The U.S., Bin Laden, and the “Afghan Trap”
BOOK REVIEW: How to Lose a War: The story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan
By Amin Saikal / Yale University Press
Reviewed by: Jean-Thomas Nicole
The Reviewer — Jean-Thomas Nicole is a Policy Advisor with Public Safety Canada. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of Public Safety Canada or the Canadian government.
REVIEW – In international relations, the wheel of fortune turns inexorably, slowly but surely. While Israel’s war against Hamas takes center stage on the world stage, as much for its disastrous military-humanitarian consequences as for the social and political polarization it provokes within North American and European societies, Ukraine continues to resist, against all odds, with limited US and European support.
Similarly, How to Lose a War : The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan by Amin Saikal reads like an elegy for a country lost in the dark age of a terrorist, totalitarian rule – once again; now, is it because of the topic itself, the contemporary tribulations of Afghanistan from September 11, 2001 until the return of the Taliban emirate (circa June 2023) or because the book was written during the long illness and passing of the author’s younger sister, Maliha Saikal, a former diplomat and Arabist, from cancer?
One thing is certain, however: this serious and somber historic reflection, a reasoned lament almost, is indeed replete with tales of deaths, tragedies, mistakes, betrayals, missed opportunities, sorrows, melancholy, and a few lessons over time.
The author, Amin Saikal, a preeminent Afghanistan and Middle East specialist, is an emeritus professor and founding director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, and adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia. His most notable books include, among others numerous publications on various platforms, Iran Rising, Zone of Crisis, and Modern Afghanistan.
Thus, as I alluded to earlier, this book explores the US-led intervention in Afghanistan and its eventual failure. Specifically, it narrates and discussed critically how the US initial approach from a light footprint changed to a heavy footprint that widened and deepened its involvement in processes of state building.
What comes to light then is the central concern of this study: the fragility of the US Afghanistan campaign in relation to Afghanistan’s historical and prevailing intricacies, and the hunt for Bin Laden and its conflation with America’s wider foreign policy agenda of democracy promotion and war on terrorism to preserve America’s global power status.
Following this orientation, the main reasons that derailed the American campaign becomes rapidly and abundantly clear: the failure to net the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, and his main operatives early enough; to secure a reliable and effective Afghan leadership and workable system of governance; to halt Pakistan’s predatory behaviour; and to pursue an appropriately long-term military strategy to deal with unforeseen contingencies.
By (not) doing so, albeit unwillingly, the US fell into the Afghan trap, following ultimately the same humiliating pattern of defeat and withdrawal already experienced by the British and Soviet would-be conquerors of Afghanistan territory, respectively in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Furthermore, this US defeat and subsequent catastrophic withdrawal would, in turn, facilitate the return to power of the Taliban, in mid-August 2021, opening therefore a new, dark, and disastrous chapter for the people of Afghanistan and transforming the country, once again, into a potentially dangerous “terrorist nest”.
In that regard, Saikal rightly cautions his Western readers: “a majority of the Afghan people had previously experienced the Taliban’s rule and feared its return, although the group’s appeal among segments of their Pashtun kindred should not be underestimated”.
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Amin Saikal’s rigorous demonstration is based on years of personal fieldwork, interviews with Afghan insiders still in active duty, in hiding, or currently with the anti-Taliban resistance; with regional and Western policymakers, practitioners, scholars and informed folk; on his own extensive writing and publications on the subject in regional and international contexts.
Saikal also mentions eyewitness accounts and highly relevant information of several insiders from the Afghanistan and American sides, particularly Mahmoud Saikal, former Afghan deputy foreign minister (2005-2006), former ambassador to the United Nations (2015-2019), and the author’s brother; and Karl Eikenberry, a retired US Army lieutenant-general and former US ambassador to Afghanistan (2009-2011).
Eikenberry also served two tours of military duty in the country as US security coordinator for Afghanistan and chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan (2002-2003), and as commander of the US-led coalition forces (2005-2007). After his military career, he was the Director of the U.S. Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University (2011-2019).
Mahmoud Saikal resigned twice from senior government positions in protest at Afghan governments’ misguided policies and corruption. He left copious notes of developments in the form of a comprehensive diary that unveils what has remained so far hidden from the public eye.
Karl Eikenberry was intimately involved in the execution and the policy-setting of the US campaign, with a very deep policy understanding and lived experience of the Afghanistan conflict. In Eikenberry’s views, as reported by the author, following the toppling of the Taliban and the expulsion of Al-Qaeda, the US would have been better off if it had refrained from a transformative involvement in Afghanistan and placed it under a UN trusteeship as a better way of managing its transition.
Given its clear Afghan insiders’ perspective, Saikal’s argument is particularly rich, strong, and well-articulated when he talks about Afghanistan’s dysfunctional governance under presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani with its rampant corruption, nouveau riche class, ethnic imbalances, and government’s inefficiencies. However, the cherry on the cake remains the outcomes of the 2014 Presidential Election; it is a masterclass in Machiavellian politics in the classical sense. This complex, unique, enlightening book is also worth reading for the constant Pakistani interference in search of strategic depth through a proxy domination of Afghanistan.
Overall, it could be argued that Saikal’s book is channeling the reformist, pluralistic and democratic governmental and societal elements who wanted to serve their country with loyalty, dedication and sincerity but found themselves on the fringes, frustrated about the direction Afghanistan is taking but void of resources and opportunities to make corrective differences.
How To Lose a War earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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