When will we realise, like the Russians did in 1987, that Afghanistan is not 'winnable'?

Let's face it - the Taliban are winning in Afghanistan, as much as I loathe them. All talk of surges (i.e. offensives), foreign fighters (not the Arab mujahadeen but NATO forces) and capturing the hearts and minds is all in vain. The kneejerk reaction by the Bush administration to invade Afghanistan October 2001 in a display of primitive revenge for 9/11, and to secure vital transit routes to Central Asia's natural resources has resulted in the prolonged suffering of the Afghan people. War for them has been ongoing since the late 1970s and now even the grandchildren of the original fighters are fighters themselves. Afghanistan is now the longest war that US forces have been engaged in, even longer than Vietnam, yet there seems to be no end in sight. Of course, when foreign forces are up against local people fighting for their own country, and have many decades experience of fighting in their rough terrain, there is no doubt who will end up victor, no matter what sophisticated technology is used.

I was reading a report by BBC News World Affairs Editor, the highly respected John Simpson on an interview with Taliban forces. Usually I like his viewpoint on most matters, however here he has taken a rather patronising take on the Taliban's position. Simpson talks down the Taliban's view that they are winning, NATO forces are in disarray and refusal to talk to them, passing it off as propaganda. The point is however, that NATO is even suggesting talks with the Taliban must mean that things are not going well.
The cruel irony of the current conflict in Afghanistan is that it was created and maintained in the 1970s and 1980s by those very same NATO forces. Following a communist revolution in the late 1970s, Afghanistan embarked on a wide-ranging modernisation campaign. When Islamist forces, buoyed by the success of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, threatened to stop these processes and also spread Islamism into bordering poor Muslim Soviet republics like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the Soviet Union stepped in ostensibly to protect the communist revolution, but more so to contain the threat of Islamic instability in the USSR itself. This is much like the same reason why NATO forces under US leadership invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Most of the world outside of the Soviet bloc condemned the Soviet invasion, most visibly with a now-hypocritical 64 country boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, an event that were to be boycotted by the US and it Cold War allies anyway. After initial success, thanks mainly to the smart use of soldiers from Central Asian republics, the Soviets were facing defeat as the Afghan Islamist forces (the mujahadeen) became the recipients of American largesse and CIA training, solely for the US to fight their Cold War Soviet adversaries by proxy and without any foresight or in-depth knowledge by the US into the long-term goals of their clients. Most instrumental in the Mujahadeen struggle was the CIA equipping them with Stinger missles, turning the tide on Soviet armed superiority, and video cameras to win the PR war with damning footage. The Soviets, in their right mind, pulled out starting from 1987, leaving the communist Afghan government to fend for itself, which it did for another 5 years (even past the collapse of the USSR). The Mujahadeen eventually did win, though the new government quickly aligned itself with the anti-American Iranian government - so much US money went to finance a force which then went against them. The Soviet fear of the spread of Islamism was becoming true, but despite the collapse of the USSR, the old Communist Party apparatus in ex-Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan remained on the basis of containing this threat, while Tajikistan itself became the scene of a ferocious civil war in 1993 involving Islamist forces on one side. The supposed US interest for spreading the principles of a free and open society and democracy had no chance, but then again, those principles are usually just a smokescreen for personal national interests, as has been the case recently in Kyrgyzstan, or much like the USSR's involvement in Afghanistan.

The US was not happy with the new pro-Iran Afghan government, so it was business as usual when the US exploited clan-based warlords who ostensibly opposed the government in Kabul but who shared the US interest in contuining warfare as it was proitable for them. One of these groups based in the southern city of Kandahar were the extremely-religious Taliban (the Students), who made sweeping victories across Afghanistan and eventually toppled the government in 1996. Much has been documented of the Taliban's rather literal and extreme interpretation of the Qur'an, much in line with the backward and primitive nature of society of its mainly rural base. By 9/11, the Taliban were accused of harbouring Islamic terrorists who threatened the US, much the same way that the Soviets accused the Mujahadeen of harbouring terrorists who threatened the Soviet Union's southern flank just over the mountainous river border.

So what do we have now? Well, the USA made a big mess of it here, solely out of the shortsightedness of its Cold War policies rather than actively pursuing humanistic principles that it superficially espouses. The US has paid big time for its actions, being the victim of the world's most devastating terrorist attack and having it occur on its own territory, masterminded by a terrorist the US itself had trained. The US has poured billions of wasteful dollars into a war that has dragged on while using the same failed tactic of sophisticated technology will win the day that led the Soviets to lose 20+ years earlier. Financing and training the mujahadeen has proven to be counterproductive in the long run as the US also destroyed the only Afghan government to actually launch the types of social reforms such as gender equality, Western universal education, literacy and modernisation which, with a little foresight, could have laid the seeds for eventual democratisation in Afghanistan and not for compromises to US security. The US have condemned the Afghan people to decades of war and despair, while neighbouring countries such as Uzbekistan live in totalitarianism thanks mainly to the threat of instability and the spread of Islamism from its neighbour's perpetual war. The best thing for the US and NATO forces to do is that they do what the Soviets did back in 1987 - get out. Leave the Afghans alone as they have suffered enough. As long as NATO forces remain in Afghanistan, there will be a war.