The morale of Afghan security forces and government officials is a potential weakness that might destroy all we and our allies have fought to achieve over the last twenty years.
With American and NATO help, instead of generating terrorists who attack us at home, Afghanistan has security forces that fight and kill jihadis every day. That is an achievement that people urging withdrawal of our residual support forces from Afghanistan ignore or think isn't worth protecting.
NATO says Afghanistan can fight on alone after foreign troops leave:
NATO has helped provide security in Afghanistan for almost two decades but the government and armed forces in the conflict-torn country are strong enough to stand on their own feet without international troops to back them, the head of the military organization said Thursday.
I hope so, because this report says Afghan forces are surrendering at a faster pace:
The base collapses are one measure of the rapidly deteriorating government war effort as one outpost after another falls, sometimes after battles, but often after wholesale surrenders.
On paper, the Afghan government can hold. But in the real world, fear of death is heightened by the American-led withdrawal. If enough time passes without a general collapse of government morale, the paper balance will win out.
But the Taliban have a window of opportunity when fear of the unknown without America holding the hand of government forces makes government officials and forces scared enough to preemptively give up.
Perhaps American forces need to heavily bombard the Taliban during the period before and after the final withdrawal until that window of opportunity is closed. As much to support Afghan government morale as to destroy and disrupt the Taliban effort to exploit our withdrawal.
This NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is a mistake. Even Iraqi forces looked better when compared to their jihadi enemies in 2011 when I was worried about the complete American withdrawal.
UPDATE: That will help:
The American military revealed that Pakistan has said it will continue to allow American military aircraft (combat and transports) to pass through Pakistani air space to and from landlocked Afghanistan.
Good. Pakistan has been hit with the reality bat, it seems.
UPDATE: Good Lord, are we not even trying to care if the government has the means to survive?
The fate of the international effort to train Afghan national security forces has become increasingly unclear as Pentagon officials point to other priorities with only about three months left until U.S. and NATO forces complete their troop withdrawal from the war-torn country.
At this rate we won't even have a "decent interval" between final withdrawal and disaster.
