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Sobering reading in this Foreign Policy article that lists the top 10 mistakes we made in the Afghan War. Do you agree with this list? Were there other mistakes we made? I personally witnessed many issues with both military units and civilian agencies trying to do stability and development operations before clearing and holding operations were concluded, wasting million of dollars on unsustainable projects. What other lessons do we need to learn from our longest sustained conflict?
From Tora Bora to wartime fatigue, the U.S. legacy in Afghanistan was just one failed endeavor after another.
Afghanistan
Lessons Learned
Warfare
Posted 10 y ago
Responses: 6
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Getting into a land war in Asia? Everyone knows it is one of the great blunders. But do you know the other?
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Number 1 should be we could not solve the military problem of the Taliban spread out over the rural areas. The Taliban occupy the rural areas, which means they own the areas. We never had the resources to find all the Taliban and kill them, and occupy rural areas to provide security for COIN to work.
The Taliban want Sharia Law, but they have not been able to produce a huge army to take on the Afghan military in large battles. The Afghan government wants democracy but its large army is incapable of beating the Taliban.
The Taliban want Sharia Law, but they have not been able to produce a huge army to take on the Afghan military in large battles. The Afghan government wants democracy but its large army is incapable of beating the Taliban.
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1. Sticking to contractors for translation services and not expanding DLI to produce qualified people. Works over time. After a few deployments, the Army would have had all the in-house assets needed for the job.
2. A lot of political nonsense about the poppies. True, poppies are a big problem in Afghanistan, but we should have provided some sort of economic incentive to have helped the Afghans transition out of poppy production, like for example, farming or other agriculture.
3. Not sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
4. Karzai was a bad character to trust from the start.
5. Karzai's brothers were no better
6. Should have sealed the border between Afghanistan and Iran. That right there would have cut down the opium trade by at least 50%
7. More effort to gain buy-in with tribal leaders and less wasting time thinking the so-called Afghan government was a worthy player.
8. The Afghan Banking system was a mess from the start, Karzai's brothers looted what was left. Had that not been the case, Afghanistan could have had a small but sustainable financial sector by now.
9. Iraq took much of the focus, thus the Taliban came back
10. The Taliban should have been defined more vigorously as an existential threat to the US and its allies. Instead, the focus got shifted to Saddam and Iraq, and everyone forgot that the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda.
2. A lot of political nonsense about the poppies. True, poppies are a big problem in Afghanistan, but we should have provided some sort of economic incentive to have helped the Afghans transition out of poppy production, like for example, farming or other agriculture.
3. Not sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
4. Karzai was a bad character to trust from the start.
5. Karzai's brothers were no better
6. Should have sealed the border between Afghanistan and Iran. That right there would have cut down the opium trade by at least 50%
7. More effort to gain buy-in with tribal leaders and less wasting time thinking the so-called Afghan government was a worthy player.
8. The Afghan Banking system was a mess from the start, Karzai's brothers looted what was left. Had that not been the case, Afghanistan could have had a small but sustainable financial sector by now.
9. Iraq took much of the focus, thus the Taliban came back
10. The Taliban should have been defined more vigorously as an existential threat to the US and its allies. Instead, the focus got shifted to Saddam and Iraq, and everyone forgot that the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda.
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MSgt Steve Sweeney
Re: Afghan/Pakistan border. Had they closed down that border permanently, the only logistics pipeline was from the north, and it was a very small pipe, and tenuous at best. One of the huge problems fighting in land-locked countries.
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