The rout of Afghan forces as Taliban fighters take one provincial city after another provides a stark answer to anyone wondering about the success of two decades of U.S.-led efforts to build a local army.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani praised Afghan security and defense forces in a brief televised address on Saturday, saying they had "a strong spirit to defend their people and country."
American officers have long worried that rampant corruption, well documented in parts of Afghanistan's military and political leadership, would undermine the resolve of badly paid, ill-fed and erratically supplied front-line soldiers - some of whom have been left for months or even years on end in isolated outposts, where they could be picked off by the Taliban.
"The only reason for this unexpected fall of provinces was our commitment and the withdrawal of U.S. troops," he said.The defeat highlights the failure of the United States to create a fighting force in the image of its own highly professional military with a motivated, well-trained leadership, high-tech weaponry and seamless logistical support.
As government forces started to fall apart, hastily recruited local militias, loyal to prominent regional leaders such as Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum in the northern province of Faryab or Ismail Khan in Herat, also rushed in to fight. Jonathan Schroden, an expert at the CNA policy institute, who served as an advisor to U.S. central command CENTCOM and the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan, said the Afghan army functioned as much as a "jobs program" as a fighting force "because it's the source of a paycheck in a country where paychecks are hard to come by."
Even the elite Special Forces units that have borne the brunt of the fighting in recent years have suffered. Last month, at least a dozen commandos were executed by Taliban fighters in the northern province of Faryab after running out of ammunition and being forced to surrender.
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