The Afghan Debacle Provides a Warning for Libya

Nation-building is now a dirty phrase, twinned with “forever war”, that bizarre description of a long-term military deployment. Nevertheless, the West must recognise and learn from its Afghan experience, not simply to act more prudently, but also how to conduct long-term social reconstruction more effectively. Indeed, absent careful policy, Libya threatens to transform much like Afghanistan, with even more catastrophic consequences for European security.

The US clearly accomplished its initial objective in Afghanistan, the destruction of the Taliban government that sheltered and supported al-Qaeda. Of course, al-Qaeda remains in Afghanistan, and maintains close political, ideological, and familial links with the Taliban. However, until these past months continuous Western force presence mitigated this threat by providing the Afghan military with overwhelming intelligence and airpower advantages.

The deep irony of the current debacle is that, in some meaningful sense, NATO’s mission in Afghanistan did succeed. Terrorist training infrastructure would have existed in the Taliban’s core provinces and parts of Pakistan. But the historical record demonstrates that moderate to minimal Middle Eastern military deployments prevented coordinated operations in the West. IS attacks, while devastating, were planned and conducted in a decentralised manner, and therefore constituted a distinct threat.

The US mission in Afghanistan was not militarily unsustainable. Every American and allied death was a tragedy, but the US lost 6,786 soldiers in the Afghan and Iraq wars, the same losses the British experienced during the Great War every fortnight. The US, moreover, has maintained an all-volunteer force since 1973. There is no lost generation of Afghan veterans, or even veterans from the War on Terror more broadly, in the Western world akin to young Frenchmen and Englishmen after 1918.

Nor was the Afghan mission financially unsustainable. The US spent around $1 trillion over 18 years in Afghanistan, with the majority of the spending taking place in the mission’s early years. In 2019, Social Security spending alone totalled $1 trillion, Medicare $800 billion, Medicaid $613 billion.

However, the Afghan mission was unsustainable, not militarily or financially, but politically. Pakistan’s support for the Taliban prevented the group’s destruction. Despite repeated tactical and operational reverses, Taliban fighters could retreat to Pakistan and regroup. Hence the emphasis on an “inclusive political settlement” under which the Taliban would participate in Afghan democracy. But the Taliban would never accept this settlement. They were convinced that the post-2001 Afghan government was illegitimate, and would collapse without foreign support, a view recent events have confirmed.

The issue is not a supposed incapacity for democracy. Afghans lack an explicitly democratic history, as did Germans and Japanese in 1945, and the overwhelming majority of Europe before the late 18^th century. Nevertheless, in one manner or another European and Middle Eastern societies developed parallel traditions of deliberative decision-making, particularly at the local level.

The Northern European thing, an assembly of all free males, is remarkably similar to the shura of Islamic law, and the loya jirga of Pashtun tradition. All are traditional assemblies, called periodically to discuss critical communal issues, in the Pashtun context typically to select new leaders or resolve tribal feuds. The first recognisably Afghan states, the Hotaki and Durrani Empires, called loya jirgas throughout the 18^th century. Afghanistan’s Barakzai monarchs did the same in the 20^th century. Amanullah Khan called three during his ten-year reign. Mohammed Zahir Shah, Afghanistan’s last king, used the loya jirga as the basis for constitutional democracy.

Rather than contradicting democratic representation, the Afghan monarchy is historically inseparable from it. Like any tribal society, Afghanistan is a patchwork of ethnically affiliated smaller political units. Afghan society is varied: while Pashtuns (42 percent) and Tajiks (27 percent) form a majority, dozens of smaller ethnic groups exist, each with their own tribal and inter-ethnic dynamics. Uniting this society requires not simply a legal political institution, but a cultural one that taps into Afghan history and tribal representation. That institution in Afghanistan is the monarchy, the only form of rule that successfully united Afghanistan absent foreign support.

In particular, the House of Barakzai still plays a central role in Afghan political consciousness. The Barakzai secured Afghan independence from British suzerainty, and henceforth served as the guardian of Afghan sovereignty. Mohammed Zahir Shah ruled Afghanistan for four decades, successfully defeating rebellions in the late 1940s, and creating a democratic constitution in 1964. This constitution was the culmination of decades of reforms, only made possible through the Barakzai’s intimate connections with Afghan ethnic groups and tribes.

Indeed, intra-royal infighting led to the 1973 coup – the autocratic Mohammed Daoud Khan was an Afghan prince, and used his connections to oust Mohammed Zahir Shah. Barakzai rule was imperfect. But the monarchy as an institution represented the potential of Afghan statehood, and provided Afghans with the longest continuous period of stability in the country’s history.

Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani repeatedly emphasised their monarchical connections, Karzai through his family’s political activity before 1973, Ghani through his admiration for Amanullah Khan’s reforms.[1] Karzai likely conceived of himself as a monarch, per his 2002 coronation ceremony resembling that of 18^th century king Ahmad Shah Durrani.[2] But despite their monarchical rhetoric and Pashtun ethnicity, neither president could entice the Taliban to negotiate legitimately for reconciliation, nor provide an alternative point of national identification.

There was an opportunity for Afghan monarchical restoration. Mohammed Zahir Shah returned to Afghanistan in April 2002, two months before the loya jirga was scheduled to select a transitional administration. Public support existed for monarchical restoration, although Zahir Shah stated that he would accept any decision the Afghan people made, and rejecting the title of king. However, the United States forced Zahir Shah to renounce his claims, clearing the way for the US-backed Karzai.[3]

Karzai’s nepotism spoiled the situation, creating an unpopular oligarchic political structure that alienated the population, and bolstered the Taliban’s support. A restored Zahir Shah, even in a largely ceremonial capacity, would have been able to resist these trends, and provide Afghans with a legitimate pole of political loyalty.

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