S. Frederick Starr
Over the two decades following the attack on the World Trade Center the United States lost nearly 2,500 soldiers and spent more than $2 trillion fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then the U.S. abruptly withdrew. America may have washed its hands of Afghanistan, but the country did not disappear. It is time for the United States to acknowledge this, and to address fresh challenges that are as yet acknowledged and unmet. Only this will advance America’s longterm interests and prevent their being further eroded in a neglected but important world region.
The problem is not that Washington has done nothing. America’s voice is prominent in the international choir opposing Taliban restrictions on women. Three senior Taliban officials have struggled to articulate an acceptable response, but so far fallen have far short. What the State Department terms “pragmatic engagement” combines non-recognition, sanctions, and over-the-horizon monitoring of terrorist activities on Afghan soil, with the provision through third parties of aid to the fifteen million Afghans who, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, don’t know where their next meal will come from. Washington also refuses to return the seven billion dollar of frozen Afghan assets in American banks until the main women’s issues are resolved. It meanwhile devotes the interest on these funds to humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and to defraying the cost of lawsuits against the Taliban government.
Such an approach falls short, not because it does too little but because it does nothing either to deter our enemies or strengthen our friends. Its altruistic goals are laudable but insufficiently strategic. What is needed is a targeted strategy that addresses the dangers posed by the actions of China and Russia and takes cognizance of carefully calculated steps taken by Afghanistan’s regional neighbors. Only such a targeted approach will bring advance America’s interests and those of its regional friends and deter global powers that aspire to control the heart of Asia.
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