America reacted with fury, not wisdom
THE 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a stark reminder of the uncertainties of individual and collective human endeavours, of unintended consequences, of enduring features and of change and transformation. Much of the drama which brought forth these elements played over two decades on the Afghan stage.
It began with the al-Qaeda’s devastating terrorist attacks in America. Its final act ended with the easy collapse of the American-inspired Afghan Republic on August 15 this year: the strategic defeat of the world’s pre-eminent power and the return of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate.
But a new Afghan drama will now begin. It will have a cast of old and new characters and directors and will be richly complex, possibly bloody.
America’s first objective after 9/11 was to eliminate its perpetrator, the al- Qaeda. Significantly, it did not seek to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan. It only demanded that the group severe its connection with the al-Qaeda and hand over Osama bin Laden and his companions to face justice. The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, refused to do so.
Hence, America launched military operations to capture the al-Qaeda leaders and cadres based in Afghanistan, as well as the Taliban leadership. In this process, it succeeded in destroying the Taliban regime, but failed to get its leaders as well as those of the al-Qaeda; both escaped to Pakistan.
Once these military operations ended, America focussed on the al-Qaeda. It gave Pakistan a free pass to rebuild the Taliban as long as it kept handing over the al-Qaeda operatives. Pakistan utilised the space given to it to convert the Taliban into a formidable insurgent force which continued to rely on terror. It operated from secure bases in Pakistan to attack both the US and Afghan Republic forces.
To effectively combat the Taliban, the theatre of war had necessarily now to extend to Pakistan. However, the Americans decided not to do
so and, thus, ensured their forces militarily could not defeat the Taliban insurgency.
Nor, of course, could the Afghan Republic, which compounded its military incapacity with continuing political disunity and ineptitude.
Having failed to control the insurgency, America decided to fall back on its first priority. That was the elimination of the al-Qaeda and the prevention of the use of Afghan territory by any international terrorist group to attack American interests.
Faced with the criticism of the hasty and messy withdrawal, President Joe Biden has sought to remind his people of this core objective of the Afghan war. He has also said that with the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in May 2011, the principal American aim was achieved.
While the Taliban has given assurances that it will not allow the Afghan territory to be used by terrorist groups against America, the Chairman of the US Joints Chiefs of Staff recently said: “I think there’s at least a good probability of a broader civil war and that will, in turn, lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to a reconstitution of al Qaeda or a growth of ISIS or …other terrorist groups.”
Should that happen, then, for America, the futility of the Afghan war, of over 2,400 American soldiers killed and at least a trillion dollars spent, will be cemented in stone.
In 2001, the action in Afghanistan was touted by the Bush administration as part of a grand global war on terror. Two decades later, global terrorism continues unabated with deadly groups such as the ISIS, initially an offshoot of the al-Qaeda, coming up. Terrorism has morphed.
In his address to his people on August 31, Biden confirmed this, even if inadvertently. Justifying the pullout from Afghanistan, he said, “The terror threat has metastasised across the world, well beyond Afghanistan.”
If this is so — and it is — then the global war on terrorism has failed. One reason for such a situation lies in the continuing selective approaches of the international community to terrorism. This is illustrated by the continuing global failure to even define terrorism. What is needed to end it is a genuine global cooperation. The major powers also need to rein in countries like Pakistan that use terror as an instrument of state policy.
Despite American protestations that nation-building was not its aim in Afghanistan, it embarked on such an endeavour from the beginning. The Afghan Republic created in 2004 is now part of history.
The Islamic Emirate is back, representing the conservative, and in many respects, regressive traditions of Afghanistan’s Pashtun-dominated south and east.
In the past 20 years, Afghanistan has evolved, with sections of its urban youth more aware and committed to modern values. Nation-building, though, does not take place in urban centres alone.
In a fundamental way, the return of the Emirate represents the failure of foreign-imposed nation-building exercises. This does not mean that the Taliban must be allowed to turn the clock back. At the same time, there is a need to understand that societies and polities evolve organically.
The current one-size-fits-all international approach and the emphasis on quickfixes in post-conflict situations does not work. The past 20 years in Afghanistan establishes the veracity of this assertion.
In the 1990s, America was a hyperpower. It had emerged victorious in the Cold War and the Soviet Union had disintegrated. China was acquiring power rapidly, but keeping a low profile. Though America faced challenges, it was moving with the assurance of its centrality in the world order, marked by Pax Americana. 9/11 was a shattering blow to its ego and it reacted with fury, but not with wisdom.
Not surprisingly, the Afghan debacle will only intensify questions about its power and standing, though it remains, by far, the world’s most powerful country. It continues to possess the world’s strongest technological base at a time when digitisation is changing human life in fundamental ways.
History does not move in a linear fashion; this is the enduring lesson of all that has happened since that fateful morning 20 years ago in America.
