The special report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction called the US withdrawal decision – conceived by the Trump administration in 2020 and implemented by the Biden administration in 2021 – “the only major factor” behind the disintegration of the Afghan National Force. for defense and security.
The inspector general’s report, which also blamed significant decisions on former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s decisions, is one of the most in-depth studies to date on the reasons for the Afghan government’s stunning fall last summer in which the Taliban quickly took control of Afghanistan. of the full withdrawal of the United States after 20 years of war.
The interim report is another humiliating accusation of the failed planning and strategy that struck America’s vision for Afghanistan, even when Special Inspector General John Sopko wrote that a possible collapse was “predictable.” The United States has repeatedly set goals for the Afghan military that were unattainable, applied indicators that ensured success, while obscuring the real problems and pouring resources into solutions that only exacerbated the problems they had to solve.
“After 20 years of training and development, ANDSF has never become a cohesive, essential force capable of acting on its own. The governments of the United States and Afghanistan share the blame,” the inspector general wrote. “None of the countries seems to have had the political commitment to do what is needed to meet the challenges, including devoting the time and resources needed to develop a professional ANDSF, a process of several generations. In essence, US and Afghanistan’s efforts to cultivate an effective and sustainable security sector are likely to fail from the outset. The February 2020 decision to commit to a rapid withdrawal of US military forces decided the fate of ANDSF. “
The Doha agreement, signed between the Trump administration and the Taliban in February 2020, shattered the fragile morale of the Afghan military, according to the SIGAR report. The Pentagon has been trying for more than 20 years to create a “mirror image of the US military,” the report found, something that never materialized and would require years of training and assistance.
By 2020, Afghan forces still relied too heavily on US personnel and support, despite $ 90 billion in US investment during the war.
The Pentagon has defended its decades of training and equipment with ANDSF, saying an independent, Afghan-backed Afghan army is “very close.”
“While not perfect and facing many residual challenges such as rampant corruption and desertion, the ANDSF has grown to demonstrate competence in securing most of Afghanistan’s population centers and has taken on all offensive operations against the Taliban to include the vast majority. from air strikes, “said Army Major Rob Lodwick, a spokesman for the Department of Defense.
Reduction of air strikes
Following the agreement with the Taliban, other factors also hampered Afghan security forces. The inspector general wrote that the United States carried out more than 7,400 air strikes in 2019, but limited them to only 1,600 the following year, almost half of which took place in the two months before the agreement between the United States and the Taliban.
Reducing air strikes, the report said, left Afghan forces “without a key advantage in keeping the Taliban at bay.”
The defense ministry said the reduced strikes were a reflection of the US commitment to the Doha agreement, which called for an end to strikes against the Taliban. The Afghan air force is still launching unilateral “defensive strikes”, Lodevik said.
The withdrawal of US counterparts last year further worsened the situation in the Afghan Air Force. Former Afghan Army Corps Commander General Sami Sadat has told investigators that when US troops withdraw, any aircraft in battle or in need of maintenance are grounded. “Within months, 60 percent of the Black Hawks were arrested without any plan by the Afghan or US governments to bring them back to life,” Sadat said, according to the report.
The report also criticizes the way the US military left Bagram Airport in July 2021, saying US forces left the base at night without notifying the new commander of the Afghan base.
“The U.S. military has also cut off electricity, allowing looters to search the base before security forces regain control,” the inspector general wrote. “Although US and Afghan officials have disputed the circumstances surrounding the US departure, which a U.S. military spokesman said was a result of a misunderstanding, the demoralizing effect of the late departure late at night on Afghan troops was clear.
The report examines a number of ways in which Ghana’s paranoia and lack of planning have contributed to the downfall of the country’s armed forces and, ultimately, the Ghanaian government.
Ghani was deeply ignorant of the state of his own army, the report said, realizing only in the last months before the Taliban took over that the United States provided almost everything for Afghan forces except men who fought. Increasingly distrustful of the United States and paranoid that the West is plotting to replace it, Ghani is tightening its inner circle, replacing a young generation of US-trained Afghan officers with loyal ones.
“It was only after President Biden announced on 14 April 2021 the final date for the withdrawal of troops and executors that this senior adviser and President Ghani’s inner circle said they understood that the ANDSF had no supplies and logistics.” writes the inspector general. “Although the Afghan government has been doing this for nearly 20 years, their realization came just four months before it disintegrated.”
“Old Guard of the Communists”
In the week before the fall of Kabul, Ghani deployed an “old communist guard” in almost the entire army corps, removing the younger officers.
At the time, the Taliban controlled five of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Within days, they would take over almost the entire country, culminating in the fall of Kabul on August 15th. Whatever his motives, Afghan and US officials believed that changes in Ghana’s leadership also played a key role in the disintegration of the Afghan army, according to a report.
The inspector general wrote that some Afghan and American officials believe that Kabul would not fall if Ghana remained in the capital. An Afghan squadron commander told investigators he had arrived in Kabul ready to defend the capital with a dozen helicopter attackers and 17 pilots. But after Ghani fled, “self-preservation instincts prevailed” and the squadron commander said anyone who could fly the plane had fled to neighboring countries, according to the report.
The interim report, requested by congressional committees, also aimed to assess how much equipment provided by the United States fell into the hands of the Taliban.
The inspector general wrote that the condition of the equipment provided by the United States remains largely unknown. The Pentagon estimates that $ 7.1 billion of Afghan security forces’ equipment remained in Afghanistan in various repair states when U.S. forces withdrew last August. “Obviously we don’t have a complete picture of where each article of defense material went, but certainly a lot of it fell into the hands of the Taliban,” a U.S. national security adviser told the inspector. common
The Ministry of Defense reported to Congress in March that it estimated that 78 aircraft, more than 9,500 air-to-ground munitions, more than 40,000 vehicles, more than 300,000 weapons and night vision and other equipment remained in Afghanistan. The planes that remained in Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport were “demilitarized and rendered inoperable,” according to a Pentagon report.
The interim report ends with a warning to the US government.
“Unless the US government understands and takes into account what went wrong, why it went wrong and how it went wrong in Afghanistan, it will probably repeat the same mistakes in the next conflict,” the inspector general wrote.
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