\n\n“It would be a mistake to get caught up in the collapse of provincial capitals because what has happened this week is just the continuation of what we\u2019ve seen over the last three months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting about three months ago, in late May and then June, picking up speed in July<\/a>, the Taliban launched an offensive campaign that has swept across the country in a way that has been unprecedented since the US intervened in late 2001.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “it\u2019s not accurate to say the Taliban now controls all of the districts they\u2019ve captured, because in many places they haven\u2019t set up a shadow government. They haven\u2019t left a garrison of their fighters to control the area. In some places, they cause the Afghan troops or police to run away, to surrender, to retreat, to simply go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, what we can say is not how much the Taliban controls, but how much the Afghan government has lost.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “the government has either been kicked out of or abandoned more than 200 of the 400 districts in the country. That\u2019s happened in just the last three months.” …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For the longest time, the Afghan government has pointed to this district center map as a means of demonstrating their authority, when in reality, their only presence or assertion of authority might be a district center where they have a couple buildings that are protected by a small military or police force, or sometimes just a militia that\u2019s outfitted and paid by the government. And that\u2019s it. That is the only government that exists in that entire district, for miles around in any direction.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “So when we ask, \u201cHow did we get here?\u201d \u2014 where all of a sudden in one week, nine<\/a> out of 34 provincial capitals fall to the Taliban, or seem like they\u2019re on the verge of falling \u2014 the answer is, well, half of the country slipped out of the government\u2019s control in the last three months, and it no longer had a buffer protecting those provincial capitals, which were these village outposts and district centers standing in the way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The New York Times ran a piece<\/a> and got someone to go on the record with something I\u2019ve been told over the last couple of weeks. One Afghan government official told them some of these districts fell when 10 Taliban fighters showed up. A lot of this was just the collapse of government authority, and if it could collapse in the face of 10 Taliban fighters, we have to be honest: It was barely there to begin with.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It\u2019s still too fluid to say they\u2019re consolidating anything. What we can say is that they\u2019re amassing huge numbers of their fighters to try and encircle or surround some of these cities. They\u2019re doing it in multiple regions of the country: in the north, in the southwest. In some places, the government is pushing them back more effectively than others.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What they seem to be doing seems to be something they planned on for quite some time, which is to cut off the government\u2019s ability to resupply other areas of the country, to cut off the government\u2019s ability to move from point A to point B on the country\u2019s roads, and to surround and choke off the country\u2019s cities \u2014 not to fight their way through each and every city of the country, but to pressure the government to collapse.” …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Some people will say it\u2019s because of the US withdrawal. And if that is true, it\u2019s based on the psychological impact of that withdrawal, not the military effect that it had. The US had several thousand troops to help cover an area of the size of Texas. The US troops were not what was holding the Taliban back in 200 districts around the country. The US troops weren\u2019t even out there at any of those villages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, since the US-Taliban agreement was signed early last year<\/a>, the US really scaled back<\/a> its airstrikes against the Taliban, though they\u2019ve picked them back up<\/a> as the Taliban has gone on their offensive in the last three months. But for most of 2020, and the early months of this year, the US really wasn\u2019t bombing the Taliban. That gave them a major reprieve from what had been a really intensive bombing campaign in 2018<\/a> and in 2019<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It\u2019s too early to see the outcome. What is clear is that if the Afghan government is able to mount a strong defense of cities, if it is able to take back some of these border crossing points and maybe other strategic stretches of the country\u2019s major roads and highways, if the Afghan government can put a stop to the Taliban\u2019s advance and can stand firm \u2014 then it might be able to fight its way back to a stalemate, a military situation where there\u2019s no clear winner, at least in the foreseeable future.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “since the Obama administration<\/a>, there was an acknowledgment among senior policymakers that the war was already unwinnable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What we\u2019ve seen in recent years was a situation that was clearly slipping out of the Afghan government\u2019s control. And for much of that time, the US solution was to ramp up airstrikes to help keep the scales leveled out. But with the US\u2019s thumb on the scale, that meant the years went by and nobody really wanted to acknowledge how much they had tilted out of the government\u2019s favor.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Even in Biden\u2019s remarks in mid-April, there was the suggestion that this withdrawal decision was made based on how hopeless the situation seemed<\/a>. It was not the withdrawal that created an unwinnable situation. The withdrawal decision was made because in Biden\u2019s assessment, the situation already was<\/em> unwinnable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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