Afghanistan and Its Neighbors

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By KELLY JANE TORRANCE

Seven months after taking office, President Donald Trump finally announced how his administration plans to fight the longest-running war in American history. “My original instinct was to pull out—and, historically, I like following my instincts,” Trump told the nation in a prime-time address outlining his strategy for Afghanistan. But after studying the situation—and weeks of dithering in the face of vicious infighting on the subject among his staff—he came to understand why withdrawal wasn’t wise: “9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists.”

The course he chose is little different from the status quo, with one exception: The president called out one of Afghanistan’s neighbors for providing protection to those destabilizing the country. “We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting,” Trump noted. “No partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials.” It was a direct rebuke to his predecessor, Barack Obama, who declared in his Afghanistan strategy speech that “we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust.” Obama didn’t mention Pakistan’s neighbor and rival, but Trump did; working more with India, he said, was a “critical part of the South Asia strategy.”

Trump rightly recognizes that to change the situation in Afghanistan, America must change its strategy in the broader region. But he only mentioned countries to Afghanistan’s east and south. He said not a word about its direct western neighbor, which enjoys causing chaos in that country and beyond: Iran.

Trump noted that “Pakistan often gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror.” The Islamic Republic does, too—and much more. Iran sees itself killing two birds with one stone there. A permanently destabilized Afghanistan is easier to exert influence over, and through the Taliban, Iran can help hit what it calls the Great Satan: the United States. In a long report in its August 6 edition, “Iran Flexes in Afghanistan As U.S. Presence Wanes,” the New York Times detailed the ways Iran contributes to the terrorist cause. Some Taliban commandos live in Iran, moving back and forth across the border, and new fighters are recruited and trained there. Iran also gives Taliban terrorists direct aid: fuel, weapons, cash. As Afghan officials told the Times, “Iran is set on undermining the Afghan government and its security forces, and the entire United States mission, and maintaining leverage over Afghanistan by making it weak and dependent.”

The details in the Times account were eye-opening, but its conclusions weren’t a revelation. “In the past several months, multiple U.S. commanders have warned of increased levels of assistance, and perhaps even material support, for the Taliban from Russia and Iran,” the Congressional Research Service noted in an August 22 report. Weekly Standard contributing editor Thomas Joscelyn last year analyzed documents, including records from the State Department, Treasury, and a D.C. district court, and concluded, “Iran has supported the Taliban’s insurgency since late 2001.”

Some skeptics persist in claiming that Iran, a Shia state, wouldn’t align itself with a Sunni fundamentalist group. Superficial students of the Middle East and environs think all alliances and enmities there are sectarian. But not every battle in the region sees Sunni pitted against Shia (think only of the recent diplomatic row between Qatar and a group of Arab Gulf states). Who can be surprised that a government that imprisons and tortures dissidents, encourages acid attacks on women who go unveiled, and bans social media is happy to back an organization that, when it was in power, outlawed music and movies, prevented girls from being educated, and gave safe haven to terrorists plotting attacks against the United States?

The Trump administration is reportedly close to finishing its review of U.S. policy toward Iran. The president has made it clear he would like to tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by his predecessor, but he’s twice bowed to pressure from advisers and recertified it. Here the author of The Art of the Dealshould follow his instincts. The nuclear deal is providing the Islamic Republic with increased resources it’s using to fund terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Iran received $1.7 billion from the United States through the agreement. “None of that money reached the Iranian people,” Farzad Madadzadeh, a 32-year-old dissident who fled Iran less than two years ago, told me recently. He was quick to name some of the people and groups who have benefited from the largesse: Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis. And more American money will be pouring into the country the State Department calls “the foremost state sponsor of terrorism.” Boeing has signed two deals to supply Iran with aircraft, one for $16 billion, the other for $3 billion. By making those contracts possible, the JCPOA gives Iran the ability to do more harm to U.S. forces and interests in Afghanistan.

Will Trump ultimately overrule his viziers? One of them undermined the president just moments after his Afghanistan address. Trump said in his speech that someday “perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan.” It was a strange statement, one that contradicted his declaration that “it is up to the people of Afghanistan to take ownership of their future, to govern their society, and to achieve an everlasting peace.” Do the Afghan people want to be ruled by murderous fundamentalists who massacred civilians and brutally repressed women before they were replaced by the country’s first elected government? They haven’t indicated so at the ballot box; but then, a Taliban spokesman once stated, “General elections are incompatible with sharia and therefore we reject them.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has admitted that he and the president “have differences” over the Iran nuclear deal. And not just there, it seems. Tillerson released a statement the night of Trump’s address stating that the Taliban has a path to “political legitimacy.” “We stand ready to support peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban without preconditions,” he said, adding that Pakistan “can be an important partner in our shared goals of peace and stability in the region.” Trump’s secretary of state is a lot more willing than his boss to make deals with terrorists and their supporters. Let’s hope that this is one area in which the president is willing to recoup his authority.