The Taliban’s Psychological Edge
A US intelligence assessment, leaked on August 10th, forecast that Kabul could fall to the Taliban in 90 days. Instead, it did so within a week of the assessment coming to light. The Taliban breached the presidential palace in the capital on the 15th of August, ushering in a return to theocracy two decades after the Taliban were toppled by a US-led coalition in 2001. Would the West have intervened on behalf of Ghani’s government had intelligence reports conveyed a greater sense of urgency? This is unlikely. The briefs of American and British troops deployed in recent days in Afghanistan have limited them to safely evacuating US personnel. Still, it is worth considering why observers were so overconfident about the timescale of the Taliban’s takeover. In fairness to Biden’s intelligence officers, official data makes the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) out to be larger and better equipped than Taliban forces. What, then, influences the outcome of warfare but lurks behind tables of figures? The answer to this riddle lies in psychology.
The basic narrative is as follows. In April, Biden ordered that all US troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. He took the baton passed to him by Trump. His isolationist predecessor struck a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, agreeing to end the US military presence in Afghanistan within a year. With US muscle all but gone, the Taliban saw their opportunity and took it. They waged the Blitzkrieg of Hitler’s dreams, taking their first provincial capital on August 5th and holding a press conference from the absentee president’s office just 12 days later. 20 years and $88 billion dollars have been spent since Bush opened up the Afghan theatre of the war on terror, much of it on strengthening local forces with a view to making them self-sufficient. With this comparative material advantage how could the ANDSF have put up such feeble resistance to stateless insurgents?
This is where emotion comes into play. Morale was higher on the Taliban’s side of the conflict. They were fighting for what they perceived to be a holy cause. For Afghan forces, nation-building did not go far enough for the incumbent government to be worth fighting for. Moreover, early victories in the first stages (not all that long ago) of the Taliban’s push towards Kabul could only have convinced Taliban fighters that their god was on their side. The jihadists were were invincible because they were righteous. Afghan troops were friendless after the departure of the Americans, while Taliban troops believed themselves protected by an omnipotent friend. The Taliban’s advance would not have been so swift had the ANDSF and local leaders had a reason to, and the confidence to, fight back. Why else were white flags raised before rather than after a clash of force in many of Afghanistan’s northern districts?
If not enamoured with the Taliban and eager for the reimposition of Sharia law enforced by public executions, many members of the ANDSF would have been apathetic to a Taliban government, notwithstanding scenes at Kabul airport. On the frontline of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city, a police unit’s daily ration was a box of “slimy potatoes”. A government that cannot provide for those defending it cannot expect their allegiance. After all, the women whose rights will vanish under the Taliban are not the ones fighting them. Moreover, the reputation of the Taliban precedes it. Fear of of an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban did not provide an impetus to stop it from materialising. Surrendering was soldiers’ and leaders’ safest bet – the Taliban are known for their brutal recriminations, despite their recent pledge to extend amnesty to those who worked for Ghani’s government and foreign powers.
Capital among these foreign employers was the US. Those who castigate Biden for his decision to finish what Trump started argue that only a minimal US presence was needed to keep the Taliban at bay. Before Biden took office, US Forces in Afghanistan were down to a mere 2,500. Americans did not constitute a significant proportion of the counterinsurgency force. This force can thus not have been much stronger before the Americans withdrew. Yet American involvement had a greater symbolic than numerical significance, as a token of US support. The Taliban remained reticent about launching an attack because they calculated that any victory they secured would backfire, prompting the US to upscale their military commitment to the country. Because Biden’s word on withdrawal seemed final, come rain or shine for Ghani’s government, the Taliban were emboldened.
Psychology and symbolism aside, numbers do not always tell the full story because they are often inaccurate. Official figures were bluffs. A US government-commissioned report from November 2013 stated that ANDSF troops numbered 344,602. Yet the Defense Department’s report to congress in December 2020 revealed that the ANDSF was actually under 300,000 strong, owing to the “ghost” soldiers conjured by officers who then pocketed their pay. The problem may have been worse than those who authored the report knew. Much of the money funnelled into Afghanistan by foreign supporters was lost to corruption and so did nothing to improve the ANDSF. Furthermore, though the Taliban might be a rebel group without a tax system of its own to fund its operations, it likely has covert support from regional benefactors.
All this is to say that foreign policy outcomes will remain unpredictable so long as we rely for our risk assessments on numbers alone. Audiences the world over remain incredulous. This is not solely because of the suddenness of the Taliban’s victory, but also the fact that news of it just seems too bad to be true.
Image courtesy of The Borgen Project, ©2018, some rights reserved.
