Daily Times

In late September, the Taliban launched a multi-pronged attack on the key northern Afghan city of Kunduz that took caught the military and intelligence agencies by surprise, resulting in the stunning but temporary fall of the city as the insurgents took over government buildings and freed hundreds of prisoners. What made this shocking assault particularly egregious was the fact that the city had a substantial amount of military presence since battles with the Taliban were ongoing in the surrounding regions for months and yet a band of insurgent fighters managed to overrun troops who outnumbered the militants ten to one. The fall of Kunduz represented a major propaganda victory for the Taliban as this was the first urban centre they successfully captured since the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 and showed that the militant outfit was stronger than ever under its new leadership of Mullah Mansour. As a consequence of this scandalous failure of the Afghan forces and intelligence agencies, the lack of preparedness and resolve of the Afghan military was laid bare in front of the world. This revelation confirmed what many feared: the departure of the bulk of the US military from Afghanistan was a folly since the Afghan forces trained by the US were clearly not up to scratch and would not stand up to a determined Taliban. The fall of Kunduz also put immense pressure on the already strained administration of President Ashraf Ghani and threatened to undo the entire government machinery as no one escaped from the crisis looking good.
Now that two months after the city’s fall the preliminary investigations into the cause of the failures are complete, President Ashraf Ghani seems intent on breaking with the past and holding those responsible for this costly embarrassment accountable. In a speech, he minced no words and announced that the fall of Kunduz was due to a lack of unified command and questioned the fortitude of the military personnel present in the city. The first casualty of this drive for accountability is the premier intelligence agency of Afghanistan, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), as Ghani has ordered the dismissal or military trial of an undisclosed number of the organisation’s members who were responsible for the Kunduz debacle, including the agency’s provincial chief. The announcements by the President were met with cheers and presumably will win widespread approval. This step by Ghani shows seriousness and a desire to meaningfully restructure the security apparatus of the country to meet the Taliban threat. However, this process should not be left simply at the dismissal of NDS officials, otherwise this welcome step will smack of scapegoating. To maintain the credibility of the process, it is imperative that President Ashraf Ghani see the process through and hold the military accountable as well, since it was their feckless retreat in the face of a numerically inferior enemy that proved to be the critical failure. *