Over the course of two days, the United States secretary of state, John Kerry, made unannounced visits to Iraq and Afghanistan. In both cases, he was there to provide political support and encouragement to politicians who are fighting for their political survival. In both cases, the forces ranged against them are US adversaries from the past.
Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen off the world’s agenda. The Syrian civil war and its fallout in the form of the rise of ISIL and the refugee crisis gripping the Middle East and Europe have absorbed most of the time and the minds of regional politicians. But the problems in both countries have not gone away – and in both cases, they can be traced back to America’s involvement.
That may seem a touch unfair. It was, certainly, America’s ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 that kicked off the fragmentation of that country. And America’s prolonged war in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks (that were planned there) did start the most recent round of Afghan instability. But Afghanistan was hardly a stable country before that.
Yet it says a great deal about US wars that, 15 years after going into Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban government, John Kerry is reduced to returning to Kabul to plead for the Taliban to enter into a peace process to try to end a wave of violence and protect the unity government in Kabul.
The same in Iraq. For years after the 2003 invasion, the Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr proved to be a thorn in the side of the occupation, leading demonstrations against the Americans. Yet he was too powerful to arrest. Now, Al Sadr is back, holding a sit-in inside the Green Zone itself to pressure Iraqi politicians – the very politicians that the US is keen to shore up.
Supporters may say that the complex politics of the region are always likely to throw up unexpected allies and situations. That may be true. But the US must also accept its responsibility for the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
