The start of understanding Afghanistan begins, I think, with a question: Which Afghanistan are we talking about?
There is largely urbanized Afghanistan with a significant population of well educated young women and men working in jobs directly or indirectly supported by international aid groups or foreign aid. And a larger group of city dwellers working in small shops and factories or involved in an informal economy of street vending and hustles. Mobile phones are omnipresent, internet access is available, there are multiple TV channels and movie theaters. There is also a large expat population including military personnel, diplomatic staff and people working for international organizations such as Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and a number of United Nations agencies. That's about a quarter of the Afghan population and it is concentrated in Kabul.
And there is rural Afghanistan, home to about 70% of all Afghans, making the country one of the least urbanized in the world. Half of the people in rural areas fall below the UN's definition of poverty, struggling to get by on subsistence farming. In some parts of the country opium poppies provide a cash crop although most of the profit goes to middlemen and local tribal leaders (or the Taliban). The best guess is that 43% of the people can read and write in their native languages; there are only four countries with lower rates. The sex disparity is striking: 54% male literacy; 30% female. Most people live in small villages in hilly and mountainous areas where communication between villages is challenging and communication with the outside world rare. Despite what has been the world's highest infant mortality rate, rural families tend to be large. Large families, limited arable land and persistent poverty mean that there is a large number of young men available for recruitment by local bandit groups, militias or the Taliban.
In much of the world the push of poverty and the pull of opportunity and excitement lead to young men and women leaving their traditional villages for the city. In Afghanistan, even among the young, the city remains an alien, threatening place.
I think the 2001 invasion of was justified by our self interest in protecting us from terrorist attacks. When the Taliban regime refused to cooperate with us to act against Al Qaeda after 9/11, we and our NATO allies joined forces with groups inside Afghanistan who were waging an insurgent struggle against the regime. The initial goal was to work with the Taliban's Afghan opponents and create a stable government that could exert enough control over the country to prevent it from again becoming a base for attacks on us or our friends. The recent suicide bombing in Kabul is a pointed reminder of how critical control of the Afghan countryside, once and future home to terrorist groups, is to American security.
Afghanistan has never had a unified national government that exercised control over the diverse ethnic, regional and local groups. Traditional monarchs with hopes of modernizing the country were swept aside by more impatient young reformers whose attempts at highly coercive reforms led to the popular uprising that provoked the Soviet invasion. The Taliban, with a lot of support from Pakistan and the United States, emerged as the most powerful of the several groups that composed the mujaheddin resistance to the Soviets. The Taliban absorbed or defeated the other militias and controlled the government from 1996 to 2001.
The Taliban was based in the ethnically Pashtun parts of rural Afghanistan. The leadership used a particularly harsh and punitive variant of Islam to express and justify a puritanical and repressive patriarchal regime. The regime's excesses provoked armed resistance in those parts of Afghanistan populated by one of the 12 major ethnic groups other than the Pashtuns. By 2001 the Taliban had lost control of much of the country, had alienated many Afghans, was faced with a collapsing economy and was ripe for replacement.
But replacement with what? The Afghan opponents of the Taliban were not a unified force and as a collection of largely rural, non-Pashtun factions had little credibility in the cities or most of the countryside. There was no national elite or political parties that could provide leadership and no national institution that could provide security, justice, education or medical care. In a country where about three quarters of the population were subsistence farmers living in small villages in isolated valleys separated by towering mountains, there were few economic resources to support the widespread desire for a better life. And the hundreds of thousands languishing in refugee camps in Pakistan who had fled the Taliban included large proportion of the few Afghans who had modern educations and skills.
Establishing a government that can effectively rule a country involves development along three inter-related dimensions: economic, social and political.
Frank Zappa would add a fourth essential precondition: a national beer. If that's true Afghanistan is doomed since alcohol is illegal.
The human toll of the past includes 8,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers, contractors and aid workers, and as many as 240,000 Afghans. The United States, Europe, the United Nations and non-governmental agencies have spent more than two TRILLION dollars on aid projects. What has been achieved?
Economic development: Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The largest single component in the national economy is foreign aid. The lack of easily exploitable resources, difficult geography and physical insecurity make it unattractive to foreign investment. There are some wealthy Afghans but some have gotten rich by exploiting poor farmers and many by siphoning off aid money and extorting bribes from aid organizations. That wealth has been parked in bank accounts and assets outside the country. On the whole, Afghanistan is not any better off than it was twenty years ago.
Social development: This is an area where there has been demonstrable change for the better. The country has a long way to go but literacy rates, especially for women, have improved. Twenty years ago the infant mortality rate in Afghanistan was the highest in the world. That rate has been cut in half. Especially in Kabul, a significant number of well educated, highly skilled young men and women have begun to create a contemporary social, intellectual and artistic culture. (Since many of them have worked for or with American forces and international aid agencies they have been among the most desperate to flee the Taliban.)
Political development: The internationally backed regime that evolved over the past twenty years did not have the kind of popular support that makes a regime legitimate. Popular support is based on two things: a belief that the regime and its leaders have a right to rule and the regime's ability to deliver the goods. In Afghanistan the right to rule is rooted in tribal and Islamic tradition and seriously undermined by the perception of foreign involvement. And none of the governments installed after 2001 could deliver even the most basic goods: physical security, economic improvement, honest local administration.
The U.S. and NATO military contingents did not develop an effective strategy for keeping villagers safe from local bandits, the remnants of the Taliban and other insurgent groups. No matter how well intentioned or "culturally sensitive" western military units and the Afghan forces they trained were, they were seen as an alien army that might storm in during the day but went home at night. That left villagers, local police and government officials, at the mercy of whomever was lurking in the dark. The lack of physical security doomed attempts to link villages to larger markets or diversify into cash crops other than opium. From top to bottom many government employees routinely supplemented their income by demanding bribes and kickbacks. The message to ordinary citizens was clear: we are not here to make your life better, we're here to make money for ourselves. This pattern marked the national army, as well. While some officers were dedicated and professional, others were siphoning off money meant for payrolls and equipment.
Most Afghans were well aware of what the Taliban did when they were in power in a village or region and were not supporters. But the national government was no better and, in the countryside, tainted by association with foreign invaders and evils of city life. The Afghan army depended on American trainers, logistical support and air strikes. When that disappeared, large numbers of soldiers saw no reason to fight to defend a corrupt government based on urban elites.
As Yogi Berra reportedly said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Nonetheless:
Humanitarian disaster: Drought, Covid, warfare, and inflation have already created a dire situation with half the population relying on food aid from the outside. Food and medical supplies have been coming into the country through the Kabul airport and four border crossings with Pakistan. Once the U.S. military leaves the airport will there by anyone left to run it? Will it be safe, or even possible for large scale shipments to arrive? Will the truck convoys be allowed to continue and will they be safe from bandits and hijackers? Some foreign aid workers, especially UN personnel and international non-governmental organizations have decided to stay in Afghanistan, but will they be able to maintain the distribution networks? The UN World Food Programme's supplies in the country will be exhausted by the end of September and it does not have sufficient cash on hand to buy enough food to get through the winter. Medical personnel were already scarce in Afghanistan and many Afghan doctors and nurses have left the country, as have international medical workers.
Economic collapse: One quarter of the Afghan Gross Domestic Product is foreign aid. The United States and European Union countries are not going to send money to a Taliban regime in the near future. A large proportion of the money sent to Afghanistan in the past is physically held by international banks or embedded in national budgets. The United States has already frozen several billion dollars that the new government cannot spend. We will probably try to use the promise of aid to to induce the Taliban to refrain from doing the sorts of things that are central to their stated principles and beliefs. Add in the billions of dollars diverted from past aid by corrupt officials that ended up in foreign bank accounts. Most of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans fleeing the country by airlift or crossing into Pakistan are arriving with only a few possessions. Some, like ex-President Ghani, are headed to the Gulf or Europe with very large bank accounts.
Anarchy: The Taliban is not a unified, hierarchical organization, There are distinct factions who have been able to coordinate their military activities but have differing views on what should be done now and clashing personal ambitions. The leaders who negotiated with the Trump administration and have been in contact with the Biden administration are veterans of the anti-Soviet war who have spent a considerable amount of the past twenty years outside the country. Even if they had been fully committed to the promises they made in exchange for U.S. withdrawal, they did not have the power to carry them out. It is not clear that the senior military leaders in the various Taliban factions can always control the fighters on the streets. You have spent much of your life, and lost many comrades, fighting to rid the country of foreigners and their corruption. And now you're supposed to be polite and respectful to immoral women and men?
The Taliban may be able to establish a degree of control and stability in Kabul and the provincial capitals despite the fact that it is not seen as legitimate or desirable by a large proportion of the citizens because it has a large coercive capability. But the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport focused attention on the fact that Taliban does not control much of the countryside and is itself under attack by armed groups.
This is one of those situations where you desperately hope you are wrong, but I think the suffering of Afghanistan is just beginning.
