Allauddin Khan/AP Photo
Afghan soldiers, left, walk past a U.S. Army soldier outside of a military base in Panjwai, in Kandahar Province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, March 2012.
The reaction to President Biden’s newly announced plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11 of this year has ranged from the dismay of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who called it a “grave mistake,” to more positive statements from Senate Democrats such as Tim Kaine, who said it’s time to bring U.S. troops home and refocus on other challenges.
Missing from these early reactions is a critical question: What does a troop withdrawal really look like in Afghanistan? And what are America’s plans for security assistance, or support for Afghanistan’s security forces, when U.S. troops leave?
Earlier this year, the Biden administration floated the idea of a small residual U.S. counterterrorism force in Afghanistan. The most recent announcement ruled that out but said nothing about intelligence personnel or civilian contractors, who could in theory be present without counting as boots on the ground.
The temptation to carry on business as usual—but without a military face—will be great.
The Afghan security forces are not financially or technically capable of providing security on their own. In particular, they depend on U.S. airpower and have limited abilities to carry out offensive operations. They are also likely to require some level of contracted logistical support. There are some 18,000 contractors currently in Afghanistan, including 6,350 U.S. citizens. Under President Trump’s deal with the Taliban, all personnel, including contractors, would have departed along with U.S. troops by May 1. Now? It’s not yet clear.
The contractor question is particularly thorny. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has noted that the departure of contractors “may be ‘more devastating’ to the effectiveness of the Afghan security forces” than a troop withdrawal, because of their role in conducting military and police training, training forces on equipment, maintaining that equipment, and managing supply chains.
Many contractors simply won’t want to operate in Afghanistan in the absence of the security provided by U.S. troops. But those who might remain would be doing so without the transparency and oversight that comes with operating as part of standard military operations. While their role may be important for security forces to function, their continued presence also comes with great risk.
Besides the issue of simply security assistance, there has been virtually no public discussion of what will be the role of counterterrorism operations, and drones in particular, after the U.S. departure. The United States will want to prevent al-Qaeda from restoring its base in Afghanistan. The question is through what means. Afghanistan is already subject to more drone strikes than any other country in the world. There are many reports of American drones killing civilians, particularly in southeast Afghanistan. These strikes rarely lead the news, and civilian casualties rarely receive anything approaching a full investigation. According to reportedly secret annexes to the U.S. agreement with the Taliban, the U.S. would forgo drone strikes in return for measures by the Taliban, including a cessation of attacks against U.S. troops. But the risk of increased drone strikes, particularly if Taliban operations resume against U.S. troops, is one we should continue to watch.
The solution to all this is much more complicated than simply getting rid of contractors in Afghanistan. The United States and NATO partners have spent 20 years failing to build fully independent Afghan security forces, who will almost certainly require some ongoing contracting support to hold bases and stand the best chance of preventing a full-fledged civil war. But even so, the United States needs to get very serious now about a post-troop withdrawal plan for security assistance—an effort that throughout America’s 20 years in Afghanistan has consistently taken a back seat to war fighting, shifting strategies, and other exigencies.
And in the absence of U.S. troops, the Biden administration will need to do much more to demonstrate it is planning for an eventual cessation of all operations. It would not be a success by any means if we find, in another 10 or 20 years, the U.S. is still providing contractors for logistical support to Afghan security forces, or worse, still conducting drone strikes, adding to the ever-growing toll of civilian deaths.
We have seen this play out before, as drone strikes kill civilians outside of war zones in Pakistan, Somalia, Niger, and elsewhere around the world, to little public attention. The risk then, is not only that operations will continue in Afghanistan, but that the death toll from U.S. actions will continue to rise, with little attention or oversight. In fact, in previous years, U.S. military personnel have explicitly said they would likely continue to rely on drones after U.S. troop withdrawals.
The temptation to carry on business as usual—but without a military face—will be great. To minimize that, it’s important for the U.S. to focus where it should have been focusing all along: not just on shorter-term goals, but on the larger strategic goal of reducing security force dependencies and truly getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan.
This means being strategic, and at the very least ensuring security forces are receiving equipment and training appropriate to their needs and abilities to maintain, and to stop perpetuating the dependencies that have characterized the last 20 years of security assistance.
Yes, it may ultimately be positive for the United States that U.S. troops are leaving—provided a peace can hold, and Afghan security forces can hold it, and the U.S. doesn’t return in a few years. That’s a lot of caveats and a lot of risks, and despite fervent reactions on both sides, mixed emotions from the United States are probably most appropriate. It makes sense then to cautiously await the impending departure of U.S. troops while keeping in mind that the work of a full withdrawal is far from over.
