The War is over. Hopefully these will be my last words on the matter.
We as a nation are not very good at the portion of the campaign called “nation building”. Nation building is of course, the civilian sensibilities, vision, and direction as a basis for military execution. I cannot at this point, provide an example of nation building with this country as the senior partner, which succeeded. Add one example in the comments or remarks if one springs to mind, please.
I think that our main handicap in this phase of the campaign is that we believe the American standard and cultural sensibilities are near universal, and we find ourselves generally surprised when we find that is not the case. Surprise is the great military equalizer, the ender of campaigns, and likely why Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. We never did get this one right, and were stubborn about adapting to the Afghan method, which I would say after 20 years we still do not understand.
I don’t suppose it is a question if the Afghan can fight or not- history shows that he can. The Mujahedeen could fight, as can and did the Northern Alliance, and the Taliban can as well. Maybe it is that they cannot fight inside of the US paradigm. So said, our chief failure was the attempt to Americanize their army, instead of understanding and adapting to this style.
The US spent twenty years of blood and treasure trying the change the entire fabric of their DNA. If they can fight, and they can, but they cannot soldier, which in the US sense they cannot, we have not generated conditions required to withdrawal. How is it, that this contrast was gone unnoticed, and that we had no indication of the defection and ultimate surrender of the entire country? What follows is my attempt to explain how this came to pass, by my perspective.
The Afghans were naturally adaptive people. As such, their societal norms do not conform to any preset or a solid set of founding principles, conscious, or defining character that the immediate situational necessities will not overcome. This “It” factor is maybe a natural adaptation/survival instinct that caused them to make split second decisions against anything that could hurt them.
“It” is the only reason traffic worked in Kabul. On the road from the embassy to the MOI, three marked lanes of road which drivers would fill seven cars abreast and shoulder to shoulder, maybe inches between cars, totally ignoring both the lane line markers and any traffic cop. If the guy in lane 3rd from the shoulder decides he forgot something, he simply turns around and goes the wrong way on the 3 lane road filled with 7 cars abreast, and everyone just adapts and let him through with no metal on metal. In the US, insanity- there, no big deal, just how they roll. Literally.
It is like water, seeking the path of least resistance, settling in the cracks and crevices, using whatever space available to fill, existing in harmony with the other liquid men on the road, an expectation and not an aberration. So stated, US notions on warfare are structured and not amorphous, and we attempted to pour that liquid into a mold and force it by 20 years of pressure to take a solid shape. The moment we announced that we were departing, we opened the mold – expecting a solid, and the liquefied contents poured out.
It is obvious to those of trained to the US standard of weapons handling, that some, if not many of the current Taliban posing for news photographs were trained by the US forces there. We have come to determine that we have in large measure trained the Taliban. I would wager that those soldiers of the former ANA, now Taliban- decided that they should adapt, and did so.
I advised four Afghan Ministry of Interior Generals, and they were a study in this contrast and adaptability. One was competent and an honest man, one was incompetent but an honest man and delightful company, one was competent and corrupt; the last was expertly competent and totally corrupt. I think that I have said this before, but I would say that the corrupt of the two are out of the country, the honest of the two may already be dead, running, or facing defection and adaptation in another way. Adapt and survive. This liquidity can be benign or malignant, flow uphill or down, and the temperature can and will also change in a millisecond.
My up armored Ford F250 had an issue with a tire between the embassy and airport- and a crowd of benevolent Afghans appeared to help. The old man I was speaking to asked for something to eat, and while I couldn’t help him there, I gave him a bottle of water. We were having a nice visit.
Within seconds, all of the antennas were stolen from the Ford, and one our security people lost a watch. Punches were thrown, a young Afghan was butt stroked with a 240. That old man that I had moments before given a bottle of water, tried to strike me with the now opened bottle, which had a surprising, yet fairly comical schoolyard effect. Surprised- surely- and I think anyone would be at this total change of temperature- that went from tepid to boiling- in just an instant.
In 2011, an Afghan Air Force Colonel was paid $250,000 to murder the 8 US Air Force personal and a US civilian that were advising him. Reports after the fact indicate that this Colonel, while being paid by the Taliban, had also been disillusioned and radicalized, which after the fact seems to be an arrogant statement of the obvious. Imagine the surprise of these nine US personnel, after working with this man day after day for months and expecting nothing, how astonished they were as he excused himself, came back with his sidearm, and systematically executed nine men equally as well armed as he. His temperature and direction changed, and this liquid man managed to flow uphill.
As this explains how the change of allegiances that we have witnessed has come to pass, it also provides us with a real warning on what is to come. They are liquid; they will find the cracks and crevices and fill them. They can be volatile, and change direction and temperature in an instant. As we are not dealing with it there anymore, will we see it here?
I think so. I am really of the opinion that the next attack may not be as large scale as September 11th, rather a series of “death by a thousand cuts”. So, more likely instead of the single 9/11 attack, which they know we have adapted to, and we are better at the big game than the smaller, cuts of a thousand types. I’d expect their tactics to adapt, and they will seek out a target of opportunity. Like a church, synagogue, mosque, nightclub, veteran’s center, LBGTQ activity, international banking institution, restaurant that sells bacon cheeseburgers- whatever. The liquid men will cut us. No job too large or too small.
One should consider writing a book, that details Jack Ryan type energetics, tracking down a former translator, now recruited and radicalized by the Taliban, ISIS, AQ, etc., who after imported by the US with the remainder of those apparently loyal, now plants a device or orchestrates an attack. Or, save time and wait to see this on the news in a few years.
Our enemies are liquid and adaptable, and they are going to not rest on their laurels. They are going to keep on with what they started in 2001. Those that are literate, remember Osama Bin Laden’s vision, and will execute that, to the limits of their ability.
As we didn’t have the patience to deal with it there, we will have to learn to be patient when we deal with it here.