The fundamentals have not changed and the posture of this blog remains. It is this. The central government in Afghanistan is corrupt and does not command the support of the whole country. Left to its own devices it would be overthrown. US forces, now largely in an advisory and training role and supported by NATO contributions, prevent that happening. Even so, the Taliban now control almost half the country. So the mission, after sixteen years and between one and two trillion dollars spent and nearly 2500 American lives lost, is failing by any rational standard.
Without a central government capable of clean rule for all, which has majority support across the country and is accepted or participated in by the Taliban, there can be no solution. All the military might of America cannot deliver this fundamental foundation to move forward. Trump’s instinct was to pull out.
He has changed his mind because there is a real risk that IS, in retreat all over the Middle East, will re-establish itself in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda hangs on there as well. To prevent this the US military want to beef up their operation to support the Afghan government forces and perhaps play a more proactive role, at least to stop further loss of territory to the Taliban and for sure to crush the IS threat. On the face of it that makes sense.
So does the desire to negotiate with the Taliban and to engage with Pakistan and India, not only to join in the process of finding a settlement, but also to resolve their own differences which contribute to instability in the region. Failure to do any of this could precipitate a Taliban take over on its own terms, triggering another mass migration with which Europe would be hard pressed to cope. Moreover there must be enough troops to deal with IS decisively and enough lateral thinking to understand that the Taliban is an ally in that aim. As are both Pakistan and India. The details are not yet clear but the clear impression from the Trump administration is that all branches understand this.
Nevertheless the core problem remains, even after this re-engagement gets under way. The central government in Kabul is fundamentally incompetent and corrupt, not as bad as the last one certainly, but still not good enough to prevail. Until that is put right there can be no solution. So the US and NATO will either have to abandon the project and let Afghanistan go its own way like Viet Nam, where the corrupt government of South Vietnam torpedoed the entire US effort, or stay at least to contain the terrorist threats within Afghanistan’s own borders. That could be a long haul. Think 100 years. Even then it may fail. It always has in the past.