Afghanistan Watchdog: U.S. Exit Led to Swift National Army Collapse Against Taliban

The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the federal government’s designated watchdog on America’s role in the country, blamed President Joe Biden’s extension of the Afghan war — then abrupt withdrawal from the country — for crushing the morale of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), paving the way for the Taliban’s swift takeover.

“SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021,” the report said.

“The ANDSF had long relied on the U.S. military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The U.S.-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population,” SIGAR explained.

According to the report, the first domino to fall was limiting U.S. airstrikes, which had surged under the Trump administration. ANDSF officials reportedly felt they were making real progress against the Taliban with American air support. 

Since Afghan troops had been trained in a mirror image of American forces, they relied on airpower and were ill-prepared to deal with its absence after the U.S. made deals with the Taliban to begin its withdrawal. The up-and-coming Afghan Air Force (AAF) was still a decade away from taking up the slack. The AAF was not even ready to cover for the loss of U.S. air transportation, leaving the ANDSF unable to distribute equipment and supplies to its forces.

ANDSF leaders also had no real plan for carrying on after U.S. forces withdrew.

“Former President Ashraf Ghani frequently changed ANDSF leaders and appointed loyalists, while marginalizing well-trained ANDSF officers aligned with the United States. The constant turnover weakened military chains of command, trust, and morale in the ANDSF. Young, well-trained, educated, and professional ANDSF officers who grew up under U.S. tutelage were marginalized and their ties to the U.S. became a liability,” SIGAR noted grimly.

The Inspector General’s report spotlighted some baffling failures of judgment and leadership on the part of American officials — baffling because the U.S. has considerable experience at fostering allied military forces, as in South Korea, and should have known how long it would realistically take to make the ANDSF self-sufficient.

“Constantly changing and politically driven milestones for U.S. engagement undermined its ability to set realistic goals for building a capable and self-sustaining military and police force. Further, many of the up-and-coming ANDSF generals had only a decade of experience; most general officers in the U.S. military have twice as much,” SIGAR noted.

The report noted American officials never had any real “yardstick for measuring the ANDSF’s development.” U.S. officials clearly never found either the Afghan military or civilian government fully trustworthy, and American forces carried most of the load on vital combat missions, while the Afghan government was locked out of logistics.

This led to the now-infamous inability of anyone in either Washington or Kabul to count the number of actual combat troops in the ANDSF. In July 2021, President Joe Biden assured the American people that “nearly 300,000 current serving members of the military” were ready to battle the Taliban after U.S. forces withdrew. By the time the Taliban reached Kabul, the Pentagon only knew where about 500 of those Afghan soldiers were.

SIGAR was harsh on the Biden administration for losing so much American military hardware to the Taliban.

“SIGAR has accounted for some items and personnel. First, the Taliban is using U.S.-provided ANDSF equipment for its own training and operations. As part of its robust propaganda campaign, the Taliban has advertised U.S.-acquired equipment – including armored vehicles and military aircraft – in videos of military parades and in training videos,” the report said.