Afghan National Police

The British Army’s Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan

After an initial honeymoon, security deteriorated. The conflict became politically toxic in Britain, and when the U.S. surged in 2007 London had no appetite to do the same. Instead British commanders arranged a secret deal with Shiite militias, trading prisoner releases for a cessation of attacks on British bases.

This “accommodation” fell apart in March 2008 when Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, abruptly sent troops south. The British commanding general was on vacation in a ski resort and Maliki publicly snubbed his deputy. U.S. and Iraqi troops went into action while the British, until late in the day, stayed at the airport.

The events in Basra cast a long shadow. Later in Kabul a British officer asked Gen. David Petraeus how long it would take the U.S. to forget what happened there. A generation? he asked. Petraeus’s reply was telling. “Slightly longer,” he said.

The U.S. military, for all its scale and resources, did not “win” in Iraq or Afghanistan either. But the conflicts damaged British military standing with its most important ally.

What are the central problems of the British Army’s experience and performance since 2001?

I see four interlinked areas. First, accountability. Almost every senior British military commander who passed through Iraq and Afghanistan was promoted, no matter how badly things went wrong in the field. Meanwhile, in parallel, Britain implemented a novel system of probes for junior malfeasance on the battlefield, from court cases permitted by the creeping reach of European Human Rights law to massive public inquiries. (Some of these investigations were baseless, but in other cases the army did commit atrocities.)

The key point is that Britain allowed a “glut and void” situation to develop, with excess accountability low down and none higher up. That created moral hazard and meant top commanders were incentivized to take bad action over no action.

Second, the army needs to overhaul its attitude to learning lessons. While the institution became adept at taking on board low-level tactical experience, over and over again initiatives that aimed to identify what had gone wrong on a broader remit were either suppressed or kept on a problematically close hold. Throughout the Iraq and Afghan conflicts avoiding senior embarrassment ranked higher than a comprehensive post-operational washup.

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U.S. Built the Afghan Military Over 20 Years. Will It Last One More?

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The Taliban attack on a police outpost at the edge of the city began at dusk, with the muted chatter of machine-gun fire and the thud of explosions. The men under attack radioed Capt. Mohammed Fawad Saleh at his headquarters, several miles away, desperate for help.

The police captain replied that he would send more men, along with one can of machine-gun ammunition — 200 rounds, not enough for even a minute of intensive fire.

“One can?” the voice on the other end of the radio responded, incredulously.

Ammunition shortages are just one of the serious and systemic issues plaguing soldiers and police officers who will soon have to defend Afghanistan — and themselves — without U.S. aircraft overhead or American troops on the ground.

“We’re holding the weight of the war,” Captain Saleh said as the attack unfolded in January. Yet one ammunition can was all he could spare.

Some soldiers have not been home in years because their villages have been overtaken by the Taliban.

Prospects for improvement are slim, given slumping recruitment, high casualty rates and a Taliban insurgency that is savvy, experienced and well equipped — including with weapons originally provided to the Afghan government by the United States.

66,000 Afghan troops have been killed since 2001, along with more than 3,500 from the U.S.-led coalition and a much higher number of civilians. Many more troops have been wounded. Years before Mr. Biden announced his plan to leave, U.S. officials were already warning of unsustainable Afghan casualty rates.

On paper, the Afghan security forces have more than 300,000 troops, but the actual figure is likely significantly less. Some police units keep their ranks lower than their rosters so commanders can pocket the salaries of dead or absent officers. One important army corps meant to have 16,000 men and women has around half that.

small outpost outside Kandahar relies on decrepit Soviet-era armored vehicles to defend its position.

And a professional corps of officers and noncommissioned officers has barely emerged, in part because wages are low, risks high and many commanders dishonest.

“Only the sons of poor people are here to show off that we have forces in the district,” army Maj. Abdul Nasir Haqmal said this winter from his hilltop post in Kandahar. “The salary of the rest of the soldiers is going to the pocket of corps commanders and people in the ministry of defense.”

Where government and Taliban territory meet, police outposts are often battered nightly, frequently by fighters with night-vision gear. Regular Afghan soldiers and police, lacking the same capability, have resorted to buying their own or sometimes even lighting debris or brush on fire to interfere with the Taliban’s devices. The Pentagon tried to equip certain units with night vision, but stopped after so much of the gear was lost, stolen or sold.

The Times’ casualty report data. Official figures are rarely disclosed by officials. Some forces are also taken prisoner and others defect.

The void left by dwindling security forces has given rise to more militias — used by the government or by regional factions — that many fear will turn on the government or recruit directly from the military and police, fracturing those organizations along ethnic and political lines.

In the air force, there are enough pilots but not enough aircraft, because of overuse, battlefield attrition and maintenance cycles, said one Afghan helicopter pilot, who was not permitted to speak to the media. What aircraft are available, another pilot said, usually only go to help the special operations forces.

While the Afghan government uses small drones to watch the battlefield, one of its few advantages over the Taliban, it only has enough to cover hot spots.

But even with operational planes and armed helicopters, Afghan troops frequently complain of the air forces’ slow response: By the time an aircraft is overhead, soldiers or police need their wounded and dead evacuated, they say, not an airstrike.

Col. Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, who commands a commando regiment in the south, said that it will be near impossible to rely on the air force after the U.S. withdraws. “We must have the air support of foreigners,” he said.

Speaking from the U.S.-backed Ministry of Defense in Kabul, the capital, Gen. Yasin Zia, the army chief of staff and acting minister of defense, acknowledged the logistical and military challenges his forces face once the United States and NATO withdraw.

But, he said, “we will find a way to survive.”

Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported from Mazar-i-Sharif, Najim Rahim from Kabul and C. J. Chivers from Binghamton, N.Y. Fahim Abed contributed reporting from Mazar-i-Sharif, Asadullah Timory from Herat, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost and Zabihullah Ghazi from Nangarhar.

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In Kabul’s Streets, Dogs Rule the Night

KABUL, Afghanistan — Civilians in Afghanistan’s capital live in constant fear of being killed in a targeted attack as the war with the Taliban and other extremist groups drags on. But at night, a different war is being fought — against criminals, and packs of stray dogs stalking the streets.

The shop owners in one Kabul neighborhood speak of a shadow government.

“There are dogs and armed thieves who make people’s lives here hell,” said Fahim Sultani, a local elder who works from the empty dusty hulk of the run-down Aryub Cinema in the northwest part of the city, which he has converted into a makeshift office.

As Afghanistan’s economy has been battered by the coronavirus, crime has flourished in Kabul. Just after the lockdown last year, the dogs on Mr. Sultani’s street, and a handful of security guards, watched what has become a staple in the city: An ice cream vendor in front of the theater was shot at and robbed, he said.

The stray dogs roam throughout the city and are a strange and sad fixture of Kabul, known for snapping, snarling and attacking people passing by, mostly those just trying to eke out a living. By day, the animals rest, conserving their energy until twilight, when they, along with the criminals, command the streets.

report from the Afghan Analysts Network. The Ministry of Interior Affairs declined to provide crime data for the past year, but in early 2020 the uptick in incidents pushed government officials to ban the use of motorbikes — the primary method of travel for many criminals — though the ruling was barely enforced.

Bearing the brunt of such lawlessness are shop owners like Mohammed Ibraheem, whose small shop that sells drinks and snacks less than a mile from Aryub Cinema is swathed in darkness after sunset. The few streetlights and the steady glow from nearby restaurant signs quickly fade as the road edges along a hill. At the top of the hill is a decaying palace from the 19th century.

Mr. Ibraheem, 20, has worked in his shop for at least seven years. His tired voice sounds as if it comes from someone three times his age.

In the last year, he has been forced cut his hours, coming to work late in the morning and leaving in the early evening to try to avoid both the dogs and the thieves. There are now fewer hours during which he can make a living, he said, as he stood near the cardboard boxes in his shop filled with chips and sodas.

“The government and the police, they do what they can,” Mr. Ibraheem said. “But they don’t have the capacity to fight dogs, terrorists and thieves.”

Two shops down, Jawad, 50, who like many Afghans uses just one name, said he was earning half of what he usually made in the past because he too has had to shorten his work days.

“It’s mentally traumatizing,” said Maryam Sultani, 19, a woman who lives next to the theater but bears no relation to Mr. Sultani. She has heard stories from her father about when they used to show movies there decades ago.

“From one side there are the dogs that keep you from leaving the house and from the other it’s the thieves,” she said.

The animals are easily identifiable, the criminals not so much.

Near the shopkeepers’ neighborhood, atop a hill-turned-graveyard-turned-kite flying-arena, a group of friends have opted for peace with the pack of dogs that live among the headstones. On a recent day, a gaggle of half a dozen or so children — all local boys from the area between the ages of 9 and 14 — have appointed one of their own as their certified dog whisperer. Sometimes the boys feed the dogs; other times they play with them. Mostly they just try to coexist.

It is a move rooted in strategy they reckon, so that Four Eyes, Red, Big Feet and Rex — as they’ve come to call the dogs — won’t attack them at night. And maybe, just maybe, the dogs might defend them against any of the nefarious two-legged species lurking in the dark.

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