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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfghanistan's military collapse: Illicit deals and mass desertions
KABUL The spectacular collapse of Afghanistans military that allowed Taliban fighters to reach the gates of Kabul on Sunday despite twenty years of training and billions of dollars in American aid began with a series of deals brokered in rural villages between the militant group and some of the Afghan governments lowest-ranking officials.
The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official.
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, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers.
During the past week, more than a dozen provincial capitals have fallen to Taliban forces with little or no resistance. Early Sunday morning, the government-held city of Jalalabad surrendered to the militants without a shot fired, and security forces in the districts ringing Kabul simply melted away. Within hours, Taliban forces reached the Afghan capitals four main entrances unopposed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/afghanistans-military-collapse-illicit-deals-and-mass-desertions/ar-AANlu01
Lovie777
(12,393 posts)the president ran to another country.
dalton99a
(81,700 posts)Some just wanted the money, an Afghan special forces officer said of those who first agreed to meet with the Taliban. But others saw the U.S. commitment to a full withdrawal as an assurance that the militants would return to power in Afghanistan and wanted to secure their place on the winning side, he said. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because he, like others in this report, were not authorized to disclose information to the press.
The Doha agreement, designed to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, instead left many Afghan forces demoralized, bringing into stark relief the corrupt impulses of many Afghan officials and their tenuous loyalty to the countrys central government. Some police officers complained that they had not been paid in six months or more.
They saw that document as the end, the officer said, referring to the majority of Afghans aligned with the government. The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Everyone was just looking out for himself. It was like [the United States] left us to fail.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,412 posts)as a result of TFG's negotiations with the Taliban.