Farewell to Afghanistan - the end of an era

MY PIECE FOR THE TIMES TODAY: Standing on the edge of one of America’s myriad isolated military bases in Afghanistan, called Combat Outpost Senjaray, carved high up on a rocky hill, a US Army major pointed down towards Taliban territory across the other side of the road half a mile or so away. Beside him in this crow’s nest was Robert Gates, US defence secretary, on a two-day, fact-finding visit to Afghanistan. It was September, 2010. The US-led war with the Taliban had been going for nearly nine years. Gates was optimistic that the strategy was working. Victory was not a word he ever used but he was confident, even there in Kandahar province, the spiritual home of the Taliban, along with neighbouring Helmand, that the war was going in the right direction. But the army major had a message for his esteemed visitor. I stood a few paces behind the army officer, Major Nicholas Stout, a company commander of the 502nd Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division. He turned to Gates and said: “There’s a school down in the town which we’ve reopened and secured. I don’t want to see on the television in the years ahead that that school is in flames.” The Pir Mohammed school had been severely damaged and booby-trapped with improvised explosive devices by the Taliban when it was taken over by the 502nd. Some of the major’s men were killed by Taliban snipers as they worked to restore the school for the local children. For Major Stott’s regiment and for numerous other military units, American, British and coalition forces, rebuilding schools destroyed by the education-hating Taliban became one of the most important symbols of achievement. It wasn’t the original reason for sending troops to Afghanistan after the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the US. But as the war ground on, school-building – nation-building – became the moral justification for fighting the Taliban. If the schools and new health clinics and freedom for Afghan women could be protected, then the appalling sacrifices – 2,400 dead American troops and 454 British – had some meaning. Gates was one of eight US defence secretaries who went back and forth to Afghanistan over 20 years of war, the longest in America’s history, each coming away with a hopeful message but little else. The strategy of pushing the Taliban out of their strongholds and protecting the Afghan people had its merits but it was never going to bring military victory. Throughout the war, as the casualty toll rose, every serviceman and woman sent to serve their country asked themselves the same questions. “Why are we here, is it worth it?” General Jack Keane, vice chief of staff of the US Army in the first two years of the war, said that over the two decades the US and coalition troops had prevented al-Qaeda from enjoying safe haven in Afghanistan to plot further terrorist attacks. “And thousands of al-Qaeda were killed. So, yes, it was worth it, there was retribution and no other attacks [in the US],” he told The Times. “But I was a platoon and company commander in Vietnam [58,000 US troops died in 11 years] and when I saw what was achieved getting squandered in the end due to lack of political will and then the enemy taking over the country, that was hard to take,” he said. The same fate, he fears, will befall Afghanistan. Once all US troops had left, the war would carry on without them and the Taliban would never seek a peaceful solution with the Kabul government. “The decision to unconditionally withdraw all US troops by September 11 without a ceasefire or a binding peace agreement and no commitment by the Taliban to deny sanctuary to al-Qaeda was reckless,” he said. For the families of those killed in the war and for the tens of thousands who were wounded – more than 20,000 Americans, many of them losing limbs – the ending of the military mission in Afghanistan would be “an emotional and difficult moment”, Lieutenant-General David Barno, a former US forces commander in Afghanistan (2003-2005), told The Times. “Those in the military who have lost comrades will have mixed feelings,” he said. US commanders told the Biden administration they thought a presence of 4,500 soldiers would be necessary for a continuing counter-terrorism role in Afghanistan. There is a highly classified secret base in Afghanistan from where US special operations troops act against al-Qaeda and Taliban movements across the border from the safe sanctuary of Pakistan. This base will now close. Keane said the US had troops in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and in east Africa for the very same reason that forces were still in Afghanistan after 9/11. “To prevent jihadists from establishing sanctuaries for plots against the US,” he said. “If we had 3,000-5,000 troops in Afghanistan that would be a modest contribution to avoid the risk of a terrorist sanctuary returning to Afghanistan,” he said. “If the Taliban take over in Afghanistan that will be profoundly disappointing for our troops who served there,” Keane said. Postscript: the Pir Mohammed school stayed open but only because of daily neighbourhood patrols by US soldiers. Its future may now be less certain.