By Dr Sharifullah Dorani*
‘I’d been impressed with Stan McChrystal’s leadership of coalition forces there: The additional troops I’d authorized had helped regain territory from the Taliban; the training of the Afghan army had ramped up; McChrystal had even convinced President Karzai to venture out beyond his palace and start engaging the population he claimed to represent.’[1] President Obama on the results of the surge decision in Afghanistan
Introduction
This article analyses President Barack Obama’s 2011 decision to begin the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, a policy choice that set the stage for the end of the US combat mission. Unlike the 2009 decision to surge forces, this time, the process was managed directly by the President, who acted as an ‘honest broker’ to navigate conflicting advice from his military and civilian teams. This paper will focus on the interplay of three primary factors that shaped the final policy: the shifting balance of bureaucratic politics within the administration, the overwhelming influence of domestic public opinion against the war, and the impact of Obama’s personal characteristics and deeply held beliefs about the limits of military power. The conclusion will show that the ultimate decision to accelerate the drawdown was a reflection of these powerful forces, overriding the military’s preference for a slower, conditions-based exit.
Policymaking for the decision to withdraw
Unlike 2009, the 2011 decision was not about a top-down reassessment of the strategy, but about the pace of US troop withdrawal. As seen in my other article, Obama was faced with two options: a slow withdrawal or a steep troop cut. There was another difference to the decision: Obama managed to employ a ‘consensus’ model. This model allows a trusted advisor, or what Professor James Pfiffner would call the ‘honest broker’,[2] to work to bring every bureaucracy to a strategy that the President supported, e.g. the review by President George W Bush’s National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to surge in Iraq.[3] In 2011, Obama himself was the honest broker. Consequently, this time the process was disciplined and unified. Obama met Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Thomas Donilon and David Petraeus individually (and later as a group in the three National Security Council meetings in June) and heard their opinions.[4]
The departing Secretary of Defense Gates and the military wanted a conditions-based and gradual withdrawal where the Afghan National Security Forces could take over, as pulling out too fast would threaten the gains the American-led coalition had made in the previous 18 months. Gates warned ‘against undercutting a decade-long investment by cutting the budget too rapidly’. He wanted the Obama Administration to continue to support the Afghan Government and improve its security forces, and avoid repeating the mistakes made by the US after the Soviets left Afghanistan when it descended into chaos and into the Taliban’s hands.[5]
Secretary of State Clinton and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen were of the same opinion.[6] Clinton expressed reservation about the scale of the reduction Obama had in mind, because it would signal to the Afghans that the US was abandoning Afghanistan.[7]
The Commander of the International Security Assistance Force General Petraeus, in turn, believed that the administration should be careful with the withdrawal as the Taliban was moving to reconstitute after the beating of the past year, trying to regain the momentum they had lost. For him, any withdrawal should take account of conditions on the ground, meaning how strengthened the Taliban were, how ready the Afghan National Security Forces were to take over, and how the economic and political progress of Afghanistan was doing. ‘Most of those [conditions] would weigh in favor of staying longer’, one senior official said.[8] Petraeus pointed to the southern districts of Nawa, Garmsir, Arghandab, and Zhari Amrit to argue that the surge had worked, and they needed a few more years to build on the progress they believed they had made in the past 18 months. For the military leaders, the surge was working.[9]
The President’s civilian advisors did not agree. Invoking the false assumptions, they argued that they would not be able to transfer security responsibility to the Afghans in most places cleared by the military. The Vice-President Joe Biden group, including the inner circle, questioned how much longer the US needed to stay on to keep security. They argued that the Afghan Government lacked the capacity and political will to provide security and civil administration, and hence the counterinsurgency strategy would not produce results even if they continued with it.[10]
Around the time the administration considered the decision to withdraw, a report by the CIA on Afghanistan was leaked, which had concluded that the Afghanistan War was heading to a stalemate. For the White House, this was another card ‘on surge’.[11] According to Gates, the Biden camp, from the moment Obama left West Point on December 1, 2009, began to search for any possible piece of information that could assist it with proving that the Biden camp was right and that the military was wrong on the surge, that the military was not following the President’s instructions, and that the war was going from bad to worse.[12] The damaging rift and the suspicion still carried on in 2011.[13]
However, nobody in the White House, not even those who had opposed the surge, advised Obama to pull out all US troops at once.[14] As will be seen below, they still proposed a counterterrorism strategy that supported a small presence in Afghanistan. The Biden group believed that with fewer troops Karzai would be compelled to make peace with the Taliban, and the Afghan Army, incompetent as they were, would be able to defend the key cities.
But the military believed such an approach was too risky and could result in a messy outcome. The districts liberated by the surge would slip back into the hands of the Taliban. Talking to the Taliban would only produce results when the US was in a position of strength, not when the US was heading home.[15]
In short, the policy suggestions given to the President by the policymakers from the two opposing camps were similar to the viewpoints the area experts, indirectly, suggested to the President above: the Biden group again argued for a counterterrorism strategy, but the military stressed the continuation of the counterinsurgency strategy.[16]
As far as specific questions were concerned, the number and time of the withdrawal of the 30,000 (+3000) troops, Petraeus, who had met in Afghanistan with his generals, had several options. The most conservative option required troops to remain for another two years after July 2011. This plan, said Petraeus, could enable the Afghan Government to extend its authority in all corners of Afghanistan. The most radical option called for the surge forces to leave by July 2012. This option would put at risk the fragile accomplishments the military had made so far in the south. He asked for the middle ground option, which required keeping the majority of the surge troops until November 2012, that is, after the fighting season ended in October, while between 5,000 and 10,000 could be withdrawn by the winter of 2012. This approach, said Petraeus, would give him a good chance to achieve his campaign’s plan, including redeploying some of the surge troops in 2012 to the east to pacify some districts from the Haqqani network.[17]
It seemed that Petraeus had not heard Obama well during the Af-Pak review. Obama had made it clear to the general that in July 2011, there would be no question of keeping the troops for longer, because Obama would begin to withdraw them. The general had been authorised to clear those places that he could transfer within the 18-month period. Obama only approved the surge in order to withdraw US forces. Now Petraeus was asking for almost two more years, if counted from December 2009, for another four years. Even then, 68,000 US troops would still remain, while the 30,000 would begin to withdraw.
Obama disagreed. His option was to remove 15,000 by the end of 2011 and 18,000 by July 2012. Petraeus stated that Obama’s option would ‘invalidate’ his campaign plan. ‘David, you shouldn’t have assumed I wouldn’t do what I told the American people I would’, said Obama.[18] Obama this time clearly did not want to follow the military advice the way he had done two years ago: he looked for a much quicker timetable than the military suggested. Obama wanted to set in place a policy trajectory that could succeed (Obama’s definition of success, below), but was also sustainable and proportional to US interests.[19]
Mullen spoke that a midsummer withdrawal would require the troops to start packing up late spring, which was before the peak of the fighting season. Clinton and Gates agreed with Mullen.[20] Ironically, so did National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and Director of the CIA Leon Panetta on this particular point.[21]
Biden, National Security Advisor for the Vice-President Antony Blinken, US Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan Douglas Lute, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, and US Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan, on the other hand, supported the July deadline.[22]
Gates then proposed a middle ground, as he had done for the surge in 2009, which required the troops to return in September.
Obama consented, and on the evening of June 22 the President announced from the East Room of the White House that he was going to fulfil the commitment he had announced at the end of 2009: the withdrawal of the surge troops, that is, 10,000 by the end of 2011, 23,000 by summer 2012, and by 2014, following the agreement of the Lisbon Summit, the entire security responsibility, or the combat role, would be transferred to the Afghans, and a small number of US troops might remain to conduct counterterrorism operations and train and assist the Afghan National Security Forces.[23]
Thus Obama managed to accomplish the policy trajectory he set in motion in 2009: Afghanise the mission and gradually bring US involvement to an end!
Obama obviously acted against the advice of the military leaders as well as his top civilian advisors, Clinton and Gates, since the troop reduction was deeper and faster than the military recommended. The decision also did not represent the situation on the ground. The question is why he did so now but not in 2009? The answer lies in the impact of bureaucratic politics, domestic influences and the belief system and images of Obama.
The decision to send American forces to kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan was Obama’s personal decision. The President took the decision even when it involved tremendous risk. Obama writes in his memoir that President Jimmy Carter ‘had never recovered politically [from the decision to rescue 53 American hostages held in Iran in 1980]. The unspoken suggestion was that I might not.’[24] But the decision paid off. He was hailed by friends and foes alike, including by former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Now the positive tone stood in contrast to the assumption that Obama was a middle way seeker, an indecisive and back seat leader, incapable of handling rapidly evolving events around the world.[25] The decision ‘represented a significant mark in his evolution as a national political leader’.[26]
On the other hand, Petraeus’s standing had been weakened by his flawed assumptions. His eminence within the Situation Room was further damaged by his appointment to the top job at the CIA. Even though Petraeus was entitled to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama did not consider him for the position.[27] According to British author and Professor Robert Singh, his appointment was politically motivated to ‘limit the potential that such a prestigious figure could cause Obama’.[28] Whatever the cause for the change of position might have been, the appointment removed him from the rank of the military and the Pentagon hierarchy.
His bureaucratic position was even more damaged by the presence of a no longer inexperienced leader in the White House. Unlike 2009, in June of 2011, almost three years into the presidency, Obama was more experienced and had developed greater understanding of the Afghanistan War.[29]
Penultimately, those colleagues who supported Petraeus during the Af-Pak review in 2009 were either gone or on their way out. He had lost US Commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal a year early and Gates was on his way out. Hawkish Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham could hardly influence the media and public opinion due to poor results in the theatre of war in Afghanistan.
Finally, Donilon as the NSA and Panetta as Gates’s successor had a naturally greater say this time. Having achieved some accomplishments in the past 18 months through counterterrorism operations, including the killing of Osama Bin Laden, both favoured counterterrorism operations, such as the intensification of unmanned drone strikes.[30]
The Biden camp was strengthened not only by those appointments, but also by the accuracy of their assumptions. Petraeus, therefore, did not enjoy the bureaucratic position he had had 18 months ago.
The numerous documents found from Osama Bin Laden’s compound convinced Obama (and the Biden camp, including Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry) that Al-Qaeda was significantly disrupted and its presence was dramatically reduced in Afghanistan, and, with Osama Bin Laden’s death, Al-Qaeda was so weakened and ‘within reach’ of being defeated that there was no need to keep a great number of troops in Afghanistan.
While the killing of Osama Bin Laden was one ‘strategic consideration’ that Obama invoked to take an aggressive position (much aggressive that the recommendations made by the military commanders), the rising costs of the war were another.[31] As seen in the previous section, public debate was against an expensive involvement in Afghanistan. The President’s political advisors, the Democratic Party, and the general American public pressurised him to reduce the expensive involvement in a war that seemed unwinnable, and instead take measures to focus on domestic problems such as reducing the unemployment rate and speeding up the slow recovery of the economy.[32]
The Democrats had a reason to be fuming since, in the mid-term 2010 election, the Democrats had suffered massive defeats, and Republicans had recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives. The Republican-controlled House pressurised Obama to raise the debt ceiling and reduce the budget deficit. More Republicans in 2011, compared to 2009, especially those involved in the presidential campaign, demanded an end to an expensive Afghanistan engagement. As seen in my other article, Obama’s approval rating had plummeted considerably, and he faced an increasingly restive American public over the Afghanistan War.[33] Foreign policy analyst Strobe Talbott was even of the opinion that Obama could lose the presidency over the war.[34]
Indeed, Obama faced a re-election the next year, and needed the support of his party and his political advisors, not Petraeus or any other military leaders.[35] Obama clearly seemed to have listened to the public debate when he announced that he was going to bring an end to US involvement in Afghanistan and instead invest in America and its people.[36]
Another important factor in 2011 was the changing of the whereabouts of the threat. More and more reports warned that Al-Qaeda recruited Americans to carry out their attacks. A prime example was Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed thirteen people and wounded thirty-two others. Moreover, Al-Qaeda threats from other countries − such as Somalia and Yemen – had materialised by 2011 by a Nigerian young man (‘the bomber from Yemen’), who (trained in one of the camps in Yemen) tried to blow up a passenger plane headed for Detroit on Christmas Day.[37] Thus the threat no longer was limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan, since Al-Qaeda had proved to be capable of carrying out attacks through its affiliates from other countries and from within America.[38] So the US was to focus more on other neglected regions and on security at home, according to US Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan’s new counterterrorism strategy in 2011.[39]
In 2011, the Obama Administration also faced numerous other pressing security issues including Iran, North Korea, and, most importantly, the Arab Spring. Unbelievably for many in the Obama Administration, the US spent more money each year to keep Marine battalions in Nawa and Garmsir than it provided the entire nation of Egypt in military and development assistance.[40]
Finally, and most importantly, the surge was in sync with Obama’s belief system and images of the Afghanistan War. Obama faced, to a lesser extent, though, the same opposing elements in 2009 ─ restive Americans, relentless budget pressure, opposition from Congress ─ as he did in 2011, yet he did not refuse the military in 2009. As analysed in one of my articles, things had not improved greatly in Afghanistan. It was untrue when Obama stated in his speech that ‘we are meeting our goals’ and starting the drawdown from ‘a position of strength’.[41]
Obama, as well as his supporters, such as Kerry, knew through CIA reports and the December 2010 assessment that most US goals in Afghanistan had not been met, and the strategy was not working.[42] So the achievement of US goals, which Obama gave as a reason for the drastic drawdown, could not have been the answer.
The answer could lie in Obama’s belief system and images of the US role in the world in general and in the Afghanistan War in particular: Obama did not see military means as the only solution to violent extremism, but ‘diplomacy’, ‘strong partnerships’ with allies and Muslim countries (multilateralism/engagement rather than unilateralism), investment in ‘homeland security’, and strengthening American values (by ‘living them at home’).[43] Obama preferred not to get deeply involved in conflicts that engaged ground forces, be they a counterterrorism strategy or a counterinsurgency strategy. Instead he preferred a ‘leading from behind’ approach, e.g. in Libya, Iraq (against Islamic state militants), and, to a lesser extent, Syria.[44]
As for the Afghanistan War, it was a civil war, an unwinnable one, and McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy was way too expensive and beyond US means and interests, and failed, as Obama had assumed, due to the ‘Pakistan problems’ (discussed in one of my articles), incompetent and corrupt government/Afghan National Security Forces, and the ‘inherent complexities’ (discussed in the same article) of Afghanistan. Obama’s views were compatible with those of Biden and his group/supporters, but he disagreed only with the Vice-President’s drastic approach (a quick withdrawal and leave only a number sufficient to conduct a counterterrorism strategy) in both 2009 and 2011.[45]
For the decision to withdraw (and the decision to surge), Obama’s outlook for Afghanistan was more in line with that of his future Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry wanted to have a ‘good enough’ state in Afghanistan (‘not building a perfect state’) to stop insurgents securing a base from which to launch attacks on the US and the allies, and to keep the gains the US had made. This way, their strategy and resources would match their objectives.[46] Like Kerry, Obama was increasingly doubtful about success the way the military defined it in Afghanistan.[47] But unlike Biden’s statements, Kerry’s statements argued against haste and recommended a responsible withdrawal.[48]
So Obama’s direction moved towards achieving such an Afghanistan that Kerry (and those area experts who sided with the Biden camp in section two ─ but not at the speed Biden would have wished for) argued for.[49] Changing the goal from a stable and secure to a not perfect state helped Obama to withdraw most of US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Obama hoped that such a state could be defended by the Afghan National Security Forces , regardless of how inadequate they were. Thus he treated the July 2011 date, as he had aimed at in 2009, as the beginning of the end of the US’s longest war against the Taliban (not Al-Qaeda, as it would continue) in Afghanistan. The Afghan National Security Forces , as argued in the Af-Pak review in 2009, were becoming a ticket out of Afghanistan for US troops.
The answer for the drastic troop reduction also lay in Obama’s aim for the surge: the surge was authorised to enable US troops to come home. It was an escalate-then-exit strategy. The exit part of the strategy, as Obama had made clear in 2009, was to begin in July 2011,[50] and that was why he authorised the surge. The factors considered above certainly helped Obama to be more aggressive in bringing US forces home.
It would probably have been another decision entirely if Petraeus had produced the same results as he had done in Iraq in 2007, something that Petraeus was confident in 2009 that he would. It might have silenced Congress, the American public, the critics, and consequently Obama. It could have challenged Obama’s belief system (or views about the Afghanistan War) and the assumptions it carried.
But, as seen in my article, that was not the case. Petraeus’s magic wand, which had previously turned a losing war into a relative success, did not work in Afghanistan. Most of his assumptions, as seen above, had proved to be mistaken. Biden and his group, on the other hand, were right on almost every one of their assumptions, confirming Obama’s beliefs that the Afghanistan War was not winnable and the military’s ‘loftiest ambitions’ were unachievable.[51] The Biden camp’s prediction (to which Obama had agreed in 2009) proved almost exact: in July 2011, things would remain the same in Afghanistan and not much would be changed for the better.
Meanwhile, Obama did not seem to think in technical terms of counterinsurgency strategy or counterterrorism strategy . For Obama, the US mission in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 was never a counterinsurgency strategy , nor did the drawdown decision change it immediately to a counterterrorism strategy. Obama did not buy both in the Af-Pak review in 2009, and rejected them once again in 2011.
However, McChrystal had tried to apply a counterinsurgency strategy in the south of Afghanistan, but the rest of Afghanistan still experienced counterterrorism operations, and most NATO states continued to apply caveats (discussed in my article on NATO’s role in the Afghanistan War) in their operations. So, technically speaking, it was perhaps a combination of both strategies. But the drawdown decision neither ended the counterinsurgency strategy nor approved a counterterrorism strategy.
However, the drawdown decision began to bring an end to the counterinsurgency strategy that the military had adopted 18 months ago (even if it was in two provinces), and paved the way for a counterterrorism strategy, but it did not change it overnight. Obama’s strategy, if anything, was a pragmatic approach that set in motion a reasonably responsible US withdrawal.[52]
Conclusion
For the decision to withdraw, Obama again heard the conflicting views from the two opposing camps. However, this time he did not listen to the military camp. He rather listened to himself (and the Biden camp since the President’s views were not dissimilar to those of his Vice-President) as the decision marked the beginning of the end of the US’s longest war. Certain factors helped Obama in his decision. They included the stalemate of the US war in Afghanistan, the inaccuracy of the military assumptions, and the accuracy of the assumptions made by the Biden camp, and the weakening positions of the counterinsurgency strategy pundits and the emerging of Obama as a strong leader were factors that influenced the decision to withdraw. Furthermore, the increasing opposition from Congress and the American public, the dire economic conditions in America, the emphatic language used by Obama in 2009 that he would not listen to pleas in 2011 to increase troops or keep the same level, the increasing threats from other countries, as well as from within America, the purpose of the surge to bring US forces home, and most importantly, the beliefs or views of the President of the US role in the world and Afghanistan were other factors which were reflected in the decision to withdraw. For Obama, the Afghanistan War was a costly and unwinnable quagmire, and that America’s future lay not in nation-building abroad but in investment at home. Ultimately, the 2011 drawdown was not a tactical compromise; it was a strategic pivot, driven by a president who, this time, was ready to listen to his own counsel above all else.
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[1] Obama, Barack. 2020. A Promised Land. Viking, p. 576.
[2] Pfiffner, James, ‘Decision Making in the Obama White House’, Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2(June), 2011, pp. 244-262, p. 244, <http://www.marioguerrero.info/326/Pffiner2011.pdf>
[3] McGurk, Brett, ‘Agreeing on Afghanistan: Why the Obama Administration Chose Consensus This Time’, CNN, June 22, 2011, < http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/22/agreeing-on-afghanistan/>
[4] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 562-565.
[5] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 486, 492, 562-565;O’Hanlon, Michael, ‘Staying Power: The U.S. Mission in Afghanistan Beyond 2011’, The Brookings Institution, September/October, 2010 <http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2010/08/25-afghanistan-ohanlon> ;Landler, Mark and Helene Cooper, ‘Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, 22 June 2011 ; Sanger, David E., Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, ‘Steeper Pullout Is Raised as Option for Afghanistan’, The New York Times, June 5, 2011.
[6] O’Hanlon, Michael, ‘Staying Power: The U.S. Mission in Afghanistan Beyond 2011’, The Brookings Institution, September/October, 2010 <http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2010/08/25-afghanistan-ohanlon>.
[7] Landler, Mark and Helene Cooper, ‘Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, 22 June 2011; Clinton, Hilary R., ‘Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Washington, D.C.’, Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, June 23, 2011, <https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/062211%20Secretary%20Clinton%20Testimony%20for%20SFRC%20Af-Pak%20Hearing.pdf>; Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 564.
[8] Sanger, David E., Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, ‘Steeper Pullout Is Raised as Option for Afghanistan’, The New York Times, June 5, 2011.
[9] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 483, 486-487.
[10] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 321.
[11] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 327.
[12] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 474, 483, 486-487. Moreover, the assessment of December 16, 2010, was prepared by Lute, and Gates believed it was not ‘balanced’, as it focused majorly on the negative aspects of the strategy, Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 500.
[13] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 474, 502.
[14] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 324.
[15] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 322.
[16] Sanger, David E., Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, ‘Steeper Pullout Is Raised as Option for Afghanistan’, The New York Times, June 5, 2011; Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 556-557.
[17] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 322-323;Landler, Mark and Helene Cooper, ‘Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, 22 June 2011; Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 562-565.
[18] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 323, 325.
[19] McGurk, Brett, ‘Agreeing on Afghanistan: Why the Obama Administration Chose Consensus This Time’, CNN, June 22, 2011, < http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/22/agreeing-on-afghanistan/>; Kerry, John F., ‘Chairman Kerry Opening Statement At Nomination Hearing For Ambassador To Afghanistan’, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, June 8, 2011, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/chairman-kerry-opening-statement-at-nomination-hearing-for-ambassador-to-afghanistan>; Mann, Jim. 2012. The Obamians: the struggle inside the White House to redefine American power. New York: Viking, p. 319; Singh, Robert. 2012. Barack Obama’s post-American foreign policy: the limits of engagement. London: Bloomsbury academic, p. 67.
[20] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 326; Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, pp. 562-565.
[21] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 565.
[22] Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 565.
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*Sharifullah has a PhD from Durham University in the UK on America’s Afghanistan War. He has authored several articles and two acclaimed books: The Lone Leopard, a novel set in Afghanistan, and America in Afghanistan, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Sharifullah is the founder of CEPSAF and the South Asia and Middle Eastern Editor at CESRAN International.