Strategy and Long Term Thinking
In the last few days, we have all been horrified and heartbroken by the chaotic, frightening and tragic scenes coming out of Afghanistan as its American-backed government fell at lightning pace to the insurgent Taliban, nearly 20 years after the US first sent troops to the country.
The rapid collapse of the Afghan government took the US and most world leaders by surprise and, as always, the innocent and the brave were and are still the ones suffering the most, through fear, displacement, oppression, victimization, violence and death.
When the US forces entered Afghanistan in late 2001, their goal was to weed out Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, as well as to punish the Taliban for supporting al-Qaeda's use of Afghanistan to train the fighters who attacked the US on 9/11. But US troops ended up staying long beyond their mission for many more years, and in the absence of clear strategy and long term thinking by the US and its allies, their mission became unclear, confused and some would argue, seriously lacking.
The US and its allies thought they could rebuild Afghanistan as a democracy, which would free all its citizens from oppression, stop the exporting of opium and create a new environment that would stop serving as a training ground for radicalised fighters. But in its arrogance and ignorance, as a result of an unwillingness by the US to truly understand the history and complexity of this country, it failed to appreciate that Afghanistan was less of a state and more accurately a collection of diverse peoples, in particular the Pashto, who do not recognize hard country borders and whose loyalties were more narrow than national ones.
The resurgence of terrorism and the escalating humanitarian crisis we are now witnessing is a direct result of the absence of clear strategy, commitment to long term thinking and a failure to remain loyal to a single mission that was meant to bring less suffering, greater safety and more freedoms to the people of this Afghanistan and the US.
Put another way, when leaders try to exert their power and authority without a clear and aligned vision, mission and purpose in pursuit of a common and greater good, failure is the most foreseeable outcome.
And in the case of Afghanistan, failure by the US and its allies has resulted once again in the oppression, displacement, trauma, violence and death of innocent Afghanis, millions of whom now know not where to turn.
When will our world leaders learn from the mistakes of the past - the mistakes of their past?
We must do what we can to do better. As leaders, influencers, role models and change agents, we must at least learn the lessons and commit to leading and living with alignment, clarity and loyalty to a clear purpose. Now more than ever the world is calling upon us to do this. And if not us then whom?
