The military taking on the Taliban is broken and battered

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan this summer has prompted deep fears about the Afghan security forces’ ability to defend what territory remains under government control.

For nearly two decades, the United States and NATO have engaged in the nation-building pursuit of training, expanding and equipping Afghanistan’s police, army and air forces, spending tens of billions of dollars in an attempt to build government security forces that can safeguard their own country.

But interviews in April with two dozen security and government officials, military and police officers and militia commanders across the country described a bleak result: Despite this enormous effort, the undertaking has produced only a troubled set of forces that are woefully unprepared for facing the Taliban, or any other threat, on their own.

In the months that followed, it became apparent that the Afghan forces deployed across the country could not stop the Taliban offensive that took roughly half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts as it swept across the country this summer.

In the past few days alone, the insurgents have seized four of the country’s 34 provincial capitals: Zaranj, Sheberghan, Sar-e-Pul and Kunduz.

It is easy to portray the Afghan military and police as corrupt, predatory and ineffective, as they at times are. But those same forces have suffered terribly, far more than Westerners, in what often feels like a losing war of attrition.

Numerous outposts and bases have been surrendered after negotiations between the Taliban and government forces, according to village elders and government officials. With morale diving as US troops leave, and the Taliban seizing on each surrender as a propaganda victory, each collapse feeds the next in the Afghan countryside.

The Taliban have negotiated Afghan troop surrenders in the past, but never at the scale and pace of the base collapses in recent months. The tactic has removed hundreds of government forces from the battlefield, secured strategic territory, and reaped weapons, ammunition and vehicles for the Taliban — often without firing a shot.

As districts in the countryside collapse, the Taliban have begun to encroach on major cities such as Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south. This multipronged attack has exhausted the Afghan commandos and air force, the two most viable units in the Afghan military, as they struggle to counter the insurgents in almost every part of the country.

The United States, despite pledging to end military operations by Aug. 31, has committed more aircraft and drones — now based outside the country — to help beat back the Taliban through airstrikes. The last-ditch effort to prop up the Afghan security forces helped in some areas, but still provincial capitals fell.

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