Yet Trump—and Mattis’s—solution to this unwinnable war seems to be once again to send more troops. On Tuesday, Trump announced that the military itself would be given full authority to decide how many troops it needs. (By leaving all decisions in the hands of the military, he has abandoned the usual inter-agency consultations, especially with the State Department.) And Mattis is talking about a review to be completed in July that could add as many as 5,000 troops. It may be too late.
Afghanistan now faces a far deeper crisis than many seem to understand. Warlords and politicians—including cabinet members—are calling for the resignation of President Ashraf Ghani and his security ministers, accusing them of incompetence, arrogance, and stirring up ethnic hatred. There are as many as ten public demonstrations a day in the streets of Kabul, carried out by young people and by relatives of those killed in recent bomb attacks. [...]
Afghanistan’s neighbors, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly restive about the US-led counterinsurgency: Pakistan continues to give sanctuary to the Taliban leadership, including the Haqqani group—the most vicious arm of the Taliban—while Iran and Russia are also providing support (the exact amount is unknown) to the Taliban. These regional powers believe that the Taliban could provide a bulwark against the spread of ISIS into their territories and do not want Pakistan to monopolize influence over the Taliban. They want to limit US power in the region. The influence of ISIS in Afghanistan, which was once relegated to the single eastern province of Nangarhar, is now expanding, and the group claimed responsibility for a horrendous early March attack on Kabul’s military hospital in which fifty patients and doctors were killed and ninety wounded. [...]
Ghani is deeply unpopular. Many Afghans now regard the government as illegimate, a regime that would not survive at all if it were not propped up by the US and NATO, who jointly have some 13,000 troops in the country. Two years ago the US brokered a coalition government between Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah in order to paper over a heavily rigged election. (It was rigged by both candidates and the two candidates bickered for months about who actually won, before the Americans stepped in.)
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