Afghanistan : how the West lost its way

311 Pages·2011·2.315 MB·English

by  Tim Bird, Alex Marshall

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AFGHANISTAN 6
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AFGHANISTAN
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HOW THE WEST LOST ITS WAY 7
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Tim Bird and Alex Marshall 1
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YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 30
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON 31R
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To
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Louise, Emily and Jessica Bird
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4 John and Dorothy Marshall
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Copyright © 2011 Tim Bird and Alex Marshall
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The right of Tim Bird and Alex Marshall to be identified as authors of this
4 work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
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All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in
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any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
7 Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written
permission from the publishers.
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For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please
9 contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com
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Europe Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.co.uk
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Bird, Tim, 1962-
3 Afghanistan: how the West lost its way / Tim Bird & Alex Marshall.
p. cm.
4 ISBN 978–0–300–15457–3 (cl: alk. paper)
1. Afghan War, 2001–2. North Atlantic Treaty Organization—Afghanistan. 3.
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United States. Army—History—Afghan War, 2001–4. Strategy. I. Marshall, Alex,
1976 Feb 11–II. Title.
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DS371.412.B532011
7 958.104′7—dc22 2010051043
8 Set in Janson Text by IDSUK (DataConnection Ltd)
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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CONTENTS
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Introduction 1 10
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CHAPTER 1 The great enigma: Afghanistan in
historical context 9 2
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CHAPTER 2 9/11 and the response, 11–25
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September 2001 47
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CHAPTER 3 ‘Boots on the ground’: From the arrival
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of the CIA to the emergency Loya Jirga,
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26 September 2001–June 2002 73
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CHAPTER 4 ‘Taking the eye off the ball?’ The roots
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of Taliban revival in Afghanistan, 2002–05 111
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CHAPTER 5 Return to the ‘forgotten war’, 2006–08 153
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CHAPTER 6 The Pakistan problem 185
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CHAPTER 7 Silver bullets and the search for an exit, 3
2009–11 217 4
Conclusion 249 5
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Notes 263
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Bibliography 289
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Index 299
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1 0 0 0
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UZBEKISTAN Dushanbe
T A J I K I S T A N
C H I N A
T U R K M E N I S T A N
Keleft Termez Feyzabad
Jeyretan disputed
JOWZJAN BALKH KUNDUZ Taloqan borders
Mashhad Sheberghan MSazhaarr-ief Kholm KunduzTAKHARBADAKHSHAN Lasht
Sar-e Pol Baghlan
Meymaneh SAMANGAN Pol-e Khomri Gilgit
FARYAB SAR-E POL BAGHLAN Chitral
BQAaDl’eGhH-yeI SNow BAMIAN P A RKVAPA INSAGHMAN KONAR ceasefire line
Herat VARDAKKABUKLabul LA JalalabAadsadabad Srinagar
HERAT GHOWR LOWGARNANGARHAR Landi Kotal
A F G H A N I S T A N Baraki Peshawar Islamabad
Khyber
I R A N Ghazni Gardeyz Pass Kohat Rawalpindi
Shindand Baghran OTRarUinZGAN GHAZNShIaran PAKTIAKhowstThal
Kowt Bannu Jammu
FARAH Musa Qala PAKTIKA
Farah Delaram ZABOL Sargodha
Sangin
Marjah Qalat
P A K I S T A N
Lashkar Kandahar Lahore
Gah
KANDAHAR T H E P U N J A B
HELMAND
I N D I A
NIMRUZ
Quetta Multan
0 kilometres 200
0 miles 100
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INTRODUCTION
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IT ALL BEGAN so well. As the Northern Alliance, heavily supported 6
by US Special Forces and massive airpower, swept through 7
Afghanistan in October and November of 2001, Al Qaeda and its 8
Taliban allies fled to the mountains and havens of the south and 9
east, or over the border into the Pakistani tribal areas, in seeming 20
disarray. While a number of questions remained about the where- 1
abouts of Osama bin Laden, and about the nature of the post- 2
conflict configuration of Afghanistan, the overall impression was 3
still one of stunning victory. The remaining few thousand, mostly 4
American, troops were left to conduct what were termed ‘mopping- 5
up’ operations, while their political and military leaders, with a 6
certain degree of smugness and hubris about a job well done, began 7
to turn their attention to the inexorable march of events in Iraq. 8
However, as the intervening powers pondered what they had 9
wrought in Afghanistan, and as declarations of ‘victory’ began 30
to seem increasingly premature, a series of basic, nagging, yet 31R
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AFGHANISTAN
1 profoundly important questions circulated around policymaking
2 communities. What was considered to be at stake in Afghanistan?
3 What were realistically achievable goals? How much blood and
4 treasure was the West willing to expend to bring about its preferred
5 outcomes? In a disturbing preview of the incoherence that was to
6 come, the answers provided to these questions in the immediate wake
7 of the overthrow of the Taliban lacked both clarity and consistency.
8 As we approach the tenth anniversary of this initial intervention,
9 answers to these original, fundamental questions (as well as to a
10 bewildering array of subordinate ones) remain frustratingly elusive.
1 In addition, severe doubts are being expressed about some tradition-
2 ally unquestioned policy assumptions. The future of Afghanistan
3 and that of its near neighbour Pakistan are so suffused with doubt –
4 and yet are seen as so inextricably linked – that commentators
5 routinely refer to the ‘AfPak theatre’ with despair. NATO, arguably
6 the most successful military alliance in history, appears to view
7 success in Afghanistan as the engineering of any kind of withdrawal
8 that will maintain some semblance of Alliance credibility. The
9 phrase ‘Global War on Terror’, such a powerful rhetorical construct
20 in 2001, is now rarely heard in polite company and viewed as an
1 embarrassment. Deeply held policy prescriptions based on Western
2 models of development are being fundamentally questioned because
3 of their perceived total failure in the country. The American ‘redis-
4 covery’ of counterinsurgency doctrine, lauded as the means by
5 which anarchy was averted in Iraq, also seems to be foundering
6 in the crucible of Afghanistan. Even the utility and viability of
7 ‘state-building’, a shibboleth of Western-dominated international
8 organizations, is under scrutiny and attack as never before.
9 This is a book about an intervention. Its focus is the ten-year
30 journey from the perceived triumph of 2001 to the complex and
31R Byzantine conflict that characterizes contemporary Afghanistan.
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INTRODUCTION
The aim of the work is straightforward. It is to provide an under- 1
standing of why a large swathe of the international community, 2
with the leading members of NATO in the vanguard, has found it 3
so difficult to achieve its goals in this decade-long conflict – or 4
even to answer the basic questions noted above. 5
The explanations can be grouped under two broad themes. The 6
main theme examines the manner with which the intervention has 7
been conceptualized and conducted. In particular, the focus will be 8
on the way in which the intervening coalition has thought about, 9
and sought to execute, strategy. As has usually been the case in 10
Afghanistan’s history, most of the drivers that have shaped the 1
politics of intervention in this unluckiest of countries are regional 2
or international, rather than local, in nature. Therefore, many of 3
the defining and consequential decisions and events that have 4
shaped the intervention have occurred in national capitals such as 5
Washington, Islamabad, London, Brussels, New Delhi, Tehran, 6
Moscow and Beijing, rather than in Kabul or the towns and 7
villages of Afghanistan. 8
Nevertheless, the dramatic stage upon which the drama has 9
been most visibly played out is Afghanistan itself, and the people 20
who have suffered disproportionately from the conflict have been 1
Afghans. Therefore, the narrative also provides context by exam- 2
ining the nature of the country. However, the purpose of the 3
analysis is not to make an original contribution to the under- 4
standing of the country and its peoples per se (there is a rich 5
and growing literature on the history, society and politics of this 6
fascinating land). Rather, it is to shed light on how the West 7
fundamentally lost its way in Afghanistan. It is, therefore, above all 8
else a book about policy and strategy. 9
The initial action in 2001, driven by righteous anger following 30
the events of 9/11, possessed a degree of conceptual clarity with 31R
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