4 - The context: From Regime Change, to Peace Building, to Countering Insurgents: Stabilising Afghanistan

Summary

Introduction

The intervention of (Western) powers has a long history in Afghanistan. It is not without a great degree of pride and dignity that Afghans can refer to a history in which no occupying power has successfully conquered Afghan soil and its people for a long period in time. Throughout history, only some have come close to claiming a long lasting victory over the Afghans, but military experiences from more recent times all resulted in disenchantments. Against the background of these disillusioned military endeavours, one would have expected a certain degree of modesty with regard to what can be achieved.

Yet, many Western nations and their respective (military) organisations entertained ambitious goals in terms of changing the regime, beliefs and habits of the inhabitants of Afghanistan. In turn, the majority of the Afghans were not in favour of the imposition of foreign models of governance and development, amongst others. As posited in Jonathan Steele's book, Ghosts of Afghanistan: Hard Truths and Foreign Myths, the Afghan people predominantly wanted to be left alone, leaving the presence of foreign troops likely to be one of the major causes of current instability.

This chapter serves merely to set out the developments in Afghanistan since the intervention of the ‘coalition of the willing’: a formation of Western military powers led by the United States that invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 until NATO's expansion into southern Afghanistan in the summer of 2006. As such, this chapter is designed to provide an understanding of the environment in which the Netherlands and the United Kingdom felt they needed to engage by contributing to NATO's expansion into southern Afghanistan. This chapter, however, does not engage with the current ongoing problems in Afghanistan since this carries beyond the scope of this book.

Setting

The pursuit of stabilisation of Afghanistan has been hindered by the amount of strategic goals set for the mission, as well as a recurring shift of priorities. The initial goal was defeating Al-Qaida and the Taliban and, in doing so, eradicating their ability to threaten the West as well as regional neighbours (2001). The goal then changed to developing the Afghan economy through the security and development agenda (2002 onwards), building good governance (2005) and creating stability, possibly via deals or negotiations with the Taliban (2008).