How the Research Is Empirically Examined 145
only about 25 percent of them were members of the organization. The rest
were foreign volunteers who had been brought into Afghanistan to fight
under Al Qaeda’s leadership. Until January 15, 2002, nearly 7,000 Taliban
and foreign combatants were captured, and fewer than 500 of them were
transferred to American custody.^217 Most leaders of the Taliban regime
survived and were not apprehended. Many of them fled to Pakistan. From
about three dozen Taliban leaders on the Pentagon’s “wanted list,” more
than a dozen were killed or injured or fled.^218 At least eight of the 20 senior
Taliban leaders and their assistants were killed.^219 Eleven training camps
and other infrastructures of Al Qaeda were destroyed.
I shall translate these achievements into qualitative terms. The Taliban
was removed from power in Afghanistan, was split as a political force,
and fell into disrepute as an ideological movement. Despite that, many
members of the Taliban regime became integrated in Afghan politics—
some of them in provincial functions and others as members and leaders
of various political frameworks. The infrastructures and operations of Al
Qaeda in Afghanistan were destroyed and its ability to operate globally
was significantly reduced—although maybe only temporarily.^220
In addition to the direct consequences of the war for the Taliban regime
and Al Qaeda, the United States might hope that the action in Afghanistan
will serve other, broader goals. The fate of the Taliban regime should cause
a number of violent countries to be more careful in their relations with
independent terrorist organizations, which like Al Qaeda, may consider
the United States as a target. The speed, scale, and intensity of the American
reaction to the September 11 terrorist attacks certainly dashed any expecta-
tion that the attack would lead to a reduction in American military actions
around the world. The expansion in U.S. foreign military commitment that
followed the attack was part of the campaign against terrorism. The war
improved with certainty the United States’ standing in central Asia in gen-
eral and in Afghanistan in particular. It also strengthened the status of the
United States in Pakistan—the regime of the president of Pakistan at the
time, Pervez Musharraf, remained closely dependent on American sup-
port. In addition, the war formed a new basis for cooperation with India.^221
SUMMARY OF THE FIVE WARS OF POLAR POWERS AGAINST
AFGHANISTAN
The various values of the independent variable, the polarity of the
system, in all five test cases allowed me to check whether the variable
affected the dependent intrasystemic variable that is being assessed in the
study—the degree of territorial expansion of polar powers at the end of
the wars being studied. Analysis of the empiric results of these five test
cases showed that the territorial outcomes of the test cases indeed corre-
spond with the study hypotheses.