n August 2021, America’s involvement in Afghanistan came to a tragic and ignoble end. That August 26th, a suicide bomber killed 13 American servicemembers—ten Marines, two soldiers, and one sailor—and untold civilians at the Abbey Gate outside Hamid Karzai International Airport as Afghans sought to flee the country as the Taliban forces seized control of the country. Four days later, American forces officially withdrew, but the legacy and tragedy of America’s involvement will linger for decades to come.
Understanding the war and its consequences will take generations. It is the longest of America’s wars and is likely to truly be a forever war—the legacy of its effects lasting well beyond the last surviving participant and with participants bearing wounds both hidden and visible. Even as many in the United States wish it to fade from the collective consciousness, it is still very much here. Nearly a year after the tragic deaths at Abbey Gate, America killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qa’ida and co-planner of the attacks of 9/11. As Elliot Ackerman writes in his new book “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan,” America may be done with Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is not done with America.
Ackerman’s book is one of two that I read as the one-year anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan approached. It serves as a book end to the United States’ longest war and a fitting end point to the starting point offered by Elizabeth Leake in her book, “Afghan Crucible” (kindly provided by Oxford University Press). While Ackerman unpacks the end of America’s war through his personal experiences in the Marines and CIA as well as his efforts to rescue Afghans left behind, Leake looks not at the 20 years after 9/11, but the period starting in 1978 with the Saur revolution and closing with Russia’s withdrawal in 1989. It is a tumultuous and violent period, yet one critical to understanding Afghanistan’s present.
Afghanistan’s history is, in many ways, a tragic one. The Kabul which Leake writes about in the 70s was by no means a cosmopolitan global city, but one that had a much more vibrant politics and society than many in the West would immediately recognize. Its politics were riven by disputes and competing visions for the future, a struggle which led to the revolution and ensuing chaos. Even still, it is a far cry from the Afghanistan the United States would encounter in the aftermath of 9/11.
Leake reframes the conflict by removing it from the narrow Cold War framework in which it is often portrayed. Rather, she places the conflict in an Afghan-first context—exploring the multiplicity of personalities who would go on to shape the conflict well into the future, competing visions of the future and modernity, philosophical disputes, and ideological struggles. There was never any one war in Afghanistan, as Leake shows. There were wars within wars, many of which the Soviet invasion and its aftermath were merely layered on top of or serving as a distraction from.
The events Leake writes about are a tragic opening act that laid the foundation for the events that would form Ackerman’s closing act. A failed revolution, followed by a violent and destructive invasion. The fragmentation of Afghan society and the mass exodus of civilians. The Cold War framing of the conflict, the infusion of arms and aid, and the genesis radical Islamist groups that—buoyed by the withdrawal of the Soviets—sought to export their revolution. The Soviet war shattered Afghan society and social networks, leading to warlordism and instability on which the Taliban would later seize. To be sure, Mohammed Najibullah, retained power between 1986 and 1992 when Soviet aid ended, but the polity was anything but stable.
Amidst the chaos and infighting, the Taliban would rise and al-Qa’ida would find a home to plan and execute 9/11—leading to the American invasion. The swift toppling of the Taliban and failed pursuit of al-Qa’ida led to constantly shifting objectives in America’s longest war—the longest war in history fought with an all-volunteer force as Ackerman rightly notes in his book “The Fifth Act.” Ackerman is one of the finest writers of his generation, having brilliantly penned literary reflections on war and meaning—a quality that carries through to his latest book. It is not often that I finish a book in one sitting, and even rarer that I put a book down and know it will stay with me long after I finish it. Ackerman’s “The Fifth Act” does both. It is powerful, poignant, personal, and painful. His personal narrative of combat and how it stays with him today—especially during the effort to evacuate Afghans in the run-up to the collapse—is haunting and should be widely read.
America’s war in Afghanistan was by no means destined to fail. As Wes Morgan shows in “The Hardest Place,” the early days of the conflict were tactically and operationally successful. There were plenty of partners keen to work with the United States, overthrow the Taliban, and achieve a measure of stability and progress in their country. Yet, the absence of a viable political objective doomed Washington’s efforts. As Ackerman writes, “There were, of course, many reasons why we lost the war. However, as I tried to figure out how to answer my son, it occurred to me that many of the reasons we failed in Afghanistan, chief among them was that we never understood what winning meant.” This was America’s war within the war—competing visions for what American forces should be doing in the country and what was achievable. Was it the establishment of a Jeffersonian democracy? The eradication of the country’s prolific drug trafficking networks? Was success to be measured by the defeat of al-Qa’ida? Or perhaps by the number of girls in school?
This is not to say that there was no progress or that the armed forces did not achieve tactical or operational success. Nor does this detract from the unquestioned heroism and sacrifices made by America’s servicemembers and those of allies. Far from it, but that is not the issue—the issue was that those incremental victories could never add up to strategic success. The United States was fighting its own war and, in many (if not most) ways, that was not the war the Afghans were fighting.
At an even larger level, what was victory in the War on Terror? How would that be defined? Ackerman, unsurprisingly strikes at the heart of that question: “what has made the war on terror different from other wars is that victory has never been based on achieving a positive outcome; the goal has been to prevent a negative one.” To the credit of intelligence and law enforcement, few Americans have been killed since 9/11, but the global threat of Islamist Jihadism remains, and is particularly acute for those areas of the world with little governance—a situation unlikely to change in the near future.
And this was just the American and allied debate. What vision did the Afghans have for their own future? It was their country, after all. While it was a complex organization, the Taliban had a kernel of a vision for the country—a rigidly Islamist government and returning the country to pre-9/11 governance. The Taliban is by no means a monolithic organization and there are suggestions that younger generations are not as zealous as their elders, but that is small consolation to the Afghans fearing for their lives and those of their families. Indeed, the Taliban’s rigid vision is being executed today with horrid results for the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban have barred girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, ruthlessly hunting anyone who supported the American military, and the country’s economy, already beleaguered, has collapsed.
The final tragedy of America’s involvement in Afghanistan need not have happened in the manner in which it did. By 2021, America’s footprint in the country was exceptionally small, based on special operations forces and their enablers—a subject explored by Jessica Donati in “Eagle Down.” It was enough to keep the Taliban at bay, but not enough to raise political hackles in Congress or amongst the electorate. Both the Trump and Biden administrations bear blame for what was to follow. A single-minded focus on ending “forever wars” led to an abhorrent agreement with the Taliban in Doha—one which excluded the legitimate government of Afghanistan—and a barely planned rapid withdrawal from the country in the face of clear intelligence warnings of what was to follow.
The herculean effort of individuals and groups to extract Afghans stands in stark contrast with the American government’s almost willful failure to plan for what they knew was coming. It is not like Washington had not done such a withdrawal before—at the end of the Vietnam War, it evacuated over 110,000 Vietnamese to Guam. Michael San Nicolas, Guam’s representative to Congress offered to host Afghan refugees, to repeat the success of the Vietnam airlift. That America did not do more is a stain on its character—one unworthy of the sacrifices so many men and women in uniform made and one that will take generations to absolve.
Much remains to be done for those who managed to escape and those left behind. Of those evacuated, some 14,000 remain on military bases across the United States awaiting processing. Another 2,500 reside on U.S. bases abroad, also awaiting processing. While many communities have welcomed these refugees with open arms, as the immediacy of the tragedy wanes and the war in Ukraine emerged, attention and support ebbed. Most alarmingly for those Afghans, they live in a legal limbo. Having not entered through the formal Refugee Admissions Program or receiving a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV)—itself a program long overdue for reform—their long-term status is unclear. Entering the already beleaguered immigration system may doom them to a legal purgatory for the foreseeable future.
Beyond the Afghans, the wounds of war for America’s service members are real and remain. The physical and mental injuries of those who fought and their families represent a long-term challenge for both the military’s health care infrastructure and the Veterans Administration. The PACTS Act is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done. These are systemic issues that affect the military writ large, but disproportionately those who fought in Afghanistan.
The tragedy of Afghanistan is as much a failure of policy as it is a failure of politics. It is perhaps too simple an explanation of why not just the withdrawal from Afghanistan descended into chaos so swiftly, but that the mission never achieved strategic success—that political leaders did not want to hear uncomfortable truths (such as those provided by the Intelligence Community) and believed that success was always just around the corner. Blinded to the truth, the argument goes, the public never protested the war as they did in Vietnam. As Ackerman writes, reflecting on Craig Whitlock’s “The Afghanistan Papers,” “Inherent in this statement is the logic that the American people were misled and because they were misled they gave successive administrations their consent to continue prosecuting the war. What is unspoken in this logic is that if the American people knew how poorly the war was going, they would’ve mobilized to end it, much as they mobilized eventually to end the Vietnam War. That mobilization never comes for Afghanistan. This isn’t because of a lack of “truth” or of “facts.” It is because of a lack of interest.”
The effects of the war in Afghanistan will last for generations to come. Its visible and invisible injuries for American servicemembers and Afghan civilians alike are immeasurable. The moral and psychological damage is incalculable—America must support its men and women in uniform, its veterans, and their families, and it must ensure that those Afghans that fought by America’s side are protected. The American people may wish to move on, but they cannot and should not. The war in Afghanistan must not fade from America’s conscience or consciousness.
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The Tragedy and Legacy of Afghanistan
Photo by Andre Klimke via Unsplash.
August 13, 2022
The effects of the war in Afghanistan will last for generations to come. As the one-year anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan occurs, Joshua Huminski reviews two books, Elliot Ackerman’s “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan” and Elizabeth Leake’s “Afghan Crucible."
I
n August 2021, America’s involvement in Afghanistan came to a tragic and ignoble end. That August 26th, a suicide bomber killed 13 American servicemembers—ten Marines, two soldiers, and one sailor—and untold civilians at the Abbey Gate outside Hamid Karzai International Airport as Afghans sought to flee the country as the Taliban forces seized control of the country. Four days later, American forces officially withdrew, but the legacy and tragedy of America’s involvement will linger for decades to come.
Understanding the war and its consequences will take generations. It is the longest of America’s wars and is likely to truly be a forever war—the legacy of its effects lasting well beyond the last surviving participant and with participants bearing wounds both hidden and visible. Even as many in the United States wish it to fade from the collective consciousness, it is still very much here. Nearly a year after the tragic deaths at Abbey Gate, America killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qa’ida and co-planner of the attacks of 9/11. As Elliot Ackerman writes in his new book “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan,” America may be done with Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is not done with America.
Ackerman’s book is one of two that I read as the one-year anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan approached. It serves as a book end to the United States’ longest war and a fitting end point to the starting point offered by Elizabeth Leake in her book, “Afghan Crucible” (kindly provided by Oxford University Press). While Ackerman unpacks the end of America’s war through his personal experiences in the Marines and CIA as well as his efforts to rescue Afghans left behind, Leake looks not at the 20 years after 9/11, but the period starting in 1978 with the Saur revolution and closing with Russia’s withdrawal in 1989. It is a tumultuous and violent period, yet one critical to understanding Afghanistan’s present.
Afghanistan’s history is, in many ways, a tragic one. The Kabul which Leake writes about in the 70s was by no means a cosmopolitan global city, but one that had a much more vibrant politics and society than many in the West would immediately recognize. Its politics were riven by disputes and competing visions for the future, a struggle which led to the revolution and ensuing chaos. Even still, it is a far cry from the Afghanistan the United States would encounter in the aftermath of 9/11.
Leake reframes the conflict by removing it from the narrow Cold War framework in which it is often portrayed. Rather, she places the conflict in an Afghan-first context—exploring the multiplicity of personalities who would go on to shape the conflict well into the future, competing visions of the future and modernity, philosophical disputes, and ideological struggles. There was never any one war in Afghanistan, as Leake shows. There were wars within wars, many of which the Soviet invasion and its aftermath were merely layered on top of or serving as a distraction from.
The events Leake writes about are a tragic opening act that laid the foundation for the events that would form Ackerman’s closing act. A failed revolution, followed by a violent and destructive invasion. The fragmentation of Afghan society and the mass exodus of civilians. The Cold War framing of the conflict, the infusion of arms and aid, and the genesis radical Islamist groups that—buoyed by the withdrawal of the Soviets—sought to export their revolution. The Soviet war shattered Afghan society and social networks, leading to warlordism and instability on which the Taliban would later seize. To be sure, Mohammed Najibullah, retained power between 1986 and 1992 when Soviet aid ended, but the polity was anything but stable.
Amidst the chaos and infighting, the Taliban would rise and al-Qa’ida would find a home to plan and execute 9/11—leading to the American invasion. The swift toppling of the Taliban and failed pursuit of al-Qa’ida led to constantly shifting objectives in America’s longest war—the longest war in history fought with an all-volunteer force as Ackerman rightly notes in his book “The Fifth Act.” Ackerman is one of the finest writers of his generation, having brilliantly penned literary reflections on war and meaning—a quality that carries through to his latest book. It is not often that I finish a book in one sitting, and even rarer that I put a book down and know it will stay with me long after I finish it. Ackerman’s “The Fifth Act” does both. It is powerful, poignant, personal, and painful. His personal narrative of combat and how it stays with him today—especially during the effort to evacuate Afghans in the run-up to the collapse—is haunting and should be widely read.
America’s war in Afghanistan was by no means destined to fail. As Wes Morgan shows in “The Hardest Place,” the early days of the conflict were tactically and operationally successful. There were plenty of partners keen to work with the United States, overthrow the Taliban, and achieve a measure of stability and progress in their country. Yet, the absence of a viable political objective doomed Washington’s efforts. As Ackerman writes, “There were, of course, many reasons why we lost the war. However, as I tried to figure out how to answer my son, it occurred to me that many of the reasons we failed in Afghanistan, chief among them was that we never understood what winning meant.” This was America’s war within the war—competing visions for what American forces should be doing in the country and what was achievable. Was it the establishment of a Jeffersonian democracy? The eradication of the country’s prolific drug trafficking networks? Was success to be measured by the defeat of al-Qa’ida? Or perhaps by the number of girls in school?
This is not to say that there was no progress or that the armed forces did not achieve tactical or operational success. Nor does this detract from the unquestioned heroism and sacrifices made by America’s servicemembers and those of allies. Far from it, but that is not the issue—the issue was that those incremental victories could never add up to strategic success. The United States was fighting its own war and, in many (if not most) ways, that was not the war the Afghans were fighting.
At an even larger level, what was victory in the War on Terror? How would that be defined? Ackerman, unsurprisingly strikes at the heart of that question: “what has made the war on terror different from other wars is that victory has never been based on achieving a positive outcome; the goal has been to prevent a negative one.” To the credit of intelligence and law enforcement, few Americans have been killed since 9/11, but the global threat of Islamist Jihadism remains, and is particularly acute for those areas of the world with little governance—a situation unlikely to change in the near future.
And this was just the American and allied debate. What vision did the Afghans have for their own future? It was their country, after all. While it was a complex organization, the Taliban had a kernel of a vision for the country—a rigidly Islamist government and returning the country to pre-9/11 governance. The Taliban is by no means a monolithic organization and there are suggestions that younger generations are not as zealous as their elders, but that is small consolation to the Afghans fearing for their lives and those of their families. Indeed, the Taliban’s rigid vision is being executed today with horrid results for the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban have barred girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, ruthlessly hunting anyone who supported the American military, and the country’s economy, already beleaguered, has collapsed.
The final tragedy of America’s involvement in Afghanistan need not have happened in the manner in which it did. By 2021, America’s footprint in the country was exceptionally small, based on special operations forces and their enablers—a subject explored by Jessica Donati in “Eagle Down.” It was enough to keep the Taliban at bay, but not enough to raise political hackles in Congress or amongst the electorate. Both the Trump and Biden administrations bear blame for what was to follow. A single-minded focus on ending “forever wars” led to an abhorrent agreement with the Taliban in Doha—one which excluded the legitimate government of Afghanistan—and a barely planned rapid withdrawal from the country in the face of clear intelligence warnings of what was to follow.
The herculean effort of individuals and groups to extract Afghans stands in stark contrast with the American government’s almost willful failure to plan for what they knew was coming. It is not like Washington had not done such a withdrawal before—at the end of the Vietnam War, it evacuated over 110,000 Vietnamese to Guam. Michael San Nicolas, Guam’s representative to Congress offered to host Afghan refugees, to repeat the success of the Vietnam airlift. That America did not do more is a stain on its character—one unworthy of the sacrifices so many men and women in uniform made and one that will take generations to absolve.
Much remains to be done for those who managed to escape and those left behind. Of those evacuated, some 14,000 remain on military bases across the United States awaiting processing. Another 2,500 reside on U.S. bases abroad, also awaiting processing. While many communities have welcomed these refugees with open arms, as the immediacy of the tragedy wanes and the war in Ukraine emerged, attention and support ebbed. Most alarmingly for those Afghans, they live in a legal limbo. Having not entered through the formal Refugee Admissions Program or receiving a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV)—itself a program long overdue for reform—their long-term status is unclear. Entering the already beleaguered immigration system may doom them to a legal purgatory for the foreseeable future.
Beyond the Afghans, the wounds of war for America’s service members are real and remain. The physical and mental injuries of those who fought and their families represent a long-term challenge for both the military’s health care infrastructure and the Veterans Administration. The PACTS Act is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done. These are systemic issues that affect the military writ large, but disproportionately those who fought in Afghanistan.
The tragedy of Afghanistan is as much a failure of policy as it is a failure of politics. It is perhaps too simple an explanation of why not just the withdrawal from Afghanistan descended into chaos so swiftly, but that the mission never achieved strategic success—that political leaders did not want to hear uncomfortable truths (such as those provided by the Intelligence Community) and believed that success was always just around the corner. Blinded to the truth, the argument goes, the public never protested the war as they did in Vietnam. As Ackerman writes, reflecting on Craig Whitlock’s “The Afghanistan Papers,” “Inherent in this statement is the logic that the American people were misled and because they were misled they gave successive administrations their consent to continue prosecuting the war. What is unspoken in this logic is that if the American people knew how poorly the war was going, they would’ve mobilized to end it, much as they mobilized eventually to end the Vietnam War. That mobilization never comes for Afghanistan. This isn’t because of a lack of “truth” or of “facts.” It is because of a lack of interest.”
The effects of the war in Afghanistan will last for generations to come. Its visible and invisible injuries for American servicemembers and Afghan civilians alike are immeasurable. The moral and psychological damage is incalculable—America must support its men and women in uniform, its veterans, and their families, and it must ensure that those Afghans that fought by America’s side are protected. The American people may wish to move on, but they cannot and should not. The war in Afghanistan must not fade from America’s conscience or consciousness.
