New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. US$33.00, cloth. ISBN 9780197694725.
For general readers, students at all levels, policy professionals, and policy makers, this book is a concise, comprehensive, and accessible study. The authors focus thematically on “some key matters that impacted on the capacities and performance of the state, and on the attitudes of the public to the way in which power was exercised” (14) during the rule of the Afghan Republic that existed from December 22, 2001 to August 15, 2021. William Maley is a long and close observer of Afghanistan politics, with endnotes citing 24 of his previous single and co-authored books, edited volumes, journal articles, edited book chapters, and other publications. Ahmad Shuja Jamal served as a senior administrator in the Republic, including at the end as a key aide to the national security advisor.
The volume briefly summarizes the pre-2001 political history of Afghanistan, then in nine chapters, including introduction and conclusion, details every nuance of the domestic and international dynamics that challenged the Afghan Republic. The authors maintain a steady analytic commentary that compares Western political theory and modelling of state-building with the efforts, achievements, and limitations of the foreign and domestic actors involved in Afghan Republican state-building. The authors argue that despite Afghan state divisions and performance limitations, no serious American budget or casualty issues precluded a continued presence in Afghanistan, and that US presidential choices to fully withdraw in 2021 betrayed “the most pro-western regime in West Asia” (197).
After the introductory chapter, the next four chapters detail problems that led to the “decline” in the system installed after the UN-sponsored Bonn Conference of November 27-December 5, 2001. Chapter 2, “The Problem of Political Legitimacy,” discusses issues related to government institutional design, security and legitimacy, corruption, impunity, the abuse of power, flawed presidential elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019, and the weaknesses of the Republic’s elected lower house, the Wolesi Jirga. The authors summarize Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s “neopatrimonial system” of domestic politics and personal limitations but go lightly on the American role in assuring his ascendance at the Bonn Conference, the choice of a presidential system, and the structure of a highly centralized state-governance structure. The next president, Ashraf Ghani, a technocratic centralizer of decision-making, alienated Karzai’s patronage networks without establishing alternative political alliances.
Chapter 3, “Pathologies of Aid and Development,” discusses the forms and significance of aid, security sector assistance, provincial reconstruction teams, state funding, “off-budget” funding, management issues, and the complex effects of aid that suffered from donor fragmentation, capacity issues, waste, and Taliban extortion. The authors discuss the “sovereignty gap” and “dependency curse” (47). Foreign funders emphasizing security expenditures and direct funding of development projects limited the Afghan state’s abilities to manage and prioritize. Chapter 4, “Problems of Insurgency,” details the character and objectives of the Taliban, the ultimately decisive role of Pakistan as a source of instability and Taliban sanctuary, Taliban resources, the Afghan security forces, the dominant role of the US defence department and military, and civilian casualties and drone strikes.
Chapter 5, “Political Leadership,” analyzes the leadership and personality qualities of Karzai and Ghani as they rose to or failed to meet the skills and requirements needed for Afghan leadership. The roles of American political agents, such as Zalmay Khalilzad and other ambassadors, are described enough to suggest the major constraints placed on any Afghan leader’s autonomy of action or policy independence. As American disengagement accelerated under Presidents Trump and Biden, the “fall” of the Republic is portrayed in chapter 6, “Diplomatic Disaster,” chapter 7, “Cascade Effects and the Unravelling of Military Power,” and chapter 8, “The Final Days of Kabul.” The authors closely study events of the last eighteen months of the Republic, from the February 29, 2020 signing of the Doha agreement with the Taliban to the August 15, 2021 fall of Kabul to Taliban forces.
In their final chapters the authors trace the American recognition that there could be no US-imposed military solution to the war. At first, during the Obama administration some efforts were made to initiate peace talks with the Taliban that included Afghan government participation. Notions of Republic reconciliation with the Taliban and integration of the Taliban into Afghan society were as ephemeral as American requirements that the Taliban renounce violence, honour the Afghan constitution, and maintain rights for women and minorities. In the end, the Taliban did not negotiate away what they had not given up on the battlefield. Khalilzad did so for the Trump administration at the Doha meetings held without Afghan Republic negotiators. Sworn in as president in January 2021, Biden chose to fully withdraw American military support, including the support of contractors and air power. With Ahmad Shuja Jamal closely involved in the final weeks of the disintegration of the Republic, the book concludes by documenting the final collapse of the Kabul regime and the truth that there is no elegant way to lose a war.
After years of scholarly and personal investment in the fate of the Afghan Republic, Maley and Jamal end their study with an afterword, a scholarly and Afghan-related discussion of betrayal. Focused on the fall of the Republic, the authors do not step back and engage with political theory, or American history, to examine the imperatives of a great power. Political elites and diplomatic and military institutions do finally move on from foreign interactions that have failed due to expedient policies, often poorly executed, and themselves a result of the mistake of overreach.
Robert Nichols
Stockton University, Galloway