Afghanistan and the Myth of an “Orderly” Withdrawal
By Omar Abdelrahman, University of Texas at Austin
On August 15, Americans watched in horror as Taliban pickup trucks covered in white flags flooded the streets of Kabul, marking the tragic end of America’s longest war. The eyes of the world fixated on the heartbreaking scenes of Afghans hanging onto the wings of a Boeing C-17 to escape the Taliban onslaught and the accompanying reprisal against those perceived as traitors for collaborating with the US. Foreign policy experts provided their analysis of the unfolding historical events, most criticizing President Biden’s handling of the withdrawal and arguing for an alternative end to America’s longest war. However, when pushed to define how to achieve an “orderly” exit from Afghanistan, Biden's critics were hazy on the details. Their righteous indignation at a withdrawal that lasted a week wasn't matched by similar anger toward a twenty-year aimless nation-building project where the US invested blood and treasure for minimal gains. In this essay, I describe the myth of the “orderly” withdrawal espoused by foreign policy pundits to obfuscate their support for an endless troop presence in Afghanistan, highlight the ill-fated nature of the US mission there, and rebut some of the prevailing criticisms against President Biden’s handling of the withdrawal.
An assortment of words can be used to describe how the United States managed its war in Afghanistan: aimless, chaotic, jumbled, and confused, to name a few. However, one word that shouldn’t be associated with how the US conducted its longest war is “orderly.” While the US was losing its finest men and women, supporters of the war lobbied for more time as they argued that the security environment wasn’t conducive to an “orderly” withdrawal of US forces. The imaginary security environment pursued by every administration never came, and each new administration refused to pull the plug out of fear of being the one who lost Afghanistan. President Biden’s decision to withdraw US forces faced sharp criticism from a class of foreign policy analysts who had built their careers advocating for a doomed nation-building project. Instead of reflecting on where they went wrong, they lambasted Biden’s curtain call on an episode of American history that should have ended long ago.
On February 29, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Taliban leadership in Doha to finalize the agreement for the withdrawal of US forces. President Trump did not shy away from taking credit for the deal as he rushed to his preferred social media platform to attack the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which accused him of acting impulsively by signing the withdrawal deal with the Taliban. On May 18, 2020, the former president tweeted, "The Wall Street Journal editorial states that it doesn’t want me to act in an ‘impulsive’ manner in Afghanistan. Could somebody please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years, hardly impulsive?” Throughout his four-year term, President Trump railed against US troop presence in Afghanistan as he criticized the ill-defined nature of the mission and the lack of discernible progress. Yet, the former president delayed signing a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban until the final year of his presidency. Like his predecessors, he understood that pulling US troops out of Afghanistan would represent a Taliban victory. By delaying the withdrawal to the end of his presidential term, the former president could claim credit for ending America’s longest war while avoiding the negative press his successor would eventually be subjected to.
Thus, President Biden inherited a withdrawal set in motion by a previous administration. He was faced with the choice of either renegotiating a new deal with the Taliban in the hope of extracting more concessions or abiding by the withdrawal timeline set by the Trump administration. He chose the latter, a decision that drew intense criticism from foreign policy analysts. However, such criticisms overlook the practical challenges of revising the agreement, given the Trump administration’s decision to commit to a specific withdrawal date. President Biden lost all leverage in negotiations once the Taliban understood that US forces would eventually leave, constrained as they were by Trump’s timeline.
The US had 2,500 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan when President Biden assumed office. In the two years that preceded the withdrawal, combat deaths totaled 17 soldiers in 2019 and 4 in 2020. Advocates for continued US presence in Afghanistan often point to the minor troop footprint and the low number of US casualties to conclude that the US mission in Afghanistan was sustainable and could be supported indefinitely. However, their analysis glosses over why the US military was able to maintain security with such a small footprint. The four combat deaths the US military suffered in 2020 occurred before the Taliban had signed the Doha Agreement. Since the signing of the agreement, the Taliban had made a conscious decision to avoid confrontation with US troops out of fear of the deal breaking down. Had President Biden gone back on the terms agreed upon by the Trump administration, the Taliban would have ramped up attacks against the small contingent of US troops stationed in the country. President Biden would have had to respond in kind by committing to a troop surge, and he would have found himself stuck in a cycle that is all too familiar to his predecessors. President Biden opted to end the cycle by withdrawing US forces and bringing an end to a war that had strayed far away from its original objectives.
The US military invaded Afghanistan with clear objectives in mind: to hunt down Osama bin Laden and prevent Al-Qaeda from using the country as a staging ground for more terrorist attacks. The US eliminated bin Laden in Pakistan, and Al-Qaeda is today a shadow of its former self. Instead of declaring victory after Al-Qaeda’s capabilities had been significantly degraded, which would have given the US an avenue for a graceful exit, the Bush administration chose to divert resources away from Afghanistan by invading Iraq under the pretense of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. Additionally, the US decided to embark on a nation-building project to shape Afghanistan in its image by promoting political centralization in a country where tribal politics reigned supreme. The centralization initiative pursued by the US in Afghanistan was doomed from the start as it ignored the country’s geography. Around 71 percent of Afghanistan’s population lives in rural areas, with a mere 24 percent in urban areas. While Afghans residing in major cities like Kabul enjoyed the benefits of political centralization, most of the population lived under tribal laws disconnected from Kabul.
In his memoir, President Bush defended his policy of nation-building in Afghanistan. He wrote, “Afghanistan was the ultimate nation-building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society.” The Bush administration envisioned a democratic Afghanistan with a strong national army that would act as a vanguard against extremist groups and prevent the country from being used as a launchpad for more attacks. To achieve that goal, the US embarked on an ambitious but ultimately futile project of building an Afghan National Army from the ground up. Aided by lessons learned rebuilding the armies of Germany and Japan post-World War II, decision-makers in the Bush administration felt the mission was challenging but achievable. However, the US committed multiple fatal mistakes, ultimately leading to the project's demise.
A report published by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction titled Why the Afghan Security Forces Collapsed outlines various short-term and systemic factors that contributed to the collapse of the ANA in the face of the Taliban offensive. To begin, the U.S. military made the error of designing the ANA to mirror itself, creating a fighting force structurally dependent on continued US support. The US military attempted to set up a logistics network for the ANA, mimicking its own. However, the need for sophisticated infrastructure and skilled operators meant the system couldn’t be replicated using an Afghan workforce that didn’t possess the required technical know-how. The US military would eventually heed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's advice: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” The Afghan military shifted to a convoy-based logistics system. However, repeated attempts by the Taliban to cut off roads forced the ANA to rely heavily on flights from the center to regional commands. The ANA's overreliance on flights created an overdependency on US contractors for equipment maintenance, a support structure they were deprived of when US forces withdrew from the country. Another systemic factor that led to the collapse of the ANA was the overdependence on US-provided combat enablers such as air strikes and technical intelligence; without the aforementioned combat enablers, Afghan soldiers were unable to stem the tide of the Taliban offensive. Ultimately, the US created a fighting force with inherent structural dependencies that couldn’t be solved by extending the US mission or investing more resources into the project.
The chaotic US exit from Afghanistan was the culmination of two decades of mismanagement and an ill-fated nation-building effort. The US failed to create an Afghan military that could stand on its own or establish a stable government. The abrupt departure of President Ashraf Ghani as the security situation deteriorated exemplified the collapse of the US-backed state. As Afghans looked for their Zelensky to guide them through the crisis, they found a head of state more concerned with his safety than the country's future. Corruption was endemic throughout Ghani’s government and all levels of the military. Sami Sadat, a three-star general in the Afghan army who commanded the 215 Maiwand corps and later led Afghanistan’s special forces, detailed some factors that led to the collapse of the Afghan military in the face of the Taliban offensive. Among these, he highlighted how corruption hollowed out the Afghan Army as Military appointments were handed out based on personal connections rather than merit, creating a cadre of military officers unable to lead or inspire confidence in their men. Corruption also caused disruptions to food rations and fuel supplies due to skimming and corrupt contract allocations, which destroyed troop morale. Mass desertions were prevalent among the ANA at the start of the Taliban offensive. Those who stood their ground like Sadat’s men found the rug pulled from under them as they lost access to crucial real-time intelligence and software used to track vehicles and personnel. US contractors even went as far as physically removing the missile defense system from ANA helicopters. The removal of these resources handicapped the ANA’s ability to fight back.
In conclusion, the chaotic nature of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was the inevitable culmination of twenty years of systemic failures spanning multiple administrations. President Biden’s predecessors treated the war in Afghanistan like a political hot potato, tossing the issue from one administration to the next. They refused to take the hit and end the war as the US continued to lose its finest men and women with no achievable objectives. President Biden made the decision to pull the bandage off and shouldered the responsibility for the political fallout his predecessors were too cowardly to accept. Instead of reflecting on the doctrine of primacy used to justify a twenty-year aimless mission, primacists held onto their ideological commitment as they believed primacy couldn't fail; it could only be failed. They saw the chaotic end to America’s longest war and the collapse of the Afghan National Army as evidence that the US should have committed more resources to the mission and that the mythical security environment allowing for an “orderly” exit was just around the corner.
Work Cited
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