The US Decision to Invade Afghanistan - Research Paper Example

The US Decision to Invade Afghanistan The American decision to invade Afghanistan remains mired in controversy, despite the fact that it occurred more than eight years ago. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the United States faced the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on US soil. The hijackings on September 11th 2001 effectively changed the world and the decision of the United States to invade Afghanistan less than one month after the attacks of September 11th was a watershed moment in world history. The ramifications of this decision continue to resonate, as NATO forces remain committed to eradicating the Taliban presence from the rural regions of Afghanistan and the United States remains and embroiled in quelling the insurgency. The United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan took place almost immediately following the attacks of 9/11 and led to the successful overthrow of the Taliban, an extremist and violent Islamist organization which had run Afghanistan through fear and brutality. That Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and remains severely underdeveloped has been a feature of this country’s existence for centuries. The American decision to invade Afghanistan remains controversial for some but has been justified as being legal and within international law. With the aim of understanding the decision of United States to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, this research paper will provide a thorough analysis of a complex phenomenon. To what extent was the war in Afghanistan, against both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, justified according to article 51 of the UN Charter? To what extent was the behavior of the United States justified in line with the principle of self defense?1 While the invasion was successful and led to the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the insurgency continues and the consequences of such an event continue to resonate on the lives of average Afghans. Afghanistan remains in the news, as the shady reelection of Hamid Karzai reflects, and the international community has a vested interest in ensuring the peace and stability of this war-torn country. Although the issues of peace and security in Afghanistan today remain relevant and interesting to discuss, they are beyond the scope of this analysis. The purpose of this research paper is to explore the antecedents for the American-led invasion of this Central Asian country and determine whether or not this invasion was justified in the eyes of the international community. International law is a fascinating topic to discuss in light of the important issues surrounding Afghanistan today but again, the focus here will be on the legality of the actions undertaken by the United States and its allies following the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Aiming to understand the intricacies surrounding the American invasion and the principle of self-defence in international law, this research paper will provide a concise overview of the United Nation’s Charter and its applicability in this context. We now turn to an overview of the antecedents to the invasion, the establishment of the Bush Doctrine in Washington which authorized the use of force in Afghanistan and an analysis of the legal issues surrounding this decision. Since the decision to invade Afghanistan was based upon the concept of self-defense and the inherent right of the United States to defend itself after attack, Article 51 of the UN Charter was utilized to provide ammunition for the United States in its response to terror on American soil. Since this article deals explicitly with relations between states and not sub state actors such as Al Qaeda, this research paper will explore this article in depth. Accordingly, this assignment will emphatically argue that Article 51 does not justify the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and that the invasion was thus unjust under international law.2 The UN Charter and the Invasion of Afghanistan The United Nations was established in the aftermath of the Second World War to provide peace and security throughout the world as well as to manage the international system. Accordingly, the Charter of the United Nations seeks to regulate state behavior in a dangerous international environment and provide a series of mechanisms for international peace. Due to its total relevance to this assignment, it is important that certain aspects of the United Nations Charter be reproduced here in their entirety. Accordingly, Section 2, Articles 3) and 4) explicit advocate a peaceful means for dispute resolution and specify the importance of state sovereignty. Accordingly, 3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. 4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.3 In addition to these important aspects of the United Nations Charter for the purpose of this analysis, Article 51 of the UN Charter is particularly relevant. Accordingly, the following is reproduced for the sake of this analysis and is the 51st, and final, article of the United Nations Charter: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.4 The United States and the coalition forces justified the invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that the United States had an inherent right to self-defence following the outlandish attacks of September 11th. The question of whether this is actually the case has confounded scholars and foreign policy aficionados for years and will continue to do so in the future. What makes the decision of the United States to invade Afghanistan so troubling in this particular context is that Taliban government did not actively participate in the planning nor the delivery of the attacks of September 11th. By providing safe haven to the Al Qaeda leaders who masterminded the attacks, the logic utilized by the United States makes the Taliban leaders responsible for providing support and a safe home for the plotters. Interestingly, this Article was not framed with the idea of sub national terrorists in mind. Importantly, the United Nations exist to maintain peace and stability between states and to establish international law and precedent. It was not crafted with the goal of regulating behavior between states and sub-state actors such as the Al Qaeda. Thus, the applicability of this provision of the UN Charter is brought into question. The inherent right to self-defence in this context refers to the right to self-defence by a state (the United States) to exercise its right when attacked by another state (such as Afghanistan, Russia or a whole host of other countries). Because the Al Qaeda movement was not, at the time, at the helm of a state within the international system of governance, the linkages between this piece of international law and the decision by the United States to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban in its search for Osama bin Laden, was seen by many as spurious at best. While the self-defence argument for the invasion of Afghanistan remains disputed, it is evident that Section 2, Articles 3) and 4) of the United Nations Charter were contravened when the United States decided to invade the sovereign state of Afghanistan. Accordingly, there are numerous questions raised about the ability of states to intervene in the affairs of another state when that state is accused of harboring terrorists. Accordingly, a fascinating article by Kimberley N. Trapp in International and Comparative Law Quarterly emphatically demonstrates that international law and legal precedent have determined that the right of state “A” to attack state “B” because of the alleged presence of terrorists operating on the terrorist of state “B” is illegal under international law. Accordingly, citing the International Court of Justice in DRC vs. Uganda, the court ruled that the right to self-defence is not permissible under the circumstances outlined above. Importantly, this case bears striking resemblance to the arguments put forth by the United States for the invasion of Afghanistan and overthrow of the Taliban following the Al-Qaeda-led attacks of September 11th 2-01. Accordingly, Despite the overwhelming support for the 2001 US-led campaign in Afghanistan, it remains the only internationally accepted example of a use of force directed against a States apparatus, where that State did not launch the armed attacks being responded to. And while it is still too early to tell whether this practice will develop into a rule recognizing a States acquiescence in, or failure to suppress, international terrorism as a basis of attribution...In the meantime, State practice strongly suggests that the international community has recognized a right to use force in self-defence targeting non-State actors in foreign territory to the extent that the foreign State cannot be relied on to prevent or suppress terrorist activities.5 American foreign policy has fundamentally altered the geopolitical landscape of the world and the ramifications of the attacks of September 11th 2001 continue to resonate around the world. The right to self-defence, in the context implied by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, would necessarily be predicated on the idea that Afghanistan participated in the attacks of September 11th. If the leaders of the Taliban directly orchestrated the attacks that warm fall morning, then logic would have it that the United States would have the right to engage in its right to self-defence. This is where its logic falls flat on its face. The United States has accused the Taliban regime of horrendous things, including rape, murder and pillaging, not to mention the horrible way that it treated its women while the authority in Kabul, but the government of Afghanistan did not carry out an armed attack on American soil. Alleged operatives of the Al Qaeda network did. Accordingly, none of the 19 alleged hijackers who carried out the hijackings were native Afghans or were working on the orders of the government of that country. From this perspective then, the linkages between the hijackers on September 11th and the government of Afghanistan are difficult to prove. The United Nations Security Council quickly condemned the attacks of September 11th and passed a series of resolutions, 1368 and resolution 1373, which sought to address the concerns of the United States in bringing the perpetrators of the attacks to justice. Importantly, Article 51 does not tackle the issue of sub state actors and the response of states to their acts. While the United States has utilized the Bush Doctrine as a foreign policy prescription and as a justification for the use of force in Afghanistan, the invasion was not sanctioned by international law. For this defense in be valid in the eyes of the international community, the United States would have had to have been attacked by Afghanistan. That did not take place. Looking at the Article 51 more closely, it becomes readily apparent that the American invasion of Afghanistan did not have legal sanction. Providing safe haven to the heads of the Al Qaeda movement was the major shortcoming of the Afghan government with respect to the way in which it aided the attacks of September 11th. It also had the opportunity to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States for trial and failed to do so. This may have in fact saved the Afghan people from the looming invasion and untold death and suffering6. There are some who feel that the United States had ulterior motives in its decision to invade Afghanistan. Securing a pliant client state in the newly important Caspian Sea region would help US efforts aimed at extracting the natural wealth of one of the most underdeveloped regions of the world. Much has been made of American financial interests in the region and former oil executive and George W. Bush’s Vice-President Dick Cheney famously remarked, "I cant think of a time when weve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian".7 Thus, American interests in the region, from an economic and political perspective, may thus explain the decision of the American government to invade a sovereign state irrespective of international law. By securing a pliant regime in Afghanistan, according to this argument, the United States is able to maintain control over the ever important pipelines joining Afghanistan with the rest of the newly independent Central Asian republics. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left a power vacuum in the region, the United States hoped to step in and maintain its regional hegemony. There are many skeptical questions raised by the invasion of Afghanistan and they are beyond the scope of this analysis. Nonetheless, they remain relevant in the context of this analysis of the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.8 The War in Afghanistan began just a little over 3 months following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, a moment which will go down in the annals of history as one of the worst terrorist attacks of all time. Following these horrendous attacks, the United States, in coalition with a series of allies, launched Operation Enduring Freedom which was justified in direct response to the attacks on September 11th, 2001. With the aim of removing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and finding the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center Attacks, Osama bin Laden, the United States argued that it was acting in self-defence and had an inherent right to find the mastermind of the Al Qaeda network and hold him accountable for the devastating attacks that fateful September morning. During the policies espoused by the Bush regime in Washington, the Bush Doctrine allows for the United States to engage in retaliation against both the Al Qaeda network and the regime which harbored them. By providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden and the heads of the Al Qaeda network, the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan was made on the grounds that states that harbor terrorists are guilty of a crime under international law and subject to measures which would punish those who harbor terrorists. Through Operation Enduring Freedom, the United States argued that it was engaging in self-defence, following Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and was legitimate in seeking to bring the perpetrators of the attacks of September 11th to justice. With the stated aim of finding Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts, the United States and its coalition of armies utilized the principle of self-defence to justify the invasion in the eyes of the international community. Accordingly, this defence is spurious at best and ignores UN Charter.9 Concluding Remarks According to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was not justified in international law. This paper has established the following: 1) the government of Afghanistan did not directly attack the United States; 2) the alleged hijackers on September 11th were not Afghan operatives working for the Government of Afghanistan, nor were they Afghan citizens themselves; 3) Article 51 of the United Nations deals specifically with nations between states and serves to provide a mechanism through which states can respond to attack. This is described as the “inherent right to self-defense”. Importantly, however, State A needs to be attacked by State B for the right to be justified. Unfortunately, in the case of the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, that was not the case. The US invasion of a severing country represented an affront to the principles of international order and directly contravened the UN Charter. In this respect, the invasion was just illegal. While the Taliban was a horrendous form of government and inflicted untold suffering on the men and women of Afghanistan while in power, the United States and its allies did not have the right to invade the country following the attacks of September 11th 2001. Accordingly, the linkages between the Taliban regime and the hijackers are spurious at best. The Bush Doctrine, a neo-conservative set of foreign policy prescriptions which has fundamentally altered the ways in which the United States exerts its global hegemony following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, paved the way for the invasion of Afghanistan. Justifying pre-emptive military action and arguing that states which harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves, the Bush Doctrine sought to justify an act which had no basis in international law. Since the United Nations Charter was established to regulate behavior between states and not between a state and a sub state actor, the United States has made a spurious correlation between the existence of the alleged heads of the global Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan and its desire to engage in its right to self defense following a terrorist act. Accordingly, this defense is baseless and ignores international law. Accordingly, the United States should be held accountable for its illegal invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and its decision to wreak havoc on the sovereign nation of Afghanistan. The ramifications of this illegal act continue to resonate today.10 bibliography Afghanistan, 2000, CIA World Fact Book, viewed November 9, 2009 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/AF.html Armstrong, A & Rubin B 2003, ‘Regional Issues in the Reconstruction of Afghanistan’ World Policy Journal, 2:3, pp. 12-69. Gallacher, A 2009, “Obamas new Afghan strategy”’ BBC News. viewed November 9, 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7896173.stm Goodhand, J 2004, ‘Frontiers and Wars: the Opium Economy in Afghanistan’ Journal of Agrarian Change, 5:2, pp. 191-216. Held, D 1989, “Sovereignty, National Politics and the Global System”, Political Theory and the Modern State, pp. 214-242. Hobsbawm, E.1994, Age of Extremes: The Short History of the Twentieth Century: 1914-1991, Abacus, London. Malloch-Brown, M 2008, ‘Opium production in Afghanistan’ British Medical Journal, 336, pp. 972-973. 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