War on Terror: Causes, Costs, and Consequences
“This crusade — this war on terrorism — is going to take a while” George Bush
Abstract
Though it was the worst intelligence failure of any intelligence agency in history, the USA took maximum advantage of the 9/11 tragedy and embarked on the mission to accomplish the objectives outlined in the infamous neo-con paper, known as the American Century. Calling it a War on Terror, America employed all its -military, diplomatic and financial, to wage a war of terror on several co, countries besides Afghanistan-its starting point.
Whether it was a stellar success as its proponents want us to believe or a dismal failure as its opponents claim, is a debatable point but it has cost the world massively in terms of loss of human lives, financial losses, refugees crises, missed opportunities, and surprisingly, increased global terrorism. What were the causes of the failure of the War on Terror, what costs did it imposed on those on the receiving end, and what are its long-term consequences, are touched on in this article
Background
Starting in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks inside the USA, the War on Terror is a generic name for the global military, political, legal, and conceptual struggle against both terrorist organizations and against the regimes accused of supporting them. It officially finished the day Osama has declared killed on 2nd May 2011 although Barak Obama announced its official termination in 2013 and directed the American security establishment to focus on specific enemies as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.
Aims and Objectives of the War on Terror
According to the official American version, the War on Terror was launched to dismantle the terrorist network of Al Qaida after they carried out a series of terrorist acts against US interests outside the USA and finally on 9/11 inside the USA. As they had crossed the red line, so their elimination was the basic objective to obviate the possibility of such attacks in the future. The Bush administration defined the following objectives in the War on Terror
- Identify, locate, defeat, and demolish terrorists along with their organizations
- Deny sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists
- Strengthen and sustain the international effort to combat terrorism by force or by capacity building of states facing terrorism and diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit
- Enhance measures to ensure the integrity, reliability, and availability of critical, physical, and information-based infrastructures at home and abroad
Views on War on Terror
There are three views on War on Terror namely the American state version, the Opponents’ views, and the skeptics’ reservations. While the official US version has been explained above, the opponents of the War on Terror believe that 9/11 was just a hoax; or it did happen, then, it was an inside job conducted by the CIA and Mossad to establish some casus belli for implementing the Neo-Con agenda explained in their American Century Project to re-assert the American hegemony, etc
On the other hand, skeptics maintain that 9/11 may or may not be an inside job but the military-industrial complex used it brilliantly to advance their agenda of self-aggrandizement outlined in the 1997 document “Project for the New American Century”. Authored by Paul Wolfowitz, it argued that the United States would remain the “unipolar global hegemon” and has been the underlying spirit of every National Defence Strategy and National Security Strategy issued since then. In 2012, General Wesley Clark revealed that the USA had already planned to invade seven countries in five years.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mXsoYrXaMQ)
Dimensions of the War on Terror
The war on terrorism was an open-ended multidimensional campaign with military and diplomatic dimensions working in tandem domestically as well as globally.
- Military Dimension: Its military dimension started with the invasion of Afghanistan but expanded to Iraq and covert operations in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Now, the Costs of War Project identifies no less than 76 countries, 39% of those on the planet, as involved in that global conflict where U.S. drone or other air strikes are the norm andU.S. ground troops have been either directly or indirectly engaged in combat.
- Diplomatic Dimension: In the diplomatic field, it resulted in augmenting old alliances in the Middle East while expanding its military spending, intelligence capabilities, and criminal outreach ordering illegal detention, capturing, and killing of those perceived to be enemies of the USA, expanding cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies, and the tracking and interception of terrorist financing. It also included continuing efforts to construct and maintain a global coalition of partner states and organizations and an extensive
- Domestic Dimension: The domestic dimension of the U.S. war on terrorism entailed new anti-terrorism legislation, new security institutions, the preventive detainment of thousands of suspects; surveillance and intelligence-gathering programs, the strengthening of emergency-response procedures; and increased security measures for airports, borders, and public events
War on Terror; Stellar Success or Dismal Failure?
The answer to the question of whether the global war on terror launched by the USA after 9/11 succeeded in achieving its stated objectives depends upon the perspective one has in mind. To the enthusiasts, it was a stellar success in ensuring the security of the mainland USA by not only dislodging the Taliban government which was accused of harbouring the terrorists, particularly Osama bin Laden but also dismantling Al Qaida and uprooting their safe havens. It resulted in the arrest of hundreds of terrorist suspects around the world, the prevention of further large-scale terrorist attacks on the American mainland, and increased levels of international cooperation in global counter-terrorism efforts. Its final crowning success came when the USA killed its mastermind, Osama bin Laden on 2nd May 2011 in a remotely located house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Of course, the USA has lost around 2500 soldiers and got more than 20,000 wounded in pursuit of this objective notwithstanding the trillions of dollars spent. Yet these losses are worth the aim for which this war was launched. The USA is now safe from any 9/11-style attacks. However, what is the cost borne by the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries for keeping America safe cannot be adequately estimated. Never. Similarly, what will be the consequences, short term as well long term, of this war on terrorism will be only an educated guess.
Forget the collateral damage in the form of great human misery of non-American nations i.e., millions of people killed/wounded or made homeless, property worth trillions of dollars destroyed, and economies of several developing countries ruined. The arrival of hundreds and thousands of refugees in Europe has long-term socioeconomic implications for NATO allies. For a country that has been responsible for causing more than 20 million deaths since the second world war, it is immaterial.
However, to its opponents and critics, all the successes claimed so far in the War on Terror are tactical and not of much significance in a strategic sense. To them, there are no signs of any clear US victory in this War on Terror; rather the USA is seen to be fighting an endless war, creating more terrorists than it has killed so far. To them, the costs incurred in terms of human losses, financial burden, and infrastructural damage outweigh the gains the USA claims in its War on Terror. Similarly, they argue, that the unintended consequences of the War on Terror are far more than the goals intended and achieved. More of these later in the final part of this essay
Causes of American Failure in WOT
There are several reasons for American failure to achieve its stated objectives and ensure long-term global peace
1. American Failure to Comprehend the Nature of War
The USA failed to correctly determine the nature of the war it was going to launch against global terrorism and hence there was ambiguity in formulating the objectives of the war and the attendant strategy to achieve them. It erred in equating a counter-terrorism/insurgency war with fighting a conventional war. They should have learned lessons from their past two dismal failures in Vietnam and Lebanon as well as from the Soviet Union’s Afghan fiasco that fighting against organised state-run forces obeying, at least literally, the rules of the Geneva Convention is opposed to fighting against multiple terrorist organisations, each backed by different hostile states and carrying out acts of terrorism with impunity. The advantages these organisations enjoy in terms of terrain, tactics, logistics, and public support demand different type of strategies to achieve your end goals.
2. Gung-ho Operation
Secondly, although the stated public aims of the War on Terror were to dismantle al-Qaeda, and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power, Operation Enduring Freedom itself was a gung-ho operation, carried out without any proper planning and effective strategy to cope with the situation once the initial objectives were achieved. As such, it was doomed to fail. Once the Taliban had been ousted and al Qaeda had been degraded, America should have tried to establish a broad-based government and left with a strong intelligence presence to keep an eye on the re-emergence of Al Qaida. Rather it started an ambitious project of state-building and even nation-building- objectives that need decades if not centuries. Unfortunately, Americans were still not clear about what they wanted from this war till their ignominious exit from Kabul.
3. Half-hearted Attempts
Thirdly, if the objectives were ambitious then the USA should have allocated much larger resources and should have continued with it till these were achieved. Keeping in view the peculiar conditions of Afghanistan with its diverse ethnic composition, mountainous terrain, inadequate infrastructure, and institutional backwardness, far more troops, and finances were required. Troop levels in Afghanistan never approached that level. Instead, those battle-hardened troops were sent to Iraq in 2003 where another similar gung-ho operation was launched, allowing the Taliban to re-emerge in the vacuum this created.
4. Post-operation Blunders
Fourthly, invading a foreign country like Afghanistan which is sparsely populated, mountainous, and bleak is one thing; maintaining your occupation for long is impossible. After the fall of the Taliban government, the USA installed a government that was overwhelmingly non-Pashtun. Passionate appeals by Pakistan to accommodate the moderate Pashtun Taliban who were on the run and amenable to negotiated peace were not heeded. Banishing all the Pashtuns from every decision-making apparatus of the state machinery, not only created a legitimacy crisis for the new government but also disempowered 60% of the population in one go in the new socio-political setup. Currently, it is the Northern Alliance that is calling the shots in the national government. Three fourth of the Afghan security forces are non-Pashtuns.
5. Inefficient and Corrupt Government
Fifthly, despite massive military and financial aid from the NATO forces, the Afghan government could not deliver in terms of security or delivery of basic services. Rampant corruption has made the situation even worse. According to a 2009 DFID survey, “Most ordinary people associate the [national] government with practices and behaviour they dislike: the inability to provide security, dependence on foreign military, eradication of a basic livelihood crop (poppy), and as having a history of partisanship (the perceived preferential treatment of Northerners).” Read the 2016 report issued by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Relief (SIGAR) showing how mass corruption, bribery, payoffs, and drug money had fatally undermined US efforts to build a viable Afghan society.
6. Public Support for the Taliban
Sixthly, errors of omission and commission on the part of NATO forces in Afghanistan in general and the Afghan government, in particular, have effectively pushed the majority of Pashtuns towards the Taliban who needed the space and sympathy of the people to carry out their mission. Survey after survey has suggested that the majority of Pashtun people are supporting the Taliban not only out of fear but also for being more trustworthy as compared to the present regime. Pashtuns consider the Taliban movement as an indigenous liberation movement without any affiliation with Al Qaida or global Jihad. They consider it as a continuation of their centuries-old war against foreign invasion or occupation-whether British or Soviet or American. The proverbial bravery and tenacity of the Pashtun tribes through their wars of attrition ultimately saps the morale and drains the finances of the occupying power. The same is happening in the USA.
7. Active Support of Russia
After realising that defeat was imminent in Vietnam, Americans started to destabilise Afghanistan to take revenge on the Soviet Union for this humiliation. By 1973, the CIA had recruited more than 5000 fighters from all over the Islamic world and started infiltrating Afghanistan. Americans were ultimately successful and USSR had no option but to come to the aid of its ally in Kabul. The rest is history.
Now it is Russia’s turn to avenge their defeat. That is why Russia welcomed the American attack on Afghanistan, knowing full well what was in store for the Americans in the long run. They had learnt the lesson the hard way it is easy to fall in love or enter a war; bloody difficult, almost impossible to extricate yourself with some modicum of respect left. And that is why they are giving maximum support to the Taliban, particularly in the form of military equipment, and have ensured that the USA remained bogged down in this quagmire as long as possible.
8. Active Support of Iran
Initially, Iran was deadly against the Taliban for the atrocities committed by them against the 20% of the Shia population of Afghanistan and actively supported the USA in their operations. Once the Taliban were cut to size, Iran is now actively supporting these very Taleban for its geopolitical objectives.
9. Active Support of Pakistan
The Taliban have been using Pakistan’s space for multiple purposes-recruiting volunteers, collecting finances, taking refugees, etc. No doubt Pakistan has been vehemently rejecting the allegations that it has been actively supporting the Taliban, rather than using them as its proxy to counter the increasing Indian influence. Pakistan maintains that it has very marginal and mostly moral influence over the Taliban. However, the fact is that official borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Taliban take refuge are a NO man’s Land. No army in the world can succeed against a group that takes refuge in such terrain. The biggest handicap the Pakistan government is facing is the fear of the blow-back of any action in the form of increased terrorist activities inside the country by the Taliban themselves or their supporters who are among millions living in Pakistan
10. American Announcement to Withdraw
Ironically, by announcing its withdrawal from Afghanistan quagmire in 2014, the USA repeated the same mistake that the USSR made in the case of its ally Najibullah in September 1991. Boris Yeltsin, determined to cut back on the country’s international commitments, announced that from 1 January 1992, no more arms, petrol, and food supplies would be delivered to Kabul. This announcement was catastrophic for the morale of Najibullah and his supporters, who had otherwise survived for more than two years and could have gone for much longer.,
Similarly, the above-mentioned announcement by Obama and later on an invitation to the Taliban for negotiations for their possible induction as partners in the government was enough to keep up the morale of the Taliban who might have yielded to Pakistan’s pressure for a negotiated settlement with the Afghan government.
Costs of War on Terror
Any conflict, crisis, or war imposes huge costs on economies, including massive destruction of infrastructure and housing, disruption of trade, transport, and production, not to mention the loss of lives and widespread human suffering. Some of the losses are
1. Human Losses
According to a report by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, about 500,000 people have died violently in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan due to the US “war on terror”. The report says the tally does not include all people who have died indirectly as a result of war, including through a loss of infrastructure or disease, combatants as well as non-combatants including children and women have lost their lives during the 18 years of war on terror in Afghanistan. If we include more than a million wounded, it means approximately 12% of the entire population of Afghanistan is either wounded or has been killed. Some areas of the country have been affected disproportionately by the war; by some estimates, as many as a third of all deaths have occurred in and around Kabul.
2. Financial Losses
According to Collier (2003), civil wars permanently reduce the per capita GDP of a country by about 10 to 15%. When it comes to a specific country in conflict, estimates vary significantly. The same is the case with the countries targeted directly or affected indirectly during or as a result of the War on Terror; estimates will vary according to the parameters used and techniques employed. The 2017 MENA Economic Monitor report puts the estimated cost of the damages to infrastructure in six Syrian cities at $7.2 billion at 2007 prices or $41 billion at current prices. A Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR) and UNDP report estimates the destruction of physical infrastructure at around $67.3 billion. Other estimates point to different numbers. The loss in GDP relative to the “no war” Counterfactual in Afghanistan alone is estimated at $100–200 billion.
3. Human Development Loss
War on terror has resulted in another type of loss which is even more difficult to estimate than the human or financial losses mentioned above namely loss of human development. Millions of children have been unable to attend school; thousands of patients have died of a lack of medical facilities while millions of people are suffering from trauma. Inadequate provision of public services resulted in the spread of formerly rare infectious diseases compounded by poor sanitation, access to hygienic water, deteriorating living conditions, and the non-availability of timely vaccination.
4. Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees
Estimates vary; while Pakistan is accommodating nearly 2 million Afghan refugees, Iran is providing shelter to another one million. No one has an exact figure for internally displaced Afghans. Similar is the case in Syria; according to Al-Jazeera, 10.9 million Syrians, or almost half the population, had been displaced by March 2015. Out of these, nearly 3.8 million had been made refugees in the neighbouring countries namely Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan creating socio-economic cum political problems in these courtiers.
5. Human Rights Violations
In any conflict truth and human rights are the first casualty; the same happened in Syria. According to various human rights organizations and the United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by all the warring parties. Armed forces on both sides of the conflict blocked access to humanitarian convoys, confiscated food, cut off water supplies, and targeted farmers working their fields. Residents of towns and cities under siege invariably faced death by starvation due to fighting between the warring factions preventing food distribution by UNRWA.
ISIS forces have been accused by the UN of using public executions, amputations, and lashings in a campaign to instil fear. Enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have also been a feature since the Syrian uprising began. At least 70 journalists have been killed covering the Syrian war, and more than 80 were kidnapped.
Even the USA has been accused of these human rights abuses; actions that it deemed necessary to fight terrorism have been considered to be immoral, illegal, or both. These included the detention of accused enemy combatants without trial at Guantánamo Bay and several secret prisons outside the United States, the use of torture against these detainees to extract intelligence, and the use of unmanned combat drones to kill suspected enemies in countries far beyond the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
6. Loss of Cultural Heritage
One of the most unfortunate aspects of the Syrian Crises was the wanton destruction of the cultural heritage of Syria-one of the oldest civilizations in the world. According to UNICEF, the war has affected 290 heritage sites, severely damaged 104, and destroyed 24. Five of the six World Heritage Sites in Syria have been damaged. While several culturally important sites got damaged due to the fighting among the warring parties, Palmyra and Kark des Chevaliers were deliberately destroyed by the fighters of the ISIL as a part of enforcing their brand of Islamic Sharia. Illegal digging and museum thefts became common as war-stricken people resorted to looting their treasures and selling them in the lucrative black market.
Consequences of the War on Terror
Besides the human, financial and economic costs and losses inflicted upon the people and the states of the countries targeted during the War on Terror, there are far-reaching geopolitical consequences with long-term ramifications for the global world order. Some of these are
1. Spread of Terrorism
Ironically, a war that was started to end terrorism has resulted in its spawning and growing into a global phenomenon. While the USA became a safe place, Europe and the Middle East are now suffering from the menace of terrorism. Military presence and operations by the NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and its associated collateral damage have increased public resentment and terrorist threats against the West. The war in Afghanistan had effectively scattered the al-Qaeda network, thereby making it even harder to counteract. It also increased anti-Americanism among the world’s Muslims, thereby amplifying the message of militant Islam and uniting disparate groups for a common cause. They allege that the War on Terrorism was a contrived smokescreen for the pursuit of a larger U.S. geopolitical agenda for controlling global oil reserves and countering the strategic challenge to the global hegemony of the West.
2. Decline of the USA as a Super Power
There are several reasons for the loss of American preeminence in global affairs; however, its misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria in the name of the War on Terror will be counted as among the most prominent reasons for this downfall. It inflicted a severe blow to the US economy and its reputation as a responsible global leader. The prestige of the USA as a world power is now at its lowest-Afghanistan proved to be a worst disaster than the Vietnam fiasco, more humiliating than the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. Soviets left Afghanistan as a result of an international agreement and with all pomp and show. God knows better how the American forces will leave it if they leave it at all!
3. Emergence of a Multipolar World
While the War on Terror was gradually seeping the energies of the USA and draining its economy, it was a God-send opportunity for emerging China and a re-surging Russia to change the global balance of power. It pushed several countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc. toward the Russian-Chinese nexus leading to the emergence of a multipolar world. At the same time, it also changed the regional equation in the Middle East. Iran has emerged as a regional power as an unintended consequence of the War on Terror which helped Iran in three ways. Firstly, it broke the back of its worst enemy namely the Sunni extremist Taliban in Afghanistan. Secondly, it eliminated Iran’s sworn enemy and rival for Middle East leadership namely Saddam Hussain, and thirdly, the War increased the price of oil, the main export of Iran which helped it to sell it in black even at higher prices and avoid/ reduce the impact of the sanctions.
4. Increased Sectarian Threats
While the Shia-Sunni rivalry is centuries old, its intensity and internecine warfare have increased tremendously during the War on Terror by design as well as by default. The Syrian crisis started as popular demand for good governance and soon turned into an Anti-Assad movement. As Assad belongs to the country’s minority Alawite religious group, an offshoot of Shia, vested interests converted the whole movement into the Shia-Sunni conflict. Within a short period, it engulfed the entire Islamic world, pitting Shias against Sunnis. In Syria, the majority of the population, and most of the opposition, is Sunni who started targeting Alawites, particularly by the dominantly Sunni rebel fighting groups like al-Nusra Front and the FSA. Finding them in a Catch-22 situation, Alawites had no option but to back Assad to the hilt. It is estimated that a third of 250,000 Alawite men of military age have been killed fighting in the Syrian civil war. This has repeated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim-majority countries
5. Spreading Crime Wave
In any conflict where clear-cut lines cannot be defined between friends and foes, criminal gangs thrive and add fuel to the fire by gun-running, money laundering, committing bank robberies, supplying mercenaries, helping people to settle personal scores on payment, and other such services. The economic downturn caused by the conflict and sanctions also led to lower incomes leading to an increase in poverty-related crimes. The breakdown of law enforcement and the criminal justice system in big cities exacerbated the situation; rates of rapes, sexual assault, and kidnappings increased manyfold when the crises peaked in 2014/15.
In several regions, law and order became acute when even local commanders of non-state militias got engaged in war profiteering through protection rackets, looting, and organized crime. The arrival of the foreign fighters to assist their respective militant outfits was the last straw on the camel’s back. Most of them being irregular mercenaries without any proper military training played havoc as they began stealing civilian properties and engaging in kidnappings. Rebel forces invariably relied on criminal gangs to generate funds for purchasing arms, ammunition, and other supplies
6. Spillover Effects
American War on Terror had some unintended consequences with spillover effects. The Iraqi invasion changed the regime but also hastened the collapse of the state resulting in massive disruption of social services delivery and virtual Balkanisation of the country; racial and sectarian tensions, which had been held in check by Saddam’s repressive regime were unleashed by his removal. Similarly, initially, Syrian crises were confined within the Syrian borders; with the space created by the state collapse in Iraq and Libya, ISIL, a militant organization with a pan-Islamic mission emerged attracting Jihadists from different countries. ISIL fighters took control of large swaths of Syrian, Iraqi, and Libyan territories and created their Islamic Caliphate. Even Lebanon was not spared; fighting between rebels and government forces also spilt over into Lebanon on several occasions resulting in increased sectarian violence. A similar thing happened in Afghanistan, which for several years had seemed to be under control, soon followed a similar trajectory, and by 2006 the U.S. was facing a full-blown insurgency there led by a reconstituted Taliban.
One other spillover effect was the arrival of hundreds and thousands of war refugees in Europe leading to xenophobic sentiments and the rise of the far-right in several European countries. One of the reasons for the overwhelmingly positive response to Brexit in the UK referendum was the fear of Turks migrating to the UK masquerading as Syrian refugees. About 667,000 people sought refuge in Lebanon disturbing the ethnic balance in the total population of Lebanon of 4.8 million. The arrival of a such number of Syrian Sunnis is undermining Hezbollah’s status based on Shia Lebanese. The same is the situation in Jordan where Palestinian refugees have been eclipsed by the Syrian ones. Turkey is now hosting more than three million Syrian refugees surpassing Pakistan in accommodating more refugees.
7. Weapons Proliferation and Arms Race
One of the most unfortunate but inevitable consequences of the War on Terror has been the proliferation of arms and ammunition in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and its neighbouring countries at three levels namely state, non-state, and private. A cursory glance at the amounts allocated to the defence and procurement of sophisticated weapons by these states is staggering. At the same time, several groups of non-state actors, acting as proxies of the global/regional powers in various conflict zones have access to modern arms and ammunition. Unfortunately, a sizable portion of these arms and ammunition have been sold in the black market to the drug mafias and warlords who feel no qualms about using these arms for their criminal activities
Not only conventional arms and ammunition are easily available in the region but Sarin, Mustard agent, and chlorine gas have been used during the conflict. Numerous casualties on account of the use of chemical weapons led to the investigation by the UNO which confirmed the use of Sarin gas on four occasions. All parties blamed one another for the use of these banned items.
8. Return of Footloose Jihadists
According to conservative estimates, more than 25,000 footloose jihadists, foreign fighters not attached to well-known militant outfits like Hamas or Hezbollah, participated in the Syrian crisis to express their solidarity with their respective sectarian cause. Most of them came from Islamic countries but it is estimated that at least 10% were from European countries. Foreign fighters, who survived this ordeal, are returning to their respective home countries with ideas and intentions to replicate the ISIS model collectively or as lone wolves.
The arrival of these highly motivated battle-hardened ex-fighters is creating security crises for the governments. Not all returnees present the same degree of threat; as such, treating all former fighters as high risk may radicalise them further through unwarranted persecution. Some ex-terrorists could become powerful voices against the groups they once joined. The government should thoroughly screen these returnees to identify the more dangerous among them as well as to select credible and trustworthy individuals who could counter their recruitment narratives.
Conclusion
There is no doubt the War on Terrorism succeeded in its stated objectives of dislodging the Taliban regime in Afghanistan accused of harbouring known internal terrorists. Similarly, it initially succeeded in dismantling terrorist networks and forced them to seek refuge in the mountains
However, due to the incompetency of the US in handling the post-Taliban Afghanistan coupled with its zeal to accomplish too much in a brief time with fewer resources and planning, it got itself embroiled in a war that has gone beyond the stated objectives of the War on Terrorism. There are no signs of any clear US victory; rather the USA is seen to be fighting a losing battle in Afghanistan. And it is losing it for the same reasons it lost in Vietnam, lost in Iraq, and is losing in Syria.
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