The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

Content Warning: This section contains accounts of terrorism and war-related violence, including torture and the killing of civilians.

At its outset, the US campaign in Afghanistan was supposed to be relatively quick and efficient. The target was not Afghanistan, or even its government, but rather the foreign terrorists who had used its territory to plot the 9/11 attacks. George W. Bush campaigned against the Clinton administration’s so-called “nation-building” efforts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and elsewhere as a distraction from the military’s main task, which was “to fight and win war” (31). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shared those attitudes and insisted repeatedly that the US had no concern other than killing or apprehending those responsible for 9/11, especially given Afghanistan’s well-documented hostility to foreign invaders. No one anticipated that the war would go on for 20 more years, long enough for some of the small children of soldiers to grow up and fight in that same war. And yet, step by step, the US engaged in “mission creep,” a military term for a task that gradually expands its scope without anyone necessarily intending or even understanding that such a process was occurring. Before long, US and NATO forces would be training a new army entirely from scratch, building up law enforcement and a judiciary, attempting to regulate the opium trade, and overseeing infrastructure projects, all of which constitute nation building.