Taliban militants, in a dramatic territorial conquests, raced closer to a forced takeover of Afghan capital, Kabul, triggering a massive endeavor to airlift Western diplomats as the security forces have utterly failed to resist. This has drawn a global attention.

With the fall of major Afghan cities like Herat and Kandahar into the hands of the radical Taliban militants, the already war-ravaged country has entered into a phase that is almost irreversible.

The Taliban have seized almost all major cities – barring its capital city of Kabul. However, they are inching closer to the capital. It is only a matter of days that the Afghan government’s control over the country will be on the verge of collapse if the United States does not use its air power within hours to roll back the Taliban maneuver. 

The dramatic collapse of provincial capitals has proved a humiliating end of the United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan. The militant group has already taken control of two-thirds of the Afghan land. 

Taliban’s strategy to isolate the Afghan capital by closing all roads and border crossings seem to be moving ahead successfully as they are on the verge of capturing the capital city by isolating Kabul from the rest of the country’s strategic cities.

Most of the strategic Afghan provincial capitals and borders with other counties have gone under Taliban control without a real fight.

In the course of unstoppable Taliban victories across the country, Kabul is surrounded by Taliban fighters. The Afghan military is totally in disarray as five out of 7 Afghan Army Corps have been completely collapsed and have surrendered the American weapons to the militants.

The government’s control over Afghan territories has been collapsing on an hourly basis. Afghan forces’ shameful defeat on all fronts — 25 out of Afghan’s 34 province capitals – have totally come under the Taliban control. Surprisingly, the Taliban could seize 10 capitals, including the country’s second-largest city, just within 24 hours.

The U.S. can have the last time to plan to prevent militants from seizing the capital Kabul and further military pressure to ensure a political settlement of the war-ravaged country.

Meanwhile, humanitarian catastrophe continues as brutal Taliban militants have dominated on almost all fronts. Social media accounts have been circulating an enormous human cost of Afghan people as the Taliban brutalities have been widely seen in their control areas.

Executions and torture are common in the Taliban-dominated areas. The public has been seen panicking and is helpless over the government’s failure as they have been experiencing one of the darkest moments in the country’s history, forget about the mass exodus or internal displacement.

This is a perfect example of how poor leadership in the government, institutions, and ineffective security organs have utterly failed to perform their duties and responsibilities.

American military planners and security experts are not surprised about the recent losses of Afghan government forces as they knew that the Afghan forces and their counter-insurgency measures would soon collapse. They, however, did not expect this so quickly.

The 350,000 Afghan forces (technically) have witnessed a stunning failure as they failed to resist the 75,000 Taliban militants. Now, the whole security organization seems to be collapsing. The Afghan security strategy has entirely failed. Their combat effectiveness and operational posture lacked defensive as well as offensive approaches.

It is certainly a humiliating blow to the United States who had been a huge support to train the Afghan security forces for almost one and half decades. The U.S. alone spent over $88 billion for Afghan forces to combat the insurgents.

Now that the series of Taliban victories have clearly shown the ineffectiveness of command and control structure of the Afghan Army besides its acute lack of coordination, operational intelligence, and logistic supply, its wrong practice of bureaucratic types of command and control, air motilities, weak logistics supplies and operation on the ground.

Without the will of political leadership, the Taliban militants cannot be handled. Without a wider coalition on the ground, clean and adept leadership, and professional key security responsibility, the U.S. support alone cannot make any breakthrough.

In fact, the Afghan forces were structured by spending billions of US dollars besides training and operational support.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has made an emergency deployment of four thousand Marine Corps on the ground to provide security and evacuate its citizens from Kabul. The troops do not have any combat role but any attacks on this force can be retaliated by the American forces.

The U.S. can have the last time to plan to prevent militants from seizing the capital Kabul and further military pressure to ensure a political settlement of the war-ravaged country.

U.S. President’s sole decision can reverse the current proposition of war in Afghanistan but will take much time to weaken the Taliban militants who have seized almost all territory. Afghan forces, meanwhile, have surrendered most of the American weapons and equipment to the Taliban.

Since January 2015, the Afghan forces have been taking full security responsibility for Afghanistan. Since then, the U.S.-led coalition has had a supporting role. Ironically, half of the Afghan territory has fallen under Taliban control within just three months as the U.S. was seriously preparing for departure from there.

This is not only the psychological and moral impact of the Afghan forces but the poor political leadership and structural problems of Afghan security forces.  

Ghani’s Government failure is not an American burden? 

Afghanistan has very complex political and ethnic dynamics. It has an unpredictable nature of political leadership marred with deep-rooted corruption.

Afghan leadership has been responsible for discouraging the U.S., missing the country’s rebuilding efforts, good governance, and functioning institution development. The U.S. had also endeavored for a power-sharing deal and corruption control.

Afghan political leadership should make the best-case scenario and political ground to involve the U.S. forces again. The U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban for a couple of days can change the course of the Taliban offensive.

This is the failure of Ashraf Ghani’s ineffective government who is self-centric and constantly focused on consolidating power and wealth. He should have resigned or worked towards forming a new national consensus government along with all anti-Taliban ethnic and political groups to better fight against the Taliban.

Without the will of political leadership, the Taliban militants cannot be handled. Without a wider coalition on the ground, clean and adept leadership, and professional key security responsibility, the U.S. support alone cannot make any breakthrough.

Ghani and his closest advisers — widely known as “three-man republic” in the Afghan political circle — middlemen, interested groups, and politically connected smugglers and businessmen damaged the Afghan forces giving an opportunity to the Taliban fighters to give the heaviest blow to Ghani’s political legitimacy. The current political establishment dug the graves themselves.  

Full withdrawal of the U.S. military has been one of the key psychological causes for this tragic situation. However, currently, the deteriorating security situation across the country is calculative due to poor leadership.

This is also the result of the senior political leadership’s series of missteps, miscalculations and self-centric approach to fighting against insurgents. Now, a full-fledged bloody war is looming over Afghanistan if Ghani fails to form a national coalition against the Taliban militants.

There is still a last hope to the U.S. relentless bombardment to roll back the Taliban offensive but needs to be prepared for ground action.

Taliban atrocities show a clear sign of rejecting the political settlement of the current conflict and they are making their last-ditch efforts to take over Kabul. Meanwhile, there are no signs of Taliban militants separating from the Pakistani military or al-Qaeda terrorist networks.

The U.S. and its allies were tired of the Afghan political and security leadership behavior, mismanagement, and their notoriously corrupt practices, particularly the police force, which they believed that country would never fix the problem.

Afghan political leadership should make the best-case scenario and political ground to involve the U.S. forces again. The U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban for a couple of days can change the course of the Taliban offensive. Without a change in the behavior of Afghan leadership, the political mindset of Afghanistan will never be stabilized by any forces.

Afghan forces have almost collapsed and need to be reorganized. Airstrikes, security rings to key cities, offensive planning, decentralizing forces, nationwide movements and recruitments, mobilization of capable special forces in key areas, among others have to be done immediately or else the Afghan leadership will fail over and over again.

The U.S. is not responsible for all the mess in Afghanistan. It is also due to the greed and self-centric attitude of the Afghan leadership.

The U.S. has been tired of dealing with people of such mentality who are self-centric and power-hungry. Afghan President and the key leadership are responsible for the Taliban’s success as they have failed to form a wider coalition.

Causes of the failure

As said earlier, America is not fully responsible for what’s happening in Afghanistan. The U.S. did tremendous work to rebuild Afghanistan and to stabilize efforts for almost two decades. The two decades of making and rebuilding have been shattered within a couple of days. The Afghan leader is responsible for this.

The U.S. also did a lot to make Afghan a better country. The war that the U.S. forces fought was not for the sake of America and its benefit but for Afghanistan’s future. However, the U.S. forces had to suffer due to Kabul’s self-centric and incapable leadership.

The U.S. can rescue for the last time to bring the Afghan system back to the course but it cannot unnecessarily involve itself to retain corrupt leaders in power who are running the system amid rampant corruption. Unfortunately, even wounded soldiers have failed to receive better treatment in army hospitals without a bribe.

Afghanistan has technically 350,000 government security forces — widely believed that many soldiers are “ghost” soldiers. Likewise, there is police personnel on the list but who do not exist but their salaries go to the pockets of the senior officers.

The U.S. had handed over the security responsibility to Afghan forces more than half a decade ago and they merely played a supporting role. Making and implementing a cohesive security plan to defend the major cities of Afghanistan was not America’s task.

Afghan government tried to hide major aspects of their weaknesses, mismanagement, egos, and the rivalry between political and ethnic factions, resulting in trouble for the American presence. The U.S. cannot bear the burden of the Afghan problems.

The U.S. and its allies were tired of the Afghan political and security leadership behavior, mismanagement, and their notoriously corrupt practices, particularly the police force, which they believed that country would never fix the problem.

In Afghanistan, only a handful of soldiers meet the standard criteria of a professional army. There are some highly-trained and equipped special forces who had worked with the American and the allied forces and can go on the offensive against the Taliban at any time.

But the Afghan top-level leadership has not yet paid attention and concern over them or motivated them to fight by providing required logistics to them.  

The Afghan leadership also never implemented any professional suggestion for institution-building efforts by the U.S. It, however, remained confined for personal benefits. Even soldiers’ salaries went to the pockets of the security officers.

Questions arise: For how long will the U.S. continue to support Afghan leadership, which is unfriendly, corrupt and hostile, and who do not themselves want to make their country a better place to live?

The wounded soldiers had to bribe the health officials to get health services in the military hospitals. Almost all highways of the country have come under the control of the militants while the security forces depend by air for everything.

Afghanistan has technically 350,000 government security forces — widely believed that many soldiers are “ghost” soldiers. Likewise, there is police personnel on the list but who do not exist but their salaries go to the pockets of the senior officers.

Similarly, Iraq had also lost the second-largest city of Mosul and other strategic cities and large swaths of territories with Islamic State Jihadist groups due to such “ghost soldiers”, who were neither present in Mosul nor in any other battlefield. However, their salaries, too, went to the pockets of the officials.

Ghost soldiers are an open secret in Afghan security strength levels. In 2019, the government had implemented the new payroll system which decreased the number of soldiers by more than 10% from the rolls.

But in 2020, an investigative report of SIGAR found 58,478 fewer security personnel from the actual number in the list. Several independent reports have also suggested that security forces’ behavior and corruption led to the rise of pro-Taliban sentiments in the public.

One of the major problems with the Afghan Forces is that they consistently wanted air support, Special Forces’ support, and other covers to fight with the Taliban militants, which was almost impossible to provide air support to all forces.

In fact, close air support is not always apposite to fight since it needs skilled field leadership, right counter-insurgency planning, or well-trained troops deployment.

The U.S. already did whatever it could do in Afghanistan but will not engage again to re-engineer the nation again. America is their liberator but never got the credit.

On the other hand, the Afghan forces have very little reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering due to deep-rooted corruption. Most of the covert fund goes into the pockets of the top officials and not to the actual security personnel.

Moreover, logistics and resupply have always been one of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan, as they missed the scheduled maintenance of the equipment, evacuation of casualties soldiers, and the security personnel did never get proper medical treatment.

Questions arise: For how long will the U.S. continue to support Afghan leadership, which is unfriendly, corrupt and hostile, and who do not themselves want to make their country a better place to live?

It was neither America’s interest nor its choice to spend around two decades of their time in Afghanistan where they lost several thousands of their people and around US$ worth of two trillion.

The U.S. certainly has the responsibility to prevent Kabul from falling into the hands of the radical Taliban militants by using force or air power.

This, too, can only hold their advance but does not give a long-term solution. Afghan willingness to defend their system is imperative than America’s tactical support.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. has been hopeless due to deep-rooted corruption and unreliable political leadership. Despite all challenges, the Americans made institutions, economy, created opportunities and social freedom or overall grounds that should be managed by the Afghans themselves. They only needed US support to fight the Taliban’s arbitrary, brutality and stricture.

Despite enormous blood and treasure, the Afghan problems will have long-term consequences, which even the US cannot fix it. In fact, the contribution of the United States in Afghanistan has gone astray.

The U.S. already did whatever it could do in Afghanistan but will not engage again to re-engineer the nation again. America is their liberator but never got the credit.

What has to be noted is that America’s primary targets have been the transnational terrorist networks such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida, which have largely been contained, their leaders have been killed and their finances largely cut off. These terrorist organizations had posed direct threats to American soil.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. military planners had anticipated something worse in Afghanistan after their withdrawal. Their recommendations were overridden by Washington leadership as they wanted to seek a political solution through the diplomatic channel, and not militarily to resolve this never-ending war. However, considering the latest developments, US military involvement in Afghanistan has become crucial.