The Complex Emotions Of A Nation: America's Sentiments Toward Afghanistan

The United States has had a complex and evolving relationship with Afghanistan over the last two decades. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the US invaded Afghanistan with the clear objective of defeating Al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts and preventing a repeat of the terrorist attacks. While the initial military victory over the Taliban was swift, the subsequent years saw a protracted war with shifting strategies and goals.

Public opinion in the US regarding the war in Afghanistan has been mixed. A 2019 survey found that despite Americans' hesitancy to deploy US troops into other conflicts, they remain comparatively supportive of maintaining the US military presence in Afghanistan. This lack of polarization on Afghan issues may be due to the relative consistency across Republican and Democratic administrations and the almost universal congressional support for the war when it began.

The US has spent trillions of dollars on warfighting and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, with the aim of eliminating Al-Qaeda, defeating the Taliban, and building a stable and legitimate Afghan government. However, the results of these efforts have been mixed, with some improvements in areas such as healthcare, maternal health, and education, but overall progress has been elusive.

The US-Afghanistan relationship has been marked by several challenges, including the lack of a coherent strategy, unrealistic timelines, unsustainable infrastructure projects, counterproductive personnel policies, persistent insecurity, and a lack of understanding of the Afghan context. These issues have hindered the effectiveness of reconstruction efforts and led to a situation where the Afghan government remains dependent and vulnerable.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, ending America's longest war, has sparked debates about the lessons learned and the future of US engagement in the region.

Support for the war in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan was initially popular among Americans, with 93% supporting military action against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This support extended to the decision to attack Afghanistan specifically, with over 90% of Americans backing the war in its early months. In November 2001, 71% supported sending large numbers of troops into the country.

However, even in the early days of the war, Americans had doubts about the chances of success and anticipated a high number of casualties. Indeed, as the war dragged on, support for it waned. In 2004, 41% of Democrats considered the war to be a mistake, compared to just 9% of Republicans.

In 2010-2014, public opinion turned sharply against the war, despite the death of Osama bin Laden. A 2011 CBS poll found that most Americans were only willing to stay in the war for a few more years, with only 3% wanting to remain for another five to ten years. By 2014, a majority wanted to keep about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan "in the years ahead".

Despite the overall decline in support for the war, Americans remained hesitant to fully withdraw troops. In 2019, a plurality of respondents (34%) favoured maintaining current troop levels, and 44% felt that the US had an obligation towards the Afghan government and segments of Afghan society affected by the war. This comparative support for maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan may be due to the consistent support for the war across Republican and Democratic administrations and the almost universal congressional support when the war was initiated.

In 2021, when the US withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, 54% of Americans agreed it was the right decision, with sharp partisan divisions on the issue. While 70% of Democrats supported the decision, only 34% of Republicans shared this view.

The US-Afghanistan relationship

The United States established diplomatic ties with Afghanistan in 1935. In 2012, the two countries concluded the Strategic Partnership Agreement to strengthen their bilateral relationship, support Afghanistan’s capabilities as a partner, and improve the lives of the Afghan people.

The War in Afghanistan

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, with the clear objective of defeating al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts and preventing a repeat of the attacks. The invasion led to the fall of the Taliban government.

The war in Afghanistan has been America's longest war, with more than 2,000 American lives lost and thousands more wounded, more than 60,000 Afghan deaths, and more than $900 billion spent on the war.

Withdrawal of US Troops

In February 2020, the US and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement, which led to the withdrawal of US and Allied forces from Afghanistan by August 30, 2021. The US has not yet decided whether to recognize the Taliban as the Government of Afghanistan.

US Counterterrorism Concerns

The Doha Agreement included commitments from the Taliban to prevent any group or individual, including Al-Qaida, from using Afghan soil to threaten the security of the US and its allies. The US continues to engage with the Taliban to ensure they fully abide by these commitments.

US Assistance to Afghanistan

Since the Taliban takeover, the US has stopped providing assistance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Instead, it has shifted its focus to humanitarian aid and targeted assistance to help meet basic human needs and avoid a complete and imminent economic collapse. The US remains the single largest donor of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's Membership in International Organizations

Afghanistan and the US are members of several of the same international organizations, including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Afghanistan is also a Partner for Cooperation with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and joined the World Trade Organization in 2016.

Bilateral Representation

The US suspended operations at the US Embassy in Kabul in August 2021 and established the Afghanistan Affairs Unit (AAU) in Doha, Qatar, as its diplomatic mission to Afghanistan.

The US's longest war

The war began in 2001, when President George W. Bush authorised an invasion of Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban-ruled country was providing refuge for al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation that had orchestrated the attacks.

The US and its allies quickly overthrew the Taliban regime, but the Taliban soon regrouped. The war continued as the US and its allies attempted to support the new government in Kabul.

The war was costly, both financially and in terms of human life. The US spent close to $1 trillion on the war, and more than 2,000 US soldiers were killed. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans also lost their lives.

The war was also politically divisive. President Biden, who ultimately decided to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, said:

> "I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit. The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors."

The US's $132 billion reconstruction efforts

The US government has spent approximately $132 billion on reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan since 2002. The reconstruction process involves various groups, including supranational organisations, the Afghan government, the US government, other foreign governments, and civilians. The US government has established the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to provide oversight.

The reconstruction efforts include activities such as:

• Training civil administrators
• Improving essential services and public safety
• Supporting civil society and self-determination
• Promoting the rule of law and economic development

Despite the vast investments by the international community, the results of the reconstruction efforts have been mixed. The implementation of development projects at the district and sub-district level has been frequently marred by a lack of coordination, knowledge of local conditions, and sound planning on the side of international donors, as well as corruption and inefficiency on the side of Afghan government officials.

The US government has been criticised for its poor division of labour, which resulted in weak strategy. The US government continuously struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve. The US government also consistently underestimated the amount of time required to rebuild Afghanistan, creating unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritised spending quickly. These choices increased corruption and reduced the effectiveness of programs.

Many of the institutions and infrastructure projects the US built were not sustainable. Billions of reconstruction dollars were wasted as projects went unused or fell into disrepair. Demands to make fast progress incentivised US officials to identify and implement short-term projects with little consideration for host government capacity and long-term sustainability.

The US government's inability to get the right people into the right jobs at the right times was one of the most significant failures of the mission. It is also one of the hardest to repair. US personnel in Afghanistan were often unqualified and poorly trained, and those who were qualified were difficult to retain. This was particularly true for civilian agencies, such as the State Department or the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which should have been leading the effort but were unable to meaningfully perform that role.

Persistent insecurity severely undermined reconstruction efforts. The absence of violence was a critical precondition for everything US officials tried to do in Afghanistan—yet the US effort to rebuild the country took place while it was being torn apart.

The US government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly. Effectively rebuilding Afghanistan required a detailed understanding of the country's social, economic, and political dynamics. However, US officials were consistently operating in the dark, often because of the difficulty of collecting the necessary information. The US government also clumsily forced Western technocratic models onto Afghan economic institutions; trained security forces in advanced weapon systems they could not understand, much less maintain; imposed formal rule of law on a country that addressed 80 to 90 per cent of its disputes through informal means; and often struggled to understand or mitigate the cultural and social barriers to supporting women and girls.

US government agencies rarely conducted sufficient monitoring and evaluation to understand the impact of their efforts. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is the process of determining what works, what does not, and what needs to change as a result. Conceptually, M&E is relatively straightforward, but in practice, it is extremely challenging. This is especially true in complex and unpredictable environments like Afghanistan, where staff turnover is rapid, multiple agencies must coordinate programs simultaneously, security and access restrictions make it hard to understand a program's challenges and impact, and a myriad of variables compete to influence outcomes.

The US's withdrawal from Afghanistan

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a long-drawn process that began with the signing of the Doha Agreement between the US and the Taliban in February 2020. The agreement led to the withdrawal of US and Allied forces from Afghanistan by August 30, 2021. The US has since shifted to a position of pragmatic engagement in Afghanistan.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a result of a combination of factors. Firstly, there was bipartisan support for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. A 2019 survey found that despite Americans’ hesitancy to deploy US troops into other conflicts, they were comparably supportive of maintaining the US military footprint in Afghanistan. Secondly, the US had spent trillions of dollars on the war in Afghanistan, and the conflict had lasted two decades. The US had already begun withdrawing troops from Afghanistan under the Trump administration.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was not without its challenges. The US had to evacuate thousands of US citizens and Afghan allies from the country. The Taliban had also made rapid gains in the country, and the Afghan government had collapsed. The withdrawal also led to a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, with millions of Afghans facing food insecurity. The US has since provided humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, but the country's economy has collapsed.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has also had political ramifications. The Biden administration has faced intense scrutiny from predominantly Republican lawmakers for its handling of the withdrawal. The administration has been criticized for not anticipating the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban's resurgence. The withdrawal has also been criticized for being chaotic and disorganized. However, the Biden administration has defended its decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, arguing that the counterterrorism mission in the country was complete.

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