The speed with which the Taliban took over Afghanistan tells us a lot.
Our intelligence was incomplete, if not flat wrong. We should have had moles inside the Taliban, but if we did, they were not committed to telling our intelligence community the truth. Maybe the problem is we have too many intelligence agencies. Why are there 17. Do they reinforce one another, or contradict? From 2016 to 2020 much intelligence was publicly ignored, even ridiculed. Maybe other years too.
Taliban are better organized than we imagined, not a rabble. They had strategies that worked, patience. “You have the fancy watches, but we have the time.” Strategy learned from Suleiman the Great. Taliban told the Army if you do not surrender, we will kill every one of you, and they were credible, based on their past. Soldiering was not worth dying for. American materiel was not worth dying for. Now they have the trucks, guns, ammo, and aircraft. Will we sell them the parts? Probably. Maybe we should. Except for some proprietary aircraft parts, they can probably get whatever they need from the international black market in weapons and drugs. Afghanistan is the opium capital of the world. Taliban have a command structure that works; it got the mission accomplished in record time with apparently few losses on their side.
Taliban are sincere and committed to their beliefs. Many are fanatically loyal. Much like the Ottoman Turks of the 18th and 19th centuries; their attitude is all or nothing. They know what they believe and are willing to die or kill for it. The Afghans vanquished the Turks, the Persians, Greeks, Japan, England, Russia, some invaders I can’t even pronounce, and most recently us.
The government that we installed was corrupt and did not have the support of the people. We have enough trouble with corruption in our system that we have been working on for 200 years. Did we think we could solve their millennia old problems in four or 40? Did Afghans even have problems we could solve?
The underpaid soldiers did not support or even trust the government. It is not clear that they even understood the concepts of military command or discipline that we inherited from Europe 300 years ago.
Maybe our model of democracy is not exportable. The Afghanistan model of a council of tribal elders, the annual Loya jirga might have worked better for them. We never even tried to work with that but instead tried to impose our definition of government-by-the-people, another contradiction. Maybe tribal organization is more practical in their culture and geography. Tribal elders may actually represent their members better than the winner of the beauty contest we call an election. In a tribal culture people may relate to their tribe not their nation, just as Southerners relate more to their state than to the union.
We learn from history that man — or at least government — does not learn from history. Politicians sure did not learn a damned thing from our fighting in Vietnam. Colonial guerillas and militias defeated the most powerful empire the world had ever seen, Great Britain in 1781. We could have declared victory in Afghanistan after one election, had a parade and gone home. Instead, we tried to use the Army to impose our new ideas into a 1,400-year-old culture. You cannot win hearts and minds by breaking down doors.
We may not like it, but the Taliban have become the de facto government of their own country. The membership has changed. This is a new generation. Many were not yet born on 9/11? We could counter attack and bomb our ordnance, but that strategy probably would just harden their resistance. The safe strategy now is probably to figure out how to work with them and not how to fix the blame.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com
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As I See It: New strategy needed in Afghanistan - West Hawaii Today
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