Today, Explained - Ending the endless war

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

This weekend in Afghanistan was one of the deadliest this year. Vox’s Jenn Williams explains whether America can end its longest war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is not an ad about a toothbrush, but it is an ad about your teeth. You can get a smile you love for a fraction of the cost of traditional braces thanks to Smile Direct Club. Yes, that's right. There's a whole club. They've got a 30-second smile assessment online to find out if you're a candidate for a free at-home impression kit with a rebate plus $100 off your aligners when you go to SmileDirectClub.com slash podcast and use the offer code EXPLAINED. Jen, what happened in Afghanistan this weekend? So in Afghanistan, in Kabul, we saw one of the deadliest terror attacks in the capital this year. Tragedy once again in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Invitations for this wedding ceremony said, we celebrate with a world of hope and desire. A sentiment crushed last night as a suicide bomber killed at least 63 people at this wedding reception in Kabul. More than 180 people were injured. Young kids, men, women, children.

It was a horrific attack. The explosion happened near the stage where the musicians were. Everyone who was nearby was killed. Kabul's huge wedding halls are centers of community life, but the grand design and decor of this one belie the carnage of the attack. So these people were literally celebrating one of the happiest moments of their lives. Around 1,200 guests were invited to the wedding. I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast. I couldn't find anyone. Everyone was laying on the floor all around the hall. Throughout the night, ambulances ferried the injured for treatment.

Outside of a nearby hospital, relatives checked for names of the dead and injured. And the explosion happened right ahead of Afghanistan's 100-year Independence Day celebration, so it was pretty momentous, and it really shook Kabul. Like I said, it was one of the deadliest attacks that we've seen this year. Earlier this month, 14 people were killed and over 100 wounded when a car bomb was detonated outside a police station in West Kabul. That blast and the wedding attack occurred in the same area. And there were also a series of attacks in Jalalabad,

and at least 66 were killed in 10 separate attacks also over the weekend. So all in all, a really, really horrific weekend for Afghanistan. Do we have any idea who was behind these attacks this weekend? So ISIS has claimed responsibility for the wedding attack. It took place in the Hazara community, which is predominantly Shia. ISIS, if you'll remember, is a Sunni Islamist group, very hardcore Sunni, and have attacked Shia in the past. And so it makes sense that it would be ISIS. The Afghan government, however, has tried to put some of the blame, at least on the Taliban, for saying they probably had something to do with it. But as far as it looks right now,

it was probably ISIS. How does ISIS fit into this picture? Obviously, the U.S. went to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. And now the U.S. is talking to the Taliban about peace. Meanwhile, ISIS executed this bombing over the weekend. Right. So if you remember, the U.S. essentially invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban had harbored al-Qaeda while they were essentially planning 9-11. So, you know, September 11th, terrorist attacks happen. We find out that, you know, bin Laden and his cohort are hanging out in Afghanistan, that the Taliban had given them safe haven.

So we invade basically to punish the Taliban and to kick everybody out, all the terrorists out, right? Yeah. So that happens, sort of. The U.S. continues to fight this kind of long-running war against the Taliban and, you know, also targeting al Qaeda. Meanwhile, more recently, several years ago, ISIS arises. Right. And I mean, ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. So how the hell do they get to Afghanistan? Well, basically, they start as this kind of regional group, but they end up spreading out and essentially doing franchises the way that al-Qaeda kind of did.

So they have different groups that basically will declare loyalty and declare that they are part of ISIS. But you have one of these groups. People call it ISIS-K or ISIS-Khorasan, which is how the group kind of identifies itself based on this term, Khorasan. It's like an older term for the region. Okay. based on this term, Khorasan. It's like an older term for the region. So they're in Afghanistan. There are some kind of ISIS people who maybe have connections to the original ISIS group in Iraq and Syria. But a lot of the fighters that actually make up this ISIS-K group in Afghanistan, a lot

of them come from the Taliban. So you have more extreme people in the Taliban, often sometimes younger fighters, who are mad the Taliban is considering doing peace with the Americans. Like, are you kidding me? You know, I thought we were fighting to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan, right? This grand caliphate thing. So why would they attack now? Is this potentially to disrupt the peace process between the United States and the Taliban? Well, it's certainly possible. For a long time, a lot of jihadist kind of thinkers, strategic thinkers have basically advocated the idea that chaos in general, like sowing chaos and

essentially having anarchy is really helpful for groups to thrive. Right. There's no order. If there's no structure, if there's no government, then you can grow and build. There's another way ISIS could be using this, which is to demonstrate its capabilities and its commitment to the terrorism fight, to the cause. This is a huge attack relative to some of the other attacks they've been carrying out, showing, look, we are still here. We are strong. We are powerful. Come join us. We're not selling out. We're not making peace with the Americans. We're still in this fight. So I'm sure there are going to be plenty of people in the Taliban, especially like foot soldiers, who are not thrilled about giving up the fight and making peace with the Americans. So it's a smart recruiting strategy.

But there's also just the fact that ISIS's strategy this whole entire time has been basically brutality against civilians. And this is a brutal attack against civilians, which that's how they grew their brand in Iraq and Syria. So it makes sense that they would do the same thing now in Afghanistan. So is ISIS actually making Afghanistan more unstable at this point? Absolutely. Last November, at least 55 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked hundreds of Muslim scholars and clerics gathered in another Kabul wedding hall to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

There have been bombings in Afghanistan fairly regularly over the past, you know, several years, but this was really a spike in violence that we haven't seen. In August, on August 7th, there was a car bomb that targeted Afghan security forces, killing 14, wounding 145. But earlier this summer, a UN report actually came out saying that of the civilian deaths so far this year, more of them had actually been committed by US and Afghan and allied forces than those that were committed by the Taliban and ISIS. So, you know, we are seeing attacks, especially now, as these peace talks are kind of underway, we're seeing a lot more kind of uptick in violence. But in general, overall civilian casualties have dropped, according to that report, by around 27 percent.

So not great, right? Still really violent. And if you're living in Afghanistan, it's not a secure time. It's not a secure place to be living. But compared to like the heights of the Afghan war, the level of security is relatively better. But it's relative. The Taliban in general, you know, when they were ruling the country, you know, before the U.S. invasion was perhaps even more brutal, at least for the people under Taliban rule.

So getting rid of the Taliban rule, which the U.S. did for a while, was a net positive for a while. But the Taliban is now back. They control entire swaths of the country. The group has changed somewhat, but I mean, there's still a lot of violence. Like this is still a country at war. This is a country that has been at war for coming up on two decades, just from the US. And then, you know, decades previous were also at war during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So this is a country that has been rocked by violence and war for a very, very long time. How to end America's longest war, or whether that's even a possibility at this point, that's after the break on Today Explained. I went to SmileDirectClub.com today because I wanted to know what I was telling you to get into. And there's a very handsome, not recently shaved man sitting in what looks to be a bed with a duvet over his waist down and a nice plain gray t-shirt on waist up.

He is holding in his right hand what looks to be clear aligners for his top teeth, but he also has a perfect smile, which I think is Smile Direct Club's way of telling you that you too can have a perfect smile when you visit smiledirectclub.com slash podcast and use the offer code EXPLAINED. You will start by taking a free 30-second smile assessment on that very website and as a result, you may get a free at-home impression kit with a rebate and $100 off your aligners. Go to smiledirectclub.com slash podcast and use the offer in Afghanistan is now the U.S.'s longest war ever.

Can we just go through quickly what it's looked like under three different presidents, starting with President Bush? For sure. So remember, the U.S. goes in to Afghanistan right after 9-11. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime. We basically start doing what we started calling state building. So we tried to set up all of the institutions for a functional democracy. So we

set up the government. We set up things like schools. We built roads and infrastructure and wells and kind of everything you need that we thought could create like a stable, prosperous Afghanistan. And it was this huge, massive effort, billions of dollars spent. The problem is that we weren't very great at that because you had U.S. troops trying to do things like building schools, which is not particularly what U.S. military forces are trained to do. So while they were fighting this insurgency that started up, you know, while they're there, the Taliban starts coming back. You have these power struggles going on because they're trying to set up this democracy. You have this like huge, massive effort that starts to kind of unravel.

How does Obama pivot? Right. So Obama comes in and, you know, remember, he ran on getting out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Except that he gets an office and he ends up doing the exact opposite. I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan. Basically,

the idea was, I'm going to try to get this finished, right? I'm going to send in all these troops. We're going to get this done. We're going to solve the problem. We're going to train the Afghan troops, train the Afghan security forces, because that was a big part of this. Again, doesn't quite work. You still end up having a lot of attacks. You have attacks on U.S. forces by some of the security forces.

They're even training. It all happened here at this British-run military academy in Kabul. Coalition forces say the Afghan soldier was using a light machine gun when he opened fire on international troops. So you have more casualties, more chaos, more failure of the U.S. mission. Eventually, he brings those troops back home and it kind of pivots towards the end of his administration to a more narrowly counterterrorism- focused mission. And Trump comes in saying he wants to end it all, the entire engagement, but obviously doesn't. What does he do instead? Right. We're now several years into the Trump administration and U.S. forces are still there.

There's still around, I think the current number is around 13 or 14,000 U.S. troops. So not 68,000, not this like huge number we had under Obama or even like even more under Bush, but we still have a lot of U.S. troops there. And so he kind of turns it into this, again, more like even more narrowly focused counterterrorism mission. He basically tells the U.S. military,

you can kind of take the gloves off. He essentially gave commanders at the lower level permission to carry out like airstrikes and targeting operations in Afghanistan that usually before only higher level commanders could do that. So basically saying, look, you can do, you know, more stuff. You can bomb more people. You can do more things. I'm giving you this kind of permission. Let's get this done. You know, let's kick out the Taliban. Let's fight. You know, ISIS has now come in. Let's fight ISIS. Part of that, of getting it done, is also his administration starts these peace talks with the Taliban. Right. That seemed like the biggest development in the Trump oversight of Afghanistan so far. You and I spoke about it back in January. Is that any closer to

happening, this peace deal with the Taliban? It certainly looks like it. Just these past few weeks, we've seen a lot of reporting coming out that they are getting closer to actually making some kind of deal. Just this past Friday on the 16th, Trump himself had a briefing with Zalmay Khalilzad, who's the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, who's basically in charge of running the peace talks on the U.S. side. A little while after, Trump tweets, just completed a very good meeting on Afghanistan. Many on the opposite side of this 19-year war and us are looking to make a deal, if possible, exclamation point. And so he's very clearly signaling that they are close to a deal, that he really wants a deal. He's not being subtle. He has been very clear that he wants to get the hell out of

Afghanistan. We've been there for 19 years. We're really serving as policemen. We could win Afghanistan in two days or three days or four days if we wanted, but I'm not looking to kill 10 million people. It looks like the Taliban is potentially willing to actually come to a deal. It's getting close. It's hopefully expected by the September deadline. The U.S. is kind of self-imposed. But, you know, there's still a lot of stuff to be worked out. What are they trying to work out?

On the U.S. side, what they want the Taliban to agree to is permanent ceasefire, so stop fighting, to basically pinky swear promise not to harbor terrorists ever again. And the big one, although those two are also pretty big, asks, but the biggest one is for the Taliban to agree to engage in negotiations with the Afghan government. Now, that is something that the Taliban has flat refused to do forever. They don't consider them to be a real government. Therefore, they are not going to talk to them. So that's like one of the biggest things that if the U.S. manages to get that, then the U.S. or at least the Trump administration will be largely satisfied. On the Taliban side, what they want is basically just for all the U.S. troops to get out. That's more or less all they're asking for.

What does it look like if the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan completely? Well, it kind of depends, right? So if the U.S. does this and the U.S. does pull out all its troops, the agreement would be that the Taliban would have a ceasefire, right? They would stop fighting. So ideally, in a perfect world, OK, great. Taliban's not fighting anymore. We're good. U.S. is gone. We're good. The Taliban then goes and sits down with the Afghan government. They make a power-sharing arrangement, and everything is great. And then the Afghan security forces continue to fight ISIS, and everyone's happy.

That kind of pie-in-the-sky ideal outcome is not necessarily super likely. The problem is that the Taliban has been fighting, again, for 20 years. It's unlikely that they are going to just completely agree to a ceasefire, totally and completely, and stop fighting. It's also the fact that the Taliban doesn't necessarily have super good control over every single member who says they're the Taliban. So if you have groups carry out an attack and the Taliban leadership didn't authorize that, well, what happens? Did you just violate the peace agreement or do you say, hey, get your guys in line? And then, you know, the Taliban could just agree not to deal with the Afghan government, to not have these negotiations. So does the U.S. go back

in? Do we just start all over and like, oh, just kidding, we're back. Meanwhile, you still have this ISIS problem there. So does the U.S. just do like airstrikes from far away, like drone strikes? Well, even then, you need to have people on the ground, like at least intelligence people to collect the intel to talk to people and figure out what house ISIS is hiding in so that you know where to target with a drone. So we don't actually know what it would look like if the U.S. left because we still don't know really what that means. It sounds like everything you're saying is why it's so hard to end this war. Because you've got the U.S. trying to be a stabilizing force fighting the Taliban. You've got the Taliban not having any regard for the Afghan government. And then on top of all that, you've got ISIS, which doesn't really answer to anyone. Absolutely. And, you know, at a fundamental level, the main reason why it is so hard to end this war beyond all the like moving pieces is like this is what happens when you try to invade and occupy an entire country as a way to fight a stateless terrorist group.

We essentially went in to fight al-Qaeda and to punish the Taliban. But if the Taliban were just the Taliban and had never harbored these groups, right, had never harbored al-Qaeda, and if there weren't like an ISIS presence, we wouldn't care really what the Taliban were doing in Afghanistan. We didn't care before when they were completely ruling, you know, Afghanistan brutally and horrifically. We only cared when they harbored a terrorist group that attacked us. Yeah. So our response to fight these terrorist groups, the war on terror, was to invade and occupy a very specific geographical boundary, a country, the country of Afghanistan. But Al Qaeda and ISIS,

these groups are actually fighting. They don't have a specific territory. They are wherever they want to be. They can move around. They, you know, especially nowadays, use the Internet to recruit. And they can just, you know, radicalize someone in their, you know, bedroom in Montana. We're still occupying this one country. But the actual threat that we were there to fight is still all over the place. That's why you don't invade and

occupy a country to fight these kinds of terrorist groups. And we kind of saw that understanding evolve down the line, but it's too late. We're still in this country and we've created this whole mess by invading and we're essentially stuck there, even though the threat doesn't really match up with why we're there anymore. Jen Williams is a senior foreign editor at Vox.com. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Just a reminder that if you're trying to get that summer smile in order before the end of the season, Smile Direct Club wants to help you at smiledirectclub.com slash podcast. Use the offer code EXPLAINED to get this 30-second smile assessment set up. You get a free at-home impression kit with a rebate plus $100 off your aligners.

Again, that is at smiledirectclub.com slash podcast. And the offer code is EXPLAINED.