Why did the Bush and Obama administrations fixate on ineffective strategies? Confirmation bias reinforced the Bush administration’s belief that the war was over, that a small military effort could defeat the remnants of the Taliban, and that the international community could pick up the burden of reconstruction. Officials emphasized reports of progress within political, military, and economic silos and discounted evidence of mounting problems. The Obama administration’s belief that the Taliban would be unwilling to fight other Afghans and its frustration over the Karzai government’s endemic corruption, coupled with the Pentagon’s narrative about the ANSF’s readiness, reinforced the withdrawal timeline. Evidence mounted that the Afghan government was losing legitimacy, and the ANSF was corrupt and poorly led. The Taliban remained resilient with their sanctuaries in Pakistan and local support in Afghanistan intact. Still, the Obama administration would not reexamine the drawdown timeline until the disaster became apparent at the end of 2014. Poor strategic empathy compounded the effects of confirmation bias in both administrations. Civilian and military officials, focused in their silos, never addressed the cross-cutting issues that jeopardized US aims. Defense officials had to use subtle language about risks to avoid running afoul of the White House, but no one in Congress picked up the nuances.
The United States’ national security architecture discourages placing a civilian or military official in charge of the full range of American political, diplomatic, military, intelligence, and economic capabilities deployed to war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is a bureaucratic way of war in which no one below the president is accountable for overall success. This absence of authority gives leaders on the ground opportunities—wittingly or otherwise—to operate in ways that might impede the president’s goals.
Chapter 6 outlined early bureaucratic frictions that delayed counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts and allowed predatory actors at local and national levels to seize control of key centers of power and run roughshod over parts of the population. Elites continued to manipulate American forces and officials into advancing their personal and political agendas—sometimes by targeting their rivals. ISAF grew wise to this by 2010, but the strategic damage was not reversible. As both administrations operated in military, political, diplomatic, and economic silos, strategic risks were emerging along the seams and fault lines. Each effort was making progress, but the whole was less than the sum of its parts. Military operations conducted with inadequate information or manipulated by elites undermined governance and legitimacy. Predatory corruption damaged government legitimacy and motivated people to fight back, thus deteriorating the security situation. The inability of US government agencies to agree about reconciliation, as will be explored in detail in Part IV, left the Obama administration without a viable alternative to a failing transition plan. The tendency by both administrations to measure success within silos reinforced the narrative of progress and undermined their ability to understand and address the emerging strategic risks.
Severe patron-client problems emerged for both administrations that impeded strategic decision-making and coordination, masked the magnitude of challenges, and undermined capacity-building efforts. The US and Afghan governments never developed a common strategy for the war. While the United States wanted to win quickly and leave, the new Afghan government focused on consolidating power and extending international presence and financial support. Karzai grew increasingly suspect of US intentions during the Obama administration. As corruption grew under the Karzai administration, so did Obama’s desire to withdraw.
As Obama stood firm on the timeline, some senior officials fixated on changing the president’s mind instead of addressing the issues that were undermining transition—such as the corruption and poor leadership in the government and ANSF. Even if officials addressed the main challenges to transition, the timeline was probably still unrealistic. They could have had a sounder basis for asking for more time or making a more serious effort at negotiations.
Both administrations, meanwhile, provided funding to the Pakistani military in the hopes of inducing them to shut down Taliban sanctuaries. The Pakistanis fought the Pakistani Taliban instead, leaving the Afghan Taliban and its Haqqani network untouched. This support to Pakistan increased Karzai’s cynicism about American intentions, alarmed India, and reinforced Pakistan’s incentives to support instability in Afghanistan so as to maintain the flow of American cash. The US approach “became a de facto military attrition campaign,” Douglas E. Lute, the Obama administration’s policy lead for South Asia from 2009 to 2013, recalls, “the political and diplomatic efforts never materialized.”1
These challenges also undermined the use of the transition method to achieve a favorable and durable outcome. By 2010, when the Afghanistan mission finally had significant resources and Washington’s attention, the deck was stacked against a successful transition. The US government did not understand the predatory kleptocracy that had emerged or appreciate the strategic risks it entailed. No one was responsible or accountable for addressing the problem. The State Department was unwilling to take on the task of addressing the kleptocracy. Efforts by ISAF to do so were too limited to have much effect.
When the matter finally reached the NSC, the Obama administration punted. Even the staggering Kabul bank crisis was not enough to motivate the interagency to address the problem. Meanwhile, the Afghan government and political elites had long since co-opted the ANSF leadership. Army and police positions were bought and sold at exorbitant prices. The reported price for a Tier 1 province police chief could go as high as $3 million to $5 million; a customs official allegedly paid $5 million for his position. The primary motivator for too many leaders was feeding the kleptocracy.2 For them, fighting and winning the war was a lesser consideration. The selling and buying of offices, a cabinet-level Afghan official said, “is our biggest problem.”3 US officials, fixated on their silos, failed to grasp the overall picture.
The predatory behavior was creating more support for the Taliban. Sufficient support within Afghanistan, combined with the sanctuary in Pakistan, kept the Taliban sustainable. Corruption and poor leadership in the government and security forces undermined the Afghan government’s ability to win the battle of legitimacy in contested and Taliban-controlled areas. Perverse incentives drained readiness and performance so fast that the sizeable capacity-building programs of the US embassy and the NATO training mission never caught up.
To be fair, the risk factors in Afghanistan were subtler than they were in Iraq. The Iraqi government’s predatory sectarianism was easier to deduce and address than Afghanistan’s predatory kleptocracy. Pakistan was less evident in their support for the Taliban (as was India for anti-Pakistan factions) than was Iran for the Sadrist militias. Al Qaeda in Iraq, wanting to provoke a sectarian civil war, never had a governance strategy and could not care less about winning the battle of legitimacy. The Taliban did. While Iraq hurtled into a disaster, Afghanistan crept incrementally but relentlessly toward failure.