The black hole of Aghanistan
By Jeff Kouba
SIGAR (the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) was established in 2008 to serve as an oversight body. It conducts audits of reconstruction projects and its mission is to look for waste and fraud.
In the wake of the collapse of the Afghan government last year, SIGAR was asked by Congress to look into the causes of the rapid collapse and today it issued an interim report. The text of the report is here.
Here is a summary of the conclusions.
SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021. Due to the ANDSF’s dependency on U.S. military forces, these events destroyed ANDSF morale. The ANDSF had long relied on the U.S. military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The U.S.-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population. The agreement set in motion a series of events crucial to understanding the ANDSF’s collapse.
The report identifies “six factors that accelerated the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021.”
1) U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021
2) the change in the U.S. military’s level of support to the ANDSF
3) the ANDSF never achieving self-sustainment
4) Afghan President Ashraf Ghani frequently changing ANDSF leaders and appointing loyalists
5) Afghan government’s failing to take responsibility for Afghan security through an implementation of a national security strategy
6) the Taliban’s military campaign effectively exploiting ANDSF weaknesses
In addition, the report identifies “nine factors that explain why, after 20 years and nearly $90 billion in U.S. security assistance, the ANDSF was ill-prepared to sustain security following a U.S. withdrawal”.
1) no country or agency had complete ownership of the ANDSF development mission,
2) the length of the U.S. commitment was disconnected from the reality of the time required to build an entire security sector
3) the U.S. created long-term dependencies that would require significant time to overcome, such as providing the ANDSF with advanced equipment they could not sustain and leaving them out of the equipping process
4) the U.S. military, driven by political deadlines, struggled to balance winning battles with letting the ANDSF gain experience by fighting on their own
5) U.S. metrics created to measure the development of the ANDSF were unable to effectively measure ANDSF capabilities
6) Afghan corruption harmed ANDSF capabilities and readiness
7) U.S. control of the battlespace and of key governance systems restricted Afghan ownership of important military and governance systems
8) U.S. and Afghan governments failed to develop a police force effective at providing justice
9) advisors were often ill-trained and inexperienced for their mission, and personnel rotations impeded institutional memory
SIGAR has been issuing quarterly reports and “lessons learned” reports as part of its mission. Last August, SIGAR issued one of these “lessons learned” reports, the text is here, and this is from the executive summary.
The U.S. government has now spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society. The Department of Defense (DOD) has also spent $837 billion on warfighting, during which 2,443 American troops and 1,144 allied troops have been killed and 20,666 U.S. troops injured. Afghans, meanwhile, have faced an even greater toll. At least 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed. More than 48,000 Afghan civilians have been killed, and at least 75,000 have been injured since 2001—both likely significant underestimations.
What, really, do we have to show for all that blood and treasure? Will anyone be held accountable, even if it’s only at the ballot box? If the American people don’t have the fortitude to hold their leaders accountable, we shouldn’t hold out hope that said leaders will hold themselves accountable.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:03 pm
Lol. They’re right back at it in Ukraine.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:05 pm
Hence the difference between aiding Afghanistan’s army and giving aid and weapons to Ukraine to fight for their country.
Biden was right to get our troops out of there.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:27 pm
What, really, do we have to show for all that blood and treasure?
A cautionary tale that we are unlikely to heed.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:40 pm
^ But when the initial intervention is based on false assumptions and lack of understanding of cultures and societies different from western societies from the git go, then the eventual failure is inevitable no matter how much endurance is applied to the problem.
The problem is fundamentally with policy makers at the highest political levels who buy into the false reasoning pushed by interventionists. They buy the slogans instead of reasoned assessments. They are naive.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:41 pm
No Afghanistan disaster, no Ukraine.
The sheer incompetence of Biden’s Afghan bugout, followed by his ignoring the after-action report that found glaring errors and incompetence in both the military and the state department, led directly to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:55 pm
The literature on this subject seems to be a means of catharsis for those who saw themselves at the forefront of the post 9/11 wars. Afghanistan and the agonizing over what could have been, but never did materialize, is the new bogeyman of Western self-doubt. It would not have become so if hubristic and naive strategies, and their vague tactical interpretation, hadn’t been pursued by political leaders and their military commanders on the ground. This was clear over a decade ago.
May 18th, 2022 at 12:55 pm
Biden was right to get our troops out of there.
No disputing that. Abandoning Kandahar Air Base in the middle of the night in the weeks preceding the bugout was the clearest illustration that the plan for withdrawal was at best more political than strategic, and at worst, nonexistent. Footage of Afghans clinging to the side of a C-17 and some falling from the landing gear on takeoff will no doubt feature in anti-Biden ads in 2024.
May 18th, 2022 at 5:24 pm
Biden’s Afghan disaster occurred in Early August, 2021. Putin began the troop and equipment prep for his Ukraine invasion in November 2021, as soon as the ground froze. The difference between November 2021 and November 2020? A new American president intent on abandoning our allies at any cost.
May 18th, 2022 at 6:32 pm
See, it was Trump’s fault!
May 18th, 2022 at 7:09 pm
If he regained consciousness long enough, I’m sure Biden would be honored to have the approbation of the likes of rAT.
Mean that sincerely.
May 18th, 2022 at 7:12 pm
“ Biden would be honored to have the approbation of the likes of rAT (or more properly whom ever he is plagiarizing now)…”
FTFM
May 18th, 2022 at 7:49 pm
It’s a shame that you have to engage in American style “kremlinology,” but given the pitiful state of our media, that’s where we are. Since the media has decided its purpose is to support the Current Occupant, we are all free to speculate as we like.
So we know that Biden originally announced that the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan would be completed on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by the Taliban that killed over 3,000 Americans and hit our economy for about $100 billion.
This was so incredibly tone deaf that it kind of brought the US news media to a pause. WTF? Was this correct? Does no one in the Biden administration realize that this is as insane as celebrating the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Seriously, Again, WTF?
So Biden pushed the deadline further ahead, and it was an absolute disaster. Hundreds of Afghans killed, more than a dozen American servicemen killed in the chaotic withdrawal, billions of dollars of taxpayer purchased American military hardware gifted to the Taliban and their Russian and Chinese allies.
Gulp.
The team that is “managing” the US response to the Russian war with Ukraine is the same team that “managed” the collapse of the Afghan government last summer with the accompanying humiliation of the US military, intelligence services, and state department. No one was fired after that fiasco, Biden never admitted that it went wrong.
Pardon me for not waiving the flag.
May 18th, 2022 at 9:55 pm
Along with others, I can see telling the Afghans “you’re not getting with the program, so we’re going to stop throwing money and lives away on your behalf.” I cannot see why we abandoned our allies there to be abused and killed by the Taliban, and I cannot see abandoning all our equipment there to be used by the Taliban. Bring it back or destroy it, but don’t give it up.
Probably the best alternative would have been to say “we’re mostly leaving, but given the degree to which your nation has sponsored terrorism, we’re keeping Bagram so if we need to come back in, we can. If you don’t like it, consider abandoning terrorism.”
May 19th, 2022 at 8:26 pm
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