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Why the Taliban will never retake Afghanistan
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Capt. Adrian Chen, Task Force Centaur, hands a radio to a Nengaresh villager during a joint operation with the Afghan National Police, July 28. www.army.mil
Much of the media wants us to believe that the coalition in Afghanistan is faltering under a new Taliban onslaught. This is not so different from what the majority of the media has been telling us for the last seven years. But it's a little more direct now with quotes like this from Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies who told the UK Independent that “The US is now losing the war against the Taliban.” Or this article from Reuters declaring that the Taliban “have not disappointed” in its' attempt to live up to a threat to retake Kabul.
So is there any validity to this analysis? Is the Taliban winning? Hardly.
But first, the allowances. Yes, the Taliban poses a threat to the personal safety of anyone in Afghanistan or western Pakistan. Yes, they can create havoc and ruin lives. But that is not the same as a genuine threat to retake the country and impose their political will. In that regard, they have little capability.
The Taliban cannot take back Afghanistan because it never had a significant populace support base in Afghanistan in the first place. Events in Iraq demonstrate why this matters. The Saddam regime held power by pitching Sunni Muslims against Shia Muslims. To do that, he embarked on murderous policies to batter the Shiites (and any other group that was not Arab Sunni).
Saddam received the support of the 20% (best estimate) or so Arab-Sunni population (of course there were dissenters) who saw him as a vanguard as long as most of his brutality was reserved for other ethnic, religious demographics. Thus the brutal internal warring dragged on until the vast majority of the Arab Sunnis finally figured out that they were better off without the Ba'athists or al Qaeda and began to side with the U.S. which effectively ended the war.
In Afghanistan, there is a vastly different dynamic. The Taliban is a Pakistani group with an Afghani face. The Taliban was created under the leadership of Benazeer Bhutto in order to protect trade routes through Afghanistan for Pakistani merchants. Bhutto left it up to a religious-political leader in Pakistan to create the group.
That man turned to the madrassas in Pakistan to build his new group but put Afghanis in charge. However, in the Pashtun tribal areas these distinctions are meaningless as tribalism and provincialism straddle both sides of the border. As an aside, this leads to a correction of a common misconception. The Taliban is not the Mujahideen of the jihad against the Soviets. The Taliban overthrew the Mujahideen who ruled badly after driving out the Communist government of Afghanistan.
The Taliban came down from the border region and began to take over swaths of Afghanistan in the mid 90's. Many in Afghanistan first supported them as a counter to rampant lawlessness. But they soon proved worse than the bandits they replaced. For the vast majority of Afghans the Taliban was not only ethnically different but considered to be religious extremists. The average Afghan practices a much more placid form of Islam than the Deobandi Islam of the Taliban (which itself stems from Wahhabism making the Taliban and al Qaeda such a good fit).
The most important element of insurgent strategy is to secure the population base to your side. It is pretty much impossible for the Taliban to do that by any means other than violence and intimidation on a massive scale, far beyond the capabilities the Taliban have exhibited so far against an Afghan government supported by NATO might. At most, the Taliban has retained its' territory in the mountainous border regions which are the tribal areas most of them came from in the first place. It is unrealistic to expect that those regions will eventually be brought under control of the government of Afghanistan. The best that can be expected, for perhaps a generation, is a self-sufficient Afghan military that can keep them at bay in the future. Which leads to why the violence has escalated.
For the first time since 2001, NATO forces are not just taking Afghanistan's population centers. Starting last year, NATO and Afghan forces began moving into those mountainous regions and establishing bases. After years of an equilibrium in which NATO would wait for the Taliban to come down from the hills every spring and take them out on their infiltration routes NATO began offensive operations into the Taliban's own homeland.
This maneuver has stirred up a hornets nest. The Taliban are hitting hard at a time when NATO has extended their lines. This allows for the Taliban to have more success at hitting NATO forces because they simply don't have to go as far. And because it decreases the opportunities for NATO to sense Taliban raiders and interdict them. Which is why the Taliban has had some recent success. But it would be a mistake to interpret a Taliban attempt to exploit a temporary tactical vulnerability on the part of NATO for a change in the overall trajectory of the war.
That trajectory is, despite media hyperventilation, a clear and continuous increase in the amount of land held by NATO and Afghanistan forces. They are pushing the Taliban back into the mountains. As they do so, NATO is dropping bases at strategically important border crossing areas. From there, they can hit Taliban infiltrators as soon as they cross the border, and more importantly, influence events inside Pakistan. This is part of the reason why we have seen a concomitant spike in attacks on High Payoff Targets inside Pakistan (along with an increase in human intel capability in the tribal regions).
The majority of the media is hiding the fact that NATO has been trying to tell us for some time that we are making progress against the Taliban. NATO outlined this success in Afghanistan in a report called “Progress in Afghanistan” released last April that received almost no media attention. Some of the highlights from the report are listed below. It paints a vastly different picture than the daily doom and gloom “analysis” of most major media outlets. There is virtually no chance of the Taliban regaining control in Afghanistan unless the international community completely abandons the mission and that is highly unlikely considering that NATO member nations have increased, not decreased support over the last seven years.
Highlights of the NATO report Progress in Afghanistan:
The Afghan Army is growing in size, experience, and leadership capabilities.
A recent study found that 90% of the Afghan population trusted the countries military force.
More than 4,000 km of roads have been built where only 50 km existed in 2001.
The rehabilitation of the North-East power system has advanced and access of the rural households to electricity has been significantly increased.
In 2007 alone, ISAF nations completed 1,080 civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) projects.
2,000 schools were built or repaired in the last five years and around 6.4 million children (including 1.5 million girls) are now in schools.
Since 2001, both infant and under-five mortality has declined by 26% and 22% respectively.
In 2001, 8% of Afghans had access to some form of healthcare. Now more than 80% of the population has access to medical care.
The non-opium economy has grown at an average of 12% over the past four years; the number of poppy-free provinces has grown from six in 2006 to 13 in 2007.
Afghan public support for international involvement in Afghanistan remains high with around 70% of Afghans supporting the presence of international forces.
The majority of Afghans believe their country is going in the right direction and 84% support their current government (as opposed to 4% who would support the Taliban).
They also maintain a positive view of reconstruction efforts with 63% saying that reconstruction efforts in their area have been effective since 2002.
Ray Robison is the author of Both In One Trench: Saddam's Secret Terror Documents
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