IN 2002, when Dick Cheney, former US Vice-President claimed the Taliban were “out of business” he hadn’t anticipated their staying power when seven years on Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff conceded they had a “dominant influence in 11 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces”.

When Mullen supported a troop surge, followed closely by a counterinsurgency campaign as dissenting AfPak architects expressed scepticism about the chances of long-term success in Afghanistan, there was no doubt the war strategy wasn’t working. What surprised warmongers then was Afghans wanting an international presence, and then, as the situation slowly normalised, investment trickled back into the country, schools reopened, foreign aid workers flooded the provinces, with women working out of their homes for the first time post-Taliban. A BBC/ABC poll showed how just under half the population wanted international forces to stay and rebuild.

As the rush for an exit plan in 2014 looms ominously, many Afghans fear for their future security. The largely ambiguous though consistent position taken by the White House on accelerated troop withdrawal is acknowledgment of how little progress has been made since Obama approved the 2009 troop surge.

Bin Laden’s death served as a tipping point realigning US policy in Afghanistan and its symbiotic relationship with the Pakistani civilian-military nexus. Speculation in Islamabad and Langley centres on whether the US will now engage in a more rapid phased withdrawal and if so, will they deal directly with the Afghan Taliban or bring in recalcitrant Pakistan as interlocutor. Will the Taliban leadership agree to power-share with Kabul and to Pakistan’s role as broker or wait it out for the drawdown? If the drawdown date gives adequate time for regrouping, then talking to the Taliban might be a cosmetic, short-term manoeuvre.

Obama’s Afghan review talked of ‘operational gains’ made to reverse Taliban momentum in some regions, with Biden favouring a narrow counterterrorism approach pursuing insurgents in Pakistan and on the Afghan border, not intending to nation-build. But Taliban momentum has gained strength this spring. All this, as right-wingers believe most forces should come home by the summer with some wanting the country to be left to its own devices. Even Britain’s David Cameron says he wants 450 of his men out this summer with Robert Gates reminding Karzai about the “weariness in both of our countries over the duration and costs of the conflict”.

It appears the US hasn’t learnt from its own history of war with the Taliban. When the Afghan Taliban merged militarily/financially with an in-house Al Qaeda leadership post 9/11, it brought back a full-fledged jihad movement.

Hard-core, Al Qaeda ideology-driven militant groups, with tentacles entrenched globally will proliferate long after the US-led forces exit Afghanistan and top militant commanders have been taken out through drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal region.

Even Bin Laden’s death has failed to directly impact the strength of the insurgency in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East, so any future US-led policy will have to be multifaceted. Ideological war requires the best theoretical hardware: more than military strategy alone, political networking in Afghanistan with concentrated, sustained and financially assisted nation-building will gradually take away hate and intolerance when all major stakeholders have their say.

Allowing the Taliban to benefit as they held civilians hostage to fear, increasing their loathing of western forces that they believed would liberate the country economically and politically of tyrannical and archaic rule was a huge miscalculation after the Soviet’s left in 1989.

In The Longest War, Peter Bergen questions if a doomed nation-state can be brought back from the precipice: “A corollary to the argument that Afghanistan was unconquerable was the argument that it was ungovernable: that the country has never been a functional nation-state, that its people, mired in a culture of violence not amenable to western fixes, had no interest in helping to build a more open, peaceful society.”

Training and equipping the Afghan army and government to secure most provinces will become a critical US legacy for the region. But the army single-handedly is not ready to safeguard high-risk provinces, nor present in adequate numbers to take charge and prevent the Taliban from creating safe havens for a newer generation of militant recruits, flushed out of Pakistan’s tribal belt, after drone strikes render these regions vulnerable as future hideouts.

A post-2011 Afghan government will be a tough conglomerate, if it is able to fix the selectiveness, unsustainability and ineffectiveness of the current government. Will the existing political players remain entrenched (the Karzai coterie and favoured warlords); what are the ingredients of political power-sharing; who will set the rules — this is all open to inference.

Even if conservative estimates place about a few hundred Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan, the sustained focus should be to clear regional Taliban strongholds and then ensure security with a joint Afghan-western force collaboration until security responsibilities are handed over. Without peace, there will be no semblance of institutional and economic development with the government resting on allegations of poor governance.

Altering the Karzai set-up will need a clever political reform agenda, negotiations with high-level Taliban insurgents, reconciliation at the local level, and regional dialogue. To top it off, Pakistan must cooperate. It is in their best interest to do so, and ironically this relationship with assorted militant groups means they may have levers of influence that could bring some to the negotiating table. Until then, the reluctant threesome continues their longest fight — America, Pakistan and Afghanistan — against a hydra-headed ideological force.

The writer is senior assistant editor at Herald.

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