In Afghanistan, the War Goes On

Hawa, a 30-year-old housewife, lived near a USAID-funded well on the side of a dirt road that connects Talkhak village, in Ghazni province’s Malistan district, to the neighboring provinces. As usual, in the afternoon of the fall of 2008, Hawa was pumping water when a convoy of U.S.-led coalition troops passed by on the way from Uruzgan province to Ghazni City, the capital of Ghazni province. 

She waved at the soldiers; in return they dropped a package in her arms. 

The long convoy of trucks and armed vehicles passed, but Hawa was frozen still and screaming. Habib, a 35-year-old farmer, approached her and asked why she was yelling. “I had heard when you move, an explosive device explodes,” Hawa told him. “Please take this package away from me.” 

Habib took the package to a corner and opened it. He knew it was food and shared only portion of it with Hawa.

The food package was part of then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s campaign to fight the Taliban insurgents and al-Qaeda militants who had killed nearly 3,000 Americans in the 9/11 attacks. Bush initially said the United States would go after al-Qaeda and topple the Taliban government that hosted their training camps on Afghan soil. In a May 2003 briefing in Kabul, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s secretary of defense at the time, declared an end to “major combat” in the country.

But when Bush left the White House in January 2009, there were nearly 20,000 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has dragged on for 18 years. In those 18 years, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to the country to fight the Taliban and support Afghanistan as it builds a democracy. The United States and its coalition partners have poured billions in aid to build up the Afghan security forces, rebuild shattered institutions, revive the war-torn economy, and create an equal space for women. 

In 2018, according to a Gallup poll, nearly 9 in 10 Afghans rated their quality of life so poorly that they can be considered as “suffering.” In another poll, 47 percent of Afghan women said they would leave the country if they could. Nearly 50 Afghans lose their lives every day because of the war. 

U.S. efforts for reconstruction in Afghanistan were kicked off by Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born American and Bush’s special presidential envoy for Afghanistan in 2001. He gathered Afghan politicians and influential figures to form an interim government, which was chaired by Hamid Karzai from 2001 to 2004.

“The Taliban was not ready to share power with other groups,” Omar Sadr, a university lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, says. “The Taliban leaders were unwilling to participate in the Bonn Conference” where Afghan politicians formed the interim administration. 

The Taliban wanted no part in the building of a new democracy in Afghanistan, but plenty of other factions did. Many of the faces in the new government belonged to those who had fought each other after the collapse of the Soviet-backed communist government in 1992. From the ashes of the 1990s civil war, a new Afghanistan was emerging; but prominent Afghan politicians remain the same.

“The experience [U.S. presence and a new political system] has had mixed results,” says former Afghan Ambassador to France Omar Samad. “It was made more difficult because of a diehard insurgency waged by Taliban affiliated groups with sanctuaries in Pakistan.”

A New Political Landscape, The Same Old Warlords 

The United States tried to legitimize the newly formed Afghan government by boosting public support. But, as Sadr notes, part of that push involved CIA operatives paying off warlords to play nice.

“The institutions were destroyed in Afghanistan back then,” says Sadr. “The U.S. dealt with individuals [warlords], a deal which created” a clientelist system, built on patronage.

Well-known warlords supported the new government and took up different positions, including Gul Agha Sherzai, a Pashtun native from the south; Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a Pashtun religious scholar who fought against the Soviets, in Kabul; Tajik Atta Mohammad Noor, Hazara Mohammad Mohaqiq, Uzbek Rashid Dostum, Tajik Mohammad Qassim Fahim, all anti-Taliban commanders in the north; and Ismail Khan, a commander in the west. These warlords converted their cohorts of fighters into political parties.

“[The warlords] remained a reality that had to be incorporated into the new political order as new institutions – civil and military – were being formed,” says Samad, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “Some played a relatively constructive role while others relied on illegal activities and corrupt practices to remain relevant.”

In Herat province, Ismail Khan helped to establish primary institutions. In the north, Atta Mohammad Noor, who was governor of Mazar-e-Sharif for 15 years, created an economic hub and boosted trade with Afghanistan’s northern neighbors. In eastern Nangarhar province, Gul Agha Sherzai managed to move his province toward economic prosperity.

“The foundation of the state-building [efforts were] damaged, as the international community poured millions in without accountability,” says Sadr. “If we had domestic revenue for state-building, the government would become accountable.”

Money poured in to rebuild Afghanistan, but oversight on where – into which pockets – those funds flowed was lacking. In 2008, the U.S. Congress created the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to provide independent and objective oversight of U.S. funds funneled into Afghanistan.

“Early on, the United States allied with Afghan warlords – many of whom had committed war crimes and grave human rights abuses against fellow Afghans – to seek their help in eliminating al-Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban,” SIGAR noted in a 2016 report. “With a weak central government and no fear of law enforcement, the warlords gained impunity and their patronage networks became more entrenched.”

According to SIGAR, corruption undermined U.S. efforts to build a functioning nation-state and government institutions in Afghanistan, key strategic goals. In a report to Congress, SIGAR said that as much as $15 billion was wasted in the country between 2008 and 2017. 

“Ethno-conflict has become more complex, and ethnic tension becomes visible,” says Sadr. “Power was shared based on ethnic group and identity group.” 

Sadr explains that this sharing of power based on ethnicity led to the stratification of ethnic groups that were oppressed over the course of Afghan history. In the long term, the ethno-conflict has become politicized. For example, Mohammad Mohaqiq is seen as a representative of the Hazara ethnic group, while Rashid Dosutm is seen as a representative of the Uzbek ethnic group.

“There are elements of ethnic and tribal tensions and rivalries that are used at times by various domestic groups to pursue a political agenda or gain political or economic advantage,” says Samad. “It is also used by external powers to pursue their own divide-and-rule agendas or as a tool in regional rivalries.” 

Building up a new political system involved rebuilding institutions that had been torn apart by the warlords themselves. The collapse of the Soviet-backed communist regime in 1992 heralded also the collapse of Afghan national institutions. After the U.S. toppled the Taliban, aid poured in to reform necessary government and social institutions – for example, a judicial system and the media – that had withered.

The explosion of media alone is remarkable. Afghanistan now has more than 175 FM radio stations, 75 TV channels, and hundreds of print publications – all a result, in one fashion or another, of U.S. and international support. But Afghanistan’s new institutional structures are far from perfect.

“We have ill-democratic government,” says Sadr. “We have illiberal politicians who are not very respectful to equal citizen rights and individual rights.” 

Zaman Ahmadi is a 40-year old Afghan who is serving a 20-year sentence in prison for writing an article that was not even published. He has served seven years in prison on spurious blasphemy charges, although the United States and its allies have heavily invested in Afghanistan to establish and promote the freedom of expression and to build a fair judicial system.

While the U.S. and its partners were busy nation-building and many Afghan warlords and politicians were busy taking advantage of free-flowing funds and weak nascent institutions, the Taliban insurgency persisted. Then it emerged with new strength. In 2012, the BBC reported on a leaked classified NATO report that indicated growing numbers of Afghans were turning to support the Taliban.

“The insurgency is part local reaction to corruption and injustice, part ideological, and part a part of a proxy war waged at the behest of regional powers pursuing strategic agendas,” Samad says. “[The Taliban] has taken advantage of flaws, faultiness and resentments that have not been addressed over the years. It has been mostly rural-based and at times fueled by illicit activities and funded by outside forces.”

The 18-year war and strident efforts to build a secure, democratic government in Afghanistan resulted in an unstable state. The efforts noted above to co-opt independent islands of power – namely the warlords – created as many problems as they solved. The fragile democratic system still sits awkwardly, feeling foreign and often serving the interests of elites and warlords far more than the average Afghan. But the potential of democracy is not lost on all Afghans.

“Public intellectuals have a responsibility to debate over political issues,” says Sadr who usually appears on TV debates. “If we can create political stability, this political system will be successful.” 

Afghan Security Forces 

Stability is the key to making Afghanistan’s democracy work. Since the very beginning, the United States has invested in building up the Afghan security forces in order to establish stability and eliminate the Taliban.

Eight days after the 9/11 attacks, CIA officers carried $3 million in cash contained in three cardboard boxes to Northern Alliance commanders. As the CIA tweeted in September 2019, “This money would enable the Northern Alliance (NA) commanders to pay their troops and convince other tribes to rally to the NA rather than fight them.”

The initial U.S. ally on Afghan soil, the Northern Alliance – whose members numbered nearly 50,000 – ultimately made up the largest portion of the initial Afghan security forces. The United States and allied countries agreed to fund 352,000 security personnel, including 227,374 in the Afghan National Army, and 124,626 in the Afghan National Police.

In 2005, the U.S. Congress established the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund to train, equip, and sustain Afghan security forces. According to SIGAR, the United States has appropriated nearly $82.67 billion to support security in the country, accounting for 62 percent of all U.S. reconstruction funding for the country since 2002. 

“The initial decision was made to ensure quality over quantity so the Army would not immediately fail,” says Jason Criss Howk, a retired U.S. Army South Asia Foreign Area Officer who has worked with Afghanistan since 2002. “[It seems] to make more sense when you look at the larger quality forces its cadres were able to build.”

According to SIGAR, as of May 2019 there were 180,869 Afghan army and air force personnel, and 91,596 Afghan police – nearly 80,000 less than goal strength set out the previous quarter.

From 2002 to 2014, the nascent Afghan security forces would often go to the field of battle accompanying international forces; they did not fight as independent forces. The 2002-2014 period was essentially practice for the Afghan security forces. In 2014, the U.S.-led coalition stepped back into a training role, allowing the Afghan forces to take the lead in the war.

“The country lacks a modern army,” says retired Gen. Atiqullah Amirkhil. “We have only foot army. We do not have tank division, strong air force, and neither heavy gun machines.”

As the Afghan forces took the combat lead, their casualties skyrocketed. The death toll soared so high the Afghan government requested that the U.S. Defense Department classify the number. In a surprise move, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani revealed in 2018 that the country had lost 45,000 security personnel to the war from 2014 to 2018. 

“Our comrade fellow service members have the ability to fight any enemies,” says Mohammad Hadi, a 45-old-year communication manager at an Afghan army base in Ghazni province. “But ethnic discrimination, lack of modern equipment, corruption, and mismanagement is so widespread that it threatens the existence of the Afghan army.”

Often, Afghan security forces are stationary, protecting an identified area; meanwhile, the Taliban are mobile and fluid, striking and then withdrawing. It is far easier to attack when you are not defending a stationary target. Insurgents can surround an Afghan military unit for days, attacking at will, while it waits for an airstrike or reinforcements. 

In 2017, the Afghan government established an Afghan National Army Special Operations Command (ANASOC) headquarters as part of a four-year growth plan for the Afghan Special Forces. The government aimed to double the size of the Afghan Special Forces, then standing at 17,000, by 2019.

The Special Forces conduct 80 percent of the offensive operations against insurgent groups in the country. When it comes to battle over a district compound or a provincial capital, the special force commandos are called in. Elite and accomplished, the Special Forces have nonetheless suffered devastating casualty rates.

In the 2018 fight over a district in central Uruzgan province, a 50-member Special Forces team was hit by a Taliban car bomb followed by an assault. Reportedly, 30 members of the unit were killed and the rest escaped into a neighboring province.

“Once we were surrounded by the Taliban for one night,” recalls Hadi. “We called for air force and commandos. Three days later, only the commandos arrived to retake the base after we had left it.”

The Afghan air force gives the security forces an upper hand on the battlefield with the Taliban, as the insurgent group lacks ground-to-air capabilities or an air force of its own. But U.S. and Afghan air assets are more often deployed to hit key commanders or significant meetings of Taliban, rather than in support of ground operations.

With nine years of experience, the Afghan air force has 217 aircraft, including U.S. Black Hawks and Russian MiGs, and approximately 6,800 personnel. 

“We call for aerial support,” says Hadi. “But they say that the aircraft is in Badakhshan province, carrying corpses of soldiers.”

Economics and Infrastructure 

For 18 years, the United States has funded the entire Afghan security apparatus, an issue that gave the Taliban a reason to see the Afghan security forces, and the government, as puppet of the United States. One of Ghani’s campaign promises – he seeks re-election in the poll scheduled for September 28, as this goes to print – is to finance the Afghan security forces with domestic revenue in the next five years. 

But economic growth has been slow in Afghanistan, with the state still heavily reliant on aid. It’s unlikely Kabul can take on the full costs of its own security any time soon.

 “We have been a poor and dependent country,” says Mirvais Araya, an entrepreneur in Kabul. “Pouring millions of aid into the country was aimed at establishing a middle-class, but we had just fake job opportunities and had a fake economy.” 

Nearly six in 10 Afghans have struggled to afford food at times in 2018, according to a Gallup World Poll in 2019. Ninety percent of Afghans reported it was difficult to get by on their household’s income, the survey added. 

“International aid partially helped to establish infrastructure, modernize the agriculture system, and economic institutions,” says Reza Ehsan, a PhD student of economics at South Asian University in India. “Most projects were short term and they were not strategic.” 

Afghanistan is blessed with abundant renewable energy possibilities – including wind, water, and solar – but the country has failed to fully exploit these resources due to a lack of suitable technology, a dearth of smart policies, poor management capacity, and difficulty in procuring financing. 

Only 30 percent of Afghans have access to grid-based electricity, one of the lowest rates in the world, according to German aid agency GIZ. Afghanistan’s electricity is mostly imported from neighboring countries, like Uzbekistan, and the Taliban occasionally blow up electricity pylons, plunging parts of the country – including the capital – into darkness.

A significant part of the reconstruction efforts were focused on paving roads. The United States has spent nearly $3 billion on road projects in Afghanistan, which had only 50 miles of paved roads in 2001. Today, 8,000 to 10,000 miles of Afghan roads are paved; although according to SIGAR significant sections of the new roads have been destroyed or damaged.

Afghanistan’s new roads were hailed as key to sparking economic growth, especially by exploiting mineral resources estimated to be worth $1 trillion. But alluring as Afghanistan’s copper, cobalt, and gold may be, few international companies have been willing to invest, largely due to continued widespread combat, corruption, and lack of additional infrastructure. 

In Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, strongmen exploit illegal mines and get rich in addition to trafficking drugs across the border with Tajikistan. For years, Afghanistan has been a global leader in opium production, despite the fact that the United States spent $8.9 billion since 2002 to stop the production and trafficking of narcotics.

“The lack of strong institutions and accountability led to the spread of corruption,” says PhD student Ehsan. “Powerful strongmen used the lack of accountability and widespread corruption and built a criminal economy.” 

SIGAR has warned that Afghanistan risks becoming a “narco-state.” The estimated annual export of narcotics has been valued at $1.5-$3 billion. The BBC estimated that the Taliban’s annual share of the illicit drug economy ranges from $100-$400 million. Afghan farmers in 2018 benefited to the tune of an estimated $600 million from the drug trade, equivalent to 30 percent of Afghanistan’s entire legitimate economic output.

This drug economy also feeds on and into the country’s informal financial systems, such as the use of the hawala system popular across the Muslim world, undercutting the institutions the U.S. and others have struggled to build. The hawala system’s informality – it has no promissory notes, no bank transfers, just lenders and promises, an honor system – makes it a perfect money laundering vehicle.

According to Ehsan, World Bank-funded projects have been successfully implemented by the Afghan government to provide official financial services in the country. 

There are 13 banks currently active in Afghanistan. Three are state-owned banks. Two of the 13 banks are foreign branches of Pakistani banks. Eight banks are private and provide ATM services and other modern banking services.

“The aid has helped to educate a new generation and workforce that has experience working with foreign NGOs,” says entrepreneur Arya, who runs a chain of fast-food restaurants in Kabul. “A new wave of entrepreneurs in the last three years kicked off running different startups.”

Arya says that these entrepreneurs are committed, educated, and responsible, and that they have big visions for pushing the country’s economy toward prosperity. According to the World Bank, as of April 2019 domestic revenues reached a record high of 189.7 billion Afghan afghanis ($2.4 billion), an increase of 12 percent from 2017 levels. The country’s GDP growth rate is expected to hit 2.5 percent in 2019, according to the World Bank.

Afghanistan’s Women

One economic asset untapped by the Taliban during its rule that has seen considerable growth since its fall is the country’s women. The Afghan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AWCCI) says that 1,150 women have invested $77 million in business over the last 18 years. Female entrepreneurs have created 77,000 jobs for individuals across the country. 

“The International community came and supported us,” says women’s rights activist Laila Haidari. “We see women everywhere, from national army to receptionist positions. They do house work, they have jobs, and they have learnt how to fight for their rights.”

Women represent 27.6 percent of the Afghan parliament and nearly 2,000 women stand in the ranks of the Afghan army. Fifty women serve as judges in the country and over 3.5 million girls are enrolled in schools. About 100,000 women in Afghanistan are pursuing higher education. 

“In many countries, virginity tests are still acceptable,” says Haidari. “In Afghanistan, the law banned virginity tests. It’s a big achievement for Afghanistan’s women. We have also pushed for approval of Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.” 

Haidari says that Afghanistan’s women have tasted freedom. A small, brave, portion of women fought for their rights even during the Taliban’s draconian rule. After the Taliban, as opportunities and funds poured in, more women joined the tireless fight for equality.

Zarifa Ghafari, 26 years old, graduated from high school after years of studying in different provinces. Her parents moved the family around often. She attended Punjab University in India and earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees. 

“My clothes were… bloodied, as I had to pass multi-suicide bombing in Paktia province,” says Ghafari of that period. “In India, I had to drink only water and eat Nashta [an Indian food].”

In 2018, Ghafari applied to become the mayor of her hometown, Maidan Shar, the provincial capital of Maidan Wardak province. Out of 138 candidates for the job, she won after a long round of interviews and qualification exams. On July 2, 2018, she was appointed the mayor of Maidan Shar. But for months, she was barred from actually taking office.

“For six months, I had to go from one office to another office with the decree of the President in my hand,” says Ghafari, as local strongmen opposed her. “I used to cry in the arms of my mother. I wanted to show that I can do the job, but they did not believe in me.”

A former Taliban commander had also applied for the job. He lost by a small margin, falling behind because government policies in place to boost female candidates.

“Legally, we have support,” says activist Haidari, who also runs a restaurant in Kabul. Local religious scholars sometimes storm her restaurant. “There are so many men who oppose the presence of women in public spaces,” she says. 

After six months of struggle, Ghafari wrote a Facebook post calling for support. It went viral. The government offered her a higher position, but she rejected it. President Ghani heard about Ghafari. He issued a special decree to appoint her as the mayor of a city that is a mere two kilometers away from his office in Kabul.

When Afghan women do secure job positions within the government, they face harassment. Earlier this year, two women disclosed to the BBC that they had been sexually assaulted and harassed by close aids of the president. Before that, Gen. Habibullah Ahmadzai, a former advisor to Ghani, leveled allegations that a circle of aids around the president asked women for sexual favours in exchange for ministerial seats.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a May 2018 report that Afghan women’s access to justice remains severely inadequate and critical laws successfully put on the paper remain without implementation, including the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law.

 “Many of the women interviewed for this report said that they were pressured into withdrawing their official complaints and agreeing to mediation, as if no actual crime had occurred,” writes Danielle Bell, head of UNAMA Human Rights, in the report. “The mediation of incidents of brutal violence against women essentially transforms criminal acts into mere family disputes; such mediation directly contradicts the spirit and letter of the EVAW Law.”

On the streets, women are harassed and at home they are underappreciated. In their homes, women are the ones who wake up first, eat late, and go to sleep last. But two in three Afghan men think that women have too many rights already – and young men are more reluctant than their elders, according to a U.N survey in January 2019. Almost one in three of the Afghan women surveyed said women already have an excess of rights.

“I have not become a mayor without paying the price,” says Ghafari, who now enjoys working with the local strongmen. “I have studied for 18 years and worked for years. I do not want to lose my achievements,” Ghafari says, referring to the ongoing peace process between the United States and the Taliban. As the U.S. and Taliban moved toward a deal, many feared that Washington was about to sell out Afghanistan’s women to extricate itself from the country. 

But in September, just as the U.S. and Taliban negotiators teased an agreement “in principle,” U.S. President Donald Trump suddenly called off the deal in a tweet.

Reconciling With the Taliban

In October 2001, the United States thought it could fight a quick war with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Taliban were swiftly deposed and al-Qaeda severely set back, but building a functioning state is far more difficult than deposing a despotic regime. Swept aside, the Taliban slid easily back into their insurgent roots.

In September 2007, then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered to hold peace talks with the Taliban. The offer was rejected, with the Taliban citing what has become a core mantra: It would not talk while foreign troops occupied the country.

In a 2009 televised speech, Karzai said: “We call on our Taliban brothers to come home and embrace their land.”

Karzai’s efforts made some progress. His administration reportedly held secret talks with the Taliban’s co-founder and second in command, Abdul Ghani Baradar. However, Baradar was arrested in a joint U.S.-Pakistani raid in the city of Karachi in February 2010. The Obama administration, which took office in early 2009, had approved a surge in troop levels to regain the upper hand in the war. The new administration initially rejected talking to the Taliban.

The Afghan government, however, was still keen to talk. In October 2010, Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour – a senior Taliban commander – was escorted by NATO helicopter to Kabul for secret talks with Karzai. Except it may have not been Mansour at all. While Karzai denied having met the man, other diplomatic sources said he had been an imposter.

The Mansour imposter incident aside, the Obama administration began to shift its position on talking with the Taliban as the tide of the war tilted. U.S. troop levels hit a peak of 100,000 in 2011 -- plus nearly 40,000 more coalition troops.

The United States and the Taliban scheduled their first serious talks in 2013 in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban opened a political office to facilitate negotiation. But the opening of the office infuriated Karzai, who argued the Taliban were aiming to build a parallel government-in-exile to challenge the Afghan government in Kabul. Talks stalled.

Pakistan, China, Russia, and the Afghan government held different conferences to try and bring the Taliban to the negotiation table. But each successive effort failed.

In 2014, Karzai left office, replaced by Ghani. In early 2017, Obama left office. The U.S. war in Afghanistan fell into the hands of Donald Trump. 

By the time Obama left office, there were only 8,400 U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan. But his successor in the White House lambasted Obama’s “hasty withdrawal” and in announcing his own South Asia Strategy in August 2017 Trump increased troop numbers to around 14,000.

In June 2018, for the first time in then-17-year-old war, the Afghan government and the Taliban announced an unprecedented three-day mutual ceasefire during the Eid celebrations.

In July 2018, U.S. diplomats met secretly with Taliban officials in Doha. With the appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad as U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation in September 2018, the U.S. intensified diplomatic efforts to end the war. Khalilzad held nine rounds of talks with the Taliban and both parties reached an agreement “in principle” in September 2019. 

But the process largely cut out the Afghan government and raised fears among Afghans of a return of the Taliban to power.

“The government was seen as a faction, and it was not considered as a sovereign state,” says American University of Afghanistan lecturer Omar Sadr. “We built institutions for 18 years and go back to zero” with making a hasty peace with the Taliban.

Afghan women, as well as minority groups including the Hazaras, have expressed deep concerns over a return of the Taliban to political power. These groups have demanded the protection of women’s rights, freedom of speech, and minority rights be part of any peace deal with the group. 

“People are so tired of war that they only think of staying alive,” says Freshta Karim, who remembers when the Taliban took Kabul in 1996. “Staying alive without freedom is meaningless to me. We should expect more from Afghanistan.”

Over the course of three tweets in early September, Trump dashed hopes of ending the war with the latest flurry of negotiations. Inadvertently and ironically, he gave reason for women to celebrate. Moreover, without the wildcard of a rushed U.S.-Taliban deal, the Afghan government could turn its focus to the presidential elections set for September 28.

In August 2019, more than 2,000 people – Afghan security forces, American soldiers, Afghan civilians and Taliban fighters — were killed.  

In Afghanistan, the war drags on.