atching the U.S. supported Afghan government unravel so quickly, I am confused by our leadership’s decisions. I am angry about how casually we allowed the Taliban to regain control. I am saddened as I think about the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been lost to this war over the last 20 years. I spent almost my entire adult life training for or participating in combat missions in southern Afghanistan. Now I wonder, was it worth it?
The plan was flawed from the start: the Afghan forces never had a true voice in the strategic planning process. The reality is that the U.S. government never understood the facts on the ground or the realities facing our Afghan partners. Between 2009 and 2010, “hearts and minds” and “clear and hold” were common phrases for military strategy that I heard tossed around in southern Afghanistan, the birthplace of the Taliban. These operations and strategies, which were devised by U.S. and NATO military strategists and policy makers and were then supposed to be carried out and “led” by the Afghan forces.
While providing intelligence support in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2013, I found that military operations that were touted as bilateral were, in reality, unilaterally led by U.S. troops. Sometimes Afghan security forces were unprepared or not even present.
When U.S. troops would work with and teach Afghan soldiers or police, there was a constant fear that these same Afghans (sometimes Taliban infiltrators) would eventually turn their weapons on American forces. We lived with a constant fear that someone within the Afghan element may have already alerted the Taliban to our mission plan and we could be walking into an ambush. These were just some of the early indicators that there was no buy-in from Afghan forces of the “joint” strategy to defeat the Taliban.
Over the decades that the United States operated in Afghanistan, these significant indicators were often wrongly attributed to the security forces being inherently lazy or unmotivated. However, they were not consistently incorporated into planning efforts to help address the key issues and challenges facing Afghans on the ground. A true joint strategy could have helped bolster a comprehensive grassroots stand against the Taliban by both civilians and government security that could have more holistically addressed the situation facing Afghan forces.
A multitude of reports have mentioned the human rights advancements, technological contributions, and financial and logistical support of Afghanistan that number in the trillions of dollars. But how involved were the families in the Arghandab River Valley in deciding the type of aid and support they would receive? In a country where Transparency International's 2017 Corruption Perception Index ranks the country 165th place out of 180 countries, how much of the financial support that was dedicated for those families actually reached them? The voice of the Afghan people— the single most important variable in ensuring success— has been left out of the entire decision-making process.
Despite all of this, many, including those who spent years of their lives dedicated to the American mission in Afghanistan, have been shocked about the way in which the withdrawal transpired. There is also surprise about the speed with which the Taliban was able to reassert themselves as the de facto leaders of the country. At a minimum, most believed that the Afghan government could keep the Taliban at bay long enough to secure key locations like the U.S. Embassy and the Kabul airport and to assist with an orderly evacuation of American citizens, Afghan interpreters, and other allies. But even this was not to be.
To the uninitiated, the question is how could America and other partner intelligence services miss by so much? The question is, how could U.S. leadership ignore the warnings for so long?
Instead of acknowledging the facts, the highest levels of American government, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, repeatedly and consistently claimed that the Afghan government was not only prepared but willing and ready to lead the fight against the Taliban without direct assistance from U.S. troops. This was obviously not the reality from where myself and my fellow American and Afghan soldiers stood. This is not an indictment of the will, capability, or intellect of the Afghan people. It is an indictment of the refusal of the American government to ask one simple question from the beginning: what do the people of Afghanistan want?
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American Leadership Never Understood Afghanistan
Map of Afghanistan. Photo via Pixabay.
November 11, 2021
Afghanistan's rapid unraveling demonstrates how poorly the U.S. government understood the facts on the ground, and how little say our Afghan partners had in the strategic planning process, writes Truman National Security Project Defense Council Member JT Liddell.
W
atching the U.S. supported Afghan government unravel so quickly, I am confused by our leadership’s decisions. I am angry about how casually we allowed the Taliban to regain control. I am saddened as I think about the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been lost to this war over the last 20 years. I spent almost my entire adult life training for or participating in combat missions in southern Afghanistan. Now I wonder, was it worth it?
The plan was flawed from the start: the Afghan forces never had a true voice in the strategic planning process. The reality is that the U.S. government never understood the facts on the ground or the realities facing our Afghan partners. Between 2009 and 2010, “hearts and minds” and “clear and hold” were common phrases for military strategy that I heard tossed around in southern Afghanistan, the birthplace of the Taliban. These operations and strategies, which were devised by U.S. and NATO military strategists and policy makers and were then supposed to be carried out and “led” by the Afghan forces.
While providing intelligence support in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2013, I found that military operations that were touted as bilateral were, in reality, unilaterally led by U.S. troops. Sometimes Afghan security forces were unprepared or not even present.
When U.S. troops would work with and teach Afghan soldiers or police, there was a constant fear that these same Afghans (sometimes Taliban infiltrators) would eventually turn their weapons on American forces. We lived with a constant fear that someone within the Afghan element may have already alerted the Taliban to our mission plan and we could be walking into an ambush. These were just some of the early indicators that there was no buy-in from Afghan forces of the “joint” strategy to defeat the Taliban.
Over the decades that the United States operated in Afghanistan, these significant indicators were often wrongly attributed to the security forces being inherently lazy or unmotivated. However, they were not consistently incorporated into planning efforts to help address the key issues and challenges facing Afghans on the ground. A true joint strategy could have helped bolster a comprehensive grassroots stand against the Taliban by both civilians and government security that could have more holistically addressed the situation facing Afghan forces.
A multitude of reports have mentioned the human rights advancements, technological contributions, and financial and logistical support of Afghanistan that number in the trillions of dollars. But how involved were the families in the Arghandab River Valley in deciding the type of aid and support they would receive? In a country where Transparency International's 2017 Corruption Perception Index ranks the country 165th place out of 180 countries, how much of the financial support that was dedicated for those families actually reached them? The voice of the Afghan people— the single most important variable in ensuring success— has been left out of the entire decision-making process.
Despite all of this, many, including those who spent years of their lives dedicated to the American mission in Afghanistan, have been shocked about the way in which the withdrawal transpired. There is also surprise about the speed with which the Taliban was able to reassert themselves as the de facto leaders of the country. At a minimum, most believed that the Afghan government could keep the Taliban at bay long enough to secure key locations like the U.S. Embassy and the Kabul airport and to assist with an orderly evacuation of American citizens, Afghan interpreters, and other allies. But even this was not to be.
To the uninitiated, the question is how could America and other partner intelligence services miss by so much? The question is, how could U.S. leadership ignore the warnings for so long?
Instead of acknowledging the facts, the highest levels of American government, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, repeatedly and consistently claimed that the Afghan government was not only prepared but willing and ready to lead the fight against the Taliban without direct assistance from U.S. troops. This was obviously not the reality from where myself and my fellow American and Afghan soldiers stood. This is not an indictment of the will, capability, or intellect of the Afghan people. It is an indictment of the refusal of the American government to ask one simple question from the beginning: what do the people of Afghanistan want?
