{"id":52922,"date":"2021-09-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/09\/28\/afghanistan-probably-never-stood-a-chance-reports-show\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T08:53:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T08:53:59","slug":"afghanistan-probably-never-stood-a-chance-reports-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2021\/09\/28\/afghanistan-probably-never-stood-a-chance-reports-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan probably never stood a chance, reports show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On July 29, the Pentagon\u2019s independent inspector general for Afghanistan<\/a> told a group of reporters that with 20 years in and trillions dollars spent, Afghan security forces were not confident enough to do basic route clearance or checkpoint management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks later, the Taliban had taken nearly all of Afghanistan<\/a> and was preparing to launch its campaign into Kabul, the capital. Video would show Afghan forces laying down their weapons as the insurgents rolled into city after city, shocking many, but certainly not everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, you really shouldn\u2019t be surprised if you\u2019ve been reading our reports for at least the nine years … that I\u2019ve been there,\u201d John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said in late July. \u201cWe\u2019ve been highlighting problems with our train, advise and assist mission with the Afghan military.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Taliban took Kabul on Aug. 15, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stood in the Pentagon briefing room<\/a> and said that no one saw the country unraveling in that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c… the timeframe of a rapid collapse, that was widely estimated and ranged from weeks to months and even years following our departure,\u201d Army Gen. Mark Milley said. \u201cThere was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milley, along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, will be forced to revisit that assessment this week, as the two take questions from both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While they may not have seen it taking a week and a half, there is a long trail of public reporting that Afghanistan was making little, if any, progress as a self-sustaining, democratic nation, despite public assurances that the U.S. was winning the War on Terror and that Afghanistan was a key front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe administration firmly believes that we\u2019re about to turn the corner, and that we just need to give our policy a chance to work,\u201d now-President Joe Biden, then a senator not yet selected as a running mate from Barack Obama, said during a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing<\/a> in January 2008. \u201cI am curious as to what that policy is, because, quite frankly, I tell you, I\u2019m somewhat \u2015 I\u2019m \u2015 it\u2019s not clear to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Navy, they call it gundecking \u2015 when your people or equipment aren\u2019t up to snuff but you have to keep things moving, so you write up reports as if everything is going swimmingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strategy was on the verge of success again several years later, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the National Press Club in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat has been, in my book, the significant turning point,\u201d Panetta said. \u201cFor the first time, we saw the transition working, the Afghan army able to do its job, and violence going down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But dozens of SIGAR reports detail the underwhelming prowess of the Afghan National Army and National Police, despite the growing competence of its pilots and special operations forces. The most recent came out July 30, the first to be released after President Joe Biden\u2019s April announcement of a full withdrawal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that in mind, the SIGAR focused on how the Afghan forces would handle their own logistics, especially fuel. It didn\u2019t look great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFuel remains a major area for theft and corruption in Afghanistan,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rank-and-file troops weren\u2019t properly trained on fuel handling and quality testing, the report continued, and there was no oversight in place to require the defense or interior ministries to accurately report how much fuel they used \u2015 necessary to make sure security forces received the fuel that they needed, rather than getting extra that could be stolen or sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The corruption of Afghan government and military officials was well-documented by the SIGAR, as was the slow progress in building and maintaining a force that could fight off the Taliban, though the Pentagon did not adopt any of the reports\u2019 findings into its own messaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt really depends on the kind of political and military leadership that the Afghans can muster, to turn this around,\u201d Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Aug. 11. \u201cThey have the capability, have the capacity, and now it\u2019s really time to use those things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, the U.S. was prepared to continue helping the Afghan National Security Forces from afar, both by footing their payroll and procurement bills<\/a>, but also through logistics and maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What went wrong<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backlash throughout the drawdown pointed to the chasm between years of rosy public assessments and the situation that played out in mid-August, but to call the whole thing a charade doesn\u2019t quite describe the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might think \u201cone of two things is true. They\u2019re either stupid, or they\u2019re dishonest. They\u2019re either too stupid to understand what\u2019s happening, or they\u2019re dishonest in their reporting,\u201d retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded the NATO mission in Afghanistan from between 2009 and 2010, told Military Times in a Sept. 7 interview. \u201cI didn\u2019t see either of those. What I saw was people given tasks. They are trying to get those tasks done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t