An Afghan Against American Retreat : Bret Stephens
http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-afghan-against-american-retreat-1443827741
Afghanistan’s chief executive says it was clear Kunduz would fall, for lack of military resources.
It was May 2014, and the war in Afghanistan would soon be over. Or so said Barack Obama.
“This is how wars end in the 21st century,” the president explained in a Rose Garden address. “Not through signing ceremonies, but through decisive blows against our adversaries, transitions to elected governments, security forces who are trained to take the lead and ultimately full responsibility.” Also prisoner exchanges, which is how the U.S. swapped Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban commanders long held at Guantanamo.
As with so many of Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy promises, things have not worked out that way. Sgt. Bergdahl, hailed by the White House for serving with “honor and distinction,” was charged last month with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Afghanistan’s political system nearly came undone last summer amid bitter allegations of electoral fraud in the second-round presidential contest between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah. The Afghan army has been beset by high desertion rates, record casualties, poor logistics, and inadequate air and intelligence capabilities. The Taliban is resurgent under its new supreme leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
And Americans are still fighting. This week, U.S. Special Forces advisers and pilots fought alongside the Afghan army to reclaim the northern city of Kunduz, which had fallen to the Taliban in a predawn attack on Monday. It was the first time since 2001 that the insurgents had gained control of a major Afghan city.
ENLARGE Afghan forces would regain partial control of the city by Thursday. But Kunduz was still in Taliban hands Wednesday when Dr. Abdullah, a one-time ophthalmologist and now Afghanistan’s chief executive in a unity government with President Ghani, visited The Wall Street Journal during his stay in New York for the U.N.’s General Assembly. His visit has included meetings with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, though with Mr. Obama he says “there was only an opportunity of a chat.”
His message is blunt, even plaintive: American troops need to stay for the long term if a democratic Afghanistan is to survive.
“I personally absolutely think—and I’m sure the president [Ashraf Ghani] also is of the same opinion—that the withdrawal in 2016 as it is planned at the moment, that is a big risk for us, for the gains of Afghans and Americans in the past 14 years,” he says. “In our own discussions, we all agree that it is absolutely important in order for our forces to deal with the situation and cope with the situation to have presence beyond 2016.”
The 2016 date refers to the hard deadline Mr. Obama set last year for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces, on a schedule that was supposed to reduce force levels from 32,000 in 2014, to 9,800 today, to what was supposed to be half as many by the end of this year—and zero by the end of next. Mr. Obama slowed the withdrawal pace in March at the request of Mr. Ghani, but for now he remains committed to a total withdrawal before he leaves office.
Yet the risks of retreat were apparent even before the Taliban moved on Kunduz. For months, the Taliban—numbering some 3,000 fighters, according to Dr. Abdullah—had steadily taken control of the surrounding countryside, effectively unopposed. Joining them, he adds, were “terrorist groups from central Asian republics” as well as members of the Pakistani Taliban who had retreated into Afghanistan following a recent offensive by the Pakistani military.
“The people [of Kunduz] were complaining all the time that we should have taken action earlier,” Dr. Abdullah confesses. So why didn’t the Afghan government act sooner?
“I would say that mainly it was insufficient resources,” he explains. “The fact [is] that our forces were also engaged in other parts of the country and separate hot spots including Helmand [province], including the eastern province of Nangarhar, including in northern Afghanistan. In order to clean Kunduz from those elements, a large-scale operation was needed. And it was planned for some time. But then it didn’t happen on time, I should say.”
The explanation seems tentative, and Dr. Abdullah says the failure to prevent the Kunduz offensive “has to be investigated thoroughly.” Meantime, the Taliban have wasted no time staying on the offensive even as Afghan forces struggle to regain the city.
On Thursday, the Taliban captured a key district in nearby Badakhshan province, which borders on Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and China. The Taliban also pushed south from Kunduz into Baghlan province, threatening Kabul’s ability to move soldiers and supplies north to Kunduz except by air, where Afghan capabilities are limited. It was mainly due to U.S. airstrikes that the Taliban were stopped from taking Kunduz’s airport.
But that only underscores how dependent Afghanistan remains on America’s military presence. “The enablers, as we call it—air transport, air support, intelligence capabilities, anti-land mine equipment—these are part of the shortcomings of our army,” he says. “And work is under way. But it takes time, and in between the vacuum is not filled. And that’s why I was pressing earlier on the issue of presence of the current level of forces. That makes up for part of those shortcomings.”
All this may sound frustrating to American ears, after the U.S. has spent nearly $700 billion and lost more than 2,300 lives (with more than 20,000 wounded) to stand up a country notorious for repelling outsiders. Why can’t Afghans sort out their own affairs? Must they forever be dependent on foreign largess and American strength?
Those are fair questions. But it’s worth keeping in mind the costs the Afghans have borne, including more than 13,000 Afghan security personnel killed in the past three years, which hardly suggests an army unwilling to fight.
It’s also worth thinking about Afghanistan’s neighborhood. Iran, to the east, “has quietly increased its supply of weapons, ammunition and funding to the Taliban, and is now recruiting and training their fighters,” according to a June report in this newspaper. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a longtime ally of al Qaeda. Hizb ut-Tahrir is active in Tajikistan, which borders Kunduz province.
Then there is Pakistan, which, according to multiple intelligence sources, continues to support terror networks in Afghanistan including the Taliban and the Haqqani network—the latter responsible for most of the terror attacks within Afghanistan.
Dr. Abdullah, a former foreign minister, is careful not to criticize any of Afghanistan’s neighbors directly, much less say anything negative about the U.S. administration. But he is mindful of the price that Mr. Obama’s timetable for withdrawal has already exacted, even before the main drawdown of U.S. forces began.
“The economy started slowing down in 2012 and 2013, when the news about [NATO’s] withdrawal started,” he says. That in turn had its effect on the calculations of the Taliban, which “shifted their strategy from engaging the international forces or our forces to a mood of survival.” He summarizes their attitude as, “Let’s pass these few months or years and then come back full force.”
It also affected the military calculus of then-President Hamid Karzai, who took the U.S. withdrawal plans as a signal that he was better off accommodating the Taliban than fighting them. “There were a lot of bans on special operations and night raids against the Taliban,” Dr. Abdullah explains. “The Taliban took advantage of that situation.”
Finally, the withdrawal announcement helped revive the Taliban despite what Dr. Abdullah says are some serious internal divisions within the movement following the death of its leader Mullah Omar in 2013. And it crippled whatever chances there might have been for a peace deal with the Taliban, which Mr. Kerry continues to pursue.
“At this stage,” he says, “I don’t see many chances [for peace talks]. Even earlier, when the Taliban showed up around the negotiating table, they were not serious.”
Dr. Abdullah nonetheless remains remarkably optimistic, which may be his congenital virtue—or defect. He spent much of his 20s tending to wounded mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, and later served alongside Ahmed Shah Massoud, fighting the Taliban as part of the Northern Alliance. Many observers would also claim he was twice cheated of the Afghan presidency, first in the 2009 election against then-President Hamid Karzai, and again in last year’s election. Each time he accepted the result and never allowed his followers to resort to violence.
About his current political arrangement—his job as “chief executive” amounts to a sort of prime ministerial role in a presidential system—he says that he and Mr. Ghani “started very slow” but that they have come to a modus vivendi. “People might expect us to do better,” he adds, “but it is working.” He’s used to ups and downs.
Now Dr. Abdullah faces twin tests, possibly his greatest. If the Afghan military proves incapable of re-establishing its authority in Kunduz, it will inflict an irreversible blow on the ability of the government in Kabul to govern the country, especially the morale and capacity of the army.
“I don’t see a situation that a province with such a strategic location [is one] where we can afford to say, ‘OK, let’s contain them there,’ ” he says. Taking back the province, he says, is a “must” for the government. Otherwise, what happened in Kunduz could be replicated in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar and other areas where the Taliban has traditionally been strong, especially against a panicky Afghan army.
The larger test may be in the U.S. Getting or staying out of wars, no matter what the consequences, has been the core principle of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy—something he has stuck to with a doggedness that has overruled the counsel of even his closest advisers. Why should Afghanistan be different? Dr. Abdullah might suppose that Mr. Obama will not want to lose Afghanistan when a relatively small American presence, doing almost no fighting, can maintain a margin between saving the country or allowing it to be swallowed again by the Taliban. But that’s not a sure bet.
In the meantime, the battle for Kunduz continues. The future of the country, and 14 years of American sacrifice, hangs in the balance.
Mr. Stephens writes “Global View,” the Journal’s weekly foreign-affairs column.
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