The ‘Graveyard of Umpires’? The Hard-Learned Lessons that Afghanistan Taught EU Mediators and Negotiators

Roland Kobia & Marnix Middelburg

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Introduction

As we commemorate its third anniversary, the withdrawal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from Afghanistan in August 2021 has been one of the defining moments of 21st century geopolitics to date, both in what it meant politically and for the dramatic optical way in which it happened, aired live on TV channels around the globe. Just like the moment when the Twin Towers in New York collapsed on 11 September 2001, many people remember their day when Kabul suddenly fell 20 years later, on 15 August 2021, with daunting images and the immediate realization that the aftermath of 9/11 was there again to haunt us. More widely, this was accompanied by a feeling that something fundamental was changing in the world, well beyond South Asia. As it ended in a much less resolute way than the NATO mission’s new name as from 2015 – Resolute Support Mission – had initially heralded, those most versed into geopolitics immediately understood that the ‘Thucydides trap’1 was widening before their eyes.

This paper will delve into the lessons and strategic maxims that can be distilled from the interaction of the European Union (EU) with allies, opponents, and its own political philosophy in the case of Afghanistan. With both an insider’s and a more academic outsider’s perspectives, this paper will candidly shed some light on what happened behind the scenes of the highly intricate negotiations and delicate political stakes, through the subjective prism of a front-line actor to the Afghanistan process between 2017 and 2021. Critical personal reflections will aim at offering ideas to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Just like the Chinese meaning of ‘crisis’ (Wei-Ji) brings together the notions of danger and opportunity, when events teach hard-learned lessons, they must be taken as an occasion to reflect and improve. This is especially urgent given that the increasingly destabilizing geopolitical landscape requires the EU to step up its posture internationally, and that negotiators and mediators should be prepared to handle cases just as complex as the Afghanistan file