Massive Incompetence Masquerading as Military Victory in Afghanistan

"We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn't know what we were doing."
"We didn't fully appreciate we didn't have sufficient expertise on Afghanistan, understanding the politics, the economics, the neighborhood. Afghanistan lives in a very tough neighborhood, prominently with Pakistan to the south and the east."

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute   AFP

"We didn't understand the ethnicities that made up the Afghan people, the demographics, well enough to craft a meaningful strategy. So it's got to start with expertise. And we were short on that from the outset."
"In the course of the [Obama administration] surge, which was approved in late 2009, in fact, about this time 10 years ago, the result of the surge was an Americanization of the fight in Afghanistan. We essentially took over the reins from the fledgling and emerging Afghan security capacity, and we took that on as our own."
"This, of course, is a natural outcome of dispatching 100,000 Americans to any war zone, but in particular in Afghanistan. And that Americanization, that owning of the war, in a way, set us back on the strategic goal of transferring this war and the responsibility of the war to the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces."
"It was on my watch that I learned about Afghanistan and tried to build personal expertise. But it took me 10 years. And on the last day of 10 years working on Afghanistan, I was still learning something new about Afghanistan."
"One of the most major flaws of the strategy, it seems to me, over the last 17 years really centers on governance and corruption in Afghanistan. And I remember, when I was there from 2008 to 2012, especially toward the end, there was a lot of U.S. military officials who would describe the Afghans as the problem, the Afghans as corrupt."
Retired General Douglas Lute, former NATO ambassador, senior official, National Security Council staff coordinating the Afghan war, 2007 to 2013 for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama

The U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan to find the leader of al-Qaeda, hosted by the-then Taliban government in Afghanistan turned into a rout for both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban who refused to surrender him to the invading coalition on demand by the United States. When the U.S. entered the country along with its partners in NATO with the approval of the United Nations more was not known about the relationship of Pakistan with Afghanistan than had been recognized. Pakistan portrayed itself as an ally fighting 'terrorism', when in fact it was a sponsor of the Taliban.

Badakhshan Province, 2004   Emilio Morenatti/AP

The millions of U.S. treasury transferred to Pakistan in support of its military and its secret service ostensibly aiding them to 'fight terrorism', went in fact to support both the Talibana and al-Qaeda as well, enabling them to resurge year after year to confront the allied forces mired in Afghanistan. Former Army General Lute appears to believe that paying the government of Pakistan and paying out U.S. treasury funds to support a nascent Afghan government which mostly went to the war lords seated in Afghan parliament, aided and abetted Afghan corruption.



He should, however, be aware that corruption infiltrated and continues to, every facet of life in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; it was not imported by the U.S., which admittedly through its naivete added substantially to the attitudes of entitlements and helped to build an aura of expectation that those collaborating with NATO allies would become rich on it, in an economy where employment was flat and rural communities in particular lived in a stone-age environment. Poverty, brutality, misogyny and hostility is the lingua franca of a powerful elite believing this is what the majority of Afghans should settle for.

The initial 'victory' of the allies over the Taliban and al-Qaeda led them to believe the mission was completed. Until, spring after spring the Taliban regrouped, recharged, reweaponized and returned and enjoyed the efficacy of improvised explosive devices bedevilling foreign troops and unfortunate Afghans alike. Victory in 2002 turned into a long, dragged-out war of attrition, frustrating and misunderstood. What failed to be understood was that Afghans, the Taliban, are a product of Islam and surrender to a foreign force is not in their theocratic handbook.

Mazar e-Sharif 2001, Oleg Nikishin, Getty Images

Throughout all the turmoil the commanders of the western forces claimed things were going swimmingly; they had changed the narrative from fighting jihadists to building communities. The Washington Post had acquired a 2,000 page study of the mission compiled for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) which served as a government watchdog for the  Afghanistan war. One person identified as a senior National Security Council official spoke to the issue of the Obama White House and the Pentagon claiming the much-celebrated 2009 'surge' had turned the tide.

"It was impossible to create good metrcs. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture."
"The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war."

By 2010 ground troops echoed the optimism of General Stanley McChrystal who formulated the plan for a 'surge' of additional U.S. troops that would overwhelm the Taliban and excite a victory for the U.S. through training the Afghan police and military in the modern art of warfare, instilling the confidence that it was their duty and theirs alone to support and defend their government and the U.S. would give them the training commensurate with that need. The U.S. trainers rose to the need, the Afghans failed to rise to the occasion.

Afghan women sit on a road divider as they seek alms from pedestrians outside a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019. Tens of thousands of internally displaced Afghans live in camps, which lack basic facilities, across Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

They were almost uniformly incompetent, lacked any evidence of loyalty to the concept of national security much less patriotism, prepared to defend their government, their nation and citizens and infrastructure against violence imposed by those determined to return to abusive power as oppressive tyrants under the guise of Islamic scholars. The American "clear, hold, build" counter-insurgency strategy failed simply because the Afghan military and its national police force failed to rise to any recognizable standards of self-sufficiency.

"About 30 of the interview records are transcribed, world-for-word accounts. The rest are typed summaries of conversations; pages of notes and quotes from people with different vantage points in the conflict, from provincial outposts to the highest circles of power."
The Washington Post

Ramstein Air Base, Germany, 2002   Tia Deatrick/Air Force/Getty Images

Over 2,200 American troops died in Afghanistan, while allied countries suffered their own war fatalities in the hundreds. After the ending of "combat operations" by the Pentagon in 2014 when the Afghan military was formally given the lead in defence, over 40,000 Afghan security forces have since died. The total cost to the U.S. treasury for associated costs for their stay in Afghanistan was close to $1 trillion.

President Trump stated while on a Thanksgiving holiday trip to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, that the United States will remain in Afghanistan "until such time as we have a deal, or we have total victory, and they want to make a deal very badly". He too fails to understand that the Taliban, Islamic scholars that they are, aspire to total victory. It is Islam in a nutshell and this is what the Taliban is loyal to calling on all martyrs to unite against the infidel.

Kabul, 2019   Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post