When the Taliban marched into Kabul on Sunday, it was the final act in an offensive that had proceeded far more quickly than many had expected. The government army, which had been heavily armed with billions of US dollars, had hardly put up any resistance. What had happened?
In June 2021, US intelligence agencies assumed that Kabul would fall within six to twelve months after the withdrawal of US troops. At the beginning of July, US President Joe Biden vehemently rejected the view that a withdrawal of the US army would inevitably lead to the Taliban taking power. It is highly unlikely that the Taliban will overrun the government army and take control of the entire country, the US President said during a press conference on July 8. At the beginning of August, the Taliban already controlled twelve of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. At the same time, military analysts warned that Kabul could fall within 90 days. As it turned out, this was still far too optimistic an assessment. The withdrawal of US troops had not yet been completed when the Taliban marched into the capital Kabul on August 15. Billions spent on arming and motorizing the army, special units and police, years of education and training – everything seems to have been wiped away. The 300,000-strong security forces seemed to have vanished into thin air. Their resistance was sporadic and was not enough to stop the Taliban, whose ranks were estimated to contain between 60,000 and 100,000 soldiers. Even after 2001, when US troops ended their rule in Kabul, the Taliban never completely disappeared from Afghanistan. They remained active in the border region with Pakistan, particularly in the southern province of Helmand, but also in other parts of the country. In 2015, they briefly captured the capital of the province of the same name, Kunduz. Their resistance against the US occupation never ended.
In doing so, they were able to count on the support of the population. In a country where, even twenty years after the US troops invaded and initiated reforms, large parts of the population live in poverty, where an Islamic patriarchy prevails in the rural regions and the occupying power, the USA, is known less for its support of a liberal society than for its manhunts using drones, groups such as the Taliban can certainly represent an alternative to the government in Kabul, which is seen as corrupt and US-friendly. It can only be assumed how many within the Afghan army also saw it that way. However, the state of the army itself was not as brilliant as the manpower and billions of dollars invested might suggest. Experts warned that the armed forces were dependent on US troops in key areas such as logistics, maintenance and training. In particular, the army would be highly dependent on foreign specialists for the maintenance of aircraft and combat helicopters. Overall, according to the experts, the highly developed weapons systems would overtax the skills of the often illiterate and poorly trained Afghan soldiers. According to the paper, many of the 300,000-strong armed forces were not trained for combat. They served as police officers, security personnel or in the air force. In addition, there were so-called ghost soldiers. Soldiers who only existed on paper, but whose pay was collected by corrupt officers. The figure of 100,000 operational soldiers therefore seems far more realistic. Other analysts who have examined the structure of the army say that it was primarily a jobs program for young Afghans. Many young men would have joined the army in order to have a regular income – something that cannot be taken for granted in Afghanistan – and not because they were prepared to defend the government with weapons. But there were also problems with the payment of salaries. The money paid by the US to the government to fund the military apparatus was often diverted and not used for the purposes for which it was intended. Civil servants and armed forces alike often went months without seeing a salary.
Kabul Airport this morning. Gunshots. Chaos. Cries for help. No security. #Kabul #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/EBBHIBSM6K
– Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 16, 2021
Mismanagement and corruption became even more apparent when the army was supposed to stop the Taliban. The troops were not supplied with ammunition, food and water. Special units had to surrender because they had run out of ammunition. It is not surprising that soldiers in such conditions ask themselves whether it is worth fighting for this government. It also did little for the morale of the Afghan troops that the USA held negotiations with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, about the time after the withdrawal. The signal was fatal. It suggested that the USA was assuming that the Taliban would seize power. The latest events are a catastrophe for all those Afghans who had hoped to continue on the path to a more western-oriented society and now find themselves abandoned by the West. The chaotic conditions at Kabul airport, where thousands are trying to get out of the country, speak for themselves. When the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, they enforced a very strict form of Islam. Even then, this Islam was not very popular with many people. Today it is even less so. The young urban generation in particular, who are well educated, have perhaps studied abroad and are used to social freedoms, will have little sympathy for this backward-looking ideology. The question is how the Taliban will deal with this. Will they be prepared to make concessions or will they use force to impose their interpretation of Islam, perhaps provoking new uprisings?
But the Taliban must also consider how to proceed in terms of foreign policy. The emirate that they have announced they will declare already existed in the 1990s. At that time, it was neither recognized within the country nor outside (except by the states of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). The Taliban know this. They also know that they are being closely watched by neighboring states such as China. The People’s Republic has already made it clear that it will not tolerate Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for terrorists, as one government representative put it. He was alluding to possible support for the Uyghur resistance against the central government in Beijing. Parts of the outer border of the Uyghur province of Xinjiang border on Afghanistan. With all these problems, the Afghans are on their own. When the Taliban invaded Kabul on August 15, the US flag on the American embassy building was taken down. The USA has given up on Afghanistan. Twenty years after September 11th and the beginning of the war on terror declared by the USA, the Taliban once again rule Afghanistan.
