afghanistanin military terms is called mission creep. Since there was no semblance of
a national army, the u.s. military and Pentagon advisers began to train a
new Afghan National Army (ana), a programme which proved to be far
more problematic than originally anticipated and one which quickly ran
foul of powerful vested interests. Marshal Fahim, the Minister of Defence,
wanted to rebrand his Panjshiri militia as the ana, but Karzai rejected
this plan since it put far too much power into Fahim’s hands. Even so,
the majority of ana troops and its officer corps were farsiwans allied to
Shura-yi Nizar or Jami‘at, with smaller contingents of Dostam’s Uzbeks
and Hizb-i Wahdat’s Hazaras. Relatively few Pushtuns joined up and the
ethnic composition of the ana caused resentment among those Pushtuns
who had been the backbone of the army and its officer corps during the
Musahiban era.
Despite millions of dollars spent on training and equipment, the ana
has not proved particularly effective at fighting insurgents and foreign
troops have had little trust in their Afghan counterparts when it came
to battlefield encounters. From its inception, the ana has been plagued
with large-scale desertions, absenteeism and nepotism, while many of its
recruits are loyal to their militia commanders or qaum rather than the state.
Thousands of rifles and other major items of military equipment supplied
by the usa have gone missing or fallen into the hands of insurgents, and
investigations have revealed that tens of thousands of individuals listed
on army payrolls are either nonexistent or absent without leave. Nor were
Afghan recruits used to the strict military discipline and unquestioning
obedience demanded by foreign military trainers, while neither side had
more than a superficial understanding of the other’s culture or values. One
outcome of this mutual incomprehension was the rise of so-called Green
on Blue attacks, as Afghan soldiers and police turned their guns on their
foreign counterparts.
Since the ana was not fit for purpose, American, British, Canadian
and other foreign forces bore the brunt of the war against a resurgent
Taliban and anti-government elements, with the result that the coalition
of America and its allies ended up fighting President Karzai’s war rather
than its own. isaf also extended its mission into provincial capitals. When
nato took over the role of internal security in 2003, its troops too became
drawn into anti-terrorist operations as well as training the ana and the
national police force. isaf’s original mandate had been to withdraw after
the 2004 elections, but in the end nato troops remained in Afghanistan
for fifteen years. Despite transiting responsibility to the ana since 2013
and the drawdown of nato forces at the end of 2015, the Taliban remain