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A US Predator drone flies over the moon above Kandahar Air Field in southern Afghanistan. (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP Photo)

In recent months talk of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has increased once again. Its not the first time during the course of the nearly two-decades-long war that weve heard this, and at several points since the war began in 2001, some troops have actually been withdrawn. But somehow, almost 20 years in, there still isnt very much talk about what it will actually take to end US actions that kill civilians. We hear talk about the forever wars, of which Afghanistan is of course the longest, but not much about what their first perpetrator, President George W. Bush, named the Global War on Terror (GWOT)and the effect that thats had.

The shift in name and definition of war in Afghanistan (and related post-9/11 wars in so many countries) away from GWOT to forever wars reflects how the wars have been and continue to be fought. Bushs war in Afghanistan, and many years of Obamas war there, and beyond, were characterized by large troop deployments and the occupation of cities and huge swaths of Afghanistan and its people. Arrests of thousands of Afghans accused, often wrongly, of sympathy with the Taliban, pitched battles with the Taliban, and deadly US air strikes, all devastated the country and the people.

Obama began reducing ground troops only after years of escalating deployments on his watch, during which time the emphasis of the war also changed. It had morphed into an air war, a war of drone strikes, bombers, and more, along with the deployment of US Special Forces for targeted operations. US casualties dropped to near zero; by 2011, Afghan civilian casualties had significantly escalated. That war in Afghanistan continues, under the guise of counterterrorism. The forever war in Afghanistan, the one that involves US troops on the ground, mainly training and assisting Afghan troops, continues today, though with dramatically reduced deployments.

While he was in office, Donald Trump, for reasons seemingly unrelated to actual US strategy in Afghanistan, and definitely unrelated to any concern about the still-climbing numbers of Afghan civilian casualties, withdrew some troops and talked about pulling out more. That withdrawal process escalated in early 2020 after the signing of the US-Taliban peace deal, which called for a complete US withdrawal by May 2021 in return for the Talibans cutting of ties with Al Qaeda, ending attacks on US troops, and opening negotiations with the Afghan government.Current Issue

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When Trump actually began withdrawing troops in November 2020, despite that commitments being key to the US-Taliban agreement, supporters of the war, Republicans and Democrats alike, erupted in opposition. They raged that Trumps decision would mean betraying the US service members who had died there, or ditching the corrupt and feckless Afghan government the United States had installed, or forsaking our Afghan allies in the military our troops continued to train, or abandoning Afghan women, ormaybe the most iconic warninglosing the war and allowing the Taliban to win. For some Democrats, the fact that it was Trump calling for withdrawal was all the evidence they needed that US troops should remain.

Among all of those Washington insiders outraged at the prospect of pulling troops out, few seemed willing to ask what the consequences would be if they stayed. Or, for that matter, what the consequences have been of the US troop presence in Afghanistan for almost two decades. For many people in the States, the war in Afghanistan had largely become invisible. US casualties had dropped to near zero, which meant that coverage of the war in the mainstream press had dramatically fallen off.

The impact of the December 2019 Afghanistan Papers, documents published by The Washington Post proving that senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable, was short-lived. At that point, there were about 13,000 US troops remaining in Afghanistan20 were killed in combat that year, and that was actually the highest number of US casualties since Obamas 2015 reduction of combat operations and their replacement with the train-and-assist mission that remains in place today. But the Pentagons separate counterterror war continued throughout the 44th presidents tenure and beyond, with little discussion back home. With annual American deaths in combat barely over single digits, press coverage disappeared, and it was much easier to keep up the deadly air war with few people paying attention. And so the number of Afghan civilians killed, whether in funeral processions, wedding parties, or trying to simply live their lives, has not led to debate about the legitimacy and human costs of the war.

There are answers, of course, to the claims asserted of why the war needed to continue.

Threat or no threat, US forces have continued killing civilians. McChrystals strategy was supposed to move away from just killing bad guys to also protecting civilians, which required more troops. His successors during the next few years oversaw Obamas huge escalation of boots on the ground. That didnt win the war either. By 2014, ground troop numbers were massively reduced, but the counterterrorism focus on air strikes and Special Forces remained.

That counterterrorism emphasis continues today, rarely discussed publicly except to mention, almost in passing, that no decision to withdraw ground troops will impact on continuing counterterror activitiesin Afghanistan, Yemen or elsewhere. By 2019 the United Nations reported that the United States and its allies were responsible for more civilian deaths than the Talibanand that aerial operations were the third-highest cause of civilian casualties. The [UN] report attributed almost all of those casualties to American air strikes. The 2020 UN casualty report documents a slight decline in civilian deaths, with numbers dropping after the signing of the US-Taliban agreement but increasing again as the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government began. US air strikes dropped precipitously, but those by the Afghan air force increasedwith the United States still training pilots, delivering parts for the planes, and providing the bombs. So Washington still bears responsibility for the deaths of thousands of civilians every year.

The 2020 UN report also called on the United States and its allies to increase transparency of investigations into civilian casualty incidents and communicate results to civilian victims and their relatives.

Ironically, while continuing its air war against Taliban fighters, the United States has simultaneously partnered with the Taliban in its conflict with ISIS, or the Islamic State, which has a small number of fighters in Afghanistan. In the fall of 2020, as if to prove that there is no military solution to terrorism, only a permanent game of lethal whack-a-mole, Taliban and ISIS fighters were fighting for control of the Korengal Valley. According to The Washington Post, US Special Operations forces were preparing to intervene in the fighting in Konar province in eastern Afghanistannot by attacking both sides, but by using strikes from drones and other aircraft to help the Taliban.

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The public text of the US-Taliban agreement does not mention CIA personnel remaining in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of troops. But public reports make clear that while reducing the number of such agents and perhaps moving them to the US embassy in Kabul was discussed during the negotiations, there is no reason to think CIA agents wont remain even when all foreign forces are withdrawn.Unending War

Pulling out the ground troops is important. Theyre not keeping Afghans safer. Theyre not building democracy. Theyve been there far too long, and we signed a peace deal promising to get them out.

But pulling out the ground troops is not enough. If were serious about ending the US role in the war, and we must be, we need to get serious about ending the war thats still killing Afghans almost two decades after the United States invaded the country. Calling the air war counterterrorism isnt a sufficient reason to continue military campaigns that kill civilians.

Ending the US military role will not in and of itself bring peace to Afghanistan, but its a necessary precondition to end the war. Malalai Joya, then the youngest member of the US-installed Afghan parliament and one of very few women, was driven out of parliament by threats and attacks, including from government supporters. In the Taliban time, she said, we had one enemy: the Taliban. Now we have three: the Taliban, warlords [inside the US-installed government and parliament] and the occupation forces. The US and NATO presence is making the struggle for justice and peace much harder because they empower these reactionary terrorists, who are great obstacles for true democratic-minded elements in my country.

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Withdrawing US Troops From Afghanistan Is Only a Start. We Have to End the Air War Too. - The Nation

Then, in 1988, as the Soviets prepared to depart and it became clear that Kabul could fall to the mujahedeen, the museum staff hid some of the most important objects in government facilities closer to the center of town. The Bactrian Hoard, a collection of 2,000-year-old jewelry and weapons, was stashed in the depths of the presidential palace. The museums staff kept its secret for the next decade, successfully safeguarding the finest treasures. But there wasnt enough space to move the remainder of the museums collection, including the Islamic wing.

One morning, Saifi and the others woke to a pillar of smoke rising in the distance. Fighting had broken out between two rival groups, and the museum was hit by rocket fire. An inferno raged on the top floor; in the galleries, metal and wood were reduced to heat, light and ash; stone cracked and shattered.

Not everything was destroyed in the blaze. Afterward, fighters in the area began stealing from the museum. They went for the low-hanging fruit, said Jolyon Leslie, who was working for the United Nations in Kabul. The museums coin collection, the remains of the Islamic gallery, and its remarkable Begram Ivories, delicate and portable, were all taken. At first, it was opportunistic: ragged, hungry men stumbling off with what they could carry. Leslie recalled driving past street sellers flogging items fresh from the museum, displayed among vegetables on a sheet of newspaper in the mud. My God, thats a Buddha, that isnt an onion, he realized. Hed stop and pay the equivalent of a few dollars, and take them for safekeeping.

But as time went on, the looting became more organized. Leslie was part of a group that tried to preserve what it could at the museum by welding iron bars onto the windows. The thieves came back with crowbars. One night, two massive schist reliefs in the entrance hall, which had seemed too heavy to remove, disappeared, presumably by truck. There were anecdotal reports that the mujahedeen were in cahoots with Pakistani dealers, Leslie said. Certainly, many of the museums looted artifacts turned up for sale across the border in Peshawar.

During the war, almost 100 Ghazni marbles, including the Hamburg panel, disappeared from the governments possession. The pieces that were missing were the big, complete pieces, Rugiadi told me. Though we cannot be certain, it seems probable that the Hamburg marble ended up on the black market in Pakistan, which was awash with Afghan antiquities. During the 90s, commanders and other wartime entrepreneurs invested in heavy machinery and labor to systematically excavate the richest sites. Thats when you have the looting of sites across the whole country, Simpson, the curator at the British Museum, said.

As tragic as the looting of the museum was, such illicit excavations were worse in an important sense, because they destroyed the archaeological record. At least we know something about the original site of the Ghazni marbles. But each illegal dig meant that information about the past was lost forever. Shorn of their connection to their sites of discovery, a rich stream of antiquities crossed Afghanistans borders, destined for world markets, many via the Persian Gulf, where the mujahedeen had well-established connections with wealthy patrons of the jihad.

According to the Italian database, the al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait holds four of the Ghazni panels taken from the Afghan government collection; others have ended up at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization and the Islamic Art Museum Malaysia. The Sharjah Museum did not respond to a request for comment. Eric Delpont, director of the Paris museum, said that its panel was acquired from Hotel Drouot in 2003, and that the museum was unaware that it came from the Afghan government collection, believing it to be from a mausoleum in the Ghaznavid capital. Salam Kaoukji, the collection manager at al-Sabah, said that she was aware of their panels provenance but that she didnt know if there were plans for restitution, adding that it was up to the governments of Kuwait and Afghanistan to decide.

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How One Looted Artifact Tells the Story of Modern Afghanistan - The New York Times

On the table are, sadly, two very badoptions: The withdrawal of all international troops by May 1, as agreed in the Doha accord, or the extension of the US-led intervention that began nearly 20 years ago.

I favor staying, and let me explain why.

International soldiers will not win this war, nor will they bring peace. But they are an indispensable bargaining chip in the difficult peace negotiations underway in the Qatari capital.

Thirsty for power and recognition, the Taliban are demanding the end of foreign occupation and the easing of all sanctions against them. These are the only two levers the West has at its disposal to put pressure on the radical Islamist extremists to agree to a cease-fire and advance negotiations.

Sandra Petersmann has been reporting on Afghanistan since 2001

To put it bluntly, troop withdrawal and sanctions are not a panacea that will work overnight. People will continue to die in Afghanistan in the coming months as a result of terror and war. According to the UN, between October and December of last year alone, at least 30 civilians on average were killed or injured each day.

This is the bitter truth of the "America First" policy. Former President Donald Trump took it to extremes with the Doha Accord. The narcissist desperately wanted to go down in history as the president who brought US troops home. He was all about ending America's longest war to win an election. But that plan backfired.

Trump was not the first to decide on Afghanistan's fate based solely on domestic political considerations. "America First" began with the revenge-driven invasion after the 9/11 terror attacks.How else can we explain the United States and its Western allies' unsavory alliances with war criminals and human rights abusers (for example the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum) for the sake of hunting down al-Qaeda and punishing the Taliban?

Germany's Bundeswehr has been on duty in Afghanistan for the past 20 years

The hasty invasion took no account of the Afghan civil war which began in 1978 and remains unresolved to this day. Nor did the intervention at least consider the wounds left by the Cold War and Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The military campaign was carried out without any regard for the dangerousrole played in Afghanistan by regional states such as Pakistan, India and Iran. They, too, are igniting the Afghan battlefield with maximum national egoism.

And that is why now after 20 years of war for the US coalition and after a total of four decades of continuous war for the Afghan people there are no better options on the table.

America's allies, including Germany, will follow the beat of Trump successor, Joe Biden's administration. If the US goes, all coalition troops go. There are currently about 10,000 left in the country. If the Americans stay, NATO allies will stay. Germany currently has around 1,100 troops stationed in Afghanistan, making it the second-largest troop contributor after the United States.

But theAfghanistan mission is just as unpopular in Germany as it is in the US. Germans also question why the Bundeswehr is still on the ground. Germany is now facing a federal election, but the political elite in Berlin do not want to spoil their campaigns with the issue of Afghanistan and they refuse to provide much-needed explanations to the public. Germany first!

It is time for truth: Those who invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago in anill-considered manner should not pull out equally recklessly and deal a death blow to the young and however imperfect Afghan democracy which was created by, and is totally dependent on, Western support. Dodging responsibility means admitting defeat.

Afghanistan needs maximum pressure on the Taliban as well as on the divided, often corrupt government and the many warlords. It needs maximum political and diplomatic involvement of all the major regional states and the other two global powers, Russia and China. This will be strenuous and dangerous.

But those who still refuse to put the necessary strength, willpower and patience into an "Afghanistan first" policy risk further displacing a terrorized Afghan population from their homeland an outcome that will also have consequences for the rest of theworld.

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Opinion: Why the United States needs to stay in Afghanistan - DW (English)

The New Guy seemed dazed as he toured the office with his predecessor. Tall and hunched, like a pro athlete five years into retirement, the New Guy looked too old to be a captain.

It was 2012. I was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, stationed at Camp Phoenix, working with a small team assigned to build police stations throughout Kabul for the Afghan National Police. We worked with police commanders to determine what physical infrastructure they needed to get ready for the supposed 2014 withdrawal of U.S. forces. It was a unique vantage point on a war already 10 years old and largely feeding on itself, like a terrarium in Thunderdome.

Our old boss, Luke, was an engineer in the Air Force. He would go out every day for meetings with Afghan police commanders, return to the office, and review blueprints and contracts for 12 hours. He spent his free time working on his Ph.D. When Luke introduced the New Guy, an Air Force reservist, as the new boss, we explained our jobs, dozens of projects. The New Guy had no questions; he just muttered easy enough or thats just some project management stuff, with relaxed, breezy confidence.

Luke, ever the professional, left so that the New Guy could take charge without the former boss lingering. The office was a small room with plywood walls and three cheap wooden desks side by side. I sat on one side. The other lieutenant, Mike, sat opposite, with the New Guy now in the middle. As soon as we sat down, he explained that a doctor told him that to avoid jet lag he needed to rest one day for every hour he flew. He figured that his flight had been 14 hours, so he would see us in two weeks. And with that, he left the office.

Mike took the rifle to the New Guys boss and explained. The major said that he would keep it and see how long it took the New Guy to report itmissing.

This is not going to go well, Mike said.

For several days, Mike and I continued our work. We went on missions, designed projects, and wrote contracts. This new guy was actually going to try to sleep for 14 days. It was heroic, in a way, to be so self-contained. As if Melville had written Bartleby, the Napper instead.

We were just getting used to not having a boss when I bumped into the Operations Officer, Maj. Harrison. He was third in command and always harried. Some people begin to physically resemble their occupation. He was an armor officer and had the attributes of a tankphysically big, loud, and aggressive.

Staron, wheres the New Guy? he asked. The boss hasnt seen him around.

Well, sir, about that. I then explained the New Guys regimen for jet lag and that we hadnt seen him for a couple days.

Hes just been fucking sleeping? Harrison turned to one of his captains and sent them to retrieve the New Guy. Stand there until he actually leaves his fucking room.

And so the New Guy started coming to work.

Mike was in the final weeks of his deployment. He had no patience left, so it fell to me to try to bring the New Guy up to speed. I took him around Kabul to show him our projects and introduce him to the Afghan police commanders and contractors who were working with us. As we drove through the city, he pointed out the window at a group of Afghan women.

LT, whats the deal with the women in blue robes? Are they nuns?

No sir, they dont have nuns here. Theyre wearing the traditional burqa.

When we returned to the base after these trips, the New Guy would generally disappear to nap for several hours, leaving us alone to do the administrative work. One day, I went back to the office to start working and found Mike as angry as I had ever seen him.

Whats up, man?

He left his fucking rifle in the office, Mike said.

Afghan workers cleaned and did maintenance on the base. Mike had turned in his chair to find one of these workers holding the New Guys M4 rifle. For a split second, Mike had assumed that he was going to be the next victim of one of the insider attacks that had become all the rage lately across Afghanistan. Instead, the worker just needed to get to the A/C unit.

Mike took the rifle to the New Guys boss and explained. The major said that he would keep it and see how long it took the New Guy to report it missing.

It took nearly a day. After that, the New Guy began to talk about disloyalty and deceitfulness in the office. It drove Mike crazy, but only for the few final days before he left for good.

Our commander, Col. Remigio, was an Army colonel from the infantryshort and intense, a yeller. His high-pitched voice would rise until it gave a pubescent crack, then he would return to normal as if all the air was out of the balloon. Each week, the New Guy had to brief Remigio, and every week, Remigio would be disappointed in the New Guys inability to answer questions. The New Guy didnt know his own projects, and for the detail-oriented Remigio, that was a cardinal sin.

Staron, this isnt that serious, the New Guy liked to say to me. This isnt a realwar.

After one such performance, Remigio took the New Guy to his office and screamed at him for 45 minutes. Just as Remigio was about to wind down, the New Guy leaned back in his chair and said, Look, sir, what you need to understand about me is that Im 90 percent civilian.

According to a major who was in the office, Remigio was slightly stunned, but took a breath and went back to screaming, for another 45 minutes.

For the next few days, the New Guy asked me about it regularly. It was all he could talk about. That was so unprofessional, he said. Is that how yall do things in the Army?

Staron, this isnt that serious, the New Guy liked to say to me. This isnt a real war. My brother was finding improvised explosive devices in Kandahar, one of my best friends had been nearly killed by a suicide bomber, and two guys I went to college with had been killed in Regional Command-East. The war seemed real to me. At the very least, I considered it not unserious.

Every so many days, like clockwork, the New Guys mantra would unleash something in me. Relax, hed say, one time too many, and I would explode. The New Guy would laugh and say that I needed Jesus. I would storm out of the office.

Fortunately, our teams civilian contractor, Dan, had inherited a humidor with about 400 cigars from another contractor. We would go to a patio and smoke while Dan talked about his ex-wife and I calmed down. The sessions usually ended with us looking at the Hindu Kush mountains in the distance with the sun fading and Dan wistfully saying that he would build a ski resort over there someday. I dont think he has yet.

The New Guy was still taking his post-mission naps in the afternoon but would return to the office in the evening to do online shopping until late into the night. He had an affinity for leather goods. We began to avoid the office after dinner.

And as Col. Remigio became more critical of him, the New Guys attitude began to shift. He wasnt as breezy as before. He became arbitrary. He demanded the plans for a multimillion-dollar project in two or three days, even though such an undertaking would require weeks of work.

He would sink into long periods of silence in the office, increasing the unease. He didnt do any work, just continued appraising leather coats online. Then, apropos of nothing, he would assign me a deadline to complete online training on emotional intelligence.

The New Guy once shared that his career manager told him that he wouldnt be promoted to major without a deployment, so he had to come to Afghanistan. It had only taken him 10 years.

For him, the war in Afghanistan was something to be endured in order to get to a better tomorrow. At least he was honest about what he was trying to accomplish by being there. As opposed to those who felt disappointed and cheated that this was their war. I heard this sentiment countless times. We need to get back to real fighting. No more of this insurgency bullshit. As if we had a choice on whether an insurgency would break out, existentially speaking. (As opposed to through policy, which almost ensured an insurgency.) Every time I heard officers say they wanted a real war with real fighting, I wanted to give them a hug and apologize for the lack of battles of the Bulge.

To these guys, the war in Afghanistan was also something to be endured in order to get to a better tomorrow. A tomorrow with a lot of tanks fighting tanks, hopefully.

When I first arrived to Afghanistan, someone passed along a word of comfort: Dont worry. You cant fuck it up. Its Afghanistan. Its already fucked.

In this kernel lay the closest approximation of a strategic vision for the day-to-day administration of Americas war in Afghanistan, which had assumed its own reality, its own internal logic.

For instance, before even coming to Afghanistan, the New Guy had been required to attend adviser training at Fort Polk. He spent his training paying bills and online shopping, which was a tough habit to break, it seemed. Many of my colleagues had completed this course and remained in touch with trainers there. Through that grapevine we heard that the New Guys instructor, appalled by his indifference to training, had sought to have him removed from the deployment. The instructor reported the New Guy to different bosses, including attempting to shame the New Guys unit for sending him in the first place. The response: There was no one else who would be ready to deploy in time. The instructor said, It would be better if no one went than to send this guy. The New Guy was sent.

It didnt matter which direction the ball was moving, so long as 11 players were on the field.

I was never quite sure that the New Guy understood where he was. It was as if he had been hit in the head on Sept. 10, 2001, and been in a coma until mid-2012, at which point he was awakened and informed that he was going to Afghanistan. He existed outside of history, except his own. In the past lay only slights and insults that he continuously referenced, like Mikes handling of the rifle. In the future lay promotion to major.

He had a habit of reflexively agreeing to whatever an Afghan commander asked for, regardless of feasibility. I asked him why he said yes when the clear answer was no.

You hear about these green-on-blue shootings? the New Guy said. Im not getting shot.

Somehow, the only Afghan-related notion that he had learned was green-on-blue. He asked Afghans if the meat they served was pork. He tried to give bottles of wine as gifts to Afghan commanders. Nothing had permeated his disinterest except the fact that Afghan soldiers were shooting Americans. And his solution was to tell the Afghans what they wanted to hear.

After he went home, I spent a lot of time informing Afghans that we had to break promises that never should have been made. No one ever got angry about it. They were used to the disappointment, maybe even relieved that someone was actually acknowledging that we were going back on our word.

One morning, after the New Guy and I almost came to blows, I reported him to the head of engineering. Kyle, were going to sit on these allegations, the head of engineering told me. Other stuff has come to light and hes fucked himself. Sure enough, a few days later, the New Guy announced that his deployment was being cut short.

It seems that he had sensed that Col. Remigio was going to fire him. So, as an insurance policy, the New Guy went to an Army National Guard unit on our base and asked if they wanted an engineer to work on police stations for them. The unit did want to do more for the police, but they had no money to spend on construction.

The New Guy explained that he would bring our $25 million budget with him if they found a place for him. He truly believed he had control of a $25 million line item in the U.S. defense budget and could carry that money around with him. Even more embarrassingly, the staff of the National Guard unit believed him.

When the proposal for this transfer reached the National Guard units chief of staff, he understood it was nonsense. He contacted Remigio, and the New Guy was kicked out of Afghanistan by the military in January 2013.

He returned in April 2013 as a civilian with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He just needed more time to find the right leather jacket, I guess.

By then, I was about to leave. I landed in the United States on April 14. The plan was to drive back to Texas and reintegrate into my old unit, lounge around for a couple of days, then enjoy a months worth of post-deployment leave.

I got back to my unit headquarters building and made the rounds, talking to friends I hadnt seen and figuring out what my job would be once I came back for good. As I was talking to someone, the new operations officer, Maj. Johnson, came up to me.

Are you Lt. Staron?

Yes, sir.

Welcome to the unit. The battalion commander wants to have a family day. I want you to plan the food. Do you think you can manage getting that?

I think I can manage ordering food, sir. But Im going on leave this weekend, so I wont be around for a while.

How long are you going on leave for?

A month, sir.

A month? Why are you taking that long of a vacation?

Well, I just got back, sir.

Back from where?

The rest is here:
When the New Guy Came to Afghanistan - Slate

In May, the United States is supposed to withdraw its remaining forces from Afghanistan in line with an agreement signed with the Taliban in Doha last year. But violence is escalating and the intra-Afghan talks mandated by the Doha accord have made little progress. If American troops leave, the Taliban might abandon the peace process and seize power by force.

This would arguably be mission accomplished for Pakistan, which has backed the militant group since its inception in the 1990s to establish strategic depth in Afghanistan and counter Indian influence there. The Afghan government maintains close ties to New Delhi and its ouster would likely harm Indias interests.

However, Islamabad appears to want a responsible U.S. withdrawal and has repeatedly insisted it would prefer an inclusive administration in Kabul. This might be an attempt to deflect accusations that it supports the Taliban, of course, but there are good reasons for Pakistan to oppose a takeover by the militant group and a restoration of its theocracy.

As former U.S. counterterrorism official Tricia Bacon notes, Though Pakistan and the Taliban have long-standing common interests, these have not produced a friendship. Pakistans security establishment largely views the Afghan Taliban with contempt, while the Taliban often resents Pakistans interference.

For years Islamabad has tried to push the Taliban around, often at Washingtons behest. Before 9/11 the United States asked Pakistan to pressure former Taliban chief Mullah Omar into surrendering Osama bin Laden, which he refused to do. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf also triedand failedto prevent the Talibans destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Efforts to strongarm the Taliban continued after the groups fall from power. When the Afghan conflict stalemated and the United States started exploring a diplomatic solution, Islamabad was called on to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. But the Taliban went behind Pakistans back and opened secret talks with the Afghan government.

This infuriated Pakistan, which wanted to control negotiations. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) proceeded to punish the Taliban by detaining half of its leadership in a 2010 sweep, including the current deputy emir, Mullah Baradar. Some Talibs were allegedly mistreated in Pakistani custody; oneformer defense minister Mullah Obaidullahmay have died under torture.

So, while Pakistan has hosted and helped the Taliban, it has also tried to bully them. And it has done that partly at Americas request, effectively siding with the Talibans main enemy. Indeed, Islamabad provided crucial assistance to the U.S.-led military campaign which removed the group from power in 2001.

It also handed captured militants over to U.S. custody, including former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Zaeef, who was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Zaeef vilifies Pakistan and its intelligence agency in his memoir, an attitude echoed in later interviews with Taliban members.

In other words, there is bad blood between the militant group and its Pakistani sponsors which could negatively impact their relationship going forward. Pakistan is generally viewed with suspicion in Afghanistan, and a Taliban regime would have a political incentive to distance itself from Islamabad to win domestic popular support.

In the 1990s, the Taliban did not kowtow to Islamabad and followed previous Afghan governments in rejecting the Durand Line, the disputed border with Pakistan. Taliban fighters have more recently insisted that the Pashtun areas of Pakistan belong to Afghanistan.

This could become a flashpoint if the Taliban returns to power, all the more so because Pakistan is building a border fence along the Durand Line which slices through tribal territory, separating families and obstructing economic activity. The Taliban has apparently tried to block construction of the fence in some places.

A Taliban regime might also host militant groups that are hostile to Pakistan. Islamabad has pursued a dual strategy with militants, supporting some (like the Afghan Taliban or Lashkar-e Taiba) which further its interests, and opposing others (like ISK, Al Qaeda, and the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP)) which attack Pakistanis.

The Taliban do not share this approach. While the movement indeed opposes the Islamic State, it continues to harbour Al Qaeda and it has never condemned or attacked the TTP, which sought refuge in Afghanistan after the Pakistan Army expelled it from the tribal areas in 2014.

Between 2007 and 2015, TTP terrorized Pakistan with repeated mass-casualty attacks, including a horrific assault on a school in 2014. The prospect of an energized TTP, aided and inspired by the Afghan Taliban, must be of great concern to the Pakistani leadership. It is also bad news for China, whose workers in Pakistan have been attacked by the group.

If the Taliban return to power and host extremists as they did in the 1990s, the United States would likely call on Islamabad to pressure them into expelling their guests. That did not work back then, and may not do so this time around, either. Pakistan would be blamed, and U.S.-Pakistan ties could suffer as a result, driving Islamabad further into Beijings arms.

Islamabad would have less leverage over a Taliban regime now than it had in the 1990s, when Pakistan was one of only three states to recognize its government. Recently the group has cultivated diplomatic contacts with most countries in the region, including former adversaries like Iran and Russia, or Qatar, where its political office is based.

Pakistans economic ties with Afghanistan might also be impaired if the Taliban seized power. Sanctions would likely be imposed on Afghanistan by the United States and international community, constraining trade and investment. Islamabads longstanding hopes of connectivity with Central Asia via Afghanistan would be dashed.

Moreover, a Taliban takeover might be resisted by other Afghan armed groups. Conflict and continued instability would further hamper economic activity and might unleash a flood of refugees into Pakistan, placing a major burden on the strained Pakistani economy and making it easier for militants and smugglers to infiltrate the country.

The drugs trade would also surely intensify under a Taliban regime. The movement is deeply involved in narcotics and could use the levers of government to facilitate trafficking and cultivation. Opium is Afghanistans main source of revenue and it will take years, if not decades, for the ruined country to develop viable economic alternatives.

A boom in Afghan narco-trafficking is the stuff of nightmares for Pakistan. The country already has a sizeable population of addicts. In recent years crystal meth has become increasingly prevalent among Pakistani youth and will likely get even worse as Afghanistan has started producing cheap meth using locally-grown ephedra.

Despite all these problems, a Taliban-run Afghanistan would at least be less friendly to Pakistans arch-rival, India, than the current government. Delhi is one of the few regional powers not to have forged diplomatic ties with the movement, placing it at a distinct disadvantage if the Taliban regains power.

But this is a silver lining on a very dark cloud. The costs of a Taliban takeover for Islamabad would be considerable, sealing Afghanistans fate as an impoverished, unstable narco-state and incubator of terrorism that threatens Pakistans national security and economic interests.

For that reason, Pakistan can be expected to continue its efforts to facilitate a political settlement in Afghanistan and help prevent a collapse into state failure and full-blown civil war. But, with peace talks stalled and the United States possibly heading for the door, a hurricane is forming.

Rupert Stone is a freelance journalist working on issues related to South Asia and the Middle East. He has written for various publications, including Newsweek, VICE News, Al Jazeera, and The Independent.

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Why Pakistan Should Fear a Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan - The National Interest