What is the reason for the rapid defeat of the Afghan army?

 

What is the reason for the rapid defeat of the Afghan army?

Western countries have also been surprised by the rapid loss of power to Afghanistan to the Taliban. Because, no one expected that the Afghan forces would not fight and would disappear into the air so quickly. In a speech to the nation on Monday, US President Joe Biden spoke about the situation in Afghanistan and the Taliban's rise to power in the war-torn country. Biden argued for the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan and blamed the Afghan leadership for failing to stop the Taliban's advance.

"The truth is, things are happening faster than we expected," Biden said. So what happened? Afghan politicians have fled the country. The Afghan military has given up, sometimes not even trying to fight. He added: "In a war during which Afghan forces aren't willing to fight for themselves, American soldiers are dying. They can't fight like that, they shouldn't. How can the Afghan army, which has been trained and armed by the United States for two decades, surrender to the Taliban so quickly? Many observers are still surprised to think so. The Taliban has about 60,000 fighters, while the Afghan government has about 300,000 troops. Yet the militant group took over the entire country in just a few weeks. There may be various reasons behind this defeat.

Absence of NATO air force: Kabul-based security expert Mohammad Shafiq Hamdam told Deutsche Welle that the Afghan security forces were financially and militarily dependent on the United States. They began to weaken after that support began to be withdrawn. "The US-Taliban agreement in Doha last year and the unconditional withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan this year have boosted the Taliban's morale," said security expert Atiqullah Omarkhail. He added that Taliban leaders knew that the Afghan government could be overthrown without the help of US and NATO troops.

Disappointment of Afghan troops: Washington has spent nearly 3 billion on training and equipping the Afghan military. Troops should have been strong enough to fight the Taliban, at least on paper. Analysts point to frustration and corruption as the two main reasons behind the collapse of the Afghan army. The US-Taliban agreement was signed in 2020 in Doha, Qatar, with the administration of former US President Donald Trump. Soon after, the message reached Afghans that Washington was no longer interested in Afghanistan. As a result, Afghan forces became frustrated.

When Joe Biden was elected president in place of Trump in January, Afghan officials hoped to get some more time from the new US president. But in April 2021, Biden pushed ahead with Trump's plan to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan. The US NATO allies follow suit. It is clear that the Afghan administration was not ready to withdraw troops so quickly. The Taliban did not agree to a nationwide ceasefire and inter-Afghan talks were pending. According to a report by the US Council on Foreign Relations, the Afghan military "did not have the capacity to deliver important items such as food and ammunition to checkpoints scattered across the country."

"Realizing that there'll be no gain in the least , most soldiers have decided to not risk their lives to barter with the Taliban, surrender or resist," the report said. The report added that "some Afghan units, especially elite commandos, have fought hard to the end."

Various non-governmental organizations and research institutes have been publishing reports of massive corruption in Ashraf Ghani's government. According to The Washington Post's Afghanistan Papers project, the former government has managed to confirm the identities of only 254,000 members of the Afghan security forces, compared to 352,000 members of the army and police. According to the newspaper, the commanders not only created 'fake soldiers' to launder money, but also corrupted the soldiers' salaries and supplies. The U.S. agency, which oversees the cost of the war, reports that the opportunity to "spend without accountability" has fueled such corruption and has not focused on trying to stop it.

Absence of Ideology: Another reason for the decline of the Afghan army was the lack of purpose. Many were more loyal to their tribe or region than to the central government in Kabul. On the other hand, the Taliban militants are united in Islamist ideology. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban from power, the Taliban said they would not abandon Islamic ideology and would take any steps to oust the "Western imperialists" and aggressors from Afghanistan. Pakistani media commentator Nadeem Farooq Paracha thinks the allegiance of Afghan forces across the country to the government in Kabul was fragile. Paracha noted that after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, it took the Mujahideen three years to oust the country's former socialist president, Muhammad Najibullah, but His forces could not last even a month. Source: Deutsche Welle.