The war in Afghanistan is long for many reasons. Remoteness. Islamist fanaticism. Pakistani collusion. Higher priorities. And of course, corruption and the inertia of tradition by our allies.
I was worried about the long-term problem of pulling back Afghan outposts and checkpoints:
Afghan forces continue to pull back their vulnerable outposts in favor of concentrating in large bases. I have a very bad feeling about this. At some point the government needs to attack and defeat the Taliban.Which worried me back in 2016 as I noted:
If--and it is a big if--Afghan forces truly are contracting their area of control in order to move on the offensive, this is good.
Otherwise, the Afghan security forces are simply abandoning the countryside and allowing the Taliban to eventually put the urban areas under siege, perhaps reliant on aerial resupply or heavily guarded ground convoys to sustain their resistance.
Yes, we needed to reduce the losses in the short term. But in the long term we had to make sure those small garrisons could hold their ground and be used as the foundation for going on offense.
One thing that was never made clear to me over many years is that the consolidation wasn't into major base camps but into larger less exposed outposts and checkpoints:
In Afghanistan the Americans finally convinced security forces leaders to consolidate their checkpoint forces into fewer, but larger and more defensible checkpoints staffed by about 40 troops and located in areas that were not excessively vulnerable. While this process began in 2019 it wasn’t until late 2020 that it was completed.
Tradition and corruption slowed down solving a problem for four years. Do read it all.
My major worry was unfounded. This is one problem of not having even a hostile and ill-informed media obsessed with covering the war. Details like what "consolidation" meant evaded me. And I pay attention.
Of course, as always, solving that problem was just the entry ticket to the next problem: going on offense to defeat the Taliban.
Or is our problem now considered getting out with a decent interval before the Taliban win (my worries are bipartisan) rather than defending our win?
UPDATE: I like the spirit:
[Interior Minister Masoud] Andarabi said Afghanistan’s National Security Forces could hold territory, but would likely endure heavy losses trying to hold remote checkpoints without U.S. air support.
“The Afghan security forces are fully capable of defending the capital and the cities and the territories that we are present in right now,” he said. “We think that the Afghan security forces this year have proven to the Taliban that they will not be able to gain territory.”
While I think Afghan forces could fight without American troops, I don't think the Afghan military can fight without our logistics, maintenance, and air support--as we've trained them to fight.
As Andarabi noted, it would cost more lives to hold those outposts. But could they? Maybe. But I'd worry a great deal if the government troops were forced back into the cities and abandoned the countryside.
