Manish Tewari | The Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden legacy: Afghanistan

The United States invasion of Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, to knock out the Al Qaeda commenced on October 7, 2001. It was in response to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. By 2003 with the US invasion of Iraq Afghanistan became a sideshow for the Bush-43 administration. By the time Barack Obama assumed the Presidency in 2009 it was fairly clear to the American strategic community that Project Afghanistan was not going anywhere.

On eleventh of February 2009, 22 days after being sworn in, Obama had appointed Bruce Riedel, a veteran Central Investigative Agency analyst for nearly three decades, to chair an inter-agency policy review of US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On twenty-seventh of March, 2009, Bruce Riedel addressed the media about the outcome of the review. He said, “I'll just put one or two of the key headlines, I think, on the table here. I think, as you heard, the President wants to make sure that this mission has a focus and a clear, concise goal. And that goal, as he spelled it out, is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda, and to ensure that their safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot threaten the United States anymore.” As he put it, al Qaeda has succeeded in regenerating itself over the last seven years, and it is again a threat to the United States homeland and to American influence around the world and to our allies around the world. Al Qaeda operates within a very sophisticated syndicate of terrorist organisations in Pakistan and Afghanistan… Thus far, our policy sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as two countries, but one theatre of operations for our diplomacy, and one challenge for our overall policy. As the President laid out, we're going to engage intensively with the Pakistani government. We have very concrete proposals for increasing economic assistance to Pakistan, proposals that have already been put forward by the Congress. We're also looking at what we can do on the military side.

On the Afghanistan side, the President has resourced fully the requirements of the mission — not just on the military side, but I want to emphasise on the civilian side, as well. Now, for the first time, we are providing the kind of civilian support that this mission has always needed.”

The key takeaway from the review was that US involvement in Afghanistan was going to increase and not decrease. This led to to a 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan. This is what the US military led by Gen. McChrystal and backed by, among others, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Commander of US Central Command General David Petraeus wanted. One person who opposed the surge strongly was then vice-president Joe Biden who thought that the American deep state had boxed in a new President by presenting an ‘in option rather than an ‘out’ alternative.

Obama was not able to end the American intervention in Afghanistan during his eight-year presidency. Though on December 28, 2014, US and Nato officials held a ceremony at their headquarters in Kabul to mark the end of their formal involvement in Afghanistan but there were enough carve-outs in the winding up operation that it was business as usual. Air strike and support missions, use of drones and Special Operations Forces for hunt, track and kill assignments meant that the American and NATO forces continued to be actively engaged in Afghanistan.

President Trump during his first term as President pretty much stayed the course set by his predecessors in Afghanistan. On August 21, 2017, speaking at Fort Myer military base in Arlington, Virginia he stated, “I share the American people’s frustration... I also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money — and, most importantly, lives — trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations.” He then added a caveat: “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my instincts… I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk of the Oval Office.” Ultimately, Trump added 3,000 troops to Afghanistan taking the numbers taking the total number up to 14,000.

Seeing the quagmire in Afghanistan perpetuating itself for the worse President Trump then decided to cut a deal with the Taliban. The same people that the US had so zealously pursued, neutralized and even brutalised in “black sites” around the world. Many of them had been detained in the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison.

He tasked the former US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmy Khalilzad to open negotiations with the Taliban midwifed by the State of Qatar. After protracted negotiations the US signed an agreement with the Taliban on February 29, 2020, in Doha that was quixotically entitled “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognised by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America”. This was not the first time that the US had signed an agreement with a non-state actor to end a conflict where the US wanted an out.

On January 27, 1973, the US signed an agreement called the Paris Peace Accords to pave the way for a withdrawal from Vietnam. The agreement was signed by the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the United States of America and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam-PRG which represented South Vietnamese communists.

Going back to Afghanistan right after the Doha Accord, Covid-19 brought the world to a standstill. Many parts of the Doha deal especially provisions relating to the Intra-Afghan dialogue remained unimplemented. On January 20, 2021, Trump was replaced by Biden. Biden decided to persevere with the deal jaded as he was given his long experience of handling US foreign policy and the fact that he wanted an end to the US involvement in Afghanistan way back in 2009 itself.

On the fifteenth of August, 2021, the US finally withdrew from Afghanistan under very ignominious circumstance’s. Comparisons were made to the US retreat from Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Almost five years after the Doha Accords were signed, the Taliban are ensconced in Kabul and the original author of the deal Trump is back in the White House. Where will it go from here?