International military involvement in Afghanistan after 2001 as a counterinsurgency operation: goals, strategies and reasons for failure

The thesis International Military Involvement in Afghanistan after 2001 as a Counterinsurgency Operation – Goals, Strategies, and Reasons for Failure deals with the reasons for failure that international involvement in Afghanistan has been facing with its goals of counterinsurgency. It reconsidered the military, diplomatic, and developmental strategies adopted by international forces and recognized two approaches to the complex operation of counterinsurgency-population-centric and enemy-centric. Such methods were to be not only against the insurgents themselves but also devised to bring the locals to their side. The thesis points out that Pakistan's support for such groups as the Taliban became a significant determining factor for this conflict. Besides, setbacks in the Afghan government, coordination issues among coalition forces, cultural dynamics, resurgent insurgent forces, and changes in geopolitical aims all worked together against the success of these operations. The case studied the reasons for the failure of this counterinsurgency operation by drawing upon the strategies employed and their execution methods, the influence of external actors, and the Afghan government's role. A hypothesis is that with the change in the geopolitical landscape, the goals for counterinsurgency varied with time. It hypothesizes that notwithstanding the diverse military, diplomatic, and development strategies implemented, coordination problems, often policy changes, and resilience from insurgents became barriers toward coalition efforts. This qualitative research will employ scholarly works, government documents, and other academic sources to understand insurgency and counterinsurgency dynamics. It will help illustrate that insurgencies are complex, multi-dimensional strategy affairs well beyond military action; hence, a broad-based understanding of insurgency characteristics involves leadership, ideology, and foreign support. In a word, the thesis argues that international counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was outplayed by complex plays of influence at the strategic and operational levels, from the area of foreign influence, and rooted in cultural dynamics to bring the intervention structure down and raise forces of insurgency.