How Afghanistan fell into the hands of the Taliban so quickly

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – this week the world is shocked by desperate and terrifying scenes Afghans pour into the tarmac at Kabul International Airport, Seize the last chance to escape the country now completely occupied by the Taliban.

After nearly two decades of war, More than 6,000 Americans were killed, more than 100,000 Afghans were killed, and the United States spent more than $2 trillion, The country’s future prospects remain grim, and regional experts assume that the Taliban will eventually control most of Afghanistan again.

But few people expected such a rapid takeover, and the Afghan government and the Afghan National Army hardly resisted, the latter being funded and trained by US taxpayers with $89 billion.

“Although the final result and bloodshed after our departure is beyond doubt, the speed of the collapse is unreal,” a former intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan and the U.S. Marine Corps told CNBC, requesting anonymity due to professional restrictions.

“Why was the Taliban able to take over so quickly? Frankly speaking, this is a masterpiece, operationally,” Michael Zacheya, a retired U.S. Marine, told CNBC, who led the first Iraqi army to be trained by the U.S. military. camp. “Why can they occupy this country faster than we did in 2001?”

This question is in the minds of Americans, Afghans, veterans, and international observers—and the answer, like the Afghan conflict itself, is complex, multi-layered, and tragic.

But analysts said that the main reasons include intelligence failure, a stronger Taliban, corruption, money, cultural differences and willpower.

The Taliban quickly occupied Afghanistan, Including the capital and the presidential palace, According to Bill Roggio, a senior researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, this shows that the US military intelligence services have failed to assess the situation.

“This is the highest level of intelligence failure,” he told CNBC “Squawk Box Asia” On Monday, he added that this was the “biggest intelligence failure” since the Spring Festival offensive during the Vietnam War, a devastating surprise attack on the United States and its allies in 1968.

Roggio said that the Taliban had pre-deployed equipment and materials since the beginning of May, organized, planned and executed a “mass offensive” before starting the “final offensive,” while US officials said that the local government and military should be able to Persist for 6 years. Months to a year.

Last week, Reuters reported that A US defense official witnessed the fall of the Afghan capital Kabul within 90 days. Instead, this happened on Sunday, less than 10 days after the Taliban occupied Zaranji’s first provincial capital.

Jack Watling, a land warfare and military science researcher at the Royal United Services Research Institute in London, said the key thing to note is that the Taliban did not have to fight to enter the provincial capital of Afghanistan, but instead contributed to a series of surrenders. In the fighting of the past few years, the organization successfully controlled about 50% of the country by capturing rural areas.

When they started to make progress in the city, many Afghan troops succumbed to them, believing that the Kabul government would not support them effectively.

“The Taliban will infiltrate urban areas, assassinate key figures such as pilots, and threaten the commander’s family, saying that if you surrender, you will save your family,” Vautrin said.

“A lot of people surrendered because they lacked confidence that Kabul could save them.” More and more people chose this route. “So there is very little fighting, which is why it suddenly happened so quickly,” he added. .

“Speed ​​is not a reflection of military capabilities, but a reflection of the collapse of the will to fight.”

Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said that the news of a full-scale withdrawal of the United States has accelerated the process.

He explained: “When the United States announced a complete withdrawal, it signaled the end to the end to the Afghan soldiers and police, and transformed the long-term lack of motivation into an acute collapse, because no one wants to be the last one who stands by others to give up. Body,” he explained. .

Biddle added: “As soon as the signal is sent, the contagion dynamics takes over, and the collapse snowballs at an ever faster rate, with almost no actual fighting.”

In April, Biden ordered the Pentagon to withdraw U.S. Army from Afghanistan By September 11, the decision he said was made simultaneously with the NATO coalition forces.

Not everyone believes that the US troop withdrawal is the chief culprit in the chaos in Afghanistan today.

Kirsten Fontenros, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council, said that since the 1990s, the Taliban have become more effective.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday, she said: “They have become more adept… both militarily and non-military, they are pursuing the same goal they have-the establishment of an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. .”

She added: “The U.S. withdrawal is not the reason for the defeat of the Afghan government.”

She said the Taliban surrounded the capital Kabul and cut the supply lines needed by government forces. She said that while formulating new strategies, their numbers are also increasing.

“They use social media as deadly as they use a sniper rifle. They use coercion to put pressure on local tribal leaders, and they use very simple but effective text messaging campaigns to threaten local Afghans who are working hard with the United States and other foreign countries,” Feng said. Tenrose said.

The Taliban also let ground commanders make a decision to bring people into the occupied areas and provide residents with small-scale social services.

She said this allows the organization to “beat” Afghan and foreign forces in effectively attracting, wooing or coercing local people to support or not oppose them.

Watling believes that if the Taliban launch a full-scale military offensive and face resistance, the country’s blitzkrieg will take longer — but it will still happen.

“I think the Taliban will still win,” he said. “This is because the Afghan National Army is composed of many corrupt units without effective command and control. They don’t know how many people are in their units. Most of their equipment has been dismantled, stolen and sold, so they It is a force that is completely malfunctioning.”

Also because the Afghan army is sad Underpaid, short supply and underpaid Under the leadership of Kabul.

“In many cases, the soldiers did not eat well, were rarely paid, and were away from home for long periods of time…and were not well led,” Vautrin added. This was a tactical failure that resulted in a large number of Casualties. In the past few years, there were about 40 soldiers tuned in every day.

Many armies sell their equipment to the Taliban in exchange for cash, and there are often unaccounted deserters, leaving an inflated number of troops on the account books.

The core of understanding the failure of the United States in Afghanistan lies in understanding the country’s history and culture—and how different it is from any Western country.

“Afghanistan has never had a central government. It is foolish to think that we can establish a central government,” said the former US intelligence official and Afghan war veteran. “The’surprise’ of the Taliban’s return to power shows that from top to bottom, Americans know very little about Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan is a country with many tribes, languages, races, and religious sects. Washington and its NATO allies are trying to turn it into a unified democracy based on Western values.

“It is impossible to understand what the Afghans want,” said Zacheya, who trained the first Iraqi battalion under the leadership of the United States in 2004. “We assume that they want what we have-liberal democracy, Judeo-Christian values… and think they will automatically convert. But this is not the case.”

The tribal alliance in Afghanistan often replaces the national alliance, or follows money and power loyally. Part of the strength of the Taliban is that, as Pashtuns, they belong to the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

“At the same time,” said the Afghan war veteran, “we are basically a hodgepodge of supporting ethnic minorities, who have never had the ability to unify the country.”

“We don’t understand tribal dynamics, we have never understood,” Zacchea said. “We think everyone wants what we have. This is cultural inactivity, a disregard for their reality and life experience.”

The nature of the U.S. mediation and the Taliban ceasefire at the beginning of 2020 also further weakened the image of the Afghan government: negotiations led by the Trump administration excluded Kabul’s elected leaders, which at the time “destroyed the legitimacy of the Afghan government,” Watling said. It has not been widely respected by the local community.

Afghans, with a population of 39 million across the country, expressed strong fears about the future of their country—especially women, who were able to go to school for the first time since the Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1996 after the US invasion in 2001. For many Afghans, veterans bring some of these basic freedoms to Afghans, and their sacrifice is worthwhile.

Now that these achievements are about to disappear, an American veteran who served as an infantry in the country in 2011 lamented.

“I have no regrets about what I did there,” the former Marine told CNBC that he asked to conceal his name due to work restrictions on interviews with the press.

“I was just shocked by the people I saw there when I was a kid. Now that they are teenagers, I can only imagine what they are going through.”

— CNBC Amanda Marcias Washington contributed to this report, and CNBC’s Abigail Ng is from Singapore.