The collapse of the Afghan army against the Taliban in just a few weeks took all military experts by surprise, starting with those from the US Department of Defense (DOD). The brutality of the US withdrawal has exposed the weaknesses of the loyal Afghan army, plagued by corruption, poorly supplied, poorly commanded and without air support. Even the insurgents did not expect such a meteoric debacle of artificially inflated regiments.

However, the American authorities and several NATO military experts had praised the merits of the reform of the Afghan armed forces as well as their operational capacities to defend their territory. The reality turned out to be a bluff. Officially, the Afghan army had 300 000 members of the security forces, including the iron spear, Special Forces, count nearly 50 000 soldiers.[1]

The American elements of the « Security Force Assistance Teams » during the exercises of mentoring, counseling and training of the Afghan units.

Reform of the Afghan army has been the top priority of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF[2]) and the US Army.[3] The specificity of this training for the Afghan army was based on the concept of OMLT (Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams) “mentoring”. A strategy according to which the trainers are brought to play a much more important role in accompanying the Afghan soldiers at all levels of training, training and operations in the field, from the operational level, that is to say – say from the design of the general maneuver plan, up to the tactical level.[4] This concept therefore implies that in the beginning “mentors” (mainly Americans) not only train officers and troops, they plan operations at all different levels and echelons of command.

From that moment on, a form of strategic and operational dependence of the Afghan troops on their mentors was created. This has led to neglect in the training of the Afghan military command, the leadership aspect of which has been neglected.

Gradually, the various provinces were placed under the responsibility of the Afghan security forces, always under the supervision of NATO military experts. The Afghans were first integrated into the planning process of operations, before being increasingly required to organize themselves, at different levels of command and structure of the army.[5] This is where the first signs of the fragility of the army began to appear.

The other major aspect of this reform concerned the colossal financial sums spent by the United States to form the Afghan army. In this regard, Biden recalled on August 16 in his televised address to the nation after the fall of Kabul: « We have spent more than 1,000 billion dollars in twenty years and equipped more than 300,000 Afghan soldiers. » Much of this manna was captured by corrupt Afghan generals who diverted it for their own profit to the detriment of the maintenance of the military, therefore demotivated and poorly supervised by a deficient command. In fact, experts estimate the staggering cost of the US intervention in Afghanistan at 2,261 billion dollars. According to a senior American military source, the Afghan authorities have inflated the figures with « ghost battalions « , no doubt to increase the bill paid by the United States and maintain endemic corruption. According to a Western diplomat, stationed in Kabul, « there would be 46 phantom battalions, of 800 men each ».

Thus, the collapse of the Afghan army began when President Barack Obama initially, then Donald Trump secondly, made a firm resolution to drastically reduce the presence of the American military abroad. An exit strategy that Joe Biden accelerated. The scenario for the Taliban’s rapid takeover of power in Afghanistan was drawn up long before the fall of Kabul on August 15. We have to go back to February 29, 2020, when the US administration, led by Donald Trump, and the Taliban signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, which sets a timetable for the final withdrawal of US forces and their allies after nearly 20 years of conflict. In return, the Taliban have pledged not to allow Afghan territory to be used for planning or carrying out actions that threaten the security of the United States. Thus, for several experts, the victorious military offensive of the Taliban is a consequence of the Doha agreement.

Washington notably pledged to lift the sanctions it had imposed on Taliban leaders. What makes some experts say that it was an agreement of camouflaged surrender of the troops of the ISAF. According to anonymous military sources cited by the Washington Post, many Afghan military and police commanders agreed to surrender to the Taliban in exchange for money once the Doha deal made it clear that the withdrawal of US forces was imminent.

Similarities of the failed reform of the Afghan army with the African armies / FARDC

We can establish a certain parallel between the Afghan army and the African armies (Malian, Nigerian, Central African, Mozambican, or DR Congolese, the FARDC). These armies are often plagued by a leadership / command deficit, the illicit enrichment of their senior and general officers as well as the demotivation of the troops, despite the equipment, training and mentoring provided by external partners.

To this should be added the lack of political will on the part of political leaders to constitute genuinely professional and republican defense forces.

We are going to focus here on the case of the FARDC, the Congolese army. Indeed, in our book Les armées au Congo-Kinshasa. Radioscopie de la Force publique aux FARDC, we noted findings similar to those currently evoked by the American experts to explain the failure of the FARDC reforms. We wrote this: “ In general, the reforms initiated and the legislative advances undertaken have been generally ineffective due mainly to lack of political vision and will, lack of qualitative training of officers, lack of military leadership. . To this, we had to add recurring problems of indiscipline, irregular payment and misappropriation of military salaries, the failure of the chain of command leading to the creation of parallel commands and the lack of effective control of the political and military hierarchy over the army. »[6]

The brassage process supposed to help reunite the Congolese army by training 18 integrated brigades, with the support of the international community, has been, according to experts, a great failure. The very operationalization of the concept of « brewing » (Brassage in French) took very little account of certain realities on the ground (logistical problems, communication difficulties, lack of reliable information on the workforce, misappropriation of sales, geography, culture), as well as of enormous structural weaknesses linked to the fragility of the post-conflict situation in the country.  

Criticism also relates to « the action of the international community, deemed ineffective, inconsistent, fragmented, uncoordinated; and an unclear distribution of roles between the different partners. Moreover, rather than presenting a vision of Congolese security and mobilizing the resources necessary to realize it, the Congolese authorities encourage the establishment of divisions within the international community. The Congolese government has encouraged the establishment of divisions within the international community and allowed active corrupt networks, present at the very heart of the security services, to thrive by stealing resources supposed to cover basic salaries or by taking advantage of the exploitation of natural resources … ” (DRC-SSR-Report 2012). Like the command of the Afghan army, the UN experts described “ a Congolese army with actions dictated mainly by the economic interests of its commanders. »[7]

Another similarity between the Afghan and African armies is the low degree of consolidation of the political and institutional framework in which they are supposed to operate. The political stability of the state is a basis for the professionalism of the army. One of the problems with African political (executive and legislative) leadrs is that they simply ignore the military institution.

Indeed, the favorable conditions for a successful army reform are, first of all, a legitimate and democratic internal political framework, then, a desire for reform on the part of the competent state institutions and finally, support and accompaniment of regional and international institutions, but also the involvement of civil society.[8]

A company of Afghan National Army NCOs in Kabul, November 22, 2009 (US Navy photo). 

The limits of prefabricated solutions, imported and imposed from outside

The major problem of armies formed on the basis of strategic concepts foreign to the local culture lies at the levels of inculturation and local ownership of the reforms conceptualized from the western air-conditioned rooms. These reforms do not take into account the sociological, environmental and cultural reality of their beneficiaries. They are conceived in the form of a “kit for assembling a conventional army” and of the Western type, the adaptation of the office automation device to which is confronted with local societal constraints which annihilate the capacity of “national ownership”.

This is where the notion of strategic culture, often ignored in Western military academies, comes in. The notion of strategic culture refers to culture as a tool for explaining warlike, strategic and security phenomena. It is the idea that there are specific styles, specific national (cultural) styles in strategic matters. This makes it possible to understand, for example, the praetorian propensity according to which the army is considered as a resource of power rather than an institution of territorial defense, adopted by a good number of armed forces in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

Indeed, among the obstacles to the reforms of the African armed forces, listed in our book devoted to African military political sociology[9], there are cultural / social obstacles. The obstacles to reforming security systems revolve around the issue of local resistance to leading security system reforms in black Africa (Augé & Klaousen ; 2010: 23). Social factors play a significant amplifying influence in the implementation of reforms and constitute obstacles / resistance to be taken into account for a good reform of the security services.[10]

Indeed, as I often mention, we enlist in the army and we accept to die to defend our homeland for a sacred cause. By sacred, we mean « that for which one is ready to sacrifice one’s life ». However, most Afghan officers and soldiers joined the army for the financial advantages of serving in the army. From that moment, there was no longer sacredness in their engagement in combat, but rather demotivation; unlike the Taliban who fought to establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. How do you expect the Afghan soldiers to agree to die when their interest is financial?

Thus, these words of Joe Biden, camouflaging the American debacle, remind us of this reality that Africans must integrate: “Americans must not die for a cause that the Afghans do not want to defend… We have given them everything. But we cannot give them the will to fight for their future, ”Biden said on August 16, 2021, with the sacrifices of American soldiers in mind. More than 2,400 of them have lost their lives in Afghanistan since October 2001.

Taliban fighters stand guard along a street in Massoud Square in Kabul on August 16, 2021 (Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP).

Conclusion: the Taliban blitzkrieg is a textbook case that should inspire African strategists

The obstacles mentioned in the previous lines call for rethinking and questioning the type of soldier Africans should have in their countries. This questioning prompted me, in my book on African military political sociology, to reflect on the need to conceptualize a military philosophy specific to Africa. African strategists should develop strategic thoughts whose scope combines the structural and cyclical aspects of African society so as to reduce all the complexity of a contemporary African defense system to questions of principle and thus uncover the problems and issues of general importance.

The absence or ignorance of a contemporary and comprehensive theory on armed conflicts in Africa and the elaboration of the basic epistemological principles which should underpin African strategic thinking greatly complicates efforts to develop strategies and doctrines of own defense, which must absolutely take into account the socio-geographical environment specific to the African military, conflict and security issue. This military philosophy could lead us, with regard to the social structuring of African countries, for example, to ask ourselves the question about the positive use of armed self-defense militias which have today become the most widespread mode of armed groups in Africa and elsewhere in the world (Arab for example).[11]

The Taliban’s lightning victory in Afghanistan is a textbook case that requires in-depth analyzes and questioning by world powers on their models of conceptualizing reforms in countries that do not share the same cultural matrices as they do.

This is one of the lines of thought to be explored without any taboos, which should lead Africans to rethink the concepts of defense and the army from the point of view that they really have, that they want in make and the relations that the defense and security forces maintain with political power, society and the citizen.

Here, the systemic culturalist approach could be used to bring out the elements of the strategic culture of African states in the fields of defense and security.

Jean-Jacques Wondo Omanyundu / Military expert and analyst of geostrategic issues 

Exclusive to AFRIDESK

Reference

[1] En Afghanistan, les raisons de l’effondrement de l’armée. https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/08/14/en-afghanistan-les-raisons-du-fiasco-de-l-armee_6091418_3210.html.

[2] The International Security Assistance Force.

[3] Revue DSI – Défense & Sécurité Internationale –, Hors-Série No 36, Juin-juillet 2014 http://www.dsi-presse.com.

[4] Battles are planned at the tactical level. The forces engaged in combat on the ground execute the maneuvers on the ground according to the orders given by the hierarchy, at the operational level.

[5] https://afridesk.org/rdc-dissoudre-les-fardc-et-creer-une-nouvelle-armee-sur-le-modele-afghan-kiwonghi-el-mahoya/.

[6] Jean-Jacques Wondo, Les armées au Congo-Kinshasa. Radioscopie de la Force publique aux FARDC, 2è Ed., Monde Nouveau/Afrique Nouvelle, 2013, p. 276. Available on Amazon : https://www.amazon.fr/Arm%C3%A9es-Congo-Kinshasa-Radioscopie-Force-publique/dp/1086972538.

[7] Ibid., p. 303.

[8] Ibid., p. 365.

[9] Jean-Jacques Wondo Omanyundu, L’essentiel de la sociologie politique militaire africaine, Amazon 2019. Available on Amazon : https://www.amazon.fr/Lessentiel-sociologie-politique-militaire-africaine-ebook/dp/B07VXHQBGC.

[10] According to Marc Imbeault, professor at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean, speaking of the defeat of the Afghan army : « L’armée n’est pas non plus vraiment convaincue du bien-fondé de sa cause ». « On ne peut pas imposer de l’extérieur à un pays un changement culturel, politique, social profond sans que ça vienne de lui-même. »

[ The army is not really convinced of the merits of its cause either . » “ You cannot impose a profound cultural, political or social change on a country from outside without it coming of itself . « ]

[11] Jean-Jacques Wondo Omanyundu, L’essentiel de la sociologie politique militaire africaine, Amazon 2019, p. 430. Available on Amazon : https://www.amazon.fr/Lessentiel-sociologie-politique-militaire-africaine-ebook/dp/B07VXHQBGC.

Lire also:

Augé, A. & Klaousen, P., Réformer les armées africaines. En quête d’une nouvelle stratégie, Karthala, Paris, 2010, 228p.

DRC-SSR-Report-2012, R.D. Congo. Prendre position sur la réforme du secteur de la sécurité, mai 2012.