The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

September 2012 ended two months of attacks by Afghan security forces against US and NATO personnel, killing 22 and wounding 29. Some attackers were Taliban infiltrators, while others were actual soldiers and police “with no known connections to the insurgency [who] took revenge on foreign troops for personal or ideological reasons” (214). These attacks posed a severe threat to the Obama administration’s plans for a precipitous reduction of troops. When training programs were resumed after a brief suspension, it was extremely difficult to restore trust, even as spokesmen dismissed any attacks as “isolated incidents” (216). They further suppressed information revealing the lack of screening on recruits and suspicions among soldiers prior to the attacks.

“Green-on-blue” attacks, as they were called, were a particularly alarming expression of a training program gone terribly wrong. Large numbers on paper counted recruits who either never showed up or did not exist, their salaries going into officers’ pockets. Those who did exist often fled, and those who stayed faced extreme risks, with Afghan soldiers constituting “roughly eighteen times the number of US and NATO troops who lost their lives” (219). The program bled money with little effectiveness, but it was a program that had to succeed if the Obama administration was to follow its oft-stated timetable. As a result, officials downplayed or dismissed negative stories, while those involved directly in the program were well aware of its limitations.

Corruption was endemic, with officers stealing from recruits and recruits stealing from citizens to make up the difference. Even people with no love for the Taliban took a wait-and-see attitude for which side they might prefer to win. The soldiers who were successfully trained ended up “serving as muscle for a warlord or tribal chief” (224). Making matters worse, the Afghan government was reluctant to crack down on problems within its own ranks. In the end, the US was paying massive sums to train a force that spent more time exploiting its own people than protecting them.

In the closing days of 2014, the US and NATO ended their formal combat operation in Afghanistan, transitioning toward a mission of support for Afghan forces. Obama was eager to fulfill his campaign promise of ending the war in his second term, and yet he recognized that the fight against the Taliban was going poorly. The shift in mission allowed Obama to do both, claiming that the war was now in the hands of the Afghans while still lending considerable support to their efforts, including drone strikes and special operations raids. The Afghans were plainly not ready for the task at hand, in no small part due to the Americans establishing conditions of complete dependency, but officials confidently proclaimed that the security forces were “beginning to do the things alone we used to do for them” (232).

By September 2015, Afghanistan’s sixth-largest city fell to the Taliban, the first to fall since 2001, and was retaken only with substantial US help. Shortly thereafter, a US warship accidentally opened fire on a hospital, killing dozens. Obama decided to keep thousands of troops in the country, insisting that they would not be engaged in “major ground combat” even though many would continue to fight and die (234).

By the end of 2015, the shape of the war had begun to shift. The Islamic State, which the US was also fighting in Iraq and Syria, had cultivated a powerful affiliate in Afghanistan, and while combat against the Taliban persisted, the Obama administration was pursuing a peace deal to expedite a more comprehensive drawdown. By the time Obama left office, the war was at best in a condition of stalemate, and responsibility for the war would fall upon yet another White House occupant, Donald Trump.