US and ISAF Policy in Afghanistan is in doldrums. With the drawdown of the US ground combat elements in Afghanistan, the onus of preventing the Taliban overrunning the Afghan National Government has now squarely shifted to the Afghan National Army, which the US has spent a fortune to raise, arm and train.

The recent deadly Taliban attack at a northern army base in Afghanistan that killed over 140 Afghan soldiers and civilians has exposed what many experts both in USA and abroad had repeatedly warned-nepotism, corruption and desertion has rendered the Afghan National Army unfit to ward off a resurgent Taliban offensive. Reports emanating from within indicate the Taliban attackers had help from the inside, by Taliban sympathizers who had been recruited as soldiers in the Afghan National Army and were deployed at the base under attack.

Is a Vietnam War ending in Afghanistan on the card? The Taliban already exercise de-facto control over 40% of Afghanistan and chances are post ISAF exit, the country would degenerate into the kind of civil war witnessed from 1990 to 1995. Afghanistan has already gained the dubious reputation as the longest combat operations undertaken by the US forces in history, with no end in sight.

Rather than accepting policy and strategy failures that have resulted in the present quagmire, the US military commanders and administration prefer to shift the blame on neighbouring Pakistan. The validity of their accusations and charges need close scrutiny.

Operation Enduring Freedom was launched in December 2001, to punish the Taliban government in Afghanistan for giving shelter to Osama bin Laden, considered the mastermind of the 9/11 attack. Pakistan was made a reluctant ally based on the threat of “either you are with us or against us” and the implied warning of being “bombed to the stone-age”.

The military operation succeeded in dislodging the Taliban but by allowing their fighters to survive due to faulty strategy, failed to complete the operational cycle.

The US airpower paralyzed the Taliban forces that allowed the pro US Northern Alliance conglomerate to advance and claim victory. Barring a handful of US Special Forces no US ground combat element participated in the campaign.

The Taliban leading commanders and their foot soldiers managed to slip away into neighbouring Pakistan’s tribal region of South Waziristan relatively unscathed. Even Osama bin Laden, the principal target of the operations evaded capture and escaped when he was trapped in the Tora Boar Valley, because of paucity of US ground troops in the area. The US commanders failed to appreciate the lack of professionalism of the Northern Alliance military and their susceptibility and penchant to bribery. Reports of the Taliban fighters given safe passage after payment of money have been confirmed by independent sources.

Taliban diaspora in South Waziristan managed to recoup and prepare for a counteroffensive. The 2003 US pivot when it shifted focus on military operation from Afghanistan to Iraq provided the Taliban the opportunity they were seeking. Pakistan came under intense US pressure to destroy the Taliban sanctuaries in South Waziristan.

Operation Al Mizan was launched by the Pakistan Army to expel the Taliban from South Waziristan. Employment of a conventional war fighting strategy against an adversary waging an asymmetric war was doomed to fail. Al Mizan failed to achieve its military objective and Pakistan signed a truce with the adversary that angered the Americans who accused Pakistan of a sellout.

The Haqqani network in North Waziristan was and still remains the principal bone of contention between USA and Pakistan. The former accuses the latter of being in league with the Haqqanis considered the prime threat to ISAF and the Afghan government. Pakistan, on the other hand has always denied the charges and tried to explain that it just did not have the necessary wherewithal to simultaneously start major military offensives in Swat, South Waziristan and North Waziristan where the Taliban and the TTP had established their stronghold. It had to prioritize and tackle them one by one, starting with the Swat Valley. Going after the Haqqanis was delayed until 2013 because of some genuine concerns and some perceptions that (with hindsight) should have been ignored.

A timeline on how Pakistan tackled the Taliban insurgency in its tribal belts would better explain Pakistan’s position in handling the Haqqani crisis.

Without revamping the military doctrine and strategy, operations against the Taliban would have been counter-productive. As it was, the Al Mizan campaign has cost Pakistan dearly in the shape of the rise of the Tehreek e Taliban (TTP) whose sole objective is to wage a war against the state of Pakistan. It took nearly four years for the Pakistan Armed Forces to get its act together and develop a fresh sub conventional war fighting doctrine. This was initially tested in the 2007 military operation in Swat where partial success was achieved.

Fazullah, the rebel leader, escaped but his private army continued to haraas the federal forces deployed. The militants operating under Fazlullah signed a 16-point peace treaty with the then NWFP (renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) government in May 2008 and agreed to disband the militia. Fazullah’s reign of terror, however, did not abate and eventually the federal government scrapped the treaty and ordered the military to launch a fresh campaign to dislodge the insurgents.

Operation Rah e Rast was initiated in April 2009 and Fazlullah and his band were routed. Fazlullah managed to survive and has since taken refuge in the eastern province of Afghanistan from where he continues to launch subversive raids against Pakistan.

South Waziristan was next on the list. Another military assault codenamed Rah e Nijat in October 2009 destroyed the TTP and Taliban infrastructure, bringing the unruly tribal agency under control. North Waziristan was the final phase of the campaign against the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Compared to Swat and South Waziristan, North Waziristan was the most formidable challenge, given the very rugged topography that favoured the insurgents whose rank and file had swelled by the TTP remnants who had survived the South Waziristan offensive.

General Ashfaq Kayani, the Army Chief until 2013 was reluctant to take on North Waziristan until Swat and South Waziristan gains were consolidated. The attack on the Army Public School in December 2013 convinced Kayani’s successor General Raheel Sharif that North Waziristan operations could no  longer be delayed.

Operation Zarb e Azb began in 2014 and the Haqqani network including other Taliban factions were uprooted.

Despite Pakistan’s plea, the Afghan government and ISAF did not take necessary measures to create an anvil on their side to crush the retreating Haqqani forces making a beeline towards the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. The Haqqanis and the TTPs are now firmly ensconced in Afghanistan and are freely carrying out murderous raids both against Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Afghan government and ISAF admit to the presence of these factions in their land but plead inability to expel them. The shoe is now on the other foot and Pakistan rightfully complains about the inability or unwillingness of Afghanistan  and ISAF from preventing use of their territory  from cross-border terror raids inside Pakistan.

Are remnants of Haqqani group and other local and foreign terrorists still present in North Waziristan? Yes, some have taken refuge in the villages and the country side not only in North Waziristan but in other tribal belts that had been cleared of the insurgents. Their sleeper cells which had been pre-positioned in the urban centres of Pakistan have been activated. The current spate of suicide attacks in all the four provinces of Pakistan is the result.

The nation’s military and intelligence agencies are engaged in the final urban warfare phase of the campaign, a phase that is messy, expensive and time-consuming. Intelligence based air and land strikes are a continuous process and are being carried out periodically against these groups.

Sixteen years of continuous US military action in Afghanistan and an investment of over a trillion US dollars in the process has failed to subdue the resurgent Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan. And yet, USA continues to blame Pakistan for not doing enough against the terror elements operating in and from Pakistan. They even fail to appreciate and acknowledge that Pakistan with far lesser resources has achieved major military successes in destroying the Taliban infrastructure at a horrendous cost of life and limb. To continue to accuse Pakistan of not doing enough is so wrong and so unfair.

To better comprehend whether the litany of charges by USA about Pakistan being the primary factor for the US failure in Afghanistan are true or false, a critical examination of the US policy in Afghanistan would be in order.
US invasion of Afghanistan became unavoidable after the Taliban government refused to hand over OBL, the alleged mastermind and financier of the twin tower attack. If Bush (junior) had followed in the footstep  of his father, Bush (senior), the 41st US President and kept the political objective of Operation Enduring Freedom limited to ousting of the Taliban regime rather than reshaping the Afghan polity to reflect the western democratic value, the current disaster could have been averted.

In 1990 under the presidency of his father Bush (senior), the US pulled out lock stock and barrel from Afghanistan after the Soviet military was forced to withdraw from Afghanistan. A year later in 1991 despite exhortations of some of his top military commanders, he restricted the political objective of the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) to simply forcing Saddam out of Kuwait. He refused to follow up into Iraq after Saddam’s military was expelled from Kuwait, letting the people of Iraq determine who and how they should be governed.

During the Taliban rule from 1995 to 2001, despite gross human rights violation and non recognition of their government by USA and practically the rest of the world, the US major multinational oil company Unocal was negotiating an oil pipeline deal with them. The US ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley was actively involved in the negotiations that eventually failed.

The Taliban might have regained power if the US had withdrawn after toppling the Taliban regime by November 2001; it would have been much chastened and infinitely less disastrous than the current catastrophe – and over trillion US dollars spent to date in Afghanistan, the loss of about 4000 US troops and civilian contractors and the gradual erosion of the US hard and soft power would have been averted.

Obama inherited the Afghanistan mess from his predecessor when he took office as the US President in 2009. Presidential candidate Obama had pronounced Afghanistan as the good war, a war of necessity, unlike the Iraq war, which he had termed as a war of choice that should have been avoided.

Soon after taking office, he realized the political objectives of the Afghan War was unachievable and he seriously considered a phased drawdown. His military commanders, however, fervently believed that if given additional troops, the US military was capable of achieving what the political leadership considered unattainable. They urged him to grant a troop surge. Obama reluctantly caved in but gave the military about half the numbers they had requested for and set a deadline after which the troop withdrawal would be imitated. It was a classic case of “between two stools” syndrome and the resultant failure of the policy was a foregone conclusion.

Towards the end of his term Obama’s Afghanistan policy had pivoted from a “good war” to “Afghanistan good enough” that echoed the sentiments and war fighting strategy of the 41st US President, George H.W Bush. By the time his tenure as the US President was drawing to a close, combat operations by ISAF had been brought to an end but the US air armada remained in position – it was a case of too little and too late.

President Donald Trump has inherited the Afghanistan mess and so far no clear guidelines on the Afghan imbroglio have come out of the Trump White House. It appears the Obama exit strategy of arming and training the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to a level where they can, with the help of US airpower, keep the Taliban at bay is still in play. Even this reduced objective appears unachievable.

How bad it is the state of affairs in the ANA and ANSF? A few excerpts from American and Afghan investigative journalists and Generals would illustrate the fatal flaws that afflict both ANA and ANSF.

Jessica Donati and Ehsanullah Amiri writing for the Wall Street Journal state, “US military wipes out 30,000 names of suspected ghost Afghan soldiers. The move is a part of a broader effort by the US military to take more drastic approach to corruption in Afghanistan. Half of US purchased fuel in Afghanistan is being siphoned off by senior Afghan military commanders. General Moin Faqir of ANA fired and is under investigation.

“Mujib Mashal for the New York Times writes, “Soldiers were to be recruited and trained, and armed with new equipment. A new commander trumpeted as visionary and clean of corruption, was appointed to rebuild and reform the unit, which was a shambles just a year after taking charge of security in Helmand from the American-led NATO coalition. Casualties were at a record high, the leadership was corrupt, and many of the soldiers existed only on paper.

“US funds fed corruption in Afghanistan eroding security fighting Taliban. Corruption undermines the US mission in Afghanistan by fuelling grievances against the Afghan government and channeling support to the insurgency”, reports Sune Engel Rasmussen, quoting the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan.

Sayed Sarwar Amani and Andrew Mac Askill writing for World Newsopine, “The United States has spent around $65 billion preparing fledgling Afghan security forces, intended to number about 350,000 personnel, for when it leaves.

In 2015, the Afghan Army had to replace about a third of its roughly 170,000 soldiers because of desertions, casualties and low re-enlistment rates, according to figures released by the US military last month. That means a third of the army consists of first year recruits fresh off a three month training course.

US. General John Campbell, commander4 of US forces in Afghanistan, told Congress in October high attrition rates are because of poor leadership and soldiers’ rarely getting holiday. In some areas, soldiers “have probably been in a consistent fight for three years” he said.

The turnover rate is one of the most serious problems faced by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), according to Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “These high turnover issues increase the possibility that when US led forces leave Afghanistan for good, whenever that is they will be leaving Afghan forces unable to fend off a still ferocious insurgency”, he said, concluding, “the very poor state of the ANA and ANSF is obvious and unless there is a drastic change in strategy they would be in no position to ward off the Taliban threat even with the US air support”.

Afghans of all ethnicity – Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, etc.– are renowned warriors historically acknowledged for their bravery and tenacity in the battlefield. Have the American scholars wondered why their Afghans equipped with modern weaponry with the massive US airpower at their beck and call are fairing so poorly against the other ragtag Afghans equipped with World War-II vintage weaponry?

The simple answer is the very poor top leadership in ANA and ANSF.

The magnitude of corruption at the highest levels of ANA and ANSF is unprecedented. Their top brass enrich themselves at the cost of the combat troops who are ill equipped and ill trained to confront a resilient enemy. The higher echelon ANA / ANSF commanders are rarely seen in the forefront leading their charges; instead they prefer to manage the fighting from the safety of their hideouts and bunkers.

The Taliban leadership on the other hand, true to the Afghan and universal war fighting traditions actively live and fight along with their rank and file.

The Taliban top and mid-level leadership draw their inspiration from the concept of Jihad against the foreign “infidels”. The irony is that while the Taliban demand the ouster of all foreign forces from Afghanistan in public, in private they reportedly agree their presence gives them the leverage to recruit and motivated Afghans to join their league and confront the enemy despite heavy odds. If the foreign legions are to leave, the principal Taliban recruitment and motivational tool of a holy Jihad would no longer be applicable. The struggle would then be viewed as a civil war for power grab where Muslims would be butchering fellow Muslims, with both sides claiming to hold and unfurl the Islamic banner.

A final word would be in order about the US legislators who repeatedly berate Pakistan, holding it responsible for the Afghanistan debacle – some under the influence of the strong Indian lobby and others on the basis of the oft repeated assumption that Pakistan and the Pakistan Army has full control of the Taliban. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That Pakistan and its premier intelligence agency the much feared ISI have channels of communication with the top Taliban leadership is true but all other players in the region including the Afghan government and USA have similar openings. If Pakistan had exercised the degree of control over the Taliban as the legislators suggest, why was it not able to resolve the Durand Line issue when the Taliban were in power?

Pakistan’s repeated requests to the Taliban government in the 1990s to hand over the sectarian militants and terrorists who had taken refuge in Afghanistan were bluntly rejected. Post 2009 Operation Rah e Rast, Fazlullah, the notorious head of the TTP faction has taken refuge in Afghanistan eastern province that are under control of the Afghan Taliban. If Pakistan had held sway over them, could Fazlullah and his militia have survived in a region where the Taliban rule the roost?

The truth is the Afghan Taliban are fiercely independent and they do what they consider are in their interest. “You can rent an Afghan but you cannot buy him” is a truism that is clearly manifested in the Pakistan – Taliban relationship. Pakistan does not control the Taliban and its influence is at best limited. Pakistan can urge the Taliban to come to the negotiating table but the final decision rests solely with the latter.

Basing conclusions on the sweeping assumption that Pakistan has total control over the Taliban is faulty; such absurd suppositions are the bread and butter of conspiracy theorists – very inappropriate in any reasonable discourse. One expects a more rational approach by the respected member of the US Congress and the Senate.
There are other major players interfering in Afghanistan who can muddy the water for the US and its allies in Afghanistan. The top US General in Europe has reportedly said that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing, and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan (Reuters).

The Indian media has reported thirteen Indians who had joined the militants were among those obliterated by the US MOAB attack in Afghanistan. How did the thirteen manage to smuggle themselves into Afghanistan? The land routes through Pakistan or the sea / land routes via Iran are both very difficult and hazardous, given the current level of tension in the region. If they went by air, how did they manage to escape the very stringent visa and departure rules?

The million dollar question is how come the Indian media found out about the thirteen Indian casualties within a few days of the bombing? As Brig. (Retde) Shaukat Qadir succinctly observes – unless they were flown under the Indian diplomatic cover for some nefarious activity (Daily Times April 30, 2017).

Andrew Korybko a Russian political analyst and journalist in his incisive article RAW + DAESH = JUNDALLAH 2.0 argues that RAW, the Indian equivalent of Israeli Mossad is actively engaged with Daesh (ISIS) in an effort to ruin Iran – Pakistan relationship and sabotage CPEC. He goes on to postulate “For reasons best understood through the prism of Modi-Doval’s ‘zero –sum’ mentality vis-à-vis Pakistan and China as well as India’s related military strategic partnership with the US, CPEC must be stopped at all costs, and the destabilization of the project’s terminal point of Pakistani Balochistan is accordingly seen as the ‘solution’.

He goes on to elaborate, “Iran is being manipulated by India if it truly believes that Pakistan is to blame for the recent terrorist attack against its border forces in Balochistan, and any counterproductive anti-Islamabad statements or actions undertaken by Tehran are playing right into New Delhi’s hands ( and by extent, India’s newfound American and “Israeli” allies too). “He concludes by advising Iran “urgently needs to read up on Chanakya and study his writings before rashly responding to any more forthcoming terrorist incidents which it’s being manipulated to blame on Pakistan, as failure to do so could contribute to Iran being exploited as a unipolar ‘cat’s paw’ for complicating the emergence of the Multipolar World Order which it’s already sacrificed so much to build”.

Pakistan is too minor a player to be held responsible for sabotaging the US Afghan policy. It is time USA reassesses of what actually has gone wrong in their Afghan policy.

Only through an honest assessment and diagnosis of the afflictions that ail US Afg-Pak policy, effective remedial measures to rescue the sinking  US ship in Afghanistan can be implemented.