Ten-Year Assessment

"If the insurgency infecting much of Afghanistan is compared to a cancer, the International Security Assistance Force's operations are little more than anaesthetic. Those military operations lower the fever of anarchy, temporarily and locally. But they are not curing the underlying disease. General [David] Petraeus's own Counter-Insurgency Field Manual makes the point that COIN - counter-insurgency - is mostly politics. Without a credible political product to offer populations caught in the cross-fire, no settlement will hold. That is the fatal flaw in the whole intervention." Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's Afghan envoy from 2007 to 2011

Ten years is a long time to fight a war. And consider: this is a war where combined armies of Western nations with their modern, up-to-date armaments and training have been battling a stone-age rag-tag guerrilla insurrection where the guerrillas are able to melt into the landscape because they are of the landscape and the population therein, while the combined, well-furbished armies are constrained to fighting in rank and file.

No contest. It never has been, even going back to antiquity, when the well-trained armies of the day were opposed by guerrilla fighters with little to lose and everything to gain by appearing suddenly out of a mountain mist and attacking the surprised targets, then gliding back to obscurity. It's something like that where the Taliban has been supported by a neighbouring country, and can rely upon Afghan Pashtun villagers not to betray their presence.

Of course, if those villagers did venture to conspire with foreign troops there would be revenge attacks by their co-religionists. Codes of honour among fighting men differ, depending upon where those battalions have emanated from. A national code of conduct, internationally imposed and recognized is not to be confused with the far more primitive code of conduct befitting a tribal society.

"We've done terribly badly in providing security to the Afghan people and this is the greatest shortcoming of our government and of our international partners. What we should do is to provide a better, more predictable environment of security to the Afghan citizens, and that the international community and the Afghan government definitely have failed [to do]." President Hamid Karzai

The Geneva Convention may declare and insist that civilians be protected from military combat but tribal convention has it that it is perfectly legitimate for fighters obeying a guerrilla code to shield themselves with civilians, to set up combat brigades and weapons depots in civilian-populated areas, and to demand of civilians that they execute helpful little tasks, like installing IEDs and in fact join their ranks.

The hugely unsuccessful mission of the NATO ISAF force to oust the Taliban, marginalize and defang them has resulted instead in a situation where the Taliban, while striking successfully within supposedly securely protected areas of Kabul, will wait patiently for the imminent departure - pre-declared - of ISAF troops, whereupon they will be free to take up where they left off, governing Afghanistan.

"(NATO) hoped they could stabilize Afghanistan by using military force to degrade the Taliban, while building up the capacity of the Afghan government and its armed forces. the idea was that NATO could then pull out leaving a weakened insurgency and a strengthened Afghan government capable of maintaining stability. But fewer Afghans seem convinced. If it does not work, the risk is probably not that of regime collapse but of a nasty persistent civil war after the drawdown in 2014." Michael Semple, former deputy European Union envoy to Afghanistan

And an odd thing happened on the way to defeating the Taliban and bringing Afghanistan into the 20th Century, to eventually catch up with the rest of the world, living in the 21st Century: the Western-sanctioned Government of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai has chosen to verbally embrace the Taliban as "brothers" (which indeed in a tribal sense they are), and to seek accommodation with them.

The Taliban have responded predictably, seeing all such overtures as defined cowardice, an obvious of weakness, an enemy set to capitulate, and victory is close at hand. Western powers are busy second-guessing where they went wrong, and coming to the conclusion: everywhere. Entering a country with archaic laws bearing no resemblance to those of a civilized society, incapable of conferring with the people, for want of a common language.

"The mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States. But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed. "The argument that it was a stabilization mission was maintained for too long. The opponent was fighting a military battle and we needed to do the same. If we withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, then the Taliban will take over power again within just a few months." Former head of Germany's armed forces, General Inspector Harald Kujat

Deciding to prematurely withdraw a huge percentage of fighting forces to turn attention elsewhere, to an entirely different, albeit equally plagued country ruled by yet another Muslim tyrant proved injudicious. Thus leaving Afghanistan, yet again, inadequately assisted, to struggle to make something of itself with the help of foreign humanitarian aid investing in the frail future of a failed nation.

"When we went after the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, there was a certain understanding that we had the ability and the right to defend ourselves and the fact that al-Qaeda had been harboured by the Taliban was legitimate. I think when we made the decision to go into Iraq that was less legitimate [to the Muslim world]." General Stanley A. McChrystal, U.S. military head of mission in Afghanistan, former commander of coalition forces