Lessons not Learned in Afghanistan

Much of the blame-seeking around Afghanistan is not only off-base, but damaging to our national interest. It’s incredible that even the comparisons with Vietnam talk about the final evacuations, not the failed enterprises. By concentrating all attention on an asserted “manageable” withdrawal, we’ve given the real perpetrators a pass.

In the last couple of days the NY Times has finally published two good articles. One by Ezra Klein has the apt title: “Let’s Not Pretend That the Way We Withdrew From Afghanistan Was the Problem”. In it the author goes over the real options we faced and why. It’s a good job. My only concern is that while he is exhaustive about the options, he stops short of all the conclusions I’d like to draw.

For that, the other article is essential. That one was by Sami Sadat, commander of the Afghan Army. His title is “I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed”. His point — that the loss was not just the Afghan army’s fault — is just the beginning here. What is important is that he gives a detailed description of the reality faced by the Afghan forces, and that says quite a lot about how much had gone wrong. There are three points to make:

1. The war was lost the moment Trump signed the Taliban agreement.

Here’s the quote from the general:

“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”.

The last bit is particularly important. Defeat is an exponential process — the likelihood of attrition depends on how bad things look, i.e. on the losses of all kinds beforehand. Once the process starts it accelerates. It was an astonishing mistake of US intelligence to believe we had many months, years even, before a Taliban takeover. There was no stability once defeat took root. Biden’s late withdrawal of 1200 US troops is not even mentioned by the general, as it was never the issue.

2. There was NO exit plan ever.

Again from the general:

“The Afghan forces were trained by the Americans using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes. We lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.

“Contractors maintained our bombers and our attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.

“The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared. Real-time intelligence on targets went out the window, too”.

The key point is that none of these functions are transferable in weeks or even months to the Afghan army. That this gap existed means that there was no serious attempt to make the Afghan army self-sufficient. As for the contractors, the general’s language makes clear that they had no intention of making their valuable, proprietary expertise available to anyone.

3. The Afghan government had lost the support of the population

On this the general’s comment is specific to the military:

“… there was only so much the Americans could do when it came to the well-documented corruption that rotted our government and military. That really is our national tragedy. So many of our leaders — including in the military — were installed for their personal ties, not for their credentials. These appointments had a devastating impact on the national army because leaders lacked the military experience to be effective or inspire the confidence and trust of the men being asked to risk their lives. Disruptions to food rations and fuel supplies — a result of skimming and corrupt contract allocations — destroyed the morale of my troops.”

More generally, Fareed Zakaria cites a US government poll of Afghans in 2018 that “showed that Afghan support for U.S. troops was at 55%, down from 90% a decade earlier”. That’s saying almost half the population was ready to choose an unknown Taliban regime as better than what they had. With the rampant corruption, participation in the last Afghan election dropped to less than 25%. The Afghan President Ghani reportedly fled through Kabul to the United Arab Emirates with $169 million in cash.

So, with all of that why were we still in Afghanistan? That answer is not hard to see.

Getting out was always going to be some variant of the mess we’ve just seen. And there was also a moral argument: leaving was going to hurt a lot of people in Kabul (though fewer elsewhere). So people in government wanted to believe a fantasy-that there was a solution. That is, the Afghan military would defend the state against the Taliban, and everyone would live happily ever after. That fantasy trumped reality all the way down to the end.

What can you say about Biden?

There’s no evidence he could have done much to delay the military defeat. He has gotten more people out thus far than has happened in other comparable situations, but he should have started sooner. He has not given in to the many proposals for last-minute military actions that would have undoubtedly made things worse. He might have gotten some of the military equipment out, but doing so would have undercut the Afghan army even more. (And the Afghan President Ghani pleaded with him not to do it.) So you can give him a B.

Lessons

1. Don’t believe in “benevolent” colonialism.

Neither Afghanistan nor Vietnam was a special American phenomenon. Whatever our original motivations, these were ultimately colonial wars. Once you take over a country, the motivation of the occupier is stability at all cost. That leads to wholesale corruption at the expense of the population and even the war effort. The Afghan general described that situation exactly.

We got into Afghanistan as a follow-on to 9/11. It was up to us to schedule elections and get out.

2. Watch out for fantasies.

Something has to be done about an intelligence establishment that was so eager to please, that it couldn’t recognize that the fantasy had no basis in reality. Remember there was NO exit plan.

3. Watch out for complacency, the idea that the future will just be a continuation of the past.

4. Finally, going back to Eisenhower, watch out for the military industrial complex.

For that, it’s worth thinking about who won this twenty-year war. Not us, just forced to leave. Not the Afghans who had to live with the fighting and corruption, and now are stuck with the Taliban. The real winners were the contractors.

Over the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. spent $89 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund the building and training of the Afghan National Army with an estimated $2.26 trillion in total operating costs funded by U.S. taxpayers. Ever since the U.S. government began keeping track, contractors have made up more than half of the military personnel working for the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is all the more remarkable since — as we’ve seen — their objectives were not even aligned with our national goals!

The contractors are said not to be worried at all about the end of the Afghan war. There’s a whole new round of military modernization coming. And we’ve never been short of wars.

Originally published at http://ontheoutside.blog on August 26, 2021.