Afghan Forces Struggle as U.S. Weans Them Off Support

When the American-led NATO coalition officially transferred security responsibility for all of Afghanistan to government forces in a ceremony on Tuesday, it was in part a formality. Already this year, Afghan forces have been in the lead in fighting the Taliban in more than three-quarters of the country — and they have been killed and wounded at a record pace, accordingly.

But after Tuesday, these are supposed to be the rules everywhere: while American units may sometimes be close by, Afghan forces must operate without American air support, medical evacuation helicopters or partnered combat units. If they get in trouble, NATO will not be riding to the rescue, except in the most dire cases.

This summer is shaping up as a lesson in tough love from American military mentors to demonstrate whether the Afghan forces really can become self-sufficient by the withdrawal deadline for Western forces in 2014.

Just how tough that has been is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Room 648 of the Afghan National Army’s Military Hospital in Kabul. The room is shared by two soldiers wounded in the same battle against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan on May 22 and 23. One of them lost three limbs, the other lost two.

Their company, with the 205th Afghan Army Corps, was based in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. In May, they were sent to a village near Zangabad, the site of a popular anti-Taliban uprising in March that American and Afghan officials had hailed as turning a corner in an area long dominated by the militants. Just two months later, though, the insurgents were back.

According to the wounded soldiers’ accounts, later confirmed by their company commander, they found the area heavily mined and booby-trapped.

“The ghosts of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union say we lose.”

The stated goal/interest of the US is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a terrorist base, not conquest. Once the Taliban were toppled, we should have withdrawn and let the Northern Alliance take care of things backed by the CIA, special forces, etc. The US used to know how to install “our” dictators in 3rd world countries and keep them there. It still befuddles me why President Bush didn’t do this.

We lost the moment we decided to stay.

It would have been wise then to have created a governable Afghanistan by separating it into a Daristan and a Pashtunistan.

That would merely have created a safe haven for the Taliban in Pashtunistan. The problem is funding from Pakistan and private Gulf state donors . Without that funding, there is no Taliban. We've used non-Pashtuns to pacify the Pashtun areas, and that is as it should be. They now have a foothold and lots of infrastructure created to help them hold the country together. The rest is up to them. As I've said before, South Vietnam lost 25K military dead a year. Afghans lost 1K last year and may lose 2K this year. If they can't take that level of casualties, they should surrender to the Taliban now and save all parties a lot of money and trouble. At the same time, this low level of casualties is encouraging - this war's tempo is desultory and downright lazy. Short of Pakistani invasion, I'd be surprised if the Afghan government fell to the Taliban.

The real problem, as with China and Vietnam, is funding. The Nationalist Chinese could not fight a Communist rival funded by the full might of the industrialized Soviet economy without Uncle Sam sending aid, given that (1) China's most productive coastal regions had been bombed to shreds, first by the Japanese, then by the Allies and (2) the Chinese Nationalists had been fighting the Japanese for almost a full decade before American entry into the Pacific War (and American aid). Similarly, South Vietnam could not fight off a conventional North Vietnamese blitzkrieg composed of air, artillery, armor and mechanized infantry units all funded by the far larger Soviet and Chinese economies without financial support from the US. From Wikipedia:

In early 1975, nearly two years after the United States' withdrawal from South Vietnam (according to the terms of the Paris Peace Accords), the VPA launched a campaign to unite Vietnam. However, when the US left, with a steady decline in US funded equipment and supplies to the government of South Vietnam, the Saigon government could not muster enough force to stand against the PVA. With the near collapse of the ARVN, the Northern forces quickly secured victory within 2 months in 1975.

I understand the media narrative is that these communists were all plucky underdogs who won because they were the good guys. But the reality is that they won because their financial backers stuck with them whereas we kicked our guys to the kerb. There are some moments in time when wars are decided by sheer military genius or grit. The Chinese and Vietnamese civil wars were not among these moments.

The natural disposition of Afghanistan is Communist, ie former Northern Alliance vs. Islamists. Good. Let them kill each other. This will wake up the Chinese. They already have some pretty large financial interest in Afghanistan. The real concern is Pakistan. Though that is overstated as well.

Both the Northern Alliance and the Taliban are Islamists. The Northern Alliance wanted an Islamist state in Afghanistan that minded its own business. The Taliban wanted to help al Qaeda fight an international jihad.

The Chinese weren't too unhappy about 9/11. They continued supplying the Taliban until Rumsfeld complained. Heck, Chinese journalists touring NYC cheered as they saw the World Trade Center engulfed in smoke on big screen monitors while they were touring a media outlet in Manhattan, upon which they were quietly sent back by to China by their State Department minders. Islamists aren't supplying their brethren in China. That's why Uighur nationalists are fighting their Chinese rulers with knives and machetes. The Chinese aren't our allies against the Islamists. If anything, Islamists are China's allies against us.

The non-elite Afganis will likely be very relieved to see the US Military vacate their country. The unrelenting killing and mayhem have been nothing good to most factions in the country, a momentary liberation of females that will revert back to pre-modern Mohammedanism within weeks of US pull back and a few with huge Swiss Deposits of US $$’s like Karsai etal. A decade afterwards we will see Hummers and half-tracks dragging poppy trailers thru the country side. The Great George Bush exportation of Democracy will have resulted in nothing more than impoverishing US and Mid-E Citizens and a lot of pain for military family’s losses! Responsibility must be brought to bear! Hang the NeoCons!

“That would merely have created a safe haven for the Taliban in Pashtunistan.”

Not necessarily, and not ‘merely’. They had, or have, safe havens in Pakistan. We could have gone in and pacified problem areas of Pashtunistan, which we didn’t do in Pakistan. Pakistan had been tolerating these when the focus was activity across their border in Afghanistan. Because of separatist concerns within Pakistan, not least of which are in regard to Pashtuns, Pakistan wouldn’t want an independent Pashtunistan, because then the focus for Pashtuns in Pakistan would be in joining that independent country.

Again, we’ll see what happens. It hasn’t worked before. Maybe, as you say, it will work this time. I’m not betting on it.

“The ghosts of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union say we lose.”

I hear what you’re saying, what they’re saying. And you’re touching on an important point here. Afghanistan was an entity created during the time of European colonization of Asia as a buffer zone between the British and the Russian Empires, so that they didn’t have to share a border with each other. It is artificial. The British Empire had to say, ‘here, and no further’. The Soviet Union, as successor to the Russian Empire, was asserting itself there in a place they perhaps thought Russia hadn’t gone far enough.

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