U.S. Afghan regime was corrupt and humiliating, and Taliban controlled half the country in ’09 — says book ignored by mainstream apologists

A wave of apologists are arguing these days that if the U.S. had stayed in Afghanistan the current tragedy could have been staved off indefinitely. But no one who reads journalist Nir Rosen’s book, Aftermath, which appeared in 2010, will be at all surprised at the unfolding events. Rosen reported for 7 years across the Mideast for Rolling Stone, Harper’s, Mother Jones and other publications, and he consolidated his courageous work into an indispensable 587-page book.

The Afghanistan section is only 80 pages, but it is extraordinarily prescient. Rosen got out of Kabul as fast as he could for 3 trips into the countryside, where the majority of Afghans live. He actually got permission from Taliban contacts before he went, and he spent time with their soldiers on the ground. As he explained, “The ‘enlightened’ Afghan elite who lead the government have little in common with the majority of rural Afghans, who are the sea where the Taliban swim.” Much of what he found between 2008 and 2010 sounds like he could have written it a few months ago. 

He suggests the U.S./NATO intervention was doomed from the start. First, the U.S. wrongly thought the Taliban were defeated after the post-September 11 invasion, but they were actually only laying low or had withdrawn to safe havens in neighboring Pakistan. The U.S. then sponsored a national conference to form a new government — but excluded the Taliban, who like it or not still had considerable support. Instead, America handed the country over to regional warlords, who were already hated by large portions of the population for their brutality and corruption. 

Rosen found that corruption permeated the U.S.-backed government. Police chiefs bought their posts, and police in the Helmand province “were known to release prisoners for bribes ranging from five hundred to twenty thousand dollars.” What’s more — here’s an angle you rarely read anywhere else — the opium industry revived, drug addiction rose, and many Afghan police and army recruits failed drug tests. Another point that the mainstream media never reported: In Ghazni province south of Kabul, the national army turned out to be “predominantly” from the Tajik ethnic group, in an area where Pashtun people were the majority. 

Rosen also learned that ill-advised U.S. military tactics increased local resistance. American soldiers raided Afghan rural homes in the middle of the night, forcing Afghan women out in their nightclothes. No people anywhere would welcome these tactics, but in conservative rural Afghanistan it is especially enraging, and even worse behavior than the Soviet army in the 1980s. One Afghan explained to him, “‘The Russians never arrested women. . . The Americans arrest Afghan women and take them to bases.’” Also, the Americans regularly bombed weddings, wrongly believing the mass gatherings were enemy concentrations.

Rosen was too intelligent to try and give precise estimates of how much support the Taliban actually had in the areas he visited. He did point out that many Afghans believed the Americans would eventually leave, so they stayed on the fence. He made another key point, usually missing in mainstream media accounts: the Taliban, “despite their extremely conservative views were fundamentally nationalists.” He elaborated:

How long would the Afghan people accept the presence of armed foreigners in their country? Even a message of help can be humiliating, more so when it is backed by a gun. The Americans underestimated the importance of dignity and the extent to which their very presence in Afghanistan was deeply offensive.

He comes to the conclusion that “by 2009, half of Afghanistan was controlled by Taliban.” Those who today argue for a continued U.S. military force there should be required to read that sentence a couple of times.

Rosen also stumbled into an unpleasant and dangerous reality, one that could be relevant today. He found that the Taliban were not necessarily a tightly organized body, with a clear chain of command. Some Taliban were showing him around Ghazi province, and they learned that a local commander had heard he was there, and wanted to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. It took several calls to even higher-ranking Taliban leaders to protect him. (Cellphones apparently worked even in rural Afghanistan.) One of the people who ordered him unharmed was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is today the organization’s de facto leader.

What this lack of internal Taliban discipline could mean today is obvious. Taliban senior officials may make certain pledges to the world community about protecting civilians, for instance, only to have others lower down violate them. 

Rosen understandably had tough words for the “celebrity pundits from Washington think tanks” who were advising the American battlefield commanders back then. He was also critical of certain senior U.S. military officers: “The generals were manipulating [U.S.] public opinion, inviting celebrity pundits to take part in reviews and then write opinion pieces in support of the conclusion that the pundits and generals proposed.”

Rosen already had an answer ten years ago to today’s arguments that the Taliban victory means Al Queda will reestablish itself in Afghanistan: “. . . Al Qaeda was in Pakistan, it was on the Internet, it was in Europe (the 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany, after all).” In other words, Al Qaeda does not need Kandahar.

We could use such reporting skills today on the Afghan story. In 2012, Rosen left journalism, and joined the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, Switzerland. Reporters today should review his insights about Afghanistan from more than a decade ago, and apply them to the reality there today.