My problems with Western attitudes towards the fall of Afghanistan (personal opinion article)

Sorry for being a tad late with this topic, as the fall of Afghanistan happened several months ago at the time of posting. I was somewhat preoccupied at the time, so I didn't get the chance to post this here when it was all occurring. However the whole Afghanistan topic has been an interest of mine for quite some time, and I just want to have a discussion about it.

Anyways, I've seen a lot of my fellow Americans (including my family) wondering why the Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers didn't stand their ground and "defend their women" from the Taliban. Many of them even labeled the ANA soldiers as "cowards" for not fighting back. However, there are so many things that these armchair westerners don't understand with that mentality.

For one, the ANA chain of command and the Islamic Republic are extremely negligent to their own soldiers. From my understanding, many officers within the ANA are prone to embezzling their units' supplies for their own pockets. Leaving their men under paid, poorly armed, and barely fed. ANA tactics were also quite crude and careless, mostly consisting of throwing recruits into the meat grinder in hopes of overrunning the enemy.

Made all the worse by the practice of "ghost soldiers", a common term for when officers inflate the number of troops under their command to illicit a bigger paycheck. For example, in a company of supposedly 250 men, probably only about 80 of them actually exist. Government officials and military commanders looking only at the theoretical numbers would then toss the “ghost companies” into situations they couldn’t possibly win. Such as expecting them to defend an outpost against hundreds of Taliban fighters, when they only have a force of a couple dozen men.

Not to mention, with all the aforementioned embezzlement of equipment, those "ghost" garrison units were lucky to have bullets in their guns. Let alone any access to aerial, armored, and artillery support, as those were in short supply in the entire government arsenal. From what I read, the ANA only had ~1,000 artillery guns, 40 tanks, and 150 combat aircraft, and even the vast majority of those were decommissioned by lack of maintenance.

Secondly, the Taliban rules for women (here is a laundry list of them in the Rawa website) by are apparently far from unique in Afghanistan. From what I read, the Uzbek, Nuristani, Taijik, Hazara, and Pashtun tribes, the vast majority of the warlord militias, etc. all treated women similarly to the Taliban. Even with the American backed government, most rural women lived pretty much the same lives as they did under the Taliban emirate. The only real difference was that the Taliban had cameras peering on them.

At least as far as my understanding goes, only urbanized populations under heavier foreign influence like Kabul are a tad more progressive on women’s rights. Not coincidentally, they were the majority of those fleeing in mass during the post fall evacuations and the loudest in protesting against the Taliban takeover. As they had the most to lose for being embedded with the US backed coalition.

As such, the vast majority of the ANA’s rank and file aren't that different from your typical Taliban fighter in terms of how they view feminism. Thus, defending women’s rights aren’t going to be much of a concern for your standard ANA soldier/pro government militiaman (as they probably have grown up such gender roles, and it's almost guaranteed to be the norm for them). In the grander scheme of things, most of Afghanistan’s power-players (especially the government backed warlords) have demonstrated time and time again that women's equality is at best an afterthought to them, despite their toothless rhetoric stating otherwise.

Pivoting back to the topic of corruption, corruption within the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRA) was so severe that it deteriorated the country’s infrastructure. For most IRA officials, embezzling funds for themselves took precedence over ensuring the functionality of their intuitions. This had the tragic result of impoverished Afghans being left to fend for themselves.

Why do your average Americans expect ANA soldiers to die for a train wreck of a government that forsaken them? Even without the Taliban in the picture, the IRA government’s days were always going to be numbered for those previously mentioned issues. The only reason why they stayed in power for so long was due to the Americans babysitting them. Case in point, the 2014 elections to replace the incumbent president Karzai were so badly mangled, that a civil war within a civil war was only prevented by American negotiations. Once the Trump administration started pushing for a full withdrawal and the Biden administration finishing it, their only stability anchor was taken with them. Fighting for the IRA is only bucketing water out of a sinking ship.

Realistically speaking, if the ANA soldiers actually tried to hold the line, they’re only going to end up as another corpse in the ruins of a yet another overrun base. The best chance for ensuring the safety of their female loved ones would be fleeing Afghanistan before its’ too late. ANA deserters aren't cowards, they've simply men and boys trying to survive the circumstances they're caught in.

I’m very sorry for this post coming out as an incoherent ramble. I’ve got so many moving thoughts about this whole Afghanistan situation, and I’m struggling to write them down under one cohesive format. Also, did anything that I wrote make any sense, as I also had a difficult time properly wording my viewpoints here.

 

I think you’re pretty dead on. Getting the average ‘Murikan to put themselves in a foreigner’s shoes is a nigh hopeless task but whenever someone says the Afghan soldiers were cowards, I try. I say, imagine that you are a grunt in the ANA. The government you are tasked to defend is made up of war lords, drug dealers, and assorted crooks who steal everything they can, rig elections, and generally don’t give a damn about you and are ready to scoot off to the Gulf States with truckloads of cash the minute things go wrong. Your commanding officers are stealing your wages so you have to sell your weapons on the black market to feed your family. Speaking of your family, the Taliban knows who and where they are and has probably recruited a bunch of your cousins. And while you might hate the rules the Taliban is imposing, at least you know what the rules are and that they’re not going to tolerate, say, cops extorting the neighborhood and molesting boys. So what exactly are you fighting for?

As for American plans or lack thereof, o e of my favorite commenters on current events, Gary Brecher AKA the War Nerd, has a good summary:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/the-war-nerd-was-there-a-plan-in-afghanistan.html

 

An interesting topic worthy of discussion. Will leave here for now but if the topic generates strong conflicting opinions it may be moved to the debate room.

 

The problem I see with the Afghanistan War is that the United States had no business starting it. Supposedly, it was because the Taliban was giving sanctuary to Al Quada, which was behind 9/11. But our leaders should have found some other way to fight terrorism than invading an entire country.

 

I find it... interesting.... that the main enemy to the Taliban now are ISIS, and are talking to the US about aid. Which to be fair benefits the civilians and the US can then determine certain policies such as female education.

 

Build a wall around the Middle East, don't let anyone in or out.

 

I agree. Why can't they be more like Europe, which is also a completely homogenous culture with no religious, cultural or ethnic divisions. Who never have violent protests, civil wars, revolutions, or go to cataclysmic war with each other and where all racial groups live in total harmony. If they can do it why can't the middle east?

Sigh.

 

Which grinds my gears no end. How the US can morally be in bed with the Saudis has always been reprehensible.

 

I thought Afghanistan had pretty much been that way since General Elphinstone high-tailed it back down the Khyber Pass.

 

Like many African nations struggling with nationalism, that area has been dominated by tribal divisions for too long to suddenly adopt, by force, an alien concept of nation.

I mean, it took the West ages (literally) to naturally evolve into nations from city states and tribal regions. And now we expect other parts of the world to conform within a few generations. Nations as a concept are still fairly new. And we wonder why that leads to civil unrest. (when it did exactly that for generations in Europe, and in many areas, still does.)

EDIT: I post this directly about Afghanistan though.

 

Gotta love the ignorance in that statement.
Mark Twain said "God created war so that Americans would learn geography" - doesn't seem to have worked. Afghanistan is NOT IN THE MIDDLE EAST. It is in Central Asia.

 

Yep. They were in the army not out of loyalty to the regime, but it was a job.

 

Saying that the Afghan National Army was at fault and not America and its Allies is a failure to comprehend that the West have had a decade to train and arm these people and that they did a piss poor job of it. Just look at the training videos being posted on youtube. The Afghans are mucking about or just cant get it right and their US instructors are just letting it happen, laughing and filming it. There was no serious attempt made to turn these people in to real soldiers.

Yes, their were problems with leadership, but the failure tacticaly and strategicaly was down to the US not giving a damn to do their job properly. They went through the motions and sneered at the Afghans efforts.

 

I think its extremley true. Like i said, just look at the videos that get posted, listen to people who were there. No effort to do things properly. No effort to stop the rampant drug use. No effort to stop the missapropriation of supplies. Why? because the longer they are the and the more supplies they have to, supply, the more money they make. Trump kicked over the gravey train else they would still be there getting paid to deliberatly fail. Look at the huge issue the media made of all the equipment left behind. That wasnt donated, that was bought and paid for and amreican arms companies were rolling in it.

 

My only thought was that our leadership failed to take lessons from Viet Nam, particularly "don't get involved with other people's rebellions".