One year ago Tuesday, President Trump stood in front of a military audience at Fort Myer, Va., and admitted his decision to double down in Afghanistan went against his better judgment.
“The American people are weary of war without victory. Nowhere is this more evident than with the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, 17 years,” Trump said. “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically, I like following my instincts.”
But then he said that after studying Afghanistan “in great detail and from every conceivable angle,” he was persuaded by his “Cabinet and generals” to unleash American airpower and dispatch more advisers in a last ditch effort to turn the tide of battle and break the will of the Taliban. He did it, he said, because “decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”
One year later, by any conventional metric, there is little progress to report.
A report to Congress by the lead inspector general, released Monday, notes that while U.S. commanders say the new strategy is working, the evidence is “difficult to assess.”
“The Taliban maintained its hold on rural parts of the country and launched attacks on Afghan forces and population centers. During this quarter, civilian deaths reached historically high levels, and violence displaced tens of thousands of Afghans,” the report notes.
Despite a three-day ceasefire that kindled hopes of peace in June, the Taliban have shown no signs of surrender.
As if to underscore the point, last week a force of at least 500 Taliban fighters laid siege to the strategically important provincial capital of Ghazni just 75 miles southwest of Kabul, terrorizing the civilians.
After five days of fighting the U.S. claimed it killed 140 Taliban in airstrikes, and the Afghan government said it lost 170 troops beating back the assault.
The response from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to offer the Taliban a two-month ceasefire, provided they responded positively.
So far they have not.
The linchpin of the Trump plan was to commit to stay as long as it takes, with the idea that once the Taliban saw they can’t win and couldn’t simply outwait the U.S., they would be driven to the peace table.
Less than three weeks after Trump took office, Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. in commander in Afghanistan, told Congress the U.S. was in a stalemate that could be broken only by giving the Afghan military more offensive capability.
The consensus of outside military experts is that, at least on the battlefield, nothing has changed.
“I think we are seeing something close to stalemate on the military front,” said Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. “It is hard to know more because the [U.S. government] classifies more information than it used to, and changes definitions and categories. But on balance, the net change in battlefield momentum seems close to zero.”
The latest IG report backs that up, noting that one key indicator of the security situation — the percentage of the population living in areas under government control — has been static for months.
As of May this year, 65 percent of Afghans lived in areas under government control, 12 percent in areas under Taliban control, and 23 percent in contested areas.
“The fact is there will never be anything close to victory there for Washington, even after nearly unlimited sums of money spent and countless lives lost,” predicts Harry Kazianis at the Center for the National Interest. “Unfortunately, there is no strategy that will bring about a true win — an economically prosperous and democratic state — in any foreseeable timeline.”
Pentagon officials say although it’s been a year since the strategy was announced, it’s only been about four months since all the pieces have been in place.
It will be another year at least, they argue, before anyone can say for sure if it’s working.
The question is does Trump, who said he shares the American people’s frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image, say it’s time to leave?
“The president must be feeling a lot of frustration,” said Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “A year ago he talked about winning but, at best, we have achieved a stalemate and maybe not that. There is no clear path to victory or even for an eventual exit.”
On Wednesday, Nicholson will give his final briefing to reporters at the Pentagon.
He will say many positive things. He will say the Taliban have mounted attacks but can’t hold new ground. He will say the Afghan forces are now more capable than ever, and are backed by their own fledgling air forces. He will talk about the rise of a peace movement, the fragile ceasefire, and the prospect of successful parliamentary elections.
He will say the conditions have been set for success, but that after 17 years, America needs a few years more.
And then Nicholson will turn over the mission to Army Lt. Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, a former Delta Force commander who until his appointment was head of U.S. Joint Special Operations Command.
At his Senate confirmation hearing in June, Miller said he couldn’t guarantee a timeline, an end date or even a turning point. “I know that going into this position,” he said.
Miller testified that the war, which started one month after the Sept. 11 attacks, was “generational,” and recognized his son, Army 2nd Lt. Austin Miller seated just behind him in the Senate chamber.
“This young guy sitting behind me, I never anticipated that his cohort would be in a position to deploy as I sat there in 2001,” Miller said.
