Howdy,
“Too bad the Afghans didn’t fight.”
How often have I heard this little rejoinder from “Afghan experts”? I don’t know. Too many. It enrages me.
The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) weren’t punks. Their elite units were pipe hitters. The Afghan Air Force was a highly functional fighting force that delivered devastating effects on the battlefield. The Afghan Special Mission Wing routinely conducted nighttime insertions with the Afghan National Army Special Operations Corps (ANASOC).
You think that’s easy? Yeah, no.
For all the problems with the Afghan Ministry of Interior, and there were tons, they fielded some excellent Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units—333, 222, etc. The European special operations community trained these units.
The problem was in the regular line units. The Afghan National Army had six corps but operated at about 60% capacity. By the war’s end, some corps were hovering at 50%. They reported higher numbers — called ghost soldiers —but that was part of a corruption scheme.
And here, we get to the heart of the problem for our Afghan counterparts: corruption. Yes, they own part of the blame, but only part of it. We were the ones who flooded the country with trillions in American largesse and did it haphazardly. Our constant six-month to year-long rotations robbed us of institutional knowledge.
During my last deployment from June 20 to June 21, Resolute Support routinely touted the ANDSF security organs' ability to conduct their weekly update brief.
Wow. A weekly brief.
Those briefs were shows for the Americans. They were a nice little gift from the Afghans filled with all the buzzwords we love: coordination, synchronization, maneuver to contact, etc. In short, we not only misunderstood our adversary, but we didn’t really understand our allies either.
So, we built them in our image. We designed the ANA like a Western-style army and made it addicted to ubiquitous surveillance, logistics on demand, and fire support. Then, we pulled out and took all of the enablers they did not have yet—mechanics, administration personnel, logisticians—and blamed them when their security forces ground to a halt.
But it’s important to remember that the ANDSF didn’t fall overnight. No. It was years in the making. Trump’s Doha surrender agreement was a bodyshot to their morale. They knew we were selling them out.
Would you send your sons (and daughters) to fight in an army whose main patron had just signed a “peace deal” with your sworn enemy?
No. You wouldn’t.
70,000 ANDSF were killed. Approximately 3,500 were killed in the final year alone.
They fought. They fought like lions.
And that, my friends, is the real problem: the US military is incompetent at security assistance.
Since 1973, the United States military has rebuilt three armies from basically scratch: the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Every single one of them disintegrated when we left (too early). Only the ISF remains, and that’s because President Obama wisely reversed course and stabilized Iraq with American airpower and special operation forces — where they remain today.
Nevertheless, instead of blaming the Afghans, perhaps we should figure out why we keep building armies made of sand. Maybe we should realize that making Western-style armies that cannot be organically sustained is a recipe for disaster.
The Afghans made their mistakes, for sure. But they fought. And it is maddening to listen to people dismiss the Afghans, considering we were the ones who retreated from the battlefield first.
Until Next Time.
The other reason the ISF remained:
1) Iranian Quds Force + PMF (Shia groups) assistance to the Iraqi Shia-dominant government
2) Iraq was 60% Shia and 30% Sunni, so there were twice the numbers of Shia against ISIS (A Sunni group) ready to stop them from entering Shia-dominant Baghdad. That’s why ISIS didn’t grow too far outside of the “Sunni Triangle” + Mosul.
In Afghanistan, without significant external support for the Afghan government from the US, the Taliban were the only show in town and they didn’t need air power to make ground gains. The Taliban had external support (Pakistan) but the Afghan gov’s only external support was the coalition.
You were there and know all too well. I believe you - that they fought like lions.