The New York Times: The Afghan army was built over 20 years... How did it collapse so quickly?

The rapid progress of the Taliban reflects the failure of US efforts to transform the Afghan army into a strong and independent fighting force, with a growing sense of letdown among the country's incompetent leaders.

This is how a report published by the American New York Times summarized the situation of the Afghan army during the successive defeats it has suffered against the Taliban fighters in recent months, as the Afghan security forces collapsed in 15 cities, including Kandahar and Herat, which are considered the most important provincial capitals. in the country, and became in the hands of the Taliban.

The newspaper report pointed out that the Taliban's rapid attack resulted in large-scale surrenders of the Afghan army forces, and enabled the movement's fighters to seize helicopters and many other military equipment that the United States provided to Afghanistan worth millions of dollars, which the Taliban offered after seizing them in Afghanistan. Blurry videos shot with cell phones.

Fierce fighting took place on the outskirts of some cities that lasted for weeks, after which the Taliban managed to bypass the defensive lines of the army and take control of those cities without encountering any resistance.

The newspaper highlighted that this collapse in the Afghan army occurred despite the United States spending more than 83 billion dollars in arming it and providing it with the necessary equipment and training over two decades.

Building the Afghan security apparatus was one of the main pillars of the strategy of the administration of former US President Barack Obama, which sought to find a way to delegate the task of establishing security in Afghanistan to the local authorities and withdraw from the country about 10 years ago.

The New York Times said that those efforts were the result of building an Afghan army similar to the image of the American army, and that institution was supposed to survive and continue after the end of the American war in Afghanistan, but it is now likely that it will disappear before the United States leaves Afghanistan.

Why collapse?

The newspaper attributed the collapse or disintegration of the Afghan army to several factors, including the Taliban's ability over the past months to besiege Afghan soldiers and policemen at road guard posts in rural areas, and after a while the movement gives hungry soldiers who do not have enough ammunition promises not to be attacked. To them if they surrendered and left their equipment behind, which enabled the Taliban to control the roads and then entire districts.

With the collapse of guard posts and army units, the reasons for the surrender of the besieged Afghan army and security elements were the lack of air support or the running out of ammunition and food.

The report pointed out that the manifestations of the disintegration of the Afghan army did not appear for the first time during the past week, but were evident months ago through the cumulative losses suffered by those forces, even before US President Joe Biden announced the US decision to withdraw its forces on September 11th.

The newspaper pointed out that there are systematic weaknesses of the Afghan security forces, the most prominent of which is that those forces, which number on paper about 300,000 people, have been shown in recent days that their true number does not exceed about one-sixth of that number, according to US officials.

She said officials were turning a blind eye to what was happening, despite realizing that the true number of Afghan forces was much lower than the number listed in official records, which had been manipulated due to corruption and secrecy, which they quietly accepted.

The shortcomings in the performance of the Afghan forces can also be traced back to several issues, some of which are due to the West’s insistence on building a modern Afghan army, despite the logistical complications and supplies, which proved to be impossible to sustain in the absence of the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The New York Times indicated that among the factors of the collapse of the Afghan army was also the growing discontent with the Afghan leadership, which has long been expressed by the Afghan army and police.

She said that when the Taliban began their offensive after the United States announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the belief that prevailed in the ranks of the Afghan security forces was reinforced that fighting for the government of President Ashraf Ghani was not worth dying for.