“Taliban flags in hand, a crowd celebrates the US army’s departure from Afghanistan. Photo taken in Kandahar on August 31, 2021. © Twitter”
In late August of 2021, Afghanistan was hurled back into the international spotlight when President Biden announced that he would be ending the two decade long war in the conflict-wrought region after unsuccessfully rooting out the Taliban. This led to far reaching political outcry and confusion; how could the world’s most powerful military have lost a war to a poor Asian nation? The answer lies not in our guns, but in our gameplan.
Our understanding of Afghanistan is flawed, and hence, so are our policies. Afghanistan is unlike many of the conflicts we have involved ourselves in in the past. For example, let’s take Country X. Country X has a clear cut political and ideological split between Group A and Group B. The United States, in an attempt to advance their own political agenda, supports one side as opposed to the other. (For simplicity’s sake, let’s say Group A.) Group A willingly accepts America’s aid considering their vast influence and resources, and together they present a united front against Group B. We have seen this countless times throughout the United States’s history, especially in the Cold War during conflicts such as the Vietnam and Korean Wars. Afghanistan is completely unlike Country X in that it is not an ideological split, but deeply rooted tribalism that sways peoples policies. This leaves Westerners floundering for control in a country they do not truly understand.
One consequence of this misunderstanding was the fall of the Ghani presidency. While Ashraf Ghani, an American educated Afghan politician, was “democratically elected” in 2014, only 3.9 million people voted for him out of a population of 33.3 million; he was widely unpopular among the Afghan people. A large part of this was his Western support system. While one thinking in a Western framework would assume the support of one of the world’s greatest superpowers would be helpful in instilling a new government, this fails to recognize the deep distrust most Afghan people feel towards the West due to a chasm of difference in culture and customs. Ghani’s regime was riddled with American idealism; its dysfunctional electoral system, haphazard attempts at rewriting gender norms, and creation of a sweeping centralized authority bred disassociation and distrust of the government, leaving room for Taliban insurgents to gain support.
We have seen another result of Western overconfidence in the last months, with the stunning relinquish of American military control and a nearly bloodless takeover by a ruthless and persistent insurgency. Now that the Taliban rules Afghanistan after the U.S’s military defeat, the rest of the world is left to wonder what tribal affiliations and fallouts will shape the future of Afghanistan. We don’t know what is next for the future of Afghanistan, but what we do know is until the American government learns to think like the Afghan people, it will never have a foot in the door of Afghan politics.
