US and Ghani government ‘set the stage’ for the collapse of republic: SIGAR

Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko stated in a report released Monday, that the agency found six short-term factors accelerated the collapse of the Afghan security forces in August 2021.

In his report to Congress, Sopko said first the decision by the United States to withdraw all U.S. military forces “fundamentally changed the behaviors of the United States, the [Ashraf] Ghani administration, and the Taliban (IEA).”

He said many Afghans thought the U.S.-Taliban agreement was an act of bad faith and a signal that the “United States was handing over Afghanistan to the enemy as it rushed to exit the country,” he said adding that “its immediate effect was a dramatic loss in ANDSF morale”.

In addition, the change in the U.S. military’s level of support to the ANDSF; the failure to establish a self-sustaining ANDSF; former President Ashraf Ghani’s frequent changes of ANDSF leaders and appointment of loyalists; the Afghan government’s failure to take responsibility for Afghan security through the implementation of a national security strategy; and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) effective exploitation of ANDSF weaknesses, were also behind the collapse of the security forces.

“These six short-term factors worked together to cause the ANDSF’s collapse,” Sopko stated in the report.

He said, in addition, SIGAR identified eight systemic factors that explain why, after 20 years and nearly $90 billion in U.S.
security assistance, the ANDSF was vulnerable to collapse in the first place and ill prepared to sustain security following a U.S. withdrawal.

According to him, these factors were:

The length of the U.S. commitment was disconnected from a realistic understanding of the time required to build a self-sustaining security sector;

No one country or agency had ownership of the ANDSF development mission;

Advisors were often poorly trained and inexperienced for their mission, while frequent personnel rotations impeded standardization, continuity of effort, and institutional memory;

The lack of effective interagency oversight and assessment programs prevented a clear picture of reality on the ground;

Afghan corruption eroded ANDSF capabilities;

U.S training, logistics and weapons procurement policies undermined its stated goal of creating a self-sustaining Afghan military;

The United States perpetuated pre-existing ethnic and regional tensions rather than achieving stated mission goals of force diversity and unification;

The U.S. and Afghan governments failed to develop a police force effective at providing justice and protecting Afghan citizens from crime.

Sopko also stated that during SIGAR’s work looking at the accounting for and status of U.S.-provided equipment to the ANDSF and U.S.trained ANDSF personnel, the agency found that the United States lacked a full accounting of equipment and personnel even before the collapse.

He said the IEA is now using U.S.-provided military equipment in operations; and while some U.S.-provided aircraft have been recovered, others remain in limbo in other countries.

In addition, ANDSF personnel have escaped, are in hiding, have been killed, or may have joined extremist groups, Sopko stated.

Sopko also stated in the report that the US department of defense and the state departed declined to review the interim

Draft of the report and in turn denied SIGAR access to their staff, “and mostly declined to answer requests for information”.

“This limited SIGAR’s ability to perform this evaluation. Still, this final version includes additional information that we received from U.S. and former Afghan officials over the past eight months, without support from U.S. agencies.”