The future of Afghanistan

There is much discussion among the punditry as to what the future holds for Afghanistan. Will the Taliban be a new improved Taliban 2.0? Starting as the end, I suspect not. Religions are inherently conservative; they are based in faith; and faith is often, perhaps even axiomatically, impervious to facts. The Taliban has promised to be a nicer Taliban, respectful of women and education; but while the Taliban leadership may be making promises it knows Western donors want to hear so as to ensure that the money taps aren't turned off, it's unclear that the foot soldiers, steeped in its peculiar brand of Islam are on board with those pronouncements. Early evidence from the country suggests they are not. Indeed it's not clear that the leadership means what is says, at least as a matter of principle. 

However there is some reason to believe that foreign nationals who could not be evacuated before the US pulled out on August 30th might yet get out without having to flee across a Taliban controlled land border.  The Taliban might want to get the "trouble-makers" off Afghan soil and avoid incurring the immediate wrath of the foreign governments on whose largess the country's economy depends. 

But for Afghan nationals the prospect is bleaker. The Taliban understands that foreign powers will not want to go into battle (again) for the sake of human rights half way round the world.  The primary rationale for the invasion twenty years ago was to deny Al Qaeda safe haven; standing up the institutions of civil society was a goal adopted only after the invasion, and one which the US may well now have realized was overly ambitious.  That provides the Taliban with much greater governing flexibility.  And they are unlikely to permit a mass exodus of those who have enjoyed a taste of freedom; that would be to admit that their world-view is not the be-all-and-end-all.  

The question has been asked whether those who have become accustomed to a less medieval form of government over the last 20 years will "push back", holding out the prospect of resistance and reform or even the possible over-throw of the newly reinstated Taliban regime. That seems based more in hope that reality.  The more likely outcome is increasingly harsh repression (much as is currently happening in Myanmar at the moment - about which, tellingly,  there is no reporting in the US media). With the US and its allies now departed and the camera crews packed up and gone, Afghanistan will be out of sight, out of mind for the West. The Taliban will then have a freer hand and few qualms about imposing its interpretation of Sharia law in the same brutal fashion is has in the past.   

Reconciliation

"Democracies evolve in a conflict of factions. They achieve greatness by their reconciliations." Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State.

Behind the fall

Two things stuck me today watching the BBC coverage of the Taliban's rout of the Afghan government; one was a surprise the other not. The unsurprising thing was seeing Taliban fighters with M-16s or similar - but clearly modern US made automatic weapons. We're quite used to seeing pictures of the Taliban with AK-47s left over from the Russians entanglement in the country so seeing American weapons brought home the point quite graphically. 

The other, and this was a surprise, was learning that the Taliban had been secretly negotiating surrender arrangements with regional leaders for 18 months, but only put them into effect just as the Americans were preparing to leave. That explains the rapidity with which they captured territory; its not that the Afghan army and police decided at the last minute they would not put up a fight; it appears the handover of power local has long been prearranged. That this wan't known or understood by the US suggests a huge intelligence failure. 

Yet despite the rush to pin the blame on the Biden administration, in the bigger picture its calculus ultimately is the same. Certainly many who might have left had the Taliban only advanced at the speed US intelligence had expected will likely now not be able to. Yet they might also have chosen to stay and the scenes of chaos may reflect that fact that more people are now trying to flee the country (following the example of their ex-president) because of the speed of the Taliban return to power than would otherwise have been the case. 

Biden was clear in his address today that the US is not in the business of nation-building. Yet that is clearly what the last 10 years in Afghanistan were all about. Osama bin Laden had been killed and Al-Qaeda's ability to train and organize had apparently be degraded to the point that it no longer presents a threat to US homeland security. So the counter-terrorism component of the US mission in Afghanistan was accomplished meaning that staying longer was only about nation-building.  

This raises the question of ambition versus what is achievable.  As a Brit I have noticed (a huge generalization of course) a tendency for America, with the best of intentions, to try and establish 'copies' of itself in other places. While numerous politicians of both parties have eschewed nation-building, that does seem to have been a goal of the post invasion strategy in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  One might argue that the post-cold war attempt to transition the countries of the ex-USSR and the Communist block more generally to Western-style market economies and democracies was similarly an attempt to reshape those countries in its image.

The ambition may have been commendable though not everyone agrees that a foreign power imposing its systems and values on another country is anything but modern day colonialism.  But putting that aside, the ambition far outstripped what was realistically achievable.  The Brits tried to govern Afghanistan in the 19th century, the Russians tried in the 20th; and both failed. So the notion that the US would do any better may have been over-optimistic.

As with America's ambitions for post-cold war Russia, its aspirations in Afghanistan were too ambitious and insufficient attention paid to context; meaning that ultimately the attempt to turn the country in to a Western-style 20th century democracy has, after 20 years, ultimately failed.  It has been said that the 19th century belonged to Britain, the 20th to the US, and the 21st will be China's.  If that's the case, then who knows, perhaps China can find a way to impose its values and systems on other countries more successfully that its colonial predecessors?    

The last straw

As if to underscore the inevitability of the Taliban's return to power, Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan's president has fled the country.

And, according to the Guardian's real time reporting, within 20 minutes of his departure the Taliban had entered Kabul. 

Ghani's departure is a highly symbolic end to to the American effort to stand up Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. Its nation-building project in Afghanistan is now unequivocally at and end.  

The American-Afghan war is, to all intents and purposes, now over, just 53 days shy of a platinum anniversary.   If America's twenty year anniversary gift to Afghanistan would have been china, China might be breathing a sigh of relief.

Taliban win the long game

I have written about the US occupation of Afghanistan and the decision to withdraw (April 18th, July 14th) and there is little in broad terms I can add to those posts. It was almost inevitable that once the Americans (and NATO) forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban would take back the country.  They live there, it's their home; the Americans are there temporarily and it's not their home. That gives the Taliban numerous strategic advantages; they can be more patient, they have better intelligence; they have a better understanding of the culture and the political situation on the ground (something the Americans appear to lack); and they are hard to identify from other Afghan civilians. So their resurgence was not a surprise. What was perhaps surprising was the remarkable speed with which this unfolded, in a matter of days rather than weeks. Some have dubbed this, with some justification, another "Saigon moment" for America. 

There are a few comments, perhaps more of a post script, that might help explain the surprising speed with which the Taliban had retaken the country.

First was corruption and mismanagement in the Afghan government; corruption undermined support for the government particularly amongst the security forces, many of whom, according to the Economist, had not been paid for months. While Biden had said that it was time for the Afghans take complete responsibility for defending their country from the Taliban, it seems his administration, perhaps from incomplete intelligence, may not have understood the fragility of the armed forces' morale and commitment. That has led to desertions in the field as the Taliban advanced. 

Second, like many things (Climate change for example) the worse things get the faster they deteriorate. As the speed of the Taliban advance became clear this week that contributed to a sense of inevitability and further undermined the will of Afghan soldiers to put their lives at risk for a government many didn't believe in.  Just as the Taliban were well equipped with Russian material (AK-47s and grenade launchers) they had seized after they drove out the Russian thirty years ago, I expect we will see them driving captured Humvees and brandishing American supplied M-16s before long.  

The Russians lasted 9 years, 1 month, 3 weeks and 1 day, according to Wikipedia; the America almost made it to its twenty year anniversary.  And the appropriate gift for a twenty year anniversary? China. 

Crossroads #2 - Artificial Intelligence

The NHS is addressing the shortage of medical professional by filling the gap with artificial intelligence as a was to increase the efficiency of the staff it has. While that doesn't seem on the face of it like job displacement, it really is in two senses.  First, it reduces demand for medical staff which in effect means in future, were supply to increase that additional supply would no longer be needed. And secondly, it demonstrates more broadly how human skills are replaceable by AI. It also reinforces the idea that highly skilled knowledge work is at least if not more vulnerable to AI replacement than other kinds of work. 

With potentially mass unemployment looming, two possible futures seem to emerge at least from an ideological perspective.  One involves state intervention and financial redistribution, the other leaves everything to economics and markets. Left to market forces, income inequality will rise, which in turn will fuel social unrest, populism and the further erosion of trust in institutions in general. The upshot will likely be a more authoritarian crackdown possibly with deep political undercurrents.  

Redistribution will be less unpopular in countries accustomed to more state intervention such as France Germany and even China. As a result these kinds of states will likely suffer less dislocation even while seeming to fare less well economically in the short run. And while it's true that as Keynes noted, "in the long run we are all dead" how we get there makes a difference.     

Crossroads #1 - Climate crisis

Yesterday the IPCC released a report concluding that on the basis of the preponderance of evidence, the current disruptions we are seeing to the climate (drought, wild fires, floods and other extreme weather events) and now irreversible.    

But things could get a great deal worse unless governments act now The window to avoid a catastrophe of truly global proportions is closing. 

While some may complain that the left (i.e., scientists and the elites) have been crying wolf for too long which is why no one is listening, the fact remains that this slow rolling crisis may be too momentous to stop. 

Do windmills cause cancer?

 

Of course not; that's just a right wing anti-green energy conspiracy theory, propagated on Facebook and by Fox.  But what about this: "Trump voters spread disease"?  Well that's a 'yes'; the unvaccinated mask-less "it's not a problem because Trump said it wasn't" types are the main vectors of spread for the delta variant.  How may of the Sturgis motorcycle rally were wearing masks this year - probably few or none; and how many were not GOP or Trump voters -  again probably few or none.  

But it's worse than that; not only are they disease vectors, they are also the incubators for potentially more deadly and more contagious variants.   

So when the next variant, more virulent and more contagious than delta, arrives, remember this: it's here because Trump voters refused to follow the guidelines that would have prevented it.  When it does we should call it "Trump-pox".