The “Afghanistan Papers” were published in The Washington Post in December 2019, detailing causes of the United States’ failures in Afghanistan. These papers were based upon the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) interviews with some 400 — mainly insider — US, Afghan and UN officials. My previous three columns dealt with the strategic direction of the Afghan war, response to Pakistan-specific finger-pointing and systemic corruption in Afghanistan under US/NATO watch as debated in these Papers. This column deals with the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), including the Afghan National Police (ANP). SIGAR published two relevant “Lessons Learned” reports in 2017 and 2019.
For years, senior US military commanders were claiming to have built resolute ANSF capable of defending Afghanistan on their own. These included stalwarts like Gen Jim Mattis, Gen John Allen and Gen Mark Milley, etc., all involved with Afghanistan in different capacities. Gen Mattis called ANSF “the worst nightmare for the Taliban.” Such was the euphoria created about a force that even today lacks a professional culture to justify the toil, training and treasure spent raising and training it; and the spine to face up to the ragtag Taliban irregulars.
Since 2002, the US provided more than $83 billion for Afghan security. In 2011 alone, this assistance was $11 billion, $3 billion more than what Pakistan roughly spent that year on its much larger military. After years of mentoring and training, the ANSF has been unable to fend off the Taliban and Islamic State, etc. without US backup; preventing the US to extricate from an unnecessary and costly conflict, it considers lost. It forces the US military to “escalate the war from the skies to prevent” Taliban from taking over, whenever, there is a reduction in US/NATO forces. And errant bombing costs.
On paper, ANSF is 352,000 strong (262,000 Afghan National Army, ANA, and 90,000 ANP), but the Afghan government was never able to account for more than 254,000 all ranks on ground. Afghan commanders routinely inflated numbers to pocket salaries of ghost or no-show soldiers.