Afghanistan Post 2014

Owing to its geo-strategic location and mineral wealth, Afghanistan has acquired significance in the inter-state politics of Asia as well as world politics during the past decades. This book outlines Afghanistan’s efforts to build a stable and peaceful democratic polity, with external military support from the United States and its NATO allies. It also analyses the nation’s development initiatives with major powers such as India, the United States, Russia and Germany. The volume: • brings to the fore ongoing tensions within the Afghan polity and its continued impact on Asian/world politics; • discusses topical themes such as withdrawal of US troops and non-traditional security; and • presents perspectives from scholars and experts from around the world, including Afghans. This work will be useful to scholars and researchers in political science, international relations, sociology, area studies, and the interested general reader.

A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 ​The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

A journalist with deep knowledge of the region provides “an enthralling and largely firsthand account of the war in Afghanistan” (Financial Times). Few reporters know as much about Afghanistan as Carlotta Gall. She was there in the 1990s after the Russians were driven out. She witnessed the early flourishing of radical Islam, imported from abroad, which caused so much local suffering. She was there right after 9/11, when US special forces helped the Northern Alliance drive the Taliban out of the north and then the south, fighting pitched battles and causing their enemies to flee underground and into Pakistan. Gall knows just how much this war has cost the Afghan people—and just how much damage can be traced to Pakistan and its duplicitous government and intelligence forces. Combining searing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with moving portraits of the ordinary Afghans who were caught up in the conflict for more than a decade, The Wrong Enemy is a sweeping account of a war brought by American leaders against an enemy they barely understood and could not truly engage.

Building an enduring and stable political consensus in Afghanistan's complex, multiactor environment requires clear analysis of the conflict. Getting It Right in Afghanistan addresses the real drivers of the insurgency, how Afghanistan's neighbors can contribute to peace in the region, and the need for more inclusive political arrangements in peace and reconciliation processes.

Providing a study of US policy towards Afghanistan from the Soviet intervention of 1979 to the exit of US/International Security Assistance Forces combat troops at the end of 2014, this book examines how the United States’ construction of its interests has shaped its long-term involvement with that country. Recognising that there is a particular focus on the United States’ representation and justification of its Afghan policy, this work demonstrates how the intertwining of language and social practices provided policymakers’ with a shared meaning on selling policy. In this way, Washington justified its practices – including covert operations, diplomacy, counterterrorism and war – as essential in ensuring that ‘good’ prevailed over ‘evil’. Teitler’s argument contrasts with the existing literature, which predominantly argues the United States has been motivated by self-interest in its dealings with Afghanistan. Teitler deploys a constructivist approach to elucidate US–Afghan relations in this critical historical juncture. Through its particular use of constructivism, the work aims to contribute more broadly to international relations and US foreign policy scholarship. This book will be of interest to academics and students in various fields, including US foreign and security policy, international relations theory, the Greater Middle East, Afghanistan, American exceptionalism, constructivism and discourse analysis.

This book examines the implications of international military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 for the country's future economic growth, fiscal sustainability, public sector capacity, and service delivery.

The Western-led efforts to establish a new post-Taliban order in Afghanistan are in serious trouble, and in this book Suhrke sets out to explain why. She begins with the dynamic of the intervention and its related peace-building mission. What were the forces shaping this grand international project? What explains the apparent systemic bias towards a deeper and broader international involvement? Many reasons have been cited for its limited achievements and ever-growing difficulties, the most common explanation being that the national, regional, and international contexts were unfavourable. But many policies were misguided while the multinational operation itself was extraordinarily and unnecessarily complex. Astri Suhrke's main thesis is that the international project itself contains serious tensions and contradictions that significantly contributed to the lack of progress. As a result, the deepening involvement proved dysfunctional: massive international support has created an extreme version of a rentier state that is predictably weak, corrupt and unaccountable; US-led military operations undercut the peacebuilding agenda, and more international aid and monitoring to correct the problems generate Afghan resentment and evasion. Continuing these policies will only reinforce the dynamic. The alternative is a less intrusive international presence, a longer time-frame for reconstruction and change, and negotiations with the militants that can end the war and permit a more Afghan-directed order to emerge.