https://crsreports.congress.gov
September 27, 2021
Twenty Years of Military Operations in Afghanistan:
Key Questions
After 20 years of operations, training, investment and
capacity building, the swift collapse of the Afghan National
Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), followed by the
Taliban’s takeover of the country, is prompting debate on
how such a significant strategic setback could take place.
Many observers attribute such failures to the decisions
made by the United States and its European and other
partners at the time the Taliban was ousted from power in
late 2001, including how to structure post-Taliban
governance and Afghan security forces. The outcome of the
campaign also provides an opportunity to reflect on how the
U.S. military conducted its operations alongside its
coalition partners, as well as the overall efficacy of the
military as an instrument for achieving strategic goals.
Section 1080 of H.R. 4350 (H.Rept. 117-118), the Fiscal
Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, would
establish a Commission on Afghanistan that would assess
the war in Afghanistan and make recommendations to
inform future operations. Senate action is pending.
Learning from the Past to Prepare for
the Future?
Some observers contend that too much focus on adopting
lessons learned from the Afghanistan into extant doctrine,
training, and operational approaches risks the United States
adapting to fight previous wars, rather than future ones.
Others maintain that such scrutiny is necessary, because
capabilities that were utilized during the Afghanistan
campaign, such as foreign military capacity building and
whole-of-government operational approaches, can
potentially be adapted to better allow the U.S. to contend
with great power competition, hybrid and gray zone
warfare, and other contingencies. Further, many of the
perceived critical deficiencies in the Afghan campaign were
present at levels of decisionmaking in Washington DC,
coalition capitals, and Kabul—making it difficult to
translate gains on the ground into overall success. Taken
together, these choices could indicate broad systemic issues
with the manner by which the United States, alongside its
coalition partners, prosecutes its wars. Left unaddressed,
such problems might hamper future U.S. war efforts.
Campaign (In)Coherence?
Unity of command, that is, a clear delineation of who
reports to whom in a military hierarchy, is a key principle
for military operations. To some observers, the organization
of operations in Afghanistan, both geographically and
functionally, “failed to achieve unity of command or unity
of effort,” for significant durations of the campaign.
Geographically, the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF, 2003-2014) phase of the campaign was organized
by province as well as by region.
Different coalition countries led Provincial Reconstruction
Teams (PRTs) and clustered their military forces’ presence
and activities around their respective PRT’s activities.
National capitals therefore had de facto decisionmaking
input when it came to the conduct of operations in the
provinces, which was at times in tension with directives
from the Regional Command (RCs) or ISAF Headquarters.
Other countries placed de jure limitations on the activities
their forces could perform (e.g., restricting night
operations), called caveats.
Afghanistan-wide, the United States conducted a number of
military or paramilitary efforts that were arguably distinct
enough to be considered campaigns in their own right:
Security operations, largely performed by battalion-
sized task forces, intended to create the conditions
whereby governance building and development
activities could take place. Later in the campaign these
operations were conducted by partnering with ANDSF.
Complicating matters somewhat, the ANDSF organized
its corps structures along different geographical
boundaries than the ISAF/coalition RCs.
ANDSF capacity development operations designed to
train and equip hundreds of thousands of Afghan forces
to be subsequently fielded across Afghanistan. Other
nonmilitary U.S. government elements established and
trained separate Afghan paramilitary units, primarily
used for counter-terrorism purposes.
Counter-terrorism operations, some of which were
conducted by U.S. and coalition Special Operations
Forces. The compartmented nature of some of their
activities meant that, at times, coalition partners did not
have visibility into such activities happening in their
areas of responsibility.
The organization of the military campaign arguably caused
unhelpful frictions and seams among components. A key
question is whether, and to what extent, the manner by
which military efforts in Afghanistan were organized
contributed to the overall failure of the campaign.
Campaign Continuity?
In part due to studies showing that since 1945 successful
counterinsurgencies last an average of 14 years (see Jones,
“Further Reading”), experts and officials argued that
succeeding in Afghanistan would likely require a long-term
approach. Yet deployment cycles (often between six
months to a year during the Afghanistan campaign),
designed to balance operational needs with the morale and
welfare of servicemembers and their families, arguably
resulted in short-term approaches to operations. As a result,
many observers described campaign continuity as a
