Why the ‘mother of all bombs’ and why now?

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.”

The dropping of a “mother of all bombs” Thursday by the United States on an ISIS cave and bunker complex in Achin district in eastern Afghanistan should be understood as part of an effort to reverse a war that is not going well for the Afghan government and, by extension, the United States.

The non-nuclear 21,600-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) “targeted a system of tunnels and caves that ISIS fighters use to move around freely,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.

Thursday’s bombing had a feeling of deja vu. A decade and a half ago the US Air Force dropped massive 15,000 pound “Daisy Cutter” bombs on the Tora Bora complex where Osama bin Laden was hiding in December 2001. Achin district is only a dozen or so miles from the Tora Bora region.

While those Daisy Cutter bombs certainly killed many members of al Qaeda, bin Laden and many of his senior leaders escaped. That’s a useful reminder that very few military campaigns are won from the air.

There are perhaps secondary effects of Thursday’s bombing in Afghanistan such as signaling to the North Koreans and the Syrians that the United States can deploy such weapons against their bunker systems, but the key is that the war in Afghanistan is at a critical point.

In fact, the war in Afghanistan is at its lowest point for the Afghans and their American allies since the Taliban were overthrown in the months after 9/11.

The Taliban “control or contest” about a third of the population of the country, according to senior US military officials, a total of around 10 million people, which is more than the population that ISIS controlled in Syria and Iraq at the height of its power during the summer of 2014.

The Taliban, a Sunni Islamist organization operating primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was formed in 1994. It was led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, a veteran of the Afghan mujahedeen that fought invading Soviets from 1979-1989. Omar, seen here in an undated video image, died in April 2013, according to a representative for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

In this image taken off television by BBC Newsnight, Omar -- fourth from left -- attends a rally with Taliban troops before their victorious assault on Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, in 1996. The Taliban's aim is to impose its interpretation of Islamic law on Afghanistan and remove foreign influence from the country. Most of its members are Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

Tanks manned by Taliban fighters are decorated with flowers in front of the presidential palace in Kabul on September 27, 1996.

Taliban soldiers in Russian-made tanks fire on the forces of former Afghan defense minister Ahmad Shah Massood in October 1996.

Afghan women in Kabul are covered head to toe in traditional burqas on October 16, 1996. After taking over Kabul, the ruling Taliban imposed strict Islamic laws on the Afghan people. Television, music and non-Islamic holidays were banned. Women were not allowed to attend school or work outside the home, and they were forbidden to travel alone.

Three women hitch a ride on the back of a donkey cart as they pass by the ruins of Kabul's former commercial district in November 1996.

This is an undated image believed to show the Taliban's former leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. In 1997, the Taliban issued an edict renaming Afghanistan the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The country was only officially recognized by three countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In 1997, Omar forged a relationship with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, pictured. Bin Laden then moved his base of operations to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

In March 2001, Taliban soldiers stand at the base of the mountain alcove where a Buddha statue once stood 170 feet high in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed two 1,500-year-old Buddha figures in the town, saying they were idols that violated Islam.

After the 9/11 attacks, the United States conducted military strikes against al Qaeda training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime. In this long-exposure photo, a U.S. Navy fighter jet takes off from the deck of the USS Enterprise on October 7, 2001.

An Afghan anti-Taliban fighter pops up from his tank to spot a U.S. warplane bombing al Qaeda fighters in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan on December 10, 2001. After massive U.S. bombardment as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Taliban lost Afghanistan to U.S. and Northern Alliance forces.

Afghans look into Omar's bedroom as they go through his compound on the outskirts of Kandahar on December 11, 2001.

In April 2011, hundreds of prisoners escaped from a prison in Kandahar by crawling through a tunnel. The Taliban took responsibility for the escape. This picture shows a general view of the prison, top center, and the house, bottom right, from which Taliban militiamen dug the tunnel leading to the prison.

Security guards stand outside the new Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar, before its official opening in June 2013. The Taliban announced that they hoped to improve relations with other countries, head toward a peaceful solution to the Afghanistan occupation and establish an independent Islamic system in the country.

Zafar Hashemi, deputy spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaks during a news conference on July 29, when the news of Omar's death was announced.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour became the leader of the Taliban after Omar's death. Mansour was killed in an airstrike in Pakistan on Saturday, May 21, 2016.

The Taliban

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Al Qaeda and ISIS have also established footholds in Afghanistan.

Whereas a few years back Kabul had a bustling restaurant scene and Westerners could live there and lead relatively normal lives, all that is now gone as a result of the multiple bombings in Kabul by the Taliban and the targeted kidnapping of Westerners. The exodus of Westerners from the country has had an adverse impact on both investment and development in Afghanistan.

Because of the worsening situation in Afghanistan, the Trump administration is engaged in a strategic review of Afghanistan both at the Pentagon and the National Security Council, according to multiple U.S. and Afghan officials.

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - APRIL 5: A soldier in the Afghan National Army's 6th Kandak (battalion), 3rd company walks through a poppy field during a joint patrol with the U.S. Army's 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment near Command Outpost Pa'in Kalay on April 5, 2013 in Kandahar Province, Maiwand District, Afghanistan. The United States military and its allies are in the midst of training and transitioning power to the Afghan National Security Forces in order to withdraw from the country by 2014. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

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US National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is overseeing the Afghanistan review at the White House and will be traveling to Afghanistan soon to make his own assessment.

McMaster served in Afghanistan running an anti-corruption task force in 2010, as a result of which he understands the players and politics of the country well.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson said that the present troop level of 8,400 US soldiers was insufficient and noted, “We have a shortfall of a few thousand” advisers to train and assist the Afghan army.

The Obama administration had a counterproductive policy of announcing scheduled withdrawals from Afghanistan even as it surged troops into the country. Take, for instance, a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009, where President Obama announced a surge of troops into Afghanistan and also announced their withdrawal date. That withdrawal date, of course, came and went – as did a number of others.

It is in American and Afghan interests for the US to stay in Afghanistan so it doesn’t turn into Iraq circa 2014, with the Taliban controlling much of the country while hosting a strong presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as every other jihadist group of note.

What to do? The Trump administration should publicly state that the US already has a strategic partnership with Afghanistan until 2024 that was negotiated by the Obama administration and that it promises to maintain a US military “train and advise” non-combat mission for the Afghan army that will stay in the country until the Taliban are contained.

Afghans don’t care if the United States has 8,400 troops in the country, as it does now, or 12,000 troops or 20,000 troops. Clearly there is a difference from a purely military point of view but from a political point of view the message Afghans want to hear is that the United States is not abandoning them.

A public announcement of such a long-term commitment to Afghanistan will help NATO and other allies also commit for the long term. It will also undermine the Taliban.