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Key point: A proxy war that we are still paying for.

In 1977, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq overthrew Pakistans civilian president in a coup. He proceeded to institute hardline Islamist laws throughout Pakistan, and began rebuilding Pakistani military power after its humiliating defeat in a 1971 war with India.

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Washington found that Zias policies dovetailed conveniently with getting Pakistani assistance in supporting Mujahideen insurgents fighting Communist forces. Thus, Pakistani and U.S. agents collaborated in organizing and arming militants proliferating in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.

In retaliation, Soviet and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Air Force (DRAAF) jet bombers began crossing into Pakistani airspace to blast those refugee camps. The Pakistani military deployed J-6 fighters (Chinese-built MiG-19 clones) capable of Mach 1 speed and two radars to defend the border, but these proved too slow and the patrol and radar coverage too spotty, so none of the raids were intercepted.

Thus in 1981, Zia persuaded the Reagan administration to authorize sale of forty F-16As and two-seat F-16Bs, which would be received between 1983-1986. The then cutting-edge fourth-generation fighter was affordable, extremely maneuverable due to its aerodynamically unstable design (compensated for with fly-by-wire controls), and could still attain high speeds and carry heavy payloads.

However, early production F-16s lacked the capability to fire radar-guided beyond-visual range missiles. This meant Pakistani Falcons needed to get up close to their opponents to use their AIM-9P and more advanced AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking missilesor their 20-millimeter Vulcan cannons.

In 1986, the F-16s of the PAFs No. 9 Griffin and 14 Shaheen squadrons were finally ready to begin flying combat air patrols along the Afghan border. That year, Soviet and Afghan forces began a series of offensive targeting mujahideen bases in the Panshir valley, supported with intensified bombardments of refugee camps.

On May 17, 1986 two F-16As were vectored towards two DRAAF Su-22M3K penetrating Pakistani airspace near Parachinar. The Sukhois were rugged swing-wing supersonic fighter bombers that often suffered heavy losses in Cold War conflicts.

The PAF F-16s closed within six miles and Squadron Leader Hameed Qadri launched a Sidewinder which failed to hit. The Su-22 promptly belted back for the Afghan border. Qadri fired off a second AIM-9L which first flew wide off the Sukhoi, then curled around and slammed into its target.

In an account published by the PAF, Qadri describes that he raced towards the second Su-22, which he engaged with a gun:

The other aircraft was in a left turn. His radius of turn and my energy state gave me enough confidence that I could easily achieve kill parameters both with missile and guns. During the turn, I found myself hitting the fringes of AIM-9P missile. I pulled a high yo-yo as I was in a totally offensive position. My target was now in a nose-down and heading towards Afghan territory. After apexing, I quickly rolled back and fired a three-second burst on the exiting Su-22. I stopped firing when a trail of smoke and flash from his aircraft confirmed a lethal kill. Through a split 'S', I headed east of Parachinar.

However, the Afghan Air Force confirmed losing only one jet, though the engagement led to a major decrease in attacks on refugee camps. Furthermore, the Soviet VVS deployed MiG-23MLD fighters to protect Afghan Su-22s.

Qadri encountered the MiGs a month later, but neither side opened fire. Nearly a year later on April 16 1987, F-16s chased down DRAAF Su-22s again near Thal, managing to overtake the supersonic jets despite having to attack from lower altitude. Squadron Leader Badar-us-Islam shot down the Sukhoi of Lt. Col. Abdul Jameel, who ejected and was captured on Pakistani soil.

By 1987, Soviets records indicate that Pakistani fighters had begun roaming into Afghan airspaceparticularly harassing efforts to provide aerial resupply to besieged garrisons like Khost, only ten miles across the border.

On March 30, 1987 two F-16s intercepted an An-26 twin-turboprop cargo plane near Khost, each striking it with one Sidewinder from just under a mile away. The ponderous cargo plane crashed into the snowy mountains below, killing all 39 aboard. Over the course of the conflict, Pakistani F-16 pilots also claimed the destruction of several Mi-8 transports helicopter, another An-26 on a reconnaissance mission in 1989, and a maneuver kill versus an An-24 transport which was actually attempting to defect.

However, the Pakistani fighter jocks luck turned two weeks later when two No.9 Squadron F-16s ambushed four MiG-23s of the Soviet 120th Fighter Regiment as they plastered a mujahideen supply bases in Djaware, Pakistan with cluster bombs. As Soviet Lt. Col. Pochitalkin led his unit in evasive maneuvers he saw an airplane plummet towards the earth in flames below him.

This was not a MiG, but the F-16 of Lt. Shahi Sikander, who had inadvertently been acquired by an AIM-9L fired by his wingman. Sikander parachuted down to Afghan soil, where he and the wreckage of his plane were smuggled back to Pakistan by Mujahideen. Some Russian sources claim Sikander was actually shot down by a Soviet jetthough the MiGs were not carrying air-to-air missilesor had somehow plowed into the rain of cluster bomblets.

In 1988, as Soviet ground forces withdrew from Afghanistan, DRAAF and Soviet aviation units began a ferocious new bombardment campaign in a last-ditch effort to save the crumbling Afghan Communist government.

On August 8, Col Alexander Rutskoy, commander of a regiment of slow but heavily armored Su-25 Frogfoot attack jetswas leading a night raid on the Maranshah refugee camp when his four-ship flight was bounced by two F-16As of the 14th fighter squadron. Rutskoy turned hard towards the F-16s, perhaps seeking to draw them away, and believing the heat-seeking missile would lose its track if his planes hot tail-pipe was facing away from it. But the AIM-9L was designed to engage targets from all aspects, and the detonations of its proximity warhead broke the flying tank in two.

Rutskoy ejected over Pakistani soil and was captured. Exchanged back to Russia, he was decorated as a hero of the Soviet Union and went onto become vice president of Russia under Boris Yeltsin, before leading an attempted coup in 1993.

A month after Rutskoys shootdown, a formation of twelve Soviet MiG-23seight loaded with bombs, and four carrying R-24 air-to-air missiles, zipped into Pakistani airspace near the Kunar valley at 32,000 feetprobably seeking to lure PAF F-16s into an ambush.

Obligingly, two F-16s raced towards the swing-wing fighters at only 11,000 feet. However, the Soviet radars failed to detect the lower-flying F-16s amidst the ground clutter. A Sidewinder fired at a steep angle by Squadron Leader Khalid Mahmood managed to riddle one MiG-23 with shrapnel, which limped back home for a crash landing. Two MiGs peeled away to engage the F-16s in a dogfight. But while Pakistani pilots claimed two MiG-23 kills, Soviet records show no additional aircraft were lost.

On November 3, 1988 the PAF would bag its final jet kill when Lt. Khalid Mahmood shot down a DRAAF Su-2M4K. Pakistan formally credits its F-16 pilots with 10 kills during the conflict, while Soviet records confirm the loss of three Su-22s, an Su-25 and An-26. Some sources claim the PAF shot down at least a dozen more aircraft during the Soviet war in Afghanistan which ostensibly were not formally credited because they involved violations of Afghan airspace. Those interested in a more extensive accounting of the Pakistani-Afghan air battles are recommended to consult the following compilations of Pakistani air combat narratives.

Sbastien Roblin holds a masters degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.

Image: Wikipedia.

Excerpt from:
The Soviet's War In Afghanistan Had Russian Pilots Fighting Pakistani F-16s - The National Interest Online

Among the many flaws in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, that Indias Parliament passed late last year is the manner in which it divides those who have suffered injustice. The former Afghan president Hamid Karzai pointed this out when he said that the victims of religious intolerance in Afghanistan are not only Sikhs or Hindus, but also Muslims themselves. In doing so, he was contradicting assertions made by some leaders of the Indian government who had spoken about the persecution of Hindus in Afghanistan, implying that others suffered less or not at all. Any failure to see that tyrants in Afghanistan spare no one shows either nave ignorance or political expedience. It also plays to a vociferous gallery within India that seems highly uninformed, and does little to enhance Indias global reputation.

The Karzai intervention is important because it calls out an Indian law that uses the lofty language of human rights to justify what is blatantly discriminatory. As it happens, the CAA also makes little strategic or diplomatic sense. Winning the hearts and minds of people in another country is more important in the long run than securing bilateral deals with its government of the day. Governments and their leaders come and go, but the people are always there. The CAA annuls the goodwill India has enjoyed among the people of Afghanistan. Given Pakistans terrible record of interference in Afghan affairs for decades, many Afghans have historically and naturally gravitated towards India. The CAA fritters away that goodwill.

The pattern repeats in Bangladesh. That is a graver mistake, since India has historically had a relatively frictionless relationship with what was East Pakistan before 1971. Over the years, hardline nationalists in Bangladesh have accused the Awami League government of appearing to bow to Indian demands. Whether it is building a fence along the border, investing jointly in the controversial coal-fired Rampal power plant near the Sundarbans, or cooperating with New Delhi on curbing the activities of the United Liberation Front of Assam, Bangladesh under its prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, has acted in ways that align with Indian interests. However, India often appears to look upon its eastern neighbour as a kind of client state, which may explain the surprise in New Delhi each time Dhaka asserts its independence, but also reveals a profound misreading of that 49-year-old country.

While those who played no role in Bangladeshs liberation may lack a historical understanding of the country, too many politicians today seem to have a unidimensional view of Islam and a confused view of Bangladesh, seeing in it a mirror image of Pakistan. Bangladeshi nationalism is distinct from Pakistani nationalism. While Pakistan began a composite of different languages and ethnicities that tried to forge a common identity rooted in one faith and one language, namely Urdu, its Bengali wing fought for independence because it resented that monocultural imposition. Not only was it not going to accept Urdu, preferring Bengali, the rhetoric of its liberation war was to create a more inclusive nation. Its original constitution enshrined those values.

This is not to suggest that religious minorities in Bangladesh have had it easy. To be sure, among those who have expropriated Hindu-owned property in Bangladesh are politicians of all parties, including the Awami League. And yet, Bangladeshis hold Rabindranath Tagore in the same high national esteem as does India. You wont find many Bangladeshis shunning Tagores poetry, calling it alien, unlike those in India who have issues with Faiz Ahmed Faizs poetry.

Before Bangladeshs independence, Pakistan attempted to relegate Tagore to obscurity, which only emboldened the Bangla language movement that ultimately led to the war in 1971. At an academic conference in New York some years ago, a Pakistani delegate asked a Bangladeshi delegate why Bangladeshis cared so much for Tagore when they had Kazi Nazrul Islam. We are lucky to have both, replied the Bangladeshi. As the Bangladeshi-American poet Tarfia Faizullah puts it in a poem, Bangladesh is Bengali and Muslim; Pakistan didnt understand that, and India, it seems, is forgetting that. Which is why Sheikh Hasina Wajed has a valid point when she asks: We dont understand why India did it. [The CAA] wasnt necessary." Her argument is self-serving: She claims that minorities are safe in Bangladesh, which is odd, since many, not just minorities, feel unsafe there. People leave Bangladesh, as do those who leave India, for similar reasons: Some flee injustice, many flee poverty.

Bangladesh has scrapped several high-level meetings with India in recent weeks. Dhaka seems worried that if India declares many people stateless and attempts to expel them, it will impact Bangladesh, since the Bengali-speaking among them, particularly if they are Muslims, would probably be assumed to be Bangladeshi. What will India do if Bangladesh refuses to accept them? Detain them in camps? Given the imperfect process of determining nationality, what might happen if it is carried out across India? The blazing summer could make the winter of discontent seem mild.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York. Read Salils previous Mint columns at livemint.com/saliltripathi

Read more from the original source:
Opinion | How the CAA affects ties with Afghanistan and Bangladesh - Livemint

Afghan security forces take position at the site of an attack in a U.S. military air base in Bagram, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, on December 11, 2019. MOHAMMAD ISMAIL/REUTERS

Kabul, Afghanistan A powerful suicide bombing targeted an under-construction medical facility on Wednesday near Bagram Air Base, the main American base north of the Afghan capital, the U.S. military said. Two civilians were killed and more than 70 people wounded.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack and Afghan officials said all the insurgents were killed. The Bagram airfield was not in danger, said Colonel Sonny Leggett. The facility is being rebuilt to help the Afghan people who live in the area, the U.S. military said.

The Taliban statement denied any civilian casualties and claimed the attackers had managed to enter the Bagram base, even penetrating barracks used by coalition forces.

Outside the sprawling base, several homes, mostly belonging to poor Afghans, were destroyed. A large mosque in the area was also badly damaged.

Shortly after the bombing, Afghan troops, special forces and intelligence officers cordoned off the perimeter of the base with armored personnel carriers. Heavily armed soldiers kept residents far from the gates to Bagram Air Base.

Within minutes of the suicide bombing, U.S. fighter aircraft bombed the area, according to witnesses

Dr. Abdul Qasim Sangin, a physician who heads the main hospital in the province, said the hospital near the perimeter of the base was on fire. It wasn't immediately clear if any foreigners were inside the hospital.

Sangin said his hospital received six wounded, all Afghans. Five were in stable condition and one was critical, he said. Scores more were treated and released by medics at the scene. Most were suffering cuts and bruises from flying glass and debris.

The Taliban control or hold sway over nearly half of Afghanistan, staging regular attacks that target foreign and Afghan forces, as well as Kabul government officials, but also kill scores of civilians.

See the rest here:
Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan fends off Taliban attack but ...

The interviews published by the Post provide a starker version of SIGARs previous analysis, but in many ways, they tell the same story. In its reports and testimony before Congress, SIGAR has revealed waste, abuse, and questionable judgment in a host of Afghanistan programs and projects. The interviews are stripped of the dry inspector-general verbiage and also of the strategic context within which judgments were made; senior officials frankly assess their failures to produce security, stability, or transparent and effective governance in Afghanistan. Those failures are documented in SIGARs reports.

But the extensive oversight mechanisms created for this massive project were not enough to force a rethink in the face of inertia, sunk costs, and short-term political calculations. SIGARs extant analysis of failures and missteps should have prompted a greater reckoning some time agoif not within the executive branch, then within Congress, which regularly authorized and appropriated funds for the ongoing campaign.

This attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan was embarked on by one president and embraced, at least for a time, by two more. Each one, when faced with the decision, chose to continue down this doomed road, believing it less risky and more palatable than his available alternatives. What the Post reporting reveals is that, while this path may have been easier, it was a road that would never reach its stated destination.

The U.S. effort in Afghanistan was an undertaking of breathtaking ambition: to oust a Taliban regime that gave haven to international terrorists; to defeat those terrorists and their allies and supporters in a counterinsurgency campaign; to set up and sustain a democratic government in a society riven by years of factional war; and to promote human development, human security, and basic human rights in a country where religious extremists, drug lords, and tribal chiefs had long ruled over (and fought for control of) a beleaguered populace. The overarching result seems to be a sort of D-minussome degree of visible achievement, but still a failing grade.

The Posts reporting is unsparing in its depiction of second-guessing and back-biting among U.S. government officials about their work in Afghanistan. Field staff argued that higher-ups didnt understand the realities they faced on the ground, didnt give them enough leeway to be effective, or cut off resources at the wrong time. Senior staff questioned strategies chosen by their superiors or determined in internal debates in which they participated. These concerns, voiced mostly in confidential interviews with SIGAR, were no doubt honestly felt, and had real foundations.

The existence of such doubts and concerns, however, does not necessarily reveal the roots of the Afghanistan failure. This kind of second-guessing is endemic in any large organization undertaking a long-term, complex project. Field staff close to on-the-ground implementation often question how their work is valued or prioritized by central decision makers, or question how their contribution fits into the wider strategy; central decision makers often fail to see the reality of implementation on the ground, and focus their energies on the policy battles theyve won and lost around the interagency table.

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The Lessons of the Afghanistan Papers - The Atlantic

The is the second of two columns about some of the lessons learned, or not, in America's longest war. The firstTrump, Afghanistan, and The Tweet of Damocles can be read here.

PARISUnless President Donald Trump decides to end the Afghan war with a bangwith tens of millions killed, as he has threatened more than onceit is going to end with a whimper, if it ends at all.

Its not victory, says counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen. It isnt ticker-tape and Broadway.

It should be said that what Kilcullen and others consider the best option looks like the one Trump is pursuing just now: a reduction of U.S. forces on the ground to an easily sustainable level of about 9,000, while negotiating to get the Taliban into direct talks, eventually, with the U.S.-backed Afghan government. But after 18 years of a war that has cost $2 trillion and the lives of more than 2,400 U.S. soldiers, such an inconclusive conclusion may not satisfy even an exhausted American publicmuch less the egotistical Mr. Trump.

As he runs for re-election touting his promises kept, the president is going to want something that looks like the definitive end that he's vowed he'll deliver to this endless war. Perhaps there will be some bit of political theater like Trump's incredibly ill-conceived and eventually rescinded invitation to Taliban leaders to come to the United States only days before the anniversary of 9/11 so he could claim his own Camp David Accords. Or, more likely, hell just pull the plug.

Thus Kilcullens memorable phrase, picked up from a U.S. Special Forces operator with rueful experience in Syria, This whole operation is sitting under the tweet of Damocles. Or, putting it another way, Trump wakes up, he sees something on Fox and Friends, gets out of the wrong side of the bed, doesnt like it, says, Fuck it, were pulling out. And I think thats a problem.

In any case, the Taliban know how badly Trump wants out, and they can play with that.

But if by some miracle the current policy of minimal U.S. presence, tough talks, and supposedly unlimited patience does hold, what are some of the strategies and tactics that should be employed going forward? What needs to be done to help Afghanistan become a stable country free of terrorists who might threaten the United States or its citizens? What lessons learned from the past?

For this and the previous column, I called up both Kilcullen, a well-known Australian soldier-scholar who worked with the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who served as the Americans top diplomat in Afghanistan in 2002 and again in 2011 and 2012.

"Have you ever seen the movie I Am Legend with Will Smith?" Kilcullen asked me. I said I had, vaguely recalling a post-apocalyptic thriller and wondering where this was going.

Theres that scene, said Kilcullen, where the sun goes down and hes checking his watch because the vampires are going to come out and eat him. Well, I wish I had a dollar for every time I have been out in an Afghan district in the late afternoon with an Afghan government official, and the guy starts checking his watch. And the reason is, they dont live there. They dont live in the districts that they govern, because they know if they try to spend one single night in the area that they are officially in charge of the vampires are going to come out and eat them.

Finding a way to reconnect the Afghan government with people at the local level is essential to stabilizing the country, Kilcullen suggested, and corruption made that almost impossible when the U.S. was pumping more money into the place than anyone knew how to handle:

Vast amounts of gringo cash come into Afghanistan, that fuels an economy of corruption, Kilcullen told me. Instability leads to money coming in which leads to corruption which leads to abuse which leads to more people supporting the insurgents which leads to more instability, and you get this sort of self-licking ice cream cone.

If you wanted to be an Afghan police chief you would have to buy that position and it would cost you about 250,000 American dollars.

David Kilcullen

Ambassador Crocker, for his part, is quoted extensively in the U.S. governments lessons learned documents recently published by The Washington Post under the damning headline, At War With The Truth: Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the development of mass corruption, Crocker said in 2015 when interviewed by a team from the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Once it gets to the level I saw, when I was out there, its somewhere between unbelievably hard and outright impossible to fix it.

Over the phone last week, Crocker added,There were no controls except our own, which obviously didnt go far enough. And there was plenty of corruption and waste among Americans as well. He said many thought, Hey, U.S. rules no longer apply. Lets get rich.

In about 2010, Kilcullen looked at bribery among Afghan police in the south of the country. If you wanted to be an Afghan police chief you would have to buy that position and it would cost you about 250,000 American dollars, Kilcullen said. And then you would have to pay every month up the chain of command all the way to Kabul about 50 grand in kickbacks... Imagine how much money you are making from bribes and shakedowns and targeting the population just to make your payment and also make a profit.

The U.S. is still spending taxpayer billions in Afghanistan, a country of 30 million people whose entire gross domestic product is only some $21 billion. This year military aid amounts to about $5 billion, while foreign assistance to civilian projects is about $633 millionstill big numbers, but less than half of what they were a decade ago.

Looking back, Kilcullen said that of $133 billion in reconstruction funds all told, Id say conservatively 20 to 30 percent went directly to the enemy. It was bad. But were not doing that anymore. Its a historical lessons learned, but its not relevant to now.

The investment we have in Afghanistan now is perfectly tuned, said Crocker.

But what of the local corruption? The shakedowns, the intimidationthe kind of thing that Kilcullen witnessed with the police and with regional officials looking at their watches in the late afternoon? His answer is surprising.

Until local government people are capable, respected, effective, Kilcullen said, the disconnect from the local population is not going to be solved. And frankly the only way I can see that happening in much of the country is for those local government people to effectively be Taliban. Thats a side effect of a successful political process, whereby you integrate Taliban into the structure.

The common rap on the Afghan National Army is that its soldiers dont want to serve, and they dont fight. There, too, corruption has been a huge problem with officers pocketing the salaries of troops who arent required to report for duty, so-called ghost soldiers. But the real problem is the casualty rate among those who do fight and do die: some 45,000 killed since 2015 as opposed to fewer than 60 American troops.

The problem is not that we cant sustain it, said Kilcullen. The problem is that the Afghans as they are currently fighting cannot sustain itthey cant sustain their own loss rate. Among the reasons: We did not put enough effort soon enough into the Afghan Air Force, so we started that very late in the game. And they are still very reliant on air power for things like medical evacuation, reconnaissance, battlefield transport, that kind of stuff, and they find it really hard to fight without those assets.

To make matters worse, says Kilcullen, the campaign against the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq diverted many of those resources.

There are ways to lower the loss rates among the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, says Kilcullen. But again, its all moot, because if the president wakes up and says, Fuck it, we are leaving, youve got to struggle to execute that strategy.

Afghanistan has become the worlds biggest producer of opium. It produces some 80 percent of the worlds illicit supply, despite $10 billion spent trying to eradicate or replace the poppy crops. The Taliban make a lot of money in the narcotics business, but they are not the only players.

What can be done better? Kilcullen proposes some unconventional solutions since the conventional ones have been such stunning failures.

I think it was a mistake to send our ground troops in a counterinsurgency role, including the Afghan troops, out to support counter-narcotics, says Kilcullen. If you are doing a counterinsurgency campaign and you are told you need to be eradicating poppy crops you will eradicate the crops that you can get to, which by definition will be the crops that are in accessible areas, which by definition means they are more likely to be crops owned by people who are broadly pro-government. So you are actually creating an incentive for people not to back the government and to back the insurgents, because that keeps the [Afghan National Army] out of their area and their crops arent going to be destroyed.

The other thing is I think we blame the farmer too much, he said, offering a little paean to what he called the amazing poppy. Its a medicine that is traditional in Afghanistan that people use to treat their kids. Its a product that keeps forever, it requires no refrigeration and never goes bad. Its tradable for currency and is the closest thing to hard cash in large parts of Afghanistan. And more importantly it grows on any piece of broken ground. It doesnt require a lot of water. It doesnt require any fertilizer, unlike virtually any other crop in Afghanistan, and the customer will pay you for it up front and pick it up from the farm gate. Its basically a perfect crop.

By targeting the farmer, says Kilcullen, you are pissing a guy off for just being logical and trying to follow his own interests. A much better way to think about dealing with it is interdiction, orthere was even an NGO in Afghanistan for years that put forward the entirely sensible policy that we should just buy all the opium, and pay the farmer a fair wage for it, and send it into a government-controlled monopoly. Then we can always just burn it out at sea if we wanted or we could feed it into the [legitimate] international economy. But we should take over and control the economy of opium rather than let the Taliban turn it into support for the insurgency.

If there is general agreement that negotiations with the Taliban are desirable, the question of who should do the talking is not so clear. Several sessions of U.S.-Taliban negotiations in Qatar over the last year were conducted without any participation by the Afghan government at all. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad hammered out an agreement that would have included the staged withdrawal of all U.S. troops (an "evacuation," as the Taliban put it) and only then were they going to consent to talk with the government of President Ashraf Ghani. The result was the Camp David fiasco. Now talks have resumed, but theyre on again and off again.

The Taliban conceded early on that they would not be harboring terrorists like al Qaeda or the South Asian version of the Islamic State, but that's a matter of self interest. Such groups now compete with the Taliban for radical Islamic cred and help to divide its already fractious organization. Trump may eventually hold up such a promise as a mission-accomplished momentonce again he has defeated terrorist. But how can Taliban promises be verified if there are no more Americans on the ground?

The Afghan government could complicate such a deal by demanding something more solid than the flimsy exit pass being discussed thus far. So, Crocker said hes not against negotiations. I just profoundly believe that negotiating without the Afghan government is surrender.

What Kilcullen calls a theoretically viable strategy is to make clear to the Taliban in no uncertain terms that there is no timeline, that we are not leaving, and that they cant wait us out. At the same time, concentrate on developing the intelligence and aviation abilities of the Afghan forces, with less emphasis on U.S. airpower. Weve been trying to bomb the Taliban to the negotiating table, said Kilcullen. Thats killing a lot of civilians.

The better strategy, he suggests, is to say convincingly, You want us to leave? Until you guys are willing to negotiate a deal we are not leaving. I think there is a way to wait them out as opposed to bombing them to the negotiating table.

But all this is theoretical because we have a chief executive problem, said Kilcullen. Around the world, Trump's threats of fire and fury are not taken seriously at this point, and neither are his promises of patient, persistent commitment, especially in Afghanistan.

I think absent President Trump you could make the case, and I think you could probably make it in a way that the American people would understand. U.S. casualties are very low, spending is way down, life has improved for many Afghans living in the cities, and especially for Afghan women.

Lets be clear, Crocker wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last Friday. We came to Afghanistan and remain there now for one essential reason: the United States national security. But what serves that interest? I have argued that a better life for people in a misgoverned country is an essential part of that effort. It is also about American values. What is it, exactly, about nation-building that we must avoid at all costs? Does it extend to looking in the eyes of a hopeful Afghan girl of kindergarten age and saying, Sorry, kid. Youre on your own?

In the mercenary age of MAGA, sadly, talk about defending American values abroad has come to sound almost nave, but that is one thing Crocker, after service as a top diplomat in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, is not.

What scares me about Trump, Crocker told me over the phone, is when he gets something in his mind, he can get beaten back, but it will come at you again. He doesnt drop it. And we saw that in Syria. Trump wanted to get all the U.S. troops out of thereonly a few thousandand he reconsidered after Defense Secretary James Mattis and Special Envoy Brett McGurk resigned a year ago. The military meanwhile were telling him the move was dog-ass dumb, as Crocker put it. But then boom, 10 months later he is back at it again. Thats where he is on Afghanistan, and I am really afraid he is going to pull the plug.

Crocker pointed to the recent prisoner swap with the Taliban. An American and an Australian hostage were traded for three Taliban prisoners. Trump tweeted: Lets hope this leads to more good things on the peace front like a ceasefire that will help end this long war. Proud of my team! But one of the released Taliban, Hajji Mali Khan, is reputed to be among their best field commanders.

So we let this guy loose with no ceasefire, said Crocker, and our guys are going to die. I think it speaks to the fact this White House just wants to get the hell out.

See the article here:
Trump's Afghanistan Policy? Talk Tough, Then Just Pull the Plug - The Daily Beast