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Two views on what happened to Afghanistan over the last two decades. The first chart depends on the FDD series of maps¹⁾, and it appears to me to give an understandable narrative of how the Taliban emerged as winner. The second chart depends on “the Gilliams” set of maps²⁾, and it appears to be an overly optimistic view of the fortunes of Taliban and anti-Taliban forces. The reports were forced to conform more closely to reality as contested areas nominally recorded as being under government control were revealed to be certainly under Taliban control. The second chart is almost a perverse mirror image of the first. If one bases oneself on the second chart, it is more possible to view things in soft focus and claim that Afghanistan was in good shape until Biden became president. However, even the second chart shows things falling apart for the government during the Trump years.(Click Individual charts to see them full-sized.)

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(The third chart is an inverted image of the second chart. Ironically, it seems to closely approximate the first chart, the one I regard as the more reliable of the two published sets of information.) I am reminded that one of my teachers would sometimes comment on what a student claimed by saying, “That is exactly wrong.” Being exactly wrong is a very useful state to be in because if an explanation is known to be wrong then much room for speculation is removed. The really caustic comment that one of the early generation of quantum physicists made was, “That isn't even wrong!”

The FDD-related chart shows that anti-Taliban forces held about 38% of Afghanistan shortly after the US invasion, lost ground until the Obama surge, when it rose from less than 10% to somewhat less than 30%. Then, in 2018, there was a strong inflection point. After that, the government steadily lost territory and had almost no territory under its control shortly after the US withdrawal. It appears that when Trump cut the Afghan officials out of the picture and began direct negotiations with the Taliban, few if any Afghans believed that the government was viable.

The Taliban originally held around 92% of Afghanistan, was reduced to holding around 32% of the country by the US invasion, was making good progress toward recovery until it was hit by the Obama surge and knocked back to around 23% of the country. At the same time, the contended areas rose to about 73% of the country, and the government hit its bottom for the period before the final debacle. As some contended areas were won over by the government, its holdings increased. But at the same time, more contended areas were won over by the Taliban. The more territory it controlled, the more military capital it possessed, and it out-competed the government on that foundation. Then the US gave clear indications of abandoning the government. The Taliban continued to gain in the contended area but also attrited the government holdings. The Taliban gained higher and higher momentum from that time forward.

“The Taliban increased their control of wider swaths of the country – and by June of this year [2020], contested or controlled an estimated 50% to 70% of Afghan territory outside of urban centers, according to a United Nations Security Council report.”³⁾

“The precise strength of the Taliban, …. is not accurately known. UN Security Council monitors last year said the group had between 55,000 and 85,000 fighters.” ⁴⁾

In early 2021, “Acting U.S. Defense Secretary of State Christopher Miller announced Friday the number of American troops in Afghanistan has been reduced to 2,500, saying the move has brought Washington 'closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war.'”

The general rule is that the ratio of one's troops to the troops in an insurgency should be three to one. Therefore, for Biden to have overcome the Taliban after he came to office, he would need to have ramped up US presence in Afghanistan to something around 180,000 troops. However, at the peak of the Obama surge the US had more than 100,000 troops on the ground. That move was not done in a matter of weeks, and the surge was not a complete success since the Taliban recovered after US troop levels were reduced to 8,400.

Here us a diagram that indicates what a challenge it would have been to turn matters around in the early months of 2021,

The moral of the story is that if you wear rose-colored glasses
you can't see the flashing blue lights of the police car bearing down on you.

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