Evaluating a Counterterrorism Strategy
Introduction

One of the problems with the “war on terror” as first conceived in the wake of 9/11 was that it lacked objectivity and realism (Taddeo, 2010). The mission calculus was unclear, the operation involved lacking in all the variables of iSTART (ideology, strategy, tactics, accounting/financing, recruitment, targets). What was the aim of the counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan? Numerous negative consequences of the mission followed: the liberation of the poppy fields and the spike in the heroin trade around the world that decimated communities, including American ones back home (Felbab-Brown, 2017); the rise of the Islamic State throughout the Middle East (Barton, 2016); two trillion dollars in costs in addition to the loss of 2,400 US soldiers and the deaths of nearly 40,000 Afghani civilians (Almukhtar & Nordland, 2019). Because the US lacked an adequate iSTART framework going into its counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan, the result has been an extended, largely ineffective and costly war without end.

The iSTART Framework

The iSTART framework provides six principles for effective counterterrorism strategies. Ideology focuses on providing legitimacy for the counterterrorism operation by showing that there is a marginalized, oppressed or defenseless population that needs assistance. The legitimacy should be able to remain justifiable from the standpoint of religious and social critique. Strategy focuses on the whole picture, from moving the cause along with implementable action items to mobilizing members to advance that action and promote the ideology that supports it. Tactics refers to the development of a spirit of mission where a command-and-control structure is in place, with discipline and rigor resulting. Training is involved and motivation is a major outcome. Accounting/Financing refers to how the operations are funded and whether money is easily transferred or collected. It requires understanding of the legal parameters of finances in the region and how to ensure that members of the operational group are funded throughout. Recruitment focuses on ensuring that there is a population there to provide support through funding, shelter, material and human and intellectual capital; the organization should be able to provide support for members both physically and psychologically. Targets refers to the choice of locations that, when attacked, will inflict maximum damage.

Ideology

The ideology of the counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan was based on opposing terrorism, which was defined as a “sustained use, or threat of use, of violence by a small group for political purposes such as inspiring fear, drawing widespread attention to a political grievance and/or provoking a draconian or unsustainable response” (Kiras, 2002, p. 211). However, this definition did not directly apply to or even really fit the Taliban, which was a small, regional militia-like group, more involved in domestic governance than in international terrorist acts like that which occurred on 9/11. Al-Qaeda was identified by the US as the international terrorist group behind the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Taliban rather more appropriately fit the definition of an insurgent group in Afghanistan, a group whose purpose was focused on the “organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region” (FM 3-24, 2014, p. 1-2). Thus, from the outset, the ideological approach of the counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan was misdirected.

President Bush had called upon the Taliban to stop protecting agents of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and to deliver the leaders of the international terrorist organization to US forces. The war on terror that Bush called for, though, was like calling a war on coronavirus or even a war on crime—an impossible mission. Sickness and crime can be prevented to some degree but never eradicated completely because so long as human beings exist and human nature stays what it is the extermination of all agents of mischief will never totally disappear. Thus, what was the real objective here? The Taliban was not disposed to work with the US and thus the US quickly lumped the Taliban in with al-Qaeda and began attacking bases and camps belonging to both groups. Nonetheless, the US ideological drive was to create sympathy for its cause by labeling the Taliban as a terror threat because, if they were not with the US—as Bush so simplistically put it—they were against the US.

Strategy

Kiras (2002) explains that the strategy in Afghanistan was initially one of counterterrorism, where the aim was to use both proactive and covert means to target terrorists primarily with the aid of intelligence. However, the strategy shifted to one of counterinsurgency as the war went on, with the strategy being to locate, isolate and eradicate insurgents throughout the region. This meant tracking and attacking not only terrorists but also those who supported them or aligned themselves against the US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Initial victory was not far off: the strategy combined military action with the application of law enforcement, the seizure and freezing of financial assets, and calls for international support (Pavlova, 2004). The US built a coalition that soon installed a new government, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces were chased into the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the enemy’s camps and presence gone, the US saw the strategic aim as accomplished.

This strategy was not entirely effective, however, as it in the beginning lacked a whole-picture framework, with forces entering into the region essentially looking to oppose the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The outcome was negligible. As Taddeo (2010) notes, the Taliban “still have a strong influence, terrorism is a daily threat, and Afghanistan is neither stable nor secure” (p. 27). The reason for the failure can be assessed in the fact that the strategy did not take into consideration the after-effects of the initial counterterrorism operation and a failure to adapt to the environment that followed created a vacuum that US forces became mired in. Even though an initial victory over the Taliban occurred quickly, the group was never wholly defeated and it reformed even as the US sought to understand what exactly it was dealing with—which was essentially more of an opposition force...…of consultants who were ignorant about Afghanistan” (Whitlock, 2019). It is difficult to see how there is strategy at all in the containment of the heroin trade, since the fields used to farm poppies have grown in size by 4x since the US invasion of Afghanistan. Were the US genuinely interested in stopping the farming and production of opium, one would think these farms would not have increased in size—yet they have—which points to the existence of an ulterior motive and a possible Contra-like operation going on.

To that end, one could argue that the operation in Afghanistan does have universal value since it appears to be the same sort of operation that intelligence has run in the past throughout other parts of the world. To what end these operations entail is not always publicly known nor interdepartmentally known. That is the problem with the existence of governmental silos: silos conceal cultures, which have their own plans and processes that may not align with other plans and operations in other parts of the organization. Covert operations are covert from other departments as well.

All of this should signal a high degree of frustration, and undoubtedly it can be seen for being just that. The counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan have been going on for nearly 20 years, with an endless stream of bureaucrats implementing their own policies, which lead to more waste, more missile strikes on empty clay huts while the heroin trade soars and the Taliban becomes more entrenched in the halls of local government. Had the US been trying to fail in the Middle East it could not have done a better job. And perhaps that is exactly what it has been doing. In the light of the ongoing feud with China, the derailment of the One Belt One Road initiative, the destabilization of nations in the Middle East, the ongoing expansion of Israel, the ratcheting up of tensions with Iran, the isolation of Venezuela, and the alienation of China from the West, the intelligence community appears to be quite busy with a Brzezinski level chess board; the only question is whether the operations in Afghanistan were ever meant to succeed as counterterrorism strategies or if they were merely part of a larger operation with wider geopolitical ramifications.

It is not always politic to assess the outcome of a single operation without awareness of the contextual factors in which it is situated. Afghanistan is but one small piece in a much bigger geopolitical puzzle of foreign policy that becomes clearer as the years pass. The US may have been waging a war on terror in these past 20 years, but the actual target of that war may not have been the groups that the US officially was attempting to target. If it were, it would betray a level of incompetence unheard of in modern warfare and intelligence. This suggests that a larger operation has been in the works.