Brian M Downing
As the US continues to withdraw, the Taliban is making alarming advances. ANA outposts are falling, often with little if any resistance, several districts are going over to Taliban control, and nooses are tightening around major cities.
The situation will continue to deteriorate. US air power, advisors, and trainers have been crucial to holding the line but they are packing up. I’m reminded of a revered special forces officer who late in the Vietnam war told me Saigon would fall two years after the last GIs left. Kabul probably doesn’t have that much time and the US embassy should make plans for a dignified exit.
The view here has been that the US can do nothing more in Afghanistan and should leave. China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan will step up to prevent a resurgent Taliban from becoming a triumphant, expansionist power in their backyards. There is no sign yet they will oblige.
Why is the situation so dire. What’s in store for the hapless country that’s been at war for over forty years now?
Sources of deterioration
The main reason for Taliban success is corruption and ineptitude in the Kabul government. As Bernard Fall noted long ago, a country losing an insurgency isn’t being outfought, its being out governed. That is, the insurgents present a more desirable government than the regime does.
Government officials, from the capital to district administrators, use their offices to enrich themselves, friends, and family. Ambitious development programs are funded, shovels turn over soil, but schools are not built, wells are not dug, roads are not improved. Cities cannot be protected from bombings and raids. Afghans want security at any cost.
The military and related security forces are rent by ethnic mistrust and hatred. Key commanders are not appointed because of professional accomplishments. Loyalty is more prized. An isolated outpost cannot rely on logistics or sister units. Many flee or surrender without a fight.
A handful of special forces units are effective but they are overused and stretched thin. The same holds for most ANA units. Chieftains in the north are forming militias in the event the ANA folds and Kabul falls.
Outcomes
A corrupt army and state do not inspire optimism. What will follow the US departure if regional powers fail to intervene?
One scenario is that the ANA, after abandoning much of the south, is more concentrated, has shorter logistical lines, and is able to hold its ground. After a year or so of stalemate the Taliban may drop its more ambitious goals and negotiate in earnest.
This took place in Syria. Assad withdrew from much of the country, concentrated in the Shia west, and eventually turned the tide. Of course, he could not have done so without Iranian help on the ground and Russian help from the air. Neither seems forthcoming in Afghanistan but time will tell.
A second scenario is ANA collapses, ethnic militias surrender piecemeal, and tribal elders accept the inevitable. The Taliban conquer the entire country.
This is unlikely. The Taliban, at the height of their power twenty years ago, never controlled the entire country. There was resistance in northern redoubts and insurgencies were popping up even in the southern homeland.
Anything approaching complete conquest would present tremendous problems with governance. That was the case in the 1990s. What economy will there be to tax? Opium goes only so far. What foreign power will subsidize a Taliban state? Pakistan’s resources are not vast.
A third scenario, fragmentation, is the most likely. The Taliban will control the south and east, possibly including Kabul, and the Kunduz region in the north where 19th-century kings moved a Pashtun populace to better lay claim to national support. The north will comprise a handful of ethnic enclaves – Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen, and Hazara. Iran has been supportive of the Tajik and Hazara peoples for many decades and at some point will likely step in.
Taliban regions will in time face leadership conflicts and local rebellions. Many of its troops will declare victory and go home, as their fathers did once the Soviet Union left in 1988.
Afghanistan has never been a unified country with a common heritage, identity, language, and shared view of the future. It is unlikely ever to become one. It will likely disintegrate into a handful of ethnic statelets that will scramble to forge military alliances against a common foe and seek support from regional powers. They will likely be drawn in, albeit cautiously, probably forever.
Next: the presence of al Qaeda and ISIL.
© 2021Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.