America is not the world’s policeman, it cannot bring peace to every region

The adage ‘no good deed done by the government goes unpunished’ encapsulates the American experience in Afghanistan. The well-intentioned effort to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice for the death of 3000 Americans in New York, and the twin bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam with the invasion of Afghanistan, degenerated into a nation building enterprise that went haywire.

The 20-year-war cost America close to US$1 billion. The US incurred almost 2500 military deaths. The Afghan casualties were 70 times higher at almost 175,000 deaths. Yet Afghanistan is in chaos. There is nothing to show for the huge sacrifice in money and lives. America is looking to wind down its military presence in Afghanistan. Why did America fail in Afghanistan?

The first clear lesson is that developmentalism failed in Afghanistan. The American thesis that with significant American economic and military support, Afghanistan could be recreated into a stable and vibrant democracy, failed miserably.

America tried to impose a western centric liberal-democratic model on a country that did not have a democratic tradition, saw the Americans as invaders and had the pressing need for order and security over the lofty ideals of democracy and human rights. This experiment was doomed from the word go.

Regional favouritism

Secondly, the Americans gave the Taliban unassailable diplomatic and military leverage when they had one-on-one talks with the guerrilla group, while simultaneously sidelining the Afghan government and US allies in the talks. Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair is recently quoted on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), as opposing the American withdrawal.

More importantly, the Doha, Qatar talks gave legitimacy to the Taliban. They could rightly make the argument to the Afghan people that America had accepted the inevitability of their victory. The talks in Doha also had a crippling effect on the morale of the Afghan National Army and the political leadership in Kabul.

With the conclusion of the Doha talks, the Taliban had no need to negotiate with the sidelined government in Kabul or ease their attacks against members of the Afghan National Army.

The Doha round of talks illustrated that if the Taliban held on for a little while longer, the Americans would leave, and the country would easily fall into their hands. War is diplomacy by other means. The Taliban understood that they could press the advantage of the peace dividend from Doha to retake major Afghan urban areas one after the other.

On matters corruption, the Afghan government failed miserably. Because of the weak institutional framework to support the government’s ability to control territory, protect the population and protect Afghanistan’s borders from the Taliban, a lot of the $1bn poured into Afghanistan went through informal channels that reinforced networks of ethnic patronage, regional favouritism, and self-aggrandizement in the government.

Soldiers in the Afghan National Army were not paid for long periods, did not have the proper equipment to confront the Taliban and were demoralized. This led to their inability to commit to fighting off the Taliban.

In addition to this, the national government’s corruption inflated the numbers of soldiers in the Afghan Army by stating the numbers were around 350,000. In fact, the real number was about 250,000. About 100,000 less. Corruption played its part in the context of the 100,000 ghost soldiers whose salaries went into the pockets of the corrupt crony networks in Kabul.

Why did America fail in Afghanistan? Its main ally in the region, Pakistan, was playing both sides. According to the US State Department, Pakistan has received over $33 billion in US assistance over the last 20 years.

A lot of this aid is compensation for the costs Pakistan has incurred supporting American counter-insurgency efforts in the region. At the same time, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is suspected in Washington of allowing Pakistan to be a safe haven for the Taliban fighters flushed out of Afghanistan.

Political missteps

As ethnic Pashtuns, the Taliban have co-ethnic Pakistani Pashtuns across the border in Pakistan. In addition to this, it is estimated that close to 40 per cent of the Taliban is made up of foreign fighters, many of whom were born in Pakistan. The Taliban has a sympathetic ear in Islamabad. All these diplomatic, strategic, and political missteps on the part of the US, led to the failure of its policy in Afghanistan.

What has America learnt from this Afghan debacle? Two things. One, there are limits to the expansion of American power. America is not the world’s policeman, nor can it bring democracy and peace to every region on the planet. Second, that US hard, soft, and smart power need to be applied in contexts that directly threaten America’s core interests.

American interventionism as a conduit to development, human rights, and peace in the developing world, is an illusion. The first American president famously warned the republic over 200 years ago, to avoid attachments and entanglements in foreign affairs that had little or nothing to do with the interests of the American republic. This wise advice is as good today, as it was in 1796.

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