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Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again

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Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again

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By Steve Coll
January 20, 2021
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden sitting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani
This time around, for President Biden, the war in Afghanistan is not as consequential for the U.S., yet American troops remain in the country as the fight grinds on.Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin / AP

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/fee...m_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned


When Joe Biden became Vice-President, in 2009, tens of thousands of American troops were fighting a spreading Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and the war loomed as one of the most pressing problems in U.S. foreign policy. American soldiers had been suffering casualties in Afghanistan since just a couple of months after the 9/11 attacks, and the numbers were rising; Al Qaeda was plotting large-scale offensives against U.S. targets along the Afghan-Pakistan border; and the Pentagon was clamoring for more troops. That February, I attended a dinner at Biden’s Washington residence, along with half a dozen Afghanistan specialists. Biden was adamant about one thing: the public would not long sustain its support for the war. “This is not the beginning,” he noted, and he talked about the pressure that Obama faced from generals who sought an escalation of U.S. involvement—which Biden opposed. He described Obama as determined to think things through for himself.

This time around, for President-elect Biden, the Afghan war is nowhere near as consequential for the United States, yet American troops remain there as it grinds on. When Biden takes office, he will confront early decisions that will define the contours of the war’s next chapter and determine the legacy of the American-led invasion, an enterprise that, based on official data, has cost the nation more than eight hundred billion dollars so far, and for which more than twenty-four hundred Americans have given their lives.

There are just twenty-five hundred American troops left in Afghanistan, and they largely eschew combat these days, under an agreement struck last February in Doha, Qatar, between the Trump Administration and the Taliban. The agreement’s goals are to withdraw all U.S. troops; promote a ceasefire and a political settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani; and prevent Al Qaeda or the Islamic State from threatening the United States. Those goals are not far from ones that Biden has previously stated. Last spring, in Foreign Affairs, he wrote that the U.S. should withdraw the “vast majority” of its troops from Afghanistan and “narrowly define” its interests around counterterrorism.

Yet Biden will inherit a fragile mess, one that comes with an important deadline in May. That is when, according to the agreement, all American troops are supposed to have departed, in exchange for Taliban guarantees to prevent Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups from operating in Afghanistan. But the conditions that some had hoped might prevail in the country by now—greatly reduced violence, progress in establishing a new political order—have not materialized. Last September, talks began in Doha to allow the Taliban and the Afghan government to define a “road map” to a peaceful political future, but the negotiations have barely progressed, and the civil war remains violent, with no ceasefire in sight. Biden will nevertheless have to decide whether to pull all American soldiers out by May. If he decides to leave troops in place for a time, he will have to figure out how to do so without blowing up the Doha talks or catalyzing yet more violence.

So far, Trump’s peace deal has mainly advantaged the Taliban. The deal was engineered by Zalmay Khalilzad, a high-octane, Afghan-born American diplomat who negotiated with the Taliban while burdened by the ignorant whims of President Trump, who repeatedly undermined U.S. negotiating positions by threatening to withdraw all troops—the Taliban’s primary goal in the talks with Washington—no matter what. Since the agreement took force, Khalilzad and other Trump Administration officials have repeatedly asked the Taliban to substantially reduce violence. Yet the Taliban have continued unrelenting assaults against the security forces of the Kabul government; the insurgents are able to amass troops and consolidate their control of some major roads and around urban centers in ways they could not when they risked heavy U.S. bombing. The Taliban are also widely seen by many Afghan officials as bearing heavy responsibility for a fresh wave of assassinations last year that targeted journalists, human-rights activists, and civil servants.

Since last February, it has become evident how the U.S.-Taliban deal “has tipped the balance of power in the conflict in the Taliban’s favor,” Kate Clark, a former BBC journalist who co-directs the independent Afghan Analysts Network, a Kabul-based research organization, wrote late last year. By removing U.S. troops from the battlefield and providing for the release of five thousand Taliban prisoners, among other things, Clark noted, the deal has “sharpened the Taliban’s military edge and heightened their confidence.” She added, “There is little sign that this particular peace process has blunted the Taliban’s eagerness, in any way, to pursue war.”


The deal that Khalilzad struck with the Taliban, notwithstanding its flaws, reflects essentially the same framework for pursuing an American troop withdrawal and an Afghan political settlement that the Obama Administration attempted, without success. Biden, his incoming national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, are all bruised veterans of Obama’s Afghan policy debates. I asked several policy specialists who served in the Obama Administration what they would advise. They favored backing the Kabul government and supporting the Doha talks, despite the difficulties, and some recommended delaying a final troop withdrawal. James Dobbins, who held Khalilzad’s during Obama’s second term, noted that Biden has argued that the U.S. should retain “a small counterinsurgency force for as long as the threat of a resurgent Al Qaeda and Islamic State remains.” He added that U.S. force levels—which then numbered forty-five hundred—“are now at that point and should not be reduced further until that threat has been removed.”


“The Trump Administration has given far too much away unilaterally, without exacting meaningful concessions from the Taliban,” Rina Amiri, who worked on Afghan policy at the State Department and has served as a political officer and mediation adviser at the United Nations, told me. “By putting further troop withdrawal on hold, until the Taliban engage in the negotiations in good faith,” she said, Biden could “give the peace negotiations a meaningful chance to succeed.”

Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, who worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan during Obama’s first term, is skeptical that the talks will deliver stability. “The Taliban have not relented on their political demands and are not likely to do so,” he told me. They see the U.S. as “facing too many challenges and eager to wash its hands of Afghanistan.” If the talks fail and international troops withdraw, Nasr added, it could be “back to the future,” meaning a return to the multi-sided civil war, anarchy, and humanitarian crises that fuelled the Taliban’s rise during the nineteen-nineties.
At that time, Pakistan’s drive to influence Afghanistan through the Taliban provided the group with a vital ally; since then, Pakistan has been victimized by jihadist violence, yet its military-dominated government continues to seek influence in Afghanistan, to protect its long border with the country, and to thwart India. Pakistan supported the deal reached last February, but it continues to protect the Taliban militarily, through its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (I.S.I.), as well as diplomatically, by arguing, for example, during a recent visit of Taliban leaders to the country, that the problem of continuing violence in Afghanistan is not only the fault of the Islamist insurgents but a matter involving “all sides” in the war.

Biden has long experience with Pakistan, and he knows the country well enough to have acquired a realistic skepticism of the I.S.I. and its military commanders. Obama’s Afghan war foundered, in part, on a contradiction in which Pakistan figured: the President believed that prosecuting the war was a vital U.S. interest, in part because of the ongoing threat from Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda’s leaders and operatives resided in Pakistan, while U.S. troops fought a bloody stalemate next door in Afghanistan against the Taliban, whom Obama did not regard as the same kind of threat as Al Qaeda.

Biden risks stepping into a similar trap, in that he has defined a narrow goal, counterterrorism, even while it is evident that containing Al Qaeda and the Islamic State depends in large part on whether the Kabul government survives and seeks to help the U.S. and Europe against its enemies. And Kabul’s fortunes are tied to the Doha talks and the sustainability of international support for Afghanistan—both immensely complicated projects.

A second Taliban revolution would crush Afghanistan’s working women, globalized urbanites, and assorted democracy dreamers. These Afghans grew up mainly in cell-phone-networked cities enlivened by revived culture and sports, bankrolled by international aid, and ringed by nato forces; they are, in some important sense, our moral and political allies in the Doha negotiations. Biden’s dilemma is that he has no easy way to protect them but, presumably, no desire to abandon them. The problem of the Afghan war hasn’t gotten any easier since Biden left it four years ago, even if the American investment in it has continued to decline. Now, as then, there are no good or easy options—only less bad ones.













Steve Coll
, a staff writer, is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. His latest book is “Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again | The New Yorker
 
As long as US deep state continues to sponsor Indian presence in Afghanistan at the expense of Pakistan there cannot be any peace.

Pakistan should host China, Russia, Turkey and Iran in Islamabad. There needs to be a strong nexus that is willing to breaks US deep state desire to win in Afghanistan. Winning is already impossible for the US and its cronies, but there needs to be a final push that puts the nail in the coffin. That final death blow will come by regional actors. This is our region and we dictate the terms.
 
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Meh, they are not leaving Afghanistan, infact they will support India even more. Why would they want to leave the underbelly of China?
 
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Meh, they are not leaving Afghanistan, infact they will support India even more. Why would the want to leave the underbelly of China?

Exactly. The US deep state is here to empower India in the region as their police officer. Afghanistan is the HQ. Not even over our dead bodies are we going to allow this to happen. Let the Americans cry rivers as we plot our own path and destiny. It is vital for regional nations to cooperate and be on the same page. We all share one common goal. Our enemy is the same. The US deep state needs to be humiliated and booted out from Afghanistan disillusioned. No matter how long this takes.
 
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Taliban will attack the US forces again. if USA doesnt send more troops, then it will get Indian troops in there. if India thought holding Kashmir is hard, wait till they meet the Taliban in Afghanistan. that place will be the graveyard of USA and India, the same way it was the graveyard of the Soviets. except this time there are probably 5 regional players that want USA and India to be defeated in Afghanistan. namely, Taliban, Pakistan, China, Iran, and Russia.
 
Pakistan needs to show a strong reaction against this and give them a hard response that if u break this peace treaty there will be no peace treaty in the future nor will Pakistan help facilitate one. and go ahead with Russia and China and make it another Vietnam.
 
Post-May will be a different thing all together. Even today we're seeing Hazaras turning against the government and fighting Afghan troops (Alipoor). We might even see MANPADs and ATGMs in hands of the Taliban soon. One thing I can say for certain is that Ghani and his stooges will have nowhere to hide.
 
The fallacy of the US Afghan policy from her interests POV:
  • No way to undermine the Taliban
  • No way to make the NA thugs succeed against the Taliban
  • More involvement of China and Russia to support the Taliban to make it even stronger
  • As for Pak, it’s an existential war for India uses it as a terrorism front against her; so, no stones remain unturned. As the US dependence on Pak continues more daring ops against the RAW agents can be carried out
  • As for the China-Pak cooperation and Russia-Pak understanding, they get only stronger as the US presence in Afghanistan continues
 
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And, even if the Americans and Indians decide to put more Indian troops into Afghanistan, how are the Indians going to get all their equipment there and sustain their logistics?

Not via China, or Pakistan.. that leaves Iran.. Does Iran want Afghanistand to go "hot" again, or are they reconcilled to have at least one of their borders, you know ... peaceful ?
 
And, even if the Americans and Indians decide to put more Indian troops into Afghanistan, how are the Indians going to get all their equipment there and sustain their logistics?

Not via China, or Pakistan.. that leaves Iran.. Does Iran want Afghanistand to go "hot" again, or are they reconcilled to have at least one of their borders, you know ... peaceful ?
They won't put troops in Afghanistan. We're going back to the 80's days of warlords and dozens of different factions.
 
Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again
coll-steve.png

By Steve Coll
January 20, 2021
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden sitting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani
This time around, for President Biden, the war in Afghanistan is not as consequential for the U.S., yet American troops remain in the country as the fight grinds on.Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin / AP

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?&display=popup&caption=Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again&app_id=1147169538698836&link=https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/joe-biden-will-have-to-address-the-war-in-afghanistan-again?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned


When Joe Biden became Vice-President, in 2009, tens of thousands of American troops were fighting a spreading Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and the war loomed as one of the most pressing problems in U.S. foreign policy. American soldiers had been suffering casualties in Afghanistan since just a couple of months after the 9/11 attacks, and the numbers were rising; Al Qaeda was plotting large-scale offensives against U.S. targets along the Afghan-Pakistan border; and the Pentagon was clamoring for more troops. That February, I attended a dinner at Biden’s Washington residence, along with half a dozen Afghanistan specialists. Biden was adamant about one thing: the public would not long sustain its support for the war. “This is not the beginning,” he noted, and he talked about the pressure that Obama faced from generals who sought an escalation of U.S. involvement—which Biden opposed. He described Obama as determined to think things through for himself.

This time around, for President-elect Biden, the Afghan war is nowhere near as consequential for the United States, yet American troops remain there as it grinds on. When Biden takes office, he will confront early decisions that will define the contours of the war’s next chapter and determine the legacy of the American-led invasion, an enterprise that, based on official data, has cost the nation more than eight hundred billion dollars so far, and for which more than twenty-four hundred Americans have given their lives.

There are just twenty-five hundred American troops left in Afghanistan, and they largely eschew combat these days, under an agreement struck last February in Doha, Qatar, between the Trump Administration and the Taliban. The agreement’s goals are to withdraw all U.S. troops; promote a ceasefire and a political settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani; and prevent Al Qaeda or the Islamic State from threatening the United States. Those goals are not far from ones that Biden has previously stated. Last spring, in Foreign Affairs, he wrote that the U.S. should withdraw the “vast majority” of its troops from Afghanistan and “narrowly define” its interests around counterterrorism.

Yet Biden will inherit a fragile mess, one that comes with an important deadline in May. That is when, according to the agreement, all American troops are supposed to have departed, in exchange for Taliban guarantees to prevent Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups from operating in Afghanistan. But the conditions that some had hoped might prevail in the country by now—greatly reduced violence, progress in establishing a new political order—have not materialized. Last September, talks began in Doha to allow the Taliban and the Afghan government to define a “road map” to a peaceful political future, but the negotiations have barely progressed, and the civil war remains violent, with no ceasefire in sight. Biden will nevertheless have to decide whether to pull all American soldiers out by May. If he decides to leave troops in place for a time, he will have to figure out how to do so without blowing up the Doha talks or catalyzing yet more violence.

So far, Trump’s peace deal has mainly advantaged the Taliban. The deal was engineered by Zalmay Khalilzad, a high-octane, Afghan-born American diplomat who negotiated with the Taliban while burdened by the ignorant whims of President Trump, who repeatedly undermined U.S. negotiating positions by threatening to withdraw all troops—the Taliban’s primary goal in the talks with Washington—no matter what. Since the agreement took force, Khalilzad and other Trump Administration officials have repeatedly asked the Taliban to substantially reduce violence. Yet the Taliban have continued unrelenting assaults against the security forces of the Kabul government; the insurgents are able to amass troops and consolidate their control of some major roads and around urban centers in ways they could not when they risked heavy U.S. bombing. The Taliban are also widely seen by many Afghan officials as bearing heavy responsibility for a fresh wave of assassinations last year that targeted journalists, human-rights activists, and civil servants.

Since last February, it has become evident how the U.S.-Taliban deal “has tipped the balance of power in the conflict in the Taliban’s favor,” Kate Clark, a former BBC journalist who co-directs the independent Afghan Analysts Network, a Kabul-based research organization, wrote late last year. By removing U.S. troops from the battlefield and providing for the release of five thousand Taliban prisoners, among other things, Clark noted, the deal has “sharpened the Taliban’s military edge and heightened their confidence.” She added, “There is little sign that this particular peace process has blunted the Taliban’s eagerness, in any way, to pursue war.”


The deal that Khalilzad struck with the Taliban, notwithstanding its flaws, reflects essentially the same framework for pursuing an American troop withdrawal and an Afghan political settlement that the Obama Administration attempted, without success. Biden, his incoming national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, are all bruised veterans of Obama’s Afghan policy debates. I asked several policy specialists who served in the Obama Administration what they would advise. They favored backing the Kabul government and supporting the Doha talks, despite the difficulties, and some recommended delaying a final troop withdrawal. James Dobbins, who held Khalilzad’s during Obama’s second term, noted that Biden has argued that the U.S. should retain “a small counterinsurgency force for as long as the threat of a resurgent Al Qaeda and Islamic State remains.” He added that U.S. force levels—which then numbered forty-five hundred—“are now at that point and should not be reduced further until that threat has been removed.”


“The Trump Administration has given far too much away unilaterally, without exacting meaningful concessions from the Taliban,” Rina Amiri, who worked on Afghan policy at the State Department and has served as a political officer and mediation adviser at the United Nations, told me. “By putting further troop withdrawal on hold, until the Taliban engage in the negotiations in good faith,” she said, Biden could “give the peace negotiations a meaningful chance to succeed.”

Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, who worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan during Obama’s first term, is skeptical that the talks will deliver stability. “The Taliban have not relented on their political demands and are not likely to do so,” he told me. They see the U.S. as “facing too many challenges and eager to wash its hands of Afghanistan.” If the talks fail and international troops withdraw, Nasr added, it could be “back to the future,” meaning a return to the multi-sided civil war, anarchy, and humanitarian crises that fuelled the Taliban’s rise during the nineteen-nineties.
At that time, Pakistan’s drive to influence Afghanistan through the Taliban provided the group with a vital ally; since then, Pakistan has been victimized by jihadist violence, yet its military-dominated government continues to seek influence in Afghanistan, to protect its long border with the country, and to thwart India. Pakistan supported the deal reached last February, but it continues to protect the Taliban militarily, through its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (I.S.I.), as well as diplomatically, by arguing, for example, during a recent visit of Taliban leaders to the country, that the problem of continuing violence in Afghanistan is not only the fault of the Islamist insurgents but a matter involving “all sides” in the war.

Biden has long experience with Pakistan, and he knows the country well enough to have acquired a realistic skepticism of the I.S.I. and its military commanders. Obama’s Afghan war foundered, in part, on a contradiction in which Pakistan figured: the President believed that prosecuting the war was a vital U.S. interest, in part because of the ongoing threat from Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda’s leaders and operatives resided in Pakistan, while U.S. troops fought a bloody stalemate next door in Afghanistan against the Taliban, whom Obama did not regard as the same kind of threat as Al Qaeda.

Biden risks stepping into a similar trap, in that he has defined a narrow goal, counterterrorism, even while it is evident that containing Al Qaeda and the Islamic State depends in large part on whether the Kabul government survives and seeks to help the U.S. and Europe against its enemies. And Kabul’s fortunes are tied to the Doha talks and the sustainability of international support for Afghanistan—both immensely complicated projects.

A second Taliban revolution would crush Afghanistan’s working women, globalized urbanites, and assorted democracy dreamers. These Afghans grew up mainly in cell-phone-networked cities enlivened by revived culture and sports, bankrolled by international aid, and ringed by nato forces; they are, in some important sense, our moral and political allies in the Doha negotiations. Biden’s dilemma is that he has no easy way to protect them but, presumably, no desire to abandon them. The problem of the Afghan war hasn’t gotten any easier since Biden left it four years ago, even if the American investment in it has continued to decline. Now, as then, there are no good or easy options—only less bad ones.













Steve Coll
, a staff writer, is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. His latest book is “Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again | The New Yorker

biden should stay in afghanisatan , india will help him .
And, even if the Americans and Indians decide to put more Indian troops into Afghanistan, how are the Indians going to get all their equipment there and sustain their logistics?

Not via China, or Pakistan.. that leaves Iran.. Does Iran want Afghanistand to go "hot" again, or are they reconcilled to have at least one of their borders, you know ... peaceful ?

northern alliance will come handy to uproot terrorist taliban . pakistan can be easily tackled .
 
And, even if the Americans and Indians decide to put more Indian troops into Afghanistan, how are the Indians going to get all their equipment there and sustain their logistics?

Not via China, or Pakistan.. that leaves Iran.. Does Iran want Afghanistand to go "hot" again, or are they reconcilled to have at least one of their borders, you know ... peaceful ?

The Iranians aren't crazy. Right now, all regional nations except India is in conflict with the US. The Americans didn't honor the nuclear deal with Iran. The Democrats will be angering their poodle Israel if they recommit to the deal. Now the deep state has shattered the Doha deal with the Taliban. That complicates matters for the Americans. That leaves China and Russia. Both would love the US to be stuck in the deserts of Afghanistan for another 20 years. Pakistan is not going to waste any time nor effort after 4 years of blood and sweat. The Americans and NATO countries are all alone with their partner India and the illegitimate government of Afghanistan.

biden should stay in afghanisatan , india will help him .


northern alliance will come handy to uproot terrorist taliban . pakistan can be easily tackled .

You have been saying that for 20 years.

LOL is India going to fly US/NATO supplies as they trade with Afghanistan? Don't get ahead of yourself. Your papa still relies on Pak supply routes.
 
biden should stay in afghanisatan , india will help him .


northern alliance will come handy to uproot terrorist taliban . pakistan can be easily tackled .
All good on paper only. India was asked to help by Trump but we all know what happened to that. USA spent $3 trillion only to find out that their allies (Kabul Regime) are no less than scum. India and USA for that matter are welcomed to put more boot in Afghanistan for a war which has no end. You were so busy tackling Pakistan that you forgot that China is your next door.
 
All good on paper only. India was asked to help by Trump but we all know what happened to that. USA spent $3 trillion only to find out that their allies (Kabul Regime) are no less than scum. India and USA for that matter are welcomed to put more boot in Afghanistan for a war which has no end. You were so busy tackling Pakistan that you forgot that China is your next door.

The problem for the US deep state is colossal. They are trapped like a rat. I honestly do believe that Biden wants out, but he is surrounded by deep state elements who want to prolong the war. This is a very personal loss for deep state machinery. The deep state has personal issues. They don't want to abandon the idea that the war is unwinnable. I would dare say that in comparison the Vietnam humiliation is acceptable to the deep state. After two decades the Taliban have left a major psychological scar on the deep state.

The deep state has been absent for a long while since Trump took over. Situation on the ground has changed drastically. Most regional nations were already paying the Taliban handsome bounty to go after US/NATO forces. Now with US/NATO breaking the deal one should expect worse. US foes in the region are going to have a feast.
 
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The problem for the US deep state is colossal. They are trapped like a rat. I honestly do believe that Biden wants out, but he is surrounded by deep state elements who want to prolong the war. This is a very personal loss for deep state machinery. The deep state has personal issues. They don't want to abandon the idea that the war is unwinnable. The deep state has been absent for a long while since Trump took over. Situation on the ground has changed drastically. Most regional nations were already paying the Taliban handsome bounty to go after US/NATO forces. Now with US/NATO breaking the deal one should expect worse.
The US Deep State is failing to tackle the most urgent CLEAR and PRESENT DANGER, which is the US Deep Nation itself!!!! They're procrastinating by dwelling on the usual problems....

The USA hasn't taken any lessons from the demise of the USSR!! By the by, the natural leader of the US Deep Nation is Putin, not Biden...
 
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