I am sure that many of you who do not have any military background; you were perplexed and confused by what transpired in the past week in Kabul. Even with my thirty-one years of experience, for me all I was seeing on television was just like a horror movie made in Hollywood.
Like anybody else, I am still seeking answers to what happened in Afghanistan. Wars are naturally predictable and this is why every country has a doctrine of war that they would follow in the case of a break out of hostilities. Militaries including ours in Botswana have schools where they invest their time teaching this or that concept.
In short, war is predictable but not absolutely. When you fight your enemy, it is important to know the tactics they apply and the weapon systems they have in their arsenal. If a platoon of thirty is confronted by a full company of one hundred and twenty with all their support weapons, it is fruitless to challenge them even if they are violating your territorial integrity.
After every operation, there is a time for a review known as debrief. In this session, the most critical aspect is lessons learnt from the operation. Indeed the Americans will have a very lengthy debrief to understand what happened in Afghanistan.
The Taliban came into the capital just like a flash flood which often catches people unprepared. The Afghan army put up some resistance at some provinces but when it came to the capital they all melted away. And then there was a rush of panic among the civilian population because they realised too late that they were naked when it came to security issues.
Is America to blame for what happened in Afghanistan? President Biden has come out clearly that they were not in that country for nation building but for the purpose of counter-terrorism. But the Americans have helped to build a three hundred thousand strong Afghan military with the best equipment that BDF can only salivate for.
For the last twenty years the US effectively trained Afghans to become top rated soldiers and the figure of the dollar spent was well over a trillion. If the US can put a third of this money in Botswana’s economy, this country will never be the same.
But what happened in Afghanistan with so much assets at their disposal? The biggest problem here is corruption. Apparently government officials were fleeing away with suitcases of cash in US dollar. Corruption is the biggest cancer in the economy of any country.
Imagine that the US government was responsible for the salaries of all military personnel in Afghanistan. This arrangement still continued and was part of the agreement for the withdrawal of the American forces. But right at the end of a twenty year period things fell apart.
I further agree with Biden in his statement that if Afghanistan could not be fixed in twenty years, an extra five years could still be meaningless except for the loss of more American lives. There was a lot to deal with in terms of culture and attitudes. I don’t see how a country can allow such an opportunity of a lifetime to pass by in this manner.
American money has been applied in the development of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and airports. One of the areas which was of priority was education and this came with the necessary infrastructure. The education system that was previously discriminatory to girls had a very poor infrastructure and this was transformed overnight.
The reason why the Americans landed in Afghanistan in 2001 was as a result of the occurrences of 9/11. They followed their doctrine of war to end up here and similarly it is the same doctrine that informed them on their departure.
The biggest prize for being in this country was the killing of Osama Bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan. This man was the reason for the events of 9/11 and they invested so much in finding and killing him.
Afghanistan is a landlocked country like Botswana and yet very strategic in the region. It borders several countries including China and Russia. It is not just a desolate desert of mountains as some may want to look at. The moment the Taliban arrived in Kabul, some of these countries were already courting their leadership.
In the next three episodes on this column, I will be arguing why Botswana should have allowed the US to bring its Africa Command to this country. It is something I have been researching over nine months now and the ideal time is now when the US military is in the limelight regarding this past operation in Afghanistan.
If we are allowed to host US Africa Command, we will handle things better regarding the past immediate experiences from Afghanistan. Corruption has been the biggest problem that allowed the armed forces of that country to just fall like a house of cards when the Americans left the country.
We will all be watching this country going forward and a lot of lessons will be learnt here. The question is; how is the Taliban going to deal with corruption that has been so much engrained into the system of the country? This is the only issue I would persuade them to apply their ruthlessness into the population in order to arrest corruption. Afghanistan minus corruption would be a different country.
And does Afghanistan compare closely with Vietnam in 1975? Not so much. In Saigon the Americans were fleeing the capital while in Kabul the US forces had to come back to evacuate and reinforce after a short absence from the country. The two scenarios are absolutely different and this is why the US forces are still in charge of the Hamid Khazai Airport.
We will all be watching from the side-lines the developments over this country. But a lot of military strategists will equally be studying this conflict and the ensuing events to follow after the final departure of the Americans.
