A potentially milestone conference on the conflict in Afghanistan transpired recently. On March 25, 2018, delegations from across the region and around the world gathered in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, to discuss and confront the Afghanistan problem.
The conference features a wide representation of states including diplomats from the United States, Russia, China, the European Union, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
There are several subjects participants will have to tackle. Concerns about the rise of the Islamic State in the region, US attention shifting from Syria back to Afghanistan and the impending increase in troops from several nations including Germany, and growing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent months (as well as Pakistan and the United States) are a few points on the agenda for the Tashkent conference.
More of the Same?
The holding of this conference should trigger no small amount of cynicism. The seventeen-year-long war in Afghanistan has been the subject of innumerable conferences and other international get-togethers over the past decade. This isn’t even the first Uzbekistan-hosted event on Afghanistan, the country having held a forum on the conflict during the recent Samarkand security conference.
So what’s supposed to be different now? The short answer is there are substantial signs that America’s drastic shift towards its policy in Afghanistan is paying off.
When the administration announced its new Afghanistan policy last August, it promised that things would be different in the war during Trump’s presidency. This cliche heard-it-before rhetoric has actually been backed up with significant actions. The current administration has changed its approach to defeating the Taliban in three very important ways.
There would be no time limits to troop presence in the country, and as White House officials related to troops on the ground back in December, complete victory will be the finalizing factor for America’s involvement in the country. This position was in sharp contrast to the approach taken during the last presidency. Facing a war-weary American population, Obama repeatedly set explicit time tables for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, regardless of any particular goals attained or not attained on the ground, first in 2011 and again in 2014. The problem with that is the Taliban watches the news, too.
Announcing to the enemy that they are facing an adversary that is by their own definition not in it for the long haul not only emboldens him, but also opens the door for the use of attrition tactics. There was no longer a need to defeat the Americans, only to bleed them out until they picked up and left of their own accord. This policy shift of the Trump administration took the idea of a set time frame for the war off the table.
Two other important changes at the tactical level have fundamentally altered America’s activities in the country. The first relates to the rules of engagement for US forces. This may come as a shock to many, but for years American troops were not authorized to fully pursue Taliban militants in Afghanistan. Until several months ago, American soldiers were required to be in “contact” with enemy forces before opening fire. This meant that the US military was, in a way, playing the role of spruced-up security guards in Afghanistan, waiting to be attacked before engaging the enemy.
All of that changed in October when Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced from Capitol Hill a fundamental change to the rules of engagement. There would be no more proximity requirements for strikes against Taliban forces, and US and allied advisers would be spread out to operate alongside lower-level Afghan units across the country.
One of the starkest indications of this switch came back in January when top brass announced their strategy of actively seeking out and destroying Taliban installations. As General Lance Bunch, one of the top American officers in Afghanistan, stated in a Department of Defense briefing, “We are able to go after their [Taliban] weapons cache sites, their revenue generation, their C2 [command and control] nodes, all the areas where they thought they were safe and they are no longer so.”
These new options for targeting the enemy are the result of President Trump making good on promises to increase authorities to warfighters in the country, already hinted at in August when the new Afghan plan was rolled out. As Bunch explained, “It has definitely been a game-changer, and the Taliban is definitely feeling it…these [strategies] are new, the war has changed.”
A third addition to the warfighting strategy made by the Trump administration was to go after the Taliban’s sources of revenue. This meant targeting the massive opium and drug synthesizing infrastructure in the country. Back in November, Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top US commander in Afghanistan, told media sources that US air forces had begun bombing heroin production labs in southern Afghanistan. According to Nicholson, the sorties were the implementation of new powers granted to the president that allow him to target Taliban revenue streams in addition to actual fighter and military assets.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
These drastic changes have reflected the end goal of American policymakers in Afghanistan. Since the coming in of the current administration, the aspiration has been to force some form of peace agreement by clamping down relentlessly on the Taliban, a strategy in line with the the unavoidable paradox of conflict: when combating a committed foe, the only effective path to attain peace is to be relentless in the fight.
From the moment the gears of the troop surge started to turn, US officials had made clear their aim. As Secretary Mattis emphasized during his earlier visits to Afghanistan as the surge was underway, the long-term hope of the US is to work with the Taliban and incorporate them into the future of the country.
Similar sentiments were heard regularly from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In October, the secretary told media sources that “there are moderate voices among the Taliban” and America’s hope was to “engage with those voices […] leading to a peace process and their full involvement and participation in the government; there’s a place for them if they’re ready to come renouncing terrorism.”
This type of carrot and stick approach, ramping up military activity while simultaneously extending olive branches, may now be paying off. In a recent Department of Defense press release, Army Brig. Gen Michael R. Fenzel, a senior officer in the Resolute Support mission, noted “breathtaking” progress the Afghan government and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani have made in suppressing Taliban forces, adding that the Afghans’ capabilities today are something he could only imagine during earlier deployments to the country. “[The Taliban] see us with no timeline, additional commitments, overwhelming commitment of enablers that comes with this shift of the main effort from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, and they are seeing it on the ground. It’s got to be demoralizing from the Taliban’s perspective,” said Fenzel.
Similar assessments were heard recently from the Pentagon. According to reports, the US is now seeing signs of interest from elements of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency about talks with the government in Kabul. Secretary Mattis told reporters “we’ve had some groups of Taliban, small groups, who have either started to come over or expressed an interest in talking.”
If all of this is any indication of a pattern, this may mark an important change in the progression of the war in Afghanistan. If the reaching out by elements of the Taliban for peace with Kabul is sincere, this would be a game changer. This question will no doubt be on the minds of delegates in Uzbekistan over the next several days and will likely be very influential in forming any consensus or resolution during the rest of the talks.
By all indicators, America’s strategy layed down seven months ago has been making headway. As long as the administration stays resolute, we may just see in the very near future the close of one of the longest conflicts in US history.
