Why Is the Afghan National Army Performing So Miserably?

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-the-afghan-national-army-performing-so-miserably?ref=scroll
Why Is the Afghan National Army Performing So Miserably?
FOLDING FAST
Always dependent on the U.S. military for air support and logistical help, the country’s army is virtually helpless on its own.
James A. Warren
Published Aug. 15, 2021 5:04AM ET

snip//

The United States spent more than $70 billion dollars to train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces—both police and army—but in the face of the recent Taliban offensive, dozens of units have simply vanished into thin air, deserting their posts and wandering off. Others have reached accommodation with local Taliban leaders, and turned over their positions without firing a single round. Still other government units have surrendered after they were surrounded and cut off by insurgents, or because they were betrayed by relief force commanders who decided it would be best to forego their mission entirely and call it a day.

So much for fighting spirit and military cohesion...

Why is the Afghan National Army collapsing? On a tactical and operational level, the answer is simple: the Afghan National Army has never severed its umbilical cord to U.S. logistics, air support, and intelligence gathering, even though the main mission of U.S. forces in the country since 2014 has been to prepare the national army and police to operate independently. Without these assets, government forces simply cannot stand up against a highly-motivated, well-supplied enemy like the Taliban.

snip//

Like the government in Kabul, the Afghan National Army is drenched in dysfunction, division, and most of all, debilitating corruption. The government has failed to address these problems for years. Nor did the senior leadership of Asraf Ghani’s administration develop a coherent politico-military strategy for tackling the Taliban on its own, though it has known for years that such a strategy would be required for long-term survival. Kabul’s internal paralysis and tensions ensure that even if it had a coherent plan, it could not implement it.

As Anthony Cordesman, an American strategic analyst known for his clinical detachment, wrote in a recent report for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington, the government in Kabul “is dominated by leaders more interested in competing for power than in the nation’s future, and it cannot govern or make effective use of its funding, most of which comes from U.S. and outside aid. The political structure of the Afghan central government remains a corrupt and divided mess.”

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-the-afghan-national-army-performing-so-miserably?ref=scroll

[Klaralven]

1. ...

The country, writes the British scholar-journalist Anatol Lieven, “is divided along many lines, which often crisscross one another in highly confusing ways.” There are tensions and mistrust between the Pashtuns and the Tajiks, the two largest ethnic groups, as well as between those two groups and the smaller populations of Uzbeks and Hazaras, between regional warlords, and a profoundly deep divide between the liberal world of educated Afghans in Kabul and the people who dwell in the deeply conservative countryside. As Lieven puts it, while the nation has a central government and an army, “in practice it is incapable of extending real administration to most of its own territory, or of keeping its own followers loyal to the state rather than other centers of power.”

[panader0]

3. Your excerpt seems as if it could apply to the US as well.

[panader0]

2. They were only in it for the paycheck.

Heck, they got cool uniforms and room and board. All of that equipment is now in the hands
of the Taliban. The US taxpayer dollars paid for the arms and equipment. What a colossal
boondoggle. I can only hope our leaders learn something after so many silly and costly
attempts at nation building.
The Afghan Army knew the Taliban would take over.

[AngryOldDem]

7. Nation building only works when people feel they have a stake in the nation.

That includes the rank-and-file and those who “lead” them. I’ve always gotten the sense that wasn’t the case here. Why should we continue to fight and die for a lost cause?

George Bush just said the consequences of leaving will be “unbelievably bad.” Of course they will be! What else to expect after 20 years of carrying this nation on our backs while the locals basically did nothing and their government was corrupt and inept? Would anything change if we stayed for four more administrations? I doubt it.

Bush just needs to keep quiet on this. If anyone “owns” this debacle, it’s him.

[krispos42]

25. They have a stake in their nation

The problem is that "nation" and"country" are not necessarily synonyms.

"Nation" is also tribal, cultural, and ethnic groups. They don't feel any allegiance to the country of Afghanistan. I think very few people there do feel that way there.

It takes a strong central government to make "nation" and "country" be the same thing, and that hasn't happened there and probably never will.

[babylonsister]

8. Yep. $70+ Billion.

Sure seems like a boondoggle now. I am happy we're getting out, as messy as it's going to be.

[Scrivener7]

23. $70+ billion also seems like a very, very low estimate.

[NJCher]

30. it is

Here's a cost estimate for both Afghanistan and Iraq:

Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.

Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.

The wars end; the costs don’t
Amount Bilmes (source, listed below) estimates the United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion.

Period those costs will peak: after 2048.

Source:

Much of the data below is from Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and from the Brown University Costs of War project. Because the United States between 2003 and 2011 fought the Afghanistan and Iraq wars simultaneously, and many American troops served tours in both wars, some figures as noted cover both post-9/11 U.S. wars.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-cost-of-america-e2-80-99s-two-decades-in-afghanistan/ar-AANm2pl?ocid=uxbndlbing

[malaise]

10. Here's what I don't get

The Taliban are part of Afghanistan - not some foreign army.
You are correct - the Afghan Army knew the Taliban would take over. Americans really thought they would side with them over their own? There are no good guys here.
To be honest I don't give a flying fuck - stop the wars and look after your own citizens - that's all the national security needed.

[panader0]

12. Your last sentence echo my sentiments exactly.

The US is at fault here. The US wants to impart democracy to the Afghans and
abandon it here at home. Crazy.

[MyOwnPeace]

14. SO many great responses in this thread......

but yours really hit home.

The irony - we wanted to have the Afghans accept democracy and we have SO many (yeah, YOU, RepubliQans!) here fighting against it!

[malaise]

15. What democracy?

Must be the ReTHUG version - they want to secure power for themselves - it is the US (and other Western powers) national interests that matter not the interests of any people anywhere on this planet. They have put more than a few military backed dictators in power to achieve those ends. Now they are brazen enough to try it in the USA.
Everything we know about international relations and democracy need a rethink .
We have all been fooled for way too long.

[JI7]

18. It's not about siding with Americans. But about siding with Afghan women and girls

but we see they probably agree with Taliban when it comes to treatment of females.

[malaise]

20. So then set a global example by locking up the Slobfather and Gaetz

The Evangelicals, Incels and more than a few others share the identical views on women and girls.

[malaise]

11. Here's what I don't get

The Taliban are part of Afghanistan - not some foreign army.
You are correct - the Afghan Army knew the Taliban would take over. Americans really thought they would side with them over their own? There are no good guys here.
To be honest I don't give a flying fuck - stop the wars and look after your own citizens - that's all the national security needed.

[PJMcK]

4. So the U.S. backed a nearly non-existent government

Afghanistan's government and military were totally corrupt and dysfunctional. Yet we poured billions of dollars and thousands of lives into a political black hole.

Not such great strategic thinking.

[Nay]

22. Ah, but plenty of rich corporations and rich individuals really made bank.

It was a grift all along.

[Kaleva]

5. Much the same reasons why the armies of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt perform so poorly.

[True Blue American]

6. This would have happened if we remained there 50

Years. Your article stated clearly why. President Obama pulled us out of Iraq. We spent many more years in Afghanistan.

We should never have been in either country and we know who is to blame for that. Trump made these plans so you can blame Republicans for both beginning and end. President Biden is doing the right thing.

We have deeper problems to solve here.

[NCjack]

9. I think there may be more basic reasons.

1. Corrupt Afgani government officials stole the troops' pay.
2. Corrupt Afgani government officials and senior military officers stole the money for guns, ammo and equipment. Also, they sold military stuff to the Taliban.
3. When the Afghan National Army soldiers ran out of ammo and got no backup and no air support, the Taliban offered them the deal of a lifetime. Surrender, join us, and we let you live.

[doc03]

13. We don't learn from history

[TheRickles]

17. Another good analysis is at Common Dreams:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/13/flawed-start-critics-say-afghan-wars-bitter-end-us-was-inevitable

Two good quotes:
"The U.S. designed the Afghan state to meet Washington's counterterrorism interests, not the interests of Afghans, and what we see today is the result,"
"There was not at that time—there is now not—a military solution to terrorism," she said, "which was ostensibly the reason for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan."

[Ford_Prefect]

24. The Neo-Cons surrounding Cheney/Bush engineered the invasion and the mission

to suit their fantasies of neo-Christian "liberation". They did the same for Iraq as for Afghanistan assuming their model of democracy was universally applicable. Neo-Cons live in a Disney-like version of cold-war America in which the divisions and solutions are very black and white. They quite badly misunderstood the ethos and subtleties of the Muslim world, and broadly discounted the degree of corruption in the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They also went in hungry to exploit regional resources much as a colonial power.

When things went badly post-invasion they made many of the same assumptions as a previous Pentagon & State Department during Vietnam. They also could not accept or deal with the idea that they might have been wrong in their planning assumptions. Instead of reacting to the realities of the situation they covered up their failures, which is what the US has been doing for the last 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...And now in Yemen along with much of Africa.

[Irish_Dem]

19. Corruption and graft on the part of both the US and Afghans. Pure and simple.

Many people got very rich off of this scam.

[empedocles]

27. Corruptions seep everywhere

[Irish_Dem]

28. Unfortunately, humans have this trait in abundance. :(

[Historic NY]

21. Place has alway been corrupt more so after they depose the King in 1969

Competition for power.

[mopinko]

26. we didnt so much fight a war as bribe our way to control.

when we invaded in the 1st place, we sent a dozen guys w cia phones and bribes in to line up the war lords against their old enemies.
they showed us where they were, and we called in bombs.

then we basically bribed people, soldiers, police, but also, i assume, vendors of all things.
we pay you extra to pretend to be on our side.

i'm not sure it would be different in any other country. it's not a path to change.

[harumph]

29. The answer is: they have not been PAID.

At least not paid on a reliable basis for YEARS running. These people are dirt poor and needed a regular paycheck.
So, with all due respect to pander0 above - they obviously weren't in it "...for the paycheck." You can bet the
warlords got paid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/world/asia/afghan-police-pay.html