ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the American War in Afghanistan, because the US unilaterally took the decisions regarding the war, its initiation and conclusion. The chapter outlines three crucial American decisions made at the outset of the war that influenced its course until the end. The initial decision regarding regime change was linked to choices about how to remove the Taliban (e.g., the number of troops to be deployed) and what would replace the Taliban in Kabul. In terms of the ‘how’ question, the answer ultimately became the deployment of a limited number of American forces on Afghan soil to remove the Taliban in collaboration with the Northern Alliance – militias that consisted of warlords with a brutal history and conduct. Another crucial decision during the first phase of the war was that the Americans chose to abdicate responsibility for building a new regime; the argument being that the USA did not want to take responsibility for nation-building. The challenges associated with these decisions reflected both a knowledge problem and created the legitimacy issues that the US and its allies grappled with – and which the Taliban could exploit to their advantage in their mobilisation campaigns.
