Afghanistan

[AnBr]

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[Deleted]

Bollocks! No one is blaming Biden for for the 20 year war. Biden bears responsibility for the absolutely bungled withdrawal. He would also bear responsibility if the withdrawal turns out to be a strategic blunder.

[jackd]

And how do you think he should have done it?

[Deleted]

Aug 28, 2021 16:55:49 GMT jackd said:

And how do you think he should have done it?

1. Mission objective should have been set in February. Criteria and standards set re: who were to receive SIV. 

2. Mission planning: how long would it take to accomplish the mission; the type of resources, various security scenarios and measures; cut-off date for people with SIVs to opt-in for evacuation; evacuation duration, approaches and logistics.

3. President Biden would then have made the tough decision how and where to draw the balance between time, security conditions, and the extent of evacuation. It might have meant longer duration of stay and temporary increase in the number of troops, or lower number of people identified to be evacuated.

There was no urgency in this administration about the winding down process, especially in terms of civilian impact, till about July. Even if you stipulate the August 31st deadline was the longest US could station troops in Afghanistan after taking in to account all the security risks, why were visa issuance not completed by April and evacuation started. The last few weeks everything was ad-hoc.

Whatever the extent of planning that took place, the chaos of the withdrawal demonstrates failure. Results matter. Biden bears responsibility for not marshaling his administration in the same manner as his response to Covid-19: focused, timely and accountable.

[jackd]

I've read that the SIV screening procedures were deliberately made bureaucratically sluggish by Pompeo and Miller and there was the problem that Trump had committed the government to a time line, etc.
I still think that no matter what procedures had been put in place, a final rush to the airport with its potential for the bomb and shooters was going to happen and it's that event that is really causing the criticism.
Two other issues are the military's advice that the Afghan Army could hold significantly longer and the fact that Americans were advised to leave at least two months ago and apparently delayed.

I think the bottom line is that this was not going to go well, ever; maybe better, but not well.

[Deleted]

Aug 28, 2021 23:44:02 GMT jackd said:

I've read that the SIV screening procedures were deliberately made bureaucratically sluggish by Pompeo and Miller and there was the problem that Trump had committed the government to a time line, etc.

It was well within Biden's power to address the hurdles created by the previous administration. He chose not to address them, especially the bureaucratic logjam.

It looks to me precautions were taken and planning were done for the military retrograde with a withdrawal deadline no later than 9/10 - a symbolic disengagement. However, not much done for civilian disengagement. It wouldn't be incorrect to infer that in this administration's calculation American civilians and Afghan SIVs would continue to evacuate after the US military had left Afghanistan. If fact the overwhelming majority of evacuations have taken plan after Kabul had fallen. In the normal course all these people would have left the country after the departure of US troops. That left no room for Taliban takeover of large Afghani territories. Even if Kabul hadn't fallen in 11 days, evacuation from the other major cities were not possible. There was no plan to address those cities. 

The additional troops were sent to Kabul only after it fell to the Taliban. By the time the troops arrived chaos reined at the airport. For a few days the airport was insecure. Taliban could have overrun it and inflicted much worse pain. It implies American military, intelligence and administration did not have contingencies for Taliban's take over prior to US departure, even after cities were falling. OR an alternative explanation is Biden was and is okay with the chaos, and leaving people behind without providing them a reasonable chance of leaving Afghanistan. 

As to the military advice... we would only know the truth after Congressional investigations. So put a pin in that. Voices of urgency went unheeded.

The evacuation notice to civilians did not put a cut-off date... the US govt. cannot ensure safe passage after...I wouldn't be surprised if the language used in the notice failed to convey the urgency.

[jackd]

Guess we'll have to wait for better information on a number of these points. I think that whenever the evacuations began, the Taliban would have begun their takeover and the Afghan military would have folded just as they have, basically negotiating with the Taliban for their own safety. Impossible to prove, of course, but that's my best guess. I'm really finding it hard to imagine how substantial evacuations could have occurred without Taliban action and the same scenario occurring.
I appreciate your input.

[AnBr]

I suspect that it was going to be messy no matter what. Jackd is right. The Afghan military most likely would have folded just as they did. A pretend army of an artificial government. To leave troops in place would only draw it out. While it might have been handled somewhat better I doubt with substantially better results.

[LFC]

Just as a data point the Taliban is estimated to have about 80,000 troops. The Afghan "army" had 300,000 armed by the U.S. The Taliban drifted through them with little resistance. I don't think anybody expected instant surrender by a force that was nearly 4X larger. Meanwhile there are 80,000 now well supplied and highly motivated troops to deal with. How many tens of thousands of American soldiers would we have had to send in to hold Kabul? Were we ready to mobilize that many, either logistically or politically?

Any Monday morning quarterbacking needs to explain that this was an expected outcome i.e. almost zero time once the Taliban pushed and how we could have stopped it.

[Deleted]

In order to have a reasoned analysis and a response to LFC's question one would need to understand the intelligence and the US military's assessment of the Afghan army's ability to have a sustained fight against Taliban, especially on their own. Congressional investigations would reveal the real assessments, not the political ones of the Biden administration. In July Biden was painting a rosy picture. By then, the Afghan military had started melting. I'm hard pressed to accede to the claim the US military did not have a proper assessment of the Afghan army, and its ability to fight without US military assistance.

The withdrawal mission did not provision for evacuating 150,000 SIV claimants. It accounted for troop withdrawal at an accelerated pace which drove the tactical security decisions - what could be secured with a few hundred troops.

Biden claimed he would level with us. He would bring competence back to the government. I find he has fallen far short in this fiasco. And lastly, I'm concerned whether this was a strategically prudent decision.

P.S. Accountability demands assessments on a "Monday morning". Tough, unsparing assessments.

[pnwguy]

If the WaPo coverage is to be believed, the 300K Afghan army in city after city had secretly signed surrender agreements with the Taliban after the Trump/Pompeo withdrawal announcements were made. Perhaps what our military intel didn't know was how much theft of paychecks was happening within the Afghan forces, making it hard for any of their troops to want to die for their corrupt army and government. So the collapse was similar to the WTC towers, after a few hours of jet fuel fire weakened the upper floors. The Afghan army pancaked.

But for sure, the Biden administration had been dealt a bad hand and then pushed most all of their chips into the pot, to compound the situation. Their execution sure appears to be close to FUBAR, and Biden owns it.

[jackd]

Given that bad hand, I still don't see how other approaches were going to play any better. Biden may own it but that's because it was his bad luck to be there at the time. Whoever was there was going to own it because it owned them.

[pnwguy]

Aug 29, 2021 16:05:29 GMT jackd said:

Given that bad hand, I still don't see how other approaches were going to play any better. Biden may own it but that's because it was his bad luck to be there at the time. Whoever was there was going to own it because it owned them.

Partly I fault Biden for not holding his own press conferences early on start the public debate and preempt the RW noise machine from setting the narrative.  He should have helped set low expectations and get the general public to anticipate chaos, deaths, and the tragedies that would befall the Afghan people BEFORE the implementation.  That can be done without broadcasting military strategies and jeopardizing those on the ground here.  But demonstrating up front that the potential for tragedy is high, and possibly have it all go well instead, would be far better politics and keep support up for the policy.

[jackd]

That was complicated by the fact that he needed the cooperation of the Taliban.

[AnBr]

www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/

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[AnBr]

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[jackd]

They win all the wars, don't they?

[LFC]

Aug 29, 2021 15:22:25 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

The withdrawal mission did not provision for evacuating 150,000 SIV claimants. It accounted for troop withdrawal at an accelerated pace which drove the tactical security decisions - what could be secured with a few hundred troops.

I put up a post about the ever increasing number of SIV claimants that keep getting cited. The number I had heard before the big Taliban push was 70,000. Your number is more than double. My post noted that one pundit was pushing the number closer to 1,000,000. I'd love to know the source and criteria of all of these numbers. Was the original 70,000 a deliberate or overly narrowed understatement? Was it accurate and the rest are also deliberate overstatements or a broadening of the qualifications?

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2021 14:53:59 GMT LFC said:

Aug 29, 2021 15:22:25 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

The withdrawal mission did not provision for evacuating 150,000 SIV claimants. It accounted for troop withdrawal at an accelerated pace which drove the tactical security decisions - what could be secured with a few hundred troops.

I put up a post about the ever increasing number of SIV claimants that keep getting cited. The number I had heard before the big Taliban push was 70,000. Your number is more than double. My post noted that one pundit was pushing the number closer to 1,000,000. I'd love to know the source and criteria of all of these numbers. Was the original 70,000 a deliberate or overly narrowed understatement? Was it accurate and the rest are also deliberate overstatements or a broadening of the qualifications?

All good questions. Points the ad-hoc nature of strategy.

[Deleted]

David From has an interesting take on US's Afghan disengagement. He is quite sanguine this is the correct resetting of US foreign policy.

[LFC]

Interesting what part of the Afghanistan story isn't being covered but you can find if you dig for it. Here we have Afghans who were supposed to be evacuated ages ago but who were blocked by the Trump administration despite a court order. Remember that the Taliban was already threatening an escalation over the fact that we missed Trumps original deadline.

With better preparation, this last-minute scramble to set up the infrastructure to receive Afghan refugees may have been averted. Though the task might be more challenging now than it would have been a few months ago, the Biden administration has acknowledged that it faces a moral obligation to ensure those people not only get out of Afghanistan but also are able to access humanitarian protection in the US.

“This was completely foreseeable,” said Yael Schacher, a senior US advocate at the advocacy group Refugees International. “We could have gotten these people out months ago. It’s really uncertain now.”

Afghan allies are being transferred to third countries or sent directly to the US
After announcing the withdrawal deadline in April, the Biden administration put its faith in the SIV program, which has existed since 2006, as its primary means of bringing Afghans to the US. But an intense, 14-step application process and a significant backlog that piled up during the final months of the Trump administration have made it an onerous immigration pathway for many who aided the US war effort, even before Kabul fell to Taliban control.

Applicants are required to submit significant documentation, including a recommendation letter from their senior US-citizen supervisor. But many Afghans who would otherwise be eligible for the program have difficulty obtaining that recommendation letter, especially in cases where they worked as contractors.

Even if an applicant can gather the required documents, they have faced lengthy wait times before they are ultimately approved for a visa. By law, SIVs are required to be processed within nine months, but in practice, the average processing time has always been longer than that.

The Trump administration actively stonewalled the program, meaning that not a single SIV was processed between March 2020 and January 2021. In response, a federal judge ordered the government to come up with a plan to process these applications in a timely manner after thousands of SIV applicants sued. Yet it’s still been taking about two years to process the applications.

Now, the Biden administration is surging resources to speed up processing of SIV applicants, who are being sent to third countries temporarily before being brought to the US. According to the State Department, the US government has been issuing SIVs at a rate of more than 800 per week — an eightfold increase over the course of a few months.

“Even before [the evacuation operation started], we were undertaking an interagency effort to clear a backlog of applicants, to identify how and where to relocate SIVs in various stages of the application process, and to work with Congress to revise qualifications for the SIV and streamline our processing requirements,” a State Department spokesperson told me in an emailed statement.

Trump gutted the ability to resettle them as well.

SIVs can choose their final destination themselves, either opting to be near family members already living in the US or selecting from a list of 19 cities spanning from Phoenix to St. Louis. Alternatively, they can request that a refugee resettlement agency choose a placement that would suit them best.

Once issued a visa, they also become eligible for the same kind of services offered to refugees to help them get their footing in the US and become self-sufficient within six months: basic necessities, temporary housing, cash assistance, job training and placement, and English classes, among other forms of aid.

But the availability of those services could be scarce given the constraints on the refugee agencies that operate these programs, many of which were gutted by President Trump, who slashed the annual refugee admissions cap from 110,000 to just 15,000 during his time in office.

Under Trump, refugee agencies saw their federal funding reduced, forcing them to scale back their infrastructure and staffing to keep their resettlement programs afloat. More than 100 resettlement offices — nearly a third of the nationwide total — closed, and many government staff tasked with processing refugees abroad were laid off or reassigned.

Now, those agencies will have to find landlords willing to rent out affordable accommodations amid a national housing shortage. They also need to rebuild relationships with employers willing to hire refugees. And they will have to recruit and train volunteers to help furnish apartments for newly arrived Afghan families and drive them to medical appointments, English classes, and job interviews.

This WaPo article says that 117,000 have been evacuated already (as of yesterday) and most are Afghan citizens.

More than 117,000 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan on U.S. and other flights as of Saturday, and Pentagon officials said the vast majority are Afghan citizens. Thousands have arrived in the United States, while thousands more are waiting in “transit hubs” in Europe and the Middle East. They are a mix of brand-new refugees and families with existing immigration applications that have been pending for months or years.

Where the evacuees will end up is “a hard question to answer,” said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, one of the refugee resettlement agencies operating in the United States. “I don’t really know where they stand,” Hetfield said in an interview. “It’s chaos.”

Of course it's chaos. Much like our COVID response if you destroy the infrastructure that was created to handle this very problem then it's bound to be chaos.

[LFC]

This is a must read from WaPo via TPM. W...T...F? Former President Ghani simply bolted and left a power vacuum. If it was an intelligence failure then it was one shared by the U.S. gov't, the Afghan gov't, and the Taliban. And it all seems to come down to the immediate and total collapse of Afghans actually defending themselves. Here's the TPM article in full with a link to the original WaPo piece.

This morning The Washington Post published an illuminating new look at the fall of Kabul. What is most telling, however, is the commentary about the facts revealed in the article. First let’s look at the new details.

The flight of former President Ghani, which triggered the final collapse of the Afghan government, was driven at least in part by apparently false reports that that Taliban fighters were in the palace searching for him. The more resonant claim is about the mechanics of the turnover of control in Kabul.

The US government wasn’t the only one surprised by the rapid collapse of Ghani’s government. The Taliban was too. There was either an agreement in place or one being prepared for Ghani to turn over power to an interim government that would attempt to negotiate a new power sharing regime in the country. The Taliban had no immediate plans to enter the capital. Ghani’s flight short-circuited that plan. With no government in control of the capital the Taliban contacted the US and said either the US could assume control of security in the capital or the Taliban would. The Post quotes a US official quoting Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s political wing telling Gen. Frank McKenzie: “We have a problem. We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”

McKenzie said that evacuation was the only US mission and that the US would thus only hold on to the airport. In response the Taliban entered the city and took over.

There’s a wave of commentary suggesting this was the moment when the US sealed the country’s fate or that the entire rushed exit over the last two weeks could have been avoided by the US taking over Kabul with Taliban acceptance if not explicit agreement. As the Post put it, “the scope of [US] defeat was total.” It is worth noting that this account suggests a level of communication and coordination between the US and the Taliban that many have been slow to appreciate. But the bigger issue here is the continued inability of most commentators to grasp the inherent dynamism of all military situations and especially those of state collapse.

The idea that a few thousand US Marines or soldiers could take over security for a city of 5 million during a process of state collapse is frankly insane. The Post article portrays the decision as Biden remaining adamant about leaving no matter what. And that is clearly the underlying part of the equation. But if you think holding an airport in this situation is fraught, vulnerable and highly dangerous try taking over security for a city of 5 million under the same circumstances. Force protection alone would require vastly greater numbers. Multiply the number of IED attacks by splinter factions and rival extremist groups by tenfold and consider the civilian collateral damage as Marines try to assert control of a city of that size when everyone knows Taliban rule is just over the horizon.

This was clearly the only possible decision. Some who claim otherwise are simply being disingenuous. But what this mostly shows is the deep lack of understanding from the ‘there had to be a better way’ crowd of the inherently dynamic nature of all military deployments and especially any actions in the context of state collapse. It’s on a par with the idea that the US could have evacuated two or three hundred thousand Afghan nationals and then allowed the US-backed government to stand on its own.

As I noted above, force protection alone would require a dramatically greater deployment. But the issue isn’t so much numbers as dynamism. You are always in the process of establishing security – which is to say, by force – or relinquishing it. You are in a dynamic process of moving toward greater or lesser control in a process that feeds on itself.

The control exercised by an occupying military or a state is always an interplay between current force and force played out into and expected in the future. The US might be able to occupy a city like Kabul or even a country like Afghanistan with a few thousand troops if it is in the process of expanding the number of troops deployed and planning to stay for the indefinite future. If it is planning on turning over the territory to a hostile force in days or weeks ten times the number likely wouldn’t be enough. There are no timeouts. Trying to do both at the same time or apply the brakes a bit as the situation moves toward state collapse is a recipe for bombing attacks on US troops and civilian ‘collateral damage’ as US troops try to defend themselves and establish order. It’s like standing on a dock as the boat leaves. You stay on the dock or you leap into the boat. You can’t do both.

That’s not much solace to people trying to flee Kabul today. But it’s critical, really a sine-qua-non, for anyone trying to understand the range of options available to what amounts to an occupying power in such a situation. It’s also essential to understand how and why governments fall, usually slowly and then all at once. Because, again, the nature of control is always an interplay between the present and expectations about the future. There are no timeouts.

[LFC]

From the original WaPo piece. Ghani froze like a deer in the headlights and then just bolted without any word to any staff who didn't run away with him or any word to the U.S.

U.S. officials were as surprised as anyone. The Americans had expected Ghani would stay for an orderly transition to an interim authority, as the agreement that negotiators in Doha had struck promised. News of Ghani’s departure, received secondhand, meant that hope had been crushed.

“He not only abandoned his country, but then unraveled the security situation in Kabul,” said a senior U.S. official. “People just simply melted away, from the airport to everywhere else.”

In the void, law and order began to break down, with reports of armed gangs moving through the streets.

In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha — including McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command — spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.

“We have a problem,” Baradar said, according to the U.S. official. “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”

Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind.

McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.

On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.

Fighters were now on the move throughout Kabul, with the group’s spokesman issuing a revision of his earlier guidance: The Taliban hadn’t intended to take Kabul that day. But Ghani’s exit gave the group no choice.

“The government has left all of their ministries; you have to enter the city to prevent further disorder and protect public property and services from chaos,” read a message that pinged on Muhammad Nasir Haqqani’s phone.

[LFC]

The idea that a few thousand US Marines or soldiers could take over security for a city of 5 million during a process of state collapse is frankly insane.

To put this in perspective let's look at Chicago, a relatively troubled city by American standards. The population is 2.7M. They have an active duty police force of 12,000. With the collapse and disappearance of the Afghan military and police how many troops would be required to secure a foreign city in turmoil and bound to harbor violent terrorists that is 85% larger? 20,000? 30? 40?

The more I read the more I want details from armchair critics on exactly what Biden needed to do better along with their analysis of how much of a difference they believe it would have made. Biden was f***ed by the deadline. He was f***ed by the blockage of refugees. He was f***ed by the destruction of the system that would process and resettle refugees. He was f***ed by a 300,000 "strong" military that refused to fight. He was f***ed by a government that bolted without a word. I'm sure there could have been some things done better but it's easy to recognize that after the fact. This situation was a cluster-f*** of monumental proportions before it was ever tossed in his lap.

[Deleted]

There's no serious claim of a few thousand marines securing Kabul, after the collapse of Afghan government. The claim was about American forces providing logistics and acting as a force multiplier, while front line war was continued to be fought by the Afghan army, and interior security provided by police. That was the situation in '17 and '18, until the US political decision of wholesale disengagement was made by Trump. That claim further goes to argue America sidelining the Ghani government during the Doha talks with the Taliban, arranging to hand over power come what might, striking a lopsided deal, and pulling out abruptly in '20 and '21 demoralized the Afghan security forces. Beyond loss of morale, US military withdrawal also deprived Afghan forces of air support and essential maintenance and replacement of equipment. Also, the loss of steady stream of US cash which fed the engine of corruption played a major part.

Whether the stalemate of '17 and '18 was sustainable in the long run, and whether that indeed was a desirable state for US interests for another generation while civil society developed and gathered steam are the critical questions.

Biden was not bound by Trump administration's decisions. If those were contrary to national interest he was well placed to ignore them. It was an affirmative decision on Biden's part to observe the constraints. His cold calculation is chaos from Afghan instability is going to be limited to Central and South Asia, and certainly not spillover to the US anytime soon. He estimates America on balance is not going to care terribly about the plight of Afghan women, or few beheadings in a distant land.

P.S. Biden has lost the claim to competence in governance. He has looked unsteady and irritated.