Rome, August 13, 2021 – Una defeat announced. The management of the international intervention in Afghanistan had begun in 2001 with the best auspices: on the ground the forces that had defeated the Taliban – after the hammering and decisive western air campaign – which were essentially the forces of the Northern Alliance, therefore Afghan forces. But Bush’s America quickly lost interest and left Afghanistan to itself for a new war in Iraq. And the Magic moment that it could have changed the fate of Afghanistan, a country to grow economically and socially first of all, if we really wanted to give it a different destiny (and safeguard our strategic interests). The choices were totally different and when we returned to focus on Afghanistan it was done in a purely military logic, without giving autonomy to the local government which in fact was little more than an American protectorate. The country, in its extreme complexity, was not understood and simple solutions were applied, which took the West as a model and as such could not work. Instead of helping the country economically, educating, creating development and convincing the Afghans that the West and modernity were a possible option (also applied in other Islamic countries) to get out of secular poverty and deep underdevelopment, weapons were chosen. . The result is that the West has become the subject that bombed and killed the Afghans. The occupier, and the occupiers, have, sooner or later, their fate in Afghanistan.
Even the constitution of the Ana – Afghan National Army, the Afghan army – and of Afghan police it was poorly managed and punctuated by constant disorganization and very high staff dropout rates. Of the 180,000 men of the Ana, divided into 7 corps, those relamente operational were the commandos and the space forces, 30,000 men in total, who were the best motivated, trained and paid. The others, at most, made a scene. And in the case of the Afghan police, militarized and present in the villages, and therefore the primary target of the Taliban, it was like “cannon fodder”.
The central Afghan state was and is very inefficient and largely corrupt. And it is not felt as right by the Afghans. Once the Westerners are gone, the house of cards has not held up. There was there common belief that the return of the Taliban was unstoppable and now he is having confirmation. For this in most cases the cities were lost by the Ana without fighting, despite the fact that the Afghan soldiers had not only been trained but also armed by the West and therefore would have had the means to offer substantial resistance. Furthermore, not a few soldiers have passed to the Taliban, as well as provincial governors, as happened in Ghazni. The Ana was a fragile building, with too many generals (the same number as in the United States) and little motivation. In a country where ethnicities and tribal affiliations count, no one, or almost anyone, really wanted to “die for Kabul”, and having created army corps with recruits from the four corners of the country did not help. It would have been better if they had been local soldiers, fighting for their village, for their ethnicity. The Americans did not know Afghanistan and – convinced that they had the solutions in their pocket, regardless – they did not even try to understand it and so they imposed a wrong model whose results are there for all to see.
The American decision, formalized by Donal Trump and implemented by Joe Biden, from disengage regardless, even if the work was not finished, even if the situation was one step away from the abyss. Attempts have been made to kick off the Doha bilateral agreements which, however, have been interpreted by the Taliban as a carte blanche to take back what they felt. It is therefore Western, and in particular American, the responsibility for what is happening: for reasons of domestic policy, Afghanistan was abandoned. And patience for the deaths and the enormous amounts spent – 2.2 trillion dollars of which almost 900 billion in direct expenses of the US Department of Defense – which benefited largely from the military industrial complex and the banks (570 billion in interest on loans).
The exit, perhaps inevitable after 20 years, had to be managed much better, guaranteeing for a few years a real air cover to the Ana operations and a support nucleus of forces in the field that could assist the Afghans in the operations, coordinating logistics, deployment, transport and above all military actions with close air support to the troops on the territory. It was decided to just leave and this is the predictable result: another lost war like Vietnam. After Afghanistan, no people will be able to believe that we are really bringing them democracy and peace. He will think, with good reason, that we do it for our own interests and that we will abandon them when it is more convenient for us. And this too is geopolitically devastating collateral damage.
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