In October 2024, Norway appointed a second Afghanistan Commission to evaluate the country’s efforts in Afghanistan, this time covering the period from 2015 to 2021. As part of its review, it examined Norway’s military contribution, development assistance and its efforts to support peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, as well as the 2021 evacuation operation. As with the first commission (which evaluated the period 2001-2014), it was chaired by Norway’s former Minister of Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bjørn Tore Godal. Therefore, it was publicly known as the Godal Commission. AAN’s contributions came about when, in early 2025, the Commission invited AAN’s former co-director, Thomas Ruttig, to give a presentation. It subsequently asked AAN to prepare an independent study on international intervention in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2021.
Norwegian soldiers stand guard at a military camp in Maymana, northern Afghanistan, outside refrigerated units containing the bodies of four comrades killed in a roadside bomb attack in Faryab province on 27 June 2010. Photo: AFP, 28 June 2010
You can read or download the two studies, which AAN produced for Norway’s second Afghanistan Commission (Afghanistanutvalget) below. The first, by Thomas Ruttig, examines the international engagement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 and serves as a prologue to the second, main study, which assesses international actions in the period from 2015, following the end of the ISAF combat mission, to the collapse of the Islamic Republic in August 2021.
These years were marked by deep political divisions within the Afghan political establishment, a war that was largely fought between Afghans, entrenched corruption within the Afghan state, negotiations between the United States and the Taliban that sidelined the Afghan government and resulted in the virtually unconditional withdrawal of US and other foreign forces, and eventually, the collapse of the Islamic Republic and the return of the Taliban to power.
The Commission’s final report, pointedly entitled Defeat, reaches conclusions that speak to the wider flaws and failures of the US-led post-2001 intervention in Afghanistan. One of its key conclusions is that Norway, like most Coalition members, shaped its engagement with an eye to its relationship with the US, often to the detriment of Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Germany’s Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry reached a similarly critical assessment in its February 2025 report, describing the intervention as a “strategic defeat” (see also AAN’s analysis of the German Parliamentary Enquete-Kommission’s 2024 interim report).
The two AAN studies should be read against this assessment of the international intervention – one shared by Norway’s Commission and Germany’s parliamentary committee alike. At their heart lie questions that extend well beyond Norway’s engagement alone.
The first study, by Thomas Ruttig, examines the formative years of the post-2001 intervention, exploring how decisions made during the Bonn process and the early years of state-building shaped Afghanistan’s political institutions, embedding flaws that were to plague Afghanistan for the next two decades. The second study brings together contributions from six senior AAN analysts examining the period 2015 to 2021 through five themes: democratic institutions and elections, security, development and the aid economy, peace and reconciliation and human rights, together with an epilogue that reflects on why the collapse of the Republic was so sudden, what was lost and what remains, and finally looks to the future, asking:
What can be done when a large project like this is headed in a direction that cannot be easily walked back, and is in fact creating new problems of its own, but to abandon the effort would also make things worse, albeit in a different way? Or more concretely: What leverage points does a small country [like Norway] have in a joint intervention like this – an intervention that was flawed from the beginning, had an internal logic that counteracted the stated aims and defined success in ways that discouraged course correction, an intervention that was politically difficult not to join and became almost impossible to extricate oneself from?
Rather than presenting a single, unified narrative, the studies offer a plurality of perspectives that explore a different dimension of the international engagement. By allowing the evidence and interpretation of each expert to stand on its own, the studies invite the reader to consider the many layers of causality, responsibility and consequence that shaped the Republic’s final years and contributed to its ultimate collapse. Together, we hope, they contribute to a deeper understanding of the international engagement in Afghanistan and the lessons it may hold for future policy.
Read or download the two AAN studies below:
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 25 Aug 2026
