The collapse of Afghan forces against the Taliban in just a few weeks was a surprise. The same insurgents had taken two years to seize power, between 1994 and 1996, during the civil war, and they had never been able to control entire areas in the north before being defeated at the end of 2001. This time, in Forty-five days, they have already conquered a good part of the North, the South and the West and are approaching dangerously close to Kabul. If fighting is still raging, a question already arises. How could an army four times the number, trained, financed and equipped by the world’s leading power, the United States, be routed so quickly?
The American authorities had multiplied the declarations on the capacities of the Afghan forces to defend their territory. The reality is less glorious. Officially, Kabul can count on 300,000 members of the security forces, including the spearhead, the Special Forces, numbering nearly 50,000 soldiers. According to a senior American military source, the Afghan authorities have inflated the figures with “ghost battalions”, no doubt to increase the bill paid by the United States and fuel endemic corruption. According to a Western diplomat, stationed in Kabul, “There would be 46 phantom battalions, of 800 men each”.
The reality of the fighting has brought out the truth of the figures. Since 2017, the American military authorities, mentor and banker of the Afghan soldiers, had accepted the demand of President Ashraf Ghani to no longer make public the figures of losses within the Afghan security forces, nor those of desertions or passages. to the enemy, which contributed to distort the image of the Afghan army.
Abandonment due to lack of ammunition
The government can rely mainly on very professional special forces who fight wholeheartedly and have banned recruitment by co-option. The Taliban do not grant any clemency to these soldiers, who oppose them the most resistance. The numbers of the regular army are, for their part, often “fixed”, that is to say locked up in their bases. The latter, according to NATO analysts, suffered from a lack of reinforcement and logistical support.
The supply lines were too extensive for the Afghan power, which did not have the air means or access by road to supply them. As a result, many soldiers often had to surrender, or even flee, not because they did not want to fight but for lack of ammunition, especially those of the regular army, to whom the Taliban guaranteed forgiveness if they stopped fighting. . The insurgents were thus able to collect large stocks of weapons and vehicles.
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