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Could Terrorists Use Afghanistan to Conduct External Ops Sooner than the Biden Administration Wants the World to Believe?

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Portrait of the terrorists who perpetrated a mass-casualty attack at a Shiite mosque in Kandahar during Friday prayers on October 15, 2021, distributed on Telegram Channels used to manage distribution of ISIS’ official propaganda (Source: Michael S. Smith II)

Nearly 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, United States President Joseph R. Biden, Jr decided to withdraw US military and other governmental personnel from Afghanistan. Once the withdrawal was underway, it became evident that the Taliban could and would reclaim control of most of the country. Since then, the Biden administration has strived to assuage concerns that either al-Qaeda, which has a longstanding alliance with the Taliban, or Islamic State (ISIS), which has a sizable presence of members in the country, could immediately use Afghanistan to conduct external operations. A notable example was seen in remarks issued by Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl during an open US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. In an exchange with the committee’s chair, Dr. Kahl advised, “I think the intelligence community currently assesses that both ISIS-K and al-Qaeda have the intent to conduct external operations, including against the US, but neither currently has the capability to do so.” History suggests this is a problematic assessment. Because the external operations programs managed by al-Qaeda and ISIS are much more dynamic than the one overseen by Usama bin Ladin on September 11, 2001. Plus, the situation in Afghanistan may be increasing their capabilities to conduct newer forms of external operations sooner than Dr. Kahl has led the Senate Armed Services Committee—thus the world—to believe either terrorist group can.

 A New Paradigm of External Operations

When the American born al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki partnered with Samir Khan to launch a new ezine named Inspire, a sea change in al-Qaeda’s global jihad came into clearer view.

Already, al-Awlaki’s online activities had indicated al-Qaeda was keen to expand its capabilities to generate buy-in for an ideology that could imbue some new adherents in the West with a sense of urgency to “defend” their faith vis-à-vis acts of terrorism. Before Khan moved from the US to Yemen to join forces with al-Awlaki, authorities’ responses to his online activities provided al-Qaeda with evidence that the US Government was not prepared to tackle such innovative efforts to build support for the group’s global jihad. As Khan put it in the second issue of Inspire while expressing his surprise that federal agencies had not disrupted his plans to travel overseas to join al-Qaeda in October 2009, “I was quiet [sic] open about my beliefs online and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out I was al Qaeda to the core.”[i] Indeed, prior to Khan’s departure for Yemen, then-Congressman Sue Myrick, a member of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and chair of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus who represented the North Carolina congressional district in which Khan resided, had expressed concerns about his online activities to the FBI.[ii] In a recent discussion with me about open source intelligence’s (OSINT) potential utilities in counterterrorism, Congressman (Ret) Myrick noted, “When he was in Charlotte, working out of his parents’ basement, he changed servers constantly, used foreign ones, so they never could charge him,” adding:  “It was a total screw up by the FBI.”

Perhaps more importantly, al-Qaeda also had evidence that al-Awlaki’s blog posts and YouTube content had likely helped stimulate Nidal Hasan’s interests in perpetrating a terrorist attack at Fort Hood in November 2009. Regardless of whether al-Awlaki should be painted as the radicalizing force, Hasan had contacted al-Awlaki via e-mail to try to confirm that attacks targeting US military personnel would be permissible, according to al-Awlaki’s notions of sharia (Islamic law). That al-Awlaki did not reply to Hasan’s e-mail with a message contesting the legitimacy of the following directive issued by bin Ladin and other Salafi-Jihadist luminaries in their 1998 declaration of war with the US and Jews was almost certainly the stuff of inspirational silence:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it …

Yet, prior to 2010, al-Awlaki’s online activities had not offered such concrete evidence that he aimed to expand al-Qaeda’s capabilities to orient the interests of his target audience towards using items in their mothers’ kitchens to make bombs and perpetrate terrorist attacks. This was made clear with a how-to feature story in the first issue of Inspire that was published online in 2010.

Also made clear by the first issue of Inspire was al-Qaeda’s interest in establishing direct and safe lines of communication with individuals in the West who may be willing to serve as agents in its external operations program. Not only did al-Awlaki and Khan provide Gmail, Hotmail, Fastmail and Yahoo e-mail addresses that could be used to contact them; they published a four-page tutorial on how al-Qaeda enthusiasts in the West could use an encrypted correspondence tool to exchange messages with them.

That al-Qaeda’s second and presumably current leader determined there was profit to be garnered from the model of online incitement developed by al-Awlaki and Khan is made evident from the continued publication of Inspire and variations thereof following their deaths in 2011, as well as al-Qaeda’s expanded use of popular and “dark” social media since. Notable dividends include the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 and the attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. According to the US Justice Department’s chief expert witness in the prosecution of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, perpetrators of the former plot gathered instructions for producing their bombs from the aforementioned article published in the first issue of Inspire, titled “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom.” A victim targeted in the latter attack in France was featured in a hit list that was published in the tenth issue of Inspire, which was published online in the spring of 2013.

As I noted in testimony for a US Senate hearing in 2017, following the declaration of its so-called “caliphate,” ISIS took al-Awlaki’s online model for expanding al-Qaeda’s capabilities to wage jihad in the West to “new heights.” In 2014, it should have been clear to officials in the US Intelligence Community who were briefing senior officials like then-Vice President Biden that ISIS’ intensely incitement-focused propaganda was intended to support its external operations. Abu Mohamed al-Adnani (d. 2016), the group’s spokesman who declared ISIS had established a “caliphate” in 2014, was also managing its external operations program. This indicated that orchestrating attacks in the West would feature prominently in how ISIS leaders would seek to define perceptions of the group. So too did the abundance of threats against Western nations in the group’s propaganda. Additionally, by the end of 2014, the most prominent narrative directed at consumers of the group’s propaganda that was tailored for (prospective) supporters in the West emphasized the following action items:  According to Islamic traditions, all Muslims must give baya (allegiance) to ISIS’ “caliph,” and this allegiance is demonstrated with one of the following two actions:  Making hijrah (emigrating) to the “caliphate” to support the group, or, if one is unable to do so, perpetrating terrorist attacks in their home country.

Since then, ISIS has used its propaganda that is tailored to present an image of strength and durability—thus worthiness of support—paired with an aggressive exploitation of social media technologies, along with more user-friendly encrypted communication tools than were available to al-Awlaki, to orchestrate exceedingly more attacks in the West than al-Qaeda. In many cases, these attacks have been perpetrated by terrorists not trained in either conflict zones or “sanctuaries.” In most cases, their selections of targets and tools used to perpetrate attacks have reflected adherence to directives devolved in ISIS propaganda. So too have these terrorists’ efforts to firmly define their actions as contributions to ISIS’ global jihad pursuant to the following guidance that was published in the fourth issue of its infamous ezine Dabiq in October 2014:

At this point of the crusade against the Islamic State, it is very important that attacks take place in every country that has entered into the alliance against the Islamic State, especially the US, UK, France, Australia and Germany. … It is important that the killing becomes attributed to patrons of the Islamic State who have obeyed its leadership. … Otherwise, crusader media makes such attacks appear to be random killings.

By ensuring their actions were understood as efforts to fulfill expectations for group supporters’ conduct set in ISIS propaganda, these de facto agents of ISIS’ external operations have done more than just demonstrate their faithful adherence to the group’s gudiance. They have also helped ISIS—which al-Adnani claimed was the true steward of bin Ladin’s manhaj (methodology) weeks before declaring it had established a “caliphate”—appear as a more competent and dedicated manager of a global jihad than al-Qaeda under the leadership of bin Ladin’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Current Situation in Afghanistan:  New Fuel for the New Paradigm of External Operations?

The current situation in Afghanistan could be used by both al-Qaeda and ISIS to conduct external operations sooner than the Biden administration apparently wants the world to believe. It enhances each group’s capabilities to project an image of strength and durability. This, in turn, fuels their powers of persuasion that factor centrally in their capabilities to conduct effective recruitment-cum-incitement campaigns in the cyber domain focused on grooming agents for external operations here in the West.

For al-Qaeda, the hasty withdrawal of the US military has enabled the group to meet a key expectation set by bin Ladin’s external communications:  al-Qaeda and its allies can survive “long wars” with the United States and its closest allies, which bin Ladin believed would “bleed” America of vast amounts of financial resources, influence in the Muslim world and the political will to deny participants in the wider Salafi-Jihadist movement capabilities to pursue their chief goal of restoring a caliphate. This intensifies the perceptibility of al-Qaeda as a credible organization that is pursuing a viable strategy for achieving that inspirational goal. The optics of a Taliban “victory” corresponding with the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks also reinforces the view of al-Qaeda as not only an important force in, but also a key beneficiary of the apparently successful effort to transition Afghanistan back into an “Islamic Emirate.” Indeed, that the Taliban has not disavowed al-Qaeda conveys a message to al-Qaeda’s wider support base that Afghanistan is likely to be a safer haven for the group than ever before. Here, it is useful to consider that, as demonstrated by ISIS following the declaration of its “caliphate,” de facto control of territory factors importantly in Salafi-Jihadists’ capabilities to fashion a group as a legitimate enterprise that is worthy of support—including support furnished in the form of terrorist attacks perpetrated in the West.

For ISIS, recent developments in Afghanistan have rendered an abundance of opportunities to further contrast the group with al-Qaeda. Further, it is doing this in ways that can provide particularly potent incentives for individuals who share these groups’ goal of restoring a caliphate to help ISIS assert dominance in the wider Salafi-Jihadist movement. Notably, by seizing on the opportunity to perpetrate attacks targeting American military personnel at Hamid Karzai International Airport, ISIS simultaneously highlighted two things that are almost certainly of great interest to prospective recruits, including members of competing groups like al-Qaeda who may be willing to defect into ISIS’ ranks:  There were substantial opportunities to kill US military personnel, but neither al-Qaeda, nor its chief ally, the Taliban, were seizing them. This reinforces ISIS’ claims that al-Qaeda has deviated from the path of jihad charted by bin Ladin. Thus, as al-Adnani put it in an address just before he declared ISIS had established a “caliphate,” al-Qaeda is no longer the “base of jihad.” Moreover, the spectacular effects produced by the attack at the airport in Kabul on August 26, 2021 that was perpetrated by a single ISIS member—in particular, the deaths of 13 US military personnel—paired with the surge of ISIS-claimed attacks in Afghanistan thereafter, are successes that can help the group animate aspirations among supporters in the West to perpetrate attacks here.

Ultimately, the situation in Afghanistan is very likely to stimulate interests among sympathetic consumers of al-Qaeda’s and ISIS’ propaganda here in the West in doing things to help these groups advance their global agendas. Given the increased emphasis among the US and its closest allies on denying prospective aspirant terrorists capabilities to travel abroad to join these groups, one of the easiest things al-Qaeda and ISIS enthusiasts here in the West can do to support them is volunteering to serve as agents in their external operations. This makes amplifying the notion that neither group can immediately capitalize on the situation in Afghanistan to help them orchestrate attacks in the US a risky business, both in terms of the Biden administration’s political and national security management concerns. Not only could this undermine confidence in President Biden if attacks occur, potentially offering Donald Trump and other prospective contenders for the presidency renewed opportunities to harness concerns about counterterrorism policies to boost their candidacies the way that Trump did in 2016; it creates additional incentives for al-Qaeda and ISIS to increase their efforts to push supporters in the US to perpetrate attacks. Indeed, as bin Ladin clearly understood, defying expectations about Salafi-Jihadists’ capabilities to advance their agendas that are set by their powerful enemies can help inspire confidence in groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. Thus, perhaps it is not a coincidence that, right now, there is a push underway to help increase al-Qaeda’s capabilities to attract support from English speakers by increasing the availability of English-language translations of its propaganda.

[i] Citing the transliteration of the group’s name used by Khan.

[ii] The author was a contributing expert to the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus.

Should Female Foreign Fighters be Repatriated?

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While as devoted as their male counterparts, female Jihadis are an underexplored topic of analysis in understanding racidalisation (Image credit: AFP)

It is a woman who teaches you today a lesson in heroism, who teaches you the meaning of Jihad, and the way to die a martyr‘s death … It is a woman who has shocked the enemy, with her thin, meager, and weak body … It is a woman who blew herself up, and with her exploded all the myths about women‘s weakness, submissiveness, and enslavement.

-Al-Sha’ab editorial, February 2002

Since the decline of Islamic State (IS), national governments are faced with the dilemma of leaving the remaining Jihadi foreign fighters and their families in Syria or repatriating them for prosecution in their home countries. This article focuses on the choice of the British Government to leave these individuals in Syria. It does so by discussing the associated difficulties to reintegrate jihadi women within society and its impact on existing counterterrorism (CT) strategies and de-indoctrination processes in the United Kingdom. Specifically, the role of female foreign fighters within the culture of Salafi-Jihadism remains underestimated, particularly with regards to their devotion to the cause and survival of the terrorist network.

Historically, a large participation of women in terrorists networks can be seen. According to Jessica Davis, female suicide bombers counted between twenty-eight to thirty-one per cent in Chechnya, while these numbers stand at fifty-four per cent in Nigeria. Similarly, during the 1970s and 1980s in the German Red Army, women counted for one third of the overall number. In the meantime, between 1986 and 2005, of the seventeen terrorist organisations which used suicide-bomb as a tactic, women were active in half of them. The article concludes that due to the lack of access to terrorist networks and their affiliated organisations, experts generally focus on male foreign fighters, as they cover positions of relevance within the organisation. In this sense, opting for repatriation of these individuals could result in a unique opportunity to advance the knowledge on rehabilitation and de-indoctrination procedures.

In terms of numbers, in 2017, there were over 40,000 jihadi fighters who travelled to Syria to fight under the banner of IS. Of the total number, thirteen per cent (or 4,761) were women, with another twelve per cent (4,640) were minors, who joined the terrorist grouping between 2013 and 2018. Since its defeat, around four-hundred foreign fighters, among them about fifty to sixty women, could or have returned to the United Kingdom (UK). A number of these women have not been able to return as Downing Street exercised its power to strip such citizens of their British nationality. This power, granted by the Immigration Act 2014, states that the British Government reserves the authority to deprive a person of their citizenship should that individual have conducted himself or herself in a manner that could compromise the UK’s interests.

One example of a female foreign fighter stripped of her British citizenship is Shamima Begum, a case which British newspaper put in the spotlights. The problem, however, is larger than her. Causing devastation on multiple occasions, the UK confronts a long history of home-grown terrorists which keep CT agencies in constant pursuit. One of the most prominent and famous cases is Samantha Lewthwaite also named the White Widow, the wife of the London 7/7 attacker, Germaine Lindsey, and currently on Interpol’s most-wanted list. Lewthwaite fake her detachment from her husband’s actions and beliefs and convinced the prosecutors of her innocence. She escaped British and European authorities disappearing shortly after. Lewthwaite is also linked to a series of other terror plots including the 2012 bombing in Kenya and in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013.

At present, the British government decided that foreign fighters should remain in Syrian prison camps. However, the terrorist threat continues, with al-Qaeda’s increased activity in the region could potentially see remaining IS fighters join, detainees released, and both groups absorbed into the Base’s operations. According to the head of MI6: ‘They are likely to have acquired both the skills and connections that make them potentially very dangerous and also experienced extreme radicalisation.’ In this sense, IS’ weaker presence in the region does not reflect a decrease in the overall influence of terrorist organisations, which are likely to benefit from the situation. At the same time, repatriating these individuals would likely result in a higher investment of resources for monitoring and de-indoctrination purposes. Such a development would add further pressure on the criminal justice system and counterterrorism units.

What makes female jihadi fighters so significant in light of such debates? Academics tend to focus primarily on the role of men in terrorist organisations as they cover positions of relevance. The lack of ample information regarding female fighters makes them equally dangerous, and all the more important to understand. Lacking the most up-to-date information on women’s ‘path to Jihad’ makes it difficult for Counterterrorism experts to produce appropriate de-indoctrination procedures fitting these profiles. However, from the available information on radicalisation and focusing on case studies in which women were the subjects, it is possible to understand this important element.

Women often cover ‘less visible,’ albeit critical roles within terrorist organisations. They are educators of the next generation, facilitators, and perpetrators of the jihadi cause through recruitment and management of finances displaying a deep devotion to the cause and a continuation of the religious struggle. The level of indoctrination they have been subjected to in their homes or in camps, but also due to the nature of the motivations for joining the organisations contests to this fact. Multiple psychologists including Yoram Schweitzer and Farhana Ali identified these causes as being much more personal for women. Indeed, they can be with the ‘Four Rs:’ Revenge (the loss of a dominant male in their lives such as husband, father or brother), Redemption (due to alleged or real sexual misconducts), Respect (inability to conceive children or being considered marriageable), and Relationship (being daughters, wives or sisters of well-known insurgents).

Based on their analysis, it is crucial to consider the individual’s unique path to radicalisation and indoctrination. Such a path is clearly based on personal experiences via the justification of events happening to them, their families, and their community. Specifically, each individual justifies the use of violence and the adoption of Islamic extremism based on how they interpret their familiar links to terrorists, often citing hatred against those who killed their family members, and even societal pressure. In a nutshell, ‘terrorist behavior is a response to the frustration of various political, economic, and personal needs or objectives.’ Therefore, this link between personal experiences and an individual’s personality transform women, who choose to follow the path of radicalisation, becoming strong believers in violent jihad and demonstrating extreme devotion to the cause.

To conclude, whether to support or criticise the British government on its decision to deny the return of these individuals depends on an in-depth and accurate analysis of the pros and cons of such decisions. The long history of home-grown terrorism in the United Kingdom constitutes an important element of analysis in the choice to repatriate or leaving these individuals in Syria. The example of Samantha Lewthwaite, for example, shows the difficulties associated with the processes of de-indoctrination. In this sense, women have demonstrated to cover essential roles in the fields of recruitment, finance, and perpetration of terrorism, showing a new way to interpret the figure of the ‘terrorist.’ Such a shift inspired scholars to coin an alternative version named the ‘female jihad,’ to understand female fighters’ unique path to radicalisation and, thus, creating a new window of analysis. In this context, repatriation ought to be seen as an opportunity to develop more rigorous de-indoctrination processes which are currently still in the pioneering stage, while using the protection of these individuals as examples to disillusion prospective foreign fighters.

Francesco Bruno is a full-time first-year PhD Candidate in Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, focusing on the organisational practices and choices of terrorist organizations with al-Qaeda as a primary case study. He received a BScEcon in International Politics from Aberystwyth University in 2016 before moving to the University of Manchester where he obtained a MA in Peace and Conflict Studies in 2017. During his studies, he took part in research trips in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Rwanda where he conducted fieldwork regarding the pacification and peace processes. Francesco’s main areas of interest span from Peace processes to state-building as well as counterterrorism and counterinsurgency with a focus on Afghanistan and Iraq

Normative Approaches versus Inclusive Peacebuilding in Afghanistan

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by Catharine Helmers

(Image credit: Casey Johnson)

Local ownership as a tenet of external intervention and peacebuilding has been a key point of debate for many years now, although its meaning and implications have long been contested. While many within the international community use the term as though it was universally understood, ‘local ownership remains remarkably understudied and, to date, understandings of ownership have been based primarily on assumptions and normative beliefs held broadly in both the policy and academic communities,’ as von Billerbeck notes.

The term must be conceptually flexible, adaptable to the situational and cultural context in which it is being applied, but can be understood broadly as mechanisms and systems by which some level of decision-making power and influence over ‘both the design and implementation’ of the peacebuilding process resides with domestic actors. In order for local legitimacy to exist, the primary audience and judgement-maker for legitimacy must be the local/target population. This article will establish and problematize the prevailing approach to local ownership in peacebuilding, examining the failures and ramifications of the peacebuilding process in Afghanistan in order to point to an alternative approach.

The prevailing approach to constructing local ownership in peacebuilding has been a normative one, noted by Zaum and von Billerbeck, often excluding local actors who may be representative of communities on the ground or have local authority but do not fit the Western image of a legitimate peacebuilder. By excluding illiberal actors from having a seat at the table, the international community severely limits who can take part in peacebuilding in post-conflict contexts. Although this normative approach is morally understandable, it undermines an intervention’s practical ability to build peace by denying local ownership in the process to key actors, thus reducing local legitimacy. As lessons from Afghanistan show, it is dangerous to exclude ‘bad actors’ from the peacebuilding process.

Case Study: Afghanistan

In 2001, after removing the Taliban from power in Kabul, the US-led coalition faced a new challenge: to rebuild the Afghan state. When it was decided what actors would be involved in these peacebuilding efforts as part of the Bonn Agreement, the Taliban was excluded, as it was not viewed by the international community (the UN and US in particular) as a legitimate actor deserving of ownership in the peace process in wake of its decisive military defeat.

Because of this, as Jonathan Goodhand and Mark Sedra discuss, the Bonn agreement ‘was a not a peace accord between belligerents, but an externally driven division of the spoils among a hand­picked group of stakeholders who were on the right side of the War on Terror.’ As illustrated by a study conducted by The Inclusive Peace & Transition Initiative, not only was the Taliban excluded from the peacebuilding process, but the very actors selected were chosen because of their opposition to the Taliban.

The reality, for better or worse, is that the Taliban, although fractured after the collapse of its regime, was still a crucial actor in the power dynamics of Afghanistan at the time of Bonn and thus should not have been ignored due to its apparent incompatibility with liberal values. Timor Sharan summarizes the failure of Bonn, which ‘did not necessarily reflect the general Afghan demographic balance, or even the political power of the factions, but the internationally sponsored military successes of the [Northern Alliance]’.

By excluding the Taliban, the interveners not only reduced the effectiveness of their reconstruction efforts, but also the legitimacy of the new governing system. To many Afghans, the normative justification given for excluding the Taliban must have seemed hypocritical, as other illiberal actors were included in the process, such as ‘Mujahedeen factions…many of whom were suspected to be guilty of human rights abuses and war crimes.’ Normative determinations of the legitimacy of local actors were not based on the values they were claimed to be, and were therefore not just ineffective and unrealistic, but contradictory.

What were the impacts of this approach to local ownership in peacebuilding? During the next nineteen years of war after Bonn, external interveners continued to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan population as they focused on self-legitimizing their peacebuilding efforts instead of seeking local legitimacy, a problem extending to the UN as well. A 2009 poll showed that Afghan support for and confidence in the US-led intervention continued to decline as the intervention went on, and the Taliban continued to vie for territorial control year after year, threatening peace and security. The failure to understand the local context and to recognize the power dynamics on the ground lead to the overall failure of the peacebuilding intervention.

Today, the Taliban has gotten its day at the negotiating table, with arguably more bargaining power than ever. Even as peace talks continue, the Taliban continues to engage in ever-increasing levels of violence. Although the U.S. military stopped measuring the number of districts under insurgent control as of 2019, it has been estimated that the Afghan government now controls less than 50 percent of Afghan districts, with the rest either under Taliban control or contested. The future of Afghan peace remains uncertain, but what is clear that the Taliban will have a major role in shaping the post-war landscape. Perhaps if they had been included in the peacebuilding process from the start, the situation in Afghanistan would be a different one. In excluding the Taliban on normative grounds, the intervention undermined its own chances to create sustainable peace and security.

So how should external interveners decide what actors to bring to the table to construct real local ownership? The answer must lie in analyses of local power structures and systems of representation instead of in the norms and values of the outside intervening forces. External interveners must depart from the prevailing norms-based approach to constructing local ownership, instead of working within the existing ground-level dynamics of power and representation.

In a post-conflict context, this will often, if not always, mean the inclusion of illiberal actors. Although this approach may delay the pace of peacebuilding, a slower and more complicated peacebuilding process that includes tangible forms of local ownership is better than an externally imposed, norms-focused process that is unlikely to be viable in the long run. If future interventions are to have any hope of success, local ownership in peacebuilding must be constructed by prioritizing the inclusion of locally legitimate actors, regardless of the normative determinations of the external interveners.

Catharine Helmers recently completed her master’s thesis for the M.A. in International Conflict Studies programme at King’s College London, where she examined the role of emotional conditioning in facilitating atrocities by sub-Saharan African rebel groups. She currently serves as Coordinating Assistant for the Urban Violence Research Network. You can find Catharine on Twitter @cat_helmers

So Little Winning: The Afghanistan Papers and Victory Theory

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by Michael C. Davies

The Washington Post’s publication of the Afghanistan Papers exposed the unwinnable nature of the war (Image Credit: The Atlantic)

In a testament to the hyperactive character of our present moment, it was only three months ago that The Washington Post broke a story that senior civilian and military officials in the U.S. Government have known that the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable for at least the past decade. As such, the recently signed agreement between the US and the Taliban is essentially a surrender agreement, allowing the US to withdrawal regardless of the consequences—a new Afghan civil war. The so-named Afghanistan Papers outlined how “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” The principal reason for this was a total lack of consensus on what the objectives were in Afghanistan, the disconnect between the stated political and military goals, and an inability to bridge this gap. Why was there no consensus on what the objectives were? Because the very notion of victory is contested. It is hard to win a war when no one knows what victory means conceptually, let alone in context.

Using a Freedom for Information Act (FOIA) request, the Post obtained more than 2,000 pages of primary interview data from over 400 individuals collected by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). This organization was created in 2008 to provide oversight of the effectiveness, efficiency, and good order of the reconstruction project in Afghanistan. Its quarterly reports, along with its long assessment papers have been an invaluable trove of data, insight, telling quotes, and operational understanding throughout its time. In its most recent quarterly report, SIGAR stated that “Both overall enemy-initiated attacks and effective enemy-initiated attacks during the fourth quarter of 2019 exceeded same-period levels every year since recording began in 2010.” Simply: the Taliban and other groups are more operationally effective and active than at any time in the past decade, and that the US and its NATO allies and partners are losing the war if it has not already been lost.

There is a deeply intertwined issue of theory and practice in the story of the Afghanistan war that appears in the Afghanistan Papers that few have noted, let alone understood. The most stunning quotes of the reporting showcase just how astrategic the thinking was in Afghanistan precisely because few have a solid idea of what victory means. Take these key highlighted quotes as prime examples:

 

  • Richard Boucher, State Department official for South Asia, 2006–2009: “If there ever was a notion of mission creep it is in Afghanistan… We are trying to achieve the unachievable instead of achieving the achievable.”
  • Douglas Lute, Afghan War ‘czar’, Obama Administration: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan—we didn’t know what we were doing.”
  • Bob Crowley, a retired U.S. Army Colonel and counterinsurgency adviser, 2013–2014: “There were a number of faulty assumptions in the strategy: Afghanistan is ready for democracy overnight, the population will support the government in a short time frame, more of everything is better.”
  • An unnamed US Official serving as liaison to NATO: What were we actually doing in that country?… What are our objectives?…. It was never fully clear in our own minds what the establish goals and timelines were.”

 

These four comments loosely follow the goals of the Afghanistan War until the Trump Administration in chronological order. The war began as a retaliatory strike again Al-Qaeda for the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, that then turned into a nation-building exercise because the entire Taliban governing apparatus collapsed under the weight of a few hundred bombs and special operations raids in collaboration with Northern Alliance light forces. The Iraq War then radically cut the resources and forces available for both efforts as the goal now became to transform the region into a mini-America. With Obama, the goal turned to “a responsible end” via a troop and civilian surge to give the Afghan Government time to build its capacity. Finally, with Trump, the goal simply seems to “bomb the shit” out of anyone and everyone.

What these quotes, as they relate to the circumstances and declared goals coming from policymakers, show are the leading examples of why the existing literature on victory in war is so superficial and contradictory. Boucher’s comment is an example of those who think that military objectives equal strategic objectives. ‘Mission creep’ is a term used by those who cannot conceive of victory in political terms and that mission creep occurs because initial military objectives rarely satisfy even announced policy goals. Lute’s comments are in line with those who think that a good strategy is all that is needed to achieve victory; that simply by aligning ends-ways-and-means all will be right with the world. Crowley’s comments are an example of an execution gap—where the appropriately aligned forces and resources to do the job simply do not exist. While the NATO liaison’s comments show that just because political and military objectives have been stated, that does not mean they are applicable, effectual, or clear to everyone in theatre. Furthermore, reporting last year noted a conversation between a Pentagon official and an intelligence analyst whereby the official asked, “Are we winning?,” and the analyst said, after looking at a mountain of data and said, “I have no idea, sir,” This is the danger of thinking in terms of metrics.

In 2019, RAND produced a significant report on victory theory. While Afghanistan was not outlined in the case studies, the Iraq War was. The report noted that the United States and its allies achieved the overwhelming majority of its objectives in the war either at the level of ‘success’ or ‘some success.’ Only two objectives were coded as ‘no success’—“create a prosperous free Iraq; Create a peaceful, united, stable, and secure Iraq.” By these measures, the Iraq War was mostly a success. Yet, the U.S. Army’s own study on Iraq calls it an Iranian victory. Similarly, with Afghanistan, many other analyses already describe it as a strategic failure. Regardless of the terminology, definitions, and concepts used, whether in theory or in practice, nothing seems to work as intended. It is beyond time to recognize that there is a theoretical black hole —no one knows what victory means, let alone how to achieve it—and the war in Afghanistan is just its latest victim.

Michael C. Davies is a Ph.D. candidate in Defence Studies at King’s College London, focusing on the theory and practise of victory. He previously conducted lessons learned research at the U.S. National Defense University where he co-authored three books on the Wars of 9/11 and is one of the progenitors of the Human Domain doctrinal concept. He is also a Senior Editor with Strife.

Book Review: “What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?”

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Reviewed by: Millie Radovic

Gurcan, Metin. What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?: Understanding Counter-Insurgency Efforts in Tribalized Rural and Muslim Environments. Helion and Company, 2016. ISBN: 978-1-911096-00-9.

 

The term ‘Counter-Insurgency’, also known as COIN, has in the post-9/11 era become synonymous with Afghanistan. Nearing its sixteenth year, the NATO-led campaign to defeat the Taliban insurgency that followed the US invasion in 2001, is not short of critical literature. In Metin Gurcan’s What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?, the author tackles several questions: Why have so many efforts in Afghanistan been futile? Why has this been such a persistent conflict? And, what are we missing in our current understandings of the Afghan state and society? His answer to all these is Tribal Rural and Muslim Environments (TRMEs) and it is their characteristics that he goes on to analyze.

As a seasoned veteran in the practice and theory of Western military interventions, Gurcan uses his personal experiences of growing up in a rural Muslim environment in Turkey and working in Afghanistan as a military consultant between 2000 and 2008 to introduce a new perspective on COIN strategy – the primacy of tribalism. In other words, he argues that TRMEs are the defining feature of Afghanistan[1]. While conventional literature deems these ‘ungoverned’[2], he contends that they very much are regulated by their own norms, rules, and structures. In the first chapter, Gurcan defines TRMEs and outlines their key characteristics in relation to the state, family, Islam, justice, and violence. Thereafter, he uses this framework to examine modern Afghan history, and finally outlines the implications that TRMEs have on the nature and success rates of NATO-led COIN efforts in Afghanistan.

Gurcan’s key contribution to the current modern literature on Afghanistan is his emphasis on the importance of tribal order, a unique prevalence of Islam, and a rural landscape. Tribal order, as he defines it, “is a particular form of socio-economic and political control that completely rejects other belief systems introduced by the outsiders into the traditional way of life.”[3] He highlights that tribal orders are not resistant to adaptation and change, but that any transformation must be on their terms and that the very core tenets of their modus operandi do not change. Therefore, “any political solution disregarding the fact of territorial identities of the tribes or violating them may be confronted by strong reactions from the tribes.”[4] Gurcan’s well-defined framework of the Afghan tribal order and its relationship with society lends a perspective into Afghan society that is often undermined or ignored in COIN literature, and implies that our failures in COIN have been fashioned by our misunderstanding of the local environment. For example, Gurcan observes that state borders are meaningless for tribes[5], how in TRMEs “authority not reasoning comes to the conclusion about correct action”[6], yet that also “battles between tribes are never fought so fierce that one side attempts to annihilate the other completely”[7]. His observations challenge common value-based perceptions of what the social structure of a state ought to be.

Another highlight of Gurcan’s book is his poignant use of anecdotes and hypotheticals. He immerses the reader in the milieu of a local Afghan in the middle of the insurgency. His continual use of hypotheticals to explain the mentality of tribal leaders, or to explain the dilemmas of ISAF commanders, and show the importance of interpreters offer a candid picture of the Afghan environment.

The niche theme suggests that the target audience is not broad, but aims at a readership that has already in some way engaged with COIN and Afghanistan before. If this indeed is the case, many of components of the book are arguably redundant and unnecessary. For example, the second chapter spends much unnecessary time on outlining the geography, demography and modern history of Afghanistan. If an informed audience is assumed, then the section itself is excessive. It gathers commonly known facts into a chapter to conclude that these factors have had four commonly known impacts on rural Afghanistan. Such impacts are the removal of tribal structures from governance, the emergence of new networks of political Islamists under the Taliban’s flag, the development of violence as a ‘norm’ in settling socio-political and economic issues, and the destruction of traditional economic structures making room for warlordism.[8] Meanwhile, in the final chapter, Gurcan states that he will address ‘generally unknown’ issues of COIN strategies in Afghanistan. However, much of it reads like a compilation of existing work on counterinsurgency theories – those of David Galula, David Kilcullen, and John Nagl – together with contemporary literature on Afghanistan and the Taliban. However, Gurcan’s first-person insight into Afghan society makes this book authentic.

Finally, all of Gurcan’s arguments on how we have misunderstood Afghanistan are convincing, yet his angle of analysis is so narrow that he straps himself into a policymaking straightjacket. By stressing local level understanding as the sole most important component of COIN efforts, Gurcan avoids broader overarching factors. His understandings of corruption, even norms, and security and justice appear solely defined by his experience of Afghanistan. This eliminates any value-based judgment of the issues and – as he admits himself – setting this book up for a problem-structuring, but not problem-solving narrative. As such, in order to yield results, this book must be accompanied by multiple other readings on the issues he refers to and a thorough knowledge of the COIN campaign in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, with vast tactical implications, What Went Wrong in Afghanistan is an essential contribution to the literature on COIN in Afghanistan. It is yet another reminder that as books like Gurcan’s improve our understanding of Afghanistan, our efforts must begin capitalizing on them.

Millie Radovic (@millie_radovic) is a final-year British student reading for a BA in International Relations at the Department of War Studies in King’s College London.

Notes:

[1] Gurcan, Metin. What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?: Understanding Counter-insurgency Efforts in Tribalized Rural and Muslim Environments. Helion and Company, 2016. p.15

[2] See Mills, Greg. “Calibrating Ink Spots: Filling Afghanistan’s Ungoverned Spaces.” The RUSI Journal 151, no. 4 (2006): 16-25; Rabasa, Angel. Ungoverned territories: Understanding and reducing terrorism risks. Vol. 561. Rand Corporation, 2007; Schetter, Conrad. “7 Ungoverned territories.” The Spatial Dimension of Risk: How Geography Shapes the Emergence of Riskscapes 27 (2012): 97.

[3] Metin, What Went Wrong in Afghanistan? (2016). p.33

[4] Ibid. p.35

[5] Ibid. p.52

[6] Ibid. p.39

[7] Ibid. p.50

[8] Ibid. p.91

Feature image credit: Tomas Munita for The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html