From Brydon to Biden: Trump Should Seek a Reset in Afghanistan

The image of the American plane trundling down the runway in Kabul with Afghans clinging to its body and dropping from the skies after takeoff is forever fixed in our minds. After two decades in Afghanistan, it is the ultimate image of America’s misadventure. It is as powerful an image of imperial defeat as the bloodied and bedraggled Dr. William Brydon on his exhausted horse, sighted outside Jalalabad fort in the nineteenth century. When asked where the British army of the Indus was that had marched with such hubris to invade Afghanistan, Brydon replied, “I am the army.” 

Nearly two centuries later, not only did the US fail to defeat the Taliban, but along with the withdrawal from the country overseen by President Joe Biden, the entire mission to create and back a democratic and inclusive Afghan state came crashing down. The US, which had spent more in Afghanistan than on the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe after the Second World War, saw the Taliban back in charge as they had been before 9/11. President Donald Trump called it “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.” 

Afghanistan worsened

Since then, the situation in Afghanistan has worsened. The long-suffering people of the country have had to deal with deadly earthquakes, droughts, mass hunger and malnutrition, economic collapse, and violence and armed conflict. UNICEF reports that in 2025, half the population, or 23 million people, including over 12 million children, will require humanitarian assistance. Women are banned from “studying, working, going to a salon or the gym, midwifery, and even speaking or praying in public.” Heightening the crisis is that the US and every other country have refused to recognize the Taliban, which limits engagement and assistance officially. But it is noteworthy that US rivals Russia and China have established diplomatic relationships, with Russian President Vladimir Putin describing the Taliban as an “ally.” India appears not far behind. 

The Great Game, which saw the imperial powers of Britain, Russia, and China scrambling for influence in the nineteenth century, is again in play, except that the US is absent.

Today, Afghanistan is crucial as a gateway to Central Asia and its vast mineral resources and access in the other direction to Pakistan and South Asia. The Great Game, which saw the imperial powers of Britain, Russia, and China scrambling for influence in the nineteenth century, is again in play, except that the US is absent.  

At the heart of this calamity was the American failure to understand local tribal society. Afghanistan and the other areas in which the war on terror was waged were largely tribal, meaning places where a fundamental and core form of identity is the clan or tribe, as we discussed in our study, The Thistle and the Drone. In these societies, people live by cultural codes of ideal conduct, which include honorable and courageous behavior, hospitality, and upholding the notion and practice of revenge. Societies are also traditionally decentralized and ruled by councils of elders who decide community affairs and mediate disputes.  

The US, however, expended vast resources establishing and strengthening centralized states in Afghanistan and elsewhere, which frequently met with resistance from locals. Not only were the governments often corrupt, but the instrument of control was often security forces who acted with brutality to subdue recalcitrant tribal groups. New and indigenous organizations from such societies themselves displayed shocking brutality—the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and subsequently Afghanistan, the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) in Pakistan, and Al Shabaab in Somalia, to name a few. While their actions were framed in the context of Islam, revenge was often the main motivating factor. 

Not only was the US backing state structures that had little legitimacy, but it barred groups it did not approve of from any hope of being involved. When the US convened the Bonn Conference to form the new Afghan government in 2001, the Taliban were excluded despite having considerable support in certain areas. The US tried to defeat the Taliban using overwhelming force but had little to show for it. It has been the same with other “war on terror” conflicts around the world. In the end, millions of lives were lost, trillions of dollars spent, and a succession of societies reduced to rubble.

After the wreckage

Surveying the wreckage of years of failures, Jeffrey Eggers, a senior White House official who directed Afghanistan policy on the National Security Council, asked, “Why did we make the Taliban the enemy when we were attacked by Al Qaeda? Why did we want to defeat the Taliban?” For Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN official who chaired the Bonn Conference, the decision to exclude the Taliban from any role in Afghanistan was “our original sin.”

Now is the time to change tactics. While the US should not aspire to be a nineteenth-century empire, it can still learn some lessons from history. After the disasters witnessed by Dr. Brydon, the British eventually stopped trying to conquer and defeat Afghanistan militarily, instead adopting a policy of subsidies to tribal elders and leaders, treaties with the Afghan king, and competing with Russia and China for diplomatic influence.  

The US needs to similarly wise up. It should engage the Taliban as China and Russia are doing and show its leaders honor and respect. It should remember how President Ronald Reagan treated the Taliban’s predecessors in the 1980s when he invited Afghan mujahedeen to the White House. 

This does not mean surrendering, for example, the focus on women’s rights but accepting that engagement and not force—or neglect—is the way to improve women’s lives and opportunities. The US also must realize that, in keeping with the decentralized nature of Muslim tribal society, the Taliban are not a monolithic organization but contains different factions and leaders—and there are additionally numerous local tribal leaders and clerics with authority who have differing views. This insight becomes key in the realm not only of human rights and development but also security, counterterrorism, and conflict resolution. 

The US needs to overcome its aversions and work with the Taliban, particularly those leaders and officials who are more amenable to aligning with American priorities.

The US needs to overcome its aversions and work with the Taliban, particularly those leaders and officials who are more amenable to aligning with American priorities, for example, on women’s and human rights. On counterterrorism, there is an immediate opportunity and necessity because the Taliban and the US both have a common interest in containing and defeating ISIS in Afghanistan. 

But the relationship must be deeper and broader than counterterror operations. First, humanitarian aid is essential to alleviate the dire situation, even if the Taliban government implements some aid with oversight from the US and international organizations. Then, there is development assistance, which could, for example, concentrate on educational institutions, providing tools such as computers, scholarships, and student exchange programs. The US can be involved in building schools—where possible, girls’ schools—and training teachers, where possible, women. 

The immediate impediments to such steps are US laws, which bar Americans legally from engaging with the Taliban. These must be reconsidered. For example, the US 2001 designation of the Taliban as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organization should be reevaluated. We have seen that when it is determined to be in the US interest, after 9/11, the US revoked sanctions against Pakistan it had imposed concerning its nuclear program; in 2014, it removed a ban on Narendra Modi entering the US for “severe violations of religious freedom” after he became prime minister of India; just weeks ago, the US removed a $10 million bounty on the head of Ahmed al-Sharaa after he became the de facto leader of Syria. 

This does not mean that the US cannot show flexibility on a case-by-case basis to punish individual Taliban leaders who may have been involved in egregious actions. At the same time, we must remember that conflict resolution sometimes involves forming new relationships between enemies to move forward in mutually beneficial arrangements. 

America’s ignominious withdrawal under President Biden symbolized the utter failure of the nation’s post-9/11 Afghan policy, which spanned the tenures of four presidents. Upon his return, Trump can turn that disaster around into a relationship where the US can once again have a role to play in that country, which, it should be noted, must not be reduced to the Taliban.

In Afghanistan, the US cannot afford to contend with another Iran, this time a Sunni one, with which all diplomatic relations have broken down in an adversarial relationship lasting years.

In Afghanistan, the US cannot afford to contend with another Iran, this time a Sunni one, with which all diplomatic relations have broken down in an adversarial relationship lasting years. Sooner or later, the post-9/11 chapter of US-Afghan relations has to be closed, and a new chapter opened. 

If the US can do this, it can improve not only the situation in Afghanistan but also the other Muslim tribal societies in which it continues to be engaged and where similar dynamics are at play, including Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. In Syria, for example, tribal and factional rivalries have bubbled to the surface with the implosion of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. They will have to be managed for that country to emerge from its longstanding nightmare of warfare and bloodshed.

In Afghanistan, the US has an opportunity to turn the page on decades of death, destruction, and turmoil, restore honor to Americans and Afghans alike, and heal terrible wounds on all sides. It is time for Washington to heed the lessons of Brydon and Biden. 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not reflect an official position of the Wilson Center.