AMERICAN ASPIRATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN
American aspirations in Afghanistan
As the Trump administration shows signs of reconnecting with Afghanistan five years after signing the Doha Accord with the Taliban, what may be next for US-Afghan relations?
America’s aspirations in Afghanistan largely revolve around its own national interest, and the US intent is to show they are still able to put pressure on geopolitical rivals, no matter where, according to a panel of experts at a recent Democracy Forum panel discussion, which addressed the issue of the US-Afghan relationship today.
TDF President Charles Bruce began by highlighting President Trump’s assertion, during his September State Visit to the UK, that he would like Bagram military airbase to be returned to US control, and the Afghan foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s emphatic refusal. Lord Bruce also stressed how, over the last four years, at least 15 countries have overcome their reservations and re-established diplomatic connections with the Afghan government, principally Russia, China, Iran, and several Gulf states. Indeed, in July Russia became the first country formally to recognise the Taliban government, and in the same month the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Russia met in Kabul to discuss deepening co-operation, including extending CPEC into Afghanistan. Then, just two weeks ago, Amit Khan Muttaqi visited Delhi for a meeting with the Indian foreign minister. For the Taliban, such engagement with India allows them to ‘create a perception of legitimacy for their domestic constituents’, and to ‘hedge their bets…carving out an identity separate from their over-dependence on Pakistan’.
Although Trump flagged up the desire to regain control of Bagram at his first cabinet meeting in February, added Lord Bruce, the official US foreign policy position on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was explained in July by Jonathan Shrier, Acting US Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, when he expressed deep scepticism about the Taliban’s willingness to participate in good faith or pursue policies in accordance with the expectations of the international community. It is even debatable, argued Lord Bruce, what strategic advantage would be gained by Trump’s plan to recover a military presence in Afghanistan. He concluded by referencing a report published by the Brookings Institute in August last year, which, in speculating on the future for Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and its relationship with the West, suggests that ‘suppressing terrorism remains the United States’ primary interest’, and advises that ‘for now the US should reconcile itself to building a low level equilibrium with the Taliban’.
Analyst and Special Eurasia Research Manager Dr Giuliano Bifolchi addressed the strategic meaning of the Bagram Air Base and why the US, as well as other regional and international actors, are interested in controlling this military facility. He homed in on three specific aspects of US interest: the strategic and geopolitical dimension, given Bagram’s location, for instance its proximity to several Central Asia republics, as well as to Iran, Pakistan and China, particularly the industrial area where the Chinese have their nuclear facilities; the counter-terrorism focus, for sustaining operations against transnational jihadist networks such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State-Khorasan; and economic interests, allowing potential access to mineral resources and strategic trade corridors linking Central and South Asia.
With Trump’s second term in office, he cut around 1.8 billion in USAID
It is not a coincidence, added Bifolchi, that after Trump declared that the US wants the Bagram air base back, Pakistan decided to increase its military operations against Afghanistan, and we had this military escalation at the borders.
Looking at the potential role of the US in the context of the Taliban’s shifting regional alliances, particularly in light of the current tensions between the Taliban and Pakistan regarding the TTP, was Nazifa Haqpal, a former diplomat, and Director of Aspire Consultancy. She spoke of the recent peace talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan in Istanbul, as well as India’s evolving relationship with the Taliban, saying that these developments remind us that the geopolitics of Afghanistan are changing. These shifts will shape Afghanistan’s security, humanitarian and economic prospects, and the response of regional countries, in turn, may also influence US foreign policy towards Afghanistan. This policy, she argued, is – in theory if not in practice – very straightforward: a stable, sovereign Afghanistan that does not serve as a safe haven for transnational terrorism, a country where people can pursue basic rights and livelihoods, and an environment in which there is cooperation, not proxy conflict.
However, added Haqpal, if we assess the US approach over the past four years, we see that, with Trump’s second term in office, he cut around 1.8 billion in USAID, suspending most humanitarian programs and leaving millions without essential services. His America. First policy shifted US engagement to a narrow focus on counter-terrorism, and hostage diplomacy or recovery.
There is a line of thinking in the US intelligence world that some kind of engagement with the Taliban might be useful
There might be converging concerns between different agencies of the American state on the issue of Afghanistan, said Dr Antonio Giustozzi, a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI and Visiting Professor at King’s College, London, although he believed Trump has his own concerns which he highlighted even before taking charge as president; the Taliban said they had received messages from his team about Bagram air base, which was raised after he became president, and now again recently. Giustozzi believed that was linked with his electoral campaign, his criticism of how President Biden handled Afghanistan, and a desire to feed this kind of thing to his MAGA base. There was certainly a line of thinking, especially in the American intelligence world, added Giustozzi, that some kind of engagement with the Taliban might be useful, if not necessary. Some senior Taliban figures have been seen meeting US American intelligence officers in the Gulf countries to discuss matters, even while other very senior officials, including Amir Abdullah, oppose this kind of engagement with the Americans, even though it has been going on for several years.
So there is a persistent interest in the US about some kind of Afghan engagement, though Giustozzi was not convinced there is a very strong interest within what Trump would call the deep state in the US for re-establishing an actual military base in Bagram. That would be difficult to sustain, he added; in fact, it could be detrimental to US defence interests, as Bagram, while very well positioned, is also in a very risky position, very exposed, and one of the reasons the Americans are no longer there is that Afghanistan, located between Central Asia and South Asia, is surrounded by countries that could be detrimental to the US, including Pakistan, Iran and Russia. Giustozzi suspected, too, that part of the US game might be to signal to China that the Americans also can be aggressive, as a form of pressure to China – the threat of re-establishing a presence in the middle of Central Asia close to a sensitive Chinese border.
In his closing comments, TDF Chair Barry Gardiner MP said that, if we look at what the US Congressional Commission on the war in Afghanistan has said, it was that the US went in primarily to stop future terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda but got deflected from their purpose in that they started to think about nation-building. But, argued Gardiner, it is clear that nation-building is much more difficult when there is not one nation to build it around, but a series of different ethnic, religious and political groups who have been warring against each other and, in that sense, nation building was always a fraught exercise.
YS Gill is a political analyst