Afghanistan is in serious trouble. An initial victory over the Taliban in 2001 was squandered, as the Bush administration drastically underestimated the commitment that would be needed to stabilize the country and lost al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora.  While the Administration turned its attention to Iraq, al Qaeda and the Taliban reconstituted, leading to the formation of a vicious insurgency that now poses a grave threat to Afghan civilians and coalition efforts in the region. Violence in Afghanistan has increased every year since 2003. This has led the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies to conclude that the country is in a “downward spiral.”  The region remains home to al Qaeda and other terrorists, whose safe-haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border constitutes the greatest threat to the American homeland, according to two National Intelligence Estimates.  In Pakistan, the Bush administration exercised the same neglect by blindly outsourcing counter-terrorism efforts to an ineffectual autocrat.  Fixated on Iraq, the Bush administration never developed the comprehensive strategy necessary for reducing the extremist threat in northwest Pakistan, or addressing Afghanistan’s debilitating opium trade or its host of development and reconstruction challenges. In the region that served as the staging ground for the worst attacks on the U.S. homeland, the Bush administration has left a legacy marked by incompetence and neglect.  

Under the Bush Administration, the Situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan Has Grown Dire

Casualties in Afghanistan have risen dramatically during Bush’s final years in office. NATO-ISAF casualties have risen 21%, to more than 280 deaths, up from a record 232 casualties in 2007, and civilian casualties have risen 39% to 1,445 in the first eight months of 2008, from 1,040 in that same period in 2007. [iCasualties.org, 12/16/08. UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 9/16/08]

Violence in Afghanistan has worsened every year since 2003. Coalition casualties have risen every year in Afghanistan since 2003. “Beginning in 2003, the United States began transferring intelligence assets, Special Forces, and equipment to Iraq; and the insurgency in Afghanistan began to rebuild, steadily increasing in strength every year.” [iCasualties.org. Center for American Progress, November 2007]

The Taliban, allowed to reconstitute by the Bush administration, has now intensified its insurgency.  Insurgent attacks have risen across the board in Afghanistan, including by 40% along the eastern border with Pakistan.  According to estimates by the International Council on Security and Development, the Taliban now has a presence in 72% of Afghanistan. [LA Times, 6/25/08. ICOS, 12/08/08]

New National Intelligence Estimate finds country in a “downward spiral.” A draft National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan found that the country is in a “downward spiral.” A range of factors have contributed to the deteriorating situation, but the NIE’s “conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration.” [NY Times, 10/9/08. Washington Post, 10/9/08]

The Afghanistan-Pakistan Region Has Become A Terrorist Safe Haven

“I would ask the skeptics to look at Afghanistan, where not only this country rout the Taliban, which was one of the most barbaric regimes in the history of mankind, but thanks to our strength and our compassion, many young girls now go to school for the first time.” – President George W. Bush, December 4, 2002

Bush administration has neglected the region identified by 16 intelligence agencies as the “greatest threat” to the U.S. homeland.  Both the 2006 and the 2007 NIE’s concluded that terrorists operating the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan region posed “the greatest threat to the Homeland and U.S. interests abroad.” [NIE, 4/06. NIE, 7/07]

Administration did little to address the growing terrorist safe-haven along Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  Intelligence analyst Ted Gistaro reported that Pakistan’s tribal zone has become a “stronger, more comfortable safe haven” for al Qaeda than it was a year ago. Moreover, “there is also a growing recognition among senior officials that the Bush administration for years did not take the Qaeda threat in Pakistan seriously enough.” [NY Times, 8/13/08]

The Bush administration’s failure to commit ground troops in Tora Bora enabled bin Laden to escape and develop a terrorist enclave in Pakistan. “The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora... and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against Al Qaeda... In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing Al Qaeda fighters. [Tommy] Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel.” Barnett Rubin observes that “in the 2001 Afghan war, the U.S.-led coalition merely pushed the core leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan, with no strategy for consolidating this apparent tactical advance.” [Washington Post, 4/17/02. Foreign Affairs, 1/07]

Afghanistan Has Long Been Neglected By The Bush Administration

From the beginning, the Administration underestimated the required force levels necessary to secure Afghanistan. “The problems began in early 2002... when the United States and its allies failed to take advantage of a sweeping desire among Afghans for help from foreign countries. The Defense Department initially opposed a request by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and Afghanistan's new leaders for a sizable peacekeeping force and deployed only 8,000 American troops, but purely in a combat role, officials said.” [NY Times, 9/06/06]

The Bush administration’s failure to commit ground troops in Tora Bora enabled bin Laden to escape and develop a terrorist enclave in Pakistan. "The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora... and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al-Qaeda.” [Washington Post, 4/17/02]

Iraq has consistently diverted attention from the greatest danger in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While the war in Iraq has received $608 billion over the past five years, Afghanistan has received just $140 billion over the past seven. On average Iraq receives over $120 billion per year, while Afghanistan receives just $20 billion. [NY Times, 6/30/08. CRS, 2/08/08]

Iraq distracted the U.S. and siphoned off resources from rebuilding Afghanistan. While Iraq has received a total of $34.2 billion in reconstruction funding over five years, Afghanistan by comparison has received just $11.5 billion over the more than seven years that U.S. forces have been on the ground and just $1.1 billion for 2008. [CRS, 02/08]

Bush Administration Outsourced Its Pakistan Policy

For years, the Bush administration had a Musharraf policy, not a Pakistan policy.  The Bush administration’s policy toward Pakistan has been “built around one person – and that is Musharraf,” said Teresita C. Schaffer, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. [NY Times, 10/20/07]

The extremist threat has grown worse under President Musharraf, while US acts as his “ATM machine.”  Since the attacks on 9/11, the U.S. has given more than $10 billion in assistance to help President Musharraf wage Pakistan’s campaign against terrorism. However, according to Pakistan expert Steven P. Cohen, the U.S. has “wasted several billions of dollars, becoming Musharraf’s ATM machine, allowing him to build up a military establishment that was irrelevant to his (and our) real security threat.” [NSN, 7/24/08. GAO, 4/17/08. NY Times, 8/18/08. Brookings Institution, 11/05/07]

The Bush administration lacked Pakistan experts. The Washington Post reported that there has been a “dramatic drop-off in US expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in US history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State's policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney's office.” [Washington Post, 6/17/07]

No Comprehensive Strategy for Stabilizing the Region Was Ever Developed

The Bush administration never had a plan to address the region posing the greatest threat to the U.S.  A GAO report titled The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas found that, “The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan…” and that, “No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed.” [GAO, 4/08]

Afghanistan’s opium trade undercut all efforts to introduce stability, but has never been addressed by the Administration.  Afghanistan produces roughly 90% of the world’s opium, a trade that funnels millions into the coffers of insurgents.  In spite of this serious threat, the U.S. response has been ineffective and has alienated Afghanistan’s people. [NSN, 5/13/08]

Though we face greater challenges in Afghanistan than we did in any of the US engagements of the 1990s, reconstruction funding is shamefully absent. “According to one Afghan expert, ‘Aid per capita to Afghans in the first two years after the fall of the Taliban was around a tenth of that given to Bosnians following the end of the Balkan civil war in the mid-1990s.’” [Center for American Progress, 11/07]

Despite lofty rhetoric, non-military objectives, like education, have not received their due attention.  Afghanistan’s education system continues to struggle, a problem that has had serious consequences, especially for women.  According to the Christian Science Monitor, “[g]irls account for only one-third of school pupils. Few females hold political positions of real power. And in the economic arena, women still struggle to move beyond low-margin handicrafts businesses.” This has led increasingly more Afghan women to say that the “development process is far removed from their needs, and hampered by foreign donors' focus on short-term wins.” [CSM, 12/18/08]