Afghan taliban are currently in Kabul, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is out of the country.
What was the secret strategy of this militant group? Understanding the process of the afghan taliban to encircle the capital and move on to the next phase of conflict requires an understanding of "operational art." This is a different afghan taliban than the afghan taliban of 1990. This afghan taliban has become adept at integrating non-military and military power to achieve its political goals.
Because most US military forces retreated from Afghanistan, the Afghan government did not lose the battle. Instead, the more adaptable military organization outmanoeuvred the government's troops. To force the government into submission, the afghan taliban set out specific objectives and lines to weaken the Afghan security forces.
Operational art is the basis for military campaigns. It translates political objectives and strategies into tactical actions on the field. To develop this art, a group does not need to study Clausewitz or Western military history. As the afghan taliban demonstrated, one does not need to rely on a single theory of victory.
The afghan taliban has developed over time into a military organization that can advance along many lines of effort. This shadowy network of insurgents is skilled at executing rural ambushes and planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs). It has taken over a complex organization that managed up to 80,000 fighters. They are also more adept at social media than AK-47s. The afghan taliban's operational art is a combination of information operations that include appeals from elders and text messages and Twitter and decentralized orders. This allows local commanders to spot opportunities for leadership and will enable them to know the politics and terrain in their area. When afghan taliban forces achieve military success, they reinforce those advances with mobile reserve exploitation forces--hordes of commandos on motorcycles--allowing the group to maintain tempo on the battlefield.
Since its inception, the afghan taliban has held its overarching goal to seize Afghanistan and establish an Islamic Emirate. The afghan taliban were pragmatic in pursuing this goal during the current military campaign. The group could win by military victories or through a complex negotiated settlement that left Kabul's administration ex-pats and prisoners. This pragmatic approach reflects the afghan taliban's realization that it cannot continue to govern Afghanistan in the same manner as it did in 1990. While the afghan taliban will not be soft on human rights and will make it difficult for the country to have access to the rest of the world and aid money flowing, they will try to do so. The group likely wants to avoid repeating the governance failures in the 1990s. They will ask for many government officials who are currently in technical positions to ensure the economy and essential services work. afghan taliban fighters have taken control of key economic territory such as border crossing points, giving them enough money to run a country with almost forty million inhabitants.
To achieve their objective, the afghan taliban's military campaign relied on four lines of effort:
Isolating the Afghan military operational
-level isolation was the reason for the collapse of Afghan security forces. The US Army defines isolation as a physical and psychological separation of an enemy from its support base. This prevents them from moving freely and contains reinforcement. By exploiting fundamental weaknesses in the Afghan security forces' position, the afghan taliban isolated its enemy at the operational level for over 18 months.
Initially, the Afghan government was focused on maintaining the terrain by establishing checkpoints and small outposts throughout the country. This allowed Ghani to appeal to various political groups, despite his inability to win wide-based support.
However, the military reality was quite the opposite. The approach scattered units throughout the country and made it impossible for them to support one another. This vulnerability was exploited by the afghan taliban, who disrupted ground communications to isolate checkpoints further and create conditions for the defeating of Afghan forces. Resupply missions also strained the already stretched Afghan Air Force, which became more dependent on air transport for new supplies. In addition, maintenance issues resulted in more aircraft being grounded than anti-aircraft fire.
The result was a series of outposts in which Afghan forces were often starved, without water or ammunition. This created discontent and disillusionment as well as a weak air force.
Targeting cohesion through threats and texts
The afghan taliban increased their activities in the second line of effort, using tailored propaganda and information operations to weaken morale and cohesion. As experts from Napoleon to Sun Tzu have noted, enthusiasm and will to fight are crucial intangibles of war. Thus, the afghan taliban further sealed off physically isolated Afghan security forces through a sophisticated psychological-warfare campaign.
Social media was flooded with images by insurgents that showed surrounded Afghan security forces as a Hobson's choice: Give up and die or wonder if they will kill your family. Over 70% of Afghans have access to cell phones. The afghan taliban has adapted to this by using modern Russian-style information warfare, which deploys bots and fake accounts to spread its messages and undermine Afghanistan's government.
They combined the new and the old by appealing to tribal elders with text messages to force the surrender of Afghan security forces. The afghan taliban maintained its momentum on the battlefield even as outposts fell, using captured military equipment to resupply their troops and exploit images from the surrender for propaganda.
Imagine yourself as an Afghan soldier. You're in a combat outpost and running out of food, ammunition, fighting for an unpopular country and being forced to pay bribes because of endemic corruption. But all you can see on your phone are pictures of soldiers giving up. Your morale and determination to fight are eroded, even if you choose to fight.
Practising a new form of terror: kill and compel
Afghan taliban used terror to undermine the government's confidence further and to degrade Kabul's ability to fight. While the afghan taliban used high-value, vehicle-borne IEDs to terrorize and strike at the government in the past, they switched to war in the dark to undermine the legitimacy of the Afghan government.
The afghan taliban have used a covert assassination campaign to target military personnel and civil-society leaders over the past two years. The second was a military goal. It was a two-fold objective. First, the afghan taliban was responsible for most assassinations. However, the fact that the afghan taliban didn't claim credit made the killings more sinister. The second is that the best way of destroying an air force is to do so on the ground. The afghan taliban, lacking sophisticated air-defence tools, chose to destroy the Afghan Air Force by attacking pilots at their homes. This is a crude but effective form of a high-value individual targeted killing. These attacks were intended to force other Afghan pilots from their positions.
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Negotiating to buy time and constrain military power
So that the United States and Afghan security forces could not replicate it, the afghan taliban combined diplomacy with a military campaign. War is the continuation of politics. Any battleground activity that isn't linked to clearly defined political goals will be self-destructive.
The afghan taliban took advantage of the peace agreement, mainly negotiated bilaterally between its representatives with the United States under former President Donald Trump. The agreement excluded the Afghan government and made it difficult to continue cooperation between allies in counterinsurgency efforts. The afghan taliban used the agreement's cover to gain control of key areas and provincial centres. They also used the negotiations to reduce US military power. Each round of diplomatic negotiations limited America's ability to attack afghan taliban targets.
The Trump peace deal was the turning point crucial in the conflict. Without it, the afghan taliban would not have isolated the Afghan military or set the conditions for its rapid advance upon Kabul. The deal also signalled to regional actors that they had to hedge their bets to make provisions for the fall of the Ghani regime.
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All wars must end. However, how they end is crucial and will determine the nature of future conflicts and their ability to spread beyond borders.
A complete collapse of Afghan security forces will increase regional actors' chances to engage with the afghan taliban. This could mean that they shift from supporting them as a proxy to establishing political relations with them. However, these interactions will only be transactional as countries like Iran and Pakistan protect their borders and security while Central Asian neighbours such as Russia and China help advance their economic interests and try to limit refugee flow and what could be a complex humanitarian emergency.
The transition period will see regional states and great power decide whether to finance rival centres of power in Afghanistan to counter the afghan taliban. However, this is unlikely to happen in the short term, given the success of the afghan taliban's campaign. Instead, regional actors will begin to view Afghanistan from a counterterrorism perspective and focus on groups like ISIS-Khorasan, a mutual enemy of the afghan taliban and states in the region.
This environment will require that the US focus its policy on preventing a humanitarian disaster and developing viable options to pursue American counterterrorism goals. In the midst of a pandemic in Afghanistan and severe drought in the region, the war in Afghanistan has caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Terrorism and humanitarian concerns are not mutually exclusive. ISIS-K and other groups will exploit the post-conflict security crises to radicalize a new generation who feels abandoned by Western institutions. Russia and Belarus will also take advantage of refugee flow to polarize Europe's politics further. The United States and its allies will stop supporting a fallen regime and prevent the afghan taliban from causing unrest by promoting it in new forms.
Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security of the Atlantic Council, is a nonresident senior Fellow. He is also a professor at Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfare. He is the director of its Future War research program and the scholar-in-residence at American University's School of International Service. He is also a US Army Reserve Officer who has just returned from Afghanistan to support the Resolute Support mission. These views are his and do not reflect official government policy.
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