When Donald Trump first took office as US president in early 2017, it was clear that the war in Afghanistan was going the wrong way for Washington. The Taliban, nearly destroyed in 2001, had resurfaced and were engaged in constant fighting with US and Afghan forces. The attempt to build a modern Afghan nation from scratch – the so-called nation-building approach – had cost tens of billions of dollars and left behind a handful of young Afghan professionals who did not fit into the tangle of local tribes, regional clans and black market rules.
American soldiers walk through an opium poppy field in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.
“The idea that we are an agricultural country is an optical illusion. The first thing in the economy here is war, then opium, then services, and then agriculture,” said one of the people interviewed by the authors of The Afghanistan Papers.
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The Afghan civilian government, supported by the United States, proved ineffective and deeply corrupt. Opium production flourished, and attempts by the Obama administration to convert farmers to growing pistachios, dates, or grapes for raisins failed. At best, farmers took seeds and American money, planted a few fields with legal crops — and rented out other fields to grow the much more profitable opium poppy. The Taliban network was fed by such illicit income.
“Foreigners who came here read The Kite Runner on the plane on the way, considered themselves experts on Afghanistan, and listened to no one. The only thing they were experts in was bureaucracy,” said the country’s regional development minister from 2002 to 2010 Mohammad Zia.
Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama said that the war needed to be ended. The question was how to transfer power to the locals without causing shame to the United States — so that the regime in Kabul at least did not fall immediately. During Obama’s second term, the American military trained local Afghans, and they already participated in most of the clashes with the Taliban. Mortality among US soldiers reached its lowest level in four years. The effectiveness of the internal troops gradually increased, as did the hope that they would be able to ensure the stability of local government. The military thought of offering the same approach to Donald Trump. To influence the new president, he was invited to a meeting dedicated to Afghanistan in the Pentagon bunker called “Tank”.
This is a special meeting room with no windows and a muffled connection. Inside is a large glossy oak table, mid-century leather chairs, and a painting of the 1865 negotiations between President Abraham Lincoln and three then-military leaders known as the “Peacemakers”. On July 20, 2017, modern-day military leaders, led by the Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, brought Trump to the “Tank” and persuaded him to maintain the current direction of the US’s work in Afghanistan. The military countered his key slogan, “America First,” with the argument that US leadership is strengthened precisely in such international projects. Trump didn’t understand.
Trump during a meeting at the “Tank”.
U.S. DoD
“You’re just a bunch of morons and kids! This is a losers’ war,” he shouted. Trump said that the commander of the US troops in Afghanistan John Nicholson “probably doesn’t know how to win, but I really want to win”, and left the meeting.
The Pentagon realized that a different approach was needed to Trump — and they took into account the mistakes. At the next meeting, which took place a few months later, the military blamed all the defeats in Afghan policy on Barack Obama. Here is one example of their argument: Obama agreed to temporarily increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan, but said for what period they would arrive. Therefore, the Taliban simply hid for a while — to attack more strongly after the American contingent was reduced again. So, it is necessary to increase the number of troops, but not to say how many of them would arrive or how long they would be in Afghanistan. Thanks to greater secrecy, the Pentagon’s operation was doomed to success, they told Trump. And he agreed.
American military in Afghanistan.
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A few days later, the military praised Trump at a briefing and declared that the war had broken the deadlock and would end in a brilliant American victory. There was only one criterion for victory: the percentage of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. It was calculated according to a complex formula: it was not just about the territory, but also about the number of people living there. Pentagon specialists calculated a new balance after each significant battle — and by the beginning of 2017 it was 64% of the territory controlled by the official authorities, 12% — under the control of the Taliban, and 24% of the gray zone. If the first indicator had grown to 80% — the Americans would have declared the transformation of the Taliban into a marginal player, victory in the war, and the withdrawal of their troops from the country. But only a year later, the Talibanʼs position according to this criterion had strengthened.
In addition to increasing the number of American troops in Afghanistan, Trump has also ordered an increase in airstrikes on Taliban positions. In 2017, the US dropped three times as many bombs on Afghanistan as the year before. More bombs also meant more civilian casualties — an average of 1 100 during the first three years of Trump’s presidency. The result is higher levels of hatred for the US and an active joining of the youth by the “Taliban”. If in 2011 the Taliban numbered about 25 000, in 2018 there were already 60 000.
More Taliban means more clashes with the Afghan army, which took the main part in the fighting from the Kabul side. Accordingly, the number of casualties among the Afghan military increased — up to 40-70 people per day. The morale of the military deteriorated, they resisted the Taliban less and less and surrendered territories.
An Afghan man holds books of the Quran at the Imam Zaman Mosque in Kabul after a suicide bomber blew himself up, October 21, 2017.
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In the summer of 2018, the head of the American contingent in the country, John Nicholson, stated that the previous criterion — what percentage of the country the government controls — was no longer relevant. The key indicator now was the Talibanʼs readiness for negotiations with Washington. Which had actually already begun at that time.
Informal contacts between the Americans and the Taliban have been taking place since mid-2018, most often in a five-star Qatari hotel, in close proximity to sun-tanned vacationers in the pool and a bar with expensive alcohol. The parties discussed the Talibanʼs participation in governing Afghanistan. At that time, the Americans recognized that this movement was noticeably different from the same Al-Qaeda, for which mainly Arab foreigners and several marginal local groups fought in Afghanistan at that time. The Taliban represented a large segment of Afghans, in particular among the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country. One of the options for resolving the conflict was to legalize the Taliban, turn them into a political party, and integrate them into the Afghan government, but this option was radically rejected by the then leadership of the country in Kabul. Therefore, Trump did not involve it in the negotiations.
The atmosphere of the hotel where negotiations between the US and the Taliban took place.
Ritz-Carlton Hotel
The main thing the US wanted from the Taliban was for Afghanistan not to pose a terrorist threat to the Americans and for the country not to lose control, sliding even deeper into the chaos of war. Formally, the Taliban agreed, but they did not miss an opportunity to show their teeth. For example, on October 18, a few weeks after Austin Miller took charge of the American contingent in Afghanistan, he met with the leadership of Kandahar province. When the Americans were returning to the helicopter, one of the provincial governorʼs guards opened fire on them — he was taken to the airport with a box of grenades as a symbolic gift for the delegation, he dropped the box, picked up a Kalashnikov and started shooting. The Taliban quickly took responsibility for the incident, releasing a video of the guard training in one of their camps in Pakistan. The terrorist attack was intended to show how unreliable the official Afghan authorities are. Miller escaped unharmed, the provincial governor was wounded, and the heads of Kandaharʼs police and intelligence services were killed.
This only pushed the tired Trump to withdraw from the “loser’s war” more quickly. In September 2019, he secretly proposed to the Taliban leadership to meet at the American presidential residence Camp David and sign a memorandum of reconciliation. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was supposed to witness the event. But both he and the Taliban refused the offer, perceiving it as a pompous ceremony without real meaning. When the press and Congress learned of Trump’s intention to invite representatives of an organization that Washington had designated as a terrorist organization to a symbolically important place for the United States, Trump canceled the event and called the agreement with the Taliban “dead”. In fact, negotiations continued.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the head of the US contingent in Afghanistan Austin Miller and Donald Trump at Bagram military base on November 28, 2019.
U.S. DoD
At the end of February 2020, the United States and the Taliban reached a final agreement. Washington is reducing its military contingent and lifting economic sanctions on the Taliban. The Taliban guarantee that there will be no Al-Qaeda in the territory under their control, and they themselves will not plan terrorist attacks against Americans. The Taliban will also not attack American soldiers in Afghanistan and will begin negotiations with the countryʼs official authorities. The agreements were called the Doha Agreement, after the name of the capital of Qatar, where most of the meetings took place.
The agreement brought peace between the Taliban and the United States closer, but violence in Afghanistan increased: Afghan soldiers began to die more often. President Ashraf Ghani did begin negotiations with the Taliban in the fall of 2020 — effectively out of desperation.
The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan was no longer a concern for Trump. Most information about the war was classified, and the American public received information about the fighting and casualties only intermittently and in parts. The military understood that the Taliban did not take the Afghan government seriously and was determined to destroy it — and with it all the achievements of Afghanistan in the field of women’s rights or civil society. They suggested that Trump increase the military contingent again and be tougher on the Taliban. However, by the end of his term, he had reduced the contingent to 2 500 fighters — compared to 14 000 in 2017. At that time, the Taliban already controlled about half of Afghanistan. In seven months, it would capture Kabul almost without resistance.
Taliban fighters in a US military Humvee vehicle in Kabul after the de facto seizure of power, August 31, 2021. Taliban flags are distributed outside the US embassy in Afghanistan, August 26, 2021. A transport plane departs from Kabul International Airport as hundreds of Afghans wait for possible evacuation to the United States, August 23, 2021.
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