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Requiem For The Afghan ‘Fabergé Egg’ Army: Why Did It Crack So Quickly?
[Modern War Institute - West Point] Over the course of two decades and at a price tag of over $88 billion, the United States and its NATO partners built a modern and well-equipped Afghan military—one that, like a Fabergé egg, boasted a glossy exterior but shattered under stress after US military advisors departed.Confronted by a smaller, technologically outmatched military, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) rapidly disintegrated, in most cases avoiding major battles and negotiating their surrenders to Taliban commanders instead of fighting. Within weeks of the US withdrawal, the Taliban had seized the majority of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals with little to no bloodshed. If the United States ever wants to build a partner military again, it had better learn the lessons of Afghanistan—and overhaul how it plans and implements US security assistance programs. The long and thorough analysis ends with this thought: The next time the United States decides to build a foreign army, success will largely depend on avoiding the issues that afflicted the Afghan military. But in places like Mali and Somalia, armies built by Western forces exhibit many similar tendencies. Without serious reform, the United States will continue building expensive militaries—ones whose viability is only surface deep, contingent on advisors babysitting partner forces indefinitely.Posted by: trailing wife 2021-11-07 |
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