The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

In November 2017, US forces launched a massive airstrike on opium-processing plants, calling it a major blow against the Taliban’s finances. Later reports concluded that the raids targeted either empty warehouses or smalltime production facilities, doing nothing to dent the 400% rise in opium production since 2009 (254). The continuation of the war favored the growth of opium, which was easier to cultivate, store, and ship than other crops (which were also far less profitable). Richard Holbrooke, an experienced diplomat who took a leading role in Obama’s Afghanistan policy until his untimely death in 2010, tried to incentivize farmers to switch crops. However, “opium served as the cornerstone of the economy in many rural areas” (258), and the US had neither the resources nor the knowledge to overcome such deeply embedded features of Afghan society.

Over 15 years, the US spent $4.5 billion on drug interdiction in Afghanistan (259), but at the peak of its effectiveness, it could capture only 2% of production. It likewise set up a judiciary that was then thoroughly penetrated by the drug trade. Attempts to prosecute wrongdoing ran into interference from either the Afghan government seeking to protect an ally or the CIA or other government agency likewise protecting a valued asset. Obama’s efforts to reduce US forces made it even more difficult to restrict the drug trade, and even faster turnover made it nearly impossible to pursue any one strategy for a considerable length of time. By 2016, staffers came in proposing ideas so old that they “didn’t realize those tactics had been tried before, to no avail” (262). 

In the early months of 2019, a Taliban delegation had set up shop in Doha, Qatar. The US was supposed to be serving as a mediator for talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government after years of either refusing any outreach or bungling opportunities to start talks. There had been efforts to distinguish “irreconcilable from reconcilable” Taliban (266), with plans to rehabilitate the latter and destroy the former. But the Taliban’s roots were too deep in Afghan society for such an individualized approach. Even so, White House officials were reluctant to give credibility to the organization that had sheltered bin Laden and risked progress on women’s rights.

The US insisted that any peace talks would be among the Afghans themselves, but the Karzai government was loath to treat the Taliban as an equal, and the Taliban dismissed the government as an American puppet. Talks got underway after a prisoner exchange in which the US freed five high-level Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, a sergeant who inexplicably walked off his post and spent five years as a prisoner. The swap helped establish communication, and some of those released from Guantanamo ended up being the main interlocutors. However, Obama received such fierce criticism for the exchange that diplomacy would go no further under his own presidency.

In 2018, the Trump administration authorized direct talks with the Taliban in Doha, ultimately agreeing for a withdrawal of all US forces by May 2021 and the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for a promise to negotiate with the Afghan government and provide “assurances that Afghanistan would not be used to launch attacks on the United States” (273). Trump passed the war on to Joe Biden, who had opposed counterinsurgency efforts when he was Obama’s vice president. Biden tried to jumpstart negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but when those stalled, he still secured a plan to withdraw US forces by September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the attacks.