Thread by @RealLarsJohmann

#FreeAfghanistan #Afghanistan #PanjshirResistance #NRF #Taliban
So how did Afghanistan fall so quickly from a military standpoint? I already made a thread about the political aspects.
Let me eplain my opinion. You are welcome to add or disagree

So there is the claim that the ANA didn't fight as soon as the Americans left. This is untrue. The Americans had retreated widely since middle of 2020 but the Government still held a lot of territory in early 2021.

The Afghan army was by no means strong or well eqquiped and their morale was very low since 60.000 fellowAfghan soldiers died over the last 20 years 8 (And the Americans are only complaining about their 2.000.dead guys🙄😑)

But they held the Taliban occupied by maintaining outposts in remote districts with the help of air support and helicopter supply routes.
But when the final wave of americans left they pulled out the private companies that managed the Afghan Airforce maintenance and repair work.

The taliban knew that the airforce was the weak link. So they started assassinating pilotes. That combined with a lack of spare parts and competent mechanics led to the Airforce being disfunctional.
(Because the U.S. had to privatize parts of the Afghan war effort.)

When the air supplies and support stopped many police stations and outposts were put under siege or simply overrun by the Taliban. When some of those outposts surrendered and the Taliban posted it on social media other outposts saw it and decided to surrender too.

This led to the Afghan army being defeated without any actual large scale fighting. When those outer disricts fell in the south the Taliban garisoned them with weaker militas and moved their professionals north and west.

They ran into the first and only real resistance near Mazar i Schariff because the people there were never really friendly with the Talibs and the local army troops were supported by those Uzbek+Turkmen militias.
But Morale was low and the Taliban surrounded them.

By that time most of the army in the west had fled to Iran and the northern regiments into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan because they wrongly assumed that the Taliban were unstoppable. Ironically the abscence of these troops made the Taliban unstoppable. The ANA remnants collapsed.

by the time the Taliban reached Kabul there was maybe about half a regiment worth of troops left to defend it. And the flight of Afghan leaders further demoralized anyone. The removal of ammunition and armaments into Panjshir made the city undefendable.

Had the Americans at least maintained a perimeter around Kabul and not just Bagram airfield maybe the ANA could have at least tried to put up a successfull counter attack.
We will never know for sure.