After the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday, August 15, 2021, Taliban fighters took control of the Afghan Presidential Palace.
Washington and Kabul believe that as the United States begins to withdraw from the area, the Afghan army will fight fiercely with the Taliban, but as the United States David Fox and Kassim Nauman It took less than two weeks to write that Kabul fell to the Taliban. They check how it happened.
The Taliban’s amazing and rapid takeover of Afghanistan is not only the result of their battlefield strength, but also the result of their continued push for forced surrender and cut deals.
The insurgents mixed threats and temptations with propaganda and psychological warfare. They occupied city after city—some of them barely shot—and eventually occupied the capital, Kabul.
How did this happen?
As foreign troops begin their final retreat in May, Washington and Kabul believe that the Afghan army will fight fiercely with the Taliban.
With more than 300,000 personnel and billions of dollars in equipment more advanced than the Taliban arsenal, the Afghan army is powerful on paper.
In fact, they have been plagued by corruption, poor leadership, lack of training and low morale for many years. Deserters are common, and US government inspectors have long warned that this force is unsustainable.
Read | The Afghan president and diplomats fled Kabul, and the Taliban declared the end of the war
This summer, the Afghan army conducted strong resistance in some areas such as Lashkar Gah in the south, but they are now fighting the Taliban without regular US air strikes and military support.
In the face of a small but motivated and cohesive enemy, many soldiers and even entire units simply deserted or surrendered, allowing the insurgents to capture one city after another.
Last year, Washington and the insurgents signed an agreement to completely withdraw the troops, which planted the seeds of collapse.
For the Taliban, this is the beginning of their victory after nearly two decades of war. For many demoralized Afghans, this is betrayal and abandonment.
They continued to attack government forces, but began to combine these with the targeted killing of journalists and human rights defenders, exacerbating the environment of fear.
They also promoted the narrative of the Taliban’s inevitable victory in propaganda and psychological action.
According to reports, soldiers and local officials in some areas were bombarded by text messages, urging them to surrender or cooperate with the Taliban to avoid a worse fate.
If they do not fight, many people can pass safely, while others arrive through the elders of the tribe and village.
Since the Afghan army was unable to stop the Taliban’s offensive, many famous Afghan-and notorious-warlords summoned their militia and promised that if the Taliban attacked their city, the Taliban would have dark eyes.
But as confidence in the viability of the Afghan government plummeted, let alone deter the insurgents, the warlord’s writing was also on the wall.
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Their city fell without a fight. The warlord Ismail Khan in the western city of Herat was captured by the Taliban when the Taliban fell.
Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor in the north fled to Uzbekistan. Their militias abandoned hummers, weapons and even uniforms on their way out of Mazar-i-Sharif.
According to reports, long before the blitzkrieg launched in May, the Taliban had begun to conclude deals and surrender arrangements.
From individual soldiers and low-level government officials to obvious provincial governors and ministers, the insurgents are struggling to reach a deal-the Taliban are almost victorious, why fight?
Facts have proved that this strategy is very effective.
The scenes of their last march to Kabul were not corpses on the streets and bloody battlefields, but photos of the Taliban and government officials sitting comfortably on the sofa when the handover of the city and province was officially confirmed.
According to US reports, less than a month before the fall of Kabul, the Afghan government may collapse within 90 days.
However, once the Taliban occupied their first provincial capital, it only took less than two weeks.
-David Fox, with Qasim Nauman in Seoul
