"No one ever deceives you; you deceive yourself." - Goethe
An article by Sami Sadat, a former three-star general in the now defunct Afghan National Army (ANA), was lately doing rounds on the social media. Some suspected his credentials; others thought he didn’t look sufficiently weather-beaten to befit his Résumé; and still others were wondering if it was at the King’s College that he learnt to write so well! Some of course commented on the article – but only on its contents.
The ANA was not created in a vacuum – and not even to serve a military purpose. I was lucky enough to have followed its evolution right from its inception. In May 2006, I met a retired American general at the Kabul Airport. He told me he was heading one of the private companies contracted to train the nascent force. To someone who was once responsible to coordinate all training related matters in the Pakistan Army, it was blasphemous. Non-state enterprises are not in the business of training militaries for war. They would rather have them untrained to get their contracts extended, and make more money – in this case, millions of dollars. My misgiving was confirmed when the contractor-general told me that he was heading for Pakistan to sell helicopters.
One also wondered: “why raise a conventional army in a country where even the most powerful of them lick the dust when pitched against the tribesmen?” One plausible answer was provided by General Eikenberry who conceived the project. During an Afghanistan Conference in 2014, he told me that it was to promote national harmony. Since we too have often followed that philosophy, I understood, but still questioned its efficacy when fighting the Taliban.
The nefarious design didn’t take too long to surface, when the bulk of the American aid started flowing to feed this white elephant. Since COIN was essentially about H & M (hearts and minds) with kinetic means only in supporting role, one expected that the projects that benefitted the masses would get priority. That anomaly was resolved by an Irishman who had spent nearly four decades in our region before he was hired to advise the American Deep State.
A billion dollars proposal he said had better chances of approval than the one for some measly millions. It’s the commission that counted. Reminded me of the dismay on a Royal Prince’s face when the Saudis cut down the number of Super-Mushaks to be bought from Pakistan – from fifty to thirty. Before one could say 'over-invoiced', he had lost forty percent of the amount he was planning to skim off his own government. We too were not very happy, but those in Kamra Aeronautical Complex were smart. Finding clients for these aircrafts would not be a problem once the first batch was blessed by the Holy Land.
I nearly laughed out loud when Sami moaned that: “the contractors took away proprietary software and weapon systems; physically removed our helicopter missile-defense; access to data that we relied upon to track our vehicles, weapons, and personnel, also disappeared; real-time intelligence on targets went out of the window”.
If the ANA didn’t hate us that much, it could have learnt from our experience. Critical supplies from the US were seized just when we needed them the most: soon after the first salvos were fired in the 1965 war against India.
The man continued to moan, but I stopped laughing because some more was so pathetic. “Overwhelmed by the Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why the Americans were not providing any air support.” Many a head of state dependent on their support also sent an SOS when under siege. None was ever answered.
The General went on to make some more points – even some more important ones. “Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years had crippled us”; “The Afghan forces were trained by using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes”; we lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out”; and most important of all – “the Taliban fought with snipers and improvised explosive devices while we lost aerial and laser-guided weapon capacity”.
Rosa Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the New America/Arizona State University. Far back in 2004, she wrote in The Foreign Policy: “Why Sticks and Stones will beat our Drones”. Not her fault if we still remain infatuated with expensive toys.
Though Sami wrote frankly about the corrupt practices at home, he did not have the courage to point out the real source of corruption. Billions were never spent in Afghanistan. Bulk of them found their way back in the pockets of the foreign contractors.
Much more can be quoted from the article but an odd sentence on the higher direction of war may explain why such hybrid arrangements never work: “there were political divisions in Kabul and Washington, and the lack of clear guidance from the US and Afghan leadership.” Indeed, there were. No one other than our own current NSA once told us that Obama had allowed all three pillars of the government – the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA – to do whatever they bloody well liked. And when the author was complaining about the US betraying the ANA, I was thinking about the fate of all who depend upon external powers for their survival.
I don’t think they teach at the Kings College in London that making you mentally dependent on the occupying power was the time-tested recipe for the long life of imperial powers.
PS: Please read Pakistan Adrift, published in the home of once the largest of the colonial empires, to get the drift.
An article by Sami Sadat, a former three-star general in the now defunct Afghan National Army (ANA), was lately doing rounds on the social media. Some suspected his credentials; others thought he didn’t look sufficiently weather-beaten to befit his Résumé; and still others were wondering if it was at the King’s College that he learnt to write so well! Some of course commented on the article – but only on its contents.
The ANA was not created in a vacuum – and not even to serve a military purpose. I was lucky enough to have followed its evolution right from its inception. In May 2006, I met a retired American general at the Kabul Airport. He told me he was heading one of the private companies contracted to train the nascent force. To someone who was once responsible to coordinate all training related matters in the Pakistan Army, it was blasphemous. Non-state enterprises are not in the business of training militaries for war. They would rather have them untrained to get their contracts extended, and make more money – in this case, millions of dollars. My misgiving was confirmed when the contractor-general told me that he was heading for Pakistan to sell helicopters.
One also wondered: “why raise a conventional army in a country where even the most powerful of them lick the dust when pitched against the tribesmen?” One plausible answer was provided by General Eikenberry who conceived the project. During an Afghanistan Conference in 2014, he told me that it was to promote national harmony. Since we too have often followed that philosophy, I understood, but still questioned its efficacy when fighting the Taliban.
The nefarious design didn’t take too long to surface, when the bulk of the American aid started flowing to feed this white elephant. Since COIN was essentially about H & M (hearts and minds) with kinetic means only in supporting role, one expected that the projects that benefitted the masses would get priority. That anomaly was resolved by an Irishman who had spent nearly four decades in our region before he was hired to advise the American Deep State.
A billion dollars proposal he said had better chances of approval than the one for some measly millions. It’s the commission that counted. Reminded me of the dismay on a Royal Prince’s face when the Saudis cut down the number of Super-Mushaks to be bought from Pakistan – from fifty to thirty. Before one could say 'over-invoiced', he had lost forty percent of the amount he was planning to skim off his own government. We too were not very happy, but those in Kamra Aeronautical Complex were smart. Finding clients for these aircrafts would not be a problem once the first batch was blessed by the Holy Land.
I nearly laughed out loud when Sami moaned that: “the contractors took away proprietary software and weapon systems; physically removed our helicopter missile-defense; access to data that we relied upon to track our vehicles, weapons, and personnel, also disappeared; real-time intelligence on targets went out of the window”.
If the ANA didn’t hate us that much, it could have learnt from our experience. Critical supplies from the US were seized just when we needed them the most: soon after the first salvos were fired in the 1965 war against India.
The man continued to moan, but I stopped laughing because some more was so pathetic. “Overwhelmed by the Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why the Americans were not providing any air support.” Many a head of state dependent on their support also sent an SOS when under siege. None was ever answered.
The man continued to moan, but I stopped laughing because some more was so pathetic. “Overwhelmed by the Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why the Americans were not providing any air support.” Many a head of state dependent on their support also sent an SOS when under siege. None was ever answered.
The General went on to make some more points – even some more important ones. “Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years had crippled us”; “The Afghan forces were trained by using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes”; we lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out”; and most important of all – “the Taliban fought with snipers and improvised explosive devices while we lost aerial and laser-guided weapon capacity”.
Rosa Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the New America/Arizona State University. Far back in 2004, she wrote in The Foreign Policy: “Why Sticks and Stones will beat our Drones”. Not her fault if we still remain infatuated with expensive toys.
Though Sami wrote frankly about the corrupt practices at home, he did not have the courage to point out the real source of corruption. Billions were never spent in Afghanistan. Bulk of them found their way back in the pockets of the foreign contractors.
Much more can be quoted from the article but an odd sentence on the higher direction of war may explain why such hybrid arrangements never work: “there were political divisions in Kabul and Washington, and the lack of clear guidance from the US and Afghan leadership.” Indeed, there were. No one other than our own current NSA once told us that Obama had allowed all three pillars of the government – the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA – to do whatever they bloody well liked. And when the author was complaining about the US betraying the ANA, I was thinking about the fate of all who depend upon external powers for their survival.
I don’t think they teach at the Kings College in London that making you mentally dependent on the occupying power was the time-tested recipe for the long life of imperial powers.
PS: Please read Pakistan Adrift, published in the home of once the largest of the colonial empires, to get the drift.