Why Afghanistan's military is collapsing

Out of food, out of ammo, gun broken

The main reasons are Afghanistan government corruption and incompetence and US government incompetence. The New York Times writes:

Building the Afghan security apparatus was one of the key parts of the Obama administration’s strategy as it sought to find a way to hand over security and leave nearly a decade ago. These efforts produced an army modeled in the image of the United States’ military, an Afghan institution that was supposed to outlast the American war.

But it will likely be gone before the United States is.

How the Afghan military came to disintegrate first became apparent not last week but months ago in an accumulation of losses that started even before President Biden’s announcement that the United States would withdraw by Sept. 11.

It began with individual outposts in rural areas where starving and ammunition-depleted soldiers and police units were surrounded by Taliban fighters and promised safe passage if they surrendered and left behind their equipment, slowly giving the insurgents more and more control of roads, then entire districts. As positions collapsed, the complaint was almost always the same: There was no air support or they had run out of supplies and food.

But even before that, the systemic weaknesses of the Afghan security forces — which on paper numbered somewhere around 300,000 people, but in recent days have totaled around just one-sixth of that, according to U.S. officials — were apparent. These shortfalls can be traced to numerous issues that sprung from the West’s insistence on building a fully modern military with all the logistical and supply complexities one requires, and which has proved unsustainable without the United States and its NATO allies.

Soldiers and policemen have expressed ever-deeper resentment of the Afghan leadership. Officials often turned a blind eye to what was happening, knowing full well that the Afghan forces’ real manpower count was far lower than what was on the books, skewed by corruption and secrecy that they quietly accepted.

And when the Taliban started building momentum after the United States’ announcement of withdrawal, it only increased the belief that fighting in the security forces — fighting for President Ashraf Ghani’s government — wasn’t worth dying for. In interview after interview, soldiers and police officers described moments of despair and feelings of abandonment.

On one frontline in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar last week, the Afghan security forces’ seeming inability to fend off the Taliban’s devastating offensive came down to potatoes.

After weeks of fighting, one cardboard box full of slimy potatoes was supposed to pass as a police unit’s daily rations. They hadn’t received anything other than spuds in various forms in several days, and their hunger and fatigue were wearing them down.

“Unfortunately, knowingly and unknowingly, a number of Parliament members and politicians fanned the flame started by the enemy,” General Tawakoli said, just hours after the Taliban had posted videos of their fighters looting the general’s sprawling base.

“No region fell as a result of the war, but as a result of the psychological war,” he said.

“We are drowning in corruption,” said Abdul Haleem, 38, a police officer on the Kandahar frontline earlier this month. His special operations unit was at half strength — 15 out of 30 people — and several of his comrades who remained on the front were there because their villages had been captured.

“How are we supposed to defeat the Taliban with this amount of ammunition?” he said. The heavy machine gun, for which his unit had very few bullets, broke later that night.

As of Thursday, it was unclear if Mr. Haleem was still alive and what remained of his comrades.

So there it is. No food, no ammunition, broken weapons, no government help. Afghan government corruption and incompetence and US government incompetence are undeniable. The US failed after 20 years and tens of billions spent. The US tried to build a modern military force in a place where such a thing is not buildable or sustainable. That is gross incompetence. Afghan government corruption and incompetence are clear.

As usual, there will be few or no repercussions. Maybe the US military will fire an officer or two as the designated scape goats, but that will be about all the accounting us dumb taxpayers can expect. As late as yesterday, in an interview in NPR with a US official, the US government was lying and spinning the situation from what it is to one where there will likely be some good outcome. Just a couple of weeks ago, the mindless former president Bush said it was a huge mistake to withdraw now. Maybe it was a mistake, but was it also a mistake to stay there and arguably even go there in the first place? The US never understood the situation it was in and, based on what what it keeps telling us, it still doesn't understand.

Questions: How stupid does the US government think the US public is, just plain stupid or really, really stupid? Can the lies about Afghanistan the US government has fed the public over the years be considered to be a form of corruption, e.g., because so much money was knowingly wasted and the government tried to hide that fact from us? Would it make any difference of the US government had not deceived for years?[1] Will there be a moral stain on the US from the thousands of Afghan allies we will leave behind for the Taliban to hunt down and slaughter?

Footnote: 

1. I strongly suspect that the US would have been out of Afghanistan years ago if the US government had been honest. How could the war be kept going if we were told it was a failing effort once that became clear (just like Vietnam)?