I Watched the Afghan Government Collapse Under the Weight of Its Own Greed – By Elyas Nawandish (The Intercept) / Sept 25, 2022
Our leaders failed to give Afghan soldiers the food, tools, and respect they needed to defeat a brutal insurgency.
ON A NORMAL MORNING, Asadullah Akbari, a colonel in the Afghan National Army, would arrive at his office in Kabul to coordinate online meetings between Afghan officials and their U.S. advisers based in Qatar. After years of fighting across Afghanistan, Akbari had helped set up his country’s special forces training program and risen through the ranks. He now worked near the highest levels of the military, side by side with Afghanistan’s political leaders. Morning teleconferences with Western partners were part of his daily routine.
He had grown accustomed to this relatively quiet life. But as the U.S.-backed Afghan government imploded last summer, a thick cloud of fear descended on the Afghan capital. Rumors spread that Taliban fighters were going house to house, hunting down Afghan military officials. Akbari stayed home, texting anxiously with his military and defense ministry colleagues, all of them trying to make sense of the sudden changes. Akbari’s future had seemed relatively predictable; now it was difficult to see even a few days ahead.
On August 20, 2021 — five days after Kabul fell to the Taliban — Akbari headed to a well-known mall with his kids. Walking the streets of Kabul, where he’d spent most of his life, he had the distinct feeling that these could be his last days on earth. When his children begged him for candy and ice cream from the vendors on the street, he bought everything they wanted.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2022/09/25/afghanistan-withdrawal-corruption/
