Casualties didn't destroy the Afghanistan military in 2021. Being abandoned by America destroyed the Afghanistan military.
Eric emailed me about an analyst who thought Afghanistan casualties
precluded a hope that a minimal American involvement in the war could
have sustained the government in its fight against the Taliban.
Specifically, the charge is that America's war in Afghanistan was doomed because Afghanistan's special forces were losing 1,200 per month.
This clearly isn't KIA since that would exceed the total force size with killed, wounded, and missing per year. The special forces loss number at least must include wounded and missing. And even that interpretation indicates losing half of the special forces per year.
Does it
include those whose terms of service expired? And was that a particularly bad month? A recent month? Or an average over a longer period of time? The figure is too vague to draw sweeping conclusions, no? Certainly the American soldier cited in the article for that figure didn't believe it was critical given his view that more time training the Afghan troops prepare could have helped them endure our withdrawal.
But more to the point, Afghanistan security forces fought for years with heavy casualties. Nearly 70,000 died over 20 years. With the numbers heavily weighted toward the end after we expanded Afghanistan's forces and turned over primary fighting duties to them. The total is not much more than the much smaller Taliban force's casualties--about 53,000 killed, plus 2,000 al Qaeda killed.
And keep in mind that the vast majority of Afghanistan's 30,000 "special forces" were simply adequately trained, equipped, and led infantry that did the bulk of the fighting (the rest of the army troops were basically static garrison troops). Don't think of them as Afghanistan's version of our special forces operators--which would absolutely be crippled with 1,200 losses of all kinds in a year, let alone a month.
In fact, America had a long history of worrying if Afghanistan's military could endure its casualties. It clearly did endure them. Right up until America abandoned them.
Remember, our military--which knew the casualties as we pulled out in the summer of 2021--assumed the Afghan government forces could fight on for two years before collapsing, even without us there at all. Yet when we left, the collapse was immediate. That wasn't a sudden coincidental result of too-heavy casualties. That was a result of feeling abandoned.
UPDATE: I should add this related post.
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
