“It won’t be simple—or cheap—to build the kind of remote counterterror operation the pullout will require. [Afghanistan is] a landlocked country in a neighborhood dominated by America’s adversaries, and although the U.S. still has allies inside Afghanistan, such as its armed forces, those allies are constrained in operating without significant U.S. assistance,” Stanford University’s Asfandyar Mir and the Soufan Group’s Colin P. Clarke write for Politico.
 
“For years, U.S. Forces Afghanistan have provided little to no transparency in responding to claims of civilian casualties and have outright rejected well-documented claims for no specified reason. It’s a level unlike anything else I’ve seen in a U.S. war zone,” Columbia University’s Azmat Khan tweets.
 
In this episode of the Why It Matters podcast, CFR President Richard N. Haass discusses the lessons to be learned in the wake of the war in Afghanistan.