The failures of a certain conflict have made me look at the Taliban victory over NATO backed Afghan forces in a new light.
The easy way out is to claim that the ANA were weak/corrupt. But I don't think that is a fair assessment. On paper Afghanistan's army was one of the best in the world - they had 20 years of training by NATO forces, were armed with the latest western equipment. When Biden briefed that Afghanistan not going to fall, I 100% believe that was the American military intelligence assessment at the time.
The Taliban on the other hand had no international support, and were largely armed with old soviet weaponry supplemented with whatever they had liberated from NATO stocks. They had no air force, I don't even think they had access to MANPADs. Until the closing stages of the war they didn't even have armoured vehicles, let alone tanks.
Yet despite that they managed to conquer Afghanistan so quickly the CIA had to ask them to slow down to allow the evacuation of Allied forces and refugees.
As well as the speed of the campaign, it also had a relatively low casuality rate. Most of the killing was done at the start, then momentum in favour of the Taliban it largely became a bloodless affair. We probably will never know how many Taliban/ANA soldiers were killed, but UN estimates were only 1-2 thousand civilians killed. If China can capture Taiwan with so few civilian deaths it would be considered a success.
There are a lot of factors, but I think the biggest reason why the Taliban were successful was the terror factor. The ANA knew that the Taliban meant business. The first towns and villages that the Taliban attacked, they massacred ANA soldiers down to a man. Even if they successed in resisting Taliban temporarily and inflict heavy losses, the Taliban were able to reinforce and kill the ANA down to the last man. This was most apparent with engagements with Afghan Special Forces, and there were numerous reports of the Taliban refusing to take Afghan SF prisoners.
Despite heavy western propaganda about initial ANA victories (no different to what we are seeing today), word spread to other commanders and warlords who quickly defected. This had a domino effect and pretty soon even regions historically hostile to the Sunni Pashtuns put out the red carpet for the Taliban.
In my opinion it was the most effectively executed military PSYOPS campaign in modern history. All done without any state level international support, no twitter campaigns or social media hashtags or any of that bullsh*t.
My assessment of the 2021 Taliban offensive: 10/10
* This is not an endorsement of the Taliban's oppressive domestic policies, or anything else. Purely their military strategy.
The easy way out is to claim that the ANA were weak/corrupt. But I don't think that is a fair assessment. On paper Afghanistan's army was one of the best in the world - they had 20 years of training by NATO forces, were armed with the latest western equipment. When Biden briefed that Afghanistan not going to fall, I 100% believe that was the American military intelligence assessment at the time.
The Taliban on the other hand had no international support, and were largely armed with old soviet weaponry supplemented with whatever they had liberated from NATO stocks. They had no air force, I don't even think they had access to MANPADs. Until the closing stages of the war they didn't even have armoured vehicles, let alone tanks.
Yet despite that they managed to conquer Afghanistan so quickly the CIA had to ask them to slow down to allow the evacuation of Allied forces and refugees.
As well as the speed of the campaign, it also had a relatively low casuality rate. Most of the killing was done at the start, then momentum in favour of the Taliban it largely became a bloodless affair. We probably will never know how many Taliban/ANA soldiers were killed, but UN estimates were only 1-2 thousand civilians killed. If China can capture Taiwan with so few civilian deaths it would be considered a success.
There are a lot of factors, but I think the biggest reason why the Taliban were successful was the terror factor. The ANA knew that the Taliban meant business. The first towns and villages that the Taliban attacked, they massacred ANA soldiers down to a man. Even if they successed in resisting Taliban temporarily and inflict heavy losses, the Taliban were able to reinforce and kill the ANA down to the last man. This was most apparent with engagements with Afghan Special Forces, and there were numerous reports of the Taliban refusing to take Afghan SF prisoners.
Despite heavy western propaganda about initial ANA victories (no different to what we are seeing today), word spread to other commanders and warlords who quickly defected. This had a domino effect and pretty soon even regions historically hostile to the Sunni Pashtuns put out the red carpet for the Taliban.
In my opinion it was the most effectively executed military PSYOPS campaign in modern history. All done without any state level international support, no twitter campaigns or social media hashtags or any of that bullsh*t.
My assessment of the 2021 Taliban offensive: 10/10
* This is not an endorsement of the Taliban's oppressive domestic policies, or anything else. Purely their military strategy.
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