Action and Reaction, the Real Afghan Hound

It doesn’t make the headlines here anymore. But for those living through the hell, wanton death is all they care about. January has been a particularly bloody month in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as Taliban terrorists focus on mass killings to send one very clear message: the US-backed regime is not in control and is completely unable to protect its citizens from harm. The more Donald Trump doubles down with more US troops, the more significant it is for the Taliban to make sure those plans do not work. And without US support, it is extremely unlikely that the Kabul political machine can stay in power.

What the Taliban have effectively communicated is that it is the US, not Afghan military fighting for the “elected government,” that keeps that regime in power. And that regime, even with US military backing, is completely unable to control the countryside, completely unable to stop the carnage inflicted seemingly at random by the Taliban, who know that the United States, mired in the longest war in its history, will not stay forever. They’ve studied the war efforts of Americans in Vietnam and Iraq… they know that sooner or later, the Americans will break.

Indeed, a Taliban assault on Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on January 20^th, a 15 hour siege that lasted throughout the night, killed 22 as terrorists ranged throughout the hotel claiming victims, most foreigners, where they could find them. A small cadre of Taliban shooters raged through the building, where hundreds of guests were trapped, taking out those innocents with gun blasts. A week later, “The Taliban drove an ambulance packed with explosives into a crowded Kabul street on Saturday [1/27], setting off an enormous blast that killed at least [150] people and injured 158 others, adding to the grim toll in what has been one of the most violent stretches of the long war, Afghan officials said.” New York Times, January 27^th (pictured above).

On January 29^th, one more attack – this time claimed by ISIS (who are affiliated with the Taliban) – against an Afghan military outpost outside of Kabul. Shooters and two suicide bombers were reported to have killed at least 11 Afghan soliders.

Why this escalation in random violence? “Whether the week’s events will translate into a long-term gain for the Taliban or serve only as a terrible but temporary show of force, the attacks embody the trends toward violence and disintegration that appear to be only worsening in Afghanistan…

“The war’s participants embarked on what they thought was a traditional battle for control of Afghanistan’s territory and for the allegiance of its people. But over more than 16 years, without setting out to do so, they have remade it into a war over one issue: whether or not the country can have a central, functioning state.

“For the American-led coalition and its Afghan partners, the goal was simple: Set up a government, help it consolidate control, and wait for Afghans to reject the Taliban in favor of stability… The Taliban, which deny the foreigner-backed government’s legitimacy, sought to topple it.” New York Times, January 28^th.

Afghanistan is rugged country to say the least. Plagued with violent and corrupt warlords as well as the extreme Muslim fundamentalist Taliban plus a US-imposed government that seemed to escalate that corruption even further, there has always been doubt whether stability and a lasting peace are remotely possible. What began as a US war to topple the Taliban-governed country that served as a training ground for the 9/11/01 Al Qaeda terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon, has continued into a seemingly unending conflict without end.

The Soviet Union, fighting its own failed Afghan war from 1979-89, was sapped in strength and power. Many claim that that ten year humiliating military action, one where the US supplied its future terrorists to accelerate that Soviet demise, was the straw that broke the USSR’s back… the final failure that fractured a collapsing Soviet government into the CIS nation-states we see today.

It was a lesson not learned by the American administrations that followed, Republican and Democrat alike… and one where succeeding generations of American generals constantly have reassured president after president that the war is winnable. It isn’t, but Donald Trump thinks he’s the one who will be the final victor. The Taliban think patience and persistence must succeed. After all, what do Americans want on the opposite side of the world… when the Taliban and their families have lived there for centuries?

“Because both sides treated Afghanistan’s governance as a matter of all-or-nothing survival, the Taliban had every incentive to create chaos…. With the Taliban unable to win outright but the Americans unwilling to admit defeat, she said, each side has privileged short-term escalations. That has validated the Taliban’s view that the group must undermine the state, including through attacks in Kabul that expose the government’s weakness.

“‘Trump’s strategy is based on a fighting machine — to send more troops,’ said Mullah Hamid, a Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan. ‘If they are giving priority to the military option, we are not weak. We can reach our target and hit the enemy.’… The tit-for-tat violence has taken on a logic of its own, overwhelming other options.

“‘There has not been any channel of talks ongoing between the High Peace Council and the Taliban,’ said Maulavi Shafiullah Nuristani, a member of the government body tasked with exploring negotiations. ‘We never had any direct contacts with them, except for indirect and personal contacts.’

“Mr. Nuristani said the peace council’s offices, located a little more than 200 yards from the site of Saturday’s car bombing, would close for two days — ‘until the rooms and our offices are cleaned of debris and broken glass.’” NY Times.

Is not losing the same thing as winning? It an expensive stalemate, costing well over a trillion dollars and costing thousands of American lives, enough? And if we cannot sustain what three presidents believe is a peaceful state, how do we end our involvement without powerful negative regional repercussions? Is Trump’s effort to pull back military aid to neighboring “ally” Pakistan unless they amp up their genuine cooperation to stem regional terrorism an effective tool… or simply a force that will push Pakistan further to the other side? But then, foreign policy does not seem to be a particular strength of this administration. Fake news tells us we might just win. History and over a decade and a half of failure tell us otherwise.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder why repeating the same behavior but expecting a different result – after 16 years – is considered effective policy.