Our newsreel plays out in predictable fashion when covering Afghanistan. The headline might contain the death toll from the nation’s latest suicide bombing, perhaps accompanied by footage depicting a terrorist attack and shell-shocked streets. The stories often speak for themselves, and there is little left to say besides the notion that nothing has changed in the 12 years since the United States first intervened.
But this narrative—though substantiated by compelling and serious realities—ignores the tremendous growth experienced by Afghanistan over the past decade. Perpetuating this mentality of pessimism does an enormous disservice to the very real progress that has been made and may ultimately undermine U.S.-Afghan cooperation in the future, with disastrous consequences for this fragile state.
Untold Successes
While Afghanistan continues to face very real problems,
the nation has vastly improved in a number of social welfare measures since 2001. “Over the past 12 years, Afghanistan has changed enormously, and for the better,” said William Byrd, senior expert on Afghanistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, in an interview with the HPR. “When you consider social indicators like the number of children in school, life expectancy, reduced maternal and child mortality rates, economic growth, and per capita income, there’s just been a huge change.” Furthermore, in the same time period, Afghanistan’s GDP has more than tripled in size, with an annual growth rate matched only by China.
The country has also been expanding access to basic necessities. Afghanistan has the fastest growing market for mobile phones, with the number of users growing from zero to 17 million, nearly half the nation’s population, in the last decade. Ninety percent of the nation now has access to paved roads, and 80 percent to full health care. And perhaps most strikingly, under Taliban rule 900,000 children were enrolled in school, all of them male, while today over six million children attend school, a third of them female.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has dramatically fallen from grace in the eyes of Afghan citizens. Twelve years ago, the fundamentalist organization comprised 90 percent of the government. Afghanistan was a hardline conservative theocracy, with its official name being, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Today, the Taliban’s strongholds are largely outside Afghanistan, and nine in 10 Afghans view the organization unfavorably.
A large part of the militant organization’s decline may be attributed to the efforts of U.S. and NATO-led forces, together known as ISAF, which have guided and supported the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) over the last decade. But as the 2014 withdrawal date for foreign troops approaches, ANSF has willingly accepted the mission to fight the Taliban under their own capacity. This past June, NATO officially handed over all of the protection duties to its ANSF counterparts and assumed a purely guidance-based role. This, too, is a form of progress.
Confronting Gender Inequality
Gender disparity is perhaps one of the deepest problems
that Afghanistan faces. And while full gender equality has yet to occur, dramatic progress has been made in the past 10 years. An astounding two million girls are currently receiving an education in Afghanistan, as compared to zero under Taliban rule. Women are also being recruited and trained across the country to work as midwives. One of the largest problems women face in Afghanistan is lack of access to obstetrical care. Encouraging women to become midwives helps ameliorate this deficiency, while providing thousands of women with employment. Despite opposition, especially in rural areas, the mission has prevailed and been quite successful.
Other trends tell a similar story regarding equalizing opportunities for women. Speaking with the HPR, Clare Lockhart, founder and CEO of the Institute for State Effectiveness and former UN advisor on Afghanistan, described increasing female involvement in politics. “More than 31,000 village councils,
a majority, have been elected in Afghanistan over the past 12 years, and over 100,000 women have served on these councils,”
she said. This figure reveals a society moving not only toward gender inclusivity, but also toward democratic ideals. Lockhart challenges the conventional opinion about Afghanistan: “A lot of people think democracy can’t exist here and they have this pic- ture of this country as backwards … but the truth is it’s a much more open and interconnected country than we think.”
The Long Road Ahead
These statistics are not meant to make the argument that Afghanistan is free of problems—such a view would be both naïve and dangerous. “If you consider the negative trends, you have an increase in corruption, a government that hasn’t been really able to win over the people, and a potential return of the Taliban,” explained Byrd. But while forgetting or overlooking such problems is dangerous, to take these aspects of Afghan society and treat them as the whole story is even more problematic. This thinking is simplistic, reductive, and harmful—not only because it is a misrepresentation of the truth, but also because Afghanistan’s continued stability and prosperity depend heavily on continued U.S. support and a robust partnership, even after our military presence in the country declines.
Negotiations surrounding the drawdown have led the United States to propose and discuss numerous options for a post-2014 strategy. The common assumption is that even after the troops were withdrawn, a small contingent of U.S. military personnel would stay to continue providing ANSF with training, logistical, and tactical support. But talk of a “zero option,” a complete removal of U.S. presence from Afghanistan, has inspired fear among the nation’s security forces, who doubt their ability to quell what will surely be violent Taliban retaliation without international backing.
The pessimism that infects our national consciousness on Afghanistan has real implications for the future. In an interview with the HPR, Caroline Wadhams, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, explained, “many Afghans are hopeful about their country’s future and seek long-term U.S. and international engagement and support to assist them as they continue to improve their country. They worry that in our pessimism, the United States will turn away entirely.” Such abandonment would not only give the Taliban an opportunity to regain power, but it would also signal to the youth of Afghanistan that they are alone in their fight.
Only with lasting diplomatic ties and a strong partnership with the United States can Afghanistan continue on its path
of progress. Withdrawing U.S. support would almost certainly unhinge the nation’s growth. “International support for Afghanistan is crucial not least to provide some kind of anchor for Afghanistan in a very turbulent region,” said Byrd. “Pessimism can then feed into the problem of not continuing our commitment to the nation.” Diplomatically, financially, and through the tentative Bilateral Security Agreement, the United States must remain committed to Afghanistan.
But this commitment will only flourish if we disavow ourselves of the mentality that has plagued us for so long—of Afghanistan as an inferior and troubled nation doomed to fail. We must instead welcome the notion of Afghanistan as a nation actively working toward a brighter future.