I have been reflecting a lot on what failed in Afghanistan, where we failed as a nation and where I made mistakes as an officer.
Number 1 was going to Iraq. Like many, I supported this invasion. But, in retrospect, it distracted our forces for a war that had nothing to do with 9/11. We should have been concentrated in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, one of our big mistakes was with the Afghan army. And I was part of the problem.
We built an army similar to the Western armies, designed to use overwhelming firepower and enjoy infinite logistics and exquisite intelligence resources. When they withdrew, Afghan security forces were unable to fight as we expected. We should have designed them to be more in harmony with Afghan culture and society, following tribal and family lines, like the Taliban. Corruption at the highest levels of government and leadership gave many Afghan soldiers and police few reasons to want to fight.
As Director of Operations for the Kandahar Regional-South Command, from August 2009 to November 2010, I saw many brave and competent Afghan officers and units. I thought it was possible that they could finally be left alone. I left Kandahar in late 2010 very optimistic about the future. But I couldn’t believe what I saw with my own eyes: that the most effective Afghan units were actually the ones that looked a lot like the Taliban. These were the units run by U.S. Green Berets, which moved at speed in pickup trucks, did not wear boots or helmets, but knew people and culture. I was part of the problem.
Following my deployment in Afghanistan, I was director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Staff Coordination Cell throughout 2011. As such, I led a team of experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan that helped develop / coordinate the policy of the region and represented the joint staff of the weekly meeting of deputies in the White House.
We thought Pakistan was an ally. They were not. We were concerned about their nuclear weapons and we believe we could spend enough money and give enough help to maintain control of their nuclear weapons and also deny refuge to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Instead, we found Osama bin Laden living in a large house on the street of the Pakistan Military Academy, and the Taliban enjoyed an almost free safe haven in the western mountains of Pakistan. Indeed, they were an arm of the Pakistani intelligence service. Our strategy focused excessively on Afghanistan.
We never fully implemented a strategy that included Pakistan and, by necessity, India. In retrospect, it is clear that I failed to push hard enough to achieve a strategy that included Pakistan. Even worse, I did not realize that the opposing views of Pakistani experts were suppressed or ignored.
Our government should have raised a tax specifically to pay for Afghanistan. Without this tax, most Americans would not be affected by our deployment in Afghanistan. Therefore, there was little pressure from the American public in Congress or any administration to have the sense of urgency needed to review our strategy and assumptions and end this deployment.
So how do you move forward?
The immediate priority is to get everyone out who needs or wants to get out. This is already a humanitarian disaster and will get worse if the United States, our allies and the United Nations cannot prevent it. The scenes we now see coming out of Afghanistan are tragic, chaotic, frustrating and sad. But what many may not see are the incredible efforts of soldiers and marines on the ground, and the amazing skill and courage of the aviators who fly in and out of Kabul airport. Even less visible and appreciated are the daily work of the commanders and staff of the Pentagon and the United States Central Command.
What they need is time, and the failure of the Biden administration to plan ahead means the military must hurry to meet the August 31 deadline. The Taliban should never be the ones to rule on our actions.
This will launch into Europe another refugee problem that will be destabilizing and that can have negative consequences for the United States, given that the European Union is our largest trading partner.
The second step is to re-evaluate our strategy for the region. We need to see it as a regional security issue, not just an Afghan issue. The Chinese will surely travel quickly with a lot of money and zero concerns for human rights or women’s safety in order to access the large amount of precious minerals that are waiting to be extracted from the mountains of Afghanistan.
Finally, I believe that we must make a rigorous introspection on all governmental, diplomatic and defense / security institutions. I’ve been doing it on my own actions, but the military has to study where things went wrong and try not to make the same mistakes again. And if we don’t learn, it will happen again.
General Ben Hodges, now retired, was the former general in command of the United States Army in Europe.