Afghanistan

 source: in Le Devoir, AFP

author: Sylvie Lanteaume - Agence France-Presse in Washington

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

The Pentagon's Mistakes: Explaining the Afghan Army Debacle

Washington spent $ 83 billion to create from scratch an army like that of the United States.

The collapse of the Afghan army, which allowed the Taliban to seize Kabul in ten days, highlighted the mistakes made over twenty years in Afghanistan by the Pentagon, which spent billions there with unrealistic goals.

Too sophisticated equipment

Washington spent 83 billion dollars to create from scratch an army like that of the United States, that is to say, dependent largely on air support and a communication network in good condition, in a country where only 30% of the population has electricity 24 hours a day.

Planes, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, night vision goggles: the United States has stopped at nothing to equip the Afghan army. They recently aded some state-of-the-art Black Hawk helicopters.

But the military did not take into account the fact that the majority of Afghan soldiers were illiterate, that the country lacked the infrastructure to maintain such equipment and they knowingly overestimated its capacities, recently underlined the Inspector General for the reconstruction of Afghanistan (Sigar), John Sopko.

When it came to evaluating the Afghan army, “the military changed their focus to make it easier to claim success. And when they couldn't do it anymore, they classified the objectives secret-defense, ”he said. "They knew how badly performing the Afghan army was."

"The advanced weapon systems, vehicles, logistics used by Western armies exceeded the capabilities of largely illiterate and poorly educated Afghan soldiers," says the latest report from Sigar, charged by the US Congress with overseeing the action of the United States in Afghanistan.

Overestimated workforce

Pentagon officials have not ceased in recent months to emphasize to what extent the Afghan forces (army and police), more than 300,000 strong, had an advantage over 70,000 Taliban.

But according to the Combatting Terrorism Center of the prestigious West Point military school, of these 300,000 people, only 185,000 were placed in July 2020 under the authority of the Afghan Ministry of Defense (army, air force, special forces). The rest were police and other members of  security services.

West Point analysts also estimate that just over half of the Afghan army's strength were combatants.

If we exclude the 8,000 men of the air force, the capacity of the Afghan army does not exceed 96,000 men, they concluded.

Desertions have always been a problem, according to the Sigar report. "In 2020, the Afghan army was to recruit 25% of its troops each year, which the US military had come to consider as normal." Desertions were "one of the main" factors explaining this very high turnover rate.

Weak support

US leaders have repeatedly stated that they were committed to continuing to support the Afghan army after August 31, 2021, the announced deadline for ending the withdrawal of US troops. But they never put together the logistics to do it.

During his last visit to Kabul in May, Defense Minister Lloyd Austin himself raised the possibility of helping the Afghan Air Force remotely to maintain its planes itself, which he called assistance “beyond the horizon”.

This concept involved virtual training, via the Zoom online video conferencing platform. An approach that appears illusory unless  Afghan soldiers could have been equipped with high-performance computers or smart phones and connected to a wifi network in good condition.

According to Ronald Neumann, a former US ambassador to Kabul, the US military "could have proceeded more slowly."

The total withdrawal of foreign forces was planned for  May 1st, according to the agreement signed by the administration of Donald Trump with the Taliban.

His successor Joe Biden postponed the date to September 11, but he also decided to withdraw all US nationals from the country, including civilian contractors who play a key role in the logistics of the US military.

"We built an [Afghan] air force that depended on contractors for its maintenance and we took the contractors out," Neumann told NPR public radio.

A demoralized army

Worse, the salaries of the Afghan army had been paid for years by the Pentagon. However, from the moment the US military announced its withdrawal in mid-April, the funds were paid to the government in Kabul.

Numerous testimonies from Afghan soldiers on social networks show that they have not been paid for several months and that they have not been supplied with food, or  ammunition.

“We have deeply shocked and demoralized the Afghan army by withdrawing the air support with which we trained them,” continued Mr. Neumann, who was ambassador in Kabul from 2005 to 2007.