“In war, the moral is to the physical as ten is to one”. This quote from Napoleon Bonaparte could be an apt description of what happened to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) in front of the ever-advancing Taliban! While the speed of ANDSF’s capitulation was a shock, the end results perhaps not so much. It only goes to show that time about 20 years of training and support, and money around $83 billion in funds from the US doesn’t an army make! So, what gives?
A sense of belonging, an intrinsic motivation to fight, a will to defend the nation, an ideology of substance and an inclusive national purpose
The financial support provided by the American government also included handsome salaries, perks and privileges for members of the ANDSF. Although this level of remuneration may be good motivation during peace times but isn’t sufficient when it comes to war and the impending sight of casualties and deaths. For that crunch time, extrinsic motivators go out the window and an intrinsic will to fight needs to come to the fore. And that can only happen when the fighting force believes in something beyond itself! Unfortunately, the ANDSF were a rag tag bunch of soldiers that were gathered haphazardly without any of them being inculcated with a sense of belief and belonging. That is why operational armies across the world go to great lengths to marry the motivational aspect of defending the nation with the national purpose. I have written in my preceding articles that national purpose is the initial pillar of the national security framework and is the sole reason for a nation to exist. If the people of a nation especially their fighting arms don’t know their common purpose, existence is futile! And so, it turned out to be in the case for ANDSF and the so-called government of Ashraf Ghani.
The final nail in the coffin was a firm withdrawal timetable with an ultimate exit date to boot!
The composition of the ANDSF was mostly urbanites and people from well-connected clans. This raised a major problem why would the majority of the population support the government when they did not have even a minute stake in the system? This should have raised red flags in the US Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defence but regrettably there was no cognisance of this grave oversight. Even during the time of the British Raj in the subcontinent, military minds tried to raise an inclusive army from across the region. While it can be argued that this endeavour wasn’t as successful as intended, what can’t be ignored is the acknowledgement of the fact that an attempt was made to give everyone a stake in the system even if a small one. In Afghanistan, there was no such effort which meant that neither the US dollar flowed to all parts of the country nor the whole country was ready to fight the Taliban.
The US administration and President Joe Biden himself were keen on saying that there is a well-trained army of over 300,000 ANDSF to protect Afghanistan. Due to rampant corruption and government incompetence, there were a lot of ‘ghost fighters’ on the payroll which meant that the actual number may have been less than 245,000. This meant two things. One, there weren’t as many soldiers available to stop the emboldened Taliban as intended. Two, ordinary Afghan soldiers and police officers perhaps those even wanting to fight sincerely could see this corruption through their own eyes and that did not do wonders for their morale. Looking at this, the Taliban offered money, food and amnesty to ANDSF resources to lay down their arms and go home. Where this didn’t work, the Taliban turned their hand at covertly undermining ANDSF’s confidence by telling them that ‘the non-believers are defeated and leaving, your rulers are corrupt and weak, surrender now and we will protect you, keep fighting and we will kill you’. Then, it is not a surprise that things turned out as they did!
Operational armies across the world go to great lengths to marry the motivational aspect of defending the nation with the national purpose
The final nail in the coffin was a firm withdrawal timetable with an ultimate exit date to boot! That enabled the Taliban to go about their ‘talk-talk, fight-fight’ strategy just to run down the clock. Therefore, the ANDSF had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide! With spirits plummeting and the writing now clearly on the wall, there wasn’t much else that could have been expected of them. Stephen Biddle, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University says, “when the US announced a total withdrawal, that sent a signal to Afghan soldiers and police that the end was near and converted chronically poor motivation into acute collapse as nobody wanted to be the last man standing after the others gave up”. At the end, “once the signal was sent, contagion dynamics thus took over and the collapse snowballed with increasing speed and virtually no actual fighting”.
The US administration and President Joe Biden himself were keen on saying that there is a well trained army of over 300,000 ANDSF to protect Afghanistan
In the final analysis a sense of belonging, an intrinsic motivation to fight, a will to defend the nation, an ideology of substance and an inclusive national purpose are all critical components of a fighting army that will stand tall against any adversary, internal or external. Anything else will lead to the debacle that was seen unfolding in Afghanistan recently. Policy makers beware!
