Afghanistan: It Seems to be Getting Better

The Wall Street Journal had a lengthy article in Monday’s paper¹ about the success Afghan and U.S. forces are having in and around Achin, southeast of Kabul, near the border with Pakistan.  ISIS (aka Islamic State²) fighters moved into Afghanistan, and especially this area, in 2014, as ISIS was expanding in Syria and Iraq – and as the U.S. was leaving Afghanistan, per President Obama’s timetable.

In the last year, however, the U.S. has moved away from President Obama’s idea of fixing a timetable for departure.  Instead of leaving based on the calendar, we will be leaving based on results.

The Journal said that “[t]he Obama administration had hoped the threat of withdrawal would force the Afghan government to address corruption and military weaknesses.”  A cynic could say that President Obama was also setting deadlines to keep his base, and himself, happy.  And to be able to say that he “ended” the war in Afghanistan, like he said he ended the war in Iraq, too.^3,4

Obviously, the fixed timetables didn’t work.  Even President Obama had to change them.  Now, because things got worse, we have sent more people back to Afghanistan.  We’re also doing more than we did at the end of the Obama administration, and our efforts seem to be working.  That is good, but one still sort of wonders how much better off we could be if we hadn’t tried, in the prior administration, to get out based on the calendar instead of what was actually happening on the ground.
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¹ Sadly, subscription required, as almost always with The Wall Street Journal.  I normally do not mention it.  With the Journal, you just have to assume it.
² Now that the Obama administration is gone, we don’t hear any reference by anybody to “ISIL”.  Sometime I would like to hear what that was all about; what the theory was for using the ISIL acronym even though nobody else used it.
³ Also, based on stories on the “surge” President Obama authorized in Afghanistan in 2009, it is unclear how much he trusted the U.S. military, let alone the Afghans.  See, inter alia, Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents (2013), pp. 316-18, 349-352.  
⁴ In spite of his hopes, President Obama had to stop the withdrawal from Afghanistan (and the Trump administration has had to send troops back to Afghanistan), and he had to send troops back to Iraq when ISIS.  The Obama administration often said that it was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 because of an agreement that the George W. Bush administration entered into.  I think it has been pretty clearly shown that President Obama did not try very hard to get Iraq to change that agreement.  See here and here.