Jack Fairweather: We’ve been wrong for so long in Afghanistan but we can get it right

As troops pull out, the West can learn from its mistakes and let all Afghans, including the Taliban, build their future

Withdrawing from the fray: the Union flag is lowered for the last time at Kandahar air base last month

22 December 2014

America is winding down its mission in Afghanistan. The British have mostly called it a day. Out in the country’s tribal hinterland, the Taliban are returning to hoist their black flags.

Thirteen years into the campaign, it’s time to recognise how spectacularly badly this so-called good war has gone. What started as a mission to destroy al Qaeda and remove Afghanistan’s obnoxious Taliban regime has become of the longest and most futile nation-building efforts in recent history.

The international community’s misguided belief that it could — and indeed should — impose on Afghanistan its vision for a free and prosperous nation has instead created deep corruption and a simmering insurgency that continues to claim hundreds of lives each month.

It’s time to recognise the death of the West’s nation-building effort in Afghanistan. The hope is that our leaders can learn from the campaign’s mis-steps.

The war’s original sin was conceived by President George W Bush when he issued his infamous proclamation shortly after 9/11 that “you’re either with us or you are with the terrorists”. His statement was aimed at the Taliban, who were sheltering Bin Laden at the time. While the international community welcomed the Taliban’s overthrow that took a few short weeks, the Bush administration made the mistake of continuing to persecute the group after they’d either fled the country or hung up their weapons.

In December that year, the country’s recently appointed leader, Hamid Karzai, accepted a Taliban delegation outside Kandahar that wanted to sue for peace, and even got as far as talking about retirement perks for ex-Taliban ministers. The deal was kiboshed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Neither the Taliban nor the tribal leaders allied to them were included in the country’s political process, and Western diplomats have been trying vainly to get the Taliban back to the negotiating table ever since.

Such a deal is unlikely to present itself again, as the group’s leadership is fractured. Yet negotiations with the Taliban could make sense as part of a reconciliation process that addresses the country’s deeper sectarian and religious differences.

The war’s other great mistakewas the UK-led deployment to Helmand in 2006. While the Bush administration blundered when it came to Afghanistan’s politics, it did at least recognise the limits of what could be achieved when it came to nation-building — especially when soldiers were expected to do much of the delicate engagement with local communities.

The British military, inflated by its experience in Northern Ireland, along with potted histories of its colonial exploits, had an altogether grander sense of what could be achieved in southern Afghanistan.

While the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 was largely blamed on the Americans and their lack of planning, Helmand was a mess entirely of the UK’s own making. Its overreaching ambitions for transforming the province into a “Switzerland of Afghanistan’’ were in inverse proportions to its resources and knowledge.

Ashraf Ghani, recently appointed as the country’s new president, warned one UK planner that there could not have been a worse peace-keeping force to send to Helmand, given Britain’s colonial history in Afghanistan. He warned there would be a “bloodbath”. The British ploughed on regardless and managed to achieve the unusual feat of uniting the US military, Hamid Karzai and the Taliban in condemnation of their role.

Within months of the blunder, a few pioneering British officers were trying to reverse course and reach a series of local accommodations with tribal groups that did much to temper the violence. Such truces rarely lasted long, with the Americans keen to put a stop to what they regarded as “talking to the Taliban”. And yet these deals sprang up enough times both in British areas and beyond to suggest a deeper desire for peace amid the shifting allegiances of this predominantly rural and tribal society.

The military became expert at understanding these complexities whenever they started listening to Afghans and giving them the lead in shaping their future. This is the good war that some have been fighting from the beginning, fought as much through cultural engagement as with guns. The sad irony is that just as the British and American militaries have developed the right expertise, their mission is winding down.

So far, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron appear intent on hightailing it out of the country and reducing American engagement to the barest minimum to prevent al Qaeda or any other global jihad group returning. There’s no doubt that such a containment strategy can work: it has already been used to successfully curtail al Qaeda for over a decade. But it is not a strategy that contains much hope of actually addressing Afghanistan’s deeper problems — and that is the real betrayal of our soldiers.

Afghanistan has been locked in a civil war for almost 30 years, and until America starts working to bring together all sides of the conflict, the Afghan war is never going to end.

In the next few years, we’re going to see the Taliban continue to seize isolated towns and villages in the south. They’re unlikely to seize any major towns, provided the US keeps some money and military assistance flowing. Instead, a low-level insurgency will continue to grip the country, claiming lives and destroying homes.

Can we offer Afghanistan a better future than that? I think so, with Afghans taking the lead, and the promise of a decades-long commitment that recognises the war’s main actors, including the Taliban. America and Britain have taken a wrong-headed approach in Afghanistan for much of the past 13 years but in going from one extreme of nation-building and military escalation to the opposite, the West is missing the opportunity to fulfil our promises.

In the early 20th century, British schoolchildren were taught in history class: you can’t invade Afghanistan. A hundred years later, we may be reaching the same conclusion. That sounds too defeatist to me. Instead, listen to those you are trying to help. Don’t try to do too much. And recognise that it will take longer than you think.

Jack Fairweather’s new book is The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan (Vintage)

Jack Fairweather: We’ve been wrong for so long in Afghanistan but we can get it right

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