Today's the day. :amerikkka-clap: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED :ameri

  • Torenico [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I do honestly think whether the Taliban infiltrated the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police (or secretly recruited soldiers and officers) and when the time came they sabotaged any kind of meaningful attempt to stand their ground and/or basically just deserted... or soldiers and officers don't view the Taliban as their ultimate enemy, perhaps the US organized an army without regarding internal ethnic, religious and political divisions, expecting them to have some sort of military cohesion out of nowhere.

    I'm asking that because it seems that this is a repeat of the Iraqi Army that was just steamrolled by Daesh in the opening stages of the war, some Iraqis were sent to fight to areas they don't have any personal connection to, I know that soldiers fled from Mosul because "Holy shit I'm not going to die here, this isn't my community, they are not even my people", maybe this is happening again. I don't think neither were particularly motivated to fight their respective enemies, for a variety of reasons, low morale, insanely corrupt officers and high command, local ethnic and political differences undermining cohesion and maybe, for them, it's just not worth it, maybe the Taliban do make sense for some of them.

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      i know several provincial governors who apparently just up and handed the Taliban the keys to the city in exchange for letting them flee to Kabul or actually cut a deal with the Taliban to join them. Everyone in Afghanistan, especially the ANA soldiers, know the government is a dead horse and they don't want to be caught hitched to it.

      • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Everyone in Afghanistan, especially the ANA soldiers, know the government is a dead horse and they don’t want to be caught hitched to it.

        This is exactly it. When the most optimistic reports are "lol they're fucked in 90 days," you can either spend weeks fighting and get executed at the end or you can surrender right now and at least have a shot. There's no illusion that you're going to be able to win.

    • happybadger [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Maybe it professionalised in recent years, but I heard nothing positive about the ANA when deployments were higher and there were more first-hand accounts. Individual soldiers might be recklessly brave but most were minutemen conscripts using it as a job corps. They'd smoke heroin and hash on post and were considered less professional than the Iraqi forces we were outfitting. Afghanistan doesn't really have a national ethnic identity so it's a paycheque for frustrated young men facing an enemy that could shoot them or give them an incel utopia. When even the president is too much of a coward to Allende himself for any kind of national project, even without being infiltrated there's nothing for them to fight for.