Why Did We Lose in Afghanistan? Twelve Questions the Record Can Answer

For two decades, the official story of the war in Afghanistan was told in slide decks, and the slides were optimistic. Progress charts pointed up and to the right. Then there was a second story, told in sentences, by an office whose entire job was to count what the money bought. It is a long and unflattering read. The remarkable thing is not that it exists. The remarkable thing is that it was public the entire time, filed on schedule with Congress, and not read.

This post answers twelve questions that families, veterans and ordinary citizens ask about the war. The sources are public: the reports and testimony of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR, plus the historical record. I will answer plainly and I will mark where the record is thinner than the arguments about it. A word on the term in the title: "lose" is the word most people use, and I use it because the war's stated purpose, a stable Afghan state that denied terrorists a base, was not achieved. That is a judgment, but it is a judgment the facts support.

The sources, and why they are good

Congress created SIGAR in 2008, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, to audit and investigate American spending on Afghan reconstruction. It reported quarterly to Congress for years. In 2021 it published a lessons-learned study, What We Need to Learn, drawn from two decades of work, and in November 2022 a report on why the Afghan government collapsed. In December 2019 the Washington Post published what it called the "Afghanistan Papers," built from interviews that SIGAR's lessons-learned project had conducted with officials, which the paper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Those interviews showed that many officials who spoke confidently in public had been far more doubtful in private.

I like this body of evidence for one reason: it comes mostly from the government's own auditors, not from the war's critics. A conservative can read it without having to take a partisan's word.

Why we went, and what changed

1. Why did the United States go to Afghanistan in the first place?

Because the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned by al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban gave the group sanctuary. Congress passed an authorization for the use of military force on September 14, 2001, and American operations began on October 7, 2001. Within weeks, the Taliban government had been driven from the cities, and in December 2001 an international conference in Bonn set up an interim Afghan administration under Hamid Karzai.

The purpose was clear and limited: destroy the base of the people who had attacked us. Hold on to that sentence, because most of what follows is the story of how the mission grew past it. For how the legal authority has stretched, see Sixty Words Passed in 2001 Still Carry America's Wars, and That Is a Problem.

2. Did we win at the start?

In the military sense, quickly. A small number of American special forces and CIA officers, supported by air power and Afghan allies on the ground, brought down the Taliban government in a matter of weeks. But the top target escaped. Osama bin Laden slipped away from the Tora Bora region in December 2001 into Pakistan, and he lived there for nearly a decade, until he was killed in a raid at Abbottabad on May 2, 2011. The early win was real, and it was incomplete, and the incompleteness would matter for twenty years.

3. When did the mission become nation-building?

Gradually, then officially. In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute on April 17, 2002, President Bush invoked the Marshall Plan, saying that the United States would help rebuild Afghanistan. Reconstruction of a state, an army, a court system and an economy became an American responsibility. Counterterrorism, which is a narrow job, had become state-building, which is an enormous one.

The Founders' counsel was against such ventures. John Quincy Adams's warning that America should not go abroad searching for monsters to destroy is the standard reference point, and John Quincy Adams Said America Does Not Go Abroad Hunting for Monsters gives the context. You can believe that the case for state-building was strong, and many sincere people did, and still say that it was a different war from the one Congress authorized.

The money and the army

4. How much did it cost?

SIGAR reported that Congress appropriated roughly $145 billion for Afghan reconstruction over the two decades, and that about $89 billion of it went to the Afghan security forces. That is the reconstruction budget alone. The cost of the war overall, including the military operations, is much larger. The Costs of War project at Brown University estimated about $2.3 trillion, a figure that includes long-term costs such as veterans' care and interest on borrowing. Estimates differ with what is counted, and I would treat any single number with caution, but even the lower estimates are on a scale that should have prompted much harder questions at the time. For the money side of the ledger, see The Pentagon Has Never Passed an Audit, and Conservatives Should Mind.

The human cost is more exact: more than 2,300 American service members died, and tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and police and many more civilians. Behind those numbers are people who did what they were asked.

5. Why couldn't we build an Afghan army that could stand on its own?

The short answer, from the record, is that we built an army in our own image and then kept it dependent on us. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces were designed with American-style equipment and methods: helicopters, armored vehicles, a modern air arm, a logistics system that assumed a literate and well-run supply chain. It was a force that needed advanced maintenance, spare parts and trained pilots, which are the hardest things to build in a hurry in a country with limited education and an ongoing war.

SIGAR documented the problems at length: weak logistics, poor retention, unreliable personnel records, and a command culture in which good officers were often undermined by patronage. The report on the collapse also pointed to political dysfunction at the top of the Afghan government. Those are Afghan failures, and honest analysis includes them. But the army we designed could not have worked without us, and that was a choice we made.

6. Why did the contractors matter so much?

Because the Afghan forces relied on American contractors to keep their equipment running. SIGAR reported repeatedly that the Afghan military, and especially its air force, depended on contractors for maintenance, particularly for aircraft and for complex vehicles. SIGAR's audit of the Afghan air forces found that they would always require contractor logistic support, and when the American contractors were withdrawn in 2021, the availability of the air force's aircraft fell sharply. An army that cannot repair its own helicopters has a tail that someone else is holding.

The lesson is general. An ally's self-reliance is the whole point of training it. If the end state of a training program is a force that needs your technicians forever, then the program has bought a dependency, not an army. See How America Built 2,710 Liberty Ships and Why It Could Not Do So Today for the difference between a base that produces and one that merely uses.

7. What about corruption and "ghost soldiers"?

SIGAR reported extensively on corruption, which it called a threat to the mission. One recurring problem was "ghost" personnel: names on the payroll for soldiers and police who did not exist or did not serve, with the pay going to commanders and officials. When the U.S. paid salaries based on rolls the Afghan government supplied, the system rewarded padding. The size of the force on paper exceeded the size in the field.

Corruption also corroded legitimacy. Afghans who saw their officials enrich themselves, with American money passing through, gave their loyalty less readily to the government than to those who offered order, even harsh order. A counterinsurgency is a contest to see which side the population trusts more, and it is lost when the population concludes that the state is a racket.

The neighbors and the strategy

8. What role did Pakistan play?

A large one, and an awkward one. Pakistan was a nominal partner of the United States, a recipient of American aid and designated a major non-NATO ally in 2004, while parts of the Taliban leadership, including the so-called Quetta Shura, and the Haqqani network found sanctuary on Pakistani territory. Insurgents who could cross a border to rest, recruit and rearm could not be defeated by pressure on one side of it. That bin Laden lived for years in a compound in Abbottabad, near a Pakistani military academy, is a fact no one has fully explained.

Many analysts, left and right, have concluded that an insurgency with a safe haven across the border is very hard to beat. I do not say that settles anything about what a better policy toward Pakistan would have been, since that country has nuclear weapons and a fragile state, and the options were all poor. But it does explain a great deal about why the military pressure did not lead to victory.

9. Did the surge work?

It improved security in some areas for a time, and it did not change the underlying balance. In a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009, President Obama announced an additional 30,000 troops, and American forces reached roughly 100,000 at their peak, alongside allied troops. He also announced that the drawdown would begin in July 2011. Critics argued that the dual message, a surge and a deadline together, told the Taliban to wait. Defenders replied that the surge bought time and reduced Taliban control of key districts.

Both claims have evidence. What the record shows is that the Afghan forces, as American troop levels fell, were increasingly asked to fight alone, and that after combat operations formally ended in December 2014, the American role shifted to training, advising and counterterrorism. The Taliban's strength in the countryside grew during that period.

The end

10. How did the Doha agreement shape the outcome?

Heavily. The agreement signed on February 29, 2020, between the United States and the Taliban, set a withdrawal timetable, included a Taliban commitment not to harbor terrorists, and left the Afghan government out of the room. It called for the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The SIGAR report on the collapse found that the exclusion of the Afghan government from the talks weakened it, and that after the agreement Afghan soldiers felt they were not the winning side.

The agreement did something else: it granted the Taliban recognition as a negotiating partner while the group continued attacks on Afghan forces. Consider how a soldier at a remote checkpoint would read that situation. His government's ally has just signed a deal to leave, with his enemy.

11. Was the collapse really sudden?

In its last stage, yes: from the fall of the first provincial capital on August 6, 2021, to the fall of Kabul on August 15, it took about nine days. But the speed hides a longer decline. The SIGAR record shows years of a force that was heavily dependent and, in places, poorly supplied. A building that comes down in a day usually had cracks for years. The withdrawal removed the support, and the structure fell. The aftermath, including the evacuation and the Abbey Gate bombing, is covered in Abbey Gate and the Withdrawal From Afghanistan, the Record in Order.

12. What should we learn?

Here are the lessons that the record supports, stated as a short list.

• Define the mission and keep it defined. The war began as a counterterrorism operation and became a state-building project without a clear public decision to make the change.
• Do not build what the ally cannot sustain. A force that requires a sophisticated logistics base to operate is a dependency.
• Count honestly. Metrics that reward activity, such as units trained, dollars spent, and schools built, produce reports that look like progress. Measure outcomes.
• Address the sanctuary. A war against an insurgency with a protected base across a border needs a strategy for the border.
• Plan the exit when you plan the entry. The Weinberger tests asked, forty years earlier, whether there was a clear objective and a plan, and The Weinberger Doctrine Set Six Tests Before Sending Troops to Fight shows how they apply.
• Involve Congress. The Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war, and one authorization from 2001 stood in for twenty years of decisions. See Commander in Chief Means Less Than Presidents Claim and More Than Critics Say.

What not to conclude

A few cautions, because good lessons are easily abused.

Do not conclude that the troops failed. The record is a record of institutions and decisions, not of the courage of the people who served. Soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen did what they were asked, in difficult conditions, and many did it extraordinarily well.

Do not conclude that one man, or one party, lost the war. The decisions run through four administrations, two parties and a long list of generals, ambassadors and officials. The tendency of both parties' partisans to blame the other is a way of avoiding the harder answer, which is that the strategy was flawed from the start and the flaws were visible for years.

Do not conclude that all American effort was wasted. For years there was no second attack on the homeland from Afghanistan. Afghan girls attended school who would not have under the Taliban, for a time. Those are real gains. They do not change the final result, but a fair account includes them.

Do not conclude that the lesson is isolationism. The lesson is discipline: know what you are fighting for, build only what can stand, and finish what you begin. A country that decides never to act again has drawn the wrong lesson from a poorly run effort.

The case in brief

1. The mission of 2001, destroying al-Qaeda's base, was largely met in weeks, but the escape of bin Laden and the shift to nation-building in 2002 turned a limited operation into a twenty-year enterprise.
2. SIGAR's public reports show roughly $145 billion spent on reconstruction, an Afghan army built in an American image that depended on American contractors, and corruption that undermined the government's legitimacy.
3. Pakistan's sanctuaries for the Taliban leadership meant the insurgency could never be fully pressed.
4. The Doha agreement of February 29, 2020, signed without the Afghan government, and the withdrawal timetable that followed collapsed morale before the final days.
5. The record supports a doctrine of discipline: define the mission, build only what the ally can sustain, measure outcomes honestly, and keep Congress involved.

What you can do: read the Executive Summary of SIGAR's What We Need to Learn report, which is free on the SIGAR website, and ask your senators how Congress will use its lessons before the next authorization of force.