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?