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The Kunduz Debacle
It’s been a disastrous week in Afghanistan. First the Taliban overran Kunduz — a major northern Afghan city — raising memories of 1996, when they stormed key cities before an assault on Kabul. Kunduz was the first city to fall to the Taliban after the Soviets pulled out, and the last from which we evicted them.
And if the idea of Kunduz back in Taliban hands wasn’t nauseating enough, six US airmen and an unknown number of civilians were killed when a C-130J crashed on takeoff at Jalalabad Airfield, in the southeast. (They were Capt. Jonathan J. Golden, 33; Capt. Jordan B. Pierson, 28; Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Hammond, 26; Senior Airman Quinn L. Johnson-Harris, 21; Senior Airman Nathan C. Sartain, 29; and Airman 1st Class Kcey E. Ruiz, 21. May they rest in peace.)
The plane crash was an accident, but the fall of Kunduz — not so much. I’m wondering what happened to the 7,000 Afghan troops who were supposedly garrisoned there. Were they even there at all, or was that just the plan on paper? If they were there, why did they flee from a Taliban force reportedly numbering hundreds at best?
Overnight, small groups of Taliban fighters – 15 or so men per group – entered Kurduz from different points and started attacking different spots across the city. The soldiers fled, so they easily took over all the official buildings, including the hospital and the prison [my emphasis], from which they freed hundreds of prisoners.
Alex Thompson correctly described this as a military, strategic, and political disaster — a predictable one, I’d add — and noted as well that there really wasn’t much we could do:
Because western ground troops have basically left the country, options are rather limited for the US. … Airstrikes? Into a densely populated city now controlled by highly-mobile militias on motorbikes?
Well, even as he was typing that, I assume, NATO jets went for “bad option B” and began airstrikes into a densely populated city now controlled by highly-mobile militias on motorbikes. They promptly, repeatedly, and very precisely hit the main area of the Kunduz Trauma Center, operated by Médecins Sans Frontières — and continued to do so for an hour, even after the hospital staff called authorities in Kabul and Washington and said, “Please stop bombing us. We’re a hospital.” By the latest count, fifty people, many of them children, were killed.
The eyewitness accounts from the doctors at Médecins Sans Frontières are appalling:
From 2:08 AM until 3:15 AM local time today, MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz was hit by a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately 15 minute intervals.
The main central hospital building, housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and physiotherapy ward, was repeatedly hit very precisely during each aerial raid, while surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched.
“The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle round,” said Heman Nagarathnam, MSF Head of Programmes in northern Afghanistan.
“There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames.
“Those people that could had moved quickly to the building’s two bunkers to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds.”
MSF stresses that they’d recently recirculated the GPS coordinates of the hospital to all parties to the conflict — which is highly believable; it would be the obvious thing to do. They seem to be one of the only hospitals in Kunduz, so I presume it was on our maps already and marked by a giant red NO or some other clear symbol that indicates, “Don’t hit this thing or you’ll wind up in Leavenworth.”
MSF denies there were any Taliban on the premises. I don’t really believe them — the original accounts of the Taliban easily overrunning major buildings, including hospitals, makes that implausible — but I still cannot fathom the stupidity, not to mention the lawlessness, of striking the central wing of a well-known hospital. I’m inclined to believe MSF when they say, “There were no Taliban in the ICU,” or at least, I believe any Taliban in the ICU was there because he was in a condition such that he’d be unlikely to pose an immediate threat.
So I’m wondering who called in that airstrike. And why. Does anyone here know enough about how decisions like this get made to help me form a reasonable theory? (Stress on “reasonable,” not “conspiracy.”)
Anyone here old enough to remember 1988? I sure am. Remember this?
Phyllis E. Oakley, deputy to the State Department spokesman, said that Soviet bombers hit guerrilla positions in Kunduz, near the Soviet border, in the last two weeks. State Department officials said the Soviets were trying to prevent the Afghan Government from suffering the embarrassment of losing a provincial capital to the guerrillas just a few days after Soviet troops had withdrawn from the town.
”It’s clear that aerial bombardment has been an element of the regime’s efforts to retake Kunduz, and we believe that Soviet aircraft have been involved in these bombing runs,” Mrs. Oakley said. ”The use of the Soviet aircraft coming from inside the Soviet Union is a violation of the Geneva accords.”
The United States has filed a complaint with the United Nations mission monitoring compliance with the Afghan accords. American officials said they hoped that the United Nations team would investigate the charges and would call on the Soviets to avoid any repetition of bombing raids.
The officials said they believed that the Soviets would often be tempted to attack the guerrillas as Soviet forces complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving the Kabul Government exposed to guerrilla offensives.
The Soviets have also dispatched ground troops from Kabul to reoccupy the garrison they vacated in Kunduz early this month, State Department officials said. It was apparently the first time that the Soviets had lost and then retaken a garrison, the officials said.
Such redeployment of troops inside Afghanistan does not violate the Geneva accords, the officials said.
The battle for Kunduz illustrates the military and political problems that the Soviets will face if they keep their promise to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan by Feb. 15. State Department officials have predicted that the Afghan Government will collapse soon after the last Soviet troops pull out.
Russia’s propaganda organs can barely contain their mirth today.
The foreign policy of the 1980s, the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policy of the 1920s — remind me, why did our electorate have a problem with that? They’re sounding better and better to me every day.
Published in General, Military
There are certainly others who should have (*cough* Yasser Arafat) but I think Obama would be unique in getting the prizes in that order.
Agreed. Suppose the country becomes a breeding ground for terrorists–isn’t it more cost-effective to put our resources into intelligence and focus on preventing attacks?
The Bush Administration managed to royally FUBAR Afghanistan.
The Obama Administration, not wanting to be tagged with a defeat has voted present keeping just enough troops in to prolong the agony.
Easy to say what we should have done which is gone in, killed everyone who needed to be killed, destroyed anything that needed to be destroyed, then pulling every tribal warlord who was left into a big room and telling them “figure something out, because we’re leaving, and the next time we come back it will be with B52s, screw the civilian casualties, and We.Know.Where.You.Live.”
Wonder if it’s truly too late to effect some variation of the above.
Badly, from memory. But a weird snippet from an article in Al-Monitor comparing Afghanistan then and Syria now:
The article also points out that Russia will shore up Assad in the West of Syria (“Alawite Heartland blahblah”) with some spurs to places like Aleppo and Damascus – but forget about Raqqa etc. Arguably the Soviets (and the US?) could have sustainably shored up a (still pretty big) rump state in the non-Pathan North and stepping back from the Taliban supporting Pathan area in the South.
Yes
Yes, which is why this was many things, but not unpredictable.
Afghanistan was FUBAR before Bush. Bush tried to de-FUBAR it and failed. Obama followed suit. We cannot de-FUBAR Afghanistan. It did have alot of potential along time ago. It flitted with democracy and pre-crazy feminism.
Sadly, it has no potential now and it will not develop it with or without or help. I see our only option as buying off some corrupt, misogynistic, racist warlord to ensure that they don’t let terrorist bomb us or the democratic civilized world (I include Japan and Namibia.)
Does anybody here on Ricochet believe that the U.S. and our allies can make a decent democratic nation out of Afghanistan?
I do no, absent us making the kind of commitment it is impossible to imagine our making. And therefore cannot see why even one more American must suffer so much as a scabbed knee in Afghanistan.
Exactly. Which is the same way I feel about Iraq, ISIS, refugees, and pretty much anything else. We have had better chances than these and soundly rejected them. The problems we see now are largely the results of that rejection. Arguing otherwise is engaging in counterfactuals. Accepting waves of non-assimilating invading (well they weren’t invited) migrants is harmful in a way that fighting a war overseas is not. If we are not going to help *over there*, then we should certainly not give up our culture, the reason for fighting *at all*.
I realize I’ve asserted some things there that not everybody agrees with. But that’s the way I see it.
Afghanistan has been in a state of upheaval (more violence than peace) since at least the 1830s – and probably from before then.
Just since 19977 Afghanistan has had, in rough sequence:
.
Afghanistan’s State institutions have been at best weak, more frequently moribund or utterly destroyed by a historical experience that left tribal institutions and structures the only robust alternatives. Acknowledging that – and dealing with things like Loya Jirgas – seems to be common sense when dealing with it.
And yet – the first thing that happened when the Taliban were overthrown was that families sent their girl children to school. So there is a (universal?) urge for betterment that indelibly remains. That’s an equally authentic expression of Afghanistan, and it seems to sell the ‘Idea of the West’ short to ignore that or dismiss it as entirely irrelevant.
Not saying others must die for Afghanistan to be free – or even that Afghanistan must survive as a polity. Just that there is more to it than mad mullahs and pedophiles.
Yup. I’m not mad at the Afghans. I’m furious at the Americans.
Understandable. And similar to the way Western populations felt in the wake of the First World War, e.g.
And then — in large part owing to the sentiment that it had all been a waste — well, you know how the story ends. As do I. Which is why I don’t share your views on Iraq, Syria, ISIS, refugees, etc.
On Afghanistan, I do. I had no idea when we went in what the hell we were thinking — no one has ever invaded Afghanistan and come away thinking it was a wise idea. We could have achieved a more impressive effect — with far less loss of US and Afghan life — by shooting off 100 Cruise missiles in Mullah Omar’s general direction seconds after the second tower was attacked, declaring him and Osama bin Laden dead, and (publicly at least) washing our hands of it. Take care of any remaining business discreetly. We had no strategic interest in Afghanistan beyond making it clear that any violent raid coming out of there would be met by one ten thousand times more violent.
Iraq was an entirely different story, given that yes, I did believe Saddam was building WMDs, and thought it essential to enforce the NPD. (It was darling the way I believed in that treaty back then and thought everyone else did, too.) Had I known the evidence was weak, I wouldn’t have supported it. I don’t believe anyone lied, but do believe there was an intelligence failure on a scale such that more people should have lost their jobs than did, and I’ve lost quite a bit of confidence in our intelligence agencies.
That said, once we were there, we had a responsibility; it was a terrible one; we discharged it to the best of our abilities, and then the American electorate got “war weary.” Strangely, because 99.6 percent of them didn’t go to war, so one assumes they got weary of watching war on television, which doesn’t sound very strenuous to me compared to the activities of those who had better reason to complain of war-weariness — such as having been anywhere near that war. Not one of them, by the way, or not one to whom I’ve ever spoken, at least — has said, “I was so weary that I’d have handed Mosul to ISIS, no problem. I just really needed the rest.”
You know my views on Afghanistan: Give it to China, they’ll eat anything. (I can’t remember where I posted that; if you can, feel free to link to it.) Be done with it.
But the countries formerly known as Iraq and Syria will drag us back, no matter how “weary” we are, and the only question is how long will it take and how bloody it will be.
Obummer has us quitting over there and can’t even get that right.
I think that a flaw in the WWI parallel is that I do not expect peace to break out, to stay, or any of that. I expect awful wars, and I do not feel that there is any positive path for us through involvement. Not that there couldn’t be, but we are no longer the country we once were, neither in morale nor materiel. Even if the population recovered their senses, and could somehow retain that condition for longer than (say) half a war, that rejuvenated citizenry would still have more pressing problems here at home — a burgeoning police-state-via-regulation-and-security-concerns, and a cancer of non-citizenship eating away at the foundation of the Republic.
I do not expect that the War to end all Wars has been fought, and I do not think that our avoidance of the situation will calm things. I merely desire to use our limited resources for more important fights at home, without which, our conduct overseas will be meaningless.
We have been transformed.
Actually we wouldn’t. Bill Clinton shot 75 Tomahawks at Afghanistan on Aug 20, 1998 (notably 3 days after he admitted a “wrong” relationship with Monica L – just in time to short cut the media frenzy there).
We learned from that strike that you don’t shoot weapons with a time of flight measured in hours at people who relocate just as frequently. It guarantees you will miss them.
In October 2001, we allied ourselves with the weakest of the remaining civil war participants in Afghanistan and through the use of Special Forces and Airpower swept the Taliban from power. In December Hamid Karzai had been installed as interim President. March 16, 2002 saw the last mass of Taliban in Afghanistan.
5 months from owning the country to hiding in Pakistan. Much more effective than wasting 100 cruise missiles (which we don’t make any more).
A nice barb, worthy of being set up in Kipling’s tetrameter, but let’s give the democracy some credit: maybe deep down Americans do feel the waste of lives and (borrowed) money.
My favorite book on our recent involvement in Afghanistan remains Sean Naylor’s Not a Good Day to Die. The book doesn’t cover the middle or the end of the war. It doesn’t have to. You can see it all there at the First Act Break