will be talks and small agreements, but not the kind of settlement that would anchor broader regional peace and stability.
Concerns about human rights, women’s rights, and education were all shelved. None was seen as a matter of vital American interest, and now they had turned into noble causes that were too costly and difficult to support—and definitely not worth fighting an insurgency over. I remember the day in August 2010 when
Time
magazine put on its cover a gruesome picture of a young Afghan woman named Aisha, a bride in a marriage arranged when she was twelve, whose nose had been cut off as punishment for fleeing her abusive in-laws. The caption under it read: “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.” 13
We in SRAP thought the sky would fall. There would be indignation and protest at the highest level in the State Department and White House, and a reiteration of our duty to protect fundamental rights in Afghanistan. But there was nothing—deafening silence. We had shed the moral obligation that we assumed as our mantle in Afghanistan. Now in private meetings you could hear whispers of “Even if Afghanistan returns to civil war after we leave, we don’t care, it will not be our business.” Washington’s mantra was no longer “Afghan good war” but “Afghan good enough.”
The White House seemed to see an actual benefit in not doing too much. It was happy with its narrative of modest success in Afghanistan and gradual withdrawal—building Afghan security forces to take over from departing American troops. Pursuing a potentially durable final settlement was politically risky, and even if it worked it would yield no greater domestic dividends than would muddling through until thedeparture date arrived. The goal was to spare the president the risks that necessarily come with playing the leadership role that America claims to play in this region.
The problem is that what might appear sensible in the context of domestic politics (and that proposition may yet be tested if a broken Afghanistan begins to export horrors again) does not make for sensible foreign policy; definitely not if the goal is to be taken seriously around the world. The region was looking for sage strategy and follow-through. It got neither. The confusion over the rise and fall of COIN was compounded by vacillation over reconciliation.
In addition to its poor timing, the White House’s vision of reconciliation was so narrowly conceived that it was virtually guaranteed to fail. Unlike what Holbrooke had had in mind, this reconciliation would be a limited, so-called Afghan-led process, but in effect involve negotiations between America and the Taliban. 14 If it ever got off the ground it could have only the narrow purview of producing an agreement over the terms of American departure.
There would be no effort to include other regional actors in the talks—America promised to keep everyone informed of what happened in the talks and, of course, expected that they would accept the outcome. So Pakistan was asked to deliver the Taliban to the talks (i.e., allow them to travel outside Pakistan to meet American and Afghan negotiators) but not to expect a role in shaping them, nor a seat at the table.
Afghanistan’s two most important neighbors were shut out of talks about the Afghan endgame. Since the Taliban’s fall in the wake of 9/11, one or the other of these two pivotal neighbors had been at America’s side. In Bonn in 2001, Iran had been a key player in the talks and backed America’s Afghanistan strategy. In 2009 and 2010, America kept Pakistan positively engaged. Now America was trying to go it alone. Worse, America was trying to fix Afghanistan while actually escalating tensions with both Iran and Pakistan, as if peace could somehow be made to take hold in Afghanistan when the country’s immediate neighborhood was roiled by acute instability. A chaotic Afghanistan in a stable region was hard enough to handle; a chaotic Afghanistan
Concerns about human rights, women’s rights, and education were all shelved. None was seen as a matter of vital American interest, and now they had turned into noble causes that were too costly and difficult to support—and definitely not worth fighting an insurgency over. I remember the day in August 2010 when
Time
magazine put on its cover a gruesome picture of a young Afghan woman named Aisha, a bride in a marriage arranged when she was twelve, whose nose had been cut off as punishment for fleeing her abusive in-laws. The caption under it read: “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.” 13
We in SRAP thought the sky would fall. There would be indignation and protest at the highest level in the State Department and White House, and a reiteration of our duty to protect fundamental rights in Afghanistan. But there was nothing—deafening silence. We had shed the moral obligation that we assumed as our mantle in Afghanistan. Now in private meetings you could hear whispers of “Even if Afghanistan returns to civil war after we leave, we don’t care, it will not be our business.” Washington’s mantra was no longer “Afghan good war” but “Afghan good enough.”
The White House seemed to see an actual benefit in not doing too much. It was happy with its narrative of modest success in Afghanistan and gradual withdrawal—building Afghan security forces to take over from departing American troops. Pursuing a potentially durable final settlement was politically risky, and even if it worked it would yield no greater domestic dividends than would muddling through until thedeparture date arrived. The goal was to spare the president the risks that necessarily come with playing the leadership role that America claims to play in this region.
The problem is that what might appear sensible in the context of domestic politics (and that proposition may yet be tested if a broken Afghanistan begins to export horrors again) does not make for sensible foreign policy; definitely not if the goal is to be taken seriously around the world. The region was looking for sage strategy and follow-through. It got neither. The confusion over the rise and fall of COIN was compounded by vacillation over reconciliation.
In addition to its poor timing, the White House’s vision of reconciliation was so narrowly conceived that it was virtually guaranteed to fail. Unlike what Holbrooke had had in mind, this reconciliation would be a limited, so-called Afghan-led process, but in effect involve negotiations between America and the Taliban. 14 If it ever got off the ground it could have only the narrow purview of producing an agreement over the terms of American departure.
There would be no effort to include other regional actors in the talks—America promised to keep everyone informed of what happened in the talks and, of course, expected that they would accept the outcome. So Pakistan was asked to deliver the Taliban to the talks (i.e., allow them to travel outside Pakistan to meet American and Afghan negotiators) but not to expect a role in shaping them, nor a seat at the table.
Afghanistan’s two most important neighbors were shut out of talks about the Afghan endgame. Since the Taliban’s fall in the wake of 9/11, one or the other of these two pivotal neighbors had been at America’s side. In Bonn in 2001, Iran had been a key player in the talks and backed America’s Afghanistan strategy. In 2009 and 2010, America kept Pakistan positively engaged. Now America was trying to go it alone. Worse, America was trying to fix Afghanistan while actually escalating tensions with both Iran and Pakistan, as if peace could somehow be made to take hold in Afghanistan when the country’s immediate neighborhood was roiled by acute instability. A chaotic Afghanistan in a stable region was hard enough to handle; a chaotic Afghanistan
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