Evaluating the US Counterterrorism Strategy in Afghanistan

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, and the operation lacked grounding in all the variables of iSTART — ideology, strategy, tactics, accounting/financing, recruitment, and targets. What was the actual aim of the counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan? Numerous negative consequences followed: the liberation of the poppy fields and the resulting spike in the global heroin trade, which devastated communities including American ones at home (Felbab-Brown, 2017); the rise of the Islamic State throughout the Middle East (Barton, 2016); two trillion dollars in costs, along with the loss of 2,400 US soldiers and the deaths of nearly 40,000 Afghan 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 demonstrating that a marginalized, oppressed, or defenseless population needs assistance — legitimacy that must remain justifiable from the standpoint of religious and social critique. Strategy focuses on the whole picture, from developing implementable action items to mobilizing members and promoting the ideology that supports them. Tactics refers to the development of a mission spirit in which a command-and-control structure is in place, producing discipline and rigor through training and motivation. Accounting/Financing concerns how operations are funded, whether money is easily transferred or collected, and how to ensure that members of the operational group are supported within the legal parameters of the region. Recruitment focuses on securing a population capable of providing funding, shelter, material, and human and intellectual capital, while offering members both physical and psychological support. Targets refers to the selection of locations that, when struck, will inflict maximum damage on the adversary.

Ideology and Strategy

Ideology

The ideology of the counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan was based on opposing terrorism, defined as the "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 fit — the Taliban, which was a small, regional militia-like group more involved in domestic governance than in international terrorist acts of the kind that 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 more appropriately fit the definition of an insurgent group — one 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 called upon the Taliban to stop protecting agents of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and to deliver the leaders of that organization to US forces. The war on terror he declared was, however, akin to declaring a war on coronavirus or a war on crime — an impossible mission. Sickness and crime can be reduced to some degree but never eradicated completely, because so long as human beings exist and human nature remains what it is, agents of mischief will never wholly disappear. The Taliban was not disposed to cooperate with the US, and so the US quickly lumped the Taliban together with al-Qaeda and began attacking bases and camps belonging to both groups. The US ideological drive was to create sympathy for its cause by labeling the Taliban a terror threat: 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, aimed at using proactive and covert means to target terrorists primarily through intelligence. Over time, however, the strategy shifted to counterinsurgency, with the objective of locating, isolating, and eradicating insurgents throughout the region — targeting not only terrorists but also those who supported them or aligned themselves against US forces and their allies.

Initial victory was not far off. The strategy combined military action with law enforcement, the seizure and freezing of financial assets, and calls for international support (Pavlova, 2004). The US built a coalition, installed a new government, and chased Taliban and al-Qaeda forces into the mountain ranges between Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the enemy's camps dismantled, the US considered its strategic aim accomplished.

This strategy was not entirely effective, however, as it initially lacked a whole-picture framework. Forces entered the region essentially looking to oppose the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and 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 failure can be traced to the fact that the strategy did not account for the after-effects of the initial counterterrorism operation. Failure to adapt to the environment that followed created a vacuum in which US forces became mired. Even though an initial victory over the Taliban was achieved quickly, the group was never wholly defeated and it reformed even as the US struggled to define what exactly it was dealing with — essentially an opposition force to American presence rather than a true terrorist organization. Because the US never defined its objective realistically, this distinction never made its way into the formulation of strategy. The aim was loose enough to permit mission creep, and mission creep duly followed.

After 2003, with popular support rising for the Taliban, a new strategic aim emerged: "the main objective was maintaining popular support in order to prevent local insurgencies and coalitions forming with the Taliban and al-Qaida" (Taddeo, 2010, p. 30). The US came to view the Afghan people themselves as the main drivers of insurgency, and thus the Afghan people became part of the problem in the war on terror (Barno, 2007). Troop numbers increased, and the US began to focus on understanding Afghan culture more intimately in order to build a new Afghanistan whose local population would be more supportive of the US presence.

Tactics and Accounting

Tactics

The early assault on Taliban and al-Qaeda bases involved tactical aircraft equipped with next-generation weapons, giving the US a significant advantage (Taddeo, 2010). Special Operations Forces were also deployed to signal that the US was committed to engaging the enemy decisively. The Taliban was unable to mount significant resistance, and after two months both the Taliban and al-Qaeda had retreated into the mountain ranges (Taddeo, 2010). This was essentially a network-focused and enemy-focused approach. However, the tactics should also have incorporated a population-focused dimension, because the population supported the infrastructure and institutions that enabled the Taliban's resurgence. Taliban training camps could be easily targeted and destroyed, but doing so did nothing to stem the social and institutional support for the group — camps could be rebuilt readily. The US and the Northern Alliance helped form a new government in Kabul in 2002, but it failed to be inclusive, and the Pashtun population resented its marginalization. Pashtuns grew more sympathetic to Taliban overtures, and when the US shifted its focus to Iraq, the Taliban descended from the mountains and began its insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul.

After an initial victory between 2001 and 2003, tactics shifted from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency, with the main focus being to stop the spread of insurgents opposing the presence of US forces. These tactics failed in large part because both the Taliban and al-Qaeda grew between 2003 and 2005 and inflicted significant damage on US forces, causing many at home to question the continued purpose of the mission — a mission directed against local Afghani militiamen doing little more than what American colonists did when they opposed British Redcoats in the 18th century.

There was no long-term vision or operational strategy underpinning the effort. The destruction of Taliban bases, camps, and training facilities was nothing more than a temporary setback, and the government installed was little more than provisional — yet the US treated it as sufficient and turned its sights to other missions. Whether the lack of planning reflected negligence or a deliberate design — perhaps to create a lasting quagmire in Afghanistan for geopolitical purposes, such as derailing China's Belt and Road Initiative, which aimed to pass through Afghanistan but could not proceed in a climate of sustained destabilization — is a question worth raising. If the aim was counterterrorism, the tactics and strategy employed were extremely short-sighted. If the aim was to obstruct China's ambition to create a multipolar world, the operations may be judged more successful. The surface tactics concealed, perhaps, a much broader and more geopolitical objective than a so-called war on terror.

In any case, by redirecting attention and resources to Iraq, whatever victory had been achieved in Afghanistan prior to 2003 quickly evaporated. The Taliban's presence increased and the population's animosity toward the US grew with it. US tactics devolved into small-party raids that upset the local population and caused the coalition to crumble. The insurgency that developed was mainly the result of instability caused by these tactical raids, which undermined Afghan society, stifled economic growth, and eroded social stability. Popular support for the Taliban was thus a direct outcome of the US's failure to understand that the Afghan population was not focused on perpetuating a war on terror but was instead becoming inflamed at the US presence and willing to fight in order to regain self-determination (Taddeo, 2010).

Accounting/Financing

Financial assets were frozen in large part thanks to Britain's role: the UK froze some 60 million pounds of suspected Taliban financial assets held in a London branch of a European bank (Irish Times, 2001). The war on terror and the ensuing legislation passed in the West permitted the seizure of financial assets belonging to suspected terrorists and their supporters — an integral part of the strategy to neutralize al-Qaeda and those in the Taliban suspected of aiding Osama bin Laden.

Conclusion

The aim of the US in Afghanistan is difficult to decipher. After nearly two decades, the operation has produced few lasting results. Cease-fires have been declared and bombs have continued to fall, yet coalition governments have failed to gain traction and the US presence in the region has become increasingly viewed as antagonistic to regional stability and peace. Iraq's government called on US troops to leave, and the US presence in Afghanistan has been as much a domestic political controversy as it has been a source of tension in the Middle East. Both President Obama and President Trump campaigned on ending the Middle East wars, yet neither delivered on that promise.

The initial strategy of bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda camps succeeded in pushing both groups into the mountains, but these tactical exercises were not supported by social or cultural initiatives to cultivate socio-political support for the development of a new national government. That was a critical mistake. Had the US coupled the bombing campaign with an extended nation-building approach and won the favor of neighboring Middle Eastern nations rather than destabilizing them as well, the outcome in Afghanistan would likely have been very different.

In terms of universal value, it is difficult to see how the strategy employed in Afghanistan possessed any meaningful local value, let alone universal value. The strategy was at times half-baked and never fully deployed all available strategic tools over the long term. Were the same strategy to be employed elsewhere in the world, it would most likely produce identical results: destabilization, animosity among the populace, and frustration at home.

The explosion of the heroin trade is an outcome of this operation that must not be overlooked. While collateral damage is often expected, the damage caused by the flow of heroin into the US and other countries devastated an entire generation. Opium cultivation has skyrocketed in Afghanistan, and the US has had no success in containing it — if containment is even the objective. The drug trade has funded covert operations for intelligence communities in the past, as was the case with the CIA and the Contras in the 1980s (Hitz, 1999).

As Whitlock (2019) points out, the US did attempt to bomb opium production labs in 2017, when "U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan launched Operation Iron Tempest, a storm of airstrikes by B-52 bombers, F-22 Raptors and other warplanes." Yet Operation Iron Tempest turned out to be another failure: the supposed labs were empty, with opium production having moved elsewhere. How could intelligence fail so consistently and so badly in Afghanistan? Mohammed Ehsan Zia, the former Afghan cabinet minister in charge of rural development programs, told US government interviewers that the United States and other NATO countries "never settled on an effective strategy and just threw money at the opium problem," continuously altering policies and relying "on a carousel of consultants who were ignorant about Afghanistan" (Whitlock, 2019). After more than 200 airstrikes, the US military concluded "it was a waste of resources to keep blowing up primitive targets with advanced aircraft and laser-guided munitions" (Whitlock, 2019). The poppy fields used to farm opium have grown to four times the size they were before the US invasion — a fact that is difficult to reconcile with any sincere commitment to stopping the trade, and one that points toward an ulterior motive.

To that end, one could argue that the operation in Afghanistan does carry a form of universal value insofar as it appears to replicate the pattern of covert operations that intelligence agencies have run in other parts of the world throughout history. The ultimate aims of such operations are not always publicly or even interdepartmentally known. This is the problem with governmental silos: they conceal cultures, plans, and processes that may not align with other operations elsewhere in the organization. Covert operations are covert from other departments as well.

All of this signals a high degree of frustration, and it can plainly be seen as such. The counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan have continued for nearly 20 years, with an endless stream of bureaucrats implementing their own policies, leading to more waste, more missile strikes on empty structures, and a heroin trade that has soared while the Taliban has become more entrenched in local government. In the light of the ongoing strategic competition with China, the disruption of the Belt and Road Initiative, the destabilization of nations across the Middle East, and the broader reconfiguration of regional power dynamics, the intelligence community appears to be engaged in a Brzezinski-level geopolitical chess game. The central question remains: were the operations in Afghanistan ever genuinely intended to succeed as a counterterrorism strategy, or were they merely one component of a larger operation with far wider geopolitical ramifications?

It is not always prudent to evaluate the outcome of a single operation without awareness of the contextual factors surrounding it. Afghanistan is but one small piece in a much larger geopolitical puzzle that becomes clearer as the years pass. The US may have been waging a declared war on terror, but the actual target of that war may not have been the groups it officially sought to neutralize. If it were, the level of incompetence on display would be without precedent in modern warfare and intelligence — which itself suggests that a larger, longer, and more deliberate operation has been in play all along.

References

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