Trump and Biden regimes to blame for Afghan military collapse

We have just had the clearest explanation of why the Afghan Republic and its armed forces collapsed. They collapsed because the American regimes of Trump and Biden collapsed them.

This is the lucid explanation by one of the most brilliant commanders of the old army, Lt Gen Sami Sadat. He commanded the 215 Maiwand Corps in Helmand this summer, prepared the defence of Lashkar Gah, before he was whisked to Kabul to head the national special forces.

By then it was too late, as the Taliban were at the gates of the capital. Rather than cutting a peace deal with the invaders, President Ashraf Ghani fled to Doha. A man of slender courage, but great intellect, Ghani knew the game was up. The Americans had pulled the rug from under him, and had begun the process further back than he realised – from early last year, in fact.

In his article in Friday’s international edition of the New York Times, Sami Sadat explains he had fought night and day in Helmand this summer, facing up to eight car bombs a day in the cities. “I am exhausted. I am frustrated. I am angry,” he writes. He quotes Biden saying American soldiers should not fight and die in a war the Afghans weren’t prepared to fight for themselves.

“It is true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that’s because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr Biden’s tone and words over the past few months. The Afghan Army is not without blame. It had its problems – cronyism, bureaucracy – but we ultimately stopped fighting because our partners already had.”

The British-educated officer then lists three reasons why it all went wrong. In turn they raise huge questions. Even in the hour of the agony at Kabul, with the loss of the 13 American Marines at the Abbey Gate, the statements of the current White House regime should be challenged. Pronouncements from the Nation Security Agency, the Pentagon and State Department as well as the Oval Office cannot and must not be taken at face value. When the words spin forth from the podium with the bald eagle crest the watchword must be, “Caveat Emptor – America Perfidia.”

Sadat ascribes the Afghan military collapse to three things. First there is the deal between the Trump administration and the Taliban delegation at Doha in February 2020. What did it really say? It appeared to point to a peaceful settlement between the Taliban political leadership and the creaking Ashraf Ghani government in Kabul. But the Ghani government was not consulted, nor to any real intent were any of the US allies.

This has led to the legitimate suspicion that there was a secret sweetheart deal between Trump and elements of the Taliban leadership; they could only be elements of the leadership as the full team was never there in Doha.

This suspicion is strengthened by the alacrity with which CIA Director William Burns whisked into Kabul a week or so ago to try to fix it all over again with the Taliban intelligence mates.

Did the intelligence agencies, CIA and Taliban, agree to an early scuttle by the key US enablers for the Afghan military forces – the contractors who moved the fuel and ammunition, maintained the sophisticated weapons and vehicles including drones and helicopters? These groups were heading out early this year according to Sadat – and so the Afghan forces began to founder. By July most of the 17,000 American and international contractors and fitters had left.

The pull out of the logisticians and enablers was the second big reason for collapse, according to the general.

Biden’s accelerated withdrawal made things worse. Washington ignored conditions on the ground. They had neither the will nor the means to take action when the Taliban breached the Doha peace agreement.

The third reason for collapse, the general admits and highlights, was the rampant corruption in Kabul and in the management and manipulation of the forces. But he makes the sharp and sensible point that the Americans bought into the corruption, using bribery and inflated commissions to make their own shortcuts. They bought into the rackets of the extended Karzai clan, for instance, especially the nefarious activities of the strongman of the outfit, President Karzai’s half-brother, Ali Walid Karzai, the fixer of Kandahar. He was eventually murdered by his own bodyguard.

One of the few Americans who tried to halt the avalanche of corruption patronage was Ambassador Peter Galbraith. Serving as deputy UN representative, he said a halt should be called to the nefarious campaign practices for Hamid Karzai’s re-election in 2008. He was fired for his pains and Karzai was elected unopposed.

Sadat points out that 64,000 Afghan military and police have been killed in fighting since 2014 when the international sustaining force ISAF wound down its ground operations. The intelligence and special forces have been outstanding – many of the latter were British trained. As a footnote, the Special Force Support Regiment, rather than the SAS and SBS, were particularly successful in training on and during operations, working with the units like the Afghan 333 commando units, and “the Tigers.”

Very possibly elements of these formations are now outside Afghanistan and are being regrouped, fed, watered and paid against future contingencies. They are going to be needed.

Their fate and the events of the last 48 hours in Kabul, plus the trenchant words of Sami Sadat, raise two further and urgent questions. First, why has the American extraction and rescue mission from Kabul been so badly botched? The simple answer is that as much as Biden sabotaged the sustainability of the Afghan Republic’s forces, he also failed to commit seriously enough to a durable outcome to the Afghan crisis. In fairness, though, even in the most benign scenario, this would have likely needed more years than Joe Biden has left on planet Earth.

The second mystery is why we suddenly heard about the threat of a suicide attack from IS-K only in the past few days? We now understand that the “intelligence community” knew of their presence in Nangahar Province for months, if not years. The community – i.e. CIA and MI6 – had even told their chosen interlocutors in the commentariat, like Frank Gardner and Mark Urban of the BBC, who told us yesterday they had known about this for ages. They all knew that IS-K were ensconced and active, and had even been fighting elements of the Taliban. We also now know that al Qaeda is present, plus groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Punjabi extremists and associates of Kashmiri militants, Lashkar e Taiba, as well as various trans-border Pakistan clans and groups patronised by the Haqqani network. At the same time as Haqqani is trying to take charge of security in Kabul.

So Afghanistan is again a cauldron of extremist elements with aspirations to global jihad. But weren’t we told that’s why the US went there in the first place – and dragged their Nato pals into it along with them? And didn’t somebody mention the fateful mantra “mission accomplished” only a few months back?

Sympathy is more than due for the suffering in Afghanistan, where suffering is now a chronic condition.

The questions raised by Sami Sadat’s trenchant article are simple but show-stopping.

Perhaps in the UK this weekend we should start rethinking Palmerston’s dictum about a country not having allies but only interests. Right now, the US is looking less like an ally for Britain but an interest, and a curiously ambiguous one at that. The relationship with Washington requires more forensic examination than most of the Westminster Bubble commentariat seem prepared to give it.