The lack of strategic thinking on war termination—how to achieve a favorable and durable outcome—heightened the risk that the successful overthrow of the Taliban would turn into a quagmire. The Bush administration had given detailed attention to the military campaign but wished away the challenges presented in the aftermath. Such neglect damaged the United States’ ability to address the exploitative actions taken by Afghan and international actors during the chaotic post-Taliban period. These activities, many of which were hidden in plain sight, undermined the legitimacy of the nascent government in the eyes of Afghans and aroused suspicions among Afghanistan’s neighbors—especially Pakistan.
American officials attempted to simplify the complex challenges of post-Taliban Afghanistan by creating a step-by-step blueprint for political, military, and economic development. This became known as the Bonn process. Officials crafted a detailed plan that arrayed key milestones along a timeline. Each milestone had its particular plan and deliverables. Afghanistan achieved each one. But the situation in the country slowly deteriorated.
American officials in Kabul and Washington found themselves completely unprepared for the intense and sometimes violent struggle for control among Afghan elites. “Local elites know how to consolidate power,” observed Lieutenant General Terry A. Wolff, “but not how to build a country.”1 Each milestone was manipulated for advantage, mainly by Northern Alliance figures who enjoyed almost uncritical US backing. The result was a set of rules and systems that seemed to marginalize southern Pashtuns.
America’s (and NATO’s) bureaucratic way of war added to the challenges. Each agency worked hard within its silo, but the whole became less than the sum of its parts. The absence of a senior official to manage US efforts in Afghanistan hurt America’s ability to set the new Afghan government and security forces on solid ground, prevent abuses that could give rise to an insurgency, and address Pakistan’s concerns about Indian influence. The so-called lead nation concept and the tendency of US agencies to operate in bureaucratic silos undermined the woefully under-resourced stabilization effort and left international civilian and military efforts open to manipulation.
The limited US interests in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration’s desire to minimize security and reconstruction commitments, should have led to a more thoughtful discussion with Karzai about the Taliban’s offer to capitulate. The Taliban had little to no leverage—negotiations by competent Afghan and international authorities were highly likely to result in a favorable outcome and probably could have prevented or limited the scale of the insurgency. The Bush administration, however, viewed the Taliban and al Qaeda as one and the same—international terrorist organizations bent on attacking the United States. Given the September 11 attacks and the way American political leaders framed the conflict, an effort to negotiate with the Taliban in 2001 or 2002 probably would have entailed huge audience costs.
Strategic empathy is the ability to place yourself into the mind of another so that you can see yourself and the situation from their point of view.2 Sun Tzu counseled generals to know the enemy and yourself.3 Knowledge of the enemy is more than assessing their military forces and capabilities. You need to understand another’s perspective—and their pressures and motivations—to gauge their intentions and anticipate their moves. Knowing yourself, particularly your strategic empathy limitations, will motivate you to close gaps in your understanding.
Strategic narcissism, by contrast, is the tendency to view others only in relation to your interests and to believe that their success relies upon their adopting your point of view.4 Problems such as confirmation bias and mirror imaging indicate strategic narcissism, which can result in leaders believing what they want to believe about partners and enemies while presuming that others aspire to their point of view and strategies. Empathetic competitors manipulate narcissists to gain advantage.
Lack of strategic empathy undermined America’s ability to understand the objectives and motivations of the key actors in the early stages of the conflict—a problem that persisted throughout this war and the Iraq war, too. The upshot was a US approach that unwittingly created incentives for the conflict to widen. The Afghan government, as we will see in Part III, turned into a predatory kleptocracy, the Taliban mobilized into an insurgency, and Pakistan played the double game of supporting some US counterterrorism objectives while allowing the Taliban to use Pakistani soil as an insurgent sanctuary.
In 2004, according to a former Taliban official who was part of the delegation, the Taliban made another peace overture.5 But the Bush administration still refused. Standing alongside President Karzai in February 2004, Rumsfeld said, “I’ve not seen any indication that the Taliban pose any military threat to the security of Afghanistan.” Karzai, noting that he was being contacted daily by Taliban leaders seeking to be allowed to return home, surmised, “The Taliban doesn’t exist anymore. They’re defeated. They’re gone.”6 The 2004 overture would be the Taliban’s last for many years.
Had the Bush administration considered multiple options for war termination, they still might have come to the view that negotiations with the Taliban were unacceptable. Transition-and-withdraw was another option, and one that the Bush administration backed into as the insurgency fomented. A strategy that considered in advance the requirements for a successful transition would likely be based on factors such as establishing and maintaining political legitimacy and inclusiveness, deploying sufficiently capable peacekeeping forces until credible local forces were built and trained, ensuring civilian protection, and emphasizing regional cooperation. The United States, however, was myopic in its approach; to the detriment of its long-term goals, the United States continued to invest most of its time, energy, and resources into hunting down Taliban remnants—efforts that were manipulated by local actors.
By 2006, an insurgency that had durable internal and external support was fighting against a predatory, kleptocratic host nation government that was losing legitimacy. The stage was set for quagmire.