Gjergji Kajana*
In the last weeks, Afghanistan experienced the military takeover of national power by the Taliban. This political-military faction was already at the helm in 1996-2001 when it gave refuge to international terrorism. Founded in 1994 during the chaos that gripped the country after the withdrawal of the Soviets, the Taliban combined in their exercise of power a strict interpretation of Islamic law (Sharia) with sections of the customary law of the Pashtun ethnic group. Their international protectors have been Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. As a scholar, in the book “The Taliban” Ahmed Rashid wrote (2000) that the faction’s main problem during their rule was being “caught between a tribal society they tried to ignore and the need for a state structure that they refused to establish”. In the autumn of 2001, they were removed militarily by a US-led international coalition, which put boots on the ground through the fight of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. The recent offensive, aimed to return them to power, was facilitated by the US military withdrawal. In fact, since 2001, the US had been commanding a large coalition of countries (including Albania) through a mission of peacekeeping and military training of national armed forces, objectives not achieved.
An extended and logical analysis of the Taliban victory cannot avoid noticing that it represents a defeat for the Americans and Westerners in general: after 20 years of constant presence, the stabilization of a new and functioning state model would have been theoretically possible. The Afghan experience, on the other hand, with the liquefaction of the local armed forces, illustrates one of the salient missing aspects of the former President Ghani’s regime in order to be efficient and more durable. Why has Afghanistan’s stabilization model, which means the process of building stable institutions of a functional state (‘state building’), failed?
Here are the main reasons:
1) The model of freedom that has been provided in the country in 2001 was perceived by many Afghans (many of them anti-Taliban) as “cultural colonialism”. In the traditional societies, basic freedoms of the West countries have taken a long time to be absorbed and were more rapidly diffused in the urban areas, while Afghanistan is, in its socio-economic framework, an agricultural and rural country.
2) The endemic corruption and inefficiency of the armed forces of the national government: trained by NATO instructors and nominally in numbers ahead of the Taliban in a 4-to-1 ratio, their performance resulted in a Caporetto-like debacle.
3) Lack of political and military control over the entire territory is a historical plague of the country’s rulers. The Taliban remained in the country after the defeat of 2001 and the anti-insurgent strategies absorbed the strategic resources of the Government and of the NATO coalition. The most comprehensive possible majority control of the territory is the basis for successful post-conflict stabilization strategies. Although not as intense as in previous decades, the conflict between the government and Afghani rebels continued in the two decades following 2001.
4) Lack of a real post-military and state-building strategy after the 2001 intervention. US President Biden in his 16th August statement, while the scenes of panic in Kabul airport were breaking hearts, explicitly stated that the objective of the Western presence in Afghanistan was the neutralization of Al Qaeda and not the ‘nation building’ (the term in America is often used as a synonym for ‘state building’, although technically they mean different processes). A boomerang effect of this strategy could be the risk of the country becoming an anti-American and anti-Western terrorist base again, as well as a client of China, Pakistan, and Russia. From the geostrategic point of view, the loss of Afghanistan at this time represents a full withdrawal of the West from a former allied country.
5) Modernising stabilization requires a background of sustainable and long-term economic growth, based on domestic production and consumption. Economic growth has been considerable after 2001 but the country remains too dependent on external aid (around 20% of GDP and it is at risk of declining after the new Taliban takeover) and pervasive corruption.
Previous models of post-conflict stabilization can be considered in West Germany, Italy, and Japan after World War II. Similarly, to a very large extent, Kosovo after 1999 can be included in the list, although the stabilization process is still ongoing. In all these cases, the control of the territory by a single authority has been very strong. Furthermore, unlike recent Afghanistan, the population supported the stabilization process quite totally and in an ethnically very homogeneous context. To summarise, from Kabul’s experience, we can conclude that the Western intervention did not have (as admitted by Biden) any long-term objectives of institutional and political engagement, but of military stabilization and peacekeeping. This is a different framework in comparison to Europe and Asia after 1945 and Pristina (1999).
A strategic Central Asia’s country, located in such a particular region (geographical proximity to Iran, China, and the Indian subcontinent), risks rapidly return to an almost medieval and hyper-masculine society. In a chaotic framework, where Western countries have shown a disorganized retreat, as in Iraq the post-conflict stabilization in Afghanistan has failed. Looking at the continuing war in Syria, Palestine, Libya, and Eastern Ukraine, the world observes an insecure world, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 11 September 2001. The Western withdrawal from Kabul confirms the need for longer-term and more robust stabilization efforts in complex and unsafe contexts, where shortsighted ‘solutions’ are not effective.
*Freelance journalist, BSc degree in Political Sciences and International Relations at Rome’s “La Sapienza” University
