Modern warfare tends to depart from the post-Napoleonic, Clausewitzian theory that war is a rational expression of national interest. Paradoxically, technology, despite adding sophistication and lethality, has turned wars more superficial, unheroic, and inconclusive. The disconnect from the battlefield becomes obvious when drone pilots, sitting at their desks in Nevada, have the luxury of killing enemies thousands of miles away and then spending their evenings in Las Vegas.
Wars with chariots and cavalries used to be more conclusive with clear outcomes. Brown University released a report on the completion of 20 years of post-9/11 wars. The report maintains that the war was fought in 80 countries, had cost the U.S. an estimated $8 trillion, and killed more than 900,000 people. Catherine Lutz, co-director of Costs of War and a professor of international and public affairs at Brown, concludes, “The war has been long and complex and horrific and unsuccessful.”
As human capability to destroy has increased manifold during the last century, the contemplative power of war boardrooms has become more critical to assess post-war scenarios correctly and map the socio-cultural landscape of battlefields, particularly when they are hard, textured with a complex interplay of religious and tribal identities, like Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq.
The US-Afghan war is a case study, for example, to understand the deviation of modern warfare from reason in an age where excessive reliance on technology has somehow undermined the importance of contemplative power. The major military component of the Afghan War was almost finished on December 6, 2001, with the fall of Qandahar. The post-victory challenge was to expedite the process of transforming a highly tribalized society into a structured polity—with a considerable middle class.
The key parameters to achieve this goal were urban infrastructure, modernization of education, military build-up, and industrialization. George W. Bush stated in 2001, “Where the roads end in Afghanistan, the Taliban begin. In other words, roads promote enterprise. Enterprise promotes hope. Hope is what defeats this ideology of darkness.” However, despite giving huge economic aid—which accounted for 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75% of its expenditure—the US was unable to implement a comprehensive regulatory framework to ensure the strategic direction of the given credit and its transparent trickle-down.
The Ring Road, for example, was one important infrastructure project—out of many—that could have tremendously enhanced business, cultural mobility, and access to education. It would run in a 1,988-mile (3,200 km) loop, connecting Afghanistan’s four biggest cities: Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif. The project remained incomplete during the whole period of US presence in Afghanistan.
The Taliban, once a formidable proxy of the Western Bloc against the USSR during the Cold War climax, driven by the ideology of Jihad, conflated with Pashtun nationalism, developed a war economy. They better organized themselves and overran the fragmented Afghan warlords during the ’90s, and ultimately legitimized their power with support from the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
The premise that the Taliban, with their Hanafi, Deobandi orientation, can become a systematic force against other jihadi recruiters following pan-Islamic, Salafi interpretation of the same philosophy is fundamentally an analytical disaster. The U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team reported in 2024 that al-Qaida has established eight new training camps in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The report noted that the Taliban’s relationship “remains strong” with senior al-Qaida leaders, particularly with the terror group’s regional affiliate, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Additionally, the US forces left behind a vast arsenal of advanced weaponry, including armored vehicles, automatic assault rifles, transmitters, and night-vision handguns, which has fueled a thriving black market, with illegal weapons being traded across borders, multiplying the coordination and assault capacity of jihadi sleeper cells in South and Central Asia.
Pakistan faces the direct brunt of these sophisticated machines due to the shared ideological and tribal associations across its long, permeable border with Afghanistan. According to Antonio Giustozzi, the Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K) was the product of a huge investment by Al-Qaida in 2014, $800/month on every fresh recruit from the Haqqani Network and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—an isotope of the Afghan Taliban operating in Pakistan. Another customer of these illegal weapons is Baluch Liberation Army (BLA), a militant Baluch separatist outfit targeting Pakistan’s civilians and security forces.
The Taliban released prisoners from Bagram Base on August 15, 2021, including IS-K members responsible for the Abbey Gate explosion. “I don’t know the exact number. Clearly, it’s in the thousands when you consider both prisons,” said Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby in 2021.
After getting released, IS-K reorganized itself in northern Afghanistan as a base station. It has also expanded its influence to Central Asia, gained support from regional organizations like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Jund al-Khilafah (Kazakhstan), and Ansarullah (Tajikistan), which intend to create Islamic states in their respective areas of influence. The Moscow and Kerman attacks in 2024 were clear indications of IS-K’s strong logistical and human network in the region, with its powerhouse in Afghanistan. China is facing threats from the East Turkestan Movement. Moreover, the US withdrawal has rewound the clock for Pakistan’s military, undermining progress made in Swat, South Waziristan, and North Waziristan, where they conducted very complex but successful operations against terrorism. Among all this chaos, the most painful consequence was that moderate Afghans—educationists, rationalists, artists—were executed or otherwise fled their country to save their lives and careers. The Taliban’s ban on female education pushed a whole generation into darkness.
The US chaotic pullout from Afghanistan has destabilized the whole region. In February 2025, United Nations counterterrorism officials declared the Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K) one of “the most dangerous branches” of the transnational terrorist group. Vladimir Voronkov, U.N. undersecretary-general for counterterrorism, confirmed that IS-K plotted attacks in Europe and was actively seeking to recruit individuals from Central and South Asia.
The connotation “Khorasan” itself proves the transnational concept of this terror network, as historically, Khorasan referred to the northeastern province of the Sassanian Empire, the heartland of Eurasian connectivity and resources, anything between Transoxiana in the north, Caspian Sea in the west, Sistan desert in the south, and Indus River in the east. It encompasses parts of modern-day Iran, parts of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan.
To conclude, a twenty-year war is undone. Human war history has proved many times that sustaining victory has been a bigger challenge than achieving it. In the Peloponnesian War, Greece’s inability to strategize peace led to a protracted conflict that lasted 27 years, ultimately resulting in the destruction of the Athenian civilization. While strategizing victory relies heavily on machines, sustaining victory requires being more human, being contemplative, which enables us to navigate complex conflicts.
This is particularly relevant when reflecting on two extremes in the context of the US’ War on Terror: the September 11 attacks, which exposed the dangers of vulnerability, and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq, which showed the devastating consequences of reckless, miscalculated aggression. The Iraq War is another case that has left a legacy of regret among many of its supporters, who now acknowledge, after the resurrection of non-state terrorism, that anarchy can be more dangerous than the tyranny of dictatorship. My apprehension is the same for Syria as well.
In the current context of escalating tensions with Iran, contemplation is again crucial. By finding a balance between security concerns and military intervention, another inconclusive war can be avoided, one that would only perpetuate a cycle of endless violence and retribution.
The Author is a columnist and member of UNFCCC and ICAN. He taught Public Policy in the National Defence University of Pakistan.
