Five Years After the Withdrawal: Insights from the Afghanistan War Commission

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan this August, Dr. Colin Jackson and Colonel (Ret.) E.J. Degen join us to discuss initial insights from the Afghanistan War Commission’s work. The Afghanistan War Commission is an independent body established by the U.S. Congress to examine the key strategic, diplomatic, and operational decisions that pertain to the war in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021. In particular, the episode examines what the US war in Afghanistan can teach us about the promise—and limits—of building partner armies.

Summary

Security force assistance was central to the US war in Afghanistan. It was the presumed exit strategy: if Afghan forces could become capable enough, the United States could reduce or end its own combat role. Yet the collapse of Afghan security forces after the final US withdrawal raises hard questions about what the United States built, why it built it, and whether the desired end state was ever realistic. The guests discuss the work of the Afghanistan War Commission and what the commission has learned thus far about US efforts to build Afghan security forces.

Dr. Colin F. Jackson is the Co-Chair of the Afghanistan War Commission. He has served in a number of roles across academia and policy. Previously he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia from 2017 to 2019. He also served as the senior Department of Defense representative to the U.S.–Taliban peace talks. His career serving in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve included a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011 as Executive Officer for Policy Planning for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and as a senior civilian advisor to Task Force Mountain Warrior.

COL (Ret.) Edmund J. “E.J.” Degen is the Executive Officer and Chief of the Military Operations & Security Forces Assistance Team at the Afghanistan War Commission.  He is a retired career U.S. Army field artillery officer who rose to the rank of colonel and most recently served as the director of the Chief of Staff, Army’s Operation Enduring Freedom Study Group. He commanded artillery units at all levels through the brigade and served as the V Corps (U.S.) chief of plans for the Iraq invasion at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, chief of future operations for U.S. Forces Korea, and chief of staff for Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435 in Afghanistan. He has coauthored two official U.S. Army