The US war in Afghanistan is clearly floundering. This past Thursday, the superpower lost its second soldier in under a week during a combat mission. The Afghan Taliban continue to gain ground in rural areas while still retaining the capability to launch major attacks in Kabul and other major cities. Yet the only answer the US and its allies seem to have is more of the same. At the conclusion of the Nato summit in Brussels, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the alliance would maintain its presence in the country for the foreseeable future and keep financing Afghan forces till at least 2024. Stoltenberg did say that Nato supports the Afghan government’s efforts to hold peace talks with the Taliban but that as long as the militants continue waging war the chances of a diplomatic breakthrough remain small. US President Donald Trump had announced a new strategy in Afghanistan last year that also ended up being a repetition of previous policies. He sent in 3000 more troops to the country but given that the US and its allies have been unable to defeat the Taliban in 17 years, these additional troops were only going to aggravate the situation without changing the facts on the ground.
The US now seems to recognise that Trump’s Afghanistan strategy has failed. There have been reports that it will soon review this strategy. Until it realises that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, however, no amount of reviews are going to help. The only way to end war in Afghanistan is through a comprehensive peace settlement. But the US has made that more difficult by alienating Pakistan. In accusing the country of aiding the Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban and cutting off assistance, the US has made it less likely that we will work on bringing the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. The Taliban themselves are ready for talks but would prefer to have the US be a direct part of any negotiations. That too looks unlikely till the US begins drawing down its troops. The morass the US finds itself in is entirely one of its own making. It invaded and occupied a country and then acted surprised when there was resistance. Nothing has sustained militancy in Afghanistan more than the cruelty of the US occupation. Ending that is the only way to bring peace to the country after decades of war.