The West is getting Afghanistan wrong – again

Here are four misconceptions about the Afghan crisis that Western politicians and pundits continue to spread.

The dust has settled on a chaotic United States withdrawal from Afghanistan. It began with faulty predictions of the Afghan government’s longevity (at least 18 months, we were told in April), continued under the protective wing of its adversaries, and concluded with a drone strike which killed some of the Afghans, several of them children, whom the US was so keen to evacuate. Longtime observers of the US and NATO war, with its frequent unmet timelines and repeated insistence that change was just around the corner, should not be surprised. Despite amassing a wealth of data on Afghanistan and making profitable careers for an army of analysts, contractors and assorted “experts”, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to paraphrase Sun Tzu, failed to understand either its enemy or the nature of its own intervention. This article attempts to address several of the most salient misconceptions, past and present, while reflecting on what might be expected of the new Taliban-led dispensation.