Afghanistan Opinions

AN END TO THE WESTERN OCCUPATION IN AFGHANISTAN

BY VANESSA IGRAS

Twenty years and two trillion dollars later, Afghan citizens are left with an overthrown government and a splintered Afghanistan, all in the American spirit of enforcing Western-style democracy and keeping terrorist organizations at a theoretical bay. This 20-year tragedy has exposed America’s false sense of ideological superiority among the East. The truth is, the United States did not set realistic goals in Afghanistan. Its nation-building objective was beyond the American capability, not because the U.S. lacks the military authority to enforce a rule of law but rather because it does not know how to suspend its Eurocentrist values. What can the United States learn in this retrospective period?

Foreign-imposed regime change rarely leads to effective governance, especially in poor, mostly illiterate, ethnically divided, and conflict-ridden societies. We see this to be true in Central American countries but also now, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghan society is not meant to fit the standard of American governance. In adopting this goal, the U.S. had taken on nation-building in a country it barely understood. Historically, Afghanistan has long endured as a patchwork of ethnic factions; it was never meant to act as one whole nationstate, and so the presumption that one could be imposed by American force was terribly misguided.

Nevertheless, U.S. policymakers assumed that by using the “top-down” approach, which establishes overwhelming military dominance over a region, that the Afghan people would comply. The fact is, however, U.S. leaders should have known better. This situation was not unprecedented; America adopted a similar top-down strategy in Vietnam, and it backfired spectacularly. Poppy eradication programs left Arghan farmers impoverished and even aided the Taliban’s recruitment of locals. In an attempt to train Afghans to fight alongside the U.S. military, Afghan forces became dependent on U.S. contractors for technical advice, maintenance, and logistical advisers. And in spending billions to prop up a central government that turned out to be fueled by corruption, the government’s frail legitimacy was undermined. During the Obama administration, the U.S. tried to micromanage Afghanistan’s internal politics in supporting Western-educated technocrats while leaving the locally influential politicians to fend for themselves. The Eurocentric take on Afghan institutions compromised the foundation of building a government that reflected Afghanistan’s ethnic and tribal realities. The United States should have worked more closely with different local groups rather than pouring resources into a corrupt and non-representative regime.

To clarify, I believe it is essential to be critical of America’s false sense of ideological superiority, however in arguing that I am not taking away from the detriment of 9/11. The fundamental strike back on Al-Qaeda is not what went wrong. Twenty years and two trillion dollars later, both Afghans and United States forces suffered tremendous losses in the name of nation-building. It is not a surprise that the United States failed to leave behind a stable, law-based society given its strong need to impose Western-style democracy and customs.

It is now up to educational institutions to adequately teach students about America’s longest war and properly criticize what went wrong. The next generation of government officials can benefit greatly from learning the techniques of cultural relativism. Had U.S. officials taken the time to look at Afghanistan in the light of its customs and norms, it is evident that beyond the success of nation-building, Afghanistan would not be left back in the hands of the same extremists the U.S. went in to fight.

AFGHANISTAN: BIDEN’S FOREIGN POLICY DISASTER

BY ZIV CARMI

For the past few weeks, Americans have been watching the events unfolding in Afghanistan. Perhaps some felt shock, others horror. The botched American withdrawal from Afghanistan was an avoidable foreign policy failure on the behalf of Joe Biden and his administration, and the effects of this disaster will reverberate both at home and abroad for years to come.

After 20 years, it seems that the sentiments about ending American involvement in Afghanistan is one of the few things that both parties agree upon these days. However, the White House’s approach to the withdrawal was catastrophic. Instead of abandoning Bagram Airbase before evacuating American civilians and our Afghan allies, Biden should have maintained an American military presence there as a deterrent for the Taliban. While the Taliban might still have ultimately taken Afghanistan, this approach could have, at least, bought America enough time to evacuate our citizens and allies.

The abandonment of Afghan allies is, without question, one of the most tragic parts of this disastrous withdrawal. As Kabul fell this summer, a friend of mine told me how her brother received a message from an Afghan translator he had worked with and befriended during his service there. I do not exactly remember what it said, but the gist of it was that he felt betrayed by the American government, who had promised him better, and that he feared for his wife and children’s safety after the Taliban killed him. As I write this, I cannot help but wonder if this translator, like thousands of other brave Afghans who helped America, has been brutally murdered by the Taliban.

The deaths of our allies, as well as the 13 soldiers who died at Kabul Airport, were avoidable. Had American leaders prepared for a Taliban surge, it is possible that the withdrawal could have been far smoother. Indeed, as recently as July 8, less than a month before the collapse of Afghanistan, Joe Biden is on record saying that “a Taliban takeover [of Afghanistan] is not inevitable” and that “there’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of [the American Embassy in Kabul].” While, of course, hindsight is 20/20, statements like Biden’s seem to indicate that the administration did not plan for the worst (and indeed, the reference to the helicopter evacuating the American Embassy does seem ironically prophetic).

While the loss of life is without a doubt the worst ramification of this messy and chaotic withdrawal, the abandonment of American weapons to the Taliban is one of the other terrible consequences. Leaving such powerful military equipment in the hands of our enemies may have dire ramifications in the future. These weapons might be used against America or our allies in the region, something which could take more innocent lives and, perhaps, draw us into another extended conflict in the region.

With this in mind, veterans might wonder whether what they endured in Afghanistan was worth it; gold star families might be feeling that their loss was for naught. I would like to conclude this editorial by speaking directly to any veterans or gold star families who might be reading this. Your sacrifices were not in vain. No matter how poorly the withdrawal was handled, one thing remains clear: The men and women who served in Afghanistan were all heroes. And no matter how history remembers the end of the war in Afghanistan, we will, to borrow from Abraham Lincoln, long remember the men and women—your comrades, your siblings, your children, your parents—who gave everything for America during this conflict.