Intercept: US built a dependent Afghan army, setting it up for failure

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The worst failure of the US defense establishment since the fall of Saigon was when the Afghan military and government collapsed in 2021. A new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, highlights why the Afghan security forces collapsed.

The report, cited by The Intercept, focuses on the US government's efforts to rebuild Afghan's military from scratch. Similar to other US conflicts, they relied heavily on contractors and advisors who were “poorly trained and experienced for their mission,” according to the report. 

In some instances, these contractors would perform airstrikes and run systems on the Afghans' behalf. 

The US initially wanted to build an army that could resist the Taliban. However, the Afghan military was filled with corruption and designed to properly function only with the presence of a foreign contractor. As a result, the US did not build an army that is sustainable for a poor and agrarian state, such as Afghanistan. 

“The types of security forces that we were trying to build, which were relatively sophisticated and relied on advanced technology and electronics logistics systems, were just not within the general capacity of what Afghanistan would be able to use in sustainable ways,” said Jonathan Schroden, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, a nonprofit military research and analysis center in Virginia. “The real damning thing about what is in the report is that people had been telling the U.S. military this for years.”

It is important to note that ethnic and political divisions within the government led to commanders shuffling out roles for individuals connected to Kabul-based powerbrokers; corruption was widespread. 

Read more: Is This the Fall of US Strategy in Afghanistan?

The Afghan military fought the Taliban, resulting in tens of thousands who died in the war until the fight began futile. 

The report says that “the length of  the US commitment was disconnected from a realistic understanding of the time required to build a self-sustaining security sector.”

Saying that the war went on for too long, US political leaders noticed how unpopular the war was at home and began drawing up exit timelines. The US continued its commitment, but without any real aim toward success. 

Even had the training been effective, the Afghan security forces would not have been able to develop a solid institutional structure to survive indefinitely, given the fundamentally flawed US approach to building up the Afghan military.

As such, tens of thousands were sent to fight in an unequipped military for securing the country.   

“The Taliban and D.C. ultimately wanted the same thing, which was for U.S. troops to leave,” said Adam Weinstein, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and former US Marine in Afghanistan. “The conditions of the final agreement were not as important as leaving the country as soon as possible.”