LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

Collins
ally. China is poised today to help Afghanistan develop its mineral deposits
but to date has little taste for security cooperation there.
Saudi Arabia tried hard to use its good offices to end the war but was
frustrated by the Afghan Taliban’s refusal to break relations with al Qaeda, a
sworn enemy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Russia and China exploited
commercial contracts, and Russia began slowly to improve counternarcotics
cooperation with the coalition. In later years, Russia participated with other
nations in the region in forming a northern logistics route.
In all, by 2009 the regional powers were not the primary cause of the war
in Afghanistan, but their policies had not worked toward a solution. Pakistan
is particularly noteworthy here. While the U.S. policy has been one of patient
engagement to wean Islamabad from its dysfunctional ways, analysts from
other countries could be openly bitter. One Canadian military historian who
served in Afghanistan wrote that Pakistan was behind the external support to
the insurgents in southern Afghanistan and that it was “a country with a 50-
year history of exporting low-intensity warfare as a strategy.” 61
American officials tended to be more circumspect in public, but even
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, who devoted
tremendous effort to working with the Pakistani military leaders, unleashed a
broadside right before he retired in 2011, “The Haqqani Network—which has
long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government and is, in
many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency—is
responsible for the September 13th [2011] attacks against the U.S. Embassy in
Kabul.” He went on to detail Haqqani attacks on Afghan and American targets
and concluded that it is difficult to defeat an insurgency with a secure sanctuary
in a neighboring country. 62
By the end of the Bush administration, security in Afghanistan was down,
as was Afghan optimism about the future. From 2005, Karzai’s popularity had
declined at home by a third. His standing in the West also fell after widespread
fraud occurred in the 2010 presidential elections. His habit of criticizing the
coalition and the United States was galling. Bad feelings were multiplied by
his reluctance to criticize the Taliban and his habit of referring to them as “our
brothers.” In 2008, polls showed Afghan confidence in the United States and
its allies had been halved. Many Afghans believed that the Taliban had grown
40