The war of consensus
US’ engagement in Afghanistan has been more direct with the Taliban yet the ghost of their might lingers on. The force motivating both of these players is significantly different but is a persistent factor instigating both of these factions. Neither one is willing to back down and is willing to show the world not that a solution can be reached (because no plausible solution has ever been proposed) but to show to the world that they can fight an inconclusive war.
What this begs is a revision of what has been done so far and what is to be achieved. Much like in Vietnam, US in Afghanistan is trying to find ways in fighting the Taliban. The policy makers have been successively unaware of the might of the Taliban, the factors that motivate them and to what extent is it willing to fight outside of its realm.
US’ support for Al-Qaeda factions against the Houthi rebels in Yemen poses some serious questions about the absence of clarity in US’ policies. Where Al-Qaeda is a globally declared terrorist outfit, an enemy of US, is also its greatest facilitators in fight against the Houthi insurgency. This trend has predominantly emerged in Middle East since 2011 where US funds a group against another for regional influence in one particular Middle Eastern country and then subsequently fights it in another country when the armed fighters push for their own freedom. A prominent example of this is the ISIS fighters funded to fight in Libya but when the war moved to Syria were taken as the Syrian rebels or the ISIS fighters. There is very little that distinguishes each of these rebels and with the Middle Eastern crises only exacerbating, there is a need to devise an all-inclusive strategy.
Being a realist I concur with Kissinger’s thesis that a state’s foreign policy is an extension of its domestic policy interests. This has sufficed US’ engagement in Afghanistan since 2001, Iraq since 2003 and the entire Middle East since 2011. However, with casualties on both sides increasing monumentally, Americans’ utility towards these operations have significantly decreased, begging the need to re-address what is it that the US wants the world to want from in alliance against the insurgents.
The war in Afghanistan is a largely forgotten war where the emergence of various terrorist groups are being utilized for various states’ own interests. It is no longer clear as to who is fighting whom and for what. The much critically acclaimed theory which attributes US’ overseas engagement to the control over the oil monopoly in Middle East-stood corrected until the emergence of ISIS. The theory falls under the paradigm of hyper-capitalism where the core devises ways in underscoring any development of the periphery and exploits it in ways that justifies as the true spirit of capitalism. However, with the global scope of ISIS and its far reach in the American society itself, this group of insurgent is nothing that the US had predicted.
The group is vicious, vile, violent and is nationalist in trying to create a state for itself-the means with which it is trying to achieve this are wrong; but the ISIS is defeating the US-led coalition at their own game. Much like the modern secular societies, ISIS is also a group that is motivated by its values and wants to exercise its right of self-determination with ‘all means necessary’. It has also promised its people a better society where they could exercise their beliefs and practices freely. However, ISIS is also suffering from a loss in consensus that it deemed to provide for its people. Even before its loss in control of its capital Raqqa, reports had started to appear that the people were dissatisfied with the group’s failure in providing for what it had previously promised.
From this it can be drawn that much like US, ISIS is also losing in building a consensus on its policies and values which would enable them to commit more ground forces in their war.
The fight against the ISIS will either exhaust both sides towards a stalemate, however, a winner will only emerge when the policies are clearly defined by either group.