TE24 International Desk:
In an instructions with then-Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on April 9, 2021, security authorities conveyed a significant piece of information: The U.S. was wanting to declare a full military withdrawal. Be that as it may, Ghani overlooked the data after the then-VP let him know it was a “U.S. plot.”
The preparation demonstrated incredibly precise. After five days, President Joe Biden reported his choice to start pulling U.S. powers out of Afghanistan on May 1.
The episode, portrayed in an interval report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, highlights the question and brokenness that infested the Afghan government in front of its breakdown the previous summer.
The country’s military couldn’t support itself to a great extent as a result of the deficiency of U.S. airstrikes on the side of the Afghans, the report found.
Short-term, “98% of U.S. airstrikes had stopped,” a previous leader of the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan told SIGAR.
In 2019, the U.S. led 7,423 airstrikes, yet in 2020 it led just 1,631, almost 50% of them before the U.S. marked a harmony manage the Taliban in February 2020.
Without U.S. support for hostile activities, the Afghan military was constrained into to a great extent cautious situations around the country. Under the concurrence with the Taliban, U.S. airplane couldn’t target Taliban bunches that were standing by in excess of 500 meters away, giving the Taliban a benefit in focusing on Afghan military units.
The U.S. concurrence with the Taliban likewise powered confidence issues inside the Afghan military and police. The report statements an Afghan armed force administrator saying the typical warrior turned out to be more vulnerable to tolerating manages the Taliban due to the low confidence.
After the Afghan government imploded in August, U.S. military pioneers over and again accused an absence of will to battle and lead despite the fact that the U.S. had burned through $2 trillion on the conflict and country working north of 20 years.
“We prepared and prepared an Afghan military power of around serious areas of strength for 300,000 extraordinarily exceptional — a power bigger in size than the militaries of large numbers of our NATO partners,” Biden said on Aug. 16, adding: “We allowed them each opportunity to decide their own future. What we were unable to give them was the will to battle for that future.”
The peace deal between the U.S. and the Taliban introduced both mistrust and uncertainty among the Afghans, the report argues, in part because many sections were not made public or even shared with the Afghan government.
A former Afghan general said the U.S. essentially took on the role of a referee and watched the Afghan government and the Taliban fight in what he deemed “a sick game.” The lack of information also allowed the Taliban to spread propaganda and misinformation about the deal, including convincing local police and military units that the U.S. had turned over areas to the Taliban and that they should abandon their posts.
The report also found that the Afghan government was blind to the military’s logistical and sustainment failures, with a senior Afghan official quoted as saying Ghani’s closest advisers did not know their military could not support itself until Biden announced that all troops would leave.
The report provides a snapshot of the collapse of the Afghan Security Forces. The final version is expected to be released this fall.
