The Two Trillion Dollar Misunderstanding – Sowing the Seeds of Instability from the Very Beginning

This chapter examines the U.S. failure in Afghanistan, attributed to the application of the “War on Terror” doctrine. Utilizing records from Department of Defense interrogators, eyewitness accounts, the Bonn Agreement, as well as the personal observations from the author (a veteran US diplomat and Afghan scholar), the chapter highlights the initial Taliban leaders’ willingness to cooperate in 2001-2002. The main argument is that U.S. counter-terrorism policy, which equated the Taliban with al-Qaeda, missed early opportunities for stability, pushing the Taliban into exile and resistance. The chapter concludes that U.S. policy failures, despite later adjustments, led to the collapse of the Afghan government post-U.S. withdrawal. As an Annex, the chapter includes an unpublished non-paper, by former U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General Lakhdar Brahimi from 2003 on the Bonn Agreement.