afghanistan‘money from God’. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan’s financial
dependency will continue well beyond 2030. The usa and nato thus faces
the same dilemma as the British did in the First Afghan War, summed up
by John F. Sopko of sigar as, ‘withdraw, and the democratic government
may well fall. Stay, and continue what we have been doing and we may be
faced with... a stalemate’. 39
Sooner or later American and European taxpayers and politicians
will tire of pouring money into the bottomless pit and walk away. When
this happens, it is anyone’s guess what will occur. It is unclear what the
international community’s response will be in the event of the collapse of
central authority or if the Taliban manage, for example, to take control of
major cities or threaten to take Kabul itself. One suspects that there is no
action plan for such a scenario. President Donald Trump in this respect
is hardly the right man for cool, calm and objective planning. Six months
into the most dysfunctional American presidency of the post-war era, all
the White House seems to be offering is more of the same, sending back
troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to defeat the insurgents militarily.
In so doing, President Trump and his advisers have shown they have
learnt nothing from the failure of the military surge implemented by his
predecessor, President Obama, or from the Soviet one under President
Gorbachev.
Furthermore, sending back more nato forces will not solve the
problem of Afghanistan’s governance, corruption or the dysfunctional
relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches of the state,
let alone end the insurgency. Indeed, it may even make matters worse. As
one Taliban official remarked to an American diplomat in 2007, ‘You have
all the clocks, but we have all the time.’ 40 President Trump also risks under-
mining his already declining popularity with his own political support base
if more American soldiers die or are maimed for life. The stark fact is that
the government of Afghanistan, as currently constituted, is unsustainable
since it only survives by being propped up financially and militarily by
foreign powers, and the country’s Constitution and governmental struc-
tures are fundamentally flawed. One also wonders how much appetite
nato’s European members have for re-engaging militarily in Afghanistan.
Britain, the main partner of the usa when it came to combat operations
in Afghanistan, will hardly want to become embroiled again, given the
high losses its troops suffered, the recent financial crisis, and the cost and
complexity of leaving the European Union. Even with additional mili-
tary support, President Ghani faces a challenge of Herculean proportions
and there is little optimism among Afghans or informed observers that