Pretty simple question: how was the Taliban able to re-take Afghanistan? After over a decade of American military presence, how was the Taliban even able to survive? How/why did the people of Afghanistan not fight back / prevent the Taliban from taking over?
In: 5
Because it turns out you can’t bomb a country so hard it turns into a liberal democracy.
The Taliban enjoy significant support from a large percentage of the population, as well as from international backers. They were pretty much always viewed as more legitimate than the American-backed Afghan government by the people of Afghanistan.
Because the US had a strong presence in the urban areas, but never fully took control of the rural areas of the country. They were constantly being resupplied in Pakistan where the US wasn’t allowed to chase them and through black market deals with Russia.
due to the power vacuum created when the u.s. left, the taliban was able to easily take control.
as to why the people don’t fight back, so do, most are poor dirt farmers without money for a bullet, let alone a gun. they’re disorganized and defenseless.
[Anyone talking about Afghanistan needs to read the SIGAR report on exactly what went wrong](https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf)
The short and highly simplified answer is American policy was more concerned with short-term gains rather than long-term sustainability. From military objectives to infrastructure, America was more concerned with getting something done quick so leaders would look good back home than on being able to pass the baton to the Afghanis. There was a saying I remember hearing but don’t know it’s origin, “We didn’t fight a 20-year war. We fought 20 1-year wars”.
Oh, and the Afghan people did fight back. More Afghani soldiers/police died than US soldiers in Vietnam. To say nothing of the civilian casualties and destroyed infrastructure.
America failed Afghanistan because America was never in it for Afghanistan.
The Taliban never lost Afghanistan. They were simply hidden in places Americans couldnt get to: The countryside, and Pakistan. Americans leave, Taliban literally walks back in and re-takes control…
20 Years of war, for nothing…
>how was the Taliban able to re-take Afghanistan?
In terms of place and time: by first taking the rural areas, cutting the cities off from each other. After that, they advanced on city after city and finally seized Kabul.
>After over a decade of American military presence,
Although US and coalition forces were present for a long time, they were not very large compared to the enormous size and mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. Total coalitions forces reached a maximum of 130,000 troops in 2011 due to the Surge, but before 2009 and after 2014 total size did not exceed 50,000 troops. The Rand corporation think tank once posited that a succesful counterinsurgency campaign needed to have at least 20 security personnel (police and military) per 1,000 inhabitants. Regardless of whether that is actually true, the Afghan population doubled from roughly 20 million in 2001 to 40 million in 2021. That would have required a total force between 400,000 in the beginning and 800,000 in the end. In 2019 the total number of troops in the Afghan armed forces was estimated to be 180,000. But due to ghost soldiers, that number was unreliable.
>how was the Taliban even able to survive?
Because Pakistan formed a safe haven, even with the numerous drone attacks from above. And if you are the weaker force in terms of size and capability, you have to fight differently. In this case as an insurgency, grinding down the opposing forces.
>How/why did the people of Afghanistan not fight back / prevent the Taliban from taking over?
The Taliban promised not to kill any soldier who took his gun and simply went home. They also promised no retribution against any town elders if they switched sides. That makes fighting unattractive if you do not believe you will win. Still, many Afghans fought, especially the Afghan special forces. But there weren’t so many of those. In total around 70,000 Afghan soldiers died during the war.
Additionally, Americans had set up the Afghan national army in such a way that it heavily relied on air support and special forces. But when the Americans announced their withdrawal, all the contractors who were in charge of maintaining aircraft also pulled out. Which meant that it was suddenly way more difficult for Afghan forces to repair their aircraft and keep fighting.
On top of that, the quick extraction of Western forces gave an enormous blow to the morale of ordinary Afghan troops. And once the Taliban started seizing districts and cities with high speed, many felt it was useless to keep fighting, because it only meant ensuring their own deaths. Part of the negotiated withdrawal was also the release of many Taliban fighters held captive.
Finally, the Afghan government was not seen as the true representative of the nation, but as a group of corrupt people only in it for themselves. So many Afghans did not feel particularly loyal to it, certainly not to the death. Ethnic minorities and women had strong reasons to dislike the Taliban, but they could not keep them out either, altough they held out for a while in the Panjshir valley. Another major problem for the Afghan government was that it has always been a very poor country and therefore reliant on outside aid for food and economy. With the West pulling out, economic support was eventually also going to run out. That meant either a slow strangulation of Afghan cities by the Taliban or a quick surrender and hoping for the best.
The government of Afganistan relied heavily on the American military to discourage and halt taliban advances. Afganistan’s geography includes lots of mountains and caves where taliban fighters would hide in those caves and drink tea while the American military is investing heavily to maintain order in the country. Once they completed their main objectives, there was no longer a reason to stay in a foreign country. Taliban was armed and dangerous, and civilians (mostly poor farmers trying to live to feed their children) would either fight or surrender.
Alternative take. No invading force has ever won a land war in Afghanistan. From Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union, Afghanistan has been a disaster for any military that goes into it and tried to occupy. It is less of a country than it is a collection of largely autonomous ethnic and tribal regions. The terrain is mountainous and the climate is harsh. When invaded the locals simply melt into the mountains and engage in guerrilla warfare until the invading armies either run out of resources or will. When they finally leave, the locals reassert control and do so along largely ethnic lines, which are often far more powerful than any sense of Afghan national identity.
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