By: Daniel Nardini

The burning of the Quran by the U.S. military in Afghanistan exposed some dangerous fault lines that have been in the making for years. It was this incident that is showing why the U.S. government’s strategy has failed in Afghanistan and why the only answer now for the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is to completely withdraw from the country. Before I go on, I should explain that the Qurans that were burned were in fact issued to Taliban prisoners of war by the U.S. military. Interestingly enough, the Taliban prisoners used underlined words and written words between the texts as codes for other prisoners. The U.S. military personnel figured this out, and decided to destroy the books. In doing this the U.S. military committed two serious errors. First, the U.S. military should have taken the books and studied them for the types of codes used by the Taliban. Second, the U.S. military should have carefully considered the proper way of burning the Qurans. In Muslim tradition, the burning of a Quran as a means of proper disposal has to be done in a highly regulated manner—not disposed of like trash.

This is what happened at the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan. The Afghan workers who saw the Qurans being burned were horrified and tried to use their own hands to rescue what they could. It was from these people that the whole country learned about the burning of the Qurans. Four things have happened that have not been looked at carefully. First, the anti-American and anti-NATO riots occurred in areas controlled by the Afghan government. This in itself is very very serious because it means that despite 10 years of being in Afghanistan, the United States and NATO have not won the hearts and minds of the most of the Afghan people. Second, the fact that not just American soldiers but high ranking American advisers can be killed in areas that are supposed to be extra-secure states that if these areas are not secure then what part of Afghanistan is? Third, it has become very, very clear that the Afghan government has almost no control over the areas that are supposed to be under its control. Finally, after all those years the Taliban are not only undefeated but actually making a comeback.

All of this has made it clear that the “surge” in Afghanistan, and all other tactics used to defeat and destroy the Taliban forever, have failed. Now the U.S. military has entered into negotiations with the very enemy it had sought to destroy. Worse, the U.S. government has basically admitted defeat by beginning a process of withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan when the country is barely stable. Leaving behind a large force of military advisers or special forces will not do any good since it has become clear that the Afghan military is not exactly trustworthy. In my view if the U.S. venture into Afghanistan was to take out the Al Qaeda bases, get or kill Osama bin Laden, and render his worldwide terrorist network virtually incapable of doing harm against the United States, then we have succeeded. If it is to rebuild Afghanistan, fight an insurgency, and make the existing Afghan government a stable and democratic regime, then we have failed. In my view, since the Iraq War misadventure, the U.S. government lost the means and momentum to do what could have and should have been done in Afghanistan by taking the majority of our precious money, resources and lives out of the Afghanistan War. Instead of totally defeating the Taliban, we gave them the chance to recover—with the tragic consequences that there will never be a victory for America, and there will be no light at the end of this tunnel.