Afghanistan: The Great Facade — Analysis by a Combat Veteran — Lt. Col. (ret.) D.L. Jones

The Great Facade by D.L. Jones 

This article is dedicated to MG Harold J. Greene and LTC James J. Walton, both of whom were Killed in Action (KIA) in Afghanistan. One was my boss and mentor; the other a dear friend.  

 

August 15, 2021

August 15, 2021, will be a date that no U.S. combat veteran of Afghanistan will ever forget, nor will any combat veteran of the Five Eyes Alliance, or of Germany, nor should any citizen in the West.  

Many are comparing the fall of Kabul (and Afghanistan) to the Taliban to the Fall of Saigon (and Vietnam). One thing is for sure: political scientists and historians in the West will be writing about Afghanistan for the next 50 years as they have about Vietnam.

This article is solely the private thoughts of one combat veteran of Afghanistan. I do not speak for nor do the views expressed here represent those of the U.S. Government, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I do not pretend to be a subject matter expert on Afghanistan nor the region. I am simply writing because I must. My conscience forces me to write. If you find this article of value then retain what is true and good about it for yourself and share it with others. If you disagree with it, then ignore and discard it.    

Afghanistan is The Great Facade

Afghanistan is The Great Facade. The fall of Afghanistan is not the fault of President Joseph Biden. Partisan Republicans attacking the President are simply perpetuating The Great Facade or Great Lie to the American people. If fault is to be laid for our failures in Afghanistan, it should be laid at the feet of the Neoconservatives (Neocons) who created the policies of Afghanistan and sustained this "House of Cards" over the last 20 years. The Neocons have infested the Department of Defense and State Department. Therefore, there has been a continuity of Afghan policies across many Presidential administrations and across party lines.  

The Neocons believe Team America could create "a little America" in Afghanistan (and Iraq) through the implementation of brute military force and domination. The Neocons created a (Western) national government in Afghanistan, a top-down model that was doomed from the beginning because it goes against the very governance of the Afghan people over the last millennia. The Afghan people have neither the history nor the culture nor the desire to sustain a Western-style government.     

Afghanistan has been and is currently ruled valley-by-valley. Its form of governance is highly decentralized and at the highest level, it is regionally based around major metropolitan areas. Frankly, however, it is controlled by warlords in each valley. Sometimes one warlord gains dominance over a region because of their past history of fighting the Soviets or the Taliban. However, even that is fickle. For any governing policy to have worked, it should have focused on these local valley and regional levels. That is where the center of gravity is and has always been in Afghanistan. The best we could have hoped for is the establishment of a network of warlords and tribal leaders formed into a regional confederacy, region-by-region, across Afghanistan.  

Instead, the Neocons, led by the U.S. (and those in the West), established a western-style national government model that no Afghan trusted or would truly work with. Even the idea of a national defense (army, airforce, etc.) or a national police force was a foreign idea imposed on them.  Everything in Afghanistan is regionally or locally based, including the militias and police.  

House of Cards  

Why did I call Afghanistan a "House of Cards"?  Because the entire Afghan national government at all levels (the Ministries of Defense, Interior, and Finance) was propped up by the U.S., the British, and the Germans, and to a lesser extent, by our other allies in NATO along with a few Asian allies (Japan & Korea). Once the West (primarily the U.S., Brits, and Germans) pulled their financial funding and military presence there, a slight wind gust, taking only weeks—frankly, just a few days—toppled the whole national government. We all watched it happen. And now people are asking how this is possible—how could this happen?     

Allow me to explain, and my explanations are based upon my own experiences working at the highest strategic levels in Afghanistan. I had daily and weekly contact with the top-level Afghan officials across all the major ministries—from the Presidential Administration on down. However, we worked most closely with the NATO Senior Civilian Representative (SCR - the 4-star equivalent rank of the highest-ranking General or Admiral) and his Deputy, and the Afghan Ministers (and their Deputies) of Defense, Interior, and Finance. President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President from 2001-2014, who is now one of the lead Afghan negotiators with the Taliban, was/is a serious heroin addict. His own ministers and staff did not respect him or follow him. He was simply a puppet of the U.S. and Western powers.       

The Minister of Interior, and his Ministry of Interior—in charge of the National Police Force and law enforcement across the entire nation—was itself a cesspool of corruption. During my tenure there, we discovered the Ministry of Interior skimming a sizeable percentage of each and every Afghan police officer's paycheck for the Minister's own slush fund. And that replicated itself at every level, leaving a fraction of the salary for the actual police officer himself. That had been going on for our entire tenure in Afghanistan and continued even after we discovered it.  

I might add that we (meaning the U.S. and Western allies) were paying the salaries of the entire Afghan military (Army, Air Force, etc.), as well as for their entire National Police Force. Once we in the West pulled our funding, this whole "House of Cards" would fall, and everyone knew it. No one had any expectations that the Afghans could or would fund their own national army or police force. Our mantras in Afghanistan were "money is a weapon system" and "transparency, accountability, and oversight". The funny thing (not really) is that we knew the Afghans wouldn't ever have "transparency, accountability, and oversight" of the funds we were giving them. However, the truly sad thing is that this was also true for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP in Afghanistan). 

The United Nations in Afghanistan

The United Nations in Afghanistan was plagued by utter and complete corruption as well, and the International Donor Community had given up all hope of supporting the UN in their efforts there in Afghanistan. The International Donor Community knew all support would end in Afghanistan no later than 2025, if not earlier. They knew this a decade ago, and the Afghans knew it as well—at least the Afghan officials running their ministries. That this all unraveled by 2021 is no surprise to anyone who knew what was really going on there.      

Over the last 20 years in Afghanistan, we in the West (primarily the U.S.), spent more than $1 trillion dollars there lifting up this Great Facade. The level of corruption among the highest Afghan officials going down the chain of command was obscene. They were simply milking the West for everything they could, for as long as they could. We simply made the Afghan officials who supported us rich, several of whom are now millionaires. They have now returned to their opulent homes and lifestyles across the Middle East, Europe, Canada, and the U.S.

The Afghan Minister of Defense knew his job was Mission Impossible without the active support of the U.S., Brits, and Germans. In fact, it was rather a joke even when we were still there. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and NATO led the efforts to train and mentor the Afghan military, which included their army, airforce, special operations, etc. The U.S. and Germany spent hundreds of millions of dollars and euros building the Afghan West Point (military officers academy), the Afghan Logistics School, the Afghan Engineer School, Afghan Special Operations bases, and Afghan army bases. After the Afghan military forces took them over from the Coalition Forces in a deliberate and well-planned transition, they would then "Afghanize" them by ripping out the electrical lines, the HVAC—basically anything of value—and sell it all on the black market.  This happened over and over and over and over again in Afghanistan. It was just a bad joke. Billions of dollars and euros were just flushed down the toilet, so to speak. They even stole the plumbing. What a mess!  

No Real Allegiance

The average Afghan had no real allegiance to the Afghan army or military, and we've seen that play out right before our eyes. The only reason why an average Afghan joined the army or police force was for the paycheck coming from Uncle Sam—and nothing more. They have no real allegiance to the Afghan President or the Afghan National Government.  

So how could we have done things differently in Afghanistan? We should have applied "Realist foreign policies" in Afghanistan. Consider what James Baker or Brent Scowcroft might have done in Afghanistan.

The mission of Afghanistan should have been led by the State Department and USAID, as well as other non-profit organizations, from the beginning. It would only be by spending decades and, frankly, centuries in Afghanistan that we could impact any real positive and workable change. A new educational system should have been developed, improving the literacy rate among all Afghans, not just the police. The illiteracy rate of the average Afghan, for both men and women, however especially for women, was incredibly high for any modern society. Even a moderately educated Afghan male had the reading capacity of an early elementary school level, if that. It also would be necessary to develop a sustainable Afghan economy with global interaction that was/is not based on opium cultivation and production. Opium production was/is the lifeblood of the Taliban. Afghanistan was a country stuck in the Middle Ages, and a 20-year investment there was never going to be enough to impact fundamental change in their culture and among their peoples. 

The Neocons are screaming at the top of their lungs that we should have kept a more robust military presence there—as if more "door kickers" would have sustained Afghanistan from collapsing. Once again, this is nothing but propagating the Great Facade. If kinetic action was the magic pill to sustain and stabilize Afghanistan, we wouldn't be witnessing what we are. Instead, what we now see is that it only fed the beast and strengthened the Taliban. Fighting wars simply breeds future extremists and terrorists. Neither the Marines nor the 82nd ABN DIV were ever going to successfully deal with the Taliban.

The military mission in Afghanistan

The military mission in Afghanistan was to provide security for the country so that the country could become stable enough to allow it to attract business interests and to enter modernity with the rest of the civilized nations around the world. It was also to deny sanctuary to terrorist organizations and radical non-state actors. 

It seems that on both accounts, from a military perspective, we failed.  How can we come to that judgment? Ask this fundamental question: Is Afghanistan better in 2021 than in 2001? No, it is not.

This should never have been a Department of Defense (military)-led operation. The CIA, Special Operations, and Air Force should have served solely in a supporting role, focused on taking out dangerous extremist organizations and cells. The problems in Afghanistan were far too complex to apply a merely military solution. And let's face it: when the military enters any region, they suck all the oxygen out of the room, leaving little space for the real work of diplomacy and aid work that takes multiple generations. Now we find ourselves in quite a predicament.   

A Fully Preventable Crisis

Unfortunately,  Afghanistan is now facing a fully preventable genocide and a humanitarian crisis. The Taliban will show no mercy to anyone who supported the Coalition Forces or their families. That’s why getting our interpreters ('terps') and others who supported the Coalition Forces out of the country is an emergency situation. Only now will government aid agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) take a lead role doing humanitarian assistance. That’s if the Taliban allow them into the country in general and then also give them freedom of movement throughout the various regions.  That’s highly doubtful. Displaced personnel and a refugee crisis are looming. Let us pray for the safety of all innocent Afghan citizens, both for those who have been able to escape and those who remain.  

One of the major flaws of our strategy in Afghanistan was largely ignoring Pakistan. No solution in Afghanistan is ever possible without also bringing Pakistan into the equation. The ideology of radical militant Islam is taught and propagated in the madrassas (Islamic schools) in Pakistan. The Taliban were/are schooled there. Militant groups flowed back and forth over the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was artificially drawn up without recognizing the true boundaries of ethnic populations. Pakistan provided sanctuary for the Taliban. That's why it was always a "whac-a-mole" game between them and the Western military forces. Why couldn't we truly engage in combat operations in Pakistan aside from the limited strike to kill Osama Bin Laden? Because Pakistan is a nuclear power. Pakistan is the birthplace of the Taliban. The British drew these borders intentionally for two reasons: (1) to discourage a Russian advance toward India and (2) to encourage strife within those countries so they could more effectively exert colonial imperial power when they were under British rule. This was the same tactic they used all across the Middle East. Unfortunately, that came back to cripple our military capability and success in Afghanistan a century later.       

Let us tell another hard truth. Afghanistan is not central to the U.S. national security interests.  For the U.S. and our allies, Afghanistan is no longer worth the investment in regard to our foreign policy and international relations. China is. Let me repeat: China is. A strategic swing to the Pacific has been gaining significant steam over the last decade and will be our primary focus for the foreseeable future. The West is no longer willing to invest in Afghanistan, either monetarily or with human lives. Interestingly enough, for the Western coalition to have been successful in Afghanistan, we should have taken a lesson from Chinese history.  

Revolutions are Won by Education       

Mao Zedong showed us how we could have succeeded in Afghanistan. Mao understood that revolutions (or wars) are won by education. Change how one thinks and you will win. Change a person's worldview and you win. Fundamental change occurs through education. Education is an introduction to reality. Change how people see and experience reality, and you win. Mao understood that you don't win revolutions from the top down (as the Neocons tried in Afghanistan), but from the bottom up. He understood in his own way the principle of subsidiarity. Mao understood a Revolution is won village by village over a Long March that spans decades. A revolution is never won quickly. It requires winning the hearts and minds of the common person.

We didn't do that hard work of education over decades in Afghanistan. Instead, we imposed a top-down solution of a national government that no real Afghan held allegiance to, except to gladly receive our money for deposit in their own wallet or man-purse. The model the West used in Afghanistan was doomed from the beginning.  And the great irony is that the Taliban established their own Long March against our ISAF/NATO coalition forces over the last 20 years.   

Another major flaw in our strategy in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) is that it was purely secular in nature. Without addressing radical militant Islam, we could never get at solving the wicked problem that Afghanistan represented for the West. At its deepest root, Afghanistan was not a secular problem, but a religious one. Islam by its very nature is highly decentralized, so the Taliban's version of Islam claims its own validity. It isn't regulated by a central authority. In that sense, the Taliban are fundamentally a Muslim problem and one that can only be solved by them.    

The Great Lie: the Global War on Terrorism

Now allow me to expose The Greatest Facade or The Greatest Lie of all: the so-called "Global War on Terrorism." This is the great mantra of the Neocons—their ingenious marketing strategy to win trillions of dollars of Congressional support for their endless war efforts around the globe. Their message is this: as righteous crusaders, we must defeat the evil of terrorism.

First, it was the bogeyman of Al-Qaeda, then it was the Taliban, then it was the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, then it was Hezbollah, then it was the Iranians, then it was... The Neocon madness never ends.  Let's be honest. It's been a very effective tool to empower the military-industrial-congressional complex. If our failure(s) in Afghanistan teach us anything, it is that we must wake up to this reality and stop America from being the modern crusader rescuing the world from all evil. We must return to a more sensible and "Realist" perspective in foreign policy and international relations.      

I recognize my perspective above is that of just one combat veteran of Afghanistan. I recognize the limitations of my perspective, in both scope and experience. My voice is just one among thousands of combat veterans, diplomats, and aid workers of Afghanistan. All of our voices deserve to be heard. It will be the job of political scientists and historians to paint these mosaic tiles into a coherent narrative on what went wrong in Afghanistan over the next 50 years and beyond.  

Pray for Veterans

I will end on this note. For combat veterans of Afghanistan, this is not some abstract conversation about what we're watching on the news or reading about—it's deeply personal. Dozens or hundreds of memories rush back into us, both beautiful and horrific. We become emotional, sometimes hypersensitive. When our thermometer of emotions boils too high, we lose rationality and sometimes become uncivil. Be patient with us—we dearly miss our battle buddies who were KIA. We walked the hard path of being WIA (wounded in action), both physically and mentally. Those scars remain with us and make us who we are. It's vitally important for us to tell our stories—it's one of the ways we heal from those experiences of combat. What's happening now in Afghanistan brings questions and doubts on why our buddies' lives had to be lost. For what? Pray for us and give a combat vet of Afghanistan a hug if you're able. This is an incredibly trying time for us as these current events in Afghanistan unfold.

***

D.L. Jones is a retired 26-year active-duty senior field-grade Army officer with combat deployments to both Afghanistan and Iraq. He served as an Assistant Professor at the Command and General Staff College (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas) for many years until choosing to teach and mentor youth in his hometown in order to give them a better and more hopeful future.

All views contained in this article are solely his and not those of the U.S. Government or the U.S. Army.

Comments

[David Karmel]

Thank you for this well written article. What concerns me the most, at this point, is where's the next Afghanistan? Lets pray once again that we learned from Viet Nam and now Afghanistan. Lets steer clear of the madness that has created this mess....where now? Use our military and our treasury to advance humanitarian objectives.

[Martha Greenhow]

Thank you for this posting. You have given us a deeply personal perspective on Afghanistan and I feel its truth. You mention that religion should have played more of a part in the strategy of the war. I think 'religion' or faith could play a part in your life now. God sees your anguish and the anguish of many others - other veterans, the people of Afghanistan, and more. God sees and cares. May God heal the wounds caused by the war and the misguided policies and give you strength and courage in these distressing times. And may Afghanistan struggle through to peace, justice, and security.

[Paul C Larson]

I completely agree with the basic thesis of this article; Afghanistan is a very mountainous country so governance and allegiance are all at the very local valley or at most regional level. From ancient times conquerors have come and gone, and left it largely to itself. More recently Britain fought several Afghan wars, the USSR tried and failed, and now we tried and failed. All attempts to impose some outside solution will fail. If there is to be any hope for this poor war torn country it will have to be found, as the author suggests through education and local valley by valley projects

[Lynne Walter]

Thank you for this article. I am not American and have long questioned the idea that Americans are the guardians of the free world. What you have articulated resonates with some of the things that I have instinctively felt to be true. I pray for Afghanistan and her people. May they find just ways of ordering their own society in a way that works for them.