The third option in Afghanistan

Over the past few days the United States came surprisingly close to obtaining a "sustainable solution" in Afghanistan.

"Sustainable solution" is the phrase used repeatedly by a former government official who was interviewed on NPR on Sunday, when the news broke that the U.S. had called off a meeting with the Taliban that was scheduled to occur at Camp David and which would likely have resulted in that "Sustainable solution".

"Sustainable solution" means a surrender.  More specifically it means that special type of American surrender which allows the public to wholly ignore that the country surrendered and allows an administration in charge to pretend we didn't surrender.  It is, therefore a duplicitous surrender.

Throughout the weekend shows and on to the week the news was fully of analysis about how there were only two options in Afghanistan.  One is surrendering, which isn't what anyone calls it, and the other is keeping on with our low grade commitment. The US has only 5,000 soldiers in Afghanistan at the moment which frankly isn't much, and it isn't enough.  The Trump Administration, in calling off the talks, noted that the U.S. did so as an American soldier had been killed in the days leading up to the Camp David meeting, which was regarded as inappropriate for a negotiating party, while also noting that during the past few days the NATO commitment to the war had killed 1,000 Taliban combatants, which if true would be the equivalent to 1/5th of our own commitment to the war and would also equal about 1/3d of the total number of casualties we've had in the entire 20 year war.

Which brings us to the third option.

We could, and should, actually go ahead and win the war.

First let's state two obvious facts.  One is that if we pull out now, no matter how we term it, Afghanistan will fall back into a brutal Islamic theocracy run by the Taliban.  The second fact is that we've fought the war very badly.

Okay, the first.

We went into Afghanistan in the first place as the country had fallen into the hands of the Taliban and they hosted Al Qaeda.  The attacks on our country that took place on this day in 2001 were planned and stages from Afghanistan.  Afghanistan hosted the Al Qaeda as the Taliban shared the same Islamist view of the world which holds that all opposed to Islam in any fashion are infidels to be conquered by the sword.  It isn't the only view of the world that Muslims hold but it is well grounded in Islamic tradition and theology.  Many Muslims would dispute the last point, but Islam is a religion that is badly fractured into various groups, not all of which hold the same views on certain tenants, including whether there needs to be a Caliph and whether armed expansion of the religion is a central tenant.  The further a person goes, geographically, from the origin of the faith the less likely is it that its adherents hold those views.  But those views are not far removed from those which developed during Mohammed's lifetime or shortly thereafter and while there hasn't been a unified Islam since Muhammad's death, the feature of a violent expansive Islam isn't new to this era, nor has there ever been an era without it since his death.

But there has also often been a different view in which Muslims on a local level didn't pay much attention to those matters and rather focused on others.  Even early on this was the case.  That drama is playing out in Afghanistan now and has been since the Soviet invasion of the country wrecked it.

We easily shoved aside, but that's all we did, the Taliban when we came in with a badly planned and badly lead intervention following the September 11 attacks.  That allowed the tribal elements that opposed the Taliban to fill the vacuum. But we never wiped out the Taliban, even though we largely did Al Qaeda, and its fought on. And fighting on in a country that's in a state of reversed development that's so extensive that it's development has regressed hundreds of years has not been hard for it.  It now controls huge area of the country, although not as much as some American news outlets have reported.

The Taliban controls 14.5% of the country. The Afghan government controls 56.3% of the country. Both sides in the contest now control more of the country than they did in 2018, when the Afghan government controlled about 30% of the country and the Taliban 7% of the country.

So the rest of the country remains in contest, with the Afghan government actually silently pulling ahead, while the Taliban oddly also gains ground.  Right now, if trends continue, the Afghan government can be foreseen to control at least 60% of the country in the foreseeable future and 70% is unimaginable.  On the other had, seeing the Taliban control 20% or 25% isn't either.

Obvious in this is that the war is in fact developing and the Afghan government is winning.  It isn't winning in a George S. Patton advance to the Rhine fashion, but it's winning.

Guerrilla wars, which is sort of what this is, take a long time to win.  The Communist Vietnamese struggled for 30 years to win completely in Vietnam.  The British fought for 12 years in Malaya before declaring the war won, but the actual low grade struggle that followed went on for another 20 years.  The Philippine Insurrection supposedly went on for three years, but only because the U.S. pretended that the war ended then.  So the current war lasting 20 years isn't exactly surprising and shouldn't be.

But the U.S. has no staying power in guerrilla wars and indeed it doesn't in protracted wars at all.  We never have.  That's why we abandoned the Republic of Vietnam to its fate and allowed it to be defeated in 1975.  And that's why we're ready to do the same with Afghanistan.

This has come about in part because we've believed every since World War Two that we can fight a war in which Clausewitz has no part, but of course, we can't, which is the second factor noted above.  And we very much did that in Afghanistan.  Under the inept oversight of Donald Rumsfeld, we committed an economy of troops to the effort in the belief that our opponents were all rude primitives and we were super technical and could win a primitive war with special means. That was stupid.

Part of the reason, indeed much of the reason, we did that is that we were also taking on the Baathist regime in Iraq and had no need whatsoever to do that. That war was our kind of war, an armored advance on an armored enemy.  But it took up most of our effort.  The war in Afghanistan languished with lessor participation and it, over time, has reduced to one in which we really have only a smallish numerical role.  The U.S. may have 5,000 troops in Afghanistan, but the U.S. Army alone has 20,000 in Germany, where the risk of those troops being engaged in combat is quite low.

Not that 5,000 men, in terms of our current force, is small in some ways.  It isn't comparatively.  We have, for example, half that number in Japan and about three times that number in South Korea, where the risk of their becoming involved in combat isn't unsubstantial.  But it isn't a gigantic commitment in terms of men and its not enough to really do anything other than stiffen the Afghan government's will to fight on, which it has been doing.  If we add in non US NATO troops, which Americans routinely forget, those numbers climb to 17,000.

That allows the Afghani government to struggle on to try to control all of its territory.  It isn't enough to really end the war in a decisive way.  That latter fact allows the Taliban to struggle on as well.

So our only alternative is to hang on for eons or get out, right?

No.

The 14% of the country occupied by the Taliban is readily identifiable.  Commitment of an actual combat division, or better yet two, which would be 15,000 to 30,000 men, in combination with Afghani government forces, in a single hard strike would put that 14% to 0% and would cause a massive blood loss to the Taliban.  If it wasn't enough to convince a group of people who are largely willing to die on the basis that they'll go right to Heaven anyway to quit, it'll convince some, and it'll end the existence of many more in a way that would allow the Afghan government to be a presence back on its own territory.

At that point, the maintenance of the peace could logically become a UN, rather than a NATO effort, something that NATO has a lot of experience with. The blue helmets of UN peace keepers could then be a presence.  The United Nations already deploys over 100,000 troops committed by its members around the globe in just such missions, and not all of them are in kind and gentle lands by any means.  And quite a few of those troops are Muslims from Muslim nations that don't have the conquer for a Caliph mindset.  Having those troops, which include female Muslim soldiers from such places as Bangladesh, serve in the region is likely to be less offensive, and indeed perhaps more shocking, than Americans, long term.

That would give Afghanistan a chance to have a future in which the Islamic nation wasn't a base for extremism. Where women were treated as human beings, could vote, and go to school.  And were the type of Islam that most people claim is the real Islam, and which does reflect the view of most Muslims most places, could be restored to its prior place.

The opposite result is grim.  Most of all for women, but for everyone in general.  A victorious Taliban isn't going to be hosting a Summer of Love any time soon, and the kind of forces that will find refuge there aren't the kind that any nation just like it or sharing its views will be able to live comfortably with.