A clue that the war in Afghanistan is not really over

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The United States will continue its “beyond the horizon” strikes against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced Thursday, a month after the theoretical end of the American war in Afghanistan. The statement raises an important question: how far did the war end completely?

When President Biden first announced his withdrawal schedule in May, his administration sent decidedly mixed messages. Biden himself had long favored the indefinite maintenance of a residual US force on the ground. Reports at the time indicated that US airstrikes would continue, that a significant presence of “covert special operations forces, Pentagon contractors and secret intelligence agents” would remain, and many US forces recently. exits would settle in neighboring countries and waters in order to continue. train the Afghan allies and carry out air strikes.

It is clear that part of that plan has changed in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal and the Taliban takeover of Kabul. In recent weeks, Biden has dismissed the idea of residual force. With a bit of luck, we are no longer training the military of an Afghan government that no longer exists. But the status of underground troops, contractors and spies is more uncertain. In early September, the Biden administration said there were only 100 to 200 Americans left in Afghanistan. But some American contractors are not American, and if special forces and spies were still present, they might not be included in that tally. Admitting that secret agents are still in the country kind of ruins the whole “secret” thing.

Then there are those “on the horizon” strikes, which Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby clarified are not exclusively drone strikes, like the recent US strike that killed seven children and no terrorists. “It doesn’t even always have to mean aviation,” Kirby said. “‘Beyond the horizon’, like [Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin] defined, means that the strike, the means and the analysis of the target come from outside the country in which the operation takes place.

In other words, plans for the replenishment of US forces just outside the Afghan borders could be substantially unchanged. (Strangely, these forces can set up on Russian military bases.) Some of these strikes – if not airstrikes – might even have American boots on Afghan soil again. And the strikes will come under the authority of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). It is the authorization itself that started the war in Afghanistan, the war that is supposed to be waged.

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