Why Afghanistan Fell

foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-10-11/why-afghanistan-fell

October 11, 2021

“The current conditions in Afghanistan do not lend themselves well to the consolidation of
democracy.” That’s what I wrote in 2007, when I was a young student at the Harvard
Kennedy School. Even then, it was clear that the forces threatening to undermine the new
democratic Afghan state would likely prove too powerful for it to withstand. Despite my
analysis, I returned home and attempted to help build the new government, first as senior
economic adviser to President Ashraf Ghani, then as minister of industry and commerce,
and, most recently, as central bank governor. In the end, 14 years after I wrote those
words, the Taliban retook Afghanistan and democracy died overnight.

From my vantage point working for the government in Kabul until August 15, when I
scrambled to board a C-17 to escape the country, I had a front-row seat to what went
wrong. For years, the Afghan government was plagued by political infighting, corruption,
and national security and law enforcement leaders who abused their positions of power or
had little to no experience. Thus, when the United States brokered the Doha peace deal
with the Taliban in February 2020, it dealt an already weak Afghan government a
devastating blow. As the United States and the international community started heading
for the exits, other regional players, especially Pakistan, took additional steps to further
shift the balance of power to the Taliban. As these external drivers shaped the country’s

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future, Afghan political actors did not adjust accordingly. When the United States decided
to fully withdraw its troops, these same leaders continued to compete for power rather
than plan for the worst-case scenario.

I typically did not discuss security issues with the president, but in early August, after he
asked me to become finance minister when Khalid Payenda resigned and fled the
country, I expressed concerns about the deteriorating situation. At this point, most rural
districts and many provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan had already fallen to the
Taliban. Ghani replied that the security forces required six months to reconfigure and
realign themselves. The comment seemed out of touch with the rapidly advancing
Taliban. I wanted instead to hear the one-week plan. Ghani then stated that he was in
talks to bring in other external security contractors and also expressed frustration that
U.S. General Austin Miller, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan until he left on July
12, never discussed the drawdown in detail with him. Less than a week after my
conversation with Ghani, Kabul fell to the Taliban.

This combination of U.S. betrayal and disbelief on the part of Afghan leaders set the
stage for the government’s swift collapse. Any accounting of what went so horribly wrong
needs to acknowledge this confluence of external and internal factors, which worked to
reinforce each other as the state hurtled toward its downfall.

Pulling the Rug From Under

In February 2020, in the final year of the administration of President Donald Trump, the
United States signed the Doha agreement with the Taliban. The negotiations, led by U.S.
Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, and the resulting
deal legitimized the Taliban while undermining the Afghan government: the United States
was negotiating with a terrorist organization while excluding a country with which
Washington had a bilateral security agreement. As part of its deal with the Taliban, the
United States agreed to withdraw its troops and, in return, the Taliban committed to not
attack U.S. troops as they left. The arrangement also required the Afghan government to
release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, which it did reluctantly. At the time, Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo even criticized the Afghan government for not releasing them quickly
enough. Now, some of those same men make up key parts of the Taliban leadership.

By shifting the balance of power toward the Taliban, the Doha agreement helped create
the conditions for the state’s collapse. Although Khalilzad is a seasoned diplomat, he was
perhaps too close to the issue. He and Ghani were in the same international student
exchange program in the United States decades ago, and there is well-known animosity
between the two men. This meant that in addition to being about the future of two
countries, the Doha deal was about two individuals. With Ghani and the Afghan
government left on the sidelines, the deal contributed to the worst-possible outcome. It
would have been far better if the U.S. military simply left Afghanistan, rather than signing
a deal with the Taliban on the way out.

The Doha agreement helped create the conditions for the Afghanistan's collapse.

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U.S. President Joe Biden reinforced the problem by announcing within a few months of
his arrival in the White House that he would comply with the commitments made by the
Trump administration to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, even if on a delayed
timeline. This decision ran contrary to the advice of both the Afghanistan Study Group, a
bipartisan task force created by the U.S. Congress, and U.S. military leadership. In recent
U.S. Senate testimony, General Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command,
clearly stated that he had recommended maintaining 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan and
warned that removal of such troops would lead to the collapse of the government. But
Biden had long been skeptical of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. In 2008, as a senator,
he traveled to Kabul and had dinner with Hamid Karzai, then president of Afghanistan.
Frustrated with Karzai’s denials about corruption, Biden reportedly threw down his napkin
and stormed out. As vice president, he opposed the 2009 troop surge. In an August 19
interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden said that he would have found
a way to withdraw U.S. troops even without Trump’s Doha deal. Given the Afghan
National Security Forces’ dependence on logistical and air support from international
forces, the decision to withdraw troops and all its associated contractors in such a short
period of time significantly weakened ANSF capabilities.

The Taliban, in contrast, enjoyed consistent external support, above all from Pakistan and
its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president of
Pakistan, was famously quoted as saying that Pakistan always sought to keep the
temperature boiling in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s most important contribution was providing
sanctuary to the Taliban. “Make no mistake: The Taliban operated from Pakistan
consistently,” former U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said at an event last week at
Harvard University. "It's no accident that [Osama] Bin Laden was in Abbottabad. It's no
accident that [Sirajuddin] Haqqani's running the place now. Where did Haqqani spend the
last couple of decades? In Western Pakistan." The previous ISI director, Faiz Hameed,
even visited Kabul on September 4, looking quite relaxed as he met with Taliban leaders.
Two days later, an interim Taliban government was announced and it included key posts
for leaders of the Haqqani network, a militant group with links to al Qaeda that received
refuge in Pakistan and is viewed as an ally of the ISI.

Other regional actors also played a role. China approved of Pakistan’s support for the
Taliban, with the aim of countering perceived Indian interests in Afghanistan and to help
make the United States seem like an unreliable partner. Iran was unhappy when, under
pressure from the United States, the Afghan Central Bank sanctioned Aryan Bank, an
Afghan subsidiary of an Iranian bank, in 2018. It also complained about the construction
of dams along Afghan rivers that flowed into Iran. Russia supported and legitimized the
Taliban through the Moscow process, negotiations that took place between the Taliban
and the Afghan government and were hosted by Russia, in order to undermine the
Afghan government.

The Center Cannot Hold

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Thanks to its own weakness, the Afghan government was unable to withstand these
external forces. Part of the problem was Ghani’s approach to governance. He was more
interested in long-term state development than in appeasing domestic political actors.
This made enemies of local power brokers who had, for better or worse, maintained
strong regional security networks—including former Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum
in Jowzjan, Atta Nur in Balkh, and Ismail Khan in Herat. This left Ghani with too few allies
as he centralized decision-making, relying instead on best-practice institutional structures
—a single treasury account, a single procurement authority, and a single chain of
command for the military.If Ghani had had more time in office and more external support,
his state-centric approach might have been the correct one for the country. But he
miscalculated when it came to the opposition of both domestic and international political
actors to his policies. He should have known better – Amanullah Khan, the Afghan king
who led the country to independence from Britain in 1919, was overthrown almost 100
years earlier for trying to make reforms too rapidly. Ghani refused to adjust to changing
circumstances, and his governing strategy failed.

But Ghani wasn’t alone in this. As the United States negotiated with the Taliban and later,
as the Taliban advanced across the country toward Kabul, other Afghan politicians did
little to strengthen the Afghan government and instead focused on their own political
futures. Ghani’s rival Abdullah Abdullah contested the presidential election results in 2020
—and, in March of that year, even held a parallel inauguration. It was the third time he
had run for president and lost. Karzai also wanted to return to the political stage and was
reputed to be angling to become president again in an interim arrangement with the
Taliban. Since he left the government in 2018, former Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal
thought he could convince the Taliban that he could help them become legitimate in the
eyes of the international community. Other domestic politicians, including Mir Rahman
Rahmani, Ahmad Zia Massoud, and Mohammad Younus Qanooni, flew to Islamabad on
the day Kabul fell to seek some sort of political influence with the Taliban via the Pakistani
government.These politicians thought they could obtain better political outcomes in a
power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban, but they lost on both ends of the bargain:
they weakened the country and have obtained no position in the new Taliban government.

Corruption was ensconced in the Afghan state.

This all took place against a backdrop of corruption—another key domestic driver of state
weakness. I would be the last to argue that there was no corruption in Afghanistan. There
clearly was. But Afghanistan had been making slow incremental progress on this front.
Afghanistan’s score in the annual Transparency International Corruption Perceptions
Index improved from 11 out of 100 in 2015 to 19 in 2020; its Parliament passed significant
new legislation that improved transparency in the natural resources sector; and the
government created an independent anticorruption council. As head of the central bank, I
ensured that central bank accounts were connected electronically to all commercial banks
in the country, in order to make government salary payments fully electronic, which over

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time could have significantly reduced the presence of “ghost workers” and ensured
transparency in the payment of salaries to soldiers and police. But these actions were
clearly too little, too late. Corruption was ensconced in the Afghan state.

Finally, there were consequential leadership failures among security officials. The ANSF
fought bravely over the last two decades. But National Security Adviser Hamdullah
Mohib, one of Ghani’s close associates, had no military or intelligence background and
made sure that all military appointments had to be approved by him. In October 2020,
Mohib appointed new provincial district governors and district police chiefs throughout
Afghanistan, most of whom had no connection to the local communities they were
overseeing.

What’s more, frequent senior-level changes to military leaders led to confusion and
continual shifts in strategy. During a critical period throughout much of 2020 and 2021,
acting Minister of Defense Asadullah Khalid was sick and out of the country for many
months. It was never clear why Khalid was left in his position during this time, although
Ghani mentioned to me that the U.S. military wanted him to remain there. Then, in June
2021, as the military situation worsened, Ghani replaced both the defense and interior
ministers, as well as the army chief of staff. At no point did the military seem to be
planning a high-level strategy for the protection of major cities. And, in the end, it was a
surprise to me to see Minister of Defense Bismillah Khan departing the country, seated
comfortably, on the same flight I scrambled to board.

Interconnected Failures

None of these factors alone was responsible for the collapse of the Afghan state. But they
interacted and reinforced one another in ultimately fatal ways. Leadership failures in the
Afghan security sector, for example, were exacerbated by Biden’s decision to rapidly
withdraw not only all remaining international forces but also all associated contractors.
Only three years earlier, the United States had stopped buying Russian-produced Mi-17
helicopters for the Afghan military and switched to U.S.-made UH-60 Black Hawks. But
there was no time to train enough Afghan pilots and maintenance crews required to
operate the new fleet of U.S. helicopters, which were more advanced and complex
machines. With the withdrawal of international troops and contractors, the ability of the
Afghan military to project power through its air force significantly declined.

The fallout and sense of betrayal from the Doha agreement deepened the bickering
between Ghani, Abdullah, and Karzai,further weakening any sense of a strong, central
government. Karzai and Abdullah continued to push for an interim government, which
Ghani opposed. Given the Taliban opposition to Ghani during the peace negotiations,
Khalilzad then reportedly encouraged Karzai and others to consider themselves
candidates for a negotiated interim president position. In the end, it didn’t matter. The
Taliban surrounded Kabul, and Ghani fled.

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We will undoubtedly debate the reasons for the Afghan state’s quick collapse and cast
blame for a long time to come. Understanding what led to its rapid downfall will,
eventually, allow others to learn from our experience and formulate appropriate policy
responses. In the meantime, the consequences will be borne—yet again—by Afghan
citizens who had no say in any of these matters.

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