Category: Afghanistan

 

The Afghanistan failure has been a 20-year process. The Afghanistan failure was a failure to understand history and Islamic culture, train Afghan forces to fight independently, understand the evolution of the US and Afghan political environment, and poor intelligence or the failure to understand or properly use the intelligence provided. Since no empire or nation has exerted long term control over Afghanistan from Genghis Khan to the Soviet Union, Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. Afghanistan was and is a nation ruled by tribal war lords, who are the village and regional leaders of most of Afghanistan, with many ethnic groups and tribes that have been fighting to control the nation for decades if not centuries. These groups only unite effectively to fend off external enemies. In our arrogance, US politicians and military leaders convinced themselves and our nation that our military prowess would prove the exception to centuries of failure to conquer the Afghan people.

Afghan Islamic culture is a male dominated patriarchal culture controlled by Sharia Law and tribal warfare. War lords control rural Afghan villages and regions as well as the lives of tribal Afghan fighters. Under Sharia law, women are totally subservient, westerners would say enslaved, to men. Consequently, the Afghan security forces fighters were taught from their youth to be totally subservient to war lords and village elders many of whom are Taliban. It is not difficult to imagine that this allegiance might be hard to overcome with training conducted by foreign military trainers with good pay as the primary motivation. Although these forces had good fighting capabilities and have suffered around 70,000 dead while fighting the Taliban in previous years when they could usually depend on US air support on the battlefield. With their tribal allegiances and the corruption of Afghan political and military leaders, the dedication of the Afghan security forces to their national leaders and chain of command may have been deteriorating. Retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis described the response from Afghan soldiers on the ground as apathetic: I’m not going to die for a government that doesn’t even take care of me, that doesn’t pay me very well, and that doesn’t even give me food, bullets, resupply things, doesn’t give us backup when we need help.

Unfortunately, the United States military trained the Afghan security forces in tactics that ultimately caused our Afghanistan failure. First, for almost two decades the United States military failed to train the Afghan security forces to fight as a totally independent force without US air and intelligence support. Although Afghan forces had US air support for nearly two decades, the US failed to prepare these forces for complete withdrawal of US support. Once support for the Afghan war lost popular support in the US, at least six years ago, the US military training of Afghan security forces should have transitioned to totally independent fighting. Virtually every military commentator, including retired general Jack Keane on Fox News, stated that these forces were trained to fight with US air support. When Bagram Airbase was abandoned to the Taliban and US air support was withdrawn, the Afghan security forces lost the equalizing battlefield force that they had been trained to depend on for victory. Consequently, The Afghan security forces did not know how to fight the Taliban independently and lost the confidence, morale, and esprit de corps needed to win on the battlefield. As a result of this Afghanistan failure, the Afghan security forces simply refused to fight the Taliban and allowed the Taliban to take control of most of the county in a mere eleven days.

The second Afghanistan failure was a combined US political and military failure. US politicians, four different Commanders-in-Chief, two from each political party, failed to establish a consistent mission and exit strategy for the Afghan war. The first mission was to defeat the Taliban, which had provided Al-Quada a base of operation and training sites used to launch the 9/11 attack on the United States, defeat Al-Quada, capture or kill Osama Bin-Laden, and prevent future Al-Quada attacks on US soil. The US has not suffered another significant attack since 9/11. The Taliban and Al-Quada were not able to mount meaningful military operations in Afghanistan after 2002; and Al-Quada was no longer a threat by 2005. Osama Bin Laden, hiding in Pakistan, was not killed until May 2011. This mission was accomplished sometime between 2004 and 2011 when the United States should have conducted an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, no exist strategy was delineated for the Afghan war; and a new mission was established for our military forces in Afghanistan.

The second mission, for each successive Commander-in-Chief, became nation building. The US military and Afghan security forces fought annual military campaigns against the Taliban to provide an environment to maintain a western style political and economic system for Afghanistan. This mission included establishing sufficient stability to conduct free democratic elections open to both men and women and allow women to hold elected office. The first national Afghan election was held in October 2004. This mission also included establishing a public education system open to both sexes, allow women to work in all segments of the economy and travel freely in public, and construct electric, water, sewer, transportation, and other infrastructure systems to support internal and external commerce, and improve the standard of living for Afghanis. Unfortunately, both the Afghan political and military systems and leaders have been plagued by corruption. This fact may have played a role in the ultimate Taliban victory if the Afghan leadership lost the support of the security forces due to their corruption. The Afghanistan failure was also a colossal failure of intelligence; or President Biden refused to believe intelligence indicating an imminent and sudden Taliban victory that occurred during the US withdrawal was a possibility.

On Wednesday August 18, 2021, Secretary of Defense, retired General Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley held a joint news conference to update the nation on the fall of Afghanistan and the status of the evacuation mission. General Milley indicated that our intelligence had no indication that the entire Afghan military and government could fall in eleven days. The worst estimate was several weeks while other estimates up to two years were noted. No other meaningful details about our Afghanistan failure were discussed. Apparently, the intelligence failed to determine that Taliban fighters were dispersed throughout Afghanistan ready to move rapidly against the 34 provincial capitals and other major cities and towns as the US military forces withdrew leaving the Afghan security forces to fend for themselves.

From the little that I have read, perhaps the greatest Afghanistan failure occurred at the Department of Defense and Department of State. Simply Googling Afghan security forces reveals numerous open source articles questioning the readiness of these forces including the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). SIGAR reports are provided to both the Department of Defense and the State Department. On Monday, August 16, 2021, John Sopko, stated 

It’s not surprising I mean, we’ve been warning”my little agency”for the last almost 10 years about issues with the [Afghan National Security Forces’] capabilities and sustainment. All the signs have been there. I mean, we’ve been shining a light on it in multiple reports going back to when I started in 2012 about changing metrics, about ghosts, ghost soldiers who didn’t exist, about poor logistics, about the fact that the Afghans couldn’t sustain what we were giving them.

Apparently, the leaders of both the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and congressional oversight committees have received reports and heard testimony about the lack of readiness and sustainability of the Afghan security forces for nearly a decade. The Secretaries of Defense since 2012 all need to answer four simple questions. First, Did you believe the SIGAR reports or chose to ignore them? Second, Did you even attempt to train Afghan security forces to fight without US air support, both in training exercises and actual combat where emergency backup air support was available to prevent excessive losses if necessary? Third, Did regular Afghan security forces ever win a major battle against the Taliban without US air support; if they did, how many such battles did they win per year; and did the number of such victories decline since 2012? Forth, With the possible exception of Afghan special forces, when, if ever, did you know the Afghan security forces would not be able to win most of their battles without US air support.

The fact that a civilian, like me, with little strategic or tactical knowledge of two decades the political and military situation in Afghanistan is compelled to ask these questions both saddens and sickens me. I fear that the answers will demonstrate that our military and political leaders have either deceived We the People of the United States or they deceived themselves. Either way, the blood and treasure lost since Seal Team 6 killed Osama Bin-Laden in 2011 was, in my opinion, lost in a vain effort to sustain the unsustainable.

Finally, the greatest Afghanistan failure rests solely with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Biden thought that his 50 years of failed experience gave him the insight to disregard the advice of the entire pentagon, intelligence community, and Department of State. He concluded that we’ll do it my way.  He ordered a rapid draw down of the few troops remaining forcing the field commander to choose between closing Bagram Airbase or the US Embassy in Kabul. The commander chose the Embassy with its civilian personal and classified documents and materials that had to be destroyed. The result was the loss of the two runways at Bagram Airbase leaving one runway at the Kabul airport for evacuation of US Embassy personal and other US civilians, other country’s civilians, and Afghanis who had supported allied operations in Afghanistan.  By that time, all US military personal, less than 1,000, and a few thousand US civilians and Afghanis reached the Kabul airport; and the Taliban controlled most of the country, roads to Kabul, and surrounded the only evacuation site in Afghanistan. As this was occurring, Biden authorized insertion of 5-6,000 prepositioned troops to secure the Kabul airport.

This withdrawal, ordered by Biden, was done unilaterally without coordination with our NATO allies Brittan, France, and Australia that also have military personal and civilians stranded behind enemy lines. The Department of State does not know how many US passport holders are now stranded behind enemy lines but estimates at least 11,000. Between 40,000 and 80,000 Afghanis and NATO citizens eligible to evacuate may also be stranded behind enemy lines. The Department of State told these civilians to make their way to the Kabul airport but stated that the United States could not guarantee safe travel. These civilians could have as many as 500 miles to travel through enemy territory including an untold number of checkpoints and undisciplined Taliban fighters. The final insult to those stranded behind enemy lines came from Secretary of Defense Austin who indicated that no mission to extract stranded groups of civilians or establish evacuation corridors are currently planned. The 50,000 to 90,000 civilians stranded behind enemy lines will have to fend for themselves. Biden is solely responsible for the blood of these civilians that he trapped behind enemy lines because he did it my way!

Several military analysists indicated that our withdrawal plan was totally flawed. US civilians, Afghanis civilian allies, NATO civilians, and other nationality civilians should have been evacuated before our military drawdown so their evacuation could be protected. Second, our significant military equipment should have been removed from Afghanistan prior to our withdrawal of military personal, especially if we suspected that the Afghan military and government would fall to the Taliban. The final step of the withdrawal should have been withdrawal of our military personal. The fact that the order of our withdrawal occurred in reverse of the above sequence is the reason that thousands of US and other civilians are stranded behind enemy lines and the Taliban now owns large numbers of our best military equipment and technology.

Biden’s Afghanistan failure constitutes the most humiliating and significant military and foreign policy defeats in modern US history. Many of our allies including the NATO countries of Brittan, France, and Australia have lost confidence in the United States. This is also a humanitarian tragedy of major proportion that will occur under Taliban rule.

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