Description
On August 15, 2021, Taliban fighters carrying their white flags sworn Kabul’s entry points and within hours they seized the presidential palace. Ghani: “the president on the run”, maintained a delusional stance to his American allies and advisors that we can fight Taliban. But he left whiplashed capital to its new masters and paved the way for a humiliating, destructive and chaotic termination of American adventures in Afghanistan. Afghanistan witnessed a Saigon 2.0, after American air force left Kabul, leaving behind its Afghan allies, US citizens and allies at the mercy of Taliban government.
The gap which this research aims to highlight, and address is that U.S invested over $1000 billion (2001-2020) on intelligence, security infrastructure and capacity building of Afghanistan. America also maintained a public discourse on these efforts as a warfare strategy to counter Taliban’s capability of waging asymmetric warfare and to resist their advances and control in countryside. However, this research is of the view that, a calamitous military and intelligence catastrophe in Afghanistan is also a sobering reminder that American diplomatic and military presence to generate, evaluate and implement ground intelligence and boots on the grounds in challenging battle fields of asymmetric warfare like Afghanistan isn’t productive.
Thus, to understand Taliban resistance and failure of American diplomacy, intelligence and military strategy, this qualitative inquiry has used discourse analysis to find answers from the military and unconventional warfare perspective of international relations. The research found key success factors of Taliban resistance as such: ideological recruitments, branding and marketing of Taliban’s jihad, covert intelligence and capability of Pakistan’s intelligence and military support of Taliban. The research concludes on “What went wrong in Afghanistan “by pinpointing the flaws in U. S’s strategic understanding of asymmetric warfare, failed application of intelligence warfare, security paranoid diplomacy, disconnected and gated American embassies and tactical level reluctance for boots on the grounds.
