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Weve tried killing terrorists. Lots and lots of them. As many as 42,000 Taliban and other insurgents have been killed and another 19,000 wounded in fighting since 2001, according to one rough 2016 estimate. The United States has also carried out more than 400 drone strikes in Pakistan, decimating Al Qaedas core leadership. Last year a drone took out the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.

Result: The Talibans numbers in 2005 were estimated at anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 fighters. Within a decade, those numbers had grown to an estimated 60,000 fighters.

Weve tried carrots and sticks with Pakistan. In 2011, Washington gave $3.5 billion in aid to Islamabad. That same year we killed Osama bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad. Then the aid plunged.

Result: Last month, James Mattis withheld another $50 million in aid because the Defense Department could not certify that Pakistan had taken sufficient action against the Haqqani network, though Islamabad claims otherwise. American leverage with Pakistan has declined as Chinese investment in the country has surged, reaching $62 billion this year.

Weve tried diplomacy. Getting the Taliban to the table was one of John Kerrys core ambitions as secretary of state. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, both made clear they were eager to reach an accommodation.

Result: The Taliban launched a rocket attack aimed at Kerry during his visit to the country last year. The groups insistence that all foreign troops withdraw before it enters talks gives away its game, which isnt to share power with the elected government, but to seize power from it.

What about two supposedly untried options: another surge, exceeding what Obama did in troop numbers but not limited by deadlines or restrictive rules of engagement; or, alternatively, a complete withdrawal of our troops?

But thats been tried, too. Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s practiced a bomb-the-stuff-out-of-them approach to warfare, likely including the use of chemical weapons. They devoted a decade to the effort and lost. America effectively abandoned the region, too, as we imagined life in a supposedly post-historical world.

We know what happened next. Between 1990 and 2000, tens of thousands of Afghans as many as a million people, according to one estimate died in three waves of civil war. The Taliban took Kabul in 1996; Osama bin Laden returned that same year. Pakistan and India tested nuclear weapons two years later. Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

President Trump may think hes trying something new with his Afghan policy. He isnt. Obama killed a lot of terrorists. George W. Bush pursued what amounted to a conditions-based approach, without target dates for withdrawal. Both were often stern with Pakistan. Both conducted intensive policy reviews.

Trump may also think hes going to win in Afghanistan. Thats not happening either, not in our lifetimes. Even if we could kill every insurgent tomorrow, they would return, as long as they can draw on the religious fanaticism of the madrasas, the ethnic ambitions of the Pashtun, and the profits of the heroin trade.

A more forthright president might have leveled with the American people. We wont win, at least as most of us imagine winning. But we cant leave, not least because it would create the kind of vacuum in Afghanistan that the Islamic State so swiftly filled, to such devastating local and international effect, in Syria and Iraq.

What can we do? With relatively modest troop increases, we can provide the elected Afghan government with sufficient military support to reverse some of the Talibans recent gains and ensure that it cannot seize Afghan cities or control entire provinces. With relatively modest troop numbers, we can also try to keep U.S. casualties relatively low over time, avoiding the political race to the exits when combat fatalities rise.

Bottom line: We need an approach thats Afghan-sufficient, from a military point of view, and America-sustainable, from a political one, for the sake of an open-ended commitment to an ill-starred country from which there is no way out.

Trump, incredibly, may have alighted on the best of a bad set of Afghan options.

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On Afghanistan, There's No Way Out - New York Times

Trump had signed off on plans to send about 4,000 more troops and asked allies to do the same. Photograph: David Furst/AFP/Getty Images

Just days after the United States said it would increase troop numbers in Afghanistan and ask its allies to do the same, New Zealand has announced an extra three non-combat military personnel, boosting its military commitment to 13.

Donald Trump on Monday unveiled his strategy to end the conflict in Afghanistan, committing the United States to an open-ended conflict and signalling he would dispatch more troops to Americas longest war.

US officials have said the president signed off on plans to send about 4,000 more troops to add to the roughly 8,400 now deployed in Afghanistan. The US defence secretary, James Mattis, has since said that exact troop numbers are yet to be decided.

Trump said he would ask coalition allies to support his new strategy, with additional troops and funding, to end the 16-year conflict.

New Zealand defence minister Mark Mitchells announcement boosting the countrys Kabul-based troops to 13 follows a request for Nato to send more troops to Afghanistan earlier this year.

New Zealand has had troops in Afghanistan since 2001. Its presence has been decreasing since 2013 but it has kept some personnel on the ground to train local officers.

New Zealand will continue to stand alongside our partners in supporting stability in Afghanistan and countering the threat of international terrorism, said Mitchell.

The New Zealand prime minister, Bill English, said the government had ruled out making a decision on sending combat troops to Afghanistan before New Zealands election on 23 September.

The opposition leader, Jacinda Ardern, told local media this week she would not back sending troops to Afghanistan at the moment but was not privy to intelligence such decisions were based on.

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Afghanistan: New Zealand boosts army commitment, by three - The Guardian

KABUL The two top U.S. diplomatic and military officials here sought Thursday to allay confusion and concern among Afghans about President Trumpsstrategy for Afghanistan, stressing American support for possible peace talks with Taliban insurgents alongside a new, open-ended military commitment.

Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and the senior U.S. Embassy official, special charge daffaires Hugo Llorens, spoke at a joint news conference about the importance of reaching a settlement with the Taliban in an attempt to end the nearly 16-year war.

In an address Monday, Trump focused on winning the war and depicted an accord as a remote possibility.Both U.S. officials were careful to avoid contradicting the president, framing their comments as additional details and reinforcement of his message.

We are determined to pursue the goal of a political settlement. As these terrorist groups realize that they cannot win, they will see that their best option is to pursue peace, Nicholson said. He invited the Taliban to lay down your arms and join Afghan society. Help build a better future for this country and your own children.

Although Afghan officials embraced Trumps message, many Afghan commentatorsexpressed concern this week that it focused too narrowly on fighting the Taliban and terrorists. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai called it a formula based on killing, killing, killing.

[In Afghanistan, Trumps speech brings relief to some. To others, it means more war, destruction.]

Afghans also voiced worries about Trumps declaration that the U.S. government would no longer pursue nation building in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The United States has invested billions of dollars since 2001 in efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, yet the country is still struggling with political divisions and a moribund economy.

Nicholson and Llorens following similar reassurances made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington after Trumps speech emphasized that the new policy would be much more than a battle plan. Llorens said it would integrate all the instruments of American power, including diplomacy and economic support.

But Nicholson also emphasized the U.S. military commitment to the war effort, vowing to pursue and annihilate Islamic State forces in Afghanistan and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for international terrorists.

Like Trump, the general declined to say how many additional U.S. troops would be sent. But he rejected criticism that the new military strategy would echo previous U.S. policies that did not make significant headway, even with more than 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan at one time.

[Thousands more troops are probably headed to Afghanistan. Heres what theyll do.]

One difference Nicholson cited was the current Afghan government, which he called a trusted partner that seeks to reform and professionalize the security forces. He also praised the Afghan special operations forces, which will be doubled in size and trained by U.S. and NATO advisers.

These brave soldiers have never lost a battle, Nicholson said. With the additional support we will provide them, they will become larger and more lethal.

Nicholson expressed concern about the high level of Afghan war casualties, saying, The United States deeply appreciates and respects the sacrifice and strength of the Afghan people. Rising casualty rates have become a source of growing concern here, with more than 11,000 Afghan civilians killed or injured last year.

Nicholson also touted the shift from an American strategy of support based on arbitrary timelines to one guided by conditions on the ground.You can believe it will be different, because we removed the calendar from the equation, he said.

Read more:

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A 'win' in Afghanistan includes peace talks with the Taliban, say U.S. ... - Washington Post

To the editor: As we evaluate President Trumps new policy on the Afghanistan war, we should be mindful of the first law of holes: If you find yourself in one, stop digging. (There is no winning military strategy in Afghanistan, Opinion, Aug. 23)

The president might learn something from another leader who got mired in the graveyard of empires. At a 1986 Politburo meeting, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev looked in the mirror and said it is time to go:

We have been fighting in Afghanistan for already six years. If the approach is not changed, we will continue to fight for another 20-30 years. What, are we going to fight endlessly, as a testimony that our troops are not able to deal with the situation? We need to finish this process as soon as possible.

The result: Moscow got out of its hole and never looked back.

We should leave it to the neighboring countries that have a stake in cauterizing the malignant Islamic State and other terrorist cancers that would emerge in a collapsed Afghanistan and threaten their security to fashion a regional containment policy. The U.S. from offshore could provide air power and special forces to knock out terrorist cells as they emerge.

Doing anything more risks staying in the hole weve been in for 16 years. It is time to stop digging.

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Please fill in your full name, mailing address, city of residence, phone number and e-mail address below. Submissions that do not include this information cannot be published. This information is seen only by the letters editors and is not used for any commercial purpose. We generally do not publish...

Bennett Ramberg, Los Angeles

The writer served as a policy analyst in the State Departments Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the George H.W. Bush administration.

..

In the 1980s, Islamic fighters were battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. The U.S. supported those fighters, as it was happy to see the Soviet Unions resources drained by an endless war.

Now, after 16 years of fighting the Taliban and others and supporting a corrupt government, we find ourselves draining our resources in an endless war. The victory we seek continues to grow less ambitious and decisive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin must be smiling.

Doris Isolini Nelson, Los Angeles

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

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What the Soviets learned fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan ... - Los Angeles Times

The Peace-Building Paradox

There is a seemingly unresolvable contradiction at the heart of any Afghanistan strategy.

Two conditions are necessary for any agenda: ending the fighting and rebuilding the state, if only incrementally. Peace and governance would reinforce one another, creating space for other goals like rooting out terrorists or halting the exodus of refugees.

But scholars increasingly believe that when a state has failed as utterly as Afghanistans, improving either one can end up setting back the other.

Ken Menkhaus, a Davidson College political scientist, documented this dynamic in his study of Somalia, a case that experts often compare to Afghanistan.

Somalis had adapted to their countrys disintegration, he found, by setting up local, informal institutions of their own often under what might be called warlords. These systems were rife with corruption and injustice, but they produced something like relative peace.

But the more these groups grew, the greater the threat they posed to the central government, whose absence they thrived in. Rebuilding the Somali state became what Professor Menkhaus called a conflict-producing exercise.

Dipali Mukhopadhyay, a Columbia University political scientist, said the United States had tried to work both sides of this equation, apparently never realizing that theres actually a conflict between those two missions.

The United States at times aided state building, reasoning that Afghan institutions could impose a more sustainable peace, although more slowly.

But this put the state at odds with local warlords and armed groups who had risen in its absence. Often, this increased conflict and deepened insecurity.

Other times, the United States aided peace building, working through local warlords who could fight the Taliban and impose order, even if just one village at a time.

In the short term, it worked. But in the long term, a 2016 report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found, this strategy undermined the government, alienated Afghans and further pushed Afghanistan into a collection of fiefs run by strongmen whose interests cut against American aims.

Even the Afghan government has worked through local militias and warlords whose existence undermines its authority. With no other options, Professor Mukhopadhyay said, thats kind of the way the game is played.

Afghanistan is trapped in another paradox. Its location puts it at the mercy of several foreign powers, all of whom would benefit from seeing Afghanistan stabilize but also stand to lose out if another country dominates.

As a result, virtually any viable peace deal is unacceptable to at least one of those players.

Afghanistans patrons include some of the worlds tensest geopolitical rivals: Russia and the United States, Pakistan and India, as well as Iran. Each has its favored proxy.

Though none are happy with the status quo, they cannot find a peace deal in which all five come out ahead but none so far ahead as to disadvantage a rival.

The Pakistani generals who lamented the wars pull on their country, for instance, feared that Indian dominance of Afghanistan would be worse, so they undermined any tribes thought to be aligned with their adversary.

Such distasteful choices have locked American domestic politics in favor of a war that few see as winnable and a strategy that is widely seen as failed.

A deal with the Taliban or unilateral withdrawal, the likeliest alternatives, would require humiliating capitulations or watching idly as the country collapsed further. Either would bring little upside but would guarantee political disaster for the leader who oversaw it.

Partisan politics plays a role. Democrats championed Afghanistan to shield themselves from criticism over opposing the war in Iraq. Voters, who tend to take cues on foreign policy from trusted politicians, read this bipartisan consensus as proof of the wars necessity.

The burdens are carried mostly by young volunteers, shielding most Americans from the consequences of maintaining a fight that, after years of disappointment, they would rather ignore.

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Why Afghanistan's War Defies Solutions - New York Times