How the Taliban managed to overpower the prowess of the American military

I want to talk about two things:

• How did the Taliban rise?
• How did they survive the advanced US military and take control of
  Afghanistan?

The rise of the Taliban:
In 1979, Hafizullah Amin, a communist leader, was ruling Afghanistan after executing the former leader of Afghanistan. The conditions of Afghanistan at that time were pretty much similar to that of Iran. In Iran also, Reza Shah had dismissed parliament and banned political outfits which led to the Islamic revolution and Reza Shah fell to Islamists. Hafizullah Amin was also afraid of this as he believed that someday the Islamists might conquer Afghanistan also, so despite being a communist leader he decided to appease the Islamists.

Here is a snippet from the book, Afghanistan: A country study. It clearly depicts that Amin did all he could to appease the Islamists.

Even after all this, Amin was not liked by the people of Afghanistan. The reason was that he had wreaked havoc on the people of Afghanistan. Finally, Soviet Russia killed him because of two reasons;

• Ideological: The Russians believed that he was demeaning the
  ideology of communism by appeasing the Islamists.
• Geopolitical: Russia was in the Cold War with the USA then. Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, which began following World War 2.
  They also wanted more and more countries to come under their influence as it would have helped them to flourish their ideology and strengthen themselves in their war with America.

Then Soviet Russia invades Afghanistan on 24 December 1989 and installs their loyalist Babrak Karmal, a Soviet loyalist, from the rival faction Parcham. Their invasion was based on the Brezhnev Doctrine:

“A Soviet foreign policy which held that any threat to the socialist rule in any state of the Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe was a threat to them all and therefore justified the intervention of fellow socialist states.”

After Karmal came to power he promised to restore democracy in Afghanistan. He promised an end to executions, the
establishment of democratic institutions and free elections, a constitution, and the legalization of alternative political parties.

Karmal’s three most important promises were the:

• General amnesty of prisoners.
• The promulgation of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
• Adoption of a new flag containing the traditional black, red, and green (the flag of Taraki and Amin was red).

His government granted concessions to religious leaders and the restoration of confiscated property. Some property, which was confiscated during earlier land reforms, was also partially restored. All these measures, except the general amnesty of prisoners, were introduced gradually. Of 2700 prisoners, 2600 were released from prison; 600 of these were Parchamites. The general amnesty was greatly publicized by the government. While the event was hailed with enthusiasm by some, many others greeted the event with disdain, since their loved ones or associates had died during earlier purges. Work on the Fundamental Principles had started under Amin: it guaranteed democratic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to security and life, the right to peaceful association, the right to demonstrate, and the right that “no one would be accused of a crime but in accord with the provisions of law” and that the accused had the right to a Fair Trial.

For the people of Afghanistan, it was like a dream coming true. It was like their long demand for a democratic setup was being fulfilled and the Soviets had managed to form a good image of theirs. However, there was someone who was not happy with all this happening and that was the USA. The USA felt that the growing influence of Russia in Afghanistan would malign their image and reduce their importance on the world stage and they did not want this to happen. So, the then president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, asked the CIA to stop all this and granted funding of 695k dollars(non-lethal) to the Mujahideens. CIA, along with ISI and MI6 decided to undertake the program. Funding officially began with $695,000 in 1979, was increased dramatically to $20- $30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987, described as the “biggest bequest to any third world insurgency”. The funding continued (albeit reduced) after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal as the mujahideen continued to battle the forces of President Mohammad Najibullah’s army during the Afghan Civil War.

Dr. Najibullah Najibullah, president of afghanistan in 1988

The program funding was increased yearly due to lobbying by prominent U.S. politicians and government officials, such as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Fred Ilke, and William Casey. Under the Reagan administration, U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen evolved into a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, called the Reagan Doctrine in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.

The Mujahideen also benefitted from the expanded military support from the US, Saudi, and Pakistan. Levels of support to the various Afghan factions varied. The ISI tended to favour vigorous Islamists like Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami and Haqqani. Some Americans agreed. However, others favoured the relative moderates like Ahmed Shah Massoud. These included two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of US support under the Reagan Doctrine.

Then after all this, the Russians found it very much difficult to fight with them, and subsequently, the Geneva Accords were signed by the president of Afghanistan, Dr. Mohammed Najibullah. The Geneva Accords, known formally as the agreements on the settlement of the situation relating to Afghanistan, were signed on 14 April 1988 United Nations, between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United States and the Soviet Union serving as guarantors. The accords consisted of several instruments:

• A bilateral agreement between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Afghanistan on the principles of mutual relations, in particular on non-interference and non-intervention; a declaration on international guarantees, signed by the USSR and the USA.
• A bilateral agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the voluntary return of Afghan refugees; and an agreement on the interrelationships for the settlement of the situation relating to Afghanistan, signed by Pakistan and Afghanistan and witnessed by the Soviet Union and the United States.
• The agreements also contained provisions for the timetable of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It officially began on 15 May 1988 and ended on 15 February 1989, thus putting an end to a nine-year-long Soviet occupation and Soviet war in Afghanistan.

After the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the era of the Civil War began in Afghanistan. Najibullah tries to stabilize the country by reducing his powers and encouraging private sector and foreign investments. However, all this was not enough for the USA as it didn’t want Afghanistan to become a democracy, and thus it still kept on supplying arms and money to Mujahideen Russia also tried to help Najibullah by foreign aid but to no avail. Finally, in 1992 Mujahideen won the Afghan civil war, and Burhanuddin Rabbani was proclaimed as the new president.

In such situations, Mullah Omar in September 1994 in his hometown of Kandahar with 50 students found the group. Omar had since 1992 been studying the Sang-i-Hisar madrassa. He was unhappy that Islamic law had not been installed in Afghanistan after the ousting of communist rule, and now his group pledged to rid Afghanistan of warlords and criminals. He also believed in Pashtun nationalism. Within months, 15,000 students, often Afghan refugees, from religious schools joined the group. Early Taliban were motivated by the suffering among the Afghan people, which they believed resulted from power struggles between Afghan groups not adhering to the moral code of Islam; in their religious schools, they had been taught a belief in strict Islamic law. In 1996, they took power in Afghanistan. Some of the Mujahideen forces tried to fight with the Taliban and they were collectively known as “The Northern Alliance”. However, in 2001, it lost to the Taliban, and their leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was captured and executed. Then in the USA, the 9/11 attacks happened and they were done by members of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda at that time was headed by Osama Bin Laden. Taliban shelters him and Osama writes to America and says it was done to take revenge on America. The USA in pursuit of taking revenge sends its army to Afghanistan.

How did they survive the advanced US military and take control of Afghanistan?

For the survival part, I would like to quote ‘Simon Saba’ (From Quora):

Hypothetical scenario: A US soldier may be from rural Oklahoma and to get to Afghanistan, enlists, ends up in Fort Knox, goes through months of extensive training, and gets shipped off to Afghanistan through Germany and other transit points. The soldier receives new weapons that are inventoried precisely and very well maintained with a very large precise weapons logistics system. The soldier reports into a very hierarchal organization with precise well-defined roles and huge military and civilian support organizations. For each boots wearing weapon firing soldier on the front line, there are probably 10+ “support” people in the hierarchy/training/logistics / administrative areas, etc

After the long 10,000+ mile trek to Afghanistan, since this is a long mission the soldier has decent housing on base that is heated in the winter and cooled in the summer. The diesel required for power comes through ships that dock in pakistan trucked across dangerous roads and then afghanistan through hostile lands in convoys that often target. A burdened cost of a gallon of diesel arriving at the front lines can reach $100 which is a lot even with US military-sized budgets. The soldier expects and receives the ability to communicate with loved ones thousands of miles away. The soldiers serve “tours of duty” and get some R&R breaks and get to go home on occasion to break the monotony of a long war. The food and water logistics are equally complicated and expensive. While it may not be Zagat-rated gourmet food, it costs like gourmet due to the complex logistics and distances. I think by now you get the gist of the complexities and costs of running a long-term war a long distance from home.

Let’s now contrast with the Taliban foot soldier. Abdullah runs into Ashraf at the dilapidated village convenience store, and tells him the “crusaders” were seen near the big oak tree, so can you go fight them. Ashraf grabs the vintage 1880’s hand-me- down family rifle and a meager pouch of bullets and walks 10 minutes to the front line (no helmet, no uniform … nothing). If he thinks it will be a long day, he may take a piece of bread with him, and he will drink from the unfiltered well or from a puddle if he gets thirsty. As night comes, it’s a bit nippy out because it’s already December. He does not expect heating or food or communications or any comfort. He gets cold, he walks home for the night. In fact, he may just say “Fxxx It” let’s just call it “winter” and resume fighting in the Spring, not on a specific pre-planned coordinated day, but an arbitrarily picked day, when it seems “nice out” April, May, who cares ??

Meanwhile, hundreds of US soldiers and the support personnel and logistics train remains in place till we know if Ashraf decides to come back and fight when the weather improves in the Spring or if he decides that he will plow the family’s meager lands with vegetables this year. Now take this hypothetical scenario and multiply it by 10,000 Ashrafs and you can see that even a military Superpower such as the Soviet Union or British Empire or the US Military, can run out of resources quickly.

Further, many of the Taliban leadership from 2001 (after the US invasion) were captured and put in US prisons but many of them left Afghanistan. All such fugitive Taliban leaders found refuge and haven in Pakistan, courtesy: of Pakistan’s military secret agency Inter-Services Intelligence (popularly known as the ISI). Trillions of dollars of aid from the US to Pakistan were directed to these Taliban leaders to regroup, plan, recruit and execute war against the US. Almost all of these Taliban leaders were at one point trained by the US in the 1980s-90s to fight off the Soviet Union. These leaders used the same routes as pipelines to produce more and more terrorists. The front line is controlled by local commanders who have the power to recruit at the district level.

The funds from the US to Pakistan have in turn worked against the US itself in the war against terror in Afghanistan. Now, the more pertinent question is if the US let it happen deliberately. That’s because war keeps the arms business running. Defence and arms-ammunition-related companies make a lot of profit due to war. It was for the same reason that the US entered into the Second World War and the war against Vietnam.

Also, the profits from opium smuggling have benefited the Taliban to an extent. Yet, the fact that the most powerful country on Earth has not been able to defeat a militia force of the Taliban is mostly because they never really were fighting this to win or to put an end to the terror. It has always been pure business.

In 2001, the US Army removed the Taliban and an interim government was formed headed by Hazra Karzai. A new constitution was in 2004 and relations were established with India as well. India also invested 750 million $ in Afghanistan. With time, however, the army of the Taliban didn’t vanish but grew stronger and stronger as they had support from many villagers. In 2017, at their peak, there were 200K full fighters of the Taliban. Then finally in 2020 Feb, the Doha agreement was signed by the Taliban and the Donald Trump-led American government. There were several reasons why this agreement was signed, some of them being,

• Discontentment among the Americans. Many of the people of America didn’t like the fact that their relatives were fighting in foreign
  soil for people who didn’t belong to them.
• America had spent $2 trillion on armed forces in Afghanistan but it didn’t yield anything.

The Doha agreement said that if the Taliban promised that they would not keep any relations with the terrorist outfits then America would call its forces back. Further, with the Doha agreement, the Taliban got one year of relief from the US airstrikes, and using this they regrouped themselves and became so much more powerful. Then finally when the US troops were completely out they started consolidating their power and defeated the so-called strong military of Afghanistan. Now, you may also have heard reports of the Afghan military surrendering to the Taliban without any resistance. The reports are true but they do not explain why they are doing so. Some of the reasons are,

• Biden, in July I think, said that the Taliban would not be able to take control of Afghanistan as they have 300k troops. Most of us believed this which shaped us to think that the Afghan army is a coward…however, the conditions for the army are different.
• The fact that their army is 300k is a blatant lie…secondly, the ones who should be blamed are Afghan government officials…they were the ones who didn’t pay attention to strengthening the army. The army men said that they hadn’t been paid for months and were without food/water for days. They didn’t even have proper government support.
• The Afghan army has been trained by the Americans in American style only. And now it is a fact that the Americans use air supply/support a lot in any mission. In the absence of the Americans, the Afghan army didn’t benefit from air supply. Thus making their troops in remote areas pretty much vulnerable.
• Further, the policemen who were deployed in the so-called
  government-controlled areas(I used so-called for a reason I will tell you later) also had minimal support from the government. They were not paid for months and when the Taliban gave them some money they surrendered. They just didn’t have the proper equipment against the Taliban.
• Some areas, which were under the government-controlled areas, fell to the Taliban only after 10 fighters of the Taliban reached there. This is proof of the fact that government control was not even present. They were more like a neutral zone.
• The only unit of the Afghan army that gave proper resistance to the Taliban was the elite commando group of the army which were very low in number.
• Hence, the blame should not be on the Afghan army as a whole but the Afghan government. They never took care of the army. Now you might say that they should have tried to fight without proper resources but you should understand that it was not possible.

By the time the Taliban began their assault on major population centers this month, the Afghan military was so demoralized that it offered little resistance. Provincial leaders and senior commanders replicated surrender deals struck on the local level before. The elite commando units were one exception, but they were too few in number and lacked aircraft to move them around the country.

How the Afghan army, built by the U.S. over two decades, was overrun

The Afghan government was totally dependent on America and thus when America withdrew its support the government there fell to the Taliban.