The U.S. Must Prepare for the Worst in Afghanistan

Candace Rondeaux

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Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, stands between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Faced with the fact that the United States has lost patience with the Afghan government’s dithering negotiations with the Taliban, Ghani now has little choice but to orchestrate a deal that will likely end his presidency—and almost certainly result in a destructive civil war. Whether Washington decides to honor a bargain struck with the Taliban under the Trump administration, which calls for the exit of 2,500 American troops by May 1, or whether the Biden administration extends their mission by another 90 or 180 days, is almost immaterial. What waits on the other side of a final U.S. drawdown is a pitched battle for control of Kabul and Afghanistan’s other major population centers. Everyone needs to prepare for that inevitability now.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in fact, seemed to signal in a letter to Ghani leaked early this week that the U.S. is gearing up to do just that. The tone of Blinken’s bluntly worded missive suggests that the Biden administration understands that its efforts to reenergize talks between the Taliban and Kabul are unlikely to produce a long hoped for political settlement without U.N. mediation and cooperation from regional stakeholders. As it is, neither Ghani nor the Taliban have signaled much appetite for the White House’s new proposal to form an interim government with representatives from all sides in Afghanistan. Moreover, the chilly silence that greeted U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s push late last year for the Taliban and Ghani’s government to meet in Turkey to hash out the terms of a cease-fire and power-sharing deal is a pretty good indicator that any bargain struck there to reduce hostilities won’t hold for very long.

Still, if there is one upside to the White House’s “Hail Mary” bid to reset conditions for the imminent U.S. drawdown, it is that it shows that the U.S is moving talks onto a more multilateral footing. Dubbed “Bonn 2” by some astute Afghanistan analysts—after the 2001 Bonn conference following the Taliban’s ouster—the White House’s proposal appears to break from the hopelessly flawed U.S.-driven talks between the Taliban and Afghan government in Qatar and move to a more multilateral format for negotiations. The warring sides and regional stakeholders like Pakistan, Iran, India, China and Russia could, as a result, be forced to put a little more skin in the game than they have so far.

Biden’s bid to revive diplomacy could buy his team a little more time to think through a Plan B for the highly likely possibility that another civil war will break out between the Taliban, the Afghan government and various opposition factions in Kabul, including remnants of the multiethnic Northern Alliance. But what is really needed now is a Plan C, not just a backup plan for Washington to reengage militarily in the event that Ghani’s government crumbles. Plan C must account for the likelihood that the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Khorasan Province, will step more firmly into the ensuing fray in the coming years. The Khorasan Province’s recent claim that it was behind the brutal assassination of three female Afghan journalists late last week makes quite clear that the most hardcore Islamist elements in Afghanistan are not going to roll over easily under pressure from a divided transitional government, if U.S. pressure can even form one.

Any White House contingencies would presumably put in play increased support from U.S. Special Forces and military contractors to the beleaguered Afghan special forces. They might also require American military commanders to accede to the long-running demand of Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan army chief, that the U.S. expend more energy and expense on training and equipping Afghan forces to conduct more sophisticated air operations and operate tactical drones in the field.

What waits on the other side of a final U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan is a pitched battle for control of Kabul and other major population centers.

Given the spike in civilian casualties caused by all sides in Afghanistan, there are good reasons to be cautious about augmenting the remote warfare capabilities of Afghan government forces. Yet it would be folly to ignore the Taliban’s warning that it will step up its own use of bomber drones to enhance its military advantages. The White House and Pentagon would do well to remember that one of the biggest missteps in its multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the Afghan National Army was waiting almost a decade to invest in training Afghan troops to fly helicopters in a mountainous country where high-altitude skirmishes are the rule, not the exception. Going forward, however light the actual American military footprint, U.S. counterterrorism strategy will likely require more, not less, investment in a more robust Afghan air force. Given the perennial problems with graft in the Afghan military, and an overall Afghan security sector riven by corruption and mismanagement, there must be oversight of that investment.

It would be a mistake, however, for the U.S. to think that it can just prepare for the worst in Afghanistan with military means alone. The fallout from a coming civil war and the increasing hold on territory by the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Islamic State alike will be devastating for Afghan women and children, as well as Shiite and Sikh religious minorities, journalists, human rights defenders and anti-corruption activists. The U.S., along with its NATO allies, and working with neighboring Pakistan and Iran, urgently need to anticipate a migration surge and come up with a plan to deal with the even bigger flood of Afghan refugees over the next several years.

In fact, once the U.S. completes its ongoing review of a long-stalled special visa program for Afghan military interpreters, the White House would be smart to move swiftly to expand the remit of the task force that conducted that review. Presuming that the logjams that have held up U.S. visas for some 17,000 Afghans are finally resolved, the next phase of work should include an evaluation of the creation of a special visa category for Afghans who, by dint of their identity or profession, will surely be targeted by both Islamist extremists and many of the same corrupt warlords who have long held sway in Kabul. The U.S. needs to plan to boost resettlement services for Afghan refugees, and to work with allies in Europe and Australia, which have put up barriers to Afghan emigrants for too long.