Abstract
Afghanistan has witnessed numerous foreign invasions, regional interventions and domestic power struggles that cumulatively affected the social fabric, political institutionalisation and economic activity in this conflict-ridden country. The latest phase of foreign intervention and warfare led by the USA lasted for around two decades and ended abruptly in August 2021. Michael Cox’s recently edited volume Afghanistan: Long War, Forgotten Peace has candidly sought to analyse Afghanistan’s political history. Most of the constituent chapters, written by scholars and experts from the UK, Europe, China and Afghanistan, had previously been published in LSE Public Policy Review. Thus, each chapter except the Introduction carries an abstract and a conclusion, thus, enhancing the overall readability of the book. In addition, this collection of essays intends to address the perplexing question: why did the Western project ‘fail so badly’ in Afghanistan? (p. 5).
After Professor Cox introduces the thrust of the arguments within each chapter and contextualises the recent Afghan War as part of a ‘Forty-Year Crisis’, Rodric Braithwaite’s chapter provides a broader historical assessment of Afghanistan’s troubles. The chapter starts by exposing some myths regarding the British ‘retreat’ from Afghanistan in the nineteenth century, arguing the British archived their foreign policy objectives by supporting client monarchs who ‘agreed with the British to keep the Russians out in exchange for material and political support’ (p. 19). Following a period of political instability during the 1920s, Zahir Shah eventually ascended to the throne and reigned from 1933 to 1973. During his reign, he introduced key reforms such as the introduction of political parties, a modern constitution and parliament, some degree of freedom of speech and suffrage, and educational and employment rights for women. While this gave Afghanistan the veneer of stability, Braithwaite argues that ‘at its core, the system remained the same combination of ruthlessness, comprise, and decentralisation it had always been’ (p. 20). This is evidenced by the fact that Zahir Shah was eventually ousted in 1973 following the palace intrigue of his cousin, Daud, who proclaimed himself President and ruled for five years before being overthrown by the communist coup in 1978. When in 1979 the Soviet Union intervened to stabilise the new communist regime, this drew to the fore another key aspect of Afghanistan’s sociopolitical fabric: the tendency for Afghans to unite against any external intervention (whether Soviet or US), despite their political and policy differences.
Besides the historical and cultural factors behind the US–NATO failure in Afghanistan, Michael Callen and Shahim Kabuli in Chapter 3 argue that three other factors, which they term ‘sins’, ultimately undermined the post-Taliban Afghan government. First was the Western alliance’s decision to exclude the Taliban in political negotiations. Unsurprisingly, the Taliban refused to be ignored and, with the strategic support of countries like Pakistan, employed violent measures against foreign occupiers. The second was that the Karzai government adopted an electoral system that combined multi-member districts with a ‘single non-transferable vote’. This flawed electoral system further divided the country sociopolitically and undermined its democratic credentials. The final sin was the centralised presidential system which in practice excluded non-Pashtun populace in decision-making and did not reflect Afghanistan’s diverse parochial polity.
This theme of NATO failure and Taliban success is returned to in several places throughout the book. Florian Weigand in Chapter 5 provides a similar argument, identifying three factors that he argues helped the Taliban win again; namely, the failure of Western powers to build a legitimate political order, the gap between the state and its citizens and the ‘extractive’ character of the state institutions. In Chapter 10, Sten Rynning and Paal Sigurd Hilde focus more directly on the factors behind NATO’s failure militarily. They argue that the primary reason of the West’s failure is that from the outset NATO had a ‘strategic deficit’ coupled with a comprehensive approach and complex decision-making process. Although this operationally allowed the alliance to be flexible, strategically NATO forces suffered from a clear objective.
Chapter 4 examines the merits under international law of the US military action in Afghanistan in the name of ‘self-defence’. Here the authors Hovell and Hughes argue that the US justification was shaky and has operationally generated some ‘dangerous variants’. Of note, these include the preference for the use of force to be the ‘first option’ rather than the ‘last resort’ when a state feels threatened or attacked. Another is the ‘unwilling or unable’ justification for allowing the use of force in third states, most notably used in Pakistan where Islamabad was accused of pursuing insufficient measures against terrorists on their territory, thereby permitting US-led drone attacks. Hovell and Hughes argue that such dangerous variants ‘threatens to upend the principles of [state] sovereignty that underpin the jus ad belum structure’ (p. 75).
Chapters 6 to 8 deal with a wide array of different social and gendered understandings of the impact of the Afghanistan conflict. In Chapter 6, Nargis Nehan chronicles the ebb and flow of the women rights movement within Afghanistan, characterising it as a symbol for the tug-of-war for power between the conservative rural regions and the liberal urban centres throughout the twentieth century. Afzal Ashraf and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe in Chapter 7 deal with a similar theme of women empowerment and ‘emancipation’, focusing more directly on the recent experiences of women during the Taliban insurgency and under the Taliban regimes as well as the Afghan government. Thi Hoang in Chapter 8 addresses the darker but necessary issue of human trafficking, especially of women and children for use as sex and economic slaves to countries such as the UAE (p. 163).
Following the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan was literally abandoned and sanctioned by the Western governments with the aim to pressure the new regime. John Collins, Shehryar Fazli and Ian Tennant explore this policy and the likely repercussions in Chapter 9, arguing that the sanctions are only harming ordinary Afghans who are facing a humanitarian crisis rather than the Taliban elite. Further, it is noted that with little financial resources, the regime is likely to encourage poppy cultivation production initially in the northern parts of the country (p. 217).
The final two chapters detailed foreign policy choices of the US and China vis-a-vis the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In Chapter 11, Leslie Vinjamuri argued the major reason the US hurriedly quit Afghanistan was due to a strategic shift from West Asia to Indo-Pacific where China may pose challenges to US hegemony (p. 265). Nevertheless, the Ukraine–Russia war has situationally re-engaged the US in European security. Regarding China–Afghanistan ties, Feng Zhang has outlined China’s ‘New Engagement Policy’ grounded in ‘neighbourhood diplomacy’, security, political stability, humanitarianism and shaming the US and the West for ‘forfeiting their responsibility’ in the war-ravaged country (p. 284).
In summary, Afghanistan offers multiple and meaningful perspectives on the Western engagement and withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, it empirically outlined factors that explain the US–NATO defeat in Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban. While several of the arguments within the chapters will not be news to followers of events in Afghanistan, the book does make original and timely contributions. The most notable of these is the advocation that Western governments and other stakeholders need or ought to engage the Taliban diplomatically as, without financial resources and faced with humanitarian crisis, Afghanistan may again become a haven for global terrorist organisations such as Islamic State. Owing to its policy value, this book is a recommended read for the students and practitioners of public policy, international political economy as well as South Asian politics and foreign policy.