Wow - great work, Claire. A good reminder (one I need periodically) that it's always worth trying to do something to help, even (especially?) if a good outcome seems unlikely at the beginning.
It is. It's always worthwhile. It doesn't always work--see my efforts to improve Turkey's ability to withstand an earthquake--but when I look back and think about what I most regret in life, it's never, ever, "Having tried to help someone who needed it." It's always ,"Not having done enough."
Reading the section on the current situation in Afghanistan is horrifying. What I don’t understand is how the United States military, supposedly the best fighting force in the world, allowed the Taliban to emerge victorious. Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on the military and still we couldn’t defeat what can only be described as the dregs of humanity. What’s the explanation for this?
Why do you blame the officers and generals, as opposed to the civilian commander and the public pressure to which he was responding? As far as I understand things (and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm very open to hearing a better-informed view) we had, essentially, won. Our forces were there more as peacekeepers than combatants. We could have remained there, as we have in South Korea and as we did in Germany, for a very long time, at a tolerable cost. The Taliban's advances, as I understand it, before we left, were owed to the total demoralization of the ANA because they knew we were leaving and taking with us tools vital to their defense--the command and control, for example. Had we said, "We'll be here permanently," it's very likely that the corrupt, ineffective, disliked, but *a thousand times better than the Taliban* regime we were propping up would have remained in power, giving Afghans time to build a stronger civil society and democracy. (That's certainly what happened in South Korea, whose government we propped up for a long time despite it suffering from many of the same flaws.)
But we didn't. There was bipartisan support for "getting out of Afghanistan," and it was a powerful sentiment among Americans, until they realized what that would really mean, but by then it was too late. I blame Biden for a complete failure of leadership. It's easy enough to blame Trump for negotiating the deal (and I do), but Biden is the adult we hired to *not* do things Trump would do, and he should have told the American people, "If we pull out, the Taliban will come roaring back and everything we sacrificed will be for nothing." He should have known that, and he should have *led,* explaining to Americans why we had to stay, if necessary, for a century. Would that have been popular? Probably not. But is what he did popular? No. And in addition, it was wrong. And it very likely was a key factor in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine: He concluded Biden was so weak, and our public so opposed to military engagement overseas--even when the cost of it was quite low--that we wouldn't do anything to stop him.
I don't see why you'd blame the military for this: They did their job honorably, as far as I can tell. The civilians own this one. Every dumb American who banged on about "ending the forever wars" without thinking, "What happens if we end the war but the enemy doesn't?"
I wish the media spent more time showing those people the consequences of their fecklessness.
Nope, we're on the same page, and you're saying exactly, but exactly, what I've heard from everyone.
I can't say I know enough about combat to be able to evaluate the effect of adding women to the mix: I hear from many people exactly what you said, and that seems to me intuitively likely to be the case. But I hear from equally many people that my intuitions are wrong: The kind of women who want to be in combat roles, I've been told, are so far to the edge of the Bell Curve to begin with that they can hold their own, and men in those roles are professional enough not to lose their minds--and besides, no one is thinking about seduction when someone's shooting at them. Having no experience of it myself, my opinion is that I don't have an opinion. It's for other people to decide. I do find the idea of sending a young mother into combat disgusting, however.
Claire, you have done a mitzvah. It makes me proud to be a reader of your Substack. Congratulations, I look forward to contributing.
I have one question and one comment. My question is why the French won’t grant the family refugee status and take them in? My understanding is that the father worked for a French NGO. What is wrong with France?
My comment is that we should not forget that the United States is complicit in the rise of the Taliban. After all, the Carter Administration tricked the Soviets into invading because Zbigniew Brzezinski wanted to give the Soviets their very own Viet Nam. Once they invaded, the Carter Administration supported the Mujahadeen, which years later morphed (at least in part) into the Taliban.
If you don’t believe it, read this English language translation of an interview that Zbigniew Brzezinski gave to the French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998.
If you read the entire article, you will see that Brzezinski expresses no regrets whatsoever. To the former American National Security Advisor, destroying Afghanistan was a small price to pay for a small tactical victory in the Cold War.
Thanks to the United States, a bumbling, incompetent but mostly harmless Soviet puppet government in Afghanistan was replaced by Taliban insurgents mostly trained by the American Government. But for Brzezinski’s decision, the Communist Government might have survived, only to fall when the Soviet Empire fell. Instead, the Taliban is oppressing innocent Afghan women to this day. There’s little hope that things will improve in the foreseeable future.
The horror this wonderful family experienced has a lineage linked directly to decisions Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s made decades ago.
Your friend Adam Garfinkle, who really admired Brzezinski, finds this argument the height of absurdity. He’s even addressed it in print (at the American Interest which is now defunct). Ask him about it if you’re interested. Adam is wrong. This family suffered in large part because of decisions made in Washington, D.C.
"My comment is that we should not forget that the United States is complicit in the rise of the Taliban." You're confusing the Taliban with the Mujahideen. The Taliban did not yet exist. I linked above to an article that treats this:
"Many westerners truly believe that it was the Taliban who fought the Soviet invasion in 1979. They are shocked to hear that this is not true. They do not believe you – and respond belligerently – if you tell them that foreign countries could not have armed or funded the Taliban before 1989 because the Taliban did not exist. If the Western countries understood that Afghanistan meant more than the Taliban, they would not have given Afghanistan over to the Taliban. But sadly, they did."
The Taliban only emerged in 1994, as a faction in the Afghan civil war. I agree that we can be faulted, indirectly, for actions that led to that war and for abandoning Afghanistan after it ceased to be useful to us. But the US's lack of foresight was only one factor, and probably not the main one: Pakistan's creation and support for the Taliban was far more significant, and don't forget the larger context of a global groundswell of Islamic extremism, the causes of which have been treated extensively, but suffice to say, we didn't cause it.
Since you believe the USSR would have collapsed absent its defeat in Afghanistan (which is an unusual position; almost every scholar of that period disagrees with you, but I'll grant you may be right--I'd like to know why you think so), and you also believe it would have left Afghanistan when it collapsed, why do you think that what followed wouldn't have happened then, whenever that came to pass? Civil war is, sadly, a fairly typical outcome of a sudden power vacuum, and I suspect there would have been one whenever the Soviets left, no matter what we did. Why do you think Pakistan wouldn't have tried to gain control over Afghanistan through the Taliban when that happened? Pakistan's interests here are unchanging; they're owed to geography and the rivalry with India.
In some ways, I agree with Brzezinski: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" The collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Central Europe amounted to the greatest emancipation the world had seen since the victory of the North in the US civil war. Since you see no connection between the events, you probably wouldn't agree. But if you did see a connection, would you agree?
In other ways, I don't agree: If this was the only reason we were involved, we were guilty of treating human being as a means, not an end, and that is always wrong. That said, the Mujahideen we aided (who are pretty much *the same people* now fighting the Taliban) did not have to be forced to fight the Soviets. They badly wanted our help. They did not find them "bumbling, incompetent but mostly harmless," and if you look at any indicator of well-being during that period--life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita GDP--you can see why. Look at Ukraine to get a feeling for what it's like to be ruled as a Soviet protectorate.
It's true that subsequent events have been tragic in Afghanistan, and true that we played a role. But asking policy makers to anticipate and forestall complex events that might transpire in fifty years isn't reasonable. No human being can do that, and if we demand this of our policymakers, they'll be completely paralyzed. "Not intervening" is also a choice, and often the wrong one. (Look at Syria.) Afghanistan's tragedy has many fathers, and I certainly think we can be faulted for abandoning the country--twice. But we can't be faulted in the way you suggest.
Claire, thanks for the links. I read them both with interest but in the end, neither of them turned out to be interesting or convincing.
The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was demoralizing and harmful to the Soviet Empire in much the same way that the American defeat in Viet Nam was. It was also reminiscent of the American defeat in Iraq (which happened twice).
There were undoubtedly a hundred reasons that the Soviet Union collapsed and I don’t doubt that the failure in Afghanistan played a role. I suspect that whatever role the Afghan defeat played, it was inconsequential compared to the monumental economic calamity that communism represented. Similarly, I think the importance of Ronald Reagan’s defense build-up (and his Star Wars program) is greatly overestimated.
It is true that the Mujahadeen and the Taliban are not one and the same, but it strains credulity to claim that the destruction of Afghanistan caused by the Mujahadeen did not sow the seeds that led to the Taliban. But for the intervention of the Carter Administration on the side of Mujahadeen warriors, Islamic extremists all of them, the inept but secular Soviet puppet government might have survived. Afghanistan would almost surely be in a far better place today if it had.
There’s no doubt that Pakistan played a major role in the birth of the Taliban. Many of the problems in that part of the world even today stem from the competition between India and Pakistan. Remember though that Pakistan was an American ally and it’s armed forces which helped create the Taliban were funded in large part by the United States. Vivek Kelkar would know better than I do, but my recollection is that India, though technically non-aligned was partial to the Soviets.
What I find detestable is the cavalier attitude that Brzezinski and his peanut farming boss had about their role in Afghanistan’s destruction. While Brzezinski denied tricking the Soviets into invading, he admits to doing everything possible to create an environment in which they would invade. When the Soviets did invade, Brzezinski was delighted. His explanation that it was all worth it to save Eastern Europe from the Soviets just might ring hollow to the poor suffering Afghans in 2023.
I can’t help but wonder whether the “trick” the Carter Administration played on the Soviets is being recapitulated by the Biden Administration in Ukraine. If the revelations of the former Israeli Prime Minister are accurate (neither you nor I know if they are) then history may be repeating itself.
As for the Mujahadeen and the Haqqani Network, Jere Van Dyk’s book on his sojourn with them is worth a look. I’m reading it now. See,
Of course statesmen can’t predict how their decisions in the present will influence history fifty years hence. But the history of American statesmen measured by success over the long run is mixed at best.
Here's a paper that expresses what I'd consider the standard account, historiographically speaking, of the role of Afghanistan in the collapse of the Soviet Union:
"I have one question and one comment. My question is why the French won’t grant the family refugee status and take them in? My understanding is that the father worked for a French NGO. What is wrong with France?"
I have the same question. We've written and written and called and called the French crisis cell established for Afghanistan. No one has replied.
Thanks very much for telling me. I just checked and had the same experience. I checked. It's the right URL. So I replaced the link with the *same* link, and suddenly it worked. I don't get it. Will you check to see if it's working for you, now?
Wow - great work, Claire. A good reminder (one I need periodically) that it's always worth trying to do something to help, even (especially?) if a good outcome seems unlikely at the beginning.
It is. It's always worthwhile. It doesn't always work--see my efforts to improve Turkey's ability to withstand an earthquake--but when I look back and think about what I most regret in life, it's never, ever, "Having tried to help someone who needed it." It's always ,"Not having done enough."
Reading the section on the current situation in Afghanistan is horrifying. What I don’t understand is how the United States military, supposedly the best fighting force in the world, allowed the Taliban to emerge victorious. Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on the military and still we couldn’t defeat what can only be described as the dregs of humanity. What’s the explanation for this?
Why do you blame the officers and generals, as opposed to the civilian commander and the public pressure to which he was responding? As far as I understand things (and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm very open to hearing a better-informed view) we had, essentially, won. Our forces were there more as peacekeepers than combatants. We could have remained there, as we have in South Korea and as we did in Germany, for a very long time, at a tolerable cost. The Taliban's advances, as I understand it, before we left, were owed to the total demoralization of the ANA because they knew we were leaving and taking with us tools vital to their defense--the command and control, for example. Had we said, "We'll be here permanently," it's very likely that the corrupt, ineffective, disliked, but *a thousand times better than the Taliban* regime we were propping up would have remained in power, giving Afghans time to build a stronger civil society and democracy. (That's certainly what happened in South Korea, whose government we propped up for a long time despite it suffering from many of the same flaws.)
But we didn't. There was bipartisan support for "getting out of Afghanistan," and it was a powerful sentiment among Americans, until they realized what that would really mean, but by then it was too late. I blame Biden for a complete failure of leadership. It's easy enough to blame Trump for negotiating the deal (and I do), but Biden is the adult we hired to *not* do things Trump would do, and he should have told the American people, "If we pull out, the Taliban will come roaring back and everything we sacrificed will be for nothing." He should have known that, and he should have *led,* explaining to Americans why we had to stay, if necessary, for a century. Would that have been popular? Probably not. But is what he did popular? No. And in addition, it was wrong. And it very likely was a key factor in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine: He concluded Biden was so weak, and our public so opposed to military engagement overseas--even when the cost of it was quite low--that we wouldn't do anything to stop him.
I don't see why you'd blame the military for this: They did their job honorably, as far as I can tell. The civilians own this one. Every dumb American who banged on about "ending the forever wars" without thinking, "What happens if we end the war but the enemy doesn't?"
I wish the media spent more time showing those people the consequences of their fecklessness.
I'm curious to know why you think otherwise.
Nope, we're on the same page, and you're saying exactly, but exactly, what I've heard from everyone.
I can't say I know enough about combat to be able to evaluate the effect of adding women to the mix: I hear from many people exactly what you said, and that seems to me intuitively likely to be the case. But I hear from equally many people that my intuitions are wrong: The kind of women who want to be in combat roles, I've been told, are so far to the edge of the Bell Curve to begin with that they can hold their own, and men in those roles are professional enough not to lose their minds--and besides, no one is thinking about seduction when someone's shooting at them. Having no experience of it myself, my opinion is that I don't have an opinion. It's for other people to decide. I do find the idea of sending a young mother into combat disgusting, however.
Are we in a position to be picky? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/13/army-draft-volunteer-national-service/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=wp_opinions
I can't tell you how glad I am!
Claire, you have done a mitzvah. It makes me proud to be a reader of your Substack. Congratulations, I look forward to contributing.
I have one question and one comment. My question is why the French won’t grant the family refugee status and take them in? My understanding is that the father worked for a French NGO. What is wrong with France?
My comment is that we should not forget that the United States is complicit in the rise of the Taliban. After all, the Carter Administration tricked the Soviets into invading because Zbigniew Brzezinski wanted to give the Soviets their very own Viet Nam. Once they invaded, the Carter Administration supported the Mujahadeen, which years later morphed (at least in part) into the Taliban.
If you don’t believe it, read this English language translation of an interview that Zbigniew Brzezinski gave to the French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998.
https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/213722/amp
If you read the entire article, you will see that Brzezinski expresses no regrets whatsoever. To the former American National Security Advisor, destroying Afghanistan was a small price to pay for a small tactical victory in the Cold War.
Thanks to the United States, a bumbling, incompetent but mostly harmless Soviet puppet government in Afghanistan was replaced by Taliban insurgents mostly trained by the American Government. But for Brzezinski’s decision, the Communist Government might have survived, only to fall when the Soviet Empire fell. Instead, the Taliban is oppressing innocent Afghan women to this day. There’s little hope that things will improve in the foreseeable future.
The horror this wonderful family experienced has a lineage linked directly to decisions Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s made decades ago.
Your friend Adam Garfinkle, who really admired Brzezinski, finds this argument the height of absurdity. He’s even addressed it in print (at the American Interest which is now defunct). Ask him about it if you’re interested. Adam is wrong. This family suffered in large part because of decisions made in Washington, D.C.
"My comment is that we should not forget that the United States is complicit in the rise of the Taliban." You're confusing the Taliban with the Mujahideen. The Taliban did not yet exist. I linked above to an article that treats this:
https://kabulnow.com/2023/02/opinion-our-misunderstanding-of-afghanistan-led-to-taliban-return/
"Many westerners truly believe that it was the Taliban who fought the Soviet invasion in 1979. They are shocked to hear that this is not true. They do not believe you – and respond belligerently – if you tell them that foreign countries could not have armed or funded the Taliban before 1989 because the Taliban did not exist. If the Western countries understood that Afghanistan meant more than the Taliban, they would not have given Afghanistan over to the Taliban. But sadly, they did."
The Taliban only emerged in 1994, as a faction in the Afghan civil war. I agree that we can be faulted, indirectly, for actions that led to that war and for abandoning Afghanistan after it ceased to be useful to us. But the US's lack of foresight was only one factor, and probably not the main one: Pakistan's creation and support for the Taliban was far more significant, and don't forget the larger context of a global groundswell of Islamic extremism, the causes of which have been treated extensively, but suffice to say, we didn't cause it.
Since you believe the USSR would have collapsed absent its defeat in Afghanistan (which is an unusual position; almost every scholar of that period disagrees with you, but I'll grant you may be right--I'd like to know why you think so), and you also believe it would have left Afghanistan when it collapsed, why do you think that what followed wouldn't have happened then, whenever that came to pass? Civil war is, sadly, a fairly typical outcome of a sudden power vacuum, and I suspect there would have been one whenever the Soviets left, no matter what we did. Why do you think Pakistan wouldn't have tried to gain control over Afghanistan through the Taliban when that happened? Pakistan's interests here are unchanging; they're owed to geography and the rivalry with India.
In some ways, I agree with Brzezinski: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" The collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Central Europe amounted to the greatest emancipation the world had seen since the victory of the North in the US civil war. Since you see no connection between the events, you probably wouldn't agree. But if you did see a connection, would you agree?
In other ways, I don't agree: If this was the only reason we were involved, we were guilty of treating human being as a means, not an end, and that is always wrong. That said, the Mujahideen we aided (who are pretty much *the same people* now fighting the Taliban) did not have to be forced to fight the Soviets. They badly wanted our help. They did not find them "bumbling, incompetent but mostly harmless," and if you look at any indicator of well-being during that period--life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita GDP--you can see why. Look at Ukraine to get a feeling for what it's like to be ruled as a Soviet protectorate.
It's true that subsequent events have been tragic in Afghanistan, and true that we played a role. But asking policy makers to anticipate and forestall complex events that might transpire in fifty years isn't reasonable. No human being can do that, and if we demand this of our policymakers, they'll be completely paralyzed. "Not intervening" is also a choice, and often the wrong one. (Look at Syria.) Afghanistan's tragedy has many fathers, and I certainly think we can be faulted for abandoning the country--twice. But we can't be faulted in the way you suggest.
Claire, thanks for the links. I read them both with interest but in the end, neither of them turned out to be interesting or convincing.
The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was demoralizing and harmful to the Soviet Empire in much the same way that the American defeat in Viet Nam was. It was also reminiscent of the American defeat in Iraq (which happened twice).
There were undoubtedly a hundred reasons that the Soviet Union collapsed and I don’t doubt that the failure in Afghanistan played a role. I suspect that whatever role the Afghan defeat played, it was inconsequential compared to the monumental economic calamity that communism represented. Similarly, I think the importance of Ronald Reagan’s defense build-up (and his Star Wars program) is greatly overestimated.
It is true that the Mujahadeen and the Taliban are not one and the same, but it strains credulity to claim that the destruction of Afghanistan caused by the Mujahadeen did not sow the seeds that led to the Taliban. But for the intervention of the Carter Administration on the side of Mujahadeen warriors, Islamic extremists all of them, the inept but secular Soviet puppet government might have survived. Afghanistan would almost surely be in a far better place today if it had.
There’s no doubt that Pakistan played a major role in the birth of the Taliban. Many of the problems in that part of the world even today stem from the competition between India and Pakistan. Remember though that Pakistan was an American ally and it’s armed forces which helped create the Taliban were funded in large part by the United States. Vivek Kelkar would know better than I do, but my recollection is that India, though technically non-aligned was partial to the Soviets.
What I find detestable is the cavalier attitude that Brzezinski and his peanut farming boss had about their role in Afghanistan’s destruction. While Brzezinski denied tricking the Soviets into invading, he admits to doing everything possible to create an environment in which they would invade. When the Soviets did invade, Brzezinski was delighted. His explanation that it was all worth it to save Eastern Europe from the Soviets just might ring hollow to the poor suffering Afghans in 2023.
I can’t help but wonder whether the “trick” the Carter Administration played on the Soviets is being recapitulated by the Biden Administration in Ukraine. If the revelations of the former Israeli Prime Minister are accurate (neither you nor I know if they are) then history may be repeating itself.
As for the Mujahadeen and the Haqqani Network, Jere Van Dyk’s book on his sojourn with them is worth a look. I’m reading it now. See,
https://www.amazon.com/Without-Borders-Haqqani-Network-Kabul-ebook/dp/B09SC1CCYQ?ref_=ast_author_dp
Of course statesmen can’t predict how their decisions in the present will influence history fifty years hence. But the history of American statesmen measured by success over the long run is mixed at best.
Here's a paper that expresses what I'd consider the standard account, historiographically speaking, of the role of Afghanistan in the collapse of the Soviet Union:
https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1188&context=uresposters
"I have one question and one comment. My question is why the French won’t grant the family refugee status and take them in? My understanding is that the father worked for a French NGO. What is wrong with France?"
I have the same question. We've written and written and called and called the French crisis cell established for Afghanistan. No one has replied.
Tears of joy, Claire. Thank you.
What a massive relief! I’m so happy for the Sahilis!
Claire, you might want to check the fundraiser link. I keep getting a “Fundraiser Not Found” message when I click through.
Thanks very much for telling me. I just checked and had the same experience. I checked. It's the right URL. So I replaced the link with the *same* link, and suddenly it worked. I don't get it. Will you check to see if it's working for you, now?
Obviously, one wishes for those links to work.
It’s working now. Thank you, Claire!
The link in the Substack post is now working, though link in the the email isn’t fixed along with it.