A key question about the struggle for control of Afghanistan has been asked and largely answered by the man who asked it. The US government has a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko. He makes regular reports to Congress and his latest makes difficult reading. Sopko asks why it is that an enterprise that started in 2002 and thus far has cost $70 billion has not paid a bigger dividend? The answer, he says, is that there has been a failure to build a strong security force to counter the Taliban insurgents. The Taliban are relatively few in number, have no armour or air assets and a fleet of mostly captured vehicles, yet they are in the ascendant militarily.
There is no effective national civil police force and this erodes the viability of the Afghan government and undermines American attempts to disengage from combat operations — which in and of themselves are a highly effective recruiting sergeant for the Taliban. The Afghan National Army (ANA) leaks like the proverbial sieve losing 5,000 this year alongside the losses to the police force of 4,000. The leakage is composed of combat casualties as well as desertions and defections often with equipment. The Taliban are the beneficiaries, soaking up men, their training and materiel like a sponge.
The SIGAR report contains a key metric. As is obvious to any observer of the Afghan imbroglio, the Taliban have been steadily extending their hold on the country since 2014 and today 54 out of 407 districts are under partial or total Taliban control and that number advances steadily. The Afghan government is powerless to stop it and the possibility has to be confronted that the Taliban may be able to take but not necessarily hold for long — Kabul, and that within a year. Of course, the Americans may intervene in strength to avert this, but there is little appetite for the Afghan conflict in the USA and President Trump has other fish to fry specifically a burgeoning crisis in relations with North Korea. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 5th, 2017.
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