Episode 16: Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

Laurel Miller & Adam Weinstein on Biden’s Afghanistan Dilemma

In just two months, U.S. troops are slated to withdraw from Afghanistan per an agreement with the Taliban. It’s unclear whether President Biden will adhere to the terms of the agreement, or whether he’ll try to extend the withdrawal deadline and keep American troops in Afghanistan. Many are calling on the president to prolong the troop deployment until Afghanistan stabilizes -- or perhaps indefinitely. Others argue the May 1 deadline is the best chance in two decades for the U.S. to finally end America’s longest war. This week, the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah brings you into this debate. Joined by two leading experts, Laurel Miller and Adam Weinstein, Mark explores the stakes of President Biden’s decision to follow through on, attempt to modify, or walk away from, the agreement made during the previous administration.

Laurel Miller is the director of the International Crisis Group's Asia Program. An experienced diplomat, Miller served as deputy and then later as the acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department. Laurel has taught at Georgetown University and was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds a JD from the University of the Chicago School of Law. @LaurelMillerICG

Adam Weinstein is a research fellow at the Quincy Institute. His research focuses on security and the rule of law in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Adam served as a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan in 2012 and is a member of the American Pakistan Foundation's Leadership Council. He holds a JD from Temple University's Beasley School of Law. @AdamNoahWho

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Show notes:

“What the Afghanistan Study Group Final Report Missed” (Adam Weinstein, Inkstick Media, 2021)
“The Myth of a Responsible Withdrawal From Afghanistan” (Laurel Miller, Foreign Affairs, 2021)
“Afghanistan Study Group Final Report: A Pathway for Peace in Afghanistan” (Afghanistan Study Group, United States Institute for Peace, 2021)

Archival audio:

Afghan-Taliban peace talks resume in Doha (Sky News, September 12, 2020)
Afghanistan's Taliban, US sign peace deal (Al Jazeera, February 29, 2020)
Bipartisan report urges the Biden administration to remain committed to Afghanistan (PBS, February 4, 2021)
Biden reviewing Trump's Taliban peace deal ahead of troop withdrawal deadline (CBS News, February 16, 2021)
Taliban denies Afghanistan fighting will derail talks (Al Jazeera, October 18, 2020)

Transcript:

March 2, 2021

LAUREL MILLER: The U.S. wants to end the endless war in Afghanistan, but at the same time, perhaps, keep counterterrorism troops there in an indefinite way. Those are inconsistent objectives. We don't want to face these hard choices, but ultimately, there are hard choices that will have to be faced.

***

MARK HANNAH: Welcome to another episode of None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah.

We are currently approaching a May 1 deadline for the United States to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Might the United States try to negotiate an extension to this deadline for a troop withdrawal until Afghanistan stabilizes? Or should we walk away from the U.S.-Taliban agreement altogether and keep troops in Kabul indefinitely, like some in Washington would like? Or should the United States finally put an end to its seemingly never-ending involvement in Afghanistan and withdraw in May as scheduled? We decided to talk to two Afghanistan experts and get their take.

MILLER: The basic questions and problems facing the Biden Administration are essentially the same as the ones facing the last three administrations.

HANNAH: Our first guest is Laurel Miller. She heads up the Asia Program at the International Crisis Group. An expert on conflict resolution and democratization, Laurel was the State Department's deputy from 2013 to 2017 and then was acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

MILLER: What's different now is the time horizon for addressing those questions and problems is shortened, and it's shortened by an agreement the U.S. signed with the Taliban a year ago.

Interlude featuring archival audio

MILLER: That agreement called for the U.S. and NATO forces—not just the 2,500 U.S. military personnel, but also the many thousands more contractors, security contractors, other kinds of contractors, intelligence personnel, everyone who isn't a diplomat or someone protecting a diplomat—to be withdrawn from the country on a specified timeline. It’s supposed to be by the end of this April. So, just a couple of months from now. This deal also called for the Taliban to—not cut ties with al-Qaida and other groups, as is often stated—but essentially to keep a lid on terrorist groups that continue to have some debated degree of presence in Afghanistan and prevent them from posing a threat to the United States and its allies and interests. This deal also called on the Taliban to start a process of peace negotiations with the Afghan government and other Afghan political factions, a process that did start but has gone very slowly.

HANNAH: We also spoke with Adam Weinstein of the Quinsy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. An expert on transitional justice and conflict in South Asia, Adam served as a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan in 2012.

Adam, President Biden hasn't officially announced his decision. What is your sense? Where does he stand on this issue? My understanding is that throughout the Obama Administration, then-Vice President Biden seemed to be one of those lone voices for restraint and seemed to be really skeptical about this use of our military to establish or promote democracy. But the calculus is quite different now that he's the one sitting behind the resolute desk.

Interlude featuring archival audio

ADAM WEINSTEIN: Vice President Biden was a critic of the surge, which was the idea of sending 100,000 troops to Afghanistan to overwhelm the Taliban, but there is a difference between that and promoting a restraint-oriented foreign policy. I think he falls somewhere in the middle, probably because for a long time he's promoted the idea of keeping a counterterrorism presence in Afghanistan, which, of course, runs contrary to the diplomatic process that's currently underway.

I think the difficult situation President Biden finds himself in right now—and I certainly don't envy him—is that he's faced with two choices. He can leave Afghanistan in May and adhere to an agreement that was signed between the Taliban and the United States last February. And if he does that, things are probably going to get worse before they get better. The Taliban won't have much incentive to engage in intra-Afghan negotiations, which is a negotiation process that's occurring between the Afghan government in Kabul and the Taliban. And there's a high risk that the country could descend into a civil war reminiscent of a very brutal civil war that raged in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

But if he keeps U.S. troops, either unilaterally or even as part of a negotiated extension to the deadline with the Taliban, he enters an arena in which the U.S. is somewhat doubling down on a policy that has failed for the last two decades. It puts him in a situation where he's kicking the can down the road. The worst consequences might not happen right away, but there's conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that are outside of the control of Washington. So, violence will surge in the rural areas as the Taliban amp up their insurgency, and the United States is forced to respond. And that will affect rural Afghans. It may temporarily protect the rights of urban Afghans, rights that have been gained over the last twenty years, but it will disproportionately affect rural Afghans. At the same time, there's a significant chance the country could still descend into a form of civil war. Then the real question becomes: is President Biden willing to stay in Afghanistan forever? Because at some point, if you leave, these consequences will still exist.

HANNAH: What are people who are advising Biden pushing for? The Afghanistan Study Group commissioned by Congress to make recommendations on U.S.-Afghanistan policy recommends extending the May 2021 withdrawal date, quote, “in order to give the peace process sufficient time to produce an acceptable result.” Walk us through this argument in favor of extending the deadline.

WEINSTEIN: A lot of people who are advising President Biden, “Well, you can stay past the May deadline because the Taliban haven't broken with al-Qaeda.” And their evidence of that is that senior al-Qaeda members continue to be killed in areas controlled by the Taliban, and they haven't engaged in any meaningful dialog with the Afghan government, even if they've sat at the same table. Therefore, there's no reason for the United States to live up to its end of the agreement. And what I would say to President Biden, it is not whether the U.S. is obligated to withdraw by May, but whether the United States can afford to unilaterally violate this agreement with the Taliban. And I think the United States cannot afford to unilaterally violate this agreement with the Taliban.

HANNAH: And you said as much in a piece that ran in Inkstick, which I want to quote, because it was really decisive. You argued, quote, “Any unilateral decision to ignore the May 2021 withdrawal deadline will sabotage an already beleaguered peace process and drag Washington back into a failed counterinsurgency in Afghanistan yet again.” Why is that not just the likely but the necessary outcome of such a unilateral decision?

WEINSTEIN: Well, folks love to say let's stay beyond May, because there hasn't been a U.S. combat death in the last one year and because at least the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan government are at the same negotiating table. So, we might as well stay a little bit longer and see how this goes, even if we're unilaterally breaking this deal. But those conditions—those improved conditions from the U.S. perspective—are a direct result of that agreement. And I say “from the U.S. perspective,” because things have been pretty terrible from the Afghan perspective. There's been a surge in violence and a surge in targeted killings, and I think that should be recognized. But from the U.S. perspective, it has taken the target off the back of U.S. soldiers, and it has at least put the government and the Taliban in the same room. But if you abrogate the agreement, the Taliban have no incentive to continue to engage in talks or to not attack the U.S. military.

HANNAH: Adam argues that violating the terms of the agreement—particularly, blowing past the May 1 deadline—will drag the U.S. back into a failed counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Others, like those advising the president, however, only want a counterterrorism presence to remain, not a full scale ground war. But something you argue, Laurel, in your piece in Foreign Affairs, is that, at least in Afghanistan, you can't have counterterrorism without counterinsurgency. Explain that to us.

MILLER: The U.S. has been on a trajectory of trying to reduce and eventually end its involvement in the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, meaning the fight with the Taliban, and to focus its attention on counterterrorism, meaning the fight against the remnants of al-Qaeda, the ISIS branch that is there, and other much smaller terrorist groups that have some presence in Afghanistan.

HANNAH: The Biden Administration has said that they want counterterrorism, that counterterrorism is a kind of limited mission, that there should be a consensus around maintaining a presence of service members to combat terrorism. But you don't think it's that simple, correct?

MILLER: I don't think it's feasible in the Afghanistan context, because so long as the U.S. military maintains forces in Afghanistan beyond the time limit set in the U.S.-Taliban deal or any extension that might be agreed, the Taliban will contest that presence. It's not that I think counterinsurgency and counterterrorism are necessarily interwoven anywhere in the world. It’s that in the specific context of Afghanistan, they are inextricably interwoven. The Afghan government is engaged in an existential fight with the Taliban. They're not engaged in an existential fight with even ISIS or the most potent terrorist group in Afghanistan right now, but their fight with the Taliban is an existential one. So, if the U.S. wants to partner with the Afghan government as a host government for counterterrorism forces and as a counterterrorism partner, it can't simply decline to support the Afghan government in its existential fight with the Taliban. And if the U.S. military is staying for those counterterrorism purposes, the Taliban will reject that and will contest that presence of foreign forces on Afghan soil. And so, you'll be back to having to fight the Taliban.

HANNAH: What do you think, Adam? I'm curious to know how your time in the Marine Corps might have shaped your perspective, and the analysis you're now doing at the Quincy Institute on America staying the course in Afghanistan.

WEINSTEIN: Well, my time as a Marine, and specifically my deployment to Afghanistan, shapes my analysis insofar as I think I recognize the limit of the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. I think the U.S. military was very good at winning the direct firefight in a particular valley or taking control of a particular district, but it wasn't able to shape conditions on the ground such that it wouldn't be necessary to go back in once the United States left, if the goal was purely to control territory. And I think there was a hope that if the United States could control enough territory in Afghanistan and give the Afghan government and Afghan security forces breathing room to develop, there would be a time when they could just hand over responsibilities to Kabul. But the problem was that Kabul became dependent on the United States, and Afghanistan essentially functions as a frontier state. The U.S. military is in the business of two things: winning the direct firefight on the battlefield and acting as a deterrent. It's not in the business of “creating conditions,” which is a catchphrase the U.S. government and policymaking community loves to use. It's not in the business of creating conditions on the ground for complex geopolitical events. And so, there is a dysfunctional, symbiotic relationship between the presence of the United States in Afghanistan and the functioning of the Afghan state to the extent that it isn't able to fully develop because it relies on the United States.

HANNAH: What about the people who argue, “Why not just stay a little longer until things stabilize?”

WEINSTEIN: I think when people say, “Well, why don't we just stay in Afghanistan indefinitely until things stabilize?” Those two goals are in direct conflict with one another. It's a nice talking point. It's a nice way for an administration to get Afghanistan temporarily out of the spotlight and get the new cycle off of its back. This protracted counterinsurgency the United States is engaged in primarily affects rural Afghans, and let's face it, rural Afghans don't come on panels. Rural Afghans, for the most part, don't write op-eds in major U.S. newspapers. And it does create a bubble around major Afghan cities and allow the gains in those cities to continue onward. But it's not sustainable, and it keeps violence at a simmer rather than ripping off the Band-Aid and saying, “How can we find a sustainable solution while also recognizing the United States only has so much control over the future of Afghanistan?”

HANNAH: Laurel, I'm going to turn back to you now and ask about this idea in the policymaking world that America can and should withdraw—quote unquote—“responsibly” from Afghanistan and that we should wait until the conditions are right before we exit. Now, a lot of these thinkers are advising the president himself, and quite a few of them have gotten us into this position in the first place. What do they mean? And why do you argue, as you did in your Foreign Affairs piece, that this thinking is misguided?

HANNAH: I think, first of all, it's important to say, of course, no one wants to withdraw irresponsibly. No one would advocate that as a policy position. The question is more: what do people mean when they say withdraw responsibly? Sometimes, in my view, that's kind of cover language for meaning other things, and it can mean different things to different people. It also raises the question: responsible to whom? I'm responsible to the American public in the sense of what a justifiable basis is for having troops deployed in Afghanistan, responsible to the Afghan public, or responsible to some larger set of values or a more realist set of national security interests. I think part of what I was pushing against was the use of a kind of shorthand catch phrase which makes it seem like there's a way out that doesn't incur too much risk and doesn't have too many unintended consequences, when I don't think that's really the case. I don't think there is a way out or a way of staying in that doesn't incur some pretty significant risks and have some negative effects. There's no happy ending in any foreseeable timeframe for the American military involvement in Afghanistan.

HANNAH: What about the Taliban? To some extent, any peace process or any outcome from a meaningful negotiation is going to find the Taliban with some form of political power. That's something we are presumably going to have to accept if we want to withdraw our troops. Adam, what do you say to that?

WEINSTEIN: Yes, I think that's correct, and I think it's important to recognize reality without whitewashing the Taliban. The Taliban are brutal and oppressive force in many instances, and I think it's true that the majority of Afghans believe in the idea of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan rather than a Taliban emirate. But when you ask Afghans what an Afghan government means, that's where you see them break into different factions. And you see the current administration in power—the Ghani administration—has a legitimacy problem, and in some parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban do have legitimacy, in many cases, because of the abuses and mistakes of the U.S.-led war effort and the Afghan government. So, while the Taliban are extreme and in many cases commit egregious acts of violence against the Afghan people, the idea that you're going to have a future Afghanistan without the Taliban is a fantasy, I think.

HANNAH: For the people who are still uncomfortable with the United States negotiating with the Taliban, at the very least, Laurel, do you think the Taliban is a good faith negotiating partner?

Interlude featuring archival audio

MILLER: A lot of people have regularly asked me the question: are the Taliban negotiating in good faith? I think the answer to that question is yes, in that they are both fighting for and negotiating for power. If they can get a satisfactory outcome through negotiations, that is, power on terms that are acceptable to themselves, they get a sort of double victory in that they get power in a legitimizing fashion in a way they couldn't—probably couldn't—if they only took power through military means. So, judging by their behavior—I obviously can't see into their hearts and minds—I don't think there's any reason to doubt that they are genuinely testing the potential for peace process to deliver outcomes they prefer. However, negotiating in good faith in the sense of seriously testing the possibility that they can achieve their goals through negotiation is not the same thing as saying they're ready to make significant compromises in order to get those outcomes they want. And that's what I and others don't know. How far would they go in compromising with other Afghans in order to reach a negotiated settlement? They haven't been very clear at all as to specifically what their goals are and what their political vision is.

HANNAH: I want to end by asking what recommendations you'd make to President Biden. Again, we're two months away from this May 1 withdrawal deadline. What can be done at this point to salvage the situation in Afghanistan, to not give up on all the gains that have been made in the negotiations over the past year?

MILLER: It is early days, and so I'm not saying this critically. But while they're still making their minds up about what the policy approach is going to be, what you're hearing is that the U.S. wants to end the endless war in Afghanistan, but at the same time, perhaps, keep counterterrorism troops there in an indefinite way. Those are inconsistent objectives. The U.S. wants to have a negotiated political settlement, but preserve all of the gains, particularly for Afghan women, that have been achieved over the last twenty years—and democracy and elections—as if a negotiated settlement would not change any of those things. So, it's a kind of “all of the above,” rhetorical approach at the moment that is not going to be sustainable. We don't want to face these hard choices, but ultimately, that's unsustainable. There are hard choices that will have to be faced.

In my view, clearly, the best immediate course of action is to negotiate an extension of this May 1 deadline with the Taliban. I and others have thrown out six months as a plausible extension. That's partly because the start of Afghan peace talks—which was part of the agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban—started six months later than had been agreed. So, there's a kind of logical hook there. But frankly, it's also because six months sounds long enough to probe the possibility of developing some traction in the peace process without sounding too long to get it agreed. It's not a science to come up with a number. I think there is a reasonably good prospect that the Taliban would agree to that. They might want some face-saving concessions from the United States, which could just amount to a recommitment of certain things the U.S. promised to do that haven't happened pursuant to the U.S.-Taliban deal. But I think they would probably come around to agreeing to a negotiated extension because the peace process has been working out fairly well for them so far. They haven't made any concessions of any great significance as of yet. From the United States, they won a commitment to a pullout, and they have also gained an appearance of legitimacy through the process. So, it's been delivering for them, and I don't think they'll give up on the process easily. That's not to say they will easily commit to any compromises with the Afghan government and other Afghans, but keeping the process going a little longer may not be too hard. But I think it's unlikely there will be a comprehensive peace agreement that gives one confidence in the stability going forward in Afghanistan in some kind of durable way even eight months from now if you got a six month extension. There will be difficult questions as to whether you can maybe get a further extension if there is some traction developing in the peace process.

But ultimately, the U.S. is still in a hard place on the question of the troop presence. If you cannot get a satisfactory peace deal among Afghans by the end of any extension period of time, then you, the United States, either stay in Afghanistan, which means returning to conflict with the Taliban, or decide you gave it the best shot you could and that you gave Afghans the best chance you could to come to some kind of agreement among themselves, and you call it a day. Again, going back to what I said earlier, that's the fundamental question that has faced prior administrations, too. How long do you just keep keeping on with propping up the Afghan government and preventing their demise or at least an intensified civil war if you don't actually have the prospect of a military victory or a clear negotiated political settlement?

HANNAH: Thank you so much, Laurel and Adam, for joining us.

I'm Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. Giving a special thanks, as always, to our None of the Above team who make this all possible. Thank you to our producer, Caroline Gray, editor Luke Taylor, sound engineer Zubin Hensler, and EGF’s graduate research assistant Adam Pontius. If you enjoyed what you heard, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Please do rate and review us, and if there is a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@egfound.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there, and catch you next time.

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