The Collapse of the Afghan Security Forces

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known by its initials as SIGAR, released an interim report last week on the reasons for the collapse of the Afghan army. To break down the report’s findings, Bryce Klehm spoke with Dr. Jonathan Schroden, the research program director at the Center for Naval Analysis. Dr. Schroden is a longtime analyst of the Afghan military and has deployed or traveled to Afghanistan 13 times since 2003. He is quoted and cited several times in the latest report. They spoke about a range of topics covered in the report, including the U.S.’s efforts to build an Afghan army, the Afghan government's decisions that contributed to the collapse and the Taliban's highly effective military campaign.

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:34.1	The civilians that Gani had in charge of the security portfolio, people like Humdala
0:40.9	Mohib, who was a national security advisor, you know, and Gani himself had no expertise,
0:48.1	no experience with security, the security sector or military operations whatsoever.
0:54.9	And so they had no ability to provide effective civilian oversight or guidance to the security
1:02.2	sector, to the military.
1:04.0	And in some cases, they even went so far and the report describes, for example, Mohib
1:08.7	setting up his own command center inside of the National Security Council of Afghanistan
1:13.9	to directly provide guidance on military operations.
1:17.8	You had these situations where civilians had no expertise whatsoever.
1:22.1	We're trying to guide or direct security operations of the Afghan security forces.
1:27.7	And as you might imagine, they were terrible at it.
1:30.7	A humbrized claim in this is the LawFair podcast Monday, May 23, 2022.
1:37.1	The special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known by its initials as
1:41.9	C-GAR, released an interim report last week on the reasons for the collapse of the Afghan
1:47.3	army.
1:48.4	To break down the report's findings, I spoke with Dr. Jonathan Shroden, the research program
1:53.7	director at the Center for Naval Analysis.
	...

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