Fighting forces dissolve in hot battle. The United States bombards insurgent positions to prevent the country from collapse. As the Taliban’s offensive risks becoming a rout, analysts and observers — as well as Afghans themselves — are asking, what went wrong with Afghanistan’s defence forces?
The United States and its allies have invested billions of dollars developing, arming and training Afghanistan’s Army, Air Force, Special Forces commandos and police. America alone has spent almost $83 billion on Afghanistan’s defense sector since 2001, when it led an invasion following the 9/11 attacks. NATO said it has donated more than $70 million in supplies to Afghanistan’s defense forces, including medical equipment and body armour, so far this year.
Yet in the past week, 10 provincial capitals have fallen in Afghanistan. According to security and regional sources, four of those capitals were effectively handed to the insurgents by national forces that refused to put up a fight. Experts are now predicting the national capital, Kabul, will come under attack as soon as next month.
There should have been plenty of time for the US-funded political and military leadership to develop a strategy to defend the country. After all, international combat missions ended in 2014, after which much of the fighting was led by the Afghans.
As the speed and ferocity of the Taliban advance attests, though, that didn’t happen. Experts told Foreign Policy the fault lies not in the training or equipment provided to Afghanistan. Nor is it endemic: The country has long produced good fighting men and the special forces are as good as any. The reasons for the monumental failure, these experts say, stem from the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Ministries of Defense and Interior are notoriously corrupt, and the experts also cite widespread ineptitude, lack of leadership, and self-interest.
For example, sources say the Afghan police—who are militarised and fight from front line bases—have not been paid for months by the Ministry of Interior. Other sources say the same is true for the Ministry of Defense, despite electronic payments systems meant to eliminate skimming. In many areas, soldiers and police are not supplied with adequate food, water, ammunition, or arms. Supply lines are pilfered, with arms, ammunition, and other equipment sold onto the black market, and much of it reaching the insurgency. Many soldiers and police are posted far from their homes, and abandon positions to return to defend their families and property.
A former senior official with the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, said attrition rates from the country’s security services were around 5,000 per month, against recruitment of 300 to 500, a ratio he said was “unsustainable.”
Ghani himself is a micro-manager and displays a paranoia that has led to poor decision-making aimed at centralizing and consolidating his control, sources close to him say. Officials as high up as the ministers of defense and interior, as well as district governors and police chiefs, are removed and changed at an alarming rate and are rarely localised, with no knowledge or roots in the regions. Massive sums are embezzled and laundered to the detriment of civic services, health, education, and security. The appointment Wednesday of Gen. Sami Sadat, who has been leading the fightback in Helmand province, to head the Afghan Army’s special operations command, was widely welcomed as a long-overdue and sensible move.
The president and his closest advisers are referred to as the “three-man republic” of Ghani, his national security adviser Hamdullah Mohib, and the head of the presidential administrative office, Fazal Mahmood Fazli. All have spent long periods abroad and, like many senior bureaucrats, hold second passports. Some in the president’s circle are not fluent in either of Afghanistan’s two official languages, Dari and Pashtu.
“The issue of legitimacy is very important,” said Enayat Najafizada, founder of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, a Kabul-based think tank. He noted the presidential elections that returned Ghani for a second term in 2020 were tainted with corruption, a point well made by Taliban propagandists.
“Legitimacy comes from the ballot, but then you have to deliver or people will turn on you. And that has not been done for five or six years. There has been a disconnect between the government and the Afghan people,” said Najafizada. “Policies and strategies are extremely discriminatory, divisive and narrow-minded. Ghani claims to know this country very well. Maybe in theory, but in practice he is a failure.”
Experts say Afghanistan’s forces have the capability but lack the will to fight. Across the country, soldiers, police, provincial and rural officials, and citizens have said they will not fight to defend the Ghani government. Those who do fight, including local militias, say they are defending their families and property, and safeguarding their children’s future as they cannot trust the government to do so.
That view—capability without willingness—was reflected in comments made Tuesday by White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who said the Biden administration believed the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have “the equipment, numbers, and training to fight back.” Gaining ground, Psaki said, will strengthen their position in peace talks with the Taliban, which resumed in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Wednesday. No progress has been made in a year of meetings. Pentagon spokesman Jack Kirby said Tuesday the issue is “leadership.”
Military operations analyst Jonathan Schroden said, “What we have seen so far from the conventional parts of the ANDSF, not the commandos, is largely a lack of will and or ability to fight for very long.” The crux, Schroden said, was “if they don’t believe in what they are being asked to fight for or don’t want to, they are not going to.” He pointed out there is no penalty for desertion in Afghanistan, unlike in the United States.
“Not all army units or checkpoints have vanished,” Schroden said. “Many have tried to defend but they are running out of food and ammunition. [They’re] calling for resupply, reinforcements, and [] air strikes, and not getting them at all in some cases. So then they have to run.”
Large swaths of territory have fallen to the Taliban since May as the insurgents’ strategy has isolated the country by closing border crossings and encircling provincial capitals. The capital of Samangan province, Aybak; Farah, capital of the province of the same name; Pul-i-Khumri, capital of Baghlan; and Faizabad, capital of Badakhshan which borders Tajikistan, Pakistan and China, all fell on Monday and Tuesday without a fight.
The Taliban entered Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of Balkh, on Sunday, and have been inside Herat city, capital of Herat province, for two weeks. The collapse of these cities would hand the north and west of the country to the insurgency, said Najafizada, the think tank founder. The capture of Kunduz in the north gives the insurgents a run down to Kabul.
Former US president Donald Trump struck a bilateral deal with the Taliban in February 2020 to end 20 years of US engagement by pledging the group to conditions, including no attacks on US forces, cutting ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and a general reduction in violence. None of these conditions have been kept. Nevertheless, US President Joe Biden stuck to the deal and has said all US troops will be out by Aug. 31.
Weeda Mehran, a conflict specialist at the University of Exeter, said the departure of US troops, especially their overnight disappearance from Bagram Airfield, which had been the hub of their operations in Afghanistan, had been a huge blow to security forces’ morale.
“Kabul has been rather vague in how it intends to manage the war and ward off the Taliban. This lack of clarity combined with political fragmentation has led to speculation and an absence of political will to fight the insurgency, particularly in the north and west, amongst majority non-Pashtun population,” Mehran said. “This inevitably reinforces the Taliban’s narrative of a powerful force with an imminent victory in Afghanistan.”
This piece was originally published in Foreign Policy.
Lynne O’Donnell is an Australian journalist and author. She was the Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press between 2009 and 2017.
A monument to bush Blair and Howard.
War criminals.
And the embedded Murdoch, their “Minister for Propaganda”.
The reasons for the monumental failure, these experts say, stem from the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Ministries of Defense and Interior are notoriously corrupt, and the experts also cite widespread ineptitude, lack of leadership, and self-interest.
Same old story, never changes we’ve got it here on steroids in Australia under the Federal and NSW Coalitions
Allan, what would we rather accept money changing hands or beheadings?
Afghanistan, for all intents and purposes, remains the same tribalised, warlord fractured territory beset by systemic corruption, nepotism and religious dogma that numerous would be invaders or well-intentioned, but naive and ineffectual, social and political reformers have succumbed to for many centuries.
Our failure, and that of many others before us, if that is how it should be judged, exemplifies the folly of our own conceits and our failure to understand or come to grips with the lessons of the past.
However noble, ignoble or misguided our intentions have been, the current outcome should lay to rest the west’s post World War 2 fetish to make over, in short term military adventures, other cultures and countries in some superficial, Disneyland inspired caricature of our own society.
The fraudulent activities and unethical values of our current Federal Government well illustrate our inability to achieve the very same hoped for standards and practices in our own unlucky country. How good is that, Scotty?
Another USA lead military failure, and waste of money, in a local war they should have never entered.
In the 70s it was a domestic power struggle between feudalism and nascent democracy, not a war.
Then Carter, Reagan and the MIC intervened for the usual hegemonic reasons.
Yep, the girls were going to school until the US supported the feudalists who stopped the girls going to school. And then we have to go over there to help the girls go to school. But we smashed the place up so well in the process that the conditions are now conducive for the feudalists to come back to stop the girls going to school again. It’s all for the girls’ education, and it’s called Western civilisation. And we say it with such sincerity and a complete lack of insight or regret (Howard: ‘I have no regrets from my prime-ministership’).
Corruption is war; and it always women and children who are on the receiving end of it no matter where.
“the Afghan police—who are militarised and fight from front line bases—have not been paid for months by the Ministry of Interior. Other sources say the same is true for the Ministry of Defense, despite electronic payments systems meant to eliminate skimming. In many areas, soldiers and police are not supplied with adequate food, water, ammunition, or arms. Supply lines are pilfered, with arms, ammunition, and other equipment sold onto the black market, and much of it reaching the insurgency. Many soldiers and police are posted far from their homes, and abandon positions to return to defend their families and property.”
You can bet your house on if lots of females run to or ask Australia,to give them refugees stasis,they our government will tell the take your pleads elsewhere
Essentialism, and be careful, skirting racism. Australia, the same group of colonial forelock tuggers shot through with criminals and a criminal mentality looking out for the main chance and damn the environment or anyone else, that they have been since the beginning Began with rorting and still a way of life for them. It’s who they (essentially) are.
We can make criticisms and see shortcomings in contemporary Afghanistan and see their roots in history. But that history includes hundreds of years of colonial interference that fostered and profited from dysfunction. Without that Afghanistan may look quite different, including not existing or being a modern coherent state. What is happening now looks like tragedy but is is by no means some sort of Afghan destiny due their “flawed nature”.
Thankyou – saved me the effort. If you bomb a nation into the stone-age, you can hardly blame the victims for living in the stone-age.
Colonialism is just another name for war, subduing a nation and or people for personal gain of a few and this is no different, including the Afghanistan government’s role in facilitating the Taliban
What possible legitimacy can a government installed and propped up militarily and financially by the US and NATO and sundry vassals (such as Australia) have in the eyes of the people of Afghanistan? How many imperial adventures will it take for us to realise that the Afghan people don’t do colonisation?
Obviously nothing at all was learned after the USA tried the exact same strategy in South Vietnam. A succession of unpopular and deeply corrupt puppet governments were installed with foreign support, and a vast fortune expended on supporting, advising, arming and training local forces to keep these governments in power. Once the USA declared victory and left it all collapsed just as quickly and completely as the Afghan government now.
Just going to say the same thing: Vietnam all over again. Provide money to prop up a regime so that it doesn’t have to rely on popular support to stay in power and the regime becomes corrupt and unaccountable and out of touch. And with all the warlords and differing tribal and religious loyalties, the fighting forces would have to be shape-shifters to survive. You would never know if you were an Aussie or US fighter whom the soldiers you work with are beholden to. Should never have got involved -again.
I’ve just finished reading the piece, and that’s the first thing that sprang to mind. Decades have passed and no lessons learnt. The one difference from an Australian perspective is that this time there weren’t 202 ballot-conscripted young men killed, as they were in Vietnam.
Good point. Perhaps something was learned after all. When the army included conscripts the public was a lot more sensitive about where they were sent to be killed and why.
In the USA the huge protests against the Vietnam war quickly faded away after Nixon stopped the draft in 1973. The obvious conclusion is that a large number of those who objected to the war did not mind it so much once there was no risk of being sent there if you did not want to go.
There’s a good case to be made that a national army with a large number of conscripts is a much more democratic and reliable institution than a professional army that is by definition mercenary. The modern tendency for our civilian governments to encourage the public to venerate or idolise our professional armed forces is not healthy.
Unlike keen killers such as Ben B-S…sorry R-S,Jim ‘Fallujah’ Molan and Tastie Hastie
How about the one funded established and propped up by the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? It was called the Taliban.
Let’s apportion the blame more fairly.
the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – which, curiously, are allies of the USA and protected from any criticism or sanctions concerning their involvement in spreading and funding the fanatical fundamentalist ideology behind most of the Islamic trouble in the world. What’s that all about?
What about Africa? Horrific events happening over past decade at least.
Africa is a prime illustration. For example, Boko Haram has strong links with Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda going back many years. It has often been called the Nigerian Taliban. There are plenty of other examples.
Such as DAESH in Syria – mendaciously called a civil war.
Odd that a majority Sunni country, with a secular state and the largest assortment of minority Muslim sects & schisms and Christians (now that the latter have fled Iraq which, prior to western invasion, had the largest community in the ME) has a majority Sunni army which has fought the foreign jihadis without hesitation or quarter.
Hey, you can’t criticize Saudi Arabia – they buy many billions of dollars worth of advanced US military hardware every year, plus blow raspberries at Iran, which the US Government loves. Hence, they are great friends and allies.
are they still funding those schools in Australia and Indonesia and elsewhere? Never hear much about them from the ASPI
Weren’t the Mujahideen and the Taliban originally creations of US policy?
The former were originally funded by Carter in the dying days of his presidency at the urging of the big Zbig who told him that “it would draw the Ruskies into a Vietnam-style quagmire” (see his biography) then enthusiastically & lavishly continued by Reagan.
The latter were the creation of the ISI of Pakistan… a CIA tutored, funded creation.
Chickens coming home to roost
and Al Qaeda
The Taliban may be propped up. As I recall they started with Americans propping them up. What they do have is a population willing to fight and die for them, unlike the puppet regime that seems to have functioned primarily to siphon American taxpayer money to American firms and the cronies running the government.
Not necessarily fight and die for them, but at least not actively resist them, since for many Afghans the Taliban is the least bad option. The Taliban are generally hostile to corruption and they go to considerable lengths to provide proper local administration without favouritism, taking bribes or stealing. Their ‘taxation’ is relatively reasonable. This is standard insurgency stategy because it is effective. For many Afghans it is a welcome change, no matter how harsh the rules are.
The president and his closest advisers are referred to as the “three-man republic” of Ghani, his national security adviser Hamdullah Mohib, and the head of the presidential administrative office, Fazal Mahmood Fazli. All have spent long periods abroad and, like many senior bureaucrats, hold second passports. ..the presidential elections that returned Ghani for a second term in 2020 were tainted with corruption, a point well made by Taliban propagandists.
“Policies and strategies are extremely discriminatory, divisive and narrow-minded.
From everything I’ve read or watched on the ABC, they don’t want the Taliban either. Those grotesque, sociopathic villains rule by terror and cruelty, and will force the country back into some sort of Twelfth Century fiefdom. However, as every here is saying, what were we doing in Afghanistan? History repeating itself, less like tragedy and farce, more like Monty Python.
Nevertheless it remains up to the people of Afghanistan to work out their future, cruel and painful though the way might be. For the immediate future this will include the Taliban – whose military successes, including in non-Pashtun regions, speak of a degree of support, or at least acquiescence amongst a significant proportion of the people. We don’t have to like it, but at least if we could acknowledge this reality it might help us begin to ask ourselves what it was all for. It is hard not to see this as a stunning, humiliating and entirely predictable defeat for the Empire – and it’s loyal vassal. Just don’t expect to see that angle covered on our ABC.
Just like we do swimming, they do shooting.
Just another reason that any decision to invade foreign country should be via a parliamentary vote.
… a parliamentary vote that respects the international law that makes wars of aggression against other countries illegal.
Pretty sure that ‘wars of aggression’ are, ipso facto, already considered by the UN et al legally, ethically & morally to be war crimes.
But not when it is the West that perpetrates them.
In fact if you read the article you would see that is the Afghanistan parliament’s ruling party which has led to the fall of the cities without any defence from Afghanis who have been thoroughly done over by their own kind, as is the case all over the world, including here.
Like the Vietnam war, when Americans and Australians finally ran away; the American installed government fell over. The same is happening in Afghanistan, where once again the Americans and Australians ran away, within a very short time the current American installed government is expected fall over.
The Australian government seems to be already planning for the next military adventure with our powerful friend America. Ooh, this time possibly China; now that will be a real military adventure, because unlike the military equipment challenged Taliban the Chinese are equiped to the hilt.
It’s a shame, because it’s obvious that Taiwan is a functioning democracy and the people really do want independence. But I agree, for us to get involved would be madness.
We will get involved, just wait and see. Morrison has no diplomacy and even though we should not take a backward step to China, we should not hitch our star to the U.S as if you understand the U.S view it is all about on selling it’s Military hardware and without a conflict how many U.S companies would go belly up?
Certainly most of the aerospace industries of California – although they could repurpose the big bombers as tankers for water bombing the inevitable future forest fires.
Assuming that any remain – unlike eucalyptus, when deciduous or pine forests burn, they die.
Yeah its a re-run of South Vietnam in 1975, although to be fair the Saigon regime lasted a couple of years before folding, not just a couple of weeks. If I remember rightly the rapid departure is called “peace with honour”. Do you know if they have the choppers organised to rescue the domestic staff from the embassy roof in Kabul?
After the Russians left, to concentrate on their own collapsing society, the government of Mohammad Najibullah continued for another 3 years despite continued assistance to the Taliban from Pakistan & the US, shelling Kabul (it sits in the river valley) from the surrounding hills.