The events of September 11, 2001 have gone on to consume much of U.S. foreign policy for nearly two decades. Just a week after the attacks that killed nearly three thousand people, Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing the president of the United States to use

“appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons” (Government Printing Office, 2001)

Two days later, President George W. Bush in an address to a joint session of Congress stated that “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” (Bush, 2001 )The speech paired with the authorization for use of military force (AUMF) have served as the philosophical and legal underpinnings of what would come to be known as the Global War on Terror (GWOT). What does it mean for the United States to have declared war, from a metaphorical standpoint on a tactic? Neither the AUMF nor the famed speech gave concrete metrics for when and how victory over terror would be achieved. This lack of clarity regarding what constitutes victory has led U.S. forces from Afghanistan to Iraq, and eventually to dozens more countries; allegedly in pursuit of terrorist subjects leaving geopolitical disasters in their wake often creating more terrorists than there had been previously. While there have been tactical victories, greater strategic wins have been elusive and at great cost; calling into question whether or not anything approaching a traditional victory can be achieved.

The causes of the events of 2001 are firmly linked to a series of U.S. foreign policy decisions stretching back to the early 1980s. The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 designed to prop up a flagging Marxist regime known as the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDAP) led to a new front opening in the Cold War. (Barfield, 2010, p. 171 )  The United States entered into the fray by secretly funding and supplying arms to Afghan and foreign guerillas collectively known as mujahedeen or ‘holy warriors’ based in Pakistan along with Saudi Arabia. (Barfield, 2010, p. 171 ) The mission to train and equip the mujahedeen was given logistical support by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency or ISI. The relationship between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the ISI can best be summed up by the adage that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. From the outset, the ISI was extremely distrustful of the CIA due to its many para-military misadventures from the previous decades and required the CIA go through it to deliver weapons and supplies to Afghan fighters rather than deal with them directly. (Crile, 2003 , p. 104 ) For the ISI, the goal of causing trouble for the Soviet Union was only secondary to its desire to steer Afghani politics. The ISI would use its control of the supply lines to send weapons to ethnic Pashtun tribes bypassing forces of Tajik factional commander Moosud that the U.S. supported in key areas of Afghanistan that were its strategic interests in the fight against the Soviets. (Crile, 2003 , p. 198 ) This relationship between the ISI and it’s Pashtun proxies in Afghanistan is key to understanding the rise of the Taliban in the post-Soviet era power vacuum and Afghan politics along with it.

In the almost decade long covert mission to support the Afghan mujahedeen forces, there were warlords that were empowered that would go on to play key roles in the morass the U.S. would eventually find itself in after it invaded in 2001. Jalauddin Haqani was one such commander of mujahedeen forces who rose to prominence after the battle of Khost. (Crile, 2003 , p. 406 ) Haqani had once sang the praises of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson who had an unusually active role in seeing that mujahedeen were supplied with the weapons that they needed remarking that “We stood alone against the Soviet invader with our bare hands….it is the bravery of the Afghan people that attracted the foreigner for help.” (Crile, 2003 ) Haqani would go on to ally himself with the Taliban in fighting U.S. forces and conducting terrorist actions against the Afghan government in Kabul.

While Haqani is one of the most persistent adversaries to emerge from the group of mujahedeen in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden is the figure that needs no introduction. In the waning days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Bin Laden took control of a band of Saudi backed mujahedeen whose leader Abdullah Assam was assassinated in 1989. (Miguax, 2007, p. 316 ) Assam was the original visionary behind both the eventual name by which the group would be known, Al Qaeda; as well as the strategy of empowering jihad around the world. (Miguax, 2007, p. 315) Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, consolidated the group’s finances, and waited for the next call to jihad. He would not have to wait very long. In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Fearing that Iraqi army was on the march into Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, the U.S. was asked to garrison troops there and Operation Desert Shield was born. Bin Laden had pitched a plan for his mujahedeen to protect Saudi Arabia, but his offer was rejected. (Miguax, 2007, p. 318 ) He saw the U.S. military and other international force’s  proximity to the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina as afront to Islam and feared that they would use the invitation to take Saudi oil wealth for themselves. (Miguax, 2007, p. 318 ) Bin Laden would cite the continued presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia as he warned of violence in several subsequent fatwas if the troops were not removed. Coincidently, Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil until September 11, 2001, served in the United Stated States Army and was deployed to Iraq during the first Gulf War. In an essay in a now defunct publication, McVeigh cites the double standard that U.S. has for human life that he leaned about first-hand during his time in combat as one factor in deciding to bomb the Alfred P. Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City stating

“Remember Dresden? How about Hanoi? Tripoli? Baghdad?….. If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of “mass destruction” — like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above?” (McVeigh, 1998 )

While both men’s reasoning behind their radicalization is perhaps self-serving; it is a reminder that exact consequences of violence are never really known until well after it has occurred.

Even after the withdraw, the Soviet Union’s proxy force in Afghanistan the PDAP; managed to hold on with Soviet material support until the Soviet Union itself collapsed. (Barfield, 2010, p. 150 ) Covert U.S. support of the various parties continued as well but warning signs began to emerge. The ISI had been supplying warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar with U.S. weapons and in meeting a with U.S. officials, Soviet soon-to-be Russian officials argued that Hekmatyar’s “brand of militant Islam” was a danger to both their interests and those of the United States. (Crile, 2003 , p. 515 ) The Russians were right. Hekmatyar would serve as Bin Laden’s point of contact in Afghanistan when he first returned after departing the Sudan due to U.S. pressure. (Miguax, 2007, p. 321 ) The issues with Haqani also were quick to develop as the mujahedeen began to gain ground against the PDAP. In the type of trademark banditry that Haqani would become known for, forces under his command were hijacking United Nations aid trucks using U.S. bought weapons. (Crile, 2003 , p. 515) Haqani would eventually be a top target of the United States in Afghanistan ranked just after Mullah Omar who would become the leader of the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden in less than a decade after he was receiving large payments from the CIA in Pakistan. (Crile, 2003 , p. 521 )

After support from the United States and Russia for various groups in Afghanistan dried up at the end of the Cold War, the ISI decided to back a group that it could more easily control. It chose a group of Pashtun tribesmen based in Pakistan that was mix of refugees and students in religious schools. (Barfield, 2010, p. 264 ) With an influx of Pakistani cash in hand, the Taliban was able to bribe their way into military competency by purchasing loyalty from former members of the PDAP who were still armed with Soviet weapons and training. (Barfield, 2010, p. 257 ) The Taliban, with its superior financing took advantage of the fractured security environment and was able to over-take the other factions vying for the traditional capital Kabul in 1997. (Barfield, 2010, p. 260 ) Bin Laden, ever the opportunist, decided to make in-roads with the Taliban as they took control of Afghanistan. Bin Laden lended his administrative expertise and legitimacy as a jihadist figure in conjunction with additional funding to the Taliban. (Miguax, 2007, p. 320 ) In return they allowed him to open training camps for foreign fighters that would serve as the main education centers for Al Qaeda militants numbering in the thousands. (Miguax, 2007, p. 321 ) With that development, the true consequences of the U.S. actions in Afghanistan began to germinate. The ISI who were the erstwhile allies of the United States, backed a group that would allow terrorist training camps to flourish. After spending billions there the 1980s, the U.S. would watch as the training and material that was supplied to the mujahedeen would be turned against it.

Even before the safe haven for Al Qaeda was fully formed in Afghanistan, the group was able to begin to plan and execute attacks. In 1993, Ramsey Yousef who was the nephew of Khalid Sheik Muhammed (KSM) a top Al Qaeda leader, planned and conducted the truck bombing of the World Trade Center. (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , 2004 , p. 71 ) By then planning for Al Qaeda’s next series of attacks was already well underway. In 1998, Al Qaeda operatives bombed the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Saleem, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya nearly simultaneously killing more than 200 and injuring more 5,000 people. (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , 2004 , p. 70 ) Bin Laden would again reference the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia when taking credit for the bombings when he said that “If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and Americans to liberate the holy places is considered a crime…let history be witness that I am a criminal”. (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , 2004 , p. 70)

In October 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces quietly slipped into Afghanistan in leu of a large conventional presence as a result of the September 11 attacks. Those soldiers would be paired with members of the Northern Alliance, fighters originally organized by India to serve as a hedge against the ISI’s Taliban proxy in what would become Operation Enduring Freedom. (Barfield, 2010, p. 276 ) With the help of the U.S. Army special forces or “Green Berets” as they are known, the Northern Alliance was able to use U.S. air power to dominate the Taliban and topple their government. (Barfield, 2010, p. 276 ) The images of those Green Berets in local dress, and often atop horses along-side Northern Alliance forces would become iconic. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed by December in what was an early bright spot in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and much of Al Qaeda’s leadership was able to escape into the Tora Bora mountains and some have argued that a more robust conventional presence could have been more effective in capturing or killing Al Qaeda’s leadership early on. (Krause & John, 2008, p. 647 ) Another opportunity to capture or kill Bin Landen would not come for nearly ten years.

Almost as soon as the U.S. arrived in Afghanistan, U.S. officials began to refocus their energy on Iraq. U.S. policy makers conceived of a rogue’s gallery of nations that the U.S. could bring to heel and Iraqi was near the top of the list. Iraqi had been a thorn in the side of the United States since the first Gulf War. Secretary of State Colin Powell would lay out the bill of particulars against at Iraqi’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations would pave the way to the U.S. invasion. While the follies made by U.S. Forces in Iraqi are too numerous to recount here, few would be more detrimental to Iraqi’s stability than Coalition Authority Order Number 2. The order dissolved the Iraqi Armed Forces leaving nearly 400,000 soldiers unemployed without any real ability for the U.S. to adequately secure the country. (Zinn, 2016) This contributed to the general insecurity of Iraq and later to the Sunni Insurgency that sent U.S. efforts into a tailspin. (Zinn, 2016) It was out of this chaos that Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) would surface. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who came to Iraqi in 2001 was a minor figure within Al Qaeda whose efforts to affect jihad were negligible until the fall of Saddam Hussein. (Whiteside, 2017 )  al-Zarqawi would go onto lead a brutal insurgency focusing on exploiting the rifts between the Shite and Sunni population inside of Iraq. Scholars Hal Brands and Peter Feaver explored the what conditions (AQI) and its successor organization ISIS could have arisen without the U.S. invasion of Iraq and found that;

  “Had the president chosen not to invade Iraq, the subsequent course of events would have been vastly different. In the near term, the Iraqi political order probably would not have collapsed and created a void that non-state or quasi-state actors could fill.” (Feaver, 2017 , p. 17)

The instability that ISIS caused after 2014 would spill across the region, including to Syria and Libya (where the United States also had intervened militarily); leading to a breeding ground for a refugee crisis that even threatened the social fabric of the European Union.

Next year the United States will enter its twentieth year in Afghanistan. Many of the very same individuals that U.S. empowered in the 1980’s including Haqani and Hekmatyar, as well as a resurgent Taliban will great forces there. While the Taliban was on the ropes in 2001, the U.S. has little choice now but to include them at the table in peace talks to bring an end the violence in Afghanistan. Although the U.S. has embarked of targeted killing that has eliminated wave after wave of Al Qaeda leadership the organization and their franchises have been adaptable and resilient. These facts all appear to lead to the question that if this is what winning looks like what qualifies as losing ?        

Bibliography

Barfield, T., 2010. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Ninth Edition ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bush, G. W., 2001 . President Bush Addresses the Nation. [Online]
Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html
[Accessed 10 December 2020 ].

Crile, G., 2003 . Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Opertion in History. 1st Edition ed. New York : Atlantic Monthly Press .

Feaver, H. B. &. P., 2017 . Was the Rise of ISIS Inevitable?. Survival Global Politics and Strategy, 59(3), pp. 7-54.

Government Printing Office, 2001. PUBLIC LAW 107–40—SEPT. 18, 2001. [Online]
Available at: https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf
[Accessed 10 December 2020].

Krause , P. & John, P., 2008. The Last Good Chance: A Reassessment of U.S. Operations at Tora Bora. Security Studies, Volume 17, p. 644–684.

McVeigh, T., 1998 . Essay on Hypocrisy. Media Bypass , June .

Miguax, P., 2007. Al Qaeda. In: G. Chaliand & A. Blin, eds. The History of Terrorism. Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 314-348.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , 2004 . The 9/11 Commission Report , New York : W. Norton and Company .

Whiteside, C., 2017 . A Pedigree of Terror: The Myth of the Ba’athist Influence in the Islamic State Movement. PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM, Vol. 11(No. 3), pp. 2-18.

Zinn, C. M., 2016. Consequences of Iraqi De-Baathification. CORNELL INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS REVIEW, VOL. 9 (NO. 2).