The Long Crisis

This video of American army trainers working with young Afghan army troops is truly amazing. Unfortunately, this scene is not amazing in a good way, but it shows quite graphically the challenge facing president Obama’s and the Pentagon’s projections that American troops can withdraw from Afghanistan as Afghan troops are capable of taking on the defense of their own country.

President Obama stated in his speech at the West Point Academy that the additional 40,000 troops he was committing to the Afghanistan war would begin to draw down by July 30, 2011. To many observers, including myself, this date is totally unrealistic. Afghan President Karzai has publicly stated that he feels that it would be at least five years before the Afghan army would be able to fully conduct their own operations against the Taliban. After watching the video, one might surmise that the five-year period could just as easily be never.

One might wonder why the Taliban can field a small force that is highly dedicated, motivated, disciplined, and determined to prevail against vastly superior coalition forces while the Afghan army seems to attract mostly uneducated, undisciplined, non-motivated, and juvenile troops. The answer likely it is for two major reasons. One, is that the Taliban draws from young students who graduated from the Madrassas which are located in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan. The discipline experienced by these young men in the Madrassas is both constant and severe. Their religious training largely consists of memorizing the Koran from start to finish. To complete this task requires tremendous discipline, as well as perseverance.

While training in the Madrassas managed by the Taliban the young students are also trained to be warriors. After a few years of religious and military training the young men become highly disciplined soldiers with a hatred for all things American. In addition, the Taliban attract men from the Afghanistan population who have suffered losses at the hands of coalition forces.

Revenge is a matter of honor in Afghanistan. When an Afghan man has his mother,father, brothers, sisters, cousins, or close friends killed or wounded in attacks brought about by coalition forces he is expected to seek revenge on those who carried out the attacks. While the coalition forces count the killing and wounding of Afghan civilians as collateral damage those surviving members of the family suffering injury often feel honor bound to seek revenge. The most efficient way of doing this is by joining the Taliban.

The other major reason why the Afghan army seems to be so disorganized and unreliable is that the recruits tend to be young uneducated men who are motivated to join the army for one reason only, they need a job. Thus, the recruits have little if any sense of fighting for a central government, which many feel, probably quite correctly, is totally corrupt, but join the army only because they and their families desperately need the small salary that it provides. The troops are totally unmotivated by ideology. If they decide they don’t like army life they simply fade away and return to their home villages. If they get bored with the daily routine of army inspections and foot patrols they disappear to a corner of their camp and smoke a little hashish.

It is almost unbelievable that president Obama and the Pentagon could truly believe that the status of the Afghanistan Army could be drastically altered over the next 18 months or so. After nine years of attempting to upgrade and train the Afghanistan forces into self sufficient fighting units without success you would think that a more realistic exit strategy for American and coalition forces could be devised.

Probably, the president and the Pentagon realizes that there is no way that American forces can withdraw forces from Afghanistan with a victory over the Taliban within the next 18 months, or ever. More than likely team Obama is hoping that the escalation of the American troop commitment to Afghanistan will see some turnaround in the war effort and at some point vicory can be declared and a troop draw-down will become a realistic option.

However, after watching the video above it seems unlikely that the Afghanistan National Army will ever be a match for the disciplined Taliban forces. For one thing, it is apparent that many in the Afghan army are sympathetic to the Taliban’s goal of driving all foreign troops out of Afghanistan. There have already been a number of cases where Afghan Army soldiers have turned their weapons on coalition forces with deadly results.

No matter how often president Obama may dream of an American victory it is likely that the billions of dollars and hundreds, soon to be thousands, of American troops killed or wounded in action in Afghanistan will be a horrible waste. American hubris and the fear of a loss of face by withdrawing from Afghanistan seem to be the glue that keeps us attached to an impossible situation. President Obama has bet the farm by escalating the war in Afghanistan. In effect, he has doubled down on a losing hand. It is highly unlikely that his exit strategy has any likelihood of success. Again, watch the video to get a good idea as to the validity of that statement.

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