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The Foreign Policy Decision-Making Approaches and Their Applications: Case Study: Bush, Obama and Trump’s Decision Making towards Afghanistan and the Region
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Author: Dr Sharifullah Dorani Originally published by: The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development Photo credit: Gerd Altmann / Pixabay External Publication This article was originally published by The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development. A short summary is provided here for readers of this website. Summary In this article, I examine the long-standing…
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Why Karzai Clashed with the US and NATO and What It Meant
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Photo Credit: Hamid Karzai portrait (2002) – Public domain (USAID/US federal government) By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘After our assault on Kabul, the United States had brought Karzai and his advisors back and installed them in power―functional expatriates we hoped would serve as the Afghan face of a new, nonmilitant order…[T]hey did their best to…
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Obama’s Exit from Afghanistan: What the ‘Responsible End’ Really Meant
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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…
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The US Divided over the Afghanistan War: Pro- and Anti-War Narratives in the 2011 Withdrawal Debate
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* Introduction This article deals with public debate over the Afghanistan War during the President Obama made the decision in 2011 to withdraw the 30000 surge troops from Afghanistan, deployed just two years prior. To do so, the contributions of the actors/area experts from Congress, the press, think-tanks and other influential…
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What Obama’s Military, Civilian, and Diplomatic Surge Achieved in Afghanistan
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* The three-track strategy did not proceed as intended when it was implemented. The Afghan Government remained as corrupt as ever. Its leader, the Afghan President, disagreed with numerous components of the strategy and did not (or could not) fully cooperate. At local levels, in areas cleared by the military, the…
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Why Obama Failed to Secure a Taliban Peace Deal and a Regional Settlement
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘The Riedel report, though, made one thing clear: Unless Pakistan stopped sheltering the Taliban, our efforts at long-term stability in Afghanistan were bound to fail.’[1] President Obama Introduction In June 2011, President Barack Obama made the decision to withdraw the 30,000 US troops by the end of 2012, and the…
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Obama’s Development Strategy in Afghanistan (2009–2011): Ambition vs Reality
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* Introduction In June, 2011, President Barack Obama made the decision to withdraw the 30,000 US troops by the end of 2012, and the rest by 2014. The decision, in effect, marked the beginning of the end of the US’s longest war, the Afghanistan War, highlighting a major turning point in…
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Obama’s Civilian Surge and Afghanistan’s Governance Crisis
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘[M]assive U.S. contracts to some of Kabul’s shadiest business operators undermined the very anti-corruption efforts designed to win over the Afghan people.’[1] President Obama Introduction In June, 2011, President Barack Obama made the decision to withdraw the 30,000 US troops by the end of 2012, and the rest by 2014.…
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An Analysis of Obama’s 2009 Military Surge in Afghanistan
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* Introduction In June, 2011, President Barack Obama made the decision to withdraw the 30,000 US troops by the end of 2012, and the rest by 2014. The decision, in effect, marked the beginning of the end of the US’s longest war, the Afghanistan War, highlighting a major turning point in…
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Was Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy COIN, CT-Plus, or None
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘Depending on who you talked to, our mission in Afghanistan was either narrow (wiping out al-Qaeda) or broad (transforming the country into a modern, democratic state that would be aligned with the West)…my first priority was to make sure our agencies…were aligned around a clearly defined mission and a coordinated…