The Collapse of Afghanistan - What Can Be Done?

 

Events in Afghanistan continue to accelerate out of control at ever greater speeds. The fall of Kabul, originally expected to occur at some point in September now appears likely within days, baring a completely unexpected change of circumstances.

As the nation crumbles away, and a wave of fundamentalist evil approaches in the form of fanatical cult members, the Taliban look likely to take over leadership of the country. After 20 years of progress, Afghanistan appears poised on the precipice, ready to descend into an era of unimaginable evil and darkness.

Amidst this chaos, the Afghan National Army has all but walked away, while the West has decided to evacuate – leading to some of the largest Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) in recent history, while in downtown Kabul, the embassies prepare their emergency destruction kits and make ready to leave.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is possibly the single biggest humiliation of Western foreign policy since the fall of Saigon, and its repercussions will be felt for decades to come. But was it ever avoidable, and what does the future hold for the world of training teams and capacity building?

Arguably this moment has been coming since the first Western troops arrived in Afghanistan 20 years ago, and with the Taliban defeated, began to try to build a nation. At some point, they would have to leave, and the only question was how long would the complex mess that is Afghan politics and identity hold before collapsing in on itself?

That the ANA has collapsed so spectacularly and quickly is depressing, and highlights an uncomfortable reality – namely that it is very difficult to train a sustainable army that can stay the course past your departure. In Afghanistan, Iraq in 2014, Afghanistan under Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Vietnam in the 1960s – there is a long track record of armies formed by foreign powers collapsing once the main support is withdrawn.

If you consider the sheer amount of blood and treasure spent on training the Afghans to form a national army since the 1980s, firstly under the Soviets, latterly under the International Community, tens of billions of dollars and thousands of foreign lives have been spent trying to create a sustainable Afghan army. It has completely failed.

The problem is how do you keep the Army fighting as a formed body in a country where there is no sense of nationhood as we would recognise it in the West. Where family, tribal and regional loyalties play far more deeply than national identity, and where Government is formed by murky backroom deals, corruption and naked power grabs to enrich small groups of individuals.

It is perhaps not surprising that when push comes to shove, the Army melts away to be replaced by individuals who will look at the situation in a very different way.

For the West there are uncomfortable questions that need to be answered, and answered quickly. There is a school of thought that says ‘WE MUST DO SOMETHING NOW’ – knowing what lies ahead for the country, the desire to hold the line, to stop the Taliban and to prevent a complete collapse feels a powerful driver. We must try to protect something, and over time rebuild.

What would this look like though – at best it would deliver a Western presence to hold Kabul, possibly some of the surrounding cities. The resupply would be almost certainly reliant on airlifts for food and support, as most of the main vehicle routes out would be Taliban controlled.

The result would be a city like Berlin in the late 1940s, surrounded by barbarity, holding on due to resupply flights and overwhelming airpower. There would be an Afghan government, but in name only.

Would the West take on responsibility for taking the offensive and trying to recapture the cities now lost to the Taliban? It is a reasonable assumption that faced with moderate local resistance, precision airpower and special forces support, a counter attack could be launched, and a power vacuum emerge.

But this only takes us back to where we were 20 years ago – a routed Taliban fleeing but not destroyed, the Afghans unable to control their own nation, and the West overstretched and unable to extract without knowing this will happen again.

To go in now and ‘do something’ is perhaps the worst outcome because it only prolongs the agony. Uncomfortable as it may be, with the disbanding of the ISAF structures, troops and resources, and with the US deeply reluctant to step in again, there is little likelihood of success.

If the UK made a ‘best effort’ contribution, then the chances are about 10,000 troops may be put on the ground and a smaller number sustained on an enduring basis. This is a reflection of the distance, the difficulty in sustaining the airbridge (particularly given the increasingly worrying decision to withdraw the C130J from service shortly at a time of very poor A400M availability), and the challenges of logistically supporting such an operation.

At best the UK could hold some ground, deliver some support but do so at a cost of crippling other commitments and operations and disrupting deployment cycles for some years to come.

What should worry those who want to ‘do something’ is that the UK is, after the USA, the country with the best ability to deploy and sustain troops abroad. Our power projection capability is extremely good, and far more competent than people realise – yet even in a best effort situation, there will not be enough to save Afghanistan.

It would be difficult to explain to the families of those killed that their child died in Afghanistan trying to hold a tiny pocket of a country that we took a policy decision a few months previously to abandon to its fate.

At the same time, there is a not unreasonable school of thought that the West should not risk further soldiers and lives in the pursuit of Afghanistan, given the Afghan reluctance to fight themselves. Why should more Western lives be lost holding the line, when after 20 years of training it, the Afghan National Army has failed to defend its own country?

This is not to doubt the individual bravery of many Afghan soldiers, but collectively, the ANA has failed to meet the task placed upon it. Why should the West now shoulder this burden again, and step in to defend those not prepared to defend themselves?

This narrative of the collapse of the Western trained army does raise the question of whether training teams do more harm than good? The rapid collapse of the Iraqi Army after Western withdrawal also highlights this point – training teams build a short term measure of competence, enabling powerpoint metrics to be checked as ‘complete’ but do not really build the long term capability required to operate and fight.

Partly that is a problem driven by the Wests deployment cycles, of constantly changing the trainers around or sending them on R&R rather than sitting down and spending many years with a unit. An Afghan unit may have had trainers from 10 or 20 different units spend time with them over the last 10 years, meaning that every 6 months they have to build new relationships from scratch.

Is it any wonder that things didn’t work out well – perhaps the lesson is very long term partnership building and support from one unit, not a constant flow from many different ones?

More widely the question is perhaps whether it ever makes sense to provide these training teams, established to build capacity and then train nations to fight as if Western support is constantly round the corner. Training Afghans to fight in Helmand, knowing that ISTAR, gunships, medivac, and overwhelming logistical support is there is fine, right up to the point when we leave.

We’ve potentially left these troops in an exposed position, giving them equipment and access, but then pulling the plug and leaving them without the necessary ways and means to operate for the long haul. Blunt as it may seem, not training, but providing discrete local support by Special Forces and limited air support may have been just as appropriate a way to resolve this as trying to nation build an army where there is no sense of a nation to build on.

The lesson here is perhaps that the time for large nationally based capacity building and training teams is gone – except in small and very specific functions, they do not work, and they do not deliver the desired outcome. Maybe the future is one of the Oman model, limited scale training and advice, while supported through SF and discrete air support, rather than trying to establish national level training commands.

There is perhaps too a need to have a wider conversation about the role of force in building democracies. The assumption has always been that the role of the military was to build the conditions for a democratic Afghanistan to emerge, yet this has not happened.

In countries without a strong track record of democracy, using the military to step in and push out the bubble of democratic consent, training the military and trying to run the country is fine until you leave, and then it all collapses again, and the cycle begins anew.

As uncomfortable as it may seem, maybe there is a need to consider whether trying to install democracy as part of these interventions is part of the problem. Creating a weakened political system in the capital of failed states, such as Baghdad or Kabul exacerbates tensions and problems, and leads to complex challenges.

One only has to look at the difficulties faced in Iraq dealing with the coalition governments of various forms, where internal party dislike between different religious factions made trying to deliver a credible government that could rebuild the country almost impossible.

It is deeply uncomfortable to even think this, but perhaps we need to ask ourselves if democracy is always the right answer as the outcome for interventions like this. Would Western efforts be better spent supporting the strongest party, enabling consolidation of power, relative stability and then tying future support and aid and wider assistance to clear commitments on human rights, rather than trying to build a nation while the parliamentary democracy squabbles and fails to deliver – leading to the situation getting worse?

The biggest challenge the West now faces as a result of its failure in Afghanistan is trying to calibrate its desire for future interventions. Around the world there is a litany of failed or failing states where intervention could occur – but at what price?

In the last 30 years only two interventions have really worked successfully – the first is the mission to the Balkans, a complex bloody affair that many decades later still has some international troop presence on the scene. The second is Sierra Leone, where overwhelming force, and an open ended commitment to capacity building via a strong central government has delivered reasonable outcomes – but this has still taken the best part of 20 years to deliver.

Realistically a ‘boots on the ground’ intervention is not something you just do for six months then walk away. The decision to commit to the ground for anything beyond local advisory training, or a NEO is a decision now that commits your nation to years, possibly decades of presence there.

Do Western nations want to continue to shoulder the mantle of leadership that comes from this challenge? Do they want to spend many years training, supporting, fighting and dying to try to build a nation that history suggests has a high chance of failure after they depart?

A glimpse at Russia suggests their policy is one of using private armies like the Wagner Group to engage in these fights on their behalf. China on the other hand seems keen to avoid imperial entanglements far from home, focusing on pragmatically supporting via cash, largesse and other inducements to keep the favoured government in power.

The West now must make similar decisions – is the price of commitment an appropriate one to pay, given what we know the outcome is likely to be?

The collapse of Afghanistan is of particular emotional interest to Humphrey, whose early career was in part defined by operations in this nation. Working in Whitehall on policy roles trying to shape our engagement to the nation, then supporting the process to get urgently needed equipment for troops into Theatre, it is challenging to see how this has been a complete policy failure.

From a personal perspective, having served on HERRICK as a reservist, being based in Kabul but operating across the country, and visited many of the cities that have since fallen, it is heartbreaking to think of this beautiful rugged nation, and its people face the looming darkness again. Having met and known many Afghans who worked with us, the worry now is that for many of them their fate appears bleak, and their lives may be in danger. This is not what was supposed to happen.

457 British troops lost their lives in Afghanistan in a variety of circumstances. They went though as one to help serve and support efforts to make Afghanistan a better place for its people. How can we justify this sacrifice now though, knowing that everything they fought for has been overturned within months of the final departure of British forces?

Sadly, I don’t think we can justify it.