And this left the door open for the slow return of the Taliban. Unfortunately, Afghans do not seem to have been impressed. Often, they outperform the local court system. This is one major reason why religion—particularly Islam—matters.
It provides an organizing framework for rough justice and a justification for its implementation, and is more likely to be perceived as legitimate by local communities. Secular groups and governments simply have a harder time providing this kind of justice. A Sharia-based, informal dispute system would almost certainly be frowned upon by those Western donors.
How likely was it that an Afghan government headed by an Ivy League—educated technocrat could beat the Taliban at its own game? Karlin When the Bush administration helped shape the post-Taliban Afghan government, it was still claiming that it had little interest in nation building.
Strong presidential systems are appealing because they offer the prospect of determined action. But the concentration of power inevitably alienates other stakeholders, particularly on the local and regional levels. From the beginning, the Afghan Parliament suffered from a legitimacy deficit. Afghanistan used an electoral system known as single nontransferable vote SNTV , one of the rarest in the world.
There are reasons SNTV is sometimes used in local elections but almost never nationally: Among other things, it allocates votes in a way that depresses the development of political parties. The risks of a presidential system are heightened in divided societies, and Afghanistan is divided along ethnic, religious, tribal, linguistic, and ideological lines—in almost every way possible.
This raises the stakes of political competition, because what matters most is who ends up at the very top. Finally, the system works only if the president is competent. The now-exiled president, Ashraf Ghani, managed to be all-powerful in theory but resolutely feckless in practice.
When General Petraeus, the architect of the surge in Iraq and next CIA director, arrived as the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan in June , he brought a change in strategy but failed to win more support from Afghans. Reforming the government has fallen off the agenda and the coalition is supporting corrupt officials, particularly in the south, and helping mostly discredited militias that are largely ineffective and always unpopular.
And military operations in Kandahar have destroyed many private estates and orchards. Withdrawing Western forces in the coming years will undoubtedly give up territory to the insurgents. There is no way that the Afghan army will be big and strong enough to resist the Taliban. We have already seen this in the east following the evacuation of several U. Insurgents have taken control in numerous valleys and radical groups—including Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaeda—now enjoy sanctuary in Afghanistan.
The United States needs to rethink its strategy today and begin negotiating the best possible solution with the insurgency if it wants to leave anytime soon. Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
The World Unpacked is a biweekly foreign policy podcast that breaks down the hottest global issues of today with experts, journalists, and policymakers who can explain what is happening, why it matters, and where we go from here. In an increasingly crowded, chaotic, and contested world and marketplace of ideas, the Carnegie Endowment offers decisionmakers global, independent, and strategic insight and innovative ideas that advance international peace.
Image source, EPA. Fighting has been going on for 40 years - most Afghans can't remember a time of peace. Why did the US fight a war in Afghanistan and why did it last so long?
Image source, Reuters. The Afghan conflict became America's longest war. The militants slipped away and later regrouped. Twenty years of conflict in Afghanistan — what happened when? Show more. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Find out more on the Afghan conflict What has the conflict cost the US? How costly has the war been? What could happen next? During the s the Taliban forced women to dress in certain ways and denied them equal rights.
Related Topics. Published 8 September. Published 9 September Published 18 August. Published 2 April Published 14 July Published 31 January Published 28 August. But contemplating what happens going forward also means looking at the past, including the ways American involvement has shaped Afghan politics and life for more than 50 years.
During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union sought to gain footholds in Afghanistan, first through infrastructure investments and then military intervention. Once they withdrew in the late s, the country entered a civil war — a backdrop to the rise of the Taliban.
Now President Joe Biden has finally pulled American troops out of Afghanistan, but the two nations are still intertwined. I recently spoke with Ali A. A lot of people date US intervention in Afghanistan to But is that the right place to start? The actuality is that the United States was involved all the way back in the s. Afghanistan was going through a series of modernizing projects, and it attempted to really build into a modern nation-state under two subsequent leaders: first, King Zahir Shah, and then followed by his cousin who overthrew him, President Mohammad Daoud Khan.
And it was right in the midst of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in Afghanistan, namely through infrastructure building. The United States was involved in what was known as the Helmand Valley project, which was an irrigation project and agricultural project about building dams in southern Afghanistan. There was a lot of money coming from both of these big, great powers in Afghanistan. And that really sets the stage for what eventually becomes a more formal military relationship to the country.
Daoud Khan starts to ally himself more and more with the Soviet Union. He tries to establish a friendly relationship. But his allying with the Soviet Union makes the United States very, very nervous. Here, the United States starts to slowly funnel money toward some resistance groups. It has a little bit of a muddled approach. There were some in the [US] government, like former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was very interested in getting involved.
And so they have a bit of a mixed bag approach. That does eventually induce a Soviet invasion. The US was actually involved a little before the Soviets invaded. Once they got invaded, then the United States throws its full backing. The mujahedeen is a sort of resistance movement that emerges in response to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. There are people who are like, hey, I can finally find a job, and other people who are like, wait a minute, we have health care. As a result of that repressive component, there were pockets of resistance that have been growing.
The mujahedeen are not a single group. We often talk about the mujahedeen as one group, but [they were] actually four different kinds of groups that roughly align as resisting this new oppressive, repressive government. The first is the more organized. In fact, even before the Soviet invasion, he carried out a series of horrific acid attacks against women. This is a very unsavory character. He is much more interested in a sort of egalitarian vision of an Islamic republic, one with representative rather than this kind of autocratic rule.
And yet despite these ideological differences, these two people ally themselves or at least align in opposition to communist government. Then the fourth and final group are just ordinary people — people that just pick up arms and fight and resist. This movement is a little slower.
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