The betrayal of the Americans and the corruption of the Ghani regime
Lieutenant General Sami Sadat, who commanded the 215th corps of the Afghan National Army, explained why the Afghan military so quickly gave up positions to the Taliban militants” (Traffic is prohibited in Russia).
Photo: A frame from the video
In an interview with The New York Times, he noted that for the past three and a half months he has been fighting in Helmand province, and his troops have held back the Taliban and inflicted heavy losses on them. Then he was called to Kabul to command the Afghan special forces. But by that time, the Taliban were already entering the city, and it was too late.
According to the general, the Afghan army has lost the will to fight due to the growing sense of abandonment on the part of ” our American partners”.
“It pains me to see how Mr. Biden and Western officials blame the Afghan army for the collapse, without mentioning the main reasons that happened,” Sadat says.
“Mr. Ghani’s hasty flight put an end to attempts to negotiate a temporary agreement with the Taliban for a transitional period that would allow us to hold the city and help organize the evacuation”, & ndash; also noted the general.
Discussing the reasons for the collapse of the Afghan army, he said that the end of American interests in the region was put by the peace agreement of former US President Donald Trump with the Taliban in February 2020 in Doha. The rules of US air support for the Afghan military have changed, and the Taliban have become bolder. Before that, the Taliban had not won a single battle against the Afghanafter the agreement, the Afghan army began to lose dozens of soldiers a day. “We lost our superiority over the Taliban when our air support dried up and ammunition ran out,” the general stressed. “The complete and accelerated departure of Mr. Biden only made the situation worse. He ignored the conditions on the ground, ” he added.
The second reason is that the Afghan military has lost logistics and maintenance contractors that are critical for combat operations. The contractors left and took the software with them, actually destroyed the helicopter missile defense.
And the third is corruption, which is characteristic of the period of President Ghani’s rule.According to the general, corruption has spread to the top military leadership and has caused irreparable damage for a long time. ” This is really our national tragedy. So many of our leaders, including the military, were appointed because of their personal connections, not because of their qualities. These appointments had a devastating impact on the national army, as the leaders lacked military experience to be effective or inspire confidence in the people, ” Sadat emphasizes.
He describes the last fights as follows: “We were engaged in intense firefights on the ground against the Taliban, when American fighter jets were circling over us, actually watching what was happening.”
“We were betrayed by politicians and presidents,” says the general, adding that it was a military defeat, but it was the result of a political failure.