Collapse of the Afghan Army: An Overview

 As the Taliban rolled into the outskirts of Kabul it was evident that the Afghan army was crumbling, in many cases without a shot being fired. The collapse was disheartening to many, so much so that President Biden chided that if Afghans were not willing to fight for their own country how could they expect US soldiers to die for them. Indeed one would have expected that 20 years of training and billions of dollars on equipment and training costs surely the end result would or could have been a better fighting force. 

However, a summary dismissal of the Afghan army performance ignores the many factors that led to such a sorry state of affairs. The end result of a surrender ignores the gradual erosion of the will to fight that commenced 20 odd months before the recent 'victory' of the Taliban. While such a debacle warrants a full and deeper analysis it might be worth one's while to summarise the factors that led to the Afghan army's meek dissolution.

Structure of the Afghan Armed Forces.

The Afghan army was basically rebuilt after the defeat of the Taliban in 2001, even though at that point the Taliban controlled army was not a cohesive military as the Taliban preferred, and perhaps still prefer, to consider their idealised Taliban militia fighters as the mainstay of military might. Since 2001 the US and its NATO allies poured money and equipment and personnel to train and build a new army.  The 200,000 strong military that emerged was composed of a good proportion of the ethnic minorities of Hazara, Tajiks and Uzbeks, mixed with progressive Pushtuns. While pains were taken to avoid units to be raised along tribal and ethnic fault lines a good measure of former military commanders or warlords we inducted into the army to reduce the ability of former warlords to have private armies.

However, this also was the basic catalyst for nepotism and resulted in a military force which was very top heavy with officers and that too in senior ranks disproportionately more than soldiers under their command. There are some suggestions that in 2019 there were as many as 1000 senior officers with ranks above brigadier. Of the 200,000 inducted soldiers it is estimated that about 21,000 were the commando soldiers composed of seven battalions and represented the only effective fighting force in the Afghan army. It is estimated that these battalions were engaged in 80% of the fighting against the Taliban. Within these units, by and large, morale was high and over the two odd decades they had won the respect of their American and NATO supporters. Today it is estimated that as Kabul fell to the Taliban these former commandos moved into the Panjshir valley and joined forces with the Northern Alliance (also now referred to as the Norther Resistance Front).

Operational Pattern of the Afghan Army.

Since 2001 the role of the Afghan army in battling the Taliban progressed over various phases. From an initial force that 'made up the numbers' for US forces, who did the bulk of the fighting, the Afghan army, and mainly its commando battalions, were carrying out independent operations against the Taliban. In all operations of the Afghan army air support, remote battlefield intelligence (drones, satellites etc) all came from US and NATO forces. Since 2015 the Afghan airforce and air wing of the Army was slowly being rebuilt but at the time of the Taliban take over still relied on operational support, (target selection and guidance), maintenance and engineering solely on US forces or their civilian contractors. 

Typical missions carried out by the Afghan commando units would be soldiers being ferried into a battle zone by helicopter, closely overseen by satellite and drone surveillance and when threats emerged then US or NATO planes would be called in to neutralise such threats. These missions were largely successful when it came to direct combat with the Taliban, but once the mission was over the countryside was conceded back to the Taliban as local and district administration of the Karzai and then the Ghani governments was ineffective and in many cases corrupt. 

Afghan army operations were heavily if not entirely reliant on the combat operational support that the US and NATO forces provided them and on the ability to maintain the equipment provided to them. One major failing of the US planners was that they did not consider the educational and technical weakness of the average solider of the Afghan army and thus giving them equipment that required a relatively well developed technical ability to operate and maintain the equipment created inherit weaknesses in the fighting force. This problem got more acute after 2014 when President Obama first announced an intention to withdraw and substantial cuts in aid and operational support personnel occurred. 

It would seem that no strategic thinking went into planning and developing an Afghan Army which could function independently. US officials, especially the skeptics, would argue that the Afghan soldier never had the tools and skills to function as an independent military force. This is an over simplification as numerous military forces exist in the region who function independently and effectively. If forward thinking had been applied then an effective military force could have been created from the beginning with the objective that in a decade or so it should be able to operate independently. 

Ineffective Political Governance.

After the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 the government that was assembled was based on the support of the waring factions that had been fighting the Taliban prior to 2001. This was in principle the Northern Alliance and warlords from Uzbek and Tajik ethnic minorities. Like minded Pushtuns also assembled around the Karzai government but by and large the administration at provincial and district levels was based off existing tribal hierarchies. These local administrative set ups had largely remained unchanged during the Taliban time and even before. During times of strife these tribal loyalties were not only negotiable but also at time dual in nature owing their loyalties to both the Kabul government and the Taliban as the situation so demanded. 

However, years of civil war had taught these local administrations that relying on funding from a central government was not feasible and hence tribal chiefs and war lords developed their own funding from road blocks, taxing the local businesses and in some cases from the narco trade. In the 20 years that the US was trying to rebuild Afghanistan not one attempt was made to overhaul the corrupt administrative system which was expected to deliver security and basic necessities to the population. While on paper massive funding, to the tune of $144 billion, was made available to the government in Kabul, the actual funds that saw their way into the 34 provinces and 421 districts of Afghanistan were negligible. 

While a number of aid agencies were operating in the provinces in the areas of health care and social welfare their operations were not large enough to fill the void from lack of governmental services. In addition the funding that Kabul was allocating was being pilfered and only nominal progress was being shown on the ground to get further funds released. In many instances police and local officials were not paid their salaries on time and from 2015 onwards delays of nine months in salaries were common. 

While the Kabul government concentrated on security in Kabul itself, after 2015 it developed a policy to concentrate only on the major provincial centres leaving much of the countryside not administered from Kabul. The Taliban, on the other hand, had developed an effective policy to at least provide security in these far flung districts even if they did not have the means to provide health care and other amenities. Most Afghans in the rural areas were tired of decades of war and insecurity and with the Taliban offering security and no extortion and bribes at checkpoints they controlled they were winning the hearts of the rural population of the country. 

In contrast the US and its allied government in Kabul was seen more as an occupying force and in every sense the US policy makers were making the same mistakes they made in Vietnam. Corruption was so rampant that it infected the Afghan army too. It was normal for military commanders to sell fuel and ammunition on the black market and in some cases even military equipment ended up with warlords and eventually Taliban hands. While in time a deeper analysis will be done of the US debacle in Afghanistan it still remains a puzzle as to why the IUS and its allies did not take any measures to stop the corruption of the Karzai and Ghani governments? 

US policy short comings.

Apart from the fact that the US decision to invade Afghanistan (and Iraq) was faulted, (you don't invade a whole country to capture one man), polices and actions post invasion were ill thought and poorly executed. If the aim was to build a modern and progressive Afghanistan than working with the very war lords who had subjugated the Afghan people was hardly a solution for the long term. Military objectives were primary to US policy makers and political and social reform remained a step child of US policy in Afghanistan. Mediocre advisers who were either Afghans or supposed experts on the country sang from a hymn page which had no connection with the ground realities of the country. 

From 2014 US policy on Afghanistan was seeking not only disengagement from a war they knew they were not going to win but was also marked by an endless search for an exit strategy. President Obama after initially increasing the troops on the ground eventually began to talk of ending the war and a withdrawal of US troops. However, Obama fell short of specifying a timeline or a more detailed policy. His successor Donald Trump pushed ahead with a withdrawal and held meetings with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, to arrive at what is termed as the Doha Agreement. Under the agreement the US agreed with the Taliban that troops would be reduced from 13,000 to 2,500, which was promptly done, and that by May 1, 2020 all US troops would leave Afghan soil. 

What was bizarre about these talks and the subsequent agreement was that the existing government in Kabul were excluded from the talks. In addition no framework or conditions other than a Taliban undertaking not to attack US and NATO troops was mentioned in the agreement. Most importantly no political settlement or indication of the future government of Afghanistan was mentioned in the agreement. In essence this was a 'cut and run' deal done by the outgoing Trump administration in haste and perhaps partially to leave the Biden administration a 'hot potato' to handle. The Biden policy was to continue with the Trump-Taliban deal, however to extend the exist date from May 2020 to August 31st 2021 but did not push the Taliban for working towards a comprehensive peace deal with the government in Kabul. 

The Doha agreement was to have a major impact on the morale of the Afghan army. Those elements of the Afghan commando battalions who had been at the forefront of the fighting against the Taliban felt like 'a dagger had been put through their heart' when they heard of the agreement. This was all the more telling considering that through all of 2019, when the agreement was being negotiated in Doha, Taliban attacks on Afghan security forces were at their highest peak (8,204 attacks). In contrast attacks on US and NATO forces were waning and it was clear to the Afghan army that they were on their own. 

The Biden administration is being slammed for a sharp and hasty pull out from Afghanistan where in fairness both Biden and Trump should carry that burden. One would indeed have expected that Biden could have, at the time of extending the withdrawal date, encouraged and insisted on the Taliban and the Ghani government sorting out a peace deal. The Taliban it was said was willing to speak to the government in Kabul provided Ghani resigned and his successor held such talks. Biden could have renegotiated various aspects of the Doha Agreement to ensure that Taliban were also to implement steps essential for an inclusive government. 

Perhaps the gravest damage to the morale of the Afghan army was the absence of any representation of the Kabul government in the Doha talks. These were signals to the rank and file that the US was willing to abandon them for the sake of securing a safe withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban were better organised to exploit this gapping weakness of the Doha talks by sending messages into the many districts that the US was 'abandoning the Ghani government and its establishment'. This explains why the Taliban was able to take over many of the districts of Afghanistan without a bullet being fired as it pitched to local tribal chiefs that they would be better served with a Taliban government. 

Compromised Operational Readiness.

Due to massive corruption in the senior ranks of the Afghan armed forces and the ministry of defence in Kabul the Afghan army was in a pathetic state of operational readiness. While some of commando units were organised enough to fight even their resolve was being tested each month with no salaries, shortages of ammunition and most importantly the lack of any air support. When the US announced their pull out in Feb 2020, the many contractors hired to maintain and support Afghan army equipment including its small air force, also left Afghanistan. The Afghan army's fighting units suddenly found that they were not trained to fight without air support and with out over the horizon intelligence gathering they were in a sense fighting blind. 

On the ground the morale of these few fighting units was further eroded when they saw Taliban forces using American weapons and in many cases driving US Humvees and armoured vehicles. The Taliban tactics of hit and run had been effective through out the many years of them fighting US and NATO forces, and while the Afghan commandos were also picking  selective fights they lacked the air power to decisively defeat the Taliban in such encounters. As the tide turned in 2019 and most of 2020 the Ghani government insisted on holding on to small rural districts rather than withdraw to strategic highways and town centers. This depleted the effectiveness of the Afghan commandos who knew that most of the 180,000 plus Afghan army was just numbers of paper. 

In conclusion it was would be wrong to say that the Afghan army was not prepared to fight for their country. They had been built and trained by the US in a manner which required a broad based change in the mind set of military and political leadership. The US policy makers ignored that a military cannot function in a political and administrative vacuum. History has taught us that one cannot have military solutions to what are essentially political issues. The combination of all the elements mentioned above indicate that there was a systemic failure in Afghanistan and this principally rests upon the planning and direction of that plan from day one. Most damaging to the military's will to fight were the depth and extent of the  corruption in the country and the narrow self interest of the United States in negotiating their own withdrawal with little regard for the future of Afghanistan. The battle with the Taliban was being lost since a decade ago as the effort to win the hearts of the people in the countryside was failing.