Fuck These American-Trained Afghan Soldiers That Defect To The Taliban
CNN — Death is not the only reason the Afghan army is losing troops: Desertion is rife within the ranks.
CNN met two deserters in Helmand whose stories show the breadth of the problem, who have taken their skills — months of U.S. taxpayer-funded training — to the Taliban.
“I did 18 months of army training and took an oath to serve this country,” one deserter said. “But the situation changed. The army let us down, so we had to come to the Taliban, who treat us like guests.”
The two men still had their old uniforms, army IDs, and even the bank cards they used to withdraw their official wages.
“I decided to leave the army when my dead and injured comrades lay in our base, and nobody took them to hospital. My army training is very useful now, as I am training Taliban fighters with the same knowledge.”
This is so infuriating I can’t sit still. 18 months it takes to train these guys. About $15,000 per soldier. Our tax-payer dollars, our military expertise, our collaboration with a struggling government. All in an effort to build up the Afghan army so it can defend itself against the radical nutjobs infecting that region. So it can protect Afghanistan’s government, people and way of life.
And after all that, the traitors join the Taliban. They take everything we’ve given them and they join the terrorists. Even train other Taliban terrorists with the skills we’ve just given them.
Here’s an attempt at justification:
“I decided to leave the army when my dead and injured comrades lay in our base, and nobody took them to hospital.”
…
“The army let us down, so we had to come to the Taliban, who treat us like guests.”
Ah yes, the Taliban, well known for treating everyone like guests. The same Taliban that blew up dozens of people with suicide bombs in Kabul in August; the same Taliban that massacred 50 Afghans at an airport in Kandahar in December; the same Taliban that was responsible for 80% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2011; the same Taliban that promised more attacks soon in a coming spring offensive.
Sadly, we’re not the only ones watching our money and efforts wasted:
UK-trained Afghan soldiers defect to Taliban amid new spring offensive https://t.co/bFpaVZcHO8 pic.twitter.com/FgpkcWImxI
— rinf_community (@rinf_community) April 12, 2016
Hell, even ISIS is losing guys to the Taliban:
Several ISIS commanders in Afghanistan defect to the Taliban because of ISIS’ excessive brutality: https://t.co/0JDzVT9JlD.
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) April 12, 2016
This serves as a constant reminder of how complicated these regions of the globe are. Of how impossible they are to predict and ultimately help. We’ve been in Afghanistan for almost 15 years (13 with formal operations, 1.5 with aiding the Afghan gov’t). We’ve spent over 65 BILLION dollars training the Afghani army, but they’re still not ready.
If the Afghan army continues to fail, we’ll have another ISIS hotbed on our hands. If we ramp up efforts to prevent this from happening, we risk an Iraq war-type debacle.
And thus we have another crucial global conflict for the next POTUS to manage, making us all feel even more confident about the likely prospect of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump grabbing the reigns.
PS – Hopefully this was a defector: