The True Forever War?
With the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan already fading from our news-feeds, and as we move past the 20th anniversary of 9/11 there is some lingering sense of having turned the page. Some of the fears we have lived with these past two decades appear to have dwindled, like a fire burning in our car mirror, getting smaller and smaller as we move further away.
This is sense of relief that many are feeling is understandable; no one wishes to have the threat of that fire in our mirrors spreading out of control to engulf us. And yet even as we move on some are warning that the dangers from Islamic terrorism are in fact far from over.
The resurgent Taliban for one, in spite of all their mollifying words, are still a largely unknown quantity. Once occupied with the day to day business of government they may drop the ball, allowing al-Qaeda and other groups, such as ISIS-K, to expand their base operations.
How they may govern, or even if they can govern is yet to be proven. Only time will answer those questions fully. And they also maintain a facade of anti-terror rhetoric that is many ways is already sounding hollow and trite, as are their promises of a fully inclusive government.
The ISIS-K attack at Kabul airport is one such illustration. As to whether this shows an unwillingness, or an inability to restrain such attacks is a mute point to all those who died or were injured at the scene. Similarly the highly controversial appointments of Sirajuddin Haqqani and his Uncle Khalil Haqqani, with the former thought to be the current head of the Haqqani network — a highly militant arm of the Taliban with likely connections to al-Qaeda as well as Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI — as acting Minister of the Interior and Minister for Refugees respectively, is another.
Thus this version of the Taliban, or the Taliban 2.0, might seem to be a more liberal — if one can use that word in such context— iteration than the original, once again any definitive answers as to their future path or even their ultimate destination remains speculation at best; guesswork at worst.
With both Sirajuddin and Khalil featuring highly on the FBI’s most wanted list, and the Haqqani network thought to be responsible for many of the most heinous civilian attacks during the last two decades, these two appointments alone make the job of recognising the legitimacy of the Taliban government a highly thorny issue.
The Soufan Centre suggests that the current laid back Taliban 2.0 we’re seeing is merely a short-term blip to secure the necessary funding and legitimacy the Taliban seeks, and that they may well likely revert to a more religious hard-line once these are secured.
However, should the real extremists in the Taliban hierarchy, such as the Haqqani network, not see the hard-line governmental revisions (i.e. a full implementation of Sharia law and all that that means for the Afghan people) it believes any Islamic community should live under, then it’s possible that internal divisions may develop that could seriously undermine the potential of the Taliban to govern effectively, and may force the hard-liners into an even closer alliance with al-Qaeda.
The enduring threat
The Taliban are a predominantly Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist group who briefly ruled Afghanistan at the end of the 1990’s until they were evicted by the Northern Alliance who had been led in large part by Ahmed Shah Massoud — who was actually assassinated by al-Qaeda on September 9th 2001, just days before 9/11 and the subsequent invasion— and US led coalition forces in 2001.
Following the subsequent 2003 exodus of US troops, special forces and equipment for the war desired by the Bush administration in Iraq, the Taliban began their fightback. After regrouping in Pakistan they commenced what has turned out to be a wildly successful counterinsurgency against the US occupation that has led to where we are today.
It’s enough to say right now that the war on terror, and the supposed hunt for bin Laden was a sham concocted and fabricated to take advantage of the shock, grief and horror engendered by the 9/11 attacks in order to press the buttons of America’s frayed sensibilities and ultimately start the war on Iraq, which was knowingly and blatantly sought under completely false pretences, and that has led the US to costly failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the concomitant loss of its standing, its position in the world, its global reputation and its much highly vaunted honour.
Much of this is common knowledge now, whether one chooses to take none, or all, of the facts above and the tragic consequences on face value or not.
The damage has been done regardless. Thousands of US and allied troops lost their lives. Many more have been left severely debilitated and traumatised. Almost a million have lost their lives in total, the vast majority civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muslims are vilified and feared across much of the planet for just being Muslim, and the terrorist threat, far from being eradicated, has metastasised and spread to the four corners of the globe with al-Qaeda and other groups gaining strength, traction and recruits from the sociological, cultural and emotional voids left behind by the US and its partners across MENA region in the wake of the poorly understood, poorly considered and poorly executed war on terror.
Indeed US counter-terrorism strategies often directly led to an increased terror threat and probably to the rise of ISIS itself by creating the circumstances and conditions that led to enhanced radicalisation and the systematic alienation of civilian populations, an unforeseen and largely unappreciated consequence of an over-reliance on ineffective military solutions, one that mistakenly continues today with Biden’s assertion that ‘over the horizon’ tactics can adequately manage the growing threat (in Afghanistan), especially now given there are no intelligence assets whatsoever in the region, and any intel will be at best second hand.
Even with boots on the ground the results are horribly and tragically, repeatably bad.
“…//…my argument always was that when they took out 3 targets (with a drone strike) they created 3,300 more targets.”
Hina Rabbani Khar — Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, speaking on the Netflix series Episode 5, Turning Point: 9/11 & the War on Terror.
Then a few minutes later speaking on the same episode, a North Waziristan tribal leader, Malik Jalaluddin & his son Hilaluddin explaining how drone strikes had destroyed their village, killing the people, driving the young men who survived into the open arms of the Taliban.
“You create the terrorists,” Malik says speaking to US commanders and politicians, because of the ‘policy of killing children’.
And the disastrous results of the first of these over the horizon strikes; one probably taken with thoughts of revenge (for the Kabul airport attack) uppermost in the minds of the military powers that be, has proven to have been the awful result of yet more bad or misleading intelligence (after all that wonderfully accurate intel that confidently predicted the staunch defence the Afghan army would offer) and led to the death of three children and seven other innocents, with not a single terrorist among them!
It beggar’s belief! Really, it does!
And yet this is Biden’s plan moving forward to combat the threat of ISIS-K and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. These sorts of attacks must be food and drink to the terror networks who can just mop up the resultant heartache, turn it into hatred of the West, strap a bomb on them and send them over to us with bells on.
Way to go Joe! How to win friends and influence people?
I don’t think so!
Perhaps the most enduring failure of all is the failure to address the sociological and cultural issues (outside of those caused by military failures) that gave rise to much of what constitutes Islamic fundamentalism in the first place. Not only does this mean this problem is far from over, it means that the nature, the type and the manifestation of the threats are not only growing but are metamorphosing, sometimes right in plain sight.
As Ali Soufan explains,
‘Unfortunately, we continue sometimes to repeat past mistakes at a great peril. The conditions that gave rise to the September 11 attacks are resurfacing in places like Iraq, like Syria, like the Sahel and now definitely in Afghanistan, which will allow groups like al-Qa`ida to grow in strength.’
Having the military power at one’s disposal and the ability to use it effectively and to remove existing threats, is a desirable position to be in, one that the US and the West in particular has enjoyed for many decades now. But, if the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the disastrous interventions in Libya, Yemen and Syria to name but a few, are to be learned from then surely the first lesson is that the military option, no matter how lethal it may be, does not provide all the answers and certainly does not ultimately defeat the terrorist threat.
Soufan calls this a ‘failure of the imagination’ on the part of the West and who am I to disagree given the current military options being employed. Calling it a failure of the imagination is a far more diplomatic trope than I could manage!
Yes, the military option is a vital tool— but only if used wisely and not indiscriminately or in revenge driven haste, as mentioned above — but other, more imaginative and constructive ways also need to be employed if the terror threat is to be diminished and ultimately defeated. Especially given that the threat is both external (or foreign) from known and existing terrorist groups, but is also now internalised across much of the West with many analysts, including Soufan, suggesting a direct link between the rise of right-wing nationalist groups and the war on terror (1).
In the US this means that agencies need to expand their counter-terrorism remit to account for the homegrown threat, but also ensure that international co-operation is similarly expanded.
In the US too there are gaps in the legalities for countering the homegrown terror threat that need to be addressed to ensure that individuals or groups can be prosecuted under anti-terror legislation, which at the moment just doesn’t exist. Legally there is much for Congress to deal with, from revamping the AUMF, to updating counter-terrorism legislation to account for homegrown terrorists, and maybe even getting a firmer handle on the elusive form of Operation Stellar Wind. And then there is the barbaric and medieval Military Commissions Act 2009 which should really be scrapped in favour something that actually relates to human beings and not rabid animals.
None of this is going to be easy, and will require much time and extensive patience, but most of all, a decisive, workable and practical long-term plan to address and effect positive change on the conditions that breed radicalisation wherever it occurs. And this in itself is something which presents Western democracies, with their short-term electoral politics, with a political conundrum, one that can only be solved with a concerted effort to reach across party lines for an all party consensus to agree on a multi-term strategy that will begin to combat the rise of terrorism in all its forms at its various points of inception.
Only then will we in the West begin to deal with this existential threat that at this moment in time shows every sign of becoming the ‘true forever war.’
- Spencer Ackerman; Reign of terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. 2021
Addendum 17 Sept 2021: US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin apologies for the loss of innocent life caused by the reckless use of a drone strike mentioned above and says they will try to learn from their mistakes.
As if that will ever happen! I don’t believe for one second that you ever gave the possibility of such a catastrophe occurring even a passing thought, and have only said a very weak ‘sorry’ because you think it makes it alright!
Well, it doesn’t!
