The Kunduz Debacle
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
Florida
Whatever Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani had planned for peace did not work out as Kunduz city, the capital of the eponymous northern province, fell to the Taliban on Monday. Kunduz is the first major city or garrison to fall to the jihadists in 14 years of war since the Taliban were toppled in 2001. That it came on the anniversary of the inauguration of President Ashraf Ghani and the National Unity Government (NUG) on September 29, 2014, does not augur well for him, the NUG and, more importantly, Afghanistan.
The etiology of the Kunduz debacle is complex but its immediate lesson is clear: it will serve as a major morale booster for the post-Mullah Omar Taliban, whether or not they can hold on to the city. The bruised and bickering Taliban have been on the ropes since the news of their leader’s 2013 death was leaked earlier this summer but they surely seem buoyed now. On the other hand, the capitulation at Kunduz is likely to demoralize the people and the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) both. Hopefully, the fall of Kunduz is not the déjà vu of the fall of Khost (1991) or Kandahar (1994), which literally marked the beginning of the end of the People’s Democratic Party (PDPA) and the mujahideen dispensations, respectively.
The connotations and implications of the Taliban running over Kunduz surely cannot be lost on the Afghan civil and military leadership. It is quite likely that Afghan security officials will recapture the city as swiftly as they claim but their assertion that they did not expect an assault of this magnitude is shockingly disingenuous and borders on dereliction of duty. One certainly hopes that the security officials did not expect that the Taliban would share their order of battle through a memo. Ironically, as the Taliban were taking over Kunduz airport, Dr Ghani said to reporters in Kabul, “I want to reassure all the countrymen that Kunduz is under control!”
The Kunduz setback was several months in the making and its fall looming unless something was done urgently and decisively to salvage the situation. Many observers within and outside Afghanistan could see it coming. After the Pugwash peace moot between Afghan officials and the Taliban, I had noted in this space back in May that “Taliban attacks in Kunduz, Badakhshan and Farah provinces indicate that they are clearly sticking to fighting and talking simultaneously, the possible thaw at Qatar notwithstanding.” The Taliban had made several incursions into assorted provincial districts like Imam Sahib, Qala-e-Zaal and Dasht-e-Archi, to the north, northwest and northeast of Kunduz city, respectively. It was a matter of time before they coalesced for the decisive push into the city. Forays into northern and central Afghanistan have been the hallmark of the Taliban’s spring offensive, dubbed Azm (the resolve), this year. There is little doubt that government forces had let their guard down for months on end and the top leadership, including Dr Ghani, was in denial, as his remarks indicate, about these extremely precarious developments.
No surprise then that nothing was done to stem the Taliban tide. President Ashraf Ghani’s policy has been clearly flawed and he has simply failed to fix it. He had changed the Kunduz governor with his handpicked man, Mohammad Omar Safi, in an attempt to upend the local militias and warlords but Safi — an outsider to Kunduz — failed to gain traction and was pushed to pasture a few days ago. At the time of the current Taliban assault, Governor Safi was apparently in Tajikistan awaiting his dismissal orders from Kabul. Dr Ashraf Ghani is known to have a knack for micromanagement and has been running the provinces via videoconferences, venturing out only rarely, if at all. He failed to harness the alienated militias, warlords, drug barons and disastrous governance in Kunduz, all of which paved the way for the Taliban — buttressed by elements of al Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Turkistan (IMU) - to regain hold around Kunduz city and eventually ransack it. There is little doubt that advanced military planning and extrinsic support guided the Taliban every step of the Kunduz offensive but its success was ensured by the monumental intrinsic blunders on part of the local and central governments.
It was no mean feat that the insurgents and terrorists numbering several hundred to a couple of thousand, attacked Kunduz city from three sides and were able to trounce a 7,000-strong, better-armed and better-positioned government force and take over the governorate, military and intelligence offices, installations, vehicles and weapons, the UN’s offices, a hospital and the airport. It is a major propaganda coup for Mullah Akhtar Mansour no matter how one slices it. The new Taliban emir (head) will leverage it to the fullest not only against the government but also to tighten his control over the internal and rival jihadist factions. Dr Ashraf Ghani should be a very worried man now, reflecting deeply to figure out what went wrong, and by the boatloads at that. His policy of talks with the Taliban and appeasement of Pakistan’s security establishment was a disaster in the making and now he has very ugly proof of it too. The Taliban used the talks as a subterfuge and the interregnum thus gained to regroup, rearm and relentlessly score their biggest victory in a decade and a half, right before the summer fighting season ends.
There is no dearth of the blame that rightfully belongs at Pakistan and its proxies’ doorsteps but what exactly was the Afghan leadership doing to counter that problem? Pinning all the blame on Pakistan however, without acknowledging Afghan shortcomings, generates a pathological rationalization that feeds a victimhood complex, which in turn becomes a dangerously defeatist phenomenon. Mullah Omar’s death provided the Afghans a once-in-a-generation opportunity to push back the enemy but unfortunately they seem on the verge of squandering it. President Dr Ashraf Ghani has failed to capitalize politically, militarily and diplomatically on the windfall from Mullah Omar’s death. His narrative management has been dismal and decision-making characteristic of a World Bank bean counter.
The fall of Kunduz is the culmination of Dr Ghani’s dreadful domestic political approach and failed foreign overtures. Now that the Taliban have a major victory under their belt does the current Afghan dispensation have a plan B up its sleeve? The failure of intelligence and security apparatus and leadership, relying on and then shunning militias, not sending enough and timely reinforcements to Kunduz cannot be blamed on Pakistan. Unless the Afghans take ownership of their victories as well as routs, debacles like the one at Kunduz can happen and indeed have a deadly domino effect. The buck ultimately stops with Dr Ghani; the sooner he pulls his socks up the better.
(The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki)
