Warlord Diplomacy and the Future of Afghanistan

America has shut down and handed over Bagram Airfield, its largest base in Afghanistan and the nerve centre for its campaign there for the past twenty years. As it effectively ends its active participation in Afghanistan’s wars, it plans on leaving behind 650 troops in order to maintain the security of its embassy and several hundred more troops to secure Kabul international airport until a deal can be reached with Turkey to provide security. Although not there to participate in fighting or provide any support to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIROA) or the Afghan army, the presence of those troops and the diplomatic mission they protect could still play a decisive role in determining the eventual outcome of the war between GIROA and the Taliban by persuading Afghanistan’s resurgent strongmen and their militias to fight for the government.

For America, these several hundred troops represent the minimal force it feels is necessary to ensure the safety of its embassy and diplomatic mission in Kabul. The Taliban have said they would view such forces as an occupying military force in violation of the peace deal, and subject to potential attack as a result. How likely the Taliban are to act on such a threat, given what the American retaliatory response would likely be, and that they did not retaliate against troops who stayed past the original May deadline for withdrawal, is debatable. However, the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979, the Al-Qaeda attacks on the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya in 2012 show how precarious the security of diplomatic missions can be. There have been over fifty attacks on US embassies and consulates since 1945, and that is a dangerous game of brinksmanship to play in a country like Afghanistan facing the possibility of civil war. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, America closed its embassy in Kabul over the same concerns.

The presence of such a large American force to secure the embassy in Kabul, and the airport that would be needed to evacuate it, is an open acknowledgment that the GIROA is unable to secure these locations with its own forces, which under different circumstances could be considered an embarrassing slap in the face to an ally, if the security picture across the country and inside Kabul itself was not so clearly deteriorating.

The size of the force left behind to guard the embassy, combined with the size of the embassy staff, is also challenging to evacuate on short notice. This sends a tacit message that America is still committed to the future of the GIROA, and has faith that it will survive the showdown with the Taliban. It is this show of faith that may ultimately save the government. The American embassy is one of the few that remain open in Kabul, and America is the only country that can realistically commit the resources needed to secure its foreign mission. Australia closed its embassy and confirmed the withdrawal of all its personnel in June, while promising to continue diplomatic relationships with frequent flights and virtual meetings. Belgium has removed its staff, and the French, British and others who remain are looking to see what America decides to do next. The Taliban have offered repeated assurances that embassies and diplomatic missions will be protected and welcomed in the future Afghanistan they want to build, but it is an open question if the representatives who make such assurances have enough control over the Taliban fighters on the ground to make good on their promises.

As the security situation deteriorates around the country, and with the additional threat of the Delta Covid variant (which is running rampant in the capital) it can be difficult to justify accepting the risk of maintaining an embassy in Kabul. But in politics location matters, and where one chooses to plant the flag carries a lot of weight. The often quoted and rarely read military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz famously described war as the continuation of politics by other means. The outcome of this next chapter in the Afghan war will be decided by the political will to resist the Taliban rather than by the military prowess of the Afghan army. This political will may come down to nothing more than a belief by Afghanistan’s traditional cadre of strongmen warlords that the GIROA retains the backing of the international community, and that defending it will lead to a more prosperous future for themselves. A functioning embassy in Kabul is critical to promulgating the belief that America and its allies will continue to work with and support the GIROA.

Afghanistan’s warlords have been a decisive force in Afghan power politics since the collapse of the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan in 1992. Once the mujahideen commanders who fought to overthrow the government seized Kabul, vicious infighting amongst former allies broke out as they vied for control over the capital and what remained of Afghanistan’s civil infrastructure. Others used their powerful militias to establish control over distant provinces, using informal networks of patronage to maintain ties to the capital. Weakened by infighting and lacking popular support due to poor governance, these mujahideen commanders-turned-warlords were unable to resist the Taliban, who expelled them from the capital and seized control over much of the country. This led to the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, a loose confederation of warlords based in northern Afghanistan who successfully resisted Taliban control. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States decided to partner with these warlords to remove the Taliban. Backed by their newfound allies who provided airpower, money and critical political clout, the warlords and their militias were able to expel the Taliban government and seize control of Kabul.

The new government headed by President Hamid Karzai lacked any standing army, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force mission was initially limited to securing Kabul. To maintain control, the new administration paid homage to the men who drove out the Taliban by appointing them as governors of the various provinces they controlled. This action legitimised their positions of power politically by allowing them to run the state institutions in their territories and build their patronage networks through controlling the foreign aid money that was now flowing into the country.

Despite the outward transition from warlords to politicians and the public dismantling of their militias to support the centralisation of military power in Kabul, these former commanders have retained a robust, if often subtle, ability to independently direct violence and influence the security situation across the country. The most infamous Northern Alliance commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum, while serving as Vice-President of Afghanistan twice, turned his palace in Jowzjan into an independent command centre, taking control of all security forces in the north of Afghanistan and augmenting them with his own militia to beat back Taliban advances. He now holds the rank of marshal, which has only been held by two other people in Afghanistan’s history, and has pledged to lead the fight against the Taliban. 

Dostum has successfully navigated the chaos of Afghan politics for decades, deftly switching sides and forming new alliances as situations changed, showing a knack for ending up on the winning side. Dostum and his deputies held out against the Taliban for years on their own, and have used the years since 2001 to consolidate power for themselves. Although he has survived by cutting deals and switching sides, offering his services to other warlords, the GIROA, America or the Russians at various times, the one group he has never aligned with is the Taliban, even when doing so might have been expedient.

Given the current chaotic situation, Marshal Dostum has several options. He could strike out on his own, using his military power and political clout to turn Jowzjan into an autonomous region, or attempt to reform the Northern Alliance, holding on to the cities of Kunduz and Mazar-i Sharif in the north and abandoning Kabul. He could use his formidable militia to defend Kabul and President Ghani’s administration, rallying others to the cause and stopping the Taliban’s advance. If things seem hopeless, he can take his considerable fortune and seek refuge in Turkey, where he has long enjoyed support and where he waited out political turmoil in Afghanistan following allegations that he assaulted a political rival in 2008 and raped another one in 2017. The one option he does not have is striking a deal with the Taliban itself. His open fondness for vodka and women in Western clothing along with his history of brutal acts against the Taliban precludes a deal ever being struck, as the Taliban could not accept him without calling their own Islamic fundamentalist credentials into question.

Other prominent former warlords are weighing their options for survival while publicly raising their militias again. Former Northern Alliance commanders such as Atta Muhammad Noor in Balkh province and Mohammed Ismail Khan, former governor of Herat, have pledged to raise their own forces and help the Afghan army hold back the Taliban. Ahmad Massoud, the son of the leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shad Massoud, who was assassinated by the Taliban two days before the attacks on the World Trade Center, has been calling for fighters to join his new militia group, the Second Resistance, which boasts several thousand fighters.

On the other side, the Taliban are estimated to have between 50,000 and 60,000 fighters in Afghanistan. Dostum’s old militia in 2001 was a similar size, and it would not be difficult for former warlords to raise sufficient fighters to throw back the Taliban’s advance in many areas, though these militias are as useful for fighting each other over the spoils of America’s withdrawal as they are for fighting the Taliban. Dostum and other prominent strongmen remember the infighting among them that made it impossible for them to hold Kabul in the face of a Taliban advance in 1996, and what it cost them as a result. Having enjoyed political prominence and personal prosperity since recapturing the city, it is unlikely that they will allow the same squabbles to divide them again.

Many of the people of Afghanistan who welcomed Taliban rule in 1996 as an antidote to the chaos of the time now have painful memories of what it meant to live under their brutal fundamentalist regime, and are more inclined to choose a benevolent warlord as the power broker in their region rather than live under theocratic tyranny. Ethnic minorities such as the Hazara, whose ancestral home in Wardak province is next to Kabul and who suffered numerous atrocities under Taliban rule, have begun to arm themselves and form militias, both to protect themselves against Taliban insurgents and to command better treatment from the current government. All of this leaves the current internationally recognised government in a precarious position, but President Ghani has already called for militias to help the Afghan army, and appears willing to make whatever concessions he must in order to hold on to Kabul and stave off the Taliban advance.

These militias have shown a remarkable willingness to resist Taliban rule and fight them in the past; they include many of the commanders who helped the US take Kabul twenty years ago. As the Afghan army collapses in many places and faith in security forces falters, the militias may prove to be the force that prevents the Taliban’s return to power. But that will only happen if they choose to fight to preserve some semblance of the current government. Otherwise, the country will devolve into a series of smaller fiefdoms, each run by its own strongman, who may or may not decide to unite in time to resist the Taliban or cut their own deal with them. Faith that the US and its allies will continue to support the GIROA, which they have pledged to do to the tune of four billion dollars a year through to 2024, will be a critical factor in the decision that these power brokers face in a country that has struggled to maintain any form of effective central government for generations.

After twenty years of expending blood and treasure and disrupting millions of lives in a campaign that aimed to uproot extremists and build a functioning, democratic nation, the idea that the most we can hope for is for warlords, with their own long list of human rights abuses, to prop up the government in Kabul by resisting the Taliban in order to keep the tap of foreign aid dollars flowing, can be a bitter pill to swallow. But a coalition of strongmen would still provide a better future for Afghanistan’s people, especially its most oppressed ethnic minorities, than Taliban rule ever could. It would also better fulfil the primary reason America went there, which was to ensure Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups cannot use it as a safe haven, and to provide tangible proof that even in the most dire situations, siding with America is ultimately a good bet. America’s longest war is over, but Afghanistan’s continues, and an American flag flying over an embassy in Kabul may ultimately matter more to the outcome than anything else the US could provide.

Scott Kelly is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and a graduate student at American University in Washington, DC. He edits atthewatersedge.org