Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

The Taliban is rapidly advancing in Afghanistan. How did this happen after 20 years of US involvement?

[THREAD]

To answer the question, you need to understand:

1) That Afghanistan was fragile before the US invaded in 2001

2) The reason why the US invaded in 2001

3) That the US lost focus on Afghanistan shortly after completing the invasion

First, it's important to understand that Afghanistan was a fragile country prior to the 2001 US invasion.

Throughout the 1980s, Afghanistan was the ground for a "proxy war" between the Soviet Union (backing the government) and the United States (backing rebels).

Soviet troops left in 1989 and the USSR fully withdrew support to the Afghan government in 1992 (following the USSR's collapse).

The result was the onset of a new civil war in the country between multiple groups.

Of the groups, the Taliban (w/ support from Pakistan), emerged as the dominant group. It eventually took control of most of the country

But fighting continued. By 2001, the country looked like this (with the remaining militant groups forming the "Northern Alliance")

Second, it's critical to review why the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

On September 11, 2001, the US was attacked by the extremist group Al-Qaeda

Why those attacks happened is for another thread (20th anniversary is coming soon). For now, what's important is that Al-Qaeda's base of operations was Afghanistan and it was supported by the Taliban government (such as making use of training facilities -- shown in photo)

Then US President George W. Bush issued an ultimatum to the Taliban: close the facilities and hand over the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden.

The Taliban refused the ultimatum.

Without going into all of the details, the US lent support to the Northern Alliance forces and then brought in its own forces. The Taliban forces were quickly defeated.

At this point, the United States, with the assistance of its @NATO allies, sought to stabilize and rebuild the country (via the @UN authorized ISAF mission) -- important to remember that international community largely supported US actions at this point.

Third, it's essential to understand that the US essentially deprioritized Afghanistan shortly after completing the interstate war portion of the fighting.

How so? Iraq, specifically Saddam Hussein.

I can't go fully into why the US invaded Iraq. That's covered in this thread

What is critical is that the decision to invade Iraq shortly after invading Afghanistan drew away vital resources (attention, military resources, and aid) during the critical early years of the occupation.
nytimes.com/2007/08/12/wor…

See also here
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

The consequence of deprioritizing Afghanistan? It meant by 2009, control of the country looked like this: scattered government control

Essentially, any chance at creating a stable country not controlled by the Taliban was lost (let's say squandered) in the first few years following the invasion. This @RANDCorporation report even refers to a "Golden Hour" for nation building success.
rand.org/pubs/research_…

After missing that "Golden Hour", the US has since simply been bidding time and postponing the inevitable.
mwi.usma.edu/imperial-polic…

So this is not a "the US broke it, the US owns it" situation.

This is a situation where the US (w/ widespread international support) invaded a broken country, but was distracted at a crucial early moment in the rebuild.

In sum, this tragedy was years in the making.

[END]

Addendum: for those looking for more details on the various Afghan groups fighting in the 1980s Cold War proxy war and 1990s civil war, see this thread 👇

Addendum 2: @SIGARHQ's new Lessons Learned report raises the "Iraq as distraction" angle, but also highlights how Iraq generated the wrong lessons for AFG -- Officials thought some "successes" in Iraq could be "copy and pasted" (sometimes literally) in AFG