Like many other Vets, I am looking at the news from Afghanistan with astonishment, rage, bitterness, and sadness. Even pain. The first thought is for the engineers, interpreters, journalists, that worked with us and now have a death sentence on their heads. Italy, among the many, doesn't seem to care enough. Expendable non-Italian lives.
Yet, the several successes achieved during the twenty years there have been possible because of them. That is an undeniable truth. I vividly remember when we were on the field together, and we worked - sometimes day and night - being at risk to have the projects done. I also remember the courageous women there. They wanted and imagined a new destiny, not only for themselves but also for their daughters.
It has all vanished in less than ten days.
Once back, I worked to prepare our military advisors for the Afghan Army. My task was to enhance the potentialities of a positive, non-violent Civil-Military Synergy.
Today the question is: how has it been possible that the army we trained for so long melted away in only a few days?
Everybody is pointing fingers and saying we failed, we have been defeated.
We who? We the soldiers? Westerner and Afghan ones.
Not really. As usual, in war, the guilt is on the soldiers' shoulders. An easy way for the many politicians and profiteers to get away clean. And for the masses to wash their hands and conscience easily.
Don't worry. We soldiers are used to that. We have accepted to die for you, in a way or another. Maybe the Afghan workers and women, too, got that.
What we did wrong?
In my experience, we probably underestimated two essential factors - that could partially explain the rapid collapse of the Afghan State and the ANA:
1) we did not understand, and we totally underestimated the importance and the positive potentialities of the tribal social fabric, even fearing it. That is typical of our Western society;
2) we neglected the education and training of authentic leadership (civilian and military), giving space to cronyism, corruption, and incompetence.
Afghans are good soldiers by nature. We actually trained decent and even good soldiers. But generally (not always, of course), the commands were not fit enough for the tasks, also for reason 1).
And the facts show it.
But all this is just philosophy for the people of Afghanistan - for each human I met there. Those are speculations for the privileged.
One day I was in a helicopter flying along the border with Turkmenistan. An ocean of hills, like sand and arid earth waves, was under us, fading toward the northern horizon. There were no roads, only some scattered villages - more groups of houses - far from each other and everything else, lost in the harsh landscape of desert and steppes — hard life.
I thought: what is Kabul for the humans living down here? What is "Afghanistan?" What do they mean?
We surely missed comprehending that reality. It did not fit in our calculus for the Key Terrain Districts and our plans. And we are now beginning to pay the consequences coming from our Western mentality.
Who has been defeated in Afghanistan?
Not Mr. Bush that started all that, not Mr. Trump that signed a hasty agreement. Not Mr. Rumsfeld and all those that made money with the long war. Not the many politicians of the nations involved.
Yes, I am now part of a defeated army. It burns.
But the worse, the most defeated of all, are my Afghan friends, brothers, and sisters that worked with us, my engineers, my interpreters.
And the women and the people, the next generations. Not only in Afghanistan.
Comments