How the Taliban Exploited Afghanistan’s Human Geography

to capture large areas and slowly surround and isolate urban centers, enabling them to pressure officials for deals. Local officials were quick to accept Taliban proposals because they had little allegiance to the central government and knew that Afghan forces were unwilling (and unable) to defend their areas from Taliban offensives. The Afghan military’s lack of preparation, combined with its massive corruption and ethnic infighting, led to very low levels of cohesion and little commitment to the state. Indeed, in the areas where Afghan security forces tried to put up some resistance, many soldiers either fled or actively cooperated with approaching Taliban forces. As a result, after the Taliban demonstrated their superior offensive movement and cohesion during the U.S. drawdown in the spring and early summer, any effective resistance quickly collapsed.

Could the United States have done anything differently?

Worsnop writes that the Afghan security forces, as they were configured and trained by 2021, would never have been able to turn back the Taliban. Many have aptly observed that the U.S. approach to building partner forces should be dramatically overhauled, “but the opportunity to rebuild and repurpose the Afghan military had passed long before President Joe Biden took office.”

The only way to prevent the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan was to keep a large number of foreign troops in the country, which meant increasing considerably the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan relative to their numbers in late spring and summer of 2021.

But this does not mean that the withdrawal of all foreign troops could not have been made safer and more orderly.

A small Western contingent with air support could have held the Taliban at bay for a few more months, protecting urban centers long enough to stage an orderly evacuation… [This] would have provided time for the Afghan state to come to terms with the withdrawal. Although Afghan government leaders would have watched the Taliban’s territorial reach expand quickly, they would have still had outside forces helping to protect key population centers. Critically, this alternative approach would have also given the United States, and other outside governments, more time to evacuate greater numbers of Afghan allies and activists to safety.

If the U.S. government had better prepared for the intense pressure that a rapid and far-reaching Taliban offensive would put on a feeble and demoralized Afghan army and local leaders, it could have slowed the Taliban takeover for a few weeks, perhaps a couple of months — long enough to allow for the orderly evacuation of civilians and at-risk communities.

But this would have only delayed the inevitable:

Leaving a limited outside force in place, without significant reinforcement, could not have prevented an inevitable Taliban takeover within a matter of months. The Taliban would still have continued their creep into much of Afghanistan’s territory, positioning them to mass forces across many fronts in order to launch a large-scale violent campaign. The combination of the Afghan state’s feebleness and the low force-to-space ratios seen in Afghanistan meant that there were few prospects for long-term stability without a notably larger foreign troop presence that could continue to pressure the Taliban throughout the country’s vast territory.