Taliban Controls Afghanistan: Afghan Army Collapse Was Stunning & Shocking

 

Taliban in the Afghan Presidential Palace

(August 15: Post-stunning takeover)

This France24 story is stark and it fills in many blanks and gaps.

Below are three questions from the article about the Taliban’s lightning speed take over of the country in only days, not weeks, or not months – the headline:

“Why didn't they fight? Speed of Afghan collapse surprised even the Taliban”

How did the U.S. fuel a Taliban victory?

For some, Afghanistan's collapse was 20 years in the making, as mistake after mistake was made in the Western nation-building project.

The final nail in the coffin of the Afghan government came last year (February 2020) when former Trump signed a deal with the insurgents to withdraw U.S. troops by May 1 (the Doha agreement 4-page .pdf file here).

For the Taliban that was a sign that their victory was imminent after nearly two decades of war.

For the Afghans, it was a betrayal and meant their abandonment by the international community.

The Taliban continued to attack government forces but started to combine those with the targeted killings of journalists and rights activists, thus heightening the environment of fear. They also pushed a narrative of inevitable Taliban victory in their propaganda and psychological operations. 

Soldiers and local officials were reportedly bombarded with text messages in some areas, urging them to surrender or cooperate with the Taliban to avoid a worse fate. 

Many were offered safe passage if they left their weapons and did not put up a fight, while others were reached through tribal and village elders.

What happened to the anti-Taliban warlords?

With Afghan forces unable to hold off the Taliban, many of Afghanistan's notorious warlords rallied their militias and promised to fight the Taliban if they attacked their cities.

But with confidence plunging in the ability of Afghanistan's government to survive, the writing was also on the wall for the warlords. Their cities fell without a fight.

For example: Warlord Ismail Khan, known as the “Lion of Herat,” and seen as the city's last hope, was captured by the Taliban as Herat fell.

Uzbek commander and former vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum as well as fellow warlord Atta Mohammad Noor briefly joined the battle for Mazar-i-Sharif before fleeing into Uzbekistan as their militias abandoned their Humvees, weapons, and even their uniforms.

What was the Taliban's strategy?

The Taliban had been quietly pursuing what has been called an outside-in strategy, e.g., that is to slowly tighten their grip on provincial rural areas before moving in to take over the regional capitals.

The insurgents also began negotiating deals and surrender arrangements with everyone from individual soldiers and low-level government officials to provincial governors and government ministers – long before the launch of their final blitz in May. 

Those strategies proved immensely effective.

Images from the Taliban's final march to Kabul were not of bloody battles but of Taliban and government officials sitting comfortably as they formalized the handover of cities and provinces that were taken largely without a fight.

By Sunday (August 15), Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the capital and country, reportedly to Tajikistan, bringing a stunning end to the 20-year international campaign to transform Afghanistan into a modern state with a central government whose power extended into the diverse provinces across the country. (Ghani is now in the UAE reports say) (see the picture above).

As a tense calm fell over Kabul many people hid in their homes in accordance with Taliban orders fearing a return to their brutal rule.

The fear led to a throng the roads leading to Hamid Karzai international airport, where chaotic scenes unfolded as both Afghans and foreigners made a last mad dash to escape.

Tidbits on the Afghan Army with this final Question: Why didn't the Afghan army fight?

Despite the $83 billion and two decades the U.S. spent equipping and training the Afghan army, in many provinces the military appeared to evaporate in the face of Taliban insurgents.

The Afghan Army was formidable with more than 300,000 personnel and equipment that was more advanced than the Taliban’s arsenal, but only on paper. 

In reality, they had been plagued by (1) corruption, (2) payoffs, (3) poor leadership, (4) lack of training, and (5) plummeting morale for years. 

Desertions were common and U.S. inspectors had long warned that the situation was unsustainable.

One good yet sad example: The Afghan government outpost in Imam Sahib, a district of Kunduz province, held out for two months against the Taliban, but resources and supply runs soon dwindled. 

Afghan Soldier Taj Mohammad, age 38, told the Wall Street Journal: “In the last days, there was no food, no water, and no weapons. Our remaining troops fled for the provincial capital, which then collapsed weeks later.”

Another example: Afghan troops on the front line in Afghanistan's second-largest city, Kandahar, were given “one cardboard box full of slimy potatoes for an entire police unit’s daily rations last week” (New York Times reported).  

Also this example: Kandahar police said before the city fell they hadn’t been paid in six to nine months (Washington Post report). That made the Taliban offers more tempting.

Taliban insurgents mixed threats and bribery, along with propaganda and psychological warfare, as they took city after city – some with barely a shot fired – eventually capturing the capital of Kabul.

Beginning last year, Taliban leaders started offering desperate troops money in exchange for weapons, according to the Washington Post, in meetings and deals dubbed ceasefires by Afghan officials. 

Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces. 

Even as foreign troops began their final withdrawal based on the Trump Doha agreement schedule (Trump’s deadline of May 1), Washington and Kabul were confident the Afghan military would put up a fight against the Taliban.

Afghan forces did put up strong resistance in some areas such as Lashkar Gah in the south, but they were facing the Taliban without U.S. air strikes or military support. Confronted with smaller but highly motivated groups of Taliban insurgents, many soldiers and even entire units simply deserted or surrendered, leaving the Islamists to capture city after city.

Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence assessments were woefully optimistic saying only a week before that the Taliban could take over Kabul within 90 days (U.S. estimate). 

However, some 72 hours later, Kabul had fallen and the Taliban had the whole country under their control – a mission they finally accomplished after decades of war.

My 2 Cents: This France24 report sheds a lot more light on this huge catastrophic event on the pages of Middle East and world history.

Thanks for stopping by.