For many people my age, the war in Afghanistan has been going on for most of our lives. For those privileged like like me to not have any direct involvement, it’s been a constant in the news, maybe something in the background we didn’t really think about. Different politicians talked about putting more troops in, taking more troops out, and we just shrugged. But when the US really withdrew this summer and the Taliban took over, some of us wondered: What happened?
The Afghanistan papers tries to answer this, using internal memos the Washington Post obtained via courts and the Freedom of information Act. Overall, this is a fascinating and highly engaging book, highly recommended
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, by Craig Whitlock (368 pages)
Rating: 5/5
Who should read it: Anyone interested in current events or history, or even business
Summary
What happened in Afghanistan and what were the lessons learned?
First, there wasn’t a concrete / defined mission. Post 9/11, we (understandably) wanted to kill the bad guys (Al Qaeda) who murdered thousands of innocent civilians. But then what? The war expanded to be against the ruling Taliban. But after the Taliban were deposed, then what? The US never committed to nation building, but it became clear that we needed to do something to stabilize the country, which led to…nation building
The US could’ve also done a better job of understanding regional and cultural dynamics. Afghanistan is less a unified country than an amalgamation of different clans and people with diverging interests / culture. Relatedly, some Afghanis actually appreciated the Taliban for enforcing basic laws and government. And the US didn’t necessarily fully respect Afghanistan’s Islamic culture and heritage (e.g., to promote unity among different groups, they created soccer balls that included verses from the Koran, which was seen as disrespectful)
A key part of the strategy was standing up and training an Afghan army. But this was a struggle due to 1) cultural differences (e.g., not designing facilities suited to the soldiers’ way of life)1 and 2) varying degrees of commitment from soldiers (e.g., many soldiers signed up for the paycheck and then deserted). The US was so eager to stand up and grow the army that it was virtually impossible to fail basic training
The US quickly pivoted to Iraq, where it focused most of its energy and deployed relatively more resources. Afghanistan quickly became an afterthought
The Taliban simply retreated to Pakistan, where they had relatively safe harbor. So the issue was broader than simply Afghanistan
In engaging with the public, the US did a few noteworthy things:
Adopted different tones internally and externally. Internally, many US officials wondered if they were winning the war. But externally, everyone projected confidence that they were winning and progress was being made
Moved the goalposts for success: either by changing the metrics which defined success or by spinning the same information differently (e.g., more Taliban attacks = the US winning given the Taliban was “becoming more desperate”)
Key takeaways
It’s important to agree upon what the goal is and periodically check to make sure 1) it’s still the right goal and 2) the right progress is being made. One implicit issue was that new leaders kept coming in and simply kept executing against the issues they were handed. It seemed like there was relatively little pushback or asking “hey, what exactly are we trying to solve?” While this might be hard in a chain-of-command culture with strict hierarchy, the same issues still happen in many corporate / non-military organizations
Try to identify what the bottleneck / constraining factors are. According to the book, the US tried to “fix” Afghanistan by spending lots of money. This didn’t really work, as money wasn’t the bottleneck / constraint and this simply created lots of corruption or worse. For example, the US was heavily focused on building schools - but there weren’t enough teachers to fill them, so the buildings just sat empty. Some even became Taliban bomb-making factories
There is usually not a perfect solution. The book suggests that the best solution would’ve likely been to invite the Taliban to join a coalition government around 2003, but that the US was unwilling to engage with them. And years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was reluctant to hold talks with them as she feared it would hurt her politically ahead of her presidential run. Similarly, the US was fixated on stopping opium production, but in doing so, likely alienated many Afghans who saw it as their main source of income
Incentives matter and there are often unintended consequences. The US banned the harvest of opium, which led many poor farmers to sympathize with and join the Taliban. In addition, the US paid farmers to destroy it, which incentivized farmers to grow even more opium, harvest the sap right before destroying it, and get paid twice
Don’t negotiate against yourself or tip off too much about your strategy- when Obama announced the “surge” in 2009, he said a strict timetable for troops to start leaving. This let the Taliban know they simply needed to wait out the next 18 months
Thoughts and reactions
As mentioned above, I found the book really interesting. First, as an engaging explanation of “what happened” with many helpful examples, but also in terms of learnings / takeaways:
Question why you are doing something or what the goal is. In my (much lower stakes) life, I’ve found myself working on lower-value projects just because “I started them so should finish them.” That is not a good reason
When somebody gives you metrics or tells you something is going great, question it.
It’s hard to make somebody do something they don’t want to do. The US spend billions trying to train the Afghan army, but it’s unclear if the commitment was there. The implied takeaway is that you should avoid putting yourself into situations that require that (e.g., where you need to raise and train a new army for an entire country)
The point around internal v. external communication is interesting. I do think 100% honesty is hard when communicating externally, given a leader’s role is to also instill confidence and be a cheerleader for their team. If the US government had come out and said, “we think Afghanistan is going terribly, we don’t know what we are doing,” would that have been better? There is probably some middle ground where you have some level of honesty but also some level of optimism and energy for the future.
Finally, the war in Afghanistan involved some incredibly hard decisions. We just underwent 9/11. We likely had incomplete information. It’s understand why a lot of decisions were made how they were; fortunately, most of our lives are much less complicated.
E.g., kitchens not suited to how Afghans preferred to cook.