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“We handed over our weapons and surrendered with our dead and wounded comrades in front of us,” says a member of the NDS (National Directorate of Security), the military arm of Afghan intelligence and the body in charge of the most risky operations on the United States. ground. The scene, in the province of Gazni, took place a couple of days before the capture of Kabul, which took place on August 15. Its protagonist is Mohsin, a 27-year-old wardrobe with light eyes, who is embarrassed several times during his story, but insists that they were following orders. With wounded pride, he reviews a house in Parwan province in recent months in which he has worn a uniform that he now keeps crumpled in a plastic bag.
The capital fell into the hands of the Taliban with little combat, as happened already in 1996, due to that capitulation imposed from above. Everything had been cooking for months in the negotiations carried out inside and outside the country with the guerrillas that now occupy power. The announcement of the departure of the US troops and the international alliance ended up giving the finishing touch to the local troops, who were increasingly unmotivated. This has been explained by five Afghan soldiers from different provinces, ranks, positions and ages interviewed by EL PAÍS and who, for security reasons, prefer that their true identity not be published. One of them managed to escape to Pakistan in August. “Our morale when the US announced its departure was decreasing” and “there was less and less fighting,” admits a 54-year-old and 36-year-old colonel in the capital Adbul.
“Some people in charge of the PPS (the security of the presidential palace) had already spoken with the Taliban, they had agreed to everything, the delivery of weapons and surrender in exchange for not killing us. As soldiers, we follow orders, ”says Elham, a 27-year-old commander who, before joining the presidential guard two years ago, fought the Taliban guerrillas in different provinces. Fearful of being seen or heard, the interview with Elham takes place inside a vehicle that changes locations several times in Kabul.
On the afternoon of August 15, he was at Camp Watan, a training facility near the airport. When the Taliban arrived, “I was trying to keep my morale high, but some of my colleagues were shaking and fearing for their lives.” He says that they gave them everything: weapons, uniforms, vehicles … but before they proceeded to burn all the documentation that could compromise the local army or international troops. “We even gave them the car keys,” says another soldier. “We are still in shock (…) The leaders sold us, ”says Selab, a commander who was wounded and lost several colleagues in Wardak province.
Almost all those interviewed use the verb “sell” to explain what they believe the government of President Ashraf Ghani did before, on August 15, they fled to the United Arab Emirates. Two of the testimonies collected in this report correspond to members of the presidential guard. Some of those interviewed claim that Kabul could have been the scene of a carnage if it had been tried to prevent the jihadist guerrillas from completing their rise to power, but, at the same time, they do not believe that avoiding this bloodbath was the main reason for explain that there was no battle for control of the capital.
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Afghanistan’s army numbered around 300,000 after being armed and trained by the United States over the past 20 years. But, in the middle of the Taliban offensive, it ended up being diluted like a sugar in a few days. One of the soldiers featured in this report is now trying to get ahead by selling clothes, footwear, kitchenware, hygiene products, old gym equipment and military accessories from the old US bases in a small store. Paradoxes of fate in the new Afghanistan.
The bearded regime does not now have organized troops, although they control the facilities and equipment abandoned by their predecessors. Despite all the symptoms that heralded the more than possible death of the army, the US Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Tuesday that the Pentagon was caught by “surprise” the sinking of the Afghan troops.
The collapse was due to excessive dependence on Washington and foreign aid that the Taliban have historically received from the Pakistani neighbor, Colonel Adbul understands. Islamabad has already shown its willingness to take the place of the Americans as the main engine of Afghanistan’s new army, according to Pakistani military sources cited by the BBC’s Urdu service on Tuesday. Some of the military who have agreed to speak in this report expressly cite that country’s secret services, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), as an essential pillar for the Taliban before, now and in the future. “When I got home (on the night of August 15 after the surrender) I thought that my country was in the hands of the ISI. I am not a crybaby, but I have cried a lot all these days in the solitude of my home, ”says Elham.
Hatred, carried over from years of fighting and terrorism, will not facilitate the reorganization of the Security Forces in Afghanistan today. “Let them dedicate themselves to something else,” says a Taliban at a roadblock outside Kabul, whose speech seems driven by resentment against the members of the deposed army. He assures that in recent years he was part of the unit that was dedicated to manufacturing and placing mines and bombs and that he was even on the payroll of those willing to commit suicide in a suicide attack. Now he is the one trying to prevent attacks like the ones he claims he was carrying out. This man, who claims to be in his 30s and who prefers not to give his name, also points out that he was detained by both US troops and the Afghan authorities.
Now he is part of an apparatus of thousands of men scattered at checkpoints on highways and cities across the country. There are no figures on the number of members of the former Security Forces who, out of necessity or affinity, have decided to join the security apparatus of the new regime. It is true that more and more Taliban are wearing uniforms but, in the short term, the military consulted do not see the creation of a new army that resembles the old one feasible.
“If they (the Taliban) don’t show they can handle it, we’ll end up getting up even with sticks and stones.”
Mohsin, member of the special forces of the disbanded army
Regardless, Colonel Abdul’s phone rang a couple of weeks ago. On the other side, an official asked him to go to the Ministry. He believes that the Taliban ordered his interlocutor to take a roll call to try to recover those who have not left the country, as many took advantage of the lack of control to get abroad through border crossings in their vehicles or by helicopter. Abdul has the impression that they are recruiting everyone they can, but he makes it clear that they don’t count on him.
Sitting on the carpet in the living room of his home, which according to local tradition has neither table nor chairs nor hardly any furniture, he shows the reporter diplomas and photographs that attest to his past. The first is a recognition of the three weeks he spent in 2018 in the United States. His speech takes on a sentimental tone and recalls, while showing a war wound on his left leg, that he put on his boots for the first time under the presidency of Mohamed Najibulá, murdered and hanged in public by the Taliban as soon as he seized power by first time 25 years ago. With his flight, it seems that Ghani and his environment wanted to prevent that image from repeating itself. The colonel believes that the former president is the “main responsible”, ahead of the interior or defense ministers, for the rapid collapse of the country. Elham, one of the members of the presidential guard, sees him as a “good man” who the best thing he did was escape.
Fighting Taliban door to door
As a member of the special forces, Mohsin has spent the last four years of his life conducting nightly door-to-door raids throughout many of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. The last weeks life in rural areas of Gazni was at stake. There he found that the ground and air support they needed to shore up the missions no longer arrived as before.
The last day Mohsin wore his camouflage uniform was Thursday, August 12, after laying down his gun and surrendering like the fifty NDS members who were with him. They then ensured that the last fallen colleagues at the front arrived at Gazni hospital and returned to Kabul. “My friend Nasratallah had only been married a month,” he says, crestfallen and sunk. “Nobody wants more war, but in the coming months we will have a serious crisis due to lack of food or money. If they (the Taliban) do not show that they can face it, we will end up getting up even with sticks and stones ”, he predicts.
More and more people think that the Taliban had long had infiltrators at all levels. From the highest spheres to ground level. Proof of this is that gardener who cared for the plants of a high military command and who is now part of the new secret services. The fact that you have found an accommodation so quickly means that the thing was long overdue, the former employer comments with a certain tone of surprise. “This was already a spy before.”
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