Ex-CIA Agent Says US Wasted Trillions on Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, Achieved Nothing

As the US approaches the completion of its withdrawal from Afghanistan, which should be over by September 11, as well as in light of more and more audible demands from Iraq to withdraw troops from its soil, questions are increasingly emerging about the assessment of the almost 20-year military presence and the success of these operations.

The US has squandered trillions of dollars on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while failing to achieve any objectives, former US counter-terrorism specialist and CIA military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi wrote in an op-ed for Strategic Culture Foundation.

In an article, Giraldi made the remarks as US soldiers leave Afghanistan after an almost twenty-year war and pressure mounts on the Biden administration to withdraw all troops from Iraq.

"Not only did the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make bad situations worse, but the fact that no one in Washington was able to define “victory” and think in terms of an exit strategy has meant that the wars and instability are still with us," Giraldi wrote. "In their wake has been hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars spent to accomplish absolutely nothing."

He also lamented the development of a situation where, in his opinion, Iraq now has a stronger connection to "Iran than it does to Washington."

"The Iraqi Parliament has, in fact, asked US forces to leave the country, a request that has been ignored both by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Trump actually threatened to freeze Iraqi bank assets to pressure the Iraqis into accepting the continued US occupation," he added.

The former CIA agent also criticized the American presence in Syria, which takes place despite the fact that the current government of President Bashar al-Assad did not ask the United States to intervene in the long civil conflict.

"At the same time, American troops illegally present in neighboring Syria, continue to occupy that country’s oil fields to deprive the government in Damascus of much needed resources. Neither Iraq nor Syria threatens the United States in any way," Giraldi noted.

According to the former military spy, given that history, it should come as "no surprise that the withdrawal from the twenty-year-long nation-building project in Afghanistan, long overdue, is not quite going as smoothly as the Pentagon and White House apparently planned."

"US forces pulled out of their principal base in the country, Bagram Air Base, in the middle of the night without informing the incoming Afghan base commander. A frenzy of looting of the left-behind equipment followed," Giraldi wrote. People stand in front of a vehicle as an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and a Pakistan's flag flutter in front of the friendship gate of Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Wesh-Chaman border crossing, Spin Boldak, Afghanistan July 14, 2021, in this screen grab obtained from a video

And in general, the Taliban* movement in Afghanistan "is racking up victory after victory against US and NATO trained Afghan government forces who have the disadvantage of having to defend everywhere, making them vulnerable to attacks on an opportunity basis." He also noted that the Taliban "plausibly" claim to control at least 85% of the countryside, including numerous significant towns and provinces as well as crossing points into Pakistan.

"The US government is quietly expecting a similar fate for the thousands of Afghans who collaborated with the regime installed by Washington and is hurriedly arranging for visas to get the most vulnerable out, eventually seeking to resettle them in friendly Middle Eastern countries as well as in the US," he commented on the issue of evacuating Afghans who collaborated with the US forces from the country in light of the growing threats against them.

Given that some 18,000 local residents working for the US have requested evacuation from Afghanistan and that they will certainly take their families with them, Giraldi notes that there exists "particular concern" that former translators "will be most particularly targeted."

All in all, the author reckoned that the US involvement in Afghanistan in "the struggle to rid the world of the wrong kind of terrorists" has left the country "weaker and more unfocused" than it was in 2001.

"A recent 23-page report suggests that since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s February order to 'stand down' the entire U.S. military for commanders to address “extremism” in its ranks has sunk morale and many top soldiers have either retired or quit in disgust," he explained. "During his confirmation hearings, Austin pledged that he would 'rid our ranks of racists and extremists' but the reality is quite different, with the witch hunt in the ranks and endless promotion of diversity even hurting normal military readiness training."

As President Biden pledged to complete the military withdrawal by the end of August, and the whole military presence in the war-torn nation will be reduced to a battalion of soldiers to secure the Embassy and CIA station in Kabul, Giraldi notes that the situation in itself is "not sustainable unless some kind of workable Afghan government coalition can be achieved." However, referring to the Taliban's successful offensive, he figures that this "appears to be increasingly unlikely."

In addition, the US is trying to negotiate with Afghanistan's neighbors on the deployment of its military for the possibility of over-the-horizon military strikes on the country, and according to Giraldi, there "are few options as the U.S. would not be able to launch cruise missile or airstrikes through the neighboring countries that surround Afghanistan to the south, east and west, though a long-distance strike from warships in the Persian Gulf is technically possible."

Furthermore, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, according to the former CIA agent, are closed to the US presence due to Russia's dominance in the CSTO, which includes most of the former Union's republics in the region, and Russia will certainly veto a US request for a military base. A possible US presence is not generating much enthusiasm from the countries of the region because "Washington’s bullying in Iraq, Syria and also against Iran has failed to convince anyone that the US Air Force would make a good neighbor."

"So getting out of Afghanistan will be a lot trickier than going in," Giraldi concluded. "And there is no escaping the fact that the entire Afghan adventure was one hell of a waste of lives and resources. Next time, maybe Washington will hesitate to charge in, but given the lack of any deep thinking going on in the White House, I suspect we Americans could easily find ourselves in yet another Afghanistan."

On Sunday, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraq's prime minister, stated in an interview that his country no longer requires American troops on its soil. And earlier this week, it was reported that in the next days, top US and Iraqi officials are anticipated to announce the withdrawal of American troops from the war-torn country by the end of 2021.

Earlier in July, the US Department of Defense stated that around 90% of troops have already left Afghanistan, while the Taliban has been pushing back the Afghan military and gaining control of important areas of territory.

by Kirill Kurevlev

 

Repeating the Vietnam War 50 years later?

Disaster in Afghanistan after 17 years of invasion and war

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — First Lt. Mohammad Reza, 23, got up from his bedroll on Monday morning and put on civilian clothes underneath his uniform. He was sweltering in the summer heat, but before the day was over, he would be glad he had done so.

Lieutenant Reza was a platoon leader and the senior officer of what was left of Company A, Sixth Battalion, First Brigade, part of the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps. His base, known as Chinese Camp, was in Ghormach District, a longtime Taliban stronghold in northern Faryab Province.

Battered by heavy Taliban attacks for three nights in a row, the company’s officers said they had lost half of their 106 soldiers — 21 were dead, including the company commander, and 33 were wounded. Fifteen border police officers based there had also been killed.

An important Afghan army base in northern province of Faryab fall into Taliban hand. “Chinese” base came under Taliban attack 2days ago where 17 Afghan military personals were and 12 others wounded.

By the day’s end, they would all be gone.

The army’s last stand at Chinese Camp is an object lesson in the difficult conditions under which many Afghan troops fight and the inability of their military to support and resupply them — especially when forces are stretched thin by a big fight with the Taliban elsewhere.

ADVERTISEMENT

On Friday, more than 1,000 Taliban insurgents sought to overrun the strategic city of Ghazni in southeastern Afghanistan, some 300 miles from Chinese Camp. When Ghazni came under attack, Chinese Camp was doomed, its defenders said.

On Tuesday, an Afghan military spokesman, Ghafoor Ahmed Jawed, claimed the insurgents had been cleared from the main part of Ghazni. But residents said fighting continued for a fifth straight day and hundreds of bodies were either in the streets or dumped in the Ghazni River.

The fiercest attacks on Chinese Camp came on Saturday and Sunday, just as the fighting for Ghazni was at its heaviest. The insurgents in Faryab massed their forces and attacked the base throughout both nights, according to officers there.

The defenders repeatedly begged for air support and helicopter resupply from their regional command in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif; ammunition and food were perilously low.

 “They kept saying: ‘We’ll be there in an hour,’ and when we called back, they said half an hour. But they betrayed us and never came,” Lieutenant Reza said. The defenders said the insurgents numbered about 1,000 and seemed to have no problem resupplying themselves.

After dressing on Monday morning, Lieutenant Reza walked over to the camp’s fortified outer wall. Originally built by the American-led international military coalition, it was among many bases handed over to the Afghan military as foreign troops withdrew.

The first thing he noticed was that no one was in the guard tower.

“He had escaped to surrender to the Taliban,” he said.

The base itself was protected by outposts surrounding it and another layer of defenses some distance away. But the army’s positions were all on the flat valley floor, where a long-abandoned Chinese development project had given the camp its name.

The Taliban were in the surrounding hills, firing down into the camp during the day and moving closer in at night. The wounded and dead lay everywhere around the base, the lieutenant said.

“They stunk, but we couldn’t do anything about it,” he said. “It was too dangerous to get them. Their bodies were swelling in the heat.”

 “The whole camp was covered in blood,” said First Lt. Shah Fahim, another platoon leader. On Sunday night, speaking by phone, he wept and worried he would be killed in the night. On top of that, the family of the dead company commander, Capt. Sayid Azam, kept calling him, asking for news of the captain.

“I couldn’t tell them,” Lieutenant Fahim said. “I told them I would tell him to call them back later.”

Lieutenant Fahim and a squad of five men were assigned to one of the outposts around the camp on Sunday night. On Monday morning, all six surrendered to the Taliban, Lieutenant Reza said. He knew that because some soldiers taken prisoner began calling their friends still on the base at the Taliban’s urging.

“They kept asking us to go with them.”

Throughout the morning, groups of five or six soldiers at a time began disappearing from the base and the outposts.

“Finally, the 40 of us who were left decided to surrender, too,” he said.

At American urging, the Afghan military has been shifting its strategy to concentrate on holding population centers instead of territory. That previous territory-based strategy left numerous small bases scattered around rural Afghanistan highly vulnerable when the insurgents mass against them, as happened in Ghormach.

But giving up Ghormach District to the Taliban would hand them a coup in a part of the country where the insurgents were weak only a couple of years earlier. So Company A was sent to Chinese Camp a year ago.

Before he was killed, the company’s captain expressed concern that even without a Ghazni, the Afghan military’s priorities were skewed at the expense of troops in the field. Politicians commandeered badly needed military helicopters for their own use at times when bases like his were struggling for resupply.

Captain Azam was particularly incensed to learn that three Army helicopters had been used to ferry Islamic State fighters who surrendered to the government on Aug. 2 so they would not have to travel on a dangerous highway. The next day, the captain said, one helicopter came to resupply Company A.

“All we got was three sacks of rice. Can you imagine? For 100 men?”

On top of that, the captain said, he and his men had not been paid in 10 months.

The Army “was afraid once they got their pay, they wouldn’t come back,” he said.

Desertion is rife from the Afghan military. The attrition rate was running at 30 percent a year, according to the last figures, made public in 2016. Since then, the military has classified the attrition and desertion rates as secret.

“We all think they have sold us out to the enemy,” Captain Azam said in a phone interview four days before he was killed on Sunday.

On Monday, Lieutenant Reza said he and the remaining 40 soldiers in Chinese Camp walked out with their arms up and surrendered to the Taliban. The insurgents made them line up and turn over weapons and bulletproof vests, but let them keep their cellphones and other personal items.

Then the insurgents stopped two buses near Chinese Camp and made the passengers disembark so they could commandeer them for the prisoners. The passengers, it turned out, were all Afghans who had just been deported from Iran, a routine occurrence.

According to a senior Afghan military official, the entire 106-man contingent was believed to have been either killed or captured by the Taliban.

By Najim Rahim and Rod Nordland

Aug. 14, 2018

The New York Times