"So why did the Afghan military collapse?"

[PatSeg]

A New York Times guest essay from General Sadat, an Afghan national army commander. Perhaps the Afghan army has been misrepresented by the press and politicians.

I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.

For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted heavy casualties. Then I was called to Kabul to command Afghanistan’s special forces. But the Taliban already were entering the city; it was too late.

snip

I am a three-star general in the Afghan Army. For 11 months, as commander of 215 Maiwand Corps, I led 15,000 men in combat operations against the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan. I’ve lost hundreds of officers and soldiers. That’s why, as exhausted and frustrated as I am, I wanted to offer a practical perspective and defend the honor of the Afghan Army. I’m not here to absolve the Afghan Army of mistakes. But the fact is, many of us fought valiantly and honorably, only to be let down by American and Afghan leadership.

snip

So why did the Afghan military collapse? The answer is threefold. First, former President Donald Trump’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Doha doomed us. It put an expiration date on American interest in the region. Second, we lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to our combat operations. Third, the corruption endemic in Mr. Ghani’s government that flowed to senior military leadership and long crippled our forces on the ground irreparably hobbled us.


The Trump-Taliban agreement shaped the circumstances for the current situation by essentially curtailing offensive combat operations for U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. air-support rules of engagement for Afghan security forces effectively changed overnight, and the Taliban were emboldened. They could sense victory and knew it was just a matter of waiting out the Americans. Before that deal, the Taliban had not won any significant battles against the Afghan Army. After the agreement? We were losing dozens of soldiers a day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20210826&instance_id=38879&nl=opinion-today®i_id=144275770&segment_id=67295&te=1&user_id=9300c9e86795a856411ac8bf084cff8b

There is so much more to the essay than can be represented in just four paragraphs. He went on to say that the Afghan army lost air support and ammunition ran out. They also lost the 17,000 contractors who maintained the aircraft and those contractors took the software and weapons systems with them. They no longer could track their soldiers and vehicles or the enemy. Without air support, they could not resupply their bases.

In the past twenty years, the Afghan army lost 66,000 soldiers, 1/5 of their force.

[question everything]

1. The art of the deal?

[Bayard]

2. Eye-opening

Once again, TFG bears a large amount of responsibility.

[PatSeg]

4. Yes, he does

The general was also very critical of President Biden, but I think the lion share of the blame goes to his predecessor, as well as the Afghan government.

[Trueblue1968]

28. it is DONALD RUMP'S FAULT .... EVERYTHING BAD IS RUMP'S FAULT

[Hoyt]

3. Without air support, they had no chance. Why was it stopped? If it was trump, why did we not restart

[PatSeg]

5. There are so many questions yet to be answered

I understand and agree with pulling our people out, but surely there must have been a way to maintain air support. I think there may be a whole lot of blame to go around.

[Caliman73]

11. Combat mission ended. Contractors were American...

Once the US began pulling out, you know the contractors working on the Afghan planes were gone. Also, any money funding the military was also cut back or cut off. No money, no ammunition or repair parts, no fighting.

Beau from the 5th Column, on YouTube gave a fairly succinct explanation. The Afghan government, while nominally in charge, wasn't meant to stand up on its own and be independent. It was meant to do what it was told to represent American interests. When we lost interest in the war, we left a government and military that was capable, but completely dependent on assistance to function. Rachel Maddow also did a pretty good segment about the corruption in the Afghan government and how the Taliban went in and made deals or coerced the outlying provinces about their impending return.

The military really didn't have a chance unless the US planned to stay indefinitely.

The problem is that if we set up a totally autonomous government and capable military, they can simply tell us to piss of, and start dealing with Russia, or China, or Europe as far as trade relations. Keeping them dependent strengthens the hand of businesses that make their money there. We saw a bit of that in Iraq, when they went with Chinese companies to develop their oil infrastructure after our troop agreement expired.

That is something that Trump harped on with his, "We're gonna get the oil" nonsense. The US either needs to help build real, strong, independent states and engender trust and mutual respect or we need to stay out of the nation building game. I prefer the latter.

[Hoyt]

12. Good summary.

[Martin Eden]

21. Spot-on!

I agree we should stay out of that game.

[dsc]

24. why cut off the money

we give money to lots of militaries where we don't have troops stationed.

[Caliman73]

27. Don't know.

From what I read, it seems like the money had been cut off some while back. May have been part of the Trump deal.

Our mistake was going in and staying in the first place. The Afghan government was NEVER going to stand on its own because we did not design our intervention to build it up to the point where it stood on its own. Why would we have private, American contractors fixing their equipment. It was Afghan equipment, sure, equipment that we gave them, but theirs, not ours. Why not teach them to fix it, to manufacture the parts they needed.

We know they are decent at making weapons. A lot of what they had in small arms was machined in Afghanistan in small home factories. Knock of AK's, AR's and pistols. They can learn to machine Axles and other parts for trucks and prop planes.

They were conditioned to be dependent on the US. To know enough to do what we told them to.

[andym]

6. The first factor listed: the expiration date led to the "lost cause" psychology

Last edited Fri Aug 27, 2021, 12:16 PM - Edit history (1)

The major mistake was to have an expiration date. The psychological damage to the Afghan military, which apparently felt much braver knowing that the US was behind them, was by far the key blow. Without the idea that the US would help, the Afghan army, which was clearly not professional, fell apart.

It was like the Iraq army giving up during the 2nd Iraq war-- they were afraid and melted away.

Trump's deal was egregious and President Biden made an error to commit to carry out Trump's plan without going back and ensuring that an armistice between the Taliban and the Afghan government was agreed to.

[PatSeg]

8. How many times have we heard political candidates

say that we don't give the enemy a date certain for withdrawal? Actually, I am pretty sure I've heard Trump say it, but in the end, he didn't really care. Any loss of life was just collateral damage to him. He had no problem abandoning our Kurdish allies to appease Erdogan and Putin. I'm sure he didn't care about the Afghan army either.

[honest.abe]

7. I think its basically they were fighting for the US not for Afghanistan.

When we left they had nothing to fight for.

[JT45242]

9. Only issue is order -- corruption is #1

Like so many governments that the US has propped up over the years, the Afghan govrnment was incredibly corrupt. They pocketed money meant to pay the troops.

So, the troops traded surrendering and not fighting(and handing over equipment paid for by the US) to the Taliban in exchange for money and food.

Perhaps, if the government had actually paid the defense forces some of them would be willing to fight. But, they viewed the chance of dying while not getting paid as not worth it.

The Taliban would likely have still won -- time was on their side. But it would have taken months or years instead of days if the top Afghan officials had actually paid the defense forces rather than stealing the hundreds of millions of dollars that they should have been paid.

[PatSeg]

10. Yes, corruption was rampant

throughout Afghanistan. War attracts scoundrels and profiteers, especially when American money is involved. Meanwhile, everyone else suffers.

[aggiesal]

13. Put-In wanted us out of Afghanistan ...

so Pendejo45 obliged.
That's pretty much how I see it.

Everything else happened because Pendejo45 was told to bend over for Put-In, so he did.

I would love to see the secret notes from all the Pendejo45 & Put-In secret meetings.
I believe there were 5.

[PatSeg]

15. Yes, I have no doubt

Putin's fingerprints were all over that deal with the Taliban. Trump was so transparent, hard to believe what all he got away with.

[GoodRaisin]

16. Puppet45 did everything possible to comply with his master except

have the courage to actually withdraw on his watch.

What we are seeing is TFG was already effectively 95% out before Biden took over with a hollowed out troop presence and 3 month deadline already in his face. Yet, so many want us to ignore that because that would be “blaming”.

As information continues coming out it has become increasingly clear that when Joe took office his Adghanistan choices were already defined. He could either finish the withdrawal or escalate the war. Had he put more troops in, the M$M and Fox News would be smearing him over that choice. If he got out, he would be smeared for the withdrawal being “flawed”.

[Lonestarblue]

19. I believe Trump's mission as president was to do as much damage as possible to the US.

Whether that was because he is a mean, corrupt individual who cares nothing for anyone or anything but himself and his “image” or because he truly was and is Putin’s puppet, we may never know. I can’t think of even one good thing he did that helped the country, and lots of things that made our situation and our political division worse. Among the damages:

—increased costs for the ACA as vengeance for failing to kill it
—tried to make Medicaid even more difficult for poor people to access
—diverted money intended to upgrade and repair schools for military children to his border wall, which has been an environmental disaster and which is now falling apart
—did nothing about needed infrastructure spending
—robbed US taxpayers of millions of overpriced facilities at his resorts
—increased white supremacy
—increased open violence by anti-government and white supremacy through his public approval of them
—made climate warming worse by changing regulations to allow pollution
—decimated the federal government by appointing incompetents and people whose job was to undermine and destroy the agencies they headed (like DeJoy)
—established constant lying as the modus operandi of the Republican Party

And on the world stage:
—embarrassed the US at every meeting and every time he opened his mouth, with world leaders openly laughing at his pompous ways
—undermined the trust of our NSTO allies in the US
—openly supported Putin over the US security establishment
—killed the Iran nuclear agreement for no reason other than it was Obama’s deal
—promoted Kim Jong Un to world leader status by negotiating with him and achieving nothing
—allowed the massacre of our Kurd allies to please strongman Erdogan, most likely over Trump real estate in Turkey
—negotiated a stupid deal with the Taliban

This is only a partial list, but we need to remind people all the time how much damage he did.

[Jetheels]

22. I think we do know, there's no disputing tfg is mean, corrupt, etc, and at the same time a

Putin puppet or at least a Putin wannabe. Here’s a list in case you didn’t know.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-atrocities-1-1-056

[Xoan]

14. It would appear they learned next to nothing ...

in 20 fucking years. Give me a break.

[Sogo]

17. Time for another Select Committee to investigate

why Trump made this "deal."

[PatSeg]

18. And at the same time turning a deaf ear

to reports that Putin was paying Taliban militants a bounty to kill U.S. troops. Trump was Commander in Chief, it was his job to project the troops.

[Rebl2]

20. So why

are we not hearing THIS on the news.

[Martin Eden]

23. Good question

President Biden severely criticized the Afghan military for their rapid collapse, but the withdrawal of US air support and maintenance contractors apparently crippled their ability to fight.

[PatSeg]

26. That is the part that I found

really disturbing - the withdrawal of the support and supplies that the Afghan army needed to fight the Taliban. The news often paints them as lacking the will and courage to fight, but it appears they were lacking the necessary tools. At least from the perspective of this general.

[PatSeg]

25. There is so much we are not hearing

Basically though, Afghanistan is a war no one has wanted to talk about after the first year. Very few people, myself included, have any idea what all has happened there. Yet surprisingly, all of a sudden everyone has an opinion about it. Well, not really surprising. The news is full of "experts" every time there is a crisis.