There are now U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan who weren’t even born when the war started after Sept. 11. Half of Afghanistan’s current population was born after the U.S. invasion in October 2001. The Afghan people have been subjected to non-stop conflict since the 1979 Soviet invasion. And Wednesday marks the official beginning of the 20th year of perpetual combat for U.S. troops.
Even the most enthusiastic interventionists must now recognize that the war is militarily unwinnable. The hopes of a peace agreement between the Taliban and Afghan government should not delay the end of American involvement in the war and our full withdrawal. Anything less confirms Washington’s unwillingness to recognize two decades of failure and condemns yet more American troops to pointlessly sacrifice their lives and limbs.
The United States and the Taliban signed an agreement last February that was supposed to open the door to the exchange of Taliban and Afghan prisoners, followed in early March by the beginning of direct negotiations. On March 11, former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he hoped “this issue will be resolved within 100 days.”
Yet, the first face-to-face negotiations between the two parties didn’t occur until mid-September, and, as of this writing, there has been no substantive progress made — but violence remains at alarming levels. The issues that have to be resolved are incredibly complex and far-reaching. Among the initial objectives are negotiating a ceasefire, or at least a reduction of violence, and power-sharing agreements between the two sides.
This doesn’t even address the far thornier questions of whether or how to hold Taliban members and commanders accountable for potential war crimes over the decades. There are deep divisions in the society as to how far the government should go in punishing the Taliban before reconciling with them. However, it is not at all clear whether the Taliban will ever agree to any peace that puts their members in jail, or whether the Afghan people will agree to a peace that doesn’t.
Moreover, the Taliban have the unequivocal military advantage in the war. They control more territory now than at any time since 2001 and have little motivation to make the significant compromises that both sides would need to make in order to bring peace to Afghanistan. The Afghan government, meanwhile, is under heavy pressure from its population to protect the hard-fought rights of women and children, who fear the government may agree to a peace that doesn’t guarantee their freedoms.
These and many other emotionally charged issues all have to be agreed to before there can finally be peace between the two sides. The odds are high that, at best, these negotiations will drag on for years. Consider that conflicting parties in Libya have been unsuccessfully trying to negotiate the end of their civil strife since at least early 2015. And after six years of civil war in Yemen, the parties remain far from an agreement despite significant international support.
Pinning our hopes for a negotiated end to the war by next May (as the Pentagon seems to want) before withdrawing our troops is not wise policy. October marks the beginning of the 20th consecutive year of America’s endless war in Afghanistan. The U.S. should have ended the war a decade ago. What we must avoid is having these same conversations again five years (or even one year) from now.
No doubt, there will still be interventionists in Washington lobbying for more time, more troops, and more patience, claiming we can still win. However, short of an unprecedented and unacceptable level of U.S.-backed violence, military victory is not even possible in the Afghan war because the conflict is political in nature. To allow U.S. troops in the country to drift for some unknown number of years into the future would be the height of irresponsibility, both to the nation and to the men and women in uniform who we place in harm’s way.
The U.S. will continue to keep our people safe with our potent ability to identify and strike any direct threat to our country, no matter where in the world it originates — and without the need of one boot on the ground in Afghanistan. The 19th anniversary of this war should be the last anniversary with U.S. troops in the country. Washington should end the war now and withdraw all our troops because it is the most appropriate and responsible course of action our government can take.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him @DanielLDavis1.
