war in afghanistan essay

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Afghanistan War

By: History.com Editors

Published: August 20, 2021

The United States launched the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The conflict lasted two decades and spanned four U.S. presidencies, becoming the longest war in American history.

By August 2021, the war began to come to a close with the Taliban regaining power two weeks before the United States was set to withdraw all troops from the region. Overall, the conflict resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and a $2 trillion price tag . Here's a look at key events from the conflict.

War on Terror Begins

Investigators determined the 9/11 attacks—in which terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City , one at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and one in a Pennsylvania field —were orchestrated by terrorists working from Afghanistan, which was under the control of the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement. Leading the plot that killed more than 2,700 people was Osama bin Laden , leader of the Islamic militant group al Qaeda . It was believed the Taliban, which seized power in the country in 1996 following an occupation by the Soviet Union , was harboring bin Laden, a Saudi, in Afghanistan.

In an address on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush demanded the Taliban deliver bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to the United States, or "share in their fate." They refused.

On October 7, 2001, U.S. and British forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom , an airstrike campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban targets including Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad that lasted five days. Ground forces followed, and with the help of Northern Alliance forces, the United States quickly overtook Taliban strongholds, including the capital city of Kabul, by mid-November. On December 6, Kandahar fell, signaling the official end of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and causing al Qaeda, and bin Laden, to flee.

Shift to Reconstruction

During a speech on April 17, 2002, Bush called for a Marshall Plan to aid in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, with Congress appropriating more than $38 billion for humanitarian efforts and to train Afghan security forces. In June, Hamid Karzai, head of the Popalzai Durrani tribe, was chosen to lead the transitional government.

While approximately 8,000 American troops remained in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) overseen by NATO, the U.S. military focus turned to Iraq in 2003, the same year U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared "major combat" operations had come to an end in Afghanistan.

A new constitution was soon enacted and Afghanistan held its first democratic elections since the onset of the war on October 9, 2004, with Karzai, who went on to serve two five-year terms, winning the vote for president. The ISAF’s focus shifted to peacekeeping and reconstruction, but with the United States fighting a war in Iraq, the Taliban regrouped and attacks escalated.

Troop Surge Under Obama

In a written statement released February 17, 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama pledged to send an extra 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan by summer to join 36,000 American and 32,000 NATO forces already deployed there. "This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," he stated . American troops reached a peak of approximately 110,000 soldiers in Afghanistan in 2011.

In November 2010, NATO countries agreed to a transition of power to local Afghan security forces by the end of 2014, and, on May 2, 2011, following 10-year manhunt, U.S. Navy SEALs located and killed bin Laden in Pakistan.

Following bin Laden's death, a decade into the war and facing calls from both lawmakers and the public to end the war, Obama released a plan to withdraw 33,000 U.S. troops by summer 2012, and all troops by 2014. NATO transitioned control to Afghan forces in June 2013, and Obama announced a new timeline for troop withdrawal in 2014, which included 9,800 U.S. soldiers remaining in Afghanistan to continue training local forces.

Trump: 'We Will Fight to Win'

In 2015, the Taliban continued to increase its attacks, bombing the parliament building and airport in Kabul and carrying out multiple suicide bombings.

In his first few months of office, President Donald Trump authorized the Pentagon to make combat decisions in Afghanistan, and, on April 13, 2017, the United States dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb, called the " mother of all bombs ," on a remote ISIS cave complex.

In August 2017, Trump delivered a speech to American troops vowing " we will fight to win " in Afghanistan. "America's enemies must never know our plans, or believe they can wait us out," he said. "I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will."

The Taliban continued to escalate its terrorist attacks, and the United States entered peace talks with the group in February 2019. A deal was reached that included the U.S. and NATO allies pledging a total withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban vowed to not harbor terrorist groups. But by September, Trump called off the talks after a Taliban attack that left a U.S. soldier and 11 others dead. “If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Trump tweeted .

Still, the United States and Taliban signed a peace agreement on February 29, 2020, although Taliban attacks against Afghan forces continued, as did American airstrikes. In September 2020, members of the Afghan government met with the Taliban to resume peace talks and in November Trump announced that he planned to reduce U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 by January 15, 2021.

Withdrawal of US Troops

The fourth president in power during the war, President Joe Biden , in April 2021, set the symbolic deadline of September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as the date of full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the final withdrawal effort beginning in May.

Facing little resistance, in just 10 days, from August 6-15, 2021, the Taliban swiftly overtook provincial capitals, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and, finally, Kabul. As the Afghan government collapsed, President Ashraf Ghani fled to the UAE , the U.S. embassy was evacuated and thousands of citizens rushed to the airport in Kabul to leave the country.

By August 14, Biden had temporarily deployed about 6,000 U.S. troops to assist in evacuation efforts. Facing scrutiny for the Taliban's swift return to power, Biden stated , “I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war on to a fifth.”

During the war in Afghanistan, more than 3,500 allied soldiers were killed, including 2,448 American service members, with 20,000-plus Americans injured. Brown University research shows approximately 69,000 Afghan security forces were killed, along with 51,000 civilians and 51,000 militants. According to the United Nations, some 5 million Afghanis have been displaced by the war since 2012, making Afghanistan the world's third-largest displaced population .

The U.S. War in Afghanistan , Council on Foreign Relations

Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars , Associated Press

Who Are the Taliban, and What Do They Want? , The New York Times

Operation Enduring Freedom Fast Facts , CNN

Afghanistan: Why is there a war? , BBC News

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Twenty years of war: America magazine’s coverage of Afghanistan

The dramatic scenes unfolding in Kabul as Taliban forces overrun the last remaining government-held positions in Afghanistan’s capital have come as a shock to many American observers both on the ground and from afar. For those who remember the fall of Saigon in 1975, it has been a bitter repeat of history . A war that seemed eminently winnable—and justifiable—at its outset instead became a two-decade quagmire, and one that has left innocent noncombatants facing profound danger.

This is an occasion for all Americans to look back at our justifications for invading Afghanistan, our reasons for staying and our rationale for withdrawal. Where did it all go wrong? Or was the venture ill-fated from the start? Too many are dead for glib analyses to be appropriate, but a reckoning remains necessary. We at America have looked back over our coverage of Afghanistan since 2001, with some of the most pertinent accounts excerpted below.

The editors of America first weighed in on the situation in Afghanistan just a few short weeks after the United States began combat actions in that country following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 1, 2001. In the months and years that followed, the editors and other contributors weighed in with their reflections on and analyses of an increasingly fraught situation.

2001: "By their actions, the terrorists have declared war on the United States, and we certainly have the right under the just war theory to defend ourselves with military force."

A Just War? (the Editors, Oct. 8, 2001)

The United States is going to wage a war against terrorists, says President George W. Bush. Is this a just war according to the principles of the Catholic just war theory? For this issue we asked experts in the just war theory to examine this question and present their views.

Before looking at the U.S. response, it is important to make clear that the terrorists’ attacks violated almost every principle of the just war theory. First, wars can be waged only by legitimate authorities of a state. They cannot be declared by anyone who feels he has a just cause. The terrorists are not government officials. Second, the attack on the World Trade Center was directed at civilians who, according to the principle of civilian immunity, should not be targeted. And even if the Pentagon could be considered a military target, using a plane loaded with innocent civilians as a bomb is unacceptable.

By their actions, the terrorists have declared war on the United States, and we certainly have the right under the just war theory to defend ourselves with military force. But before we go too far down this path, we should ask if the use of the word war is apt. The use of the word by the president is rhetorically satisfying. It makes clear that this is a serious endeavor that will take great effort and sacrifice. But calling our response war gives the terrorists a stature that they do not deserve. It treats them like a government, when in fact they are more like organized criminals: mass murderers, not soldiers. Treating terrorists as criminals does not mean that the use of deadly force is ruled out. Police have the right to use deadly force to protect themselves and others from harm.

The rhetoric of war also makes it easier for the president to argue that we will treat nations that support terrorism in the same way that we deal with terrorists. This is easy to say, but difficult to carry out. If we discover that a foreign intelligence service gave money, arms or forged documents to Osama bin Laden, do we bomb the country? Do we bomb the offices of the intelligence service? What if the government did not know the resources were going to be used in the attack on the United States? Since the U.S. government has stated that a number of countries support terrorist groups, we could quickly be at war on many fronts.

But granting that the rhetoric of war has captured the day, it is appropriate to use the just war theory to guide us in our response. Read more...

War in Afghanistan (the Editors, Oct. 29, 2001)

The aerial attack by the United States on terrorist and Taliban targets in Afghanistan has been declared a just war by a number of Catholic leaders, including some bishops and cardinals. While we hope that the war is brought to a swift and just conclusion, such certitude, at this point, is hard to echo. There is no question that stopping terrorism is a just cause. But waging war under the just war doctrine must be the last resort, after diplomatic, economic and other means have failed. Was a month enough time to exhaust these options? This is unclear.

….Once the obvious military targets are destroyed, what do we bomb next? From the beginning, the administration has thought of this struggle primarily in military terms, but the war on terrorism cannot be won simply with bullets. The United States needs the support not only of the elites governing Muslim countries, but also of Muslim public opinion. That is why it was foolish for the administration to wait a month before accepting invitations to appear on Al Jazeera, an independent all-news satellite channel based in Qatar, which could be used to send our message to the Muslim world. This war will not be won in the mountains of Afghanistan. It will be won when Muslims are convinced that the United States acts justly. Read more...

How Goes the Coalition? (the Editors, Nov. 26, 2001)

….The Taliban retreat from Kabul will both strengthen and challenge the coalition. On the one hand, nothing strengthens a coalition like victories. On the other hand, the international coalition must now quickly find an Afghan coalition that can govern without intertribal bloodshed.

For the ultimate success of the campaign, international cooperation is indispensable, because the terrorist networks are spread across 60 nations. The coalition is not an association as formal as an alliance, but it must be held together. In an age of global interconnectedness, even a superpower cannot behave like some sheriff at high noon. If the coalition is sluggish, that’s bad luck. If the United States tries to go it alone in the campaign against terrorism, that will be more than a misfortune. It will be a perilous mistake. Read more...

2001: "In an age of global interconnectedness, even a superpower cannot behave like some sheriff at high noon."

Afghanistan Part II (the Editors, March 4, 2002)

The Bush administration has waged an effective war in Afghanistan, and, for the most part, has waged it in a just manner. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we wrote that the terrorists should be brought to justice because of their crimes and because of the danger they pose to life in this country and elsewhere. If this cannot be done peacefully, then they are legitimate targets of military action.

….While the Bush administration deserves praise, its policies have not been without defects. Many Al Qaeda and Taliban troops escaped into the mountains or Pakistan. In addition, the administration lost the moral high ground by arguing that the captives taken during the war were not covered by the Geneva conventions governing prisoners, a position it was ultimately forced to reverse. Now it is trying to convince a skeptical world that there is a difference between the Taliban soldiers and the Al Qaeda terrorists, a distinction that it could have made more successfully if it had not earlier tried to ignore the Geneva conventions. In addition, allegations that U.S. soldiers have beaten captives are alarming. The facilities holding prisoners should be immediately opened to international inspection by the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

The first casualty of war, the saying goes, is the truth. While secrecy is vital to protect military plans, post-battle secrecy breeds suspicion and prevents us from learning from our mistakes. The military would have more credibility if it acknowledged quickly and forthrightly civilian casualties and other military mistakes. To assert, for example, against all evidence that those killed at the village of Chowkar-Karez, outside Kandahar, were enemy soldiers, renders suspect all information given out by the military. Better to admit the mistake, apologize, make reparations and strive to do better.

Apologies and reparations would do much to show the Afghan people that we, unlike so many previous foreign powers, are different: we care about their welfare. Estimates of civilian casualties from the war range from 1,000 to 4,000. Justice demands that we spend at least part of our military budget to help those innocent civilians who were wounded, widowed or orphaned by U.S. weapons. We also have an obligation to retrieve and destroy unexploded ordnance, lest more innocents suffer from the war.

Rebuilding Afghanistan politically and economically will not be easy. Read more...

2002: "The Bush administration has waged an effective war in Afghanistan, and, for the most part, has waged it in a just manner."

The First Anniversary of 9/11 (the Editors, Sept. 9, 2002)

….In December, Washington was congratulating itself on defeating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and expelling the Al Qaeda terrorists from that country—although, tragically, a significant number of noncombatant civilians were killed in the process.

But on the anniversary of 9/11, the new Afghan government remains highly unstable; the partners in the anti-terrorist coalition are growing ever more critical of U.S. leadership; the Al Qaeda leaders have not been found, much less immobilized; there is frightening talk within Congress and the administration of war with Iraq; and all the while Americans are continually assured by experts that new and more dreadful terrorist attacks are a certainty.

It is often said that 9/11 marked the beginning of a new age. It should also be said that if this age is to eliminate terrorism, it must be guided by the truth that Pope John Paul II repeated over and over in his message for the 2002 World Day of Peace: “No peace without justice; no justice without forgiveness.” Read more...

The True Costs of War (May 16, 2006)

….The campaign against international terrorism confronts a new kind of challenge. Unlike conventional wars between nation-states or the decades-long confrontation of the cold war, this campaign will not conclude with a surrender or a treaty. When the two global superpowers confronted each other in a climate of mutual assured destruction, the danger was all too real, but the competing interests of the adversaries were clear. Such clarity is not present in the campaign against international terrorism. Suicide bombers will not be defeated by missiles and tanks but by the promise of a life of opportunity with hope for future generations. While military responses to clearly defined targets must be part of our response to terrorist attacks, the fundamental and continuing conflict will be one of ideals and values. If American citizens accept the diminishment of constitutional safeguards and American values without protest, we will slowly surrender our most valuable resource in the continuing campaign against terrorism. By failing to understand our adversaries, we run the risk of becoming their mirror images. Read more...

Up or Out (Dec. 7, 2009)

Afghanistan, we are told, is the “graveyard of empires.” Visitors to the recent roving exhibit “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul” will know that description is an exaggeration. For Alexander the Great and his followers, it turns out, established colonial cities across northern and western Afghanistan. So not every foreign expedition has stumbled into disaster, like the ill-fated British and Indian troops annihilated in 1842 in the First Afghan War. Nonetheless, today Afghanistan does represent an extraordinary military and diplomatic challenge for the United States. The terrain is rugged, the climate inhospitable to invading armies. Its population consists of at least nine ethnic groups who speak more than 30 languages. Its tribal culture is, to put it kindly, highly defensive and its people skilled in irregular warfare. When the illegitimacy and corruption of the government in Kabul and the weakness of its police and military are added in, waging a counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan is a test of extraordinary complexity.

President Obama’s long, drawn-out deliberation on Afghan strategy is not just due to his rational temperament, as his kinder critics have suggested. It is demanded by the multiple challenges Afghanistan presents any outside power seeking to shape events in what Maryann Cusimano Love aptly called “a fictional state.” In this context, deliberation is an asset, but it cannot assure a happy outcome. Whatever the strategy, however focused the goals, war and nation-building are both chancy undertakings. The principal issue that we believe should be weighed as the nation moves ahead is the human capacity of the U.S. military to wage this war. Read more...

2006: "By failing to understand our adversaries, we run the risk of becoming their mirror images."

Hold to the Deadline (Sept. 13, 2010)

The Taliban, according to a cover story in Time on July 29, ordered the nose of 19-year-old Bibi Aisha cut off to punish her for fleeing her husband’s family, where she was being abused. Later they shot 10 aid workers and stoned to death a young couple who had eloped. If NATO leaves Afghanistan, many tell us, such atrocities will continue. But Aisha’s husband, not the Taliban, cut off her nose; and the almost 100,000 foreign troops have failed to reform brutal tribal customs during the nine years they have fought there.

Meanwhile, civilian casualties rise. The U.S. policy is to avoid killing civilians, even at risk to our troops; but recent reports of 52 people, mainly women and children, killed in the Helmand province—condemned as “morally and humanly unacceptable” by President Hamid Karzai—and another 32 a week later, demonstrate that drones and rockets fail to distinguish sufficiently between the enemy and the innocent. According to U.N. reports, in 2009 the great majority of the 2,412 civilian victims were killed by insurgents; 596 were killed by the United States, mostly by air strikes. Nevertheless, local polls show that Afghans, particularly in the villages, blame the foreigners for civilian deaths.

Each week the parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam become more vivid: the corrupt America-sponsored government; our troops bogged down in a hostile culture and terrain; our military leadership plugged into its “can do” philosophy; our domestic economy stretched to the breaking point; a public uninformed and unconvinced of the war’s necessity; and a president stuck with a premature decision to fight and determined not to become, in Richard Nixon’s words, “the first president to lose a war.”

Americans must face the fact that we cannot control the world. Given the current burdens on our military and our economic problems, we cannot remake a nation in our image. Read this...

Out of Afghanistan (Aug. 15, 2011)

Congressman Walter Jones Jr., of North Carolina, has undergone a thorough conversion. A Democrat, he became a conservative Republican; a Baptist, he became a Catholic. He supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; now he sends hand-written letters of condolence to the American families who have lost a son or daughter. He told George C. Wilson in The Nation (6/13) that he deals with the guilt over having voted for both wars because he was “not strong enough to vote my conscience as a man of faith.” Mr. Jones and his 13-member Out-of-Afghanistan caucus plan to push the war to the forefront in the presidential primaries. Public support for the war has fallen. Only 43 percent of Americans feel it is worth fighting, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll (6/7). A Pew survey on June 21 found that 56 percent wanted troops out as soon as possible and only 39 percent supported staying until the situation stabilized.

In June, 40 religious leaders from all faiths wrote to President Obama that it is time to bring the war in Afghanistan to an end. What began as a response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they contended, has become an open-ended war against a Taliban insurgency. Read this...

2013: "Killing civilians is not only immoral but also strategically counterproductive."

Our Sacred Dead (Oct. 23, 2013)

….As the war in Afghanistan intensified in 2008, the effort to keep count of civilian deaths increased, though many agreed the data gathered from Western media reports represented only the tip of the iceberg. The tension between the United Nations and United States increased. The coalition would claim they had killed insurgents, but the local population would tell the United Nations that the victims were farmers. A U.S. bombing in September 2008 killed 92 civilians in one village, and in May 2009 another airstrike killed 140. WikiLeaks revealed in July 2010 that the U.S. military secretly maintained files concerning 4,024 Afghan civilian war deaths between 2004 and 2009.

Killing civilians is not only immoral but also strategically counterproductive. Whether an attack using drones, or night raids on the ground, these actions lead only to new recruits for the Taliban. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal often called this “insurgent math,” and his aide said every additional civilian casualty generates 20 more insurgents, an increase in road bombs and an additional violent clash between insurgents and U.S. troops in the following six weeks.

In U.S. culture, respect for human life is narrow, sometimes to the point of indifference to the fate of innocent persons who are not military enemies, but whom we kill. We are slow to see those designated “terrorists” as our brothers and sisters. There is a need for a truly independent agency, akin to the Government Accountability Office, to record and publish the names and number of civilians killed on all sides of a conflict. The nightly news should acknowledge both American and foreign dead. Memorials and liturgies that demonstrate respect for all the victims of war would give life to the most challenging words in the Sermon on the Mount. Read more...

As a soldier I was loved for my sins. Now I must repent for them (Peter Lucier, May 17, 2019)

….The Catholic faith tells us that we are sinners loved by God. I am a sinner who is loved. I struggle with both halves. I don’t always want to admit I am a sinner. What I went over there to do felt righteous. I believed in the cause, and even if I didn’t, I believed in my brothers. I believed in America, and even if I didn’t or didn’t know what America was, I believed in the Marine Corps. I believed in violence, in purpose, in our community, our brotherhood. I wanted to receive the sacrament of confirmation in the military service. I prayed for the opportunity to kill.

I believed in the redemptive power of violence. I was young and golden and fit, on fire with the zeal of a convert. On the firing ranges at the school of infantry, in the mountains of Camp Pendleton, I fell in love with the rhythms of squad fire and maneuver—the geometries of fire, crisp left and right lateral limits, the steady drumming of an M249 machine gun zipping rounds into targets. I was born again. I felt clean and right. I slept peacefully at night, tired from an honest day’s work of training to visit violence upon the others. Some days, it is hard to admit I am a sinner.

Other days, it is hard to accept that I am loved. I have not earned it. We went out all those nights and never came back with anything to show for it. The war I fought, I didn’t win. What have I done to deserve love? I have certainly done enough to deserve contempt, to deserve condescension, to deserve belittlement, to deserve hate, even. Pick your sin: pride, anger, despair, selfishness. I am guilty. I went to war feeling entitled. To what exactly? To save. To kill. It didn’t occur to me how arrogant that was until I came home. I carried that self-centeredness into a marriage after I got home and wrecked it. The uniform I wore reminds others of service. It reminds me of all the wrongs I’ve done and continue to do. Some days it is hard to accept love.

As a Marine veteran of Afghanistan, I am a sinner who is loved—and loved in a way I am not always comfortable with. Being a veteran means being venerated here at home. Before every college basketball game I go to, we take a moment to be grateful for our nation “and those who keep it safe.” I am loved with every flyover at a football game, every Fourth of July, every Veterans Day. I feel America’s love for me and for veterans in every “Thank you for your service” and in every “Support the Troops” bumper sticker.

The oftentimes adoring American public does not talk much about my sins, but I feel them acutely. St. Augustine talked about animi dolor , “anguish of the soul.” Animi dolor is the soul’s natural response to war, to killing. I feel viscerally the stains that entering into the morally complex arena of war has left upon my soul. In the American culture, I am loved for my sins. I am loved for being a Marine who went to war.

When I returned from Afghanistan, I needed to find a way to go from being a Marine who is loved for his sins to being a believer who is a sinner but who is loved. I needed to find a way to come home. The church has always offered a path for soldiers coming home from war: the path of penance. It is a hard path, both for veterans and for the families and communities to which they are trying to return. But if we really believe in the message and truth of the cross, and if veterans are to truly become again members of the community, we are compelled to take this route. Read more...

The Afghanistan Papers make clear that America has a repentance problem (Drew Christiansen, S.J., Dec. 17, 2019)

We have been here before. In 1964 there was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution , and in 1971 came the publication of the Pentagon Papers . In 1979, David Halberstam laid the blame for the Vietnam War at the feet of “ the best and the brightest .” Not until four decades later in 2004, in the film “ The Fog of War ,” did Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, own his culpability in that conflict.

In 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney and the hawkish neo-cons of the Bush administration led the United States to war under false pretenses once again, this time in Iraq. In 2006, the Iraq Study Group , headed by James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton, issued a report listing 79 recommendations to correct and prevent the mistakes and abuses of that war.

The same year, the journalists Seymour Hersh and Mark Danner began extended coverage of the torture committed at Abu Ghraib . We later learned that the C.I.A. had filmed the “enhanced interrogations,” destroyed the tapes so they could not be turned over to investigators and continued applying these grossly immoral techniques even after they had proven ineffective at producing actionable intelligence. The new film “ The Report ” dramatizes an investigation into the torture program by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.

Now comes The Washington Post’s release, on Dec. 9, of the so-called Afghanistan Papers —more than 2,000 pages from the Lessons Learned Program at the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, along with other documents. They reveal that, as The Post summarizes, “Year after year, U.S. officials failed to tell the public the truth about the war in Afghanistan.” Once again there was failure at the top, by both civilian and military leaders, in the Bush and Obama administrations and right up to the present.

“The interviews make clear,” the Post reporters write, “that officials issued rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hid unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” They go on to say, “Several of those interviewed described explicit efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public and a culture of willful ignorance, where bad news and critiques were unwelcome.” Americans, it appears, have not learned the lessons of our own past failures. Rather, we seem ensnared in a tragedy of biblical dimensions from which we cannot flee.

The first lesson I draw from the Afghanistan Papers is that U.S. civic culture has lost the capacity for repentance. Read more...

What America needs to know about the Afghanistan Papers (Ryan Di Corpo, Dec. 17, 2019)

The Washington Post released previously unpublished reports and memos related to the ongoing war in Afghanistan on Dec. 9. These 428 interview transcripts and over 2,000 pages of notes , called the Afghanistan Papers, reveal a striking contrast between the private doubts and concerns of numerous ambassadors, military leaders and U.S. government officials and what they told the American public about the war.

More than 600 people sat for interviews with the Office of the Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) as part of its $11 million “ Lessons Learned ” program, which, according to The Post, “was meant to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan.”

The documents are a sobering record of intelligence errors, strategic blunders and sustained, widespread uncertainty regarding the purpose of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan—a nearly $1 trillion endeavor . Since 2001, the war has taken the lives of 2,300 American military personnel and an estimated 43,074 Afghan civilians.

On Oct. 7, 2001, President George W. Bush announced strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He stated that the purpose of these “carefully targeted actions” was to “disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.” However, as revealed in the newly released Lessons Learned report, former Afghan war czar Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in 2015, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan— we didn’t know what we were doing .”

To help make sense of the Afghanistan Papers, America spoke by phone with Karen J. Greenberg, who has written on matters of terrorism and national security for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. A permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. Greenberg is currently director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What intelligence did the U.S. lack when beginning military operations in Afghanistan? Was the war strategically misguided from the start?

Much of the criticism about the war in Afghanistan was understated, but there are many things we didn’t know. Among them was how exactly this tribal country functions, what role the warlords and others were playing vis-a-vis the United States and other countries. In other words, who to trust, what their actual goals were, how they viewed the Americans.

On Dec. 1, 2009, at West Point, President Obama announced a surge of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and his plan to end U.S. involvement by July 2011. At the time, was it possible for U.S. forces to complete a successful transfer of power to Afghan troops?

Why was the drawdown so hard? In part because there was such opposition to it by officials who wondered, “If we draw down in Afghanistan, then what will happen?” Will Al Qaeda be on the rise again? Will other Islamist terrorist groups will be able to take root? For the most part, Obama’s decision was to draw down, but among many military experts and national security figures, that was a problem. It takes time.

The question was, “How are they going to do it?” Read more...

2020: "An emboldened and patient Taliban appears content to simply wait out the Americans."

As tensions rise with Iran, Afghanistan becomes the longest war in U.S. history (Kevin Clarke, Feb. 5, 2020)

The Afghanistan papers offer a litany of intelligence errors, strategic blunders and expressions of sustained, widespread uncertainty regarding the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. During his interview for Lessons Learned, former Afghan war czar Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in 2015, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan— we didn’t know what we were doing ”—a fitting summary of the sentiment expressed by scores of other combat officers, diplomats and Pentagon strategists who participated in the policy postmortem. According to The Post, those documents reveal “there was no consensus on the war’s objectives, let alone how to end the conflict.”

The same day The Post released its grim exposé, The New York Times published a summary of a report from Brown University’s Cost of War project. According to those researchers, the United States has spent $2.15 trillion so far in efforts to contain the Taliban, Al Qaeda and now ISIS militants and to stabilize Afghanistan’s government and civil society.

During that time, the war has cost the lives of 2,351 American military personnel and an estimated 43,000 Afghan civilians . Yet more than 18 years after U.S. and NATO troops first arrived to begin the longest war in U.S. history, the stable, democratic Afghanistan the United States struggled to establish remains acutely vulnerable to collapse, and an emboldened and patient Taliban appears content to simply wait out the Americans. Read more...

What we owe U.S. veterans who fought in Afghanistan (Matt Malone, S.J., Feb. 18, 2020)

On Feb. 8, 2020, Sgt. First Class Javier Gutierrez, of San Antonio, Tex., and Sgt. First Class Antonio Rodriguez, of Las Cruces, N.M., became the latest U.S. soldiers to die in Afghanistan. They were both 28 years old. Six other American personnel were wounded in the attack, which reportedly came as they were waiting for a helicopter transport in Nangarhar Province. Since the start of the war in 2001, more than 2,300 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan and more than 20,000 have been wounded.

The war has been far costlier, of course, for Afghan civilians. According to Amnesty International , “in the first nine months of 2019 alone, more than 2,400 children were killed or injured in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest conflict in the world for children.”

You would think that these sobering statistics would keep the war at the forefront of our national consciousness. Instead, most of us hardly think about it. Philip Klay, a former U.S. Marine, described in these pages in 2018 how our mass indifference affected him when he came home from the war in Iraq: “To walk through a city like New York upon return from war, then, felt like witnessing a moral crime.... I was frustrated, coming home, that the American people did not embrace my vision of war.” Mr. Klay went on to explain how his “vision” of the war changed, but I think one could forgive any veteran for feeling what he felt. Read more…

Most popular

Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more.

The latest from america

Programs submenu

Regions submenu, topics submenu, the future of the indo-pacific with the coast guard commandant, breaking bad: south korea's nuclear option, the future of u.s. lng exports: a conversation with rep. sean casten and rep. garret graves, strengthening u.s. critical minerals security: a fireside conversation with frank fannon.

• Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy
• Aerospace Security Project
• Africa Program
• Americas Program
• Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy
• Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative
• Asia Program
• Australia Chair
• Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy
• Brzezinski Institute on Geostrategy
• Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies
• China Power Project
• Chinese Business and Economics
• Defending Democratic Institutions
• Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group
• Defense 360
• Defense Budget Analysis
• Diversity and Leadership in International Affairs Project
• Economics Program
• Emeritus Chair in Strategy
• Energy Security and Climate Change Program
• Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program
• Freeman Chair in China Studies
• Futures Lab
• Geoeconomic Council of Advisers
• Global Food and Water Security Program
• Global Health Policy Center
• Hess Center for New Frontiers
• Human Rights Initiative
• Humanitarian Agenda
• Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program
• International Security Program
• Japan Chair
• Kissinger Chair
• Korea Chair
• Langone Chair in American Leadership
• Middle East Program
• Missile Defense Project
• Project on Critical Minerals Security
• Project on Fragility and Mobility
• Project on Nuclear Issues
• Project on Prosperity and Development
• Project on Trade and Technology
• Renewing American Innovation Project
• Scholl Chair in International Business
• Smart Women, Smart Power
• Southeast Asia Program
• Stephenson Ocean Security Project
• Strategic Technologies Program
• Transnational Threats Project
• Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies
• All Regions
• Australia, New Zealand & Pacific
• Middle East
• Russia and Eurasia
• American Innovation
• Civic Education
• Climate Change
• Cybersecurity
• Defense Budget and Acquisition
• Defense and Security
• Energy and Sustainability
• Food Security
• Gender and International Security
• Geopolitics
• Global Health
• Human Rights
• Humanitarian Assistance
• Intelligence
• International Development
• Maritime Issues and Oceans
• Missile Defense
• Nuclear Issues
• Transnational Threats
• Water Security

Realism in Afghanistan: Rethinking an Uncertain Case for the War

Commentary by Anthony H. Cordesman

Published June 16, 2010

There is nothing more tragic than watching beautiful theories being assaulted by gangs of ugly facts. It is time, however, to be far more realistic about the war in Afghanistan.  It may well still be winnable, but it is not going to be won by denying the risks, the complexity, and the time that any real hope of victory will take. It is not going to be won by “spin” or artificial news stories, and it can easily be lost by exaggerating solvable short-term problems.

The Strategic Importance of Afghanistan and the Case for Staying in the War

Two critical questions dominate any realistic discussion of the conflict. The first is whether the war is worth fighting. The second is whether it can be won. The answers to both questions are uncertain. The US has no enduring reason to maintain a strategic presence in Afghanistan or Central Asia. It has far more important strategic priorities in virtually every other part of the world, and inserting itself into Russia’s “near abroad,” China’s sphere of influence, and India’s ambitions makes no real sense. Geography, demographics, logistics, and economics all favor other nations, and no amount of academic hubris can realistically model American reform of the “Stans” in ways that are cost-effective relative to other uses of US resources.

The carefully spun good news story about Afghan minerals may or may not prove to be economically realistic. It is all too typical of a long series of “breadbasket” arguments that take problem countries and argue that their natural resources can make them wealthy or that they can become major exporters of agricultural products. In practice, it will be at least half a decade before Afghanistan’s mineral resources will pay off, and the key outside investors are likely to be Chinese, Russian, and local. It is very unlikely that firms can compete without bribes and incentives as the cost of doing business, and even if US registered companies do invest, they are likely to operate as non–US entities in ways than minimize any economic benefits to the US.

The key reasons for the war remain Al Qa’ida and the threat of a sanctuary and base for international terrorism, and the fact the conflict now involves Pakistan’s future stability. One should have no illusion about today’s insurgents. The leading cadres are far more international in character, far better linked to Al Qa’ida and other international extremist groups, and much closer tied to extremists in Pakistan.  If they “join” an Afghan government while they are still winning (or feel they are winning), they are likely to become such a sanctuary and a symbol of victory that will empower similar extremists all over the world.

Experts disagree sharply about Pakistan’s instability and vulnerability in the face of a US and ISAF defeat in Afghanistan. There is no way to predict how well Pakistan can secure its border and deal with its own Islamic extremists, and Pakistan is both a nuclear state and a far more serious potential source of support to other extremist movements than Afghanistan. A hardline， Deobandi-dominated Pakistan would be a serious strategic threat to the US and its friends and allies, and would sharply increase the risk of another major Indo-Pakistani conflict.

It should be noted, however, that the US may be forced into leaving Afghanistan regardless of its intentions to stay, or face conditions that make any stable form of victory impossible. Containment from the outside may be the only choice, and having to leave Afghanistan does not mean having to abandon Pakistan. Maintaining a major civil and military aid effort to Pakistan, and keeping US capabilities to work with Pakistan in UCAV and other strikes on insurgent networks is also an option. So is working with Russia to support a rebirth of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and to pin down the Taliban and other insurgents as much as possible.

Moreover, it is time to stop demonizing Bin Laden and Al Qa’ida and focus on the broader threat. Massive population increases, poverty, decaying educational and social infrastructure, culture shock and alienation, and failed secularism affect far too much of the Islamic world. Yemen and Somalia are only the two worst cases, and some form of extremist and terrorist threat is likely to be a regional constant for the next two decades –regardless of whether the US and its allies win or lose in Afghanistan. Moreover, the trade-offs involved do raise serious questions about whether the same – or a much lower – investment in helping key allies like Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco would do far more to provide overall security.

The fact is, the strategic case for staying in Afghanistan is uncertain and essentially too close to call. The main reason is instead tactical. We are already there. We have major capabilities in place. If we can demonstrate that the war can be won at reasonable additional cost in dollars and blood, it makes sense to persist. But, only if we can demonstrate we can win and show that the additional cost has reasonable limits . Containment and alternative uses of the same resources are very real options, and would probably be more attractive ones if we could somehow “zero base” history. The reality is, however, that nations rarely get to choose the ideal ground in making strategic decisions. They are prisoners of their past actions, and so are we.

Can This Mission Be Successful? Can We Win?

These uncertainties would be less important if it were possible to argue convincingly that the war can either clearly be won, or must be lost. No one can do this on the basis of the current evidence and indicators.

 “Afghan Good Enough” Versus “Afghan Impossible”

The definition of victory is as much at issue as the question of whether victory is possible. One thing seems clear: The impossible goals and dreams of rapid political and economic development, creation of a Western-style rule of law, and quick progress in human rights was never going to take place even if the challenge had really been post-conflict reconstruction and the insurgency had not been allowed to fester without serious opposition for half a decade. The Afghan Compact, a badly drafted Western constitution, and the Afghan National Development Plan were little more than idealistic dreams decoupled from Afghan realities and Afghan desires.

More than eight years into the war, the last Presidential election is still a political nightmare, the legislative election is in limbo, and Afghan power brokers have become far stronger while Afghan capacity in governance has made limited progress Nearly 40% of the population is partially dependent on UN food aid for basic subsistence, and most Afghans have to do anything they can to survive – whether this involves opium or what the West calls corruption. It is the Taliban that established the real rule of law in many areas, and the civil authorities and police remain largely corrupt and ineffective in much of the country. As for human rights, traditional Afghans remain traditional Afghans, and issues like the rights of women make token progress at best outside the areas where such rights already existed before the Taliban took over.

The case is very different, however, if victory is defined in the way that General McChrystal and other have done in ISAF. They are talking about a much less ambitious end state that would offer most Afghans major benefits as well as achieve a meaningful form of victory. The ISAF command brief defines both the campaign goals and this endstate as follows:

• Assist GIRoA in defeating the insurgency.
• Protect the Afghan population and separate insurgent influence.
• Gain popular support for the government. 
• Allow sustainable progress and promote legitimacy. 
• Prevent the return of transnational terrorists and eliminate potential safe havens.
• Conduct the operation in three stages: A) Gain the Initiative; B) Achieve Strategic Consolidation; and C) Sustain Security.
• Gain the initiative and stop insurgent momentum in the next 12-18 months.
• Establish closer cooperation with the International Community.
• Achieve improved integration and CIV-MIL operational cohesion.
• Insurgency defeated to within GIRoA’s capacity.
• Legitimate governance extends to local levels.
• Socio-economic programs benefit the majority of Afghan people.
• GIRoA, with ISAF support, is capable of assuming the lead for security.

The campaign design and desired end state for Afghanistan is shown in more detail in the chart below, and it effectively limits the goal to effective governance and justice as perceived by Afghans, a stable society free of significant insurgent violence and threats, and a suitable condition for development by Afghans on Afghan terms.

This may fall far short of the goals that the US and other nations set in 2002 and the years that followed, but it is credible and would serve US strategic interests by denying Al Qa’ida, the Taliban, or other insurgents control of the country or major operational areas and sanctuaries.  In short, it is “Afghan good enough,” and not “Afghan impossible,” and is at least a pragmatic definition of the mission and a set of conditions that the US and its allies have some hope of achieving.

This does not, however, alter the fact that even this much more modest definition of the mission -- and of victory -- may still prove to be beyond our ability to achieve. There are several major areas of risk and uncertainty where there simply are not enough facts or precedents to make a credible prediction.

Estimating the Enemy

One key area lies in estimating the enemy and predicting its behavior. The metrics on the Taliban and other insurgents remain ambiguous. General McChrystal seems to be correct in saying that their momentum has been halted, but he has been careful not to say that it has been reversed. ISAF reporting shows the ambiguities in these patterns in considerable detail. It is far from clear that ISAF and the US have as yet won any tactical victories they can exploit in ways that bring lasting stability and transition to capable Afghan governance and security forces. It is equally unclear, however, that the insurgents can hold out against any concentrated offensive, or either take or hold ground in areas where they have limited or no ethnic and religious support.

US and ISAF intelligence estimates raise as many questions as they answer:

• On the one hand, we are still dealing with a relatively small, extreme, and largely unpopular enemy that a number of intelligence experts argue has increasingly divided leadership and whose fighters are tired of the conflict and absentee direction.
• One the other hand, these arguments are uncertain and often made out of any historical context. Most of the successful insurgencies of modern times have been won by groups that suffered major reversals on the battlefield (and were often said to have been defeated), that proved to be far more resilient and adaptable over time than experts calculated, and essentially won the war of political attrition by outlasting their opponents in spite of continuing tactical defeats.

The fact is that this is a duel in strategic endurance, in which it is not possible to predict the level of Taliban capability inside either Afghanistan or Pakistan, Al Qa’ida’s endurance, the level of lasting Afghan and GIRoA support for the war, allied support, Pakistani support, or the support of Congress and the American people. There are also cases of sudden, unpredictable and catalytic collapse on the part of both governments and insurgents. The only way to know is to actually fight the war.

Deadlines and Expectations

One thing is clear: The war will be lost if 2011 is treated as a deadline, and/or if the GIRoA and the Afghan people, the Pakistani government and people, and our allies perceive it as a deadline. The same will be true if the timing of the campaign, and the impact of US and allied actions, are defined in terms of unrealistic expectations. No amount of planning, discussion, and analysis can set clear deadlines for this war.

The current situation is the product of more than eight years of chronic under-resourcing, under-reaction, spin, self-delusion and neglect. It is the result of one of the worst examples of wartime leadership in American history. There is no magic route out of this situation, and the timing of an effective campaign has been complicated by a wide range of factors:

• Karzai, who appeared to have already rigged the election in the summer of 2009, did not rely on power brokering to give him a majority. The controversy following the election consumed 4-6 months, divided Karzai from the US, has led to the resignation of key officials, and left GIRoA with far more uncertain legitimacy while sharply undermining US influence. This has affected every aspect of GIRoA and ANSF support for the war.
• President Obama’s review consumed 4 months of critical time in a 12-18 month campaign plan. The plans for the civilian surge were never credible and led to inevitable delays. Military movements had their own delays, and key elements of operational plans were too conceptual from the start and assumed far more rapid and easy progress in the hold and build phases than proved possible in test areas like Marja.
• President Obama attempted to qualify the deadline he set in his speech for the beginning of US withdrawal in August 2011, but this message has failed to get across in spite of repeated efforts by senior US commanders and officials. Many Afghan officials and officers, and allied officers and diplomats, are at best confused and at worst privately believe that we will leave. Any visitor to Afghanistan also sees efforts at every level to rush operations in time to meet November 2010 and July 2011 reporting deadlines. The end result is that a vague de facto deadline exists. This deadline inevitably affects goals and expectations that have long been set at unrealistically high levels for both civil and military operations. The end result is often that operations and actions that have a far better chance of succeeding over six months to a year longer are being rushed in ways that sharply increase the risk of failure. Moreover, far too little tangible planning is being carried out for the period beyond August 2011, with a sharp decoupling of civil and military plans that separate the military campaign and transition to increasing ANSF responsibility from aid plans that often are far too conceptual and stovepiped and that effectively mark a premature return to “post-conflict reconstruction.”
• Allied war fatigue compounds the problem. Canadian and Netherlands’ withdrawal in 2011, and recent Polish calls for withdrawal, are symbols of the fact that the legislatures and population of many ISAF countries no longer believe in this war. Some of this is unavoidable, given the length and cost of the conflict and the fact that the US obtained much of its present allied support by describing the mission as peacekeeping and post conflict reconstruction, and failed to show effective leadership between 2002 and 2008.
• Much – perhaps a majority – of the foreign aid effort is still directed towards programs and goals that were set before the insurgency cast Afghanistan into a state of war. This effort remains decoupled from the real world security situation and the needs and perceptions of ordinary Afghans. Far too much aid planning and spending exists in a “bubble” that effectively tries to ignore the fact that the nation is at war. It is time that the entire civil effort, and all foreign aid, dealt with the reality that Afghanistan is at war and that aid in governance, economics, and the rule of law must be tailored to this fact, and be transparently accountable in the process.
• Goals have been set for the development of the Afghan National Security Forces that emphasis force quantity over force quality. These goals may well rush a force into the field that is used up in the process, therefore denying a basis for transition from US and allied forces. The end result may well also delay operations and transition by using up key elements of the army and paramilitary ANCOP police force, or risk serious reversals if ISAF tries to rely on the force. The Army is effectively being pushed towards its present short-term force goal two years early, and the ANCOP force is still under so much stress that it has 80% attrition. Moreover, ISAF had only deployed 23% of the required trainers as of early May 2010. Giving NTM-A and the partnering effort even an additional year, and time to put more emphasis on quality and transition over quantity and immediate employment, could make the difference between strategic success and strategic failure.

ISAF has shown considerable realism in adjusting its campaign plans to these facts, but they could still cost the US and its allies the war if a major shift does not take place from the present climate of “over-promise and under-perform” to an acceptance that deadlines do more to undercut support than to motivate, that plans must reflect real world time scales and realistic expectations and goals, and that credibility and leadership depend on “under-promising and over-performing.”

No one can guarantee victory even in the form of the end state described earlier. One can guarantee that it is better to have a credible chance of victory in 2012-2013 than it is to rush to defeat in 2010-2011. Moreover, it is fairly easy to predict the political cost of pretending that the aftermath will not require serious aid expenditures, and US and allied military advisory and support efforts, well beyond 2015. One cannot ask for money through 2015 in DoD and State Department budget documents for FY2012 and simultaneously pretend that the transition to Afghan governance, the ANSF, and Afghan self-financing will be relatively quick. In fact, even the most optimistic estimate of any mining and agricultural development effort indicates that major financial support is likely to be needed through 2020. It is time to be honest about this. Vietnam is a warning of what concealment and denial will do to any lasting political support.

Accepting Afghans as Afghans

The war is not going to be won by treating the power structure of Afghanistan as if it did not exist or as if it could be radically changed in the course of the next few years. The central government is not going to be empowered at the expense of key regional, geographic, ethnic, and sectarian divisions; or suddenly eliminate the role of tribalism and key families. Efforts to reshape governance to create a modern Western structure of “effective governance” that somehow transform all of Afghanistan are simply not going to work. The challenge is to co-opt the power structure, and control its worst elements and behavior, in ways that the Afghan people can accept as a better option than the Taliban. As one experienced aid worker put it, “it is to find their worst grievances, deal with them, and create conditions where they can move forward if they choose to do so.”

This means setting far less ambitious goals for reform and government capacity. It means accepting a major role for existing power brokers, if for no other reason than that there is no credible alternative. The issue is not Western concepts of governance, but what will make GIRoA “good enough” by Afghan popular standards.

The US, its allies, and all aid donors need to take responsibility for much of what is called “corruption.” They failed to understand that Afghans accept informal payments as part of the cost of normal life. They did not consider the real world motivations of people involved in some 30 years of war and turmoil and who had no way to know if any given job or position would last more than a few months.

They failed to see the importance of preserving the Afghan civil service and instead hired many Afghans away from the government. They created a virtually uncontrolled flood of money that could be grabbed by Afghans who had not had any similar opportunities in 30 years, who had limited loyalty or no abstract concept of governance, and who had the resulting ability to take that money to become wealthy and buy power in the process. Organizations like UNAMA and AID have been massively corrupting forces in Afghanistan. So have the US and ISAF military who have given massive amounts of money to poorly supervised contractors and others, who in turn not only buy power with that money, but often pay a tax to insurgents in the process.

These problems have been compounded by an emphasis on anticorruption drives that have had a predictable lack of effect. Rather than threaten the power structure, they lead to hollow investigations, finding scapegoats, shuffling officials from one post to another, and predictable resistance from any Afghan with the clout and wealth to avoid becoming a successful target.

Moreover, all these problems interacted with a past emphasis on building a formal justice system whose resources and timescales were impossibly long and limited in near-term coverage, decoupled from credible policing and detention, and ignored the hopelessly low pay and poor security for judges and prosecutors. The end result bypassed the kind of less formal justice Afghans wanted and needed, left much of the country without effective justice, and empowered the Taliban to the point where it had enough presence to create its own “prompt” justice system. Anticorruption efforts cannot function at the local and regional levels under such circumstances, and creating local police becomes impossible when there is no real justice system for them to support and virtually any power broker or successful criminal can buy their way to the result they want.

In short, winning requires a major adjustment in US, ISAF, and donor acceptance of Afghanistan as it is. It means accelerating efforts to provide full accountability for all aid and military expenditures, tightly controlling the flow of money to power brokers and contractors in ways where the recipients see the incentive to support the war and to limit their abuses, and carefully targeting money to effective and relatively honest Afghan officials at the federal, provincial, district, and local levels in ways where it is clear that the end result benefits the Afghan people and wins support for the government over the Taliban. It means dealing with the real power structure in Afghanistan, not with the formal construct of government.

The Civil-Military Side of the War

All of these challenges combine to add another dimension to the cost-benefit assessment of continuing the war. They all highlight the fact that the war has not one but six centers of gravity,  and they all highlight the fact that the primary risks are civil and not military. As is seen throughout this analysis, the Taliban and insurgents are only one center of gravity. The rest range from GIRoA to ISAF, aid donors, and the lack of unity within the US effort. They include:

• Defeating the insurgency not only in tactical terms, but also by eliminating its control and influence over the population.
• Creating an effective and well resourced NATO/ISAF and US response to defeating the insurgency and securing the population.
• Building up a much larger and more effective (and enduring base for transition) mix of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
• Giving the Afghan government the necessary capacity and legitimacy at the national, regional/provincial, district, and local levels.
• Creating an effective, integrated, and truly operational civil-military effort.
• Coordinating NATO/ISAF, UN, member countries, NGOs, and the international community
• Efforts to focus on winning the war, meeting Afghan needs according to Afghan perceptions, and reducing waste, corruption, and their corrupting impact on Afghans.
• Dealing with a center of gravity outside Afghanistan and NATO/ISAF’s formal mission: The situation in Pakistan, and the actions of Iran and others.

There is little doubt that the US and ISAF can continue to win open tactical clashes. The risks lie primarily in the creation of an ANSF that can actually transition to the point of largely eliminating the role of the US and other ISAF forces in combat, and – above all – creating the effective civil side of a US/ISAF effort that can convince the Afghan people that fighting the war will be worth the cost, that a mix of government capabilities will come to exist that are far better than living under the Taliban, that their basic economic needs can be met, and they have a credible path to economic development.

It was all too easy to formulate a new strategy based on “shape, clear, hold, build, and transition” as long as the civil side of “hold, build, and transition” was conceptual, and did not have to be implemented in rural areas like Marjah and the far more challenging conditions of a largely urban area like Kandahar. It was clear from the start, however, that any practical application of this strategy lacked operational definition on the civil side, that the aid community was not ready to implement it and any civilian “surge” would still leave civil activity highly dependent on the US military, and that building Afghan capabilities would be a slow effort that had to occur at every level from local to central government. It short, implementation was never a military-driven exercise in finding the right troop to task ratio, but always a politico-economic exercise in resource to experiment ratio.

General McChrystal and ISAF deserve praise, not criticism, for accepting these realities. There is a clear need to slow the campaign in Kandahar, to correct the problems that occurred in Marjah, to avoid major combat of the kind that took place in Fallujah, to realistically build government services while finding viable compromises with power brokers, and to move forward on a pace dictated by Afghan acceptance and not US/allied impatience. There are acute limits to any civilian surge, which can only act at the pace that the number of capable US and allied civilians and military personnel with civil-military expertise permits. To paraphrase a lesson from Iraq, the campaign can only succeed if it operates according to Afghan and not US time. As noted earlier, this means that determining whether the war can be won or lost almost certainly should slip from 2010-2011 to 2011-2012. If it does not, it may be a sheer lack of strategic patience – not the other difficulties we face – that loses the war.

At the same time, the fact that the scale of the civil challenge, and ANSF development, are both higher than previously estimated may require more attention to a potential weakness in the overall strategy and campaign plan. Focusing on Kandahar as the greatest challenge makes sense if that challenge can be quickly met. If delays are as inevitable as now seems likely, more attention may well be needed to the less demanding challenges of pushing a much more limited insurgent presence out of the north, west, center, and parts of the east. Reversing insurgent momentum would be much easer to accomplish and would put greater and earlier pressure on the overall mix of insurgents.

The Reality of Continuing Risk

These are not likely to be popular conclusions. They require considerable leadership on the part of the US, as well as close and frank coordination with our allies. Moreover, they require acceptance of the fact that the case for the war is not based on some certainty of victory, but odds that may well be even -- or worse. It is time, however, to come to grips with the sheer scale of the US mistakes that led to the rise of the insurgency in Afghanistan, and to start addressing the reality that we may face many wars in the future against extremists that exploit the weakest and most divided states, fight similar wars of political attrition, and force the US to commit forces and money to weak governments and nations that do not meet many Western expectations.

This is not likely to be a century of confrontations between Western powers fighting conventional wars on their own territory. It is almost certain to be a century where the US must learn to fight irregular wars and exercises in armed nation building whether it likes it or not. If nothing else, the case for the war in Afghanistan may be that it is the prelude to an almost inevitable future.

Anthony H. Cordesman

Programs & projects.

• Afghanistan

Afghanistan six months on from the Taliban takeover – photo essay

The photojournalist Stefanie Glinski reports on a country traumatised and tired, with an uncertain future as unemployment and poverty spread and memories of freedoms fade

A ugust’s adrenaline may have worn off but the harrowing memories have not faded. It’s been six months since the Taliban took Kabul, the country’s then president and his cabinet fled and thousands of people flooded the airport in panic, so desperate for a way out that several men tried to hold on to a departing plane and fell to their deaths.

Food distribution in the northern Jowzjan province. Due to the economic crisis, many people cannot afford food, even though it’s widely available in the market.

Shaista, 50, from Jowzjan, says that since the Taliban’s takeover, her husband and children have lost their jobs. Right; Madina, 50, from Jowzjan.

Already scarred by four decades of war, Afghanistan’s rapid regime change has left a mark that will take a long time to process. As the Taliban are slowly putting their government in place, many Afghans feel lost and confused. With uncertain futures, some see little alternative but to seek a new life abroad, adding to a diaspora of more than 5 million worldwide.

Most people, even in Kabul, have no access to clean water in their homes. Here, people are seen filling up jerrycans with water for drinking and cooking.

Tea vendors warm their hands on a cold day in Kabul.

Taliban guards drink tea in Kabul. Right: a Taliban soldier stands on a Kabul street.

Some of those who decided to stay, or who did not have an option to leave, say they will have to give the Taliban a chance, even though the group has not been recognised internationally. There isn’t a large enough opposition anyway, and Taliban fighters have been stationed even in the most remote valleys of Panjshir, where the last battles of resistance played out.

“We will keep fighting if we have to, we’re not tired,” said Ziaul Rahman, a 21-year-old Talib stationed in Afghanistan’s Logar province. Resistance fighters, whether in Panjshir or in the Uzbek-dominated Jowzjan province, say the same.

Ziaul Rahman, a 21-year-old Talib stationed in Afghanistan’s Logar province.

For the past three and a half years of living and working as a journalist here, I have visited most of the country’s provinces. Since the Taliban’s takeover, I managed to return to many of them again, learning more about how people across the almost nation of 40 million perceive their new rulers.

The Taliban have been accommodating to foreign journalists, a privilege that has not been granted to all Afghan reporters. Several have been tortured, beaten, detained and intimidated and have since either left the country or are trying to get out.

To summarise – or even generalise about – the sentiment of a place as diverse as Afghanistan is, of course, impossible.

Destruction is widespread in Sangin, Helmand, previously right on the frontline. Here, every house is destroyed, few have been rebuilt, and people are starting over.

People cleaning up debris in Sanin, Helmand. Right: construction workers starting to rebuild their houses.

The data is bleak: last week Joe Biden announced that $3.5bn of frozen Afghan funds – including the private savings of ordinary Afghans – would be distributed to 9/11 victims, even though not a single Afghan was involved in the attacks.

Herat’s old city.

The United Nations says at least half a million Afghans have lost their jobs since the Taliban takeover, and estimates that by mid-year up to 97% of people could be living below the poverty line. The majority of development aid – funding almost 80% of the previous government’s expenditure – has ceased, throwing the country into economic crisis.

Human Rights Watch has reported executions and enforced disappearances of former government officials, and to this day many people live in fear and remain in hiding. With the newly appointed all-male cabinet and divisions within the Taliban, Afghanistan’s future remains uncertain.

Taliban fighters sit by the roadside in Logar’s Mohammad Agha district.

“As we feared, the situation is worsening in most respects – a reflection of the Taliban’s determination to crush dissent and criticism,” said Patricia Gossman, an associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Revenge killings, crushing women’s rights, strangling the media – the Taliban seem determined to tighten their grip on society, even as the situation grows increasingly unstable in the coming months.”

A boy flying his kite from a rooftop in Kabul.

Kabul’s Mandawi market is always busy.

At first sight, the changes on Kabul’s streets aren’t all too visible. Surrounded by majestic mountain peaks, parts of the city are still bustling. Kebabs wrapped in fresh warm bread are sold by the roadside, and boys selling balloons navigate through busy traffic. The Taliban’s post-victory euphoria has ebbed, and while the city was flooded with insurgents in summer, most of them now seem to have left. Those remaining man checkpoints or work in the newly established government.

Taliban on the streets of Kabul.

While the Taliban initially detained all drug addicts and moved many of them to prisons, now more are again seen on Kabul’s streets. Right: Sayed Jafar, a carpet vendor, sits in his shop in Kabul. Since the Taliban takeover, business has essentially stopped as his customers have left the country.

Yet at a closer look the city is emptier, though the number of beggars has increased significantly. Once buzzing coffee shops are vacant; several restaurants have permanently closed. Outside the Iranian embassy, long queues of people wait for visa appointments; they say they are hopeless. At a Kabul maternity clinic, a newborn boy lies abandoned. “His family doesn’t have the money to take care of another child,” said Latifa Wardak, one of the hospital’s doctors.

A nameless boy lies abandoned in the prenatal ward at Rabia Balkhi hospital.

Rahela Shahavi, 25, works as a nurse in the postnatal ward at Malalai maternity hospital, where up to 100 babies are delivered each day. Out of the 446 staff, 400 are women. Right: nurses and midwives working in the prenatal ward at Rabia Balkhi hospital in Kabul sit down for lunch.

The trauma of the last months haunts many, and although Afghans are private people who often choose to conceal emotion, they visibly carry their pain. I’ve noticed it when interviewing people. The conversations last longer, because there is a real need to talk and process. With countless cups of green tea consumed, many describe the loneliness felt after their family members escaped the country. Memories of the past Taliban regime are recalled, often linked to present fears. Tears are shed.

A man walks through fresh snow in Panjshir’s Hezarak district.

Leftovers from America’s longest war: a destroyed army vehicle sits by the roadside in Panjshir’s Hezarak district.

There are good moments, too. On a snowy morning, Naim Naimy, 63, from the southern Kandahar province, said he had travelled six hours to see a white Kabul. “I’ve been watching the weather forecast,” he said, standing amid trees in a park, soft white flakes melting on his skin. “I love snow,” he added, smiling.

In Kan-e-Ezzat village, as on many other similar frontlines, the guns have fallen silent since the Taliban’s takeover. Wardak had been one of the first provinces to see a resurgent Taliban after the start of the 2001 US-led invasion, with conflict almost a constant over the past decade.

Lal Mohammad, 48, from Wardak.

Whenever fighting erupted, Lal Mohammad, 48, would run through the family’s compound gathering his children and other relatives, shoving them towards a small, dark, underground cowshed. They would sit amid the dung, crammed in and scared, around 40 of them, sometimes for hours, listening to the sounds of bullets and mortars, often in the cold of the night, waiting for the flare-up to pass.

Naila, 10, from Wardak, has been having nightmares for months, even now that the war has stopped.

The Kabul-based International Psychological Organisation (IPSO) has said Afghanistan is a “trauma state”, estimating that 70% of Afghans are in need of psychological support.

Lal admitted to being traumatised too. He never aligned with the Taliban, but said he was glad that fighting had at least stopped. Most of his family sustained injuries over the years. He pointed to his 12-year-old nephew Sheer, sitting on a cushion next to him, his right hand deeply scared by a shrapnel wound. Little aid had trickled down to Lal’s village. “The foreigners brought us cookies but little development,” he said cynically.

“Everyone in this village has either lost a family member or has an injury. Everyone is traumatised and tired. We didn’t want the Russians, nor the Americans, nor the Taliban. We just want peace. Today I can at least tell my children that the war is over.”

• The Guardian picture essay
• Afghanistan
• South and central Asia

Most viewed

• Politics & Social Sciences
• Politics & Government

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $17.30 $17.30 FREE delivery Saturday, May 4 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: TheLastRose

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Buy used: $9.91

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the authors

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Hardcover – August 31, 2021

Purchase options and add-ons

• Print length 368 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Simon & Schuster
• Publication date August 31, 2021
• Dimensions 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1982159006
• ISBN-13 978-1982159009
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; First Edition (August 31, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982159006
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982159009
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.24 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• #124 in Afghan War Military History
• #293 in Middle Eastern Politics
• #297 in Political Corruption & Misconduct

About the authors

Craig whitlock.

Craig Whitlock is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post and a #1 NYT bestelling author. He has worked for the Post since 1998 as a foreign correspondent, Pentagon reporter, and national security specialist, and has reported from more than sixty countries. He is a winner of the George Polk Award for Military Reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for International Reporting, and the Scripps Howard Award for Investigative Reporting. He is also a two-time winner of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Freedom of Information award and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

The Washington Post

You’re supporting news that matters. Read Pulitzer Prize-winning content, essential investigative stories, and esteemed political and international coverage, plus groundbreaking augmented reality experiences, interactive articles, and galleries from our photographers around the world.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

Deceptions and lies: What really happened in Afghanistan

Part one of an excerpt from “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.” Part two can be found here. Whitlock will discuss the book during a Washington Post Live event on Aug. 31.

The suicide bomber arrived at Bagram air base in a Toyota Corolla late in the morning on Feb. 27, 2007. He maneuvered past the Afghan police at the first checkpoint and continued a quarter-mile down the road toward the main gate. There, the bomber approached a second checkpoint, this one staffed by U.S. soldiers. Amid mud puddles and a jumble of pedestrians and vehicle traffic, he triggered his vest of explosives.

The blast killed 20 Afghan laborers who came to the base that day looking for work. It also claimed the lives of two Americans and a South Korean assigned to the international military coalition: Army Pfc. Daniel Zizumbo, a 27-year-old from Chicago; Geraldine Marquez, an American contractor for Lockheed Martin who had just celebrated her 31st birthday; and Staff Sgt. Yoon Jang-ho, the first South Korean soldier to die in a foreign conflict since the Vietnam War.

Unharmed by the explosion was a VIP guest at Bagram who had been trying to keep a low profile: Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney had slipped into the war zone the day before on an unannounced trip to the region. Arriving on Air Force Two from Islamabad, Pakistan, he intended to spend only a few hours in Afghanistan to see President Hamid Karzai. But bad weather prevented him from reaching Kabul, so he spent the night at Bagram, an installation with personnel numbering 9,000 about 30 miles from the capital.

Within hours of the bombing, the Taliban called journalists to claim responsibility and to say Cheney was the target. U.S. military officials scoffed and accused the insurgents of spreading lies. The vice president, they said, was a mile away at the other end of the base and never in danger. They insisted the Taliban could not have planned an attack against Cheney on such short notice, especially given that his travel plans had changed at the last minute.

“The Taliban’s claims that they were going after the vice president were absurd,” Army Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for U.S. and NATO forces, told reporters.

But the U.S. military officials were the ones hiding the truth.

In an Army oral-history interview, then-Capt. Shawn Dalrymple, a company commander with the 82nd Airborne Division who was responsible for security at Bagram, confirmed that word had leaked out about Cheney’s presence. The suicide bomber, he added, saw a convoy of vehicles coming out of the front gate and blew himself up because he mistakenly thought Cheney was a passenger.

Part 1 of The Afghanistan Papers: U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan

The bomber wasn’t far off the mark. The vice president was supposed to depart for Kabul in a different convoy about 30 minutes later, according to Dalrymple, who had worked with the Secret Service to plan Cheney’s movements.

“The insurgents knew this. It was all over the news no matter how much it was tried to keep secret,” Dalrymple said. “They caught a convoy going out the gate with an up-armored sport-utility vehicle and thought it was him. . . . That opened up a lot of eyes into the fact that Bagram was not a safe place. There was a direct link with the insurgencies.”

The 2007 episode marked an escalation in the war on two fronts. By targeting the vice president at the heavily fortified base at Bagram, the Taliban demonstrated an ability to inflict high-profile, mass-casualty attacks far from the insurgents’ strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

And by lying about how close the insurgents had come to harming Cheney, the U.S. military sank deeper into a pattern of deceiving the public about many facets of the war, from discrete events to the big picture. What began as selective, self-serving disclosures after the 2001 invasion gradually hardened into willful distortions and, eventually, flat-out fabrications.

This account is adapted from “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” a Washington Post book that will be published Aug. 31 by Simon & Schuster. A narrative history of what went wrong in Afghanistan, the book is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who played direct roles in the war, as well as thousands of pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Explore the Afghanistan Papers database

The interviews and documents, many of them previously unpublished, show how the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump hid the truth for two decades: They were slowly losing a war that Americans once overwhelmingly supported. Instead, political and military leaders chose to bury their mistakes and let the war drift, culminating in President Biden’s decision this year to withdraw from Afghanistan, with the Taliban more powerful than at any point since the 2001 invasion.

For the Bush administration and its NATO and Afghan allies, the months preceding Cheney’s 2007 visit to Afghanistan had been an awful stretch. The number of suicide attacks had increased almost fivefold in 2006, and the number of roadside bombs doubled compared with the year before. The Taliban’s cross-border sanctuaries in Pakistan were fueling the problem.

Before his arrival at Bagram, Cheney met in Islamabad with Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, to urge him to crack down. The Pakistani strongman offered no help, saying his government had already “done the maximum.”

Their public statements notwithstanding, U.S. military officials had been so worried the Taliban might target Cheney during the short dash between Bagram and Kabul that they originally set up a ruse.

The plan was to depart Bagram from a rarely used gate. Members of Cheney’s traveling party would ride as decoys in the SUVs normally reserved for senior officials. The vice president would ride with Dalrymple, the young Army captain, in a lumbering military vehicle equipped with a machine gun. “You’d never expect him to ride in the gun truck,” Dalrymple recalled.

That plan was scrapped after the suicide attack. Military officials decided it was too dangerous for Cheney to travel by road. He waited for the weather to clear and instead flew to Kabul to meet with Karzai. Cheney finally left Afghanistan that afternoon on a C-17 military aircraft without further incident.

At the same time that the U.S. military was struggling with the Taliban’s resurgence, it was faring even worse with its much larger war in Iraq, where 150,000 U.S. troops were bogged down — about six times as many as the number deployed in Afghanistan. Given the calamity in Iraq, the Bush administration badly wanted to avoid the perception it was losing in Afghanistan as well.

Consequently, as the new year got underway, American commanders in Afghanistan expressed new levels of optimism in public that were so unwarranted and baseless that their statements amounted to a disinformation campaign.

“We are prevailing,” Army Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin, the commander in charge of training the Afghan security forces, told reporters on Jan. 9, 2007. He added that the Afghan army and police “continue to show great progress each day.”

Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, gave an even sunnier assessment a few weeks later. “We’re winning,” he said during a Jan. 27 news conference. Despite the surge in bombings the year before, he declared that U.S. and Afghan forces had made “great progress” and “defeated the Taliban and the terrorists that oppose this nation at every turn.”

As for the insurgents, Freakley said the rebels “achieved none of their objectives” and were “quickly running out of time.” He dismissed the increase in suicide attacks as a sign of the Taliban’s “desperation.”

Three days later, Karl Eikenberry, a three-star Army general, visited Berlin to shore up European public support for NATO forces. He said the allies were “postured well for success” in 2007 and suggested the Taliban was panicking.

“Our assessment is that they actually look at time working against them,” Eikenberry added.

But the generals’ chorus of happy talk defied a year-long stream of intelligence assessments that the insurgency had gained strength.

In February 2006, Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, told officials in Washington in a classified diplomatic cable that a confident Taliban leader had warned, “You have all the clocks but we have all the time.”

In private, the flood of suicide attacks and roadside bombs — insurgent tactics imported from Iraq — stoked fear among U.S. officials in Afghanistan of a potential “Tet Offensive in Kandahar,” an unnamed Bush administration official told government interviewers, referring to the bloody 1968 military campaign by North Vietnamese forces that undermined public support for the Vietnam War.

“The turning point came at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006 when we finally woke up to the fact that there was an insurgency that could actually make us fail,” the official said. “Everything was turning the wrong way at the end of 2005.”

Neumann arrived in Kabul as the top U.S. diplomat in July 2005. The son of a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, he had spent a pleasant summer there as a young newlywed in 1967, traveling cross-country, camping and riding horses and yaks during a time of peace.

When he returned 38 years later, Afghanistan had been continuously at war for a quarter century. Right away, he told his superiors in Washington it was obvious the violence was about to escalate further.

“By the fall of 2005, I had reported, in combination with General Eikenberry, that we were going to face a vastly increased insurgency in the next year, in 2006, and that it was going to get much bloodier, much worse,” Neumann said in a diplomatic oral-history interview.

At first, many officials in Washington found it hard to believe the Taliban could present a strategic danger. Even some military leaders in the field underestimated the Taliban and thought that, while it might control pockets of rural territory, it posed no threat to the government in Kabul. “We thought the Taliban’s capability was greatly reduced,” then-Brig. Gen. Bernard Champoux, deputy commander of a U.S. military task force from 2004 to 2005, said in an Army oral-history interview.

Paul Toolan, a Special Forces captain who served in Helmand province in 2005, said senior U.S. officials mistakenly viewed the war as a peacekeeping and reconstruction mission. He tried to explain to anyone who would listen that the fighting had intensified and the Taliban had bolstered its firepower.

“If we don’t do this right, we’re going to allow these guys to keep us languishing here for a lot of years,” Toolan cautioned in an Army oral-history interview.

But the Bush administration suppressed the internal warnings and put a shine on the war. In a December 2005 interview with CNN, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said things were going so well that the Pentagon would soon bring home roughly 10 percent of its forces in Afghanistan.

“It’s a direct result of the progress that’s being made in the country,” Rumsfeld declared.

Two months later, however, Rumsfeld’s office and other officials in Washington received another classified warning from their ambassador in Kabul.

In a gloomy Feb. 21, 2006, cable, Neumann predicted that “violence will rise through the next several months,” with more suicide bombings in Kabul and other major cities.

He blamed the Taliban’s sanctuaries in Pakistan and warned that, if left unaddressed, they could “lead to the reemergence of the same strategic threat to the United States that prompted our . . . intervention over 4 years ago” — in other words, another 9/11.

In the dispatch, Neumann expressed fear that popular support would wane if expectations weren’t managed. “I thought it was important to try to prepare the American public for that so that they wouldn’t be surprised and see everything as a reverse,” he said in his oral-history interview.

But the public heard no such straight talk. In a visit to Afghanistan shortly after the ambassador sent his cable, Bush did not mention the rising violence or the resurgent Taliban. Instead, he touted improvements such as the establishment of democracy, a free press and schools for girls.

“We’re impressed by the progress your country is making,” Bush told Karzai at a March 1 news conference.

Two weeks later, in a briefing with reporters from Bagram, Freakley denied that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were getting stronger. The violence was spiking, the general said, because the weather was getting warmer and his forces were going on the offensive.

“We’re taking the fight to the enemy,” the 10th Mountain Division commander said. “If you see an increase in violence here in the coming weeks and months, it’s probably driven by offensive operations that the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and coalition forces are taking.”

He added, “I’ll tell you that progress in Afghanistan is steady and you can really see it.”

In a Pentagon press briefing in May, Durbin, the commander in charge of training, presented a rosy report on the state of the Afghan security forces. He said they had been “effective at disrupting and destroying” their enemies and that the Afghan army had made “remarkable” progress in recruiting.

Durbin closed by inviting journalists to visit Afghanistan and judge for themselves how the Afghan security forces were performing. “I think if you do, you’ll be as impressed as I am with their progress,” he said.

Days later, someone did come see for himself. Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey was a hero of the Persian Gulf War. It had been a decade since he had been on active duty, but the U.S. military asked him to visit Afghanistan and Pakistan and conduct an independent assessment. The mission was not publicized.

McCaffrey interviewed about 50 high-ranking officials over the course of a week. In his nine-page report, he lauded U.S. commanders and highlighted several successes, but he didn’t sugarcoat his verdict: The Taliban was nowhere near defeated, and the war was “deteriorating.”

He judged the Taliban as well-trained, “very aggressive and smart in their tactics,” as well as armed with “excellent weapons.” Far from panicking or feeling the pressure of time, the insurgents would “soon adopt a strategy of ‘waiting us out,’ ” he added.

In contrast, McCaffrey said that the Afghan army was “miserably under-resourced” and that its soldiers had little ammunition and shoddier weapons than the Taliban. He blasted the Afghan police as worthless: “They are in a disastrous condition: badly equipped, corrupt, incompetent, poorly led and trained, riddled by drug use.”

Even under a best-case scenario, McCaffrey predicted, it would be 14 more years — until 2020 — before the Afghan security forces could operate without U.S. help.

The report was passed up the chain of command to Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We will encounter some very unpleasant surprises in the coming twenty-four months,” McCaffrey warned. “The Afghan national leadership are collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out of Afghanistan in the coming years — leaving NATO holding the bag — and the whole thing will again collapse into mayhem.”

If McCaffrey’s conclusions weren’t sobering enough, Rumsfeld soon received another harsh dose of reality.

On Aug. 17, 2006, Marin Strmecki, a trusted civilian adviser to the defense secretary, delivered a 40-page classified report titled “Afghanistan at a Crossroads.” Strmecki had made a separate fact-finding trip to the war zone after McCaffrey and arrived at many of the same conclusions.

But he cast stronger doubt on the reliability and viability of Washington’s allies in Kabul. The Afghan government, he said, was crooked and feckless and had left a power vacuum in many parts of the country for the Taliban to exploit.

“It is not that the enemy is so strong but that the Afghan government is so weak,” Strmecki reported.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul grappled with a fresh wave of internal pessimism. Neumann, the ambassador, sent another dour classified cable to Washington on Aug. 29. “We are not winning in Afghanistan,” it declared.

Two weeks after the ambassador’s warning, Eikenberry sat down for an interview with ABC News on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and offered the flip version for public consumption.

“We are winning,” the general insisted, adding, “but I also say we have not yet won.” Asked whether the United States could lose, Eikenberry responded, “Losing is not an option in Afghanistan.”

If the generals had listened to their soldiers in the field, however, they might have shied away from such hubris.

Staff Sgt. John Bickford, a 26-year-old soldier from Lake Placid, N.Y., spent much of 2006 in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan. He was stationed with other 10th Mountain Division soldiers at Firebase Tillman, named after Pat Tillman, the National Football League player who enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and was later killed by friendly fire.

Bickford said the fighting was “about 10 times worse” than his first deployment to eastern Afghanistan three years earlier. His unit clashed with insurgents four or five times a week. The enemy massed as many as 200 fighters to try to overrun U.S. observation posts.

“We said that we defeated the Taliban, but they were always in Pakistan and regrouping and planning and now they’re back stronger than they have ever been,” he said in an Army oral-history interview. “Anytime that they did an assault or an ambush it was well-organized, and they knew what they were doing.”

In August 2006, Bickford was leading a patrol in an armored Humvee when insurgents ambushed his convoy with rocket-propelled grenades. Shrapnel tore up Bickford’s right thigh, calf, ankle and foot. His team fended off the assault, but his days as an infantryman were over.

Bickford spent three months recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. During his convalescence, he reflected on the rising threat posed by insurgents.

“These are very smart people, and they’re the enemy but they deserve tons of respect and they should never, never, never be underestimated,” he said.

Taliban takeover of Afghanistan: What you need to know

Surprise, panic and fateful choices: The day America lost its longest war

Ask The Post: The Post’s Afghanistan bureau chief answers your questions about reporting on the Taliban

FAQ: What you need to know about the Taliban

The 13 U.S. service members killed: What we know about the military victims of the Kabul airport blast

More stories

Taliban co-founder reemerges to challenge reports of internal strife among militants

ISIS-K, the group behind the Kabul airport attack, sees both Taliban and the U.S. as enemies

Here’s how the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan could affect al-Qaeda and the Islamic State

The story of an Afghan man who fell from the sky

The treacherous journey into Kabul airport to escape Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

A year later, a look back at public opinion about the U.S. military exit from Afghanistan

In August 2021, the United States withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan , ending its military presence there after nearly 20 years. The U.S. exit from Afghanistan resulted in the Taliban regaining control of the country and created a refugee crisis as many Afghans fled. It also raised fears that terrorists might use Afghanistan as a safe haven, as was the case with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaida leader who was discovered in the nation’s capital, Kabul, and killed in a U.S. drone strike late last month.

A year after the U.S. military exit from Afghanistan, here’s a look back at how people in the United States and other countries have viewed the troop evacuation and its aftermath, as well as their broader attitudes about the war. All findings are based on previously published Pew Research Center surveys.

This Pew Research Center analysis examines Americans’ views of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and its aftermath. It is based on recent surveys conducted by the Center. Links to these surveys, including information about the field dates, sample sizes and other methodological details, are available in the text.

At the time of the military evacuation, 54% of Americans said the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan was the right one, according to a survey conducted in August 2021 . Around four-in-ten Americans (42%) said the decision was the wrong one. There was a sharp partisan divide on this topic. While 70% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the decision to withdraw troops was the right decision, about half as many Republicans and GOP leaners (34%) shared this view. Most Republicans (64%) instead said the decision was wrong.

In the same survey, 69% of U.S. adults said the United States mostly failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan. About a quarter (27%) said the U.S. succeeded. There was partisan agreement on this question: About seven-in-ten in both parties said the U.S. mostly failed to achieve its goals.

Americans harbored doubts about the war in Afghanistan even before the withdrawal of U.S. troops. In a spring 2019 survey , 59% of U.S. adults said that considering the costs versus the benefits to the United States, the war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting, while 36% said it was. The balance of opinion was about the same among U.S. military veterans.

Both during and after the troop withdrawal, large majorities of Americans expressed negative views of the Biden administration’s handling of the situation in Afghanistan. In both August and September 2021, about seven-in-ten or more said that the administration had done an only fair or poor job dealing with the situation there, with around four-in-ten or more saying it had done poorly. In both surveys, fewer Americans said the administration had done an excellent or good job. In the September survey, for instance, only 24% said this.

A large majority of Republicans (82%) said in September 2021 that the administration had done a poor job handling the situation in Afghanistan. Conservative Republicans were 21 percentage points more likely than moderate and liberal Republicans to say this (89% vs. 68%).

One-in-five Democrats also said the Biden administration had done a poor job dealing with the Afghanistan situation. About twice as many said the administration had done an only fair job (38%) or an excellent or good job (40%).

Veterans and non-veterans were also divided on this question. While similar shares of veterans (76%) and non-veterans (74%) said in September 2021 that the Biden administration had done an only fair or poor job dealing with the situation in Afghanistan, veterans were more likely than non-veterans to say the administration handled it poorly (60% vs. 47%). Only about a quarter or fewer in either group said the administration had done an excellent or good job, with very few giving it an excellent rating (4% of veterans and 5% of non-veterans). As is the case with the general public, veterans’ views on these issues are deeply divided along party lines.

Last September, a majority of Americans (56%) said they favored admitting thousands of Afghan refugees into the U.S., according to the same survey , which was conducted after the U.S. evacuated thousands of Afghans from the country . About four-in-ten (42%) opposed this move.

These views were deeply divided by partisanship. At the time, 63% of Republicans either strongly (29%) or somewhat (34%) opposed the U.S. admitting thousands of refugees from Afghanistan into the country. About a third (35%) said they favored admitting these refugees.

By contrast, three-quarters of Democrats were in favor of admitting refugees, including a third who strongly favored it. Liberal Democrats (87%) were more likely than conservative and moderate Democrats (66%) to support this. About half of liberal Democrats (49%) said they strongly favored admitting refugees from Afghanistan.

Despite majority support for admitting refugees, Americans were divided on whether the government was conducting adequate security screenings for those arriving in the U.S. from Afghanistan. About four-in-ten Americans (43%) said they were very or somewhat confident that the government was conducting adequate security screenings, while 55% were not too confident or not at all confident. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to express confidence in the government’s security screenings. 

In a spring 2022 survey of 18 countries , people viewed the U.S. decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan as the right one, but many said the withdrawal itself was not handled well. A median of 52% across the surveyed countries said the troop pullout was the right choice, compared with a median of 39% who said it was the wrong choice.

Public opinion in these countries was more negative when it came to how the U.S. exit from Afghanistan was handled. A median of 56% said it was not handled well, while a median of 33% said it was. In only two surveyed countries, Poland and Malaysia, did half or more of adults approve of the way the situation in Afghanistan was handled.

Most Americans said in August 2021 that Taliban control of Afghanistan is a threat to the security of the United States. Nearly half (46%) said Taliban control represented a major threat to the U.S., and another 44% saw it as a minor threat. Republicans (61%) were far more likely than Democrats (33%) to view a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as a major security threat.

In a January 2022 survey , 55% of Americans said that defending against terrorism should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year. Of the 18 issues asked about, defending against terrorism was among the top priorities identified. The survey preceded the U.S. military’s drone strike on al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul in July.

Americans tend to prioritize the terrorism issue differently based on factors including age and partisanship. About three-quarters of adults ages 65 and older (76%) said that defending against terrorism should be a top priority for the president and Congress, compared with 32% of those under 30. And roughly two-thirds of Republicans (65%) said it should be a top priority, compared with 48% of Democrats.

• Refugees & Asylum Seekers
• War & International Conflict

Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center

How Temporary Protected Status has expanded under the Biden administration

Most americans express support for taking in refugees, but opinions vary by party and other factors, republicans and democrats have different top priorities for u.s. immigration policy, key facts about title 42, the pandemic policy that has reshaped immigration enforcement at u.s.-mexico border, after a month of war, ukrainian refugee crisis ranks among the world’s worst in recent history, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

NATO Puts on a Show of Force in the Shadow of Russia’s War

The alliance’s largest exercises offer a preview of what the opening of a Great Power conflict could look like. How it ends is a different story.

A convoy of military vehicles making its way toward the Polish border from Germany this month. Credit... Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Supported by

• Share full article

By Helene Cooper

Helene Cooper covers national security and military affairs. She traveled with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Germany to Poland to report this article.

• April 24, 2024

About 90,000 NATO troops have been training in Europe this spring for the Great Power war that most hope will never come: a clash between Russia and the West with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In Estonia, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Liberty, N.C., jumped out of planes alongside soldiers from Colchester Garrison in Essex, Britain, for “forcible entry” operations. In Lithuania, German soldiers arrived as a brigade stationed outside Germany on a permanent basis for the first time since World War II.

And on the A4 autobahn in eastern Germany, a U.S. Army captain and his Macedonian counterpart rushed toward the Suwalki Gap — the place many war planners predict will be the flashpoint for a NATO war with Russia — hoping the overheated radiator on their Stryker armored combat vehicle wouldn’t kill the engine.

Kaliningrad

All are part of what is supposed to be a tremendous show of force by NATO, its largest since the start of the Cold War, that is meant to send a sharp message to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that his ambitions must not venture beyond Ukraine.

But it is also a preview of what the opening beats of a modern Great Power conflict could look like. If NATO and Russia went to war, American and allied troops would initially rush to the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — NATO’s “Eastern Flank”— to try to block penetration by a Russian force.

How that war would end, and how many people might die, is a different story. Tens of millions of people were killed in World War II. This time, the stakes have never been higher. Mr. Putin has brought up the potential for nuclear war several times since Russia invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.

National security officials are making plans for cyberwarfare, too, including how to defend U.S. and NATO interests against a possible cyberattack on public infrastructure.

But a European continental ground war has seemed far more possible since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

“This exercise changes the calculus for our adversaries — that’s the real power of this,” said Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the American general who leads NATO’s Allied Land Command. Mr. Putin, he said, “is watching this and saying, ‘Hmm, maybe I need to think twice here.’”

Russia’s war in Ukraine infuses almost every movement of the exercises, which began in January and will continue through May. It is why some of the American troops experimented with commercial drones that they could weaponize by fixing with explosives, to see how to counter such tactics, much as Russian troops have had to learn how to defend against Ukraine’s use of store-bought drones that have been MacGyvered with explosives.

It is also why the overheated Stryker carrying the two American and Macedonian captains looks almost exactly like all of the other Strykers, with the exception of its lighter machine gun.

In Ukraine, several senior Russian military leaders have been killed. The Kremlin has confirmed seven; Ukraine says 13.

Military officials said that on the battlefield, the Russian top brass made themselves conspicuous. They often appeared rooted in the same place, American military officials said, instead of moving around. Sometimes several command vehicles were hooked together with antennas next to them, almost advertising, one military official said, the presence of Russian generals and officers.

NATO and American military officers don’t want to make the same mistake.

“I think that what we found is that our command and control needs to be more survivable,” said Col. Robert S. McChrystal, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which is based in Vilseck, Germany, near the Czech border. “We need to be more mobile, and we also need to gain dispersion.”

Standing in a field at an army barracks in Poznan, Poland, and wearing the black Stetson that is customary for the 2nd Cavalry, Colonel McChrystal cut a figure both commanding and incongruous. Like many U.S. military officers, his speech was peppered with military jargon. Unlike many, he frequently interrupted himself, sometimes midsentence, to explain what he meant.

“Now what does that mean?” he said. “Grouping up, as we saw — as everyone saw in the war — does not work. So, can we do things like be in smaller elements that make it harder to locate our command-and-control nodes, so they can last longer?”

Officers with Colonel McChrystal’s regiment now seek to blend in, when they can, with the environment and with their troops.

In some cases, that has even meant using local cellphones instead of big cumbersome military communications devices like hand-held radios operating on frequencies that identify them as military.

This wasn’t an issue during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because the Taliban and insurgents didn’t have the satellites and spy drones they needed to find battlefield command-and-control nodes.

But Russia has them. That is why during a recent training exercise at the military base at Hohenfels, in southern Germany, more than 70 percent of the command and control were far away — some of them as far back as in the continental United States.

Fox 66, the Stryker carrying the captains, was the command-and-control vehicle for the four-day road-march part of the exercise that made its way to Suwalki, Poland, from Vilseck.

To the untrained eye, all of the military-green armored vehicles looked as though they had the same array of guns and tactical equipment.

But Fox 66 was mounted with a lighter machine gun. In a firefight, it would not be on the front line; it would be directing operations from the back, so it does not need the armor-piercing penetration power of the .50-caliber machine guns mounted on the other vehicles. The two guns are close to indistinguishable from the air.

Inside Fox 66, Capt. Milos Trendevski, fresh from Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, contorted his six-foot frame around the flak jackets, backpacks, rations, guns and equipment crammed inside the vehicle as it made its way toward Poland. The Americans in the vehicle carried language translation devices, but Captain Trendevski didn’t need one.

“We need to see how the U.S. Army does marches like this so our doctrine can be the same,” Captain Trendevski said in English in an interview inside the Stryker.

Just a few inches from him, Capt. Matt Johnson, commander of the Stryker unit, kept up a constant stream of worried questions.

“She burning hot?” he asked the driver, Specialist Sean McGarity.

“225, Sir,” came the answer.

“Slow down a little, see if it goes down.”

Specialist McGarity slowed down and the engine cooled off, and a collective sigh seemed to exhale inside the Stryker.

The Suwalki Gap is a 65-mile, sparsely populated stretch of land straddling Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and the Russian exclave Kaliningrad. After Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, the Estonian president at the time, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, came up with the name “Suwalki Gap” to highlight for NATO officials the area’s vulnerability. His move worked: Western military officials quickly adopted the phrase.

Western military officials believe the Suwalki Gap is likely to be the first territory that Moscow would try to take. Russian forces in Kaliningrad, assisted by Russia’s ally Belarus, could move in, isolating the Baltic countries if successful.

The road march is supposed to test how quickly NATO can get troops to the Suwalki Gap.

Captain Johnson said his Stryker, when not overheating, could traverse the 750 miles to Suwalki from Vilseck, where the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment is based, in under two days, but the regiment would lose some vehicles along the way if they tried to travel at the top Stryker speed of 70 m.p.h. A more reasonable speed, he said, is 50 m.p.h.

But such marches often take longer than predicted. It took Fox 66 and the other Strykers in Captain Johnson’s unit more than five hours to get to the Polish border from the German city Frankenberg, in the eastern state Saxony, a trip that was supposed to take three hours.

The road march culminated with a live-fire exercise in a training area near Suwalki, with 1,800 2nd Cavalry troops joining 2,600 troops from nine other countries to establish what the military called an “enhanced forward presence” to protect NATO’s Eastern Flank. The troops blew up pop-up targets and seized territory. American Apache helicopters made passes and gave covering fire, while, from an even higher altitude, Polish F-16 and Italian F-35 fighter jets conducted airstrikes.

NATO’S ability to “bring together these seemingly disparate units from different nations to conduct something so complex is what sets us apart,” said Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Europe and Africa. It was, he said, a demonstration of “combined arms” maneuvering.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has been able to do combined arms, where all parts of a maneuver force — air, land and, sometimes, sea — coordinate and work in concert. Tanks and artillery, and even airstrikes, hit a target before infantry soldiers go in.

General Williams, the NATO land forces commander, said that in the past, such exercises did not name the enemy — there was just a fictitious opponent.

Not so this year. For the first time, “we now, in this year, are actually fighting an exercise against the Russians,” he said. “We fight against our potential adversary.”

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper

Advertisement