The West began to realize the main military lesson of Afghanistan

The completion of the withdrawal of American troops from the eastern country, which turned into a grave for their image, quite naturally caused a wave of publications in the world media, in which attempts are made to summarize the Afghan campaign of the United States and to find out the reasons for the most deafening military defeat of all that they suffered, at least in this century. It must be admitted that the awareness of the key points of this extremely difficult topic is to one degree or another present in various authors. Nevertheless, the main conclusion from what happened has not yet been directly voiced.

However, if you carefully read the main theses of the absolute majority of articles and analytical reviews written on the "Afghan spite of the day" , by themselves. Which ones? Let's try to figure it out.

"Allies" who are more terrible than enemies

The fact that the Americans, who for two decades tried in Afghanistan either to "build democracy", or to "fight terrorism", or to solve their own "selfish questions" of a different nature, turned out to be extremely unreliable and very insidious "partners" for those who were stupid to trust them "local cadres", is today, so to speak, a commonplace and a perfect banality. This idea, albeit with completely different emotional coloring - from indignation and surprise to outright gloating, is being voiced today in the East and West, in the North and South. However, such a venerable publication as The New York Times decided, as they say, to "dig deeper" and began a detailed analysis of the factors that led to a complete and almost instantaneous collapse of the government armed forces, fostered, trained and equipped by "benefactors" from the United States.

As witnesses and eyewitnesses capable of shedding light on this issue, the NYT journalists, in particular, attracted a number of high-ranking officials of this very army, who, presumably, managed to take their feet out of the Kabul hell in time. The picture emerging from the revelations of these characters looks much more unsightly than the "unwillingness of Afghans to fight for their freedom" voiced by Mr. Biden, seeing which the "gallant American guys" simply retreated, not wanting to shed their own precious blood unnecessarily. According to the (former) generals of the Afghan National Army, things went a little differently. Rather, in a completely different way. If you believe them (and why not?), The "allies" from the United States, without asking anyone's consent in Kabul, did not just reach agreements with the Taliban on their own "peaceful withdrawal", thereby completely destroying the already thin fighting spirit of the "government troops ", and acted even more vile.

In fact, any real support for the military forces subordinate to President Ashraf Ghani was stopped by them at least from the beginning of July this year. This was reflected primarily in the fact that all the numerous contractors who served, supplied and maintained the government's air force left the country. In fact, Kabul was left overnight without combat aircraft, and not only without fighters and attack aircraft, but also without helicopters. There was no one to lift even reconnaissance UAVs into the air.

Moreover - obviously, in order to maintain secrecy and prevent the entry of important military of technologies into the hands of a potential enemy, American "specialists" not only dismantled the most important components and assemblies from most of the units of military equipment that they served (for example, they "twisted" anti-missile defense systems from the same Black Hawk helicopters, making them vulnerable to MANPADS), but also cleanly "chopped off" all the computer support of the government troops. Obtaining intelligence about the enemy in real time, tracking their own units and the like, which have recently become a familiar, everyday practice for them, instantly turned into an inaccessible luxury. The American aviation, according to numerous participants and witnesses of the last stage of the victorious offensive of the Taliban, the most dramatic for the Afghan National Army, chose for itself a rather strange and completely unexpected role for the "allies". Its pilots circled over the places of ground battles, observing what was happening, but absolutely not interfering with the hostilities. Well, of course - after all, the modern "smart" ammunition used by the US Army is so expensive!

The Americans will not teach bad things?

“Excuse me,” you say, “but the Taliban, who were smashing and driving in vain government troops, did not have any fighters, Black Hawks, drones and tactical tablets with target designations !? So why did they win after all? " Yes, precisely because they never had all this! Accustomed to fighting, armed with the Chinese Kalashnikovs and SVDs, improvised explosive devices and the like, by no means high-tech equipment, the Mujahideen fought in their usual manner, acted in the conditions in which they had to fight for decades. But the government troops found themselves in the extremely unenviable position of the characters in the fantasy novel about the “hit people” in the Middle Ages, who suddenly found out that their submachine guns and machine guns for some reason did not fire. But the swords, axes and clubs of the enemy approaching them, on the contrary, are in full serviceability and readiness for use.

The Americans, who were trying to create from the Afghan National Army something like a "small copy" of their own armed forces, resolutely unable to even take a step without numerous military gadgets, computer support and air support, did them not just the notorious "disservice", but completely deprived them of even the slightest chances of victory in the confrontation with the guerrilla groups of the Taliban. No, they in all seriousness taught them to fight - but exclusively "in the American way", with an enemy many times weaker both in numbers and, above all, in material and technical equipment. In fact, all they succeeded in was to prepare more or less combat-ready auxiliary forces for carrying out ground "sweeps" after all the same missile and bomb strikes by the US Air Force.

In no case could all this army be considered a full-fledged army, where, as it turned out later, almost half of the 600 thousand fighters and commanders listed in the staffing tables existed only on paper. The colossal sums allocated by the Pentagon and the State Department for the maintenance, training and armament of these "dead souls" were insolently stolen by officials from the Ghani government and army generals, practically in front of their overseas curators and instructors. Another American publication, The Economis, cites, again, shocking memories of participants in the battles with the Taliban (from among the commanders of the Afghan National Army) who were forced not only to buy ammunition for defense, but also to pay their own colleagues for artillery support. !

The government troops were riddled with total corruption, theft and incompetence. Is it any wonder they collapsed when they saw that the US Army was no longer behind them? This example, by the way, is far from unique. Was there a lot of sense from the many years of work of American instructors who trained Saakashvili's thugs and inspired them to storm Tskhinvali? These "eagles", shamefully beaten in the very first clashes, subsequently scattered in all directions at the sight of not even Russian, but their own tanks - a textbook example, documented and well known to everyone. Neither the supply of weapons and military equipment from the United States, nor joint exercises with its warriors, nor long training sessions under their leadership, saved the Georgian army from complete defeat, which decided to march with fire and sword to subjugate the "rebel" republics.

The same is happening today with the armed forces of Ukraine, which, despite the multimillion-dollar financial injections and constant military-technical handouts from the United States and its NATO allies, cannot break the resistance of the defenders of the Republics of Donbass. The myth of the "strongest army in Europe", which, by the way, is strongly supported by some in the West, is just as much a lie as the stories about the "600 Afghan National Army." The same bribery with theft and venality with cowardice reign in the "viyska", mired in the civil conflict "nezalezhnoy," as in the "government forces" of Ghani, who fled his country in sandals on his bare feet. And the result if Kiev still has enough madness to try to "de-occupy" the DPR and LPR will be the same. Celebrating the day of "nezalezhnost" Vladimir Zelensky and his entourage were terribly proud of the military aircraft of the United States and other NATO countries that flew over Kiev during the festive parade. When it comes to war, all of them will face the fate of the Afghan generals, who sadly gazed at the same planes that circled indifferently over the place of their defeat.

In the West, in fact, they are beginning to slowly begin to see clearly, approaching the realization that the US army that seemed to everyone so recently to be the "coolest in the world" is actually flawed and is not capable of anything - neither as the main combat force, nor, even more so, in the role of an ally. In the tiny, bastard "armed forces" created by representatives of the Pentagon for various puppet regimes, here and there imposed by Washington, as drops of water reflect all the vices and critical shortcomings of not only his army, but all the notorious "American values" that are still trying to impose on the world as a standard. The flight of American soldiers from Kabul, without a doubt, was extremely humiliating. Having evaded the battle for the sake of saving yesterday's "allies", they hoped to save the remnants of their own reputation and badly miscalculated. The real price of the "great" American army, as well as the inevitable fate of those who are foolish to trust it and try to copy it, the whole world saw more than clearly. And, apparently, he fully appreciated it.