” Even I didnt believe they would go down in 10 days,” stated Vanda Felbab-Brown PhD 07, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institutions Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology.
The event, titled “United States, Afghanistan, 9/11: Finished or Unfinished Business?” included (clockwise from top left) Carol Saivetz, Senior Advisor, MIT Security Studies Program; Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science, MIT; Vanda Felbab-Brown, Senior Fellow, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Brookings; and Juan Cole, Richard P Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan. Credit: MIT News, images courtesy MIT Starr Forum
The virtual event, “U.S., Afghanistan, 9/11: Finished or Unfinished Business?” was the current in the Starr Forum series held by MITs Center for International Studies, which analyzes crucial foreign-policy and worldwide issues. Barry Posen, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, moderated the occasion.
As to why the U.S. could not help construct a more solid state in Afghanistan offered 20 years, the panelists provided numerous answers.
Juan Cole, a professor of history at University of Michigan who concentrates on the Middle East, recommended that large-scale military aspirations in Afghanistan constituted a case of strategic overreach. The Taliban managed much of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, offering a haven for the Al Qaeda terrorist group that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. Any military activities beyond those intended at dismantling Al Qaeda, he stated, were likely to be quixotic.
” The preliminary U.S. attack on Afghanistan could be justified,” Cole stated. “Al Qaeda had training camps there which were utilized to plot out 9/11, and so destroying those camps, making sure they couldnt continue to run, was a genuine military objective.”
Nevertheless, Cole proposed, “occupying an entire nation of countless individuals, and a tough country to occupy and run” was “foredoomed to stop working.” The U.S. undoubtedly worked more closely with some ethnic groups and not others; regional elites siphoned off foreign aid; and some militarized factions who had been lined up with the U.S. reacted highly versus seeing foreign troops in the nation. All this implied U.S. expectations were quickly “consulted with truth on the ground,” Cole said.
Felbab-Brown stressed 2 long-running aspects that assisted undermine U.S. efforts to construct a brand-new Afghan state. For one thing, she noted, neither the U.S. nor any other country might reorient surrounding Pakistan far from its decades-long alignment with the Taliban.
” Essentially, the United States never ever fixed how to discourage Pakistan from providing complex support for the Taliban, down to the last days of July and August … and throughout the whole 20 years, the material support, safe houses, and all sort of other support,” she stated.
In a country where 40 to 50 percent of earnings in the last 2 years has come from foreign help, Felhab-Brown noted, the U.S. and its allies were not able to identify “how to persude regional governing elites to moderate their role” and develop more satisfactory routines of local administration.
All that stated, Felbab-Brown pointed to favorable consequences of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, consisting of economic advantages and instructional gains for women in particular.
” There is still a huge distinction in between the hardship of today [in Afghanistan] and the mass starvation and big degradation of civil and human rights that was the case in the 1990s,” Felhab-Brown stated.
So, where is Afghanistan headed, assuming the Taliban combine control over the majority of or all of the country?
” The worst outcome is rule that gradually will come to appear like the 1990s,” Felhab-Brown stated, referring to the extremely repressive Taliban policies that offered virtually no rights for women and huge limitations on cultural activity.
At the same time, Felhab-Brown suggested, “The best outcome is an Iran-like system, with both the political structures of Iran … and a set of political freedoms where females can have education, can have tasks, can leave a house without a guardian, a vital condition.” That would still represent a limiting state by Western requirements, and as Felhab-Brown recommended, it is likewise possible that the Taliban will choose a more limiting set of policies.
The international-relations effects of a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan remain unsure also, noted Carol Saivetz, a senior advisor and Russia specialist with the MIT Security Studies Program. She observed that while some in Russia may take complete satisfaction in viewing the U.S. struggle while departing Afghanistan, Russia itself has long-running concerns about the spread of extreme Islamic groups in its sphere of influence.
” I think that its a short-term gain … that longer-term I believe might be extremely bothersome for the Russians,” Saivetz stated. “I think they are truly scared of any type of risk of Islamist terrorism surpassing Russia once again.”.
Saivetz also observed that the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which lasted from 1979 to 1989, indicated the problems of trying to transform the nation, particularly in its rural settings.
” The Soviet experience in Afghanistan was really extremely comparable to ours,” Saivetz stated.
In his concluding ideas, Posen called the winding up of the U.S. military presence “a terrible chapter in a 20-year book” and noted that with so much of the Afghanistan economy having actually included foreign help programs now apparently ready to end, outdoors countries still have tough decisions to make about what sort of relationship they may pursue with the nations brand-new leaders.
” The West has a great deal of deep ethical choices to make here, about its relationship, not simply with the Taliban, however the Afghan individuals,” Posen said.
Credit: MIT News, images courtesy MIT Starr Forum
Juan Cole, a professor of history at University of Michigan who specializes in the Middle East, recommended that large-scale military aspirations in Afghanistan constituted a case of tactical overreach. The Taliban managed much of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, providing a sanctuary for the Al Qaeda terrorist group that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. The U.S. undoubtedly worked more closely with some ethnic groups and not others; regional elites siphoned off foreign help; and some militarized factions who had been aligned with the U.S. reacted strongly against seeing foreign troops in the nation. All this meant U.S. expectations were quickly “fulfilled with truth on the ground,” Cole stated.
A U.S. Soldier speaks with a group of Afghan National Army Soldiers.
A panel of foreign-policy professionals surveys the uncertainties facing the country as it goes back to Taliban guideline.
After almost 20 years, the U.S. has actually withdrawn its soldiers from Afghanistan, and the Taliban has actually regained control over the nation. Due to those advancements, a panel of foreign-policy specialists on Tuesday addressed two related but different questions: Why did the U.S. military action in Afghanistan fall short, and what comes next for the strife-ridden country?
The event took place as observers are still digesting the fast collapse of the U.S.-backed nationwide federal government in Afghanistan, which could not preserve power as the U.S. undertook its military withdrawal.
