Why is the Afghan National Army putting up such a weak resistance against the Taliban?

August 22 | 18:45 PM| IST

İt's actually very easy, but very difficult to understand for many westerners who, especially the US in the frontline, have sucked always regarding sociology about the rest of the world.

The Afghan government outpost in Imam Sahib, a district of northern Kunduz province, held out for two months after being surrounded by the Taliban. At first, elite commando units would come once a week on a resupply run. Then, these runs became more scarce, as did the supplies.

“In the last days, there was no food, no water and no weapons,” said trooper Taj Mohammad, 38. Fleeing in one armored personnel carrier and one Ford Ranger, the remaining men finally made a run to the relative safety of the provincial capital, which collapsed weeks later. They left behind another 11 APCs to the Taliban.

Taj Mohammad, 38, served in a local police unit for 9 years, but fled when the Taliban overtook Imam Sahib, part of a wider collapse of the state’s forces.

As district after district fell in this summer’s Taliban offensive, without much visible support from the Afghan national army and police forces, other soldiers simply made the calculation that it wasn’t worth fighting anymore—especially if the Taliban offered them safe passage home, as they usually did.

“Everyone just surrendered their guns and ran away,” said Rahimullah, a 25-year soldier who joined the army a year ago and served in the Shahr-e-Bozorg district of northeastern Badakhshan province. “We didn’t receive any help from the central government, and so the district fell without any fighting.”

Afghanistan’s national army and police forces, theoretically numbering 350,000 men and trained and equipped at huge cost by the U.S. and Western allies, were supposed to be a powerful deterrent to the Taliban. That is one reason why President Biden, when he announced in April his decision to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan, expressed confidence in the Afghan military’s ability to hold ground.

The Afghan security forces have since then experienced a humiliating collapse, losing most of the country and the major cities of Kandahar and Herat in recent days. Taliban fighters on Sunday entered Kabul, freeing inmates at the city’s main prison.

President Biden said Saturday he would send approximately 5,000 U.S. troops to safely evacuate U.S. and allied personnel, a force slightly larger than the 3,000 personnel already in transit back to Afghanistan and the 1,000 already there, part of a massive effort to airlift western diplomats and civilians as the country’s demoralized security forces offered no resistance.

This spectacular failure stemmed from built-in flaws of the Afghan military compounded by strategic blundering of the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban, meanwhile, took advantage of the U.S.-sponsored peace talks to deceive Kabul about their intentions as they prepared and executed a lighting offensive.

The Afghan army fighting alongside American troops was molded to match the way the Americans operate. The U.S. military, the world’s most advanced, relies heavily on combining ground operations with air power, using aircraft to resupply outposts, strike targets, ferry the wounded, and collect reconnaissance and intelligence.

In the wake of US President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore. The same happened with another failed American effort, the South Vietnamese army in the 1970s, said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who commanded the U.S.-led coalition’s mission to train Afghan forces in 2011-2013.

“There is always a tendency to use the model you know, which is your own model,” said Gen. Bolger, who now teaches history at North Carolina State University. “When you build an army like that, and it’s meant to be a partner with a sophisticated force like the Americans, you can’t pull the Americans out all of a sudden, because then they lose the day-to-day assistance that they need,” he said.

When U.S. forces were still operating here, the Afghan government sought to maximize its presence through the country’s far-flung countryside, maintaining more than 200 bases and outposts that could be resupplied only by air. Extending government operations to the most of Afghanistan’s more than 400 districts has long been the main pillar of America’s counterinsurgency strategy.

Mr. Ghani had ample warning of the American departure after the Trump administration signed the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban that called on all U.S. forces and contractors to leave by May 2021. Yet, the Afghan government failed to adjust its military footprint to match the new reality. Many officials didn’t believe in their hearts that the Americans would actually leave.

“Politically it was suicide to leave certain regions, and to concentrate on certain others, and that made the Afghan army overstretched and critically dependent on close air support for logistics, medevac and combat operations,” Afghan Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar, who previously served as national-security adviser and interior minister, said in an interview.

“We did not have enough transition time to move from that arrangement to a new arrangement, to bring back forces from areas that are difficult to defend and to concentrate on the main population centers,” he added.

Demoralized Afghan security forces offered no resistance as insurgents appeared on Kabul’s outskirts

When the Taliban launched their offensive in May, they concentrated on overrunning those isolated outposts, massacring soldiers who were determined to resist but allowing safe conduct to those who surrendered, often via deals negotiated by local tribal elders. The Taliban gave pocket money to some of these troops, who had gone unpaid for months.

By the time the Taliban began their assault on major population centers this month, the Afghan military was so demoralized that it offered little resistance. Provincial leaders and senior commanders replicated surrender deals struck on the local level before. The elite commando units were one exception, but they were too few in number and lacked aircraft to move them around the country.

Mr. Ghani and his national-security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, were opposed to last year’s Doha agreement and expected the Biden administration to reverse course instead of doubling down on the deal struck by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Mohib, a British-educated former ambassador with no military experience, took direct control of military operations, calling unit commanders and issuing orders that bypassed the normal chain of command, according to several senior government officials and diplomats. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

For much of the past year, the Afghan minister of defense, replaced in June by veteran anti-Taliban commander Gen. Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, was out of the country, receiving medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Ghani routinely sacked commanders. The latest chief of the army lasted less than two months.

The U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Doha allowed the Taliban to project themselves as a moderate, benevolent force just as Mr. Ghani’s political rivals in Kabul plotted to replace him with some sort of transitional administration that would facilitate a peace deal. Former President Hamid Karzai, in particular, tried to position himself as a neutral third force, frequently lashing out at Mr. Ghani and the U.S.

“The government ended up completely isolating many people,” said Hekmat Karzai, a former deputy foreign minister and a cousin of the former president. “It became a self-licking ice cream fantasy. It just talked to itself and had very senior positions led by very inexperienced people who hardly understood the reality,” he said.

“Do the troops have a reason to fight?” he asked. “I feel that the Taliban isn’t enormously strong. It’s that the government is in disarray.”

Andrew Watkins, senior analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group, a research and advocacy organization, said that there was no evidence the Taliban had increased their manpower to launch this summer’s offensive, apart from tapping some of the 5,000 insurgent detainees who had been released under the Doha agreement.

What changed between February 2020 and Mr. Biden’s withdrawal announcement was an end to American airstrikes that used to exact a heavy toll on insurgent fighters, he noted.

“The Doha agreement bought the Taliban a one year reprieve,” said Mr. Watkins. “They were able to regroup, plan, strengthen their supply lines, have freedom of movement, without fear of American bombardment.”

When the insurgents struck, after suggesting in public that they won’t attack big cities while peace talks continue, the blow was overwhelming.

“When the Kunduz province fell to the Taliban, so many soldiers were killed. We were surrounded,” said Abdul Qudus, a 29-year-old soldier who managed to make his way to Kabul in the past week. “There was no air support. In the last minutes, our commander told us that they cannot do anything for us and it’s just better to run away. Everyone left the war and escaped.”

That's why, all the places where they went after the second world war, they bombed the hell out of them, but couldn't win anything, because simply, they did not understand how to govern, what to do next and with whom to make alliances. They also did not listen to their allies, who know the region well, with the fear that these allies can get an upper hand in this region and steal the interests of the US.

The simple answer is:

Draw a line on the map, starting from North Africa, going through almost entire Middle East, except Iran and Turkey for the most part, further to Afghanistan, even further to Pakistan and India, it's ruled with a tribalism mentality.

And a tribal mentality, you can only unite people for something, in this case to fight, when you can provide them a “cause". Exactly that's the reason why “religion" served in this region as the strongest common point in most of the wars, and the Islamic extremists came out most of the time as the winners or the strongest groups, because they could unite the people, right or wrong under an umbrella. (Of course, here again we must divide into subgroups of Sunni, Shia and other sectarian points according each region).

All other causes such as “Arab-nationalism", “Baathist" systems could survive for a while, became used and either collapsed, changed their course or weakened over time, because it could reach only a certain clientele of people who profited from the rulership.

And lastly, royal families, who could survive on the unity of monetary interests among families who kept their mouth shut and still do so as long as the Benjamin Franklin looks the same on the dollar note, but as soon as this interest vanish, it will become in no time a new Lybia.

So after knowing this, in most of these regions and in Afghanistan, people stick first to their own tribes, ethnics, castes, sects, rather having any national identity feeling, it's first their own tribes benefits.

In such an environment, it was always easier for Taliban like groups to create a common cause in comparison to the masses who served a government or outsiders just for the sake of their own selfish reasons or the benefits of their tribes and/or relatives.

People are shocked now all over the world why the Taliban was successful in such a short span of time and everyone surrendered so easily, when I was knowing it already for months ago when it became clear that the US is leaving.

Taliban has not won a special war because they fought fiercely against an enemy, nope, most of the places haven't even resisted, for the simple reason that those who were in charge for their own tribal benefits, just switched like always from one group to another and won't risk their life when there is still much to gain with the new rulership and others filled their coffers all over the years and just left.

Why fighting and losing your life for a “non-cause”, when there is a better life outside. And then there are of course many people who are fed up of years long fights and instability and just want to have some steady life and agree, even sometimes unwillingly to get ruled from Taliban, rather than to continue a corrupted, infected, foreign led weak system with lots of uncertainty for years?

The real victims are of course like always the common people, yesterday and today. But who ever really cared for them?

This is not something new.

All of the billions of dollars that the US and west in particular pays for the think tank groups in Washington or London to get an advice, they could literally ask me for free and I would explain them in depths how to play out in these regions. (Actually those in charge at the highest level know that, but they don't want actually solve any problem, they want it to continue and you have to read afterwards the faked stories on Washington Post op)

I served two years in Afghanistan and saw this reality 17 years ago, learned the hard reality very fast that every tribe hates the other deep down over there, know every single bit of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia like the back pocket of my trouser and you just can't create an artificial national identity over there “a la western type republicanism”, but need to adjust a fine social engineering to win a war at the ground, not with airpower.

The US policy in contrary is to kill the mosquitos in the room with a hammer, killing a few and after the destruction of the entire house, leaving without a solution and ideas for the future.

You have to understand the “tribal mentality”. If you play on their emotions professionally, you can make them literally a slave for yourself and let them do anything. And the repeated slogan of “Afghanistan is the graveyard of x,y,z, well, absolutely not agree", it's just, the plan of the invaders were fucking bad from very beginning. Any smart idea could change the course in only six months, but nobody wanted to understand that and continued with their stubborness.

If you understand the “Gaddafi and after Gaddafi time in Lybia", you will understand the difference of “dealing with tribalism vs. ignorance”…

The chief culprit seems to be inability of ANA to handle logistics. I don't think they have a derth of fighting talent.

Basically soldiers and cops in instances didn't get paid for 6–8 months and food supplies that were supposed to be 6x became like 1x with forces having to stretch 1 month or 2 month rations for 6 months.

This is debatable. Taliban when they came to power back in the 1990s were largely composed of students of madrasas of villages and other far-flung areas of Afghanistan. Their tribal lifestyle was quite different from the urban areas, especially Kabul.

When they captured Afghanistan, they attempted to impose their lifestyle, tribal values, and their own interpretation of Islam on the urban educated Afghan people. This was their biggest mistake. The Taliban leadership itself had no exposure to the modern world. Their world-view was restricted within the boundary walls of the religious seminaries they came from.

Nevertheless, the current leadership of Taliban is quite different. Their followers, the foot soldiers, are still the same as those who captured Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The current leadership has international exposure. They travel abroad, meet and interact with world leaders, bureaucrats, diplomats, journalists, think tanks, etc.

This exposure has taught them about how the international community views them. What they expect of them, and why it is important to have acknowledgement and backing of international community to govern Afghanistan.

Just compare this group of Taliban with those who came from seminaries who used to sit on floor, never flown in aircraft, and perhaps never seen an elevator that takes people to the 20th floor of a building.

Today, they have learned the art of diplomacy. They have learned how to negotiate at international level. They have learned the craft of give-and-take with International Community.

The way they have captured Afghanistan without firing a single bullet shows that they are now an entirely different group of Taliban. The real test of their leadership has just begun. The first thing first is to dispel the atmosphere of fright that they will implement the same strict and suffocating rule that still haunts people of Afghanistan. They will have to take the entire Afghan nation into confidence that no reprisal will occur for opposing them during the US occupation in the country. They will have to communicate, act, and make sure that they are all about inclusiveness, tolerance, and change in Afghanistan.

Fortunately, they seem to be on the right path. They have announced amnesty to all the people and reaching out to the women that they will not be harmed, and they can work in offices and businesses without any fear. So far, so good. It still to be seen how well they progress on the promises they have given to the people of Afghanistan.

These two things happening in unison can cripple the will of any armed forces to put up a show and commanders have an impossible time enforcing their orders on NCOs and privates amidst this environment.

Various tribal chiefs governing various provinces, towns, and citirs also saw no point of buffering up Ghani without US assurances for business, payments etc.

Make the Talibans overnight Bengali Muslims instead of Pashtuns and then look if you can find 100 million cheering fans on Twitter in their neighborhood and look if any of them says “Islam has won, Taliban is the true Islam"… (tell that fairy tales to someone else)