Afghanistan update: Surrendering without a fight accelerates

“The Taliban come here at night and shoot at us,” said Najibullah, a policeman at the outpost in Mehtarlam. “I can’t shoot back. My rifle magazine only has a few bullets. I brought a slingshot and a rock just in case. One of my friends got hit when a mortar landed where we sleep. His blood is still on the wall.”

The New York Times writes:

A Wave of Afghan Surrenders to the Taliban Picks Up Speed

Dozens of besieged outposts or bases, and four district centers, have given up to the insurgents this month, in an accelerating rural collapse as American troops leave.

MEHTARLAM, Afghanistan — Ammunition was depleted inside the bedraggled outposts in Laghman Province. Food was scarce. Some police officers hadn’t been paid in five months.

Then, just as American troops began leaving the country in early May, Taliban fighters besieged seven rural Afghan military outposts across the wheat fields and onion patches of the province, in eastern Afghanistan.

The insurgents enlisted village elders to visit the outposts bearing a message: Surrender or die.

By mid-month, security forces had surrendered all seven outposts after extended negotiations, according to village elders. At least 120 soldiers and police were given safe passage to the government-held provincial center in return for handing over weapons and equipment.

“We told them, ‘Look, your situation is bad — reinforcements aren’t coming,’” said Nabi Sarwar Khadim, 53, one of several elders who negotiated the surrenders.

Since May 1, at least 26 outposts and bases in just four provinces — Laghman, Baghlan, Wardak and Ghazni — have surrendered after such negotiations, according to village elders and government officials. With morale diving as American troops leave, and the Taliban seizing on each surrender as a propaganda victory, each collapse feeds the next in the Afghan countryside.  

Among the negotiated surrenders were four district centers, which house local governors, police and intelligence chiefs — effectively handing the government facilities to Taliban control and scattering the officials there, at least temporarily.  

The Taliban have negotiated Afghan troop surrenders in the past, but never at the scale and pace of the base collapses this month in the four provinces extending east, north and west of Kabul. The tactic has removed hundreds of government forces from the battlefield, secured strategic territory and reaped weapons, ammunition and vehicles for the Taliban — often without firing a shot. 

In several cases, the committees have given surrendering troops money — typically around $130 — and civilian clothes and sent them home unharmed. But first they videotape the men as they promise not to rejoin the security forces. They log their phone numbers and the names of family members — and vow to kill the men if they rejoin the military. 

“The Taliban commander and the Invitation and Guidance Committee called me more than 10 times and asked me to surrender,” said Maj. Imam Shah Zafari, 34, a district police chief in Wardak Province who surrendered his command center and weapons on May 11 after negotiations mediated by local elders.

After the Taliban provided a car ride home to Kabul, he said, a committee member phoned to assure him that the government would not imprison him for surrendering. “He said, ‘We have so much power in the government and we can release you,’” Major Zafari said.  

“We have been sold out — we make calls for reinforcements, but officials don’t help,” the recorded voice said. “The Taliban sent us tribal elders who said, ‘Surrender, you are sold out, no one will help you.’”

That speaks for itself. Open questions include how widespread this will be and if it is widespread, how soon the Taliban will take control of the entire country and government. The Afghan government the US installed and supports is so deeply corrupt, callous and incompetent that its front line defenders do not even have bullets or are being paid. US officials continue to assert that Afghan government forces will be able to repel the Taliban. Maybe they have no choice but to say the unbelievable things they continue to say. Other reports indicate that the US withdrawal will be complete by the middle of July, about 7 weeks before Biden's announced Sept. 11 final withdrawal date.

Question: What basis is there for belief that the Taliban will not take control of Afghanistan within about 6 months (or less) after the US withdrawal?[1]

Footnote: 

1. "The Air Force Magazine wrote in 2000: After 21 years of struggle against the Communist forces, the South Vietnamese army collapsed in just weeks into a disorganized mass, unable to slow, much less halt, forces from the North. In nearly 30 years of war, Hanoi had defeated France and South Vietnam on the battlefield and the US at the negotiating table."