Afghan collapse has political, not just military cause
Afghanistan's army fought a long war, so post-factum analysis that defeat was inevitable does not explain what happened
The loss of city after city and finally Kabul over the course of a week has prompted questions about who is more to blame, Afghanistan's military or its international backers. International failures and military weaknesses are important, but internal political divisions played a critical role in peeling away support for President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and destroying the armed forces from within, accelerating the Taliban offensive.
What next
The Taliban have won the military campaign but have limited skills and manpower. Facing diminished foreign aid and a cash-starved economy, they may be unable to control, still less govern, Afghanistan alone. They will offer alliances to compliant politicians, but soldiers and others cannot expect amnesty offers to be honoured.
Subsidiary Impacts
- The resistance movement in Panjshir is talking to the Taliban and may seek a deal rather than go to war.
- Taliban hardliners keen to minimise concessions to other Afghan factions feel emboldened, making a coalition more difficult to negotiate.
- A probable attempt by Islamic State to carve out a larger space will endanger the Taliban's credibility and control.
Analysis
Despite many deficiencies, Afghan armed forces fought the Taliban for two decades, suffering an estimated 66,000 deaths over that time, but consistently outnumbering and outgunning the insurgents.
Two weeks before the end, the Afghan National Army (ANA) still had as many as 150,000 men, although this was half the number often claimed as enrolled. Special forces and commando units numbered over 50,000 men and there were many pro-government militias. The Afghan National Police (ANP) were at a more advanced stage of disintegration.
Several interlinked factors conspired to aggravate pre-existing ANA weaknesses in recent months:
- weak logistics and deployments, often in exposed, inadequately supplied outposts;
- deteriorating provision of food and ammunition, especially with the phasing out of US air drops;
- corrupt officers who drained supplies and often withheld their men's pay;
- Taliban efforts to undermine morale, ramped up when the insurgents started promising safe passage for soldiers who surrendered;
- the psychological damage done by the departure of international forces and the loss of the air, logistical and other support they provided; and
- a widespread belief that the war was already lost because of the direct US-Taliban deal of February 2020, which circumvented Kabul and looked like a betrayal.
Ghani's bid for control backfires
The ANA's loss of faith in commanders, politicians and itself is key to its rapid disintegration, which was ultimately more a consequence of political than military developments.
The recent chain of events was unwittingly set off by Ghani. Anticipating a political crisis once the US withdrawal was completed, he moved to weaken regional powerbrokers whom he suspected of disloyalty.
Weakening authority
Ghani's position was undermined after his disputed re-election in September 2019 (see AFGHANISTAN: Election uncertainty will persist - December 27, 2019).
US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad worked to unseat him by:
- brokering a coalition deal with losing candidate Abdullah Abdullah (see AFGHANISTAN: President will try to share little power - May 22, 2020);
- forging the US-Taliban agreement that excluded Kabul (see AFGHANISTAN: US-Taliban deal far from securing peace - March 2, 2020); and
- pressing for an interim government, and encouraging Ghani's domestic opponents and the Taliban to pursue the idea (see AFGHANISTAN: Government confusion - January 25, 2021).
Ghani consistently fought back, outmanoeuvring Abdullah, former Vice-President Abdul Rashid Dostum and others and trying to centralise authority in place of the diffuse distribution of regional power (see AFGHANISTAN: President is serious election candidate - January 24, 2019). This yielded little in terms of strengthened central power but earned him many enemies.
Security collapse in the north
Ghani's appointment of Mohammad Daud Laghmani as governor of the north-western Faryab province in May proved a fatal misstep. Laghmani, a Pashtun from eastern Afghanistan, was not well received in Faryab, where he had no connection with the majority Uzbek population and could not speak their language.
The president widened political divisions that translated into military failure
Ghani had to withdraw Laghmani from the province after a week of protests led by supporters of Dostum, the dominant figure in Faryab and neighbouring provinces (see AFGHANISTAN: Ghani forced to concede on appointment - May 25, 2021).
Intelligence reports informed Ghani that Dostum was plotting with other northern leaders to challenge his authority, and he decided to teach him a lesson. He ordered security forces deployed in the north-west to pull out of combat, leaving Dostum's militia forces alone against the Taliban. These irregular forces collapsed under Taliban pressure.
Chain reaction
Worse was to come. The Taliban were more successful than Ghani anticipated and their northern offensive developed unstoppable momentum.
Former Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani, an ally of Dostum and influential in north-eastern Afghanistan, suspected that Ghani intended to allow the Taliban to capture the entire north of Afghanistan. With Iranian mediation, he reached a pre-emptive understanding with the Taliban and agreed to facilitate a managed takeover of his north-east fiefdom in exchange for a place in a post-Ghani government.
Rabbani's militias did not put up a fight and his loyalists in the security forces started surrendering to the Taliban (see AFGHANISTAN: Taliban advance swiftly as US forces exit - July 5, 2021).
Next, supporters of Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami party in the west of Afghanistan negotiated surrenders that allowed the Taliban to advance through Herat province.
By this point it was clear that the powerbrokers and politicians, many from formerly armed factions, who constituted the opposition to Ghani and had been hoping to replace his administration with an interim government (consisting of themselves) were fracturing and giving up.
In early August, the Taliban shifted from capturing rural territory to the provincial capitals. Urban offensives were expected to be much more difficult, but city after city fell with little resistance (see AFGHANISTAN: Taliban will shape unfolding conflict - August 9, 2021 and see AFGHANISTAN: Taliban war outpaces political efforts - June 25, 2021.)
Army weakens
ANP forces, staffed by loyalists of the various strongmen, evaporated swiftly.
The ANA was affected less swiftly, but many generals saw the way things were going and heeded officials in neighbouring countries whose preference was a controlled Taliban takeover. The commander of the ANA's 207th Corps reportedly accepted a USD2mn payment from Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps to hand over his Herat headquarters to the Taliban. The same appears to have happened with army corps in the south.
Those army generals who were still willing to wage war found it difficult to motivate demoralised men to go on the offensive. Elite commandos and special forces continued to fight, but were too thinly stretched to make a difference.
The final, decisive battle was in Lashkar Gah, the provincial centre of Helmand. As the Taliban pressed home an assault on the city, General Sami Sadat, the ANA commander here, became Kabul's last hope. Optimism strengthened when US aircraft flew missions from outside Afghanistan to strike Taliban positions.
After initially regaining ground, Sadat's forces were driven back. The air strikes had little decisive impact.
Final days
After Lashkar Gah, the ANA effectively stopped fighting.
Even Ghani supporters in his traditional eastern Pashtun heartland came to terms with the Taliban, allowing them to move up towards Kabul unhindered.
On August 15, a Taliban group approached the presidential palace in Kabul, expecting a formal handover. Instead, Ghani fled and his administration collapsed (see AFGHANISTAN: Taliban pause to decide how to rule - August 16, 2021).
Reshaping political power
The Taliban's promise of an 'inclusive government' involves co-opting enough members of the old political factions to create the impression of legitimacy. Former President Hamid Karzai, Abdullah and Rabbani are among those keen to take this opportunity; others will seek to accommodate themselves to Afghanistan's new leaders.
Apart from remnants in the Panjshir valley, the armed forces have scattered. Members of elite units, at least, can expect reprisals. Unlike their flexible political leaders, they have no place in the new dispensation, and promises of amnesty will count for little.
