Afghanistan is a land where the final orders of military commanders have gone to die for the past 2000 years. And as of this week, the end of the American war machine in Afghanistan has joined that immortal history.
The collapse of the Afghan government around the country has happened faster than anyone expected. Provinces and towns are being overran by the hour and with each day news of Afghan National Army surrender grows as a failed American experiment in the name of the military industrial complex comes to a grinding and definitive halt.
The remaining US presence at Bagram airfield slipped quietly into the night, the base commander unknowingly awakening to an airfield devoid of American troops. Many felt that it may take a few months to see the slow collapse of Afghanistan, while others felt that after 20 years of “Nation Building” that the Afghan forces were going to be able to secure, in the least, Kabul and the immediate surrounding rural areas. This has been proven demonstrably false in just a matter of days.
In January of 1973, President Nixon wrote a letter to President Nguyen Van Thieu of Vietnam which included the following passage:
“Should you decide, as I trust you will, to go with us, you have my assurance of continued assistance in the post-settlement period and that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.”
I suspect no such offer has been made to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and I am sure that a man of his position is intimately familiar with the history of the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. As his world collapses around him I have wondered what positions he and the Kabul government will take in the next few weeks and months and if we see these officials slaughtered at the hands of the Taliban or act as welcomers whose ability to appease and bend saves their own lives.
Many Americans are of the age that they remember our exit from Vietnam, where men boarded hovering helicopters on rooftops as the North Vietnamese army grew close. Aircraft and helicopters were shoved off the decks of aircraft carriers to make way for the next landing of soldiers, civilians, and strap-hanging refugees.
I suspect it was quite surreal for those South Vietnamese troops who stood around watching this hasty, ill planned and disconcerting exit. I wonder now what the people of Afghanistan who have participated in Kabul government over the past 20 years think as well.
We still, as of July 7, have some 10,000 participants in country. This includes about 1,400 American intelligence and military assets, 4,000 civilian associated counterparts of various national origin, and another 5,000 or so loosely associated Afghan & regional nationals. How we expect to extricate them is something I do not think any of them are ready for, or have a firm understanding of at present.
Kabul airport is currently subcontracted out by the US to Turkish forces and interests. To bring in the manpower for such an operation our Turkish partner has brought in fighters from Libya and other MENA regions at an expected cost of $2,000/fighter per day. They will likely be augmented and led by Turkish Regular Army, Police, or a combination of official Turkish forces. These troops and militia’s skills at guarding and securing a major international airport is unknown, and in my opinion, extremely doubtful. And I also expect the Taliban will have no issues working to throw them out of the area as soon as they arrive.
We should then, make sure that our 1,400 American personnel and the 4,000 civilian associated counterparts are out of the country before this transition is completed. As for the 5,000 national and regional folks who are in Kabul and have been aiding us, I suspect we will not be able to extricate them all. Should we delay in this timeline and the pace at which regions of Afghanistan are currently falling continues unabated, I expect we are going to have a major, deadly issue on our hands in late July, August and early September. This may mean we are marking September 11th, the official end of withdrawal date as a three-time date of national mourning:
September 11, 2001
September 11, 2012
September 11, 2021
A failure to learn the lessons of the past may have us repeating them once again. I pray that our people are home sooner than later and that my fears go unrealized.
CulturalHusbandry, 1776/2021