Looking back at the failure-to-fight of the Afghan defense force trained and supplied by the U.S. is an important step for our military to take, for it is clear we did a crap job of it. Writing at Modern War Institute, an Air Force officer identifies a number of things we did wrong, although he is weaker about proposing alternatives that might have worked, had they been tried.
One key area of failure is trying to get third world people to become born-again Americans without moving them permanently to America, where it is hard enough. In situ it is essentially impossible for most locals. As the old saw about trying to teach a pig to sing has it, “You won’t succeed but you’ll irritate the pig.”
Afghans appeared to have viewed the U.S. backed army almost entirely as an opportunity for graft, and not much more. A recent story about a son of the former Afghan defense minister buying a Beverly Hills mansion for $20 million (i.e., money stolen from us) makes this point vividly.
Failure to understand the local culture, and to either co-opt it, or work in ways that made sense to locals and leveraged the strengths of their culture seem relevant. For example, forming ethnically homogeneous units in a multi-ethnic society like Afghanistan violates American norms but is essentially the only thing that will work there. Tribalism isn’t easy for us to grasp, but is their entire way of life.
We could do worse than copy approaches the Brits found useful in 19th century colonial India. These included so-called “politicals” working with local war lords and leaders, forming units with local troops and non-coms led by Brit officers, etc. The Indian Army which resulted is today one of the more successful elements of that society.
