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The changing narratives and operations of al-Qaeda and its Pakistani ally, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in recent years indicate that the anti-state jihadist war in Pakistan will not end with a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 or thereafter (The News, March 1). Recent speeches by the TTP emir, Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, to a coalition of senior TTP commanders on the future goals of the war in Pakistan is not the only piece of evidence signifying that this war will continue (Umar Media, August 18, 2020; Umar Media, December 15, 2020). Rather, history also shows this war still has a long way to go.

Pakistani Islamists are widely believed to have originally supported al-Qaedas war against the Pakistani state due to post-9/11 changes in Pakistans foreign policy, which supported the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan that expelled the Taliban regime from Kabul. However, the anti-state jihadist war in Pakistan is deeply rooted in the pre-9/11 complexities of Pakistani politics, which culminated in Islamists enabling al-Qaeda operations within Pakistan immediately after 9/11. The war against the Pakistani government is so deeply entrenched that it will remain a challenge for the country even if the widely accepted jihad against the U.S. infidel occupier in Afghanistan and its allies, including Pakistan, is no longer a factor.

An overlooked illustration of the deep roots of the Islamist war in Pakistan comes from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, whose thirteenth anniversary was last month. Bhuttos assassination provides indications about how jihadist violence will continue to be a feature in Pakistan even when the countrys support to the U.S. in Afghanistan no longer motivates al-Qaeda and TTP militancy. Benazir was the leader of the social-democratic party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), when she was assassinated on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, which neighbors the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. She had only returned to Pakistan in October 2007 from self-imposed exile in Britain and Dubai in the hope of becoming Pakistans prime minister for the third time. A leading figure of Pakistani politics secular and liberal camp, she was the first major al-Qaeda and TTP target in Pakistan, but hardly the last. [1]

Her high-profile daylight assassination remained controversial for years and led to a blame game between Pakistani politicians, but new evidence related to her murder was released in 2017 in a book on the matter by current TTP emir, Noor Wali Mehsud, which solved several mysteries (Dawn, December 29, 2017). [2] The official final investigation results involving Scotland Yard and a UN team concluded that Osama bin Laden commissioned Benazirs assassination to the TTP founding emir Baitullah Mehsud through Abu Ubaydah al-Masri (the Egyptian), who commanded al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan (Dawn, December 28, 2018). The investigation identified different tiers of operators from the chief planner Ibad-ur-Rehman (a.k.a Farooq Chattan) to suicide bomber assassins, to local facilitators. Mehsuds book added to this understanding by showing that Baitullah Mehsud and TTPs leadership purposely denied their involvement in Benazirs assassination, despite providing planning and operational details not only for the assassination, but also for the previous assassination attempt in Larkana, Sindh Province in October 2007, which killed dozens of her party members.

Bhuttos Early Battles against Islamism, al-Qaeda, and the Military Establishment

Pro-Islamist Pakistani army general, Zia-ul-Haq, ousted Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), father of Benazir, through a military coup resulting in ZABs controversial death sentence in 1979 (Dawn, April 4, 2019). [3] Zia soon became a hero to Pakistani Islamists for the advancement of Islamization processes and central role in supporting the Afghan jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. [4] This brought Zia closer to Islamist political parties, particularly to Jamaat Islami (JI), which held a longstanding ideological and political rival of the socialist ZAB, whose government suppressed their organization in the 1970s. [5] Benazir, therefore, inherited her fathers political legacy, including his conflict with Pakistani Islamists and his fight against the military establishments dominance over democratically elected governments.

Benazir became the first female prime minister of Pakistan and the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim majority country after defeating a powerful alliance of Islamist and mainstream political parties in 1988 that were allegedly backed by pro-Zia army generals (Dawn, October 30, 2012). The Islamist parties opposed her both because they considered a female head of state to be against Islamic law and because she was a strong voice against their interpretations of Islam. The Arab jihadists in Pakistan also feared Benazir would obstruct their goals to further Islamize Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bin Laden, through his trusted associates among Pakistani Islamists, financed the 1989 no-confidence motion against Benazir in parliament, which was brought forward by the anti-Benazir political alliance (Dawn, December 24, 2017; YouTube, September 18, 2012). Subsequent evidence suggested a senior officer of the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who at the time served as ISIs Islamabad station chief, covertly played a central role in this no-confidence motion. This remains a major scandal in Pakistans political history, known as Operation Midnight Jackal, which resulted in the termination of the involved officer (Dawn, November 27, 2016; YouTube, September 27, 2009).

During Benazirs second term as prime minister came in 1993-1996 (her first being 1988-1990), during which she arrested and extradited dozens of Arab jihadists to their home countries. This policy resulted in the Arab jihadists receiving life imprisonment and death penalties. [6] The remaining Arab jihadists feared that they too would be arrested and fled to Afghanistan, Bosnia, Central Asia, and Sudan. [7] They included senior al-Qaeda cadres, who became al-Qaedas post-9/11 leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including, for example, Abu Ubaydah al-Masri and Mustafa Abu Yazid, the latter of whom would go on to claimed that Benazirs assassination was revenge for her policies against jihadists (Asia Times, December 27, 2007). [8]

In addition, as a result of these extraditions, an al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani jihadist, Ramzi Yousef, organized two attempts to assassinate Benazir, but she survived both times (The News, September 7, 2017). Ramzi also masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and was the nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad. Benazirs government finally arrested Ramzi in February 1995 in Islamabad and quickly extradited him to the United States, where he has since been imprisoned for life. He remains an al-Qaeda hero praised by bin Laden and Aymen al-Zawahiri. [9]

Besides these arrests and extraditions, the Benazir government also implemented controversial laws in 1994 in the Dir division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan that agitated local Islamists. [10] A radical JI splinter group, Tehreek Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM), protested these laws through a violent uprising that took control of government buildings and the Saidu Sharif airport (Dawn, November 3, 2007; Dawn, July 12, 2019). [11] This resulted in a Taliban-style movement emerging in the Dir, Bajaur, and Swat areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa led by TNSM emir Sufi Muhammad. [12] His movement coincided with Mullah Umars rise in Afghanistan, but both movements remained separate and the Benazir government killed and arrested hundreds of TNSM members. [13]

TNSMs two senior-most members after Sufi Muhammad, his son-in-law and successor Maulana Fazlullah and Mulawi Faqir Muhammad, became founding figures of TTP in 2007. The latter became the founding deputy head of TTP and was formerly its central emir in 2013. [14] Faqir Muhammad was the TTP Bajaur chapter emir. Post-9/11, he hosted al-Qaeda leaders in Bajaur, including Aymen al-Zawahiri and Abu Ubaydah al-Masri. [15] Meanwhile, the head planner of Benazirs assassination, Farooq Chattan, hailed from Swat, and was affiliated with the TTPs Maulana Fazlullah-led Swati Taliban (Dawn, October 30, 2012).

Benazirs Second-Term Battles

Benazirs ascension to power for a second term in 1993 resulted in the formation of another radical JI splinter group, Tehreek Islami Pakistan (TIP), which emerged from JIs intellectual class in Islamabad and other Pakistani urban centers (The Friday Times, June 26, 2011). TIPs hardliners separated from JI in 1994 due to the policies of JI head Qazi Hussain Ahmad. Some of the hardliners even accused him of pursuing a failed strategy that allowed Benazir to become prime minister for a second time one year earlier. [16] Amira Ihsan, a senior TIP member who represented JI in the Pakistani parliament in 1988, now led this charge against JI. A brother of Ihsan, Colonel Muhammad Hamid, was later part of a failed military coup against Benazir in 1995, which was planned by senior army generals and a pro-al-Qaeda veteran Afghan jihadist commander, Qari Saifullah Akhtar (The Friday Times, June 26, 2011).

One of Amira Ihsans sons, Raja Muhammad Salman (a.k.a Ustad Ahmad Farooq), also played the primary role in establishing al-Qaeda in Pakistan after 9/11. [17] Ustad Ahmad Farooq became senior advisor to Mustafa Abu Yazid and later led al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) until he was killed in a US drone strike in 2015. [18] Benazir suspected Akhtar of plotting her assassination weeks before her assassination took place (Geo TV, January 10, 2007). Akhtar was consequently arrested for her assassination, but he was released in 2008. He later joined Ustad Ahmad Farooqs al-Qaeda fighters in Waziristan until his death in January 2017 in a U.S. and Afghan joint operation in Ghazni province, Afghanistan. [19]

Besides these enemies, Benazir also faced severe opposition from the anti-Shia Sunni Deobandi sectarian group, Sipahi Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) for her Shia roots. [20] SSP excommunicates all Shia Muslims, demands a totalitarian Sunni state, and has been a major contributor to lethal Shia-Sunni sectarian violence in Pakistan (see Terrorism Monitor, May 5, 2005). SSPs founder, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who was known for his firebrand oratory, declared it a religious duty to oust Benazir from power for being Shia. [21] SSP members also facilitated Ramzi Yousefs two assassination attempts on Benazir in the 1990s and its underground splinter, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which was named after Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, has remained a brutal face of terrorism in Pakistan (The News, September 7, 2017). [22]

In 1990, Jhangvi was assassinated by his Shia sectarian opponents, who were arrested immediately after the murder. His followers considered his killing to be part of a larger conspiracy organized by influential Pakistani Shia politicians and even Iran. Jhangvis killing resulted in massive violence in his native district of Jhang and elsewhere in Punjab, which birthed LeJ in 1995. [23] In particular, LeJ also became the main implementer of al-Qaeda and TTP attacks in Pakistan after 9/11. [24] Mustafa Abu Yazid, for example, mentioned that LeJ assisted al-Qaeda in assassinating Benazir when later claiming responsibility for the act (Asia Times, December 27, 2007).

The Red Mosque Operation and Relationship with Musharraf

Although Benazir remained in exile after 9/11, she consistently informed the world about the Islamist and jihadist threat in Pakistan (Asia Times, November 3, 2004). She was also critical of the post-9/11 policies of Pakistani army generals, particularly Pervez Musharraf, specifically their attempts at countering al-Qaeda and its allies, such as TTP, in Pakistan. Her long experience confronting al-Qaeda, Islamists, and rogue elements of Pakistans military establishment gave her perspective on how to counter the post-9/11 challenge of Islamist militancy in Pakistan.

Although Benazir supported Musharrafs controversial military operation against a pro-al-Qaeda Islamist leader, Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, in Islamabad in July 2007, which killed Ghazi and dozens of followers in the Red Mosque, she doubted the sincerity behind Musharraf and his allies post-9/11 counterterrorism policies (Dawn, Jul 16, 2007). Other Pakistani political leaders, including Musharrafs allies, meanwhile tried to disassociate themselves from the Red Mosque operation due to fears of severe repercussions from the public and reprisal attacks from jihadists and Islamist militants (The Express Tribune, April 26, 2013). The Red Mosque incident was the boiling point for al-Qaeda and its post-9/11 allied Pakistani jihadists, who quickly declared an open war against the state in revenge for the operation. [25]

The Remaining al-Qaeda and TTP Threat in Pakistan

The sequences of confrontations between Islamists, al-Qaeda, the military establishment, and Benazir from her entry into politics in 1988 until the July 2007 Red Mosque incident and her assassination in December 2007 offer a detailed picture of Pakistani political complexities, which paved the way for post-9/11 pro-al-Qaeda Islamists, including the TTP, to conduct an anti-state jihadist war in Pakistan. The hardliners from the anti-Benazir Islamist groups of the 1990s defected to al-Qaeda and the TTP and played a part in her assassination. Powerful elements of the military establishment who tried to stop Benazir by allegedly supporting Islamist groups who also were considered suspects for their roles in al-Qaeda and the TTPs assassination of Benazir (UN, April 15, 2010; BBC, December 27, 2017).

Although al-Qaedas and the TTPs official narrative of fighting against the Pakistani state began with their criticism of the Red Mosque incident in 2007 and Pakistans support of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, they are now focused on the long-term goals of replacing democracy with Sharia and making Pakistan a totalitarian Sunni state. [26] These were the goals for which their predecessors struggled, including JI, TIP, TNSM, SSP and LeJ. This suggests that the anti-state jihadist war will not end with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as it is deeply rooted in the complexities of Pakistani politics, which still persist into the future.

Notes:

[1] Syed Salim Shahzad, Inside al-Qaeda and Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, (Pluto Press: London, UK, 2011), pp.169

[2] See for details, Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, Inqilab-i-Mehsud, (Mehsuds Revolution) [In Urdu], (Al-Shahab Publishers: Paktika, 2017).

[3] See, for example, Chris Sands and Fazelminallah Qazizai,Night Letters, (Hurst Publishers: London, 2019)

[4] In 2011, during the time of the PPP government, the murder case was reopened by the Supreme Court, which declared it a political murder. ZAB was suspected in a murder case of his political opponent, so when Zia came to power, he probed that case against ZAB and handed down the death penalty to ZAB, even though political opponents of ZAB declared it an unjust decision.

[5] Sands and Qazizai, 2019.

[6] Anne Stenersen, Al-Qaida in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press: United Kingdom, 2017). pp.48

[7] Ibid.

[8] Shahzad, 2011, pp.168-9.

[9] Rabi al-Islami [In Arabic: Islamic Spring], Second Part, As-Sahab Central, 2015. Osama Bin Laden interview with ABC John Miller, ABC News, May 1998. For details on Ramzi Yousef, see, Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen, (Arcade Publishing: New York, 2004).

[10] Mona Kanwal Sheikh, Guardians of God: Inside the Religious Mind of the Pakistani Taliban, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2016), pp.80-82.

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] Ibid

[14] Mehsud, 2017, pp. 522

[18] Ustad Ahmad Farooq, Shaikh Saeed (Mustafa Abu Yazid), Hitteen, Issue 9, pp. 117-138

[19] It is mentioned in the Urdu magazine of al-Qaeda by a close aide of Ahmad Farooq, see for details; Moeenuddin Shami, With Ustad Farooq: Part 17th, Nawai Afghan Jihad [in Urdu], Vol. 13, Issue 4, pp. 65-66.

[20] See for details, the autobiography of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi successor; Zia ur Rehman Farooqi, Phir Wahe Qaid o Qafas (Again the same imprisonment) [In Urdu], (Farooqi Academy: Faisalabad, 1997)

[21] Ibid

[22] Mohammad Amir Rana, Gateway to Terrorism, (New Millennium: London, UK, 2003)

[23] See for details, the autobiography of SSP leader; Azam Tariq, Toot gae zanjeer (The broken chains) [In Urdu], (Ishat-ul-Maarif: Faisalabad, Sep 2004) 6th:Ed.

[24] Mujahid Hussain, Punjabi Taliban: Driving Extremism in Pakistan, (Pentagon Press: New Delhi, India, 2012)

[25] See for details, Shahzad, 2011.

[26] See the detailed essay of the al-Qaeda recruitment and propaganda head in Pakistan, who played a central role in the establishment of the post-9/11 anti-state jihadist war in Pakistan: Ustad Ahmad Farooq,Pakistan mi jihad jari rihna chaheay[Urdu: Jihad should continue in Pakistan], Hitteen Publications, Oct 2016.

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The Jihadists' War in Pakistan after the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Lessons from Al-Qaeda's Assassination of Benazir Bhutto - Jamestown - The...

Troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan have dropped, acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller announced today.

There are now 2,500 U.S. service members in Iraq and 2,500 in Afghanistan. It is the lowest number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan since operations started there in 2001.

The reductions were longtime goals of the Trump administration.

The drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq follows the successful Iraqi military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

"The drawdown of U.S. force levels in Iraq is reflective of the increased capabilities of the Iraqi security forces," Miller said in a written statement. "We have long anticipated that the force level required to support Iraq's fight against ISIS would decrease as Iraq's capability to manage the threat from ISIS improves. Our ability to reduce force levels is evidence of real progress."

The acting secretary stressed the reduction of American force strength does not mean a change in U.S. policy in the country or region. U.S. forces will continue to work with Iraqi security forces and forces from the anti-ISIS coalition to ensure the enduring defeat of the terrorist group.

Iraqi government officials know that ISIS remains a threat, and the presence of U.S. and coalition forces helps build Iraqi forces and deters the reconstitution of the terror network in the country, Miller said.

"We will continue to have a counterterrorism platform in Iraq to support partner forces with air power and intelligence," the acting secretary said. "Most operations in Iraq were already being conducted by our Iraqi partners, enabled by U.S. and Coalition forces. We can continue to provide this support to our Iraqi partners at the reduced U.S. force level."

The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has also reached 2,500. At its high point in 2011, there were 98,000 U.S. troops in the country.

"Today, the United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire," Miller said.

In August last year, there were 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to NATO's Resolute Support Mission. Miller said the force of 2,500 will give commanders "what they need to keep America, our people and our interests safe."

The American forces work alongside NATO allies and partners. There are 38 nations that contribute forces around 10,000 to the Resolute Support Mission.

Al-Qaida used Afghanistan to plan and train for the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Taliban shielded the terror group, and U.S. forces took the fight to the terrorists that threatened the United States.

U.S. forces will continue to execute the counterterrorism mission and the mission to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces, Miller said.

"Continued fulfillment of these two complementary missions seeks to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbor those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America," he said.

The force reduction shows U.S. support for the Afghan peace process that was negotiated with the Taliban.

"Moving forward, while the department continues with planning capable of further reducing U.S. troop levels to zero by May of 2021, any such future drawdowns remain conditions-based," Miller wrote. "All sides must demonstrate their commitment to advancing the peace process. Further, the United States will continue to take any action necessary to ensure protection of our homeland, our citizens and our interests."

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U.S. Completes Troop-Level Drawdown in Afghanistan, Iraq - Department of Defense

When it takes office on January 20, the Biden administration will face an urgent foreign policy choice: whether to abide by the U.S.-Taliban Doha agreement of February 2020 and withdraw the remainder of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 2021. The existence of diplomatic and legal wiggle-room in the agreement based on so-called interconnectedness (i.e. binding linkages) among the four key points of the agreement and the interpretation of compliance are tangential to how the Taliban will react. The decision about the May 2021 deadline will have a profound impact on U.S. policy in Afghanistan and beyond.

The decision comes, of course, amid a range of other crises on the new administrations front burner. But the Afghanistan decision will operate on an extremely tight timeline. A North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting of defense ministers takes place in the middle of February and, understandably, U.S. allies are clamoring to know more about the future of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. If the United States decides to keep forces there beyond May, will it seek to negotiate a time-limited extension with the Taliban, or simply force its continued military deployment on the Taliban? And for how long the length of time it takes to achieve a peace deal that both the Afghan government and the United States like? Or will the United States try to keep an open-ended counterterrorism force in Afghanistan, perhaps even beyond an eventual peace deal?

NATO allies rightly want to avoid a U.S. military exit that fails to simultaneously lift their forces out, leaving them vulnerable without the logistics and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities that the United States alone has brought to the war. Thus, the mid-February timeline is fundamental for NATOs decisionmaking and forces. Unlike some other looming foreign policy challenges, Bidens Afghanistan policy will be subject to intense political spotlight.

The decision revolves around on how the new administration prioritizes U.S. interests in Afghanistan. It also crucially depends on whether the Biden administration assesses U.S. Afghanistan policy in isolation, or considers Afghanistan within larger strategic, geopolitical, and domestic imperatives.

Since 9/11, the principal U.S. objective in Afghanistan has been to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States, its people and assets, or U.S. allies, and also to ensure that Afghanistans territory is not used for exporting terrorism. That remains the correct principal objective.

Another primary U.S. interest is ensuring that instability in Afghanistan does not destabilize Pakistan in a way could jeopardize the safety of Pakistans nuclear weapons or increase the risk of a Pakistan-India nuclear war by empowering anti-Pakistan terrorist groups. Clearly, the biggest sources of Pakistans instability come from within Pakistan itself. The country has made significant progress in recent years in reducing the threat posed by nonstate armed actors to Pakistan, and there have been improvements in the safety of nuclear weapons. But developments in Afghanistan can worsen Pakistans chronic instability.

The United States also has a set of secondary and tertiary interests in Afghanistan. First among them is that Afghanistan has a stable government that is not hostile to the United States. An Afghan government in which the Taliban is a strong, perhaps even the strongest government actor but does not define the United States as a strategic enemy satisfies this criterion.

It is also strongly in the U.S. interest that Afghanistan is not dominated by an outside power that is seeking hegemony there, such as, conceivably, Iran, China, or Russia. Afghanistans relative independence is essential for the U.S. to be able to pursue the full range of its interests in the country and the region. These include important substantive interests pluralistic political and economic processes; rule of law and accountability; and human rights, womens rights, and minority rights as well as humanitarian issues, particularly minimizing the suffering and death due to war, illness, or starvation, and enabling inclusive socio-economic development. These interests matter because they reflect U.S. values, and because Americas interventions in Afghanistan have been on the basis of these values, profoundly shaping the countrys trajectory and political dispensation.

Moreover, the stability of the Afghan government and thus Washingtons ability to maximize its interests increases if political and economic processes in Afghanistan are pluralistic, inclusive, and accountable. Thus, these tertiary interests are both objectives in of themselves and a tool of advancing some of the secondary and primary interests.

Advancing these interests also increases U.S. global legitimacy and the effectiveness of its policy elsewhere. U.S. credibility is at stake in various ways in Afghanistan:

A key hallmark of a great power is to know when to liquidate unwise commitments.

Prioritizing interests does not involve jettisoning non-primary interests. But it does imply setting limits on the resources and tools devoted to lesser-level interests, particularly lengthy military deployments. That does not mean that primary interests should ipso facto be prosecuted through military means, such as military counterterrorism forces. Other tools may be more appropriate, and the choice of available tools can change over time. But it does mean that costly resources, particularly those with high opportunity costs, should be applied selectively and reserved for the most important interests not left tied to tertiary issues, especially if the prospects of securing those tertiary objectives are low and become lower over time.

Beyond providing a framework for resource allocation, prioritizing interests provides a framework for how to trade interests against each other.

In addition to prioritizing interests within Afghanistan, a second prioritization should be adopted: namely, regarding where Afghanistan lies within the scope of U.S. geostrategic and foreign policy objectives and how it affects U.S. domestic issues. This second procedural decision is thus about whether or not to treat Afghanistan as a policy island onto itself.

Treating Afghanistan decisionmaking in isolation artificially inflates its significance and heightens the risk of policy choices being influenced by the tyranny of sunk costs. It also amplifies the weight of commitments and promises and the credibility of outcomes achieved, as well as emotional attachments to achieving those outcomes. It obscures problems of bleeding away resources from other more important geopolitical imperatives, and tying up U.S. valuable and limited assets, such as ISR and U.S. special operation forces, to objectives of lesser strategic significance.

In contrast, placing Afghanistan into a global strategic framework and reviewing Afghanistan policy with a clear eye toward its impact on the most important U.S. strategic priorities avoiding nuclear war and terrorism, managing geopolitical competition with China, countering nefarious moves by China and Russia around the world, preventing pandemics and climate change and mitigating their effects, as well as assuring the physical security of the United States and its citizens from terrorism, crime, and other avoidable deaths (such as those due to COVID-19) very significantly, and appropriately, reduces the otherwise inflated importance of Afghanistan.

Such integrated decisionmaking forces focus on opportunity costs and trade-offs (instead of sunk costs) as well as marginal costs and benefits. It drives incorporating the likelihood of success into all policy choices. In such a decisionmaking framework, the expense of $20-40 billion devoted to maintain 10,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan stops being a small amount in comparison to the Pentagons total budget; instead, it is $40 billion taken away from the annual and currently almost entirely unfunded $20 billion to $60 billion it would take to prevent environmental destruction and associated deadly zoonotic pandemics (more of which will arrive, easily rapidly, unless sufficient resources are committed to addressing their sources). Even a less expensive U.S. military deployment becomes a significant opportunity cost if the likelihood of success is low. In other words, a smaller expenditure of, say, $10 billion a year to maintain a force of 2,500 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan may be financially sustainable, but if the strategy has paltry prospects for success, it can still amount to money misallocated or altogether wasted. Those are resources taken away from other imperatives, such as rebuilding a productive middle class in the United States.

Similarly, the United States needs to focus on how the way it prosecutes its counterterrorism interests in Afghanistan influences its counterterrorism interests elsewhere. This is not merely about precedents and credibility. U.S. deployments of large military forces to Afghanistan, the Middle East, and (on a smaller scale) Africa have created an extremist blowback not just among international jihadist terrorists, but also right-wing armed actors in the United States.

U.S. veterans of these open-ended wars which fail to produce satisfactory victories, even while exposing soldiers to devastating violence have been an important source of recruitment for armed right-wing groups in the United States. These groups, and the domestic political violence they generate, are an immense threat to U.S. democracy and rule of law, having produced more deaths of American citizens in recent years than has foreign terrorism. The various ideologies embraced by right-wing armed groups, such as white supremacy and rejection of the federal government, would exist without the U.S. open-ended wars. But veterans recruited for these causes greatly increase the membership, networks, and multifaceted potency (both the capacity for violence and for building political capital) of these groups.

Reducing the pool of angry veterans as recruits for armed groups in the United States thus ought to be regarded as one of the key benefits of limiting the number, extent, and seemingly endless nature of U.S. military counterterrorism deployments. Meanwhile, there needs to be far better assistance to reintegrate veterans into civilian life. These considerations should be integrated into judgements about how to prosecute counterterrorism objectives abroad, including in Afghanistan.

It is time to prioritize among the interests the United States is pursuing within Afghanistan, and to readjust the priority accorded Afghanistan within the scope of U.S. interests abroad and at home.

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US policy toward Afghanistan: Consider the trade-offs, including with other policy areas - Brookings Institution

Jane Ferguson:

For Biden, he not only inherits America's longest war and one that, of course, he himself one that, of course, was going on while he himself was vice president under Obama; he also inherits now this deal that Trump has signed.

So, he is in a position where everybody in Afghanistan, whether it's the Taliban, or it's the government, or the people stuck in the middle, are all watching Biden, wondering, will he follow through on this deal? Will he try to negotiate for an extension beyond that May 1 deadline to pull every last American troop out?

Or will he honor the deal, in which case he could be throwing the country into potential chaos? And in the meantime, can the two sides that have sat down for talks, but not had very much progress, reach a deal by then? That's even less likely.

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U.S. forces are reduced to lowest level since 2001 - PBS NewsHour

Taipei: China, most likely, has assumed, and assessed, that the sudden US-Taliban peace agreement and the rapid withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan will be an unfriendly move or more like a trap which may jeopardize Chinas security framework in Xinjiang. And that without a professional and comprehensive intelligence network in Afghanistan, China does not have a way to escape the trap.

Ahmad Zia Saraj, the chief of Afghanistans National Directorate Security, confirmed to the Afghan Parliament recently that a Chinese spy ring was arrested for espionage in December 2020. He pointed out that this is a sensitive case and that he could not disclose details about it. More interestingly, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, in a media briefing in January 2021 said that they were unaware of the case, and highlighted that China and Afghanistans relations have always been very friendly, and our cooperation is very friendly in every field and is proceeding normally.

Except for in Pakistan, China does not seem to have a resilient and reliable international intelligence exchange network in West and South Asia. Therefore, to encounter such a harsh situation without a professional intelligence backup, Chinas tactics to gather information involves going to the informal social networks with informants from all sectors, which may be inefficient in intelligence gathering, but could successfully penetrate the grassroots. That is why it is reported that the Chinese spy ring in this Afghanistan case were construction worker, carpenter, medical doctor, bakery and restaurant owners, a total of 13 people.

This amateurish Chinese intelligence network was easily exposed and also revealed Chinas profound anxiety on the clandestine Uyghur militants and settlements in Afghanistan and surrounding areas. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, in November 2020, urged the US to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in an orderly and responsible manner. It seemingly implies that the US withdrawal would leave a mess, making Afghanistan a hotbed for Islamism to flourish once again. What was not uttered was that Beijing probably reckoned that the US might even deliberately devise a milieu where the Uyghur jihadists could survive and offset Chinas possible expansion in Afghanistan.

China prefers to refer to the Uyghur jihadists collectively under the title of East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which intends to establish an independent country violently, and reportedly has initiated numerous murderous riots in Xinjiang since the early 1990s. Their irredentist declaration assuredly irritates the Chinese authority and turns out to be the justification of the latters punitive crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang now.

Sean Roberts, in his recently published book, The War on the Uyghurs: Chinas Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority (2020), argues that soon after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks, in order to seek Chinas support in launching a global war on terrorism, the US and its alliesthe UK, European Union etc.designated the ETIM as a foreign terrorist organization for its alleged association with Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and imposed sanctions on it.

The fact is that the ETIM was never convincingly forceful enough in military terms. One of the founding jihadists of the organization, whom I interviewed in Istanbul in the summer of 2015, explained to me that ETIM was renamed as Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) shortly after the war on terror began in Afghanistan in 2002, for the purpose of mobilizing support and to recruit new blood from Central Asias Turkic ethnic communities. The new name, TIP, was to prevent confusing it with other jihadist organizations, as ETIM was dedicated solely to fight for Uyghur independence in Xinjiang. East Turkistan is parallel to Xinjiang, while Turkestan literally widens its connotation to include Central Asia, and all ranges inhabited by Turkic ethnic groups.

The ETIMs haunt was around the unmanned tribal zones of Northern Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and three of its leaders, Hasan Mahsum, Abdul Haq and Abdul Shakoor al-Turkistani were exterminated or seriously injured by US drone attacks in the war of terror. Additionally, Pakistan began a full-fledged military raid called Operation Zarb-e-Azb from 2014 to flush out comprehensively all foreign and local militants hiding in North Waziristan. It is reported that China assisted in the military operation with another name, i.e. Jingwai Qingyuan, literally meaning clearing up abroad. As a result, the Uyghur militants were forced to emigrate and transfer to Syria where they jointly fought the civil war with the Jabhat Al-Nusra (later renamed as the Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham Front, or Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham), an extension of Al Qaeda in Syria.

It came as a shock when the Trump administration removed the ETIM from the US terrorist list. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that there is no reliable evidence that the organization still existed. In other words, the US implied that Uyghur terrorists no longer existed. Meanwhile, there were reports and leaks from the Uyghur diaspora in Turkey that a bundle of Uyghur militants, who once fought in Syria, had followed Abdul Rashid Dostum (the Afghan Vice President and Marshal, and twice exiled in Turkey in 2008 and 2016) back to his stronghold in northern Afghanistan in 2018.

Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek and a warlord, having his personal fiefdom in north Afghanistan. Dostum embraced the US campaign in Afghanistan, and reportedly tortured and executed thousands of Taliban prisoners in the early days of the US-led war on terror. Dostums territory, commonly known as Afghan Turkestan or South Turkestan, geographically has proximity to Badakhshan and also to the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan where Uyghur militants are active. There are then allegedly two factions of Uyghur militants; one is under the shadow of Dostum, while the others with the Taliban forces are spread over a large area of rural Badakhshan, sharing a 90-kilometre border with Chinas Xinjiang.

From Chinas perspective, its a completely unacceptable development for north and east Afghanistan to be occupied by hundreds of experienced Uyghur militants. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, in a November 2020 news briefing, called upon the US not to backpedal international counter-terrorism cooperation, and expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the US decision. He also requested the US to refrain from whitewashing terrorist organizations, which might imply that US troops withdrawal is a tentative conspiracy, which would allow anti-China Uyghur militants to fill the vacuum and possibly fabricate turbulence on Xinjiangs back door.

Chinas Afghanistan peace plans are twofold. One is to establish the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism, which promotes joint counterterrorism and trade activities between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China. Beijing has also approached the Taliban leadership, with the support of Pakistan since 2019, to lay the groundwork for future collaboration. Beijing apparently underlined the need for not permitting the Uyghur insurgency gaining space in Afghanistan as a precondition for Chinese support for the Taliban resuming a political role in Kabul during the intra-Afghanistan talks.

What we should bear in mind is that the Afghan Taliban, while being in power in the 1990s, was allies with Uyghur militants and provided them with weapons and other equipment. Americas troops withdrawal from Afghanistan, will inevitably create a power vacuum there, which will likely be filled by local and foreign pro-Taliban militant groups. Beijing is aware that there is no certainty that the Taliban will keep their words if they regain a degree of power in Kabul. And Dostum would be another problem, with his own militia that contains Uyghur militants in north Afghanistan. The Uyghurs ability to launch cross-border attacks into Xinjiang is weak at present, but this could change quickly if China cannot settle the matter with and comfort the Taliban, Dostum and all the other political factions.

Encountered with such critical and mutually distrustful circumstances, China trying to construct its own intelligence network in Afghanistan should not come as a surprise. They were perhaps hoping that their Afghan counterparts would help eliminate the threat from the Uyghur militants in Afghanistan. But the failure of the Chinese spy ring in Afghanistan should have taught Beijing a lesson on its limited strengths when it comes to political manoeuvrings in Afghanistan.

Chienyu Shih is the Secretary General of Taiwan Association of Central Asian Studies, and also lectures on Central Asian international relations and Terrorism at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.

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The Uyghur factor: China perceives Afghanistan as a threat - The Sunday Guardian