Factors of failure: US govt did not understand Afghan context: watchdog

WASHINGTON: The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Tuesday released a report on failures in the United States' Afghanistan mission after the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

The SIGAR report accuses US leaders of not fully comprehending Afghanistan’s political dynamics and said their priorities were influenced by their own politics. The SIGAR post was specially created by the US government to provide independent and objective oversight of Afghanistan reconstruction projects and activities in the country.

“US officials prioritized their own political preferences for what Afghanistan’s reconstruction should look like, rather than what they could realistically achieve,” read the report.

“US officials created explicit timelines in the mistaken belief that a decision in Washington could transform the calculus of complex Afghan institutions, powerbrokers, and communities contested by the Taliban.”

According to a report published in foreign media, John Sopko, the special inspector general, said that bureaucratic disarray, counterproductive military and civilian personnel policies and practices led to “one of the most significant failures of the mission”.

Billions of dollars “wasted” on unsustainable institutions and infrastructure projects, he added.

“The US government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly,” the report found.

“Ignorance of prevailing social, cultural, and political contexts in Afghanistan has been a significant contributing factor to failures at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.”

The United States “struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy” in Afghanistan and the overall picture there is “bleak”, said the report.

In his report, Sopko wrote of the US mission: “If the goal was to rebuild and leave a country that could sustain itself and pose little threat to US national security interests, the overall picture is bleak.”

The collapse of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the government has shocked American experts and war veterans who are now questioning their government and Kabul authorities over their failure to build a strong force despite funding of trillions of dollars.

The situation is so chaotic that the US has now redeployed over 5,000 troops to assist the evacuation of its nationals and embassy staff from Kabul.

Foreign policy expert, Fareed Zakaria had told CNN last week that the collapse of Afghan forces happened much faster than people predicted but there has been un-real calm over the past two years in the war-torn country.

“When Trump agreed to withdraw troops down to about 3,000, the Taliban agreed to negotiate. So, there was a period there where it looked like the place was calm, but ... for 10 years, the Taliban had been making inroads.”

Afghan war veteran Sean Parnell had also slammed the US military leadership in Afghanistan, which according to him, was more interested in Twitter fights than their mission.

“And for the last seven months, I watched generals engage in Twitter fights, critical race theory on Capital Hill. You are seeing the tragic and disastrous consequences of that play on the battlefield right now.”

Appearing on a Fox News show, Parnell had questioned Biden’s strategy which provided space to the Taliban.

Donald Trump plan was quite different from what Joe Biden is doing in Afghanistan, he had said, adding the former president had a phased withdrawal that was supposed to be based on the condition on the ground in order to move onto the next phase.