LONDON (The Daily Mail) – Poor planning by the U.S. military before the “abrupt” Afghanistan withdrawal led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government as the Taliban overran the country in August 2021, a damning new watchdog report said.
The scathing analysis by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found the American decision to pull out “destroyed the morale” of the Afghan National Security Force (ANDSF), and the 300,000 local troops were destined to fail, The Daily Mail reported.
It also details the more than $7 billion in weapons and equipment left for the Taliban to use, and the widespread corruption that dominated the Afghan military and government.
The withdrawal was “abrupt and uncoordinated” and gave war-ravaged locals the impression that the U.S. was “simply handing Afghanistan over to a Taliban government-in-waiting”, it continued.
The report also criticized the failure to create “an independent and self-sustainable” Afghan security force, despite 20 years and $90 billion of support from the U.S., and blamed both President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump for the bedlam.
Eighteen months ago, the world watched in horror as Afghans desperately tried to flee on flights from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai’s International Airport before the final Western troops left.
Horrifying videos showed evacuees clinging onto the outside of planes - causing some to fall - so they could escape the Taliban.
The chaos meant thousands, including locals who helped fight the war, were left behind as the U.S. withdrew as the Taliban ran rampant.
Just a month earlier, Biden had insisted that the militant takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable”.
The SIGAR report painted the picture of Afghan security forces that threw down their weapons and weren’t prepared for the Taliban onslaught.
Nearly $7.2 billion of aircraft, guns, vehicles, ammunition and specialized equipment such as night-vision goggles and biometric devices were also abandoned when U.S. troops withdrew, the report states.
This includes at least 78 aircraft worth $923.3 million, 9,524 air-to-ground munitions that cost $6.54 million, more than 40,000 vehicles, more than 30,000 weapons and nearly all electronic equipment.
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko warned that it is ‘likely unavoidable’ that some of the weapons may end up on the black market “given the ongoing conflict and the unprecedented volume of weapons being transferred to Ukraine”.
Among the damning revelations was also the fact that U.S. forces often handled tasks they were supposed to train Afghan forces to do.
It meant the local troops were underprepared, while the American military created an illusion of success.
The “sense of abandonment” felt by Afghan forces was sparked by Trump’s 2020 peace deal with the Taliban to start bringing troops home, SIGAR stated in the report.