The Afghan Army: What Advisors Couldn’t See and Officers Couldn’t Change
An Afghan officer reflects on the institutional failures that led to the collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in 2021. The author argues that Western advisors focused on the wrong metrics, ignoring deep-seated structural issues and political abandonment.
Why it matters
This perspective provides a critical internal critique of Western military assistance doctrines and the limitations of external intervention.
The ANSF’s collapse was not a military defeat. It was the final, visible stage of an institutional failure that had been running for two decades.
Following the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, one of the major questions Western analysts have spent the last five years debating is: Why did the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANSF) dissolve so quickly and completely in August 2021? The answers offered have frequently focused on declining will to fight; the withdrawal of air support contractor and maintenance support; failure of ANSF logistics; and political abandonment. These are not wrong, but they are incomplete answers proposed by outsiders looking in.
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