Why the US’ Counter-Terrorism Strategies in Afghanistan Cannot be Seen as a Success

What the world witnessed in Afghanistan last year can be described as a shocking state of

events after two decades of US occupation. The ‘War on Terror’ that we have witnessed in the

Middle East during the past 20 years, primarily focussing on Afghanistan, saw the US and its

Western allies attempt to rebuild a fundamentally tribal society into a Western-style

democracy [1]

This attempt to reshape the rule of law in Afghanistan overreached standard counter-terrorism

tactics such as tight border security and ubiquity of the internet. To achieve their aim of

restoring order in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s rule, American troops conducted counter-

terrorism training exercises. According to Stephanie Savell, a director of Brown’s

Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the US trained the military, police, or

border forces of close to 80 countries, Afghanistan included.

The failure of these strategies can be seen not only by the Taliban’s immediate takeover on

the US’ leave but also: 7000 US service member deaths; hundreds of thousands of civilian

deaths; and trillions of US dollars [2]. Not to forget the Afghans falling from US planes as they

desperately tried to leave with the soldiers who had occupied their country for 20 years.

Objectively speaking, if the mission alone were to prevent a 9/11 level attack from happening

again then this mission was achieved. No foreign terror attack on US soil has manifested

during their time there and the threat of one now appears to be low. Bruce Hoffman, a

counter-terrorism expert at Georgetown University, stated that ‘the close bonds with our [US]

allies’ was one of the biggest successes from the War on Terror [3].

However, the US attempted to build not only a government in Afghanistan but to install a

westernised conception of the rule of law. This new stretch of what their counter-terrorism

strategy was makes it difficult to suggest that their efforts were successful.

Today, Afghanistan is facing a catastrophic humanitarian crisis [4]. On 3 December, the

UN Refuge Agency reported that ‘nearly 23 million people – that is 55% of the population - are

facing extreme levels of hunger and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine.’ [5]. With no

stable government due to the Taliban’s return to power, Western forces are reluctant to help in

fear of mismanagement of resources and validating the Taliban’s governance [6].

Afghanistan’s current weak political structure is arguably not entirely to blame on the US.

However, the US’ stretching of their own interpretation of counter-terrorism to include

enforcing the rule of law in Afghanistan means that when looking at the successes and failures

we should also focus on how successful Afghanistan is as a nation.

Despite what the US may have achieved for their own national security, its attempt to

reshape Afghanistan cannot be ignored. The humanitarian crisis alongside the devastating

human rights violations that are currently happening in Afghanistan are therefore a direct link

to the US failure to enforce the Western rule of law. Therefore, any successes for America

do not negate the failures which were inflicted on another nation.

[1] Mark Landler, ‘20 Years On, the War on Terror Grinds Along, With No End in Sight’ (The New

York Times, 10 September 2021) <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/europe/war-

on-terror-bush-biden-qaeda.html> accessed 2 December 2021.

[2] Trevor Thrall and Erik Goepner, ‘Step Back: Lessons for US Foreign Policy from the Failed

War on Terror’ (CATO Institute, 26 June 2017) <https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/step-

back-lessons-us-foreign-policy-failed-war-terror> accessed 2 December 2021.

[3] Landler (n 1).

[4] ibid.

[5] Tanya Mehra and Julie Coleman, ‘The Fall of Afghanistan: A Blow to Counter-Terrorism and

Rule of Law Efforts’ (International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 23 August 2021)

<https://icct.nl/publication/the-fall-of-afghanistan-a-blow-to-counter-terrorism-and-rule-of-

law-efforts/> accessed 2 December 2021.

[6] ‘The Observer view on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan’ (The Guardian, 12 December

2021) <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/12/the-observer-view-on-the-

humanitarian-crisis-facing-afghanistan> accessed 13 December 2021.

[7] ibid.

[8] ibid.