To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban
Jon Lee Anderson, Fitzcarraldo Editions, £14.99

AS AN exercise in guerilla warfare, the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan in 2021 reaffirmed a truth that has haunted the US since Vietnam. A determined enemy can force a great power to retreat in ignominy. Desperate Afghans clung to the fuselage of a US aircraft fleeing Kabul, only to fall to their deaths. It was Saigon all over again.

Joe Biden’s decision to expedite the withdrawal of US forces, thereby ending a chaotic, costly 20-year engagement — the US’s longest war — was evidence enough of his adversary’s will.

After two decades, writes author Jon Lee Anderson, the Taliban’s comeback was a classic example of a successful guerilla war of attrition by a ragtag army that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld had declared vanquished in 2003.

“The truth is that they were never really beaten,” Anderson writes. “They merely did what guerillas do in order to survive: they melted away in the face of overwhelming force, regrouped and restored themselves to fighting strength, and returned to battle. Here they are.”

But as an exercise in national liberation — if that’s what it can be called — the Taliban’s victory is a catastrophe for the Afghan people and for the cause of anti-imperialism itself.

That is because the country is once again in the grip of militant Islamic fundamentalism, a theocratic emirate with a totalitarian stranglehold and nothing to offer.

There is a conceit that today’s Taliban are different from those of 2001, the author notes, then like every great reporter points to the hard truths on the ground that contradict this.

In this collection of despatches from the veteran correspondent’s many visits to the country, Anderson provides eyewitness accounts of an occupation that is already fading into the abyss of memory where all the previous imperial failures in Afghanistan lie discarded.

It started in October 2001 when a vengeful US, reeling from the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks, invaded in pursuit of Osama bin Laden — and the Taliban retreat was rapid. Hamid Karzai was installed as a Western puppet, and an international peacekeeping force was established to clear pockets of resistance while the US promised “reconstruction.” By 2003 Rumsfeld was crowing, and Nato took control of international forces on the ground — eventually numbering 65,000 troops from 42 countries.

Then the flames rekindled. Cracks appeared in the Nato coalition. The predictable excesses of trigger-happy US troops tested the patience of their Afghan hosts.

Barack Obama began the mendacious game of setting deadlines for withdrawal that would never be met, while overseeing a major US escalation.

By 2011, a decade into the war, the US was no clearer about why it was waging it than it had been at the start — and it was abundantly clear to everyone else that its counterinsurgency strategy was failing. US diplomatic clumsiness and bloodthirsty blunders would derail talks with the Taliban and erode trust in the US military among Afghan people.

The first Trump administration again cranked up the pressure, stoking the Taliban’s fire. Washington’s priority in talks became withdrawal with little thought for the population.

By the time Biden took office, it was game over — and he hurriedly announced a retreat. In August 2021, facing little resistance, the Taliban juggernaut overran Kabul.

Anderson draws two main lessons from the US experience, arguing that not only did they fail to learn from the mistakes of others, they demonstrated that they had not even learned from their own mistakes in Vietnam. He writes: “The main errors were, first, to underestimate the adversaries and to presume that American technological superiority necessarily translated into mastery of the battlefield; and, second, to be culturally disdainful, rarely learning the languages or the customs of the local people.”

In short, we’ve been here before — something US hawks would do well to internalise as they amass their forces off Venezuela. And Anderson would know, as author of the definitive biography of Che Guevara, the anti-imperialist martyr who penned the playbook on guerilla warfare.  

The author’s accounts of the monumental US failure in Afghanistan, and the suffering and resilience of those who endured it, comprise a stark warning about imperial folly.