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Dr Terence Mcsweeney, Solent University and the London School of Economics and Political Science - Written Evidence (AFG0002)

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Dr Terence Mcsweeney, Solent University and the London School of Economics and Political Science - Written Evidence (AFG0002) Dr Terence McSweeney, Solent University and the London School of Economics and Political Science - Written Evidence (AFG0002) 24th September 2020 Summary “Donald Trump, Joe Biden and the Peace Talks in Afghanistan” Introduction This short written testimony will address question number three of the committee’s call for evidence: “What might US policy to Afghanistan look like under each of the US presidential candidates? What will be the likely direction of the Trump Administration’s policy to Afghanistan up until the election?” with some insights into the similarities between the Donald Trump administration’s (2017-) Afghanistan foreign policy and statements made by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden through the 2020 campaign and during his tenure as vice president of the United States during Barack Obama’s two term presidency (2009-2017). On Tuesday 3rd November 2020 the American public will decide who serves as president for the next four years and the winner will be faced with confronting the complexities of the situation in Afghanistan and a war which ended for the UK in 2014 but continues for the United States, to the consternation of many. My specialism lies in the study of conflict, human rights and issues of representation in global media cultures. As an academic, researcher and creative practitioner my work has taken me all over the world. I am currently a Senior Lecturer at Solent University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, but I have held research posts at Oxford University, UCL and the University of Southern Denmark. My research is taught in universities across the globe and regularly cited inside and outside of the realms of higher education. I am a member of the Human Rights Centre, Essex University, founder of the Research group “War, Conflict and Human Rights in Contemporary Global Cinema” and my recent research at LSE has revolved around the Trump administration. I welcome the opportunity to play some small role in the Committee’s inquiry with this written evidence. President Trump and Afghanistan American Foreign policy experts, historians and Trump scholars remain divided about the Trump administration’s foreign policy goals even as we reach the end of his first term in office. On the one hand Jon Herbert, Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Roe in The Ordinary Presidency of Donald J. Trump have asserted that “In not achieving much of consequence, Trump falls within the parameters of presidential ordinariness.” 1 However, in stark contrast to this assessment, Robert Jervis is one of many who have argued the opposite, stating that Trump has “espoused foreign policy views that are radically different from those of any of his predecessors.” 2 These writers are able to point to a range of policies and initiatives in the last four years, finding in them substantial evidence to support their own very separate arguments. By the time of the 2020 American presidential election the war in Afghanistan will have lasted for nineteen years having begun on the 7th October 2001 during the presidency of George W. Bush. The most recent casualty figures for western coalition soldiers at the time of writing place them at 3,562 but the numbers of civilians killed increases week after week and was estimated to be around 50,000 according to a 2019 report conducted by the Watson Institute.3 This is without mentioning the hundreds of thousands injured and displaced by the conflict which has now lasted for a generation. 2020 has been a significant year in the evolution of the war on Afghanistan for a number of reasons, but primarily due to the resumption of negotiations between those representing the US, Afghanistan and the Taliban. On February 20 president Trump remarked, “We think they [the Taliban] want to make a deal. We want to make a deal. I think it’s going to work out. We’ll see.”4 The president was correct to offer a note of caution given the unstable relations between the three sides, however despite this little more than a week later on February 29 2020 Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, 1 Jon Herbert, Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Roe, The Ordinary Presidency of Donald J. Trump, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. p. 5. 2 Robert Jervis, Francis J. Gavin, Joshua Rovner, and Diane N. Labrosse, Chaos in the Liberal Order. The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. p. 3. 3 Neta C. Crawford, Suzanne Fiederlein, SaraJane Rzegocki, ‘Afghan Civilians’, Watson Institute, International & Public Affairs, Brown University (January 2020): https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan [accessed 21 August 2020] 4 Associated Press in Washington, ‘Afghanistan: Trump ready to sign peace deal with Taliban if truce holds’, The Guardian (23 February 2020): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/23/trump-taliban-truce-peace-deal- afghanistan [accessed 22 August 2020] signed a conditional peace agreement with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban. The agreement itself stipulated that there would be a troop withdrawal by the United States and that the Taliban would refrain from further hostilities during the negotiation and withdrawal. While there is reason to believe this is a positive development, several factors have made the peace a highly precarious one A) The talks did not directly demand a cease fire and as a result military actions have continued on both sides. Two attacks took place very soon after: one in Kabul which saw thirty two civilians killed by two ISIL gunmen and another in the Zabul Province which took the lives of twenty-four members of the Afghan security forces. B) COVID-19 has seriously impacted upon Afghanistan from economic, political and social perspectives. Henry Kerali, World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan, wrote, “The COVID-19 crisis is having a devastating impact on the livelihoods of Afghans while undermining the government’s revenue collection and its capacity to finance comprehensive programs to save lives, protect the poor, and jumpstart the economy.”5 This has made underlying tensions within he country worse and resulted in the delay of troop withdrawals as the US military followed quarantine procedures. C) The contested 2019 presidential election, which was won by Ashraf Ghani, was disputed and originally rejected by runner-up Abdullah Abdullah who threatened to set up a rival government. This unstable situation was ultimately resolved after the two men signed a power sharing agreement that stipulated Ghani would be president and Abdullah would take a leading role in upcoming Taliban peace talks, however tensions between the two remain. President Biden and Afghanistan Were the Trump administration to be replaced by a Biden administration, based on comments previously made the newly elected 46th president of the United States would be very likely to continue the withdrawal American troops from Afghanistan as he has been outspoken about his desire to do so, not just during the 2020 presidential campaign, but throughout his tenure as vice- president of the Obama presidency. In 2019 the so-called “Afghanistan Papers”, which the Washington Post gained access to after three years in court, revealed that “Biden really loudly 5 Press Release, ‘Hit Hard by COVID-19, Afghanistan Needs Continued International Support’, The World Bank (15 July 2020): https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2020/07/15/hit-hard-by-covid-19-afghanistan-needs-continued-international- support (accessed 18 August 2020) opposed, visibly opposed in the review, the surge [2009-2011].” 6 This is not to say that Biden was entirely against American intervention in Afghanistan, but rather he preferred “a lighter footprint and far more reliance on special operations forces, advanced surveillance and targeting technologies — particularly increasingly sophisticated drones — to root out terrorist networks that continued to threaten US interests.” 7 More recently in July 2020 when asked what responsibility the United States had for the future of Afghanistan he rather bluntly answered “Zero responsibility. The responsibility I have is to protect America’s national interest and not put our women and men in harm's way… that’s what I’d do as president.’’8 This was not the first time Biden had been judged too direct for in the opinion of representatives of Afghan government as in February 2020 he had remarked “There’s no possibility to unite that country, no possibility at all of making it a whole country”9 in comments that were called “irresponsible” by Hamid Karzai, former president of Afghanistan (2004-2014). Conclusion Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have expressed a firm commitment to removing American troops from Afghanistan. However, this should certainly not be confused with withdrawing from the country entirely. Even if the peace talks result in a nominal permanent conclusion to the conflict, bringing to an end America’s longest ever war, the United States will continue to play a significant role in the region in a range of ways both economically and militarily. American special forces will continue to conduct missions on the ground and American drones will continue to fly through Afghan airspace for a long time to come no matter who is president of the United States as we move into the third decade of the new millennium. 6 Peter Spiegel, ‘”Afghanistan Papers” shed light on Biden’s role in America’s longest war’,
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