No easy way out : origins and consequences of NATO’s failure in Afghanistan

By the end of 2014 the ISAF mission in Afghanistan will come to an end and a new NATO mission – Resolute Support – will be launched next year. In three years, the military presence in Afghanistan has dramatically diminished from 140,000 troops in 2011 to 52,000 (February 2014) and will be reduced to 12/13,000 in 2015. ISAF withdrawal and, more generally, the drastic reduction of the military presence are not motivated by a clear-cut improvement in the country, neither in the socio-economic and institutional sphere nor in the security conditions. The paper explores the reasons why the international intervention has not attained the goals set for it. It investigates mistakes and limits of the strategic approach behind the military intervention since 2001 focusing on: (a) the consequences of the initial lack of distinction between the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda militants, (b) problems of coordination and competing visions between the US-lead mission Enduring Freedom and ISAF, (c) the ideological side of the war on terror which complicated the regional context and failed to engage regional actors in Afghanistan; (d) shortcomings and limited results of the Af-Pak Strategy.