'The Afghanistan Papers' a sordid tale of beneficiaries becoming foes (Book Review)

New Delhi, Aug 30 "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it," General Douglas MacArthur, the legendary World War II military commander, had once famously declared. This is a bitter pill that Washington has had to swallow twice in the past half century as the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15, two weeks before the US was to end its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan in what was euphemistically termed the Global War on Terror in the wake of the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Centre.

But then, there were portends of the capitulation of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, trained by US and NATO forces, as far back as 15 years ago with innumerable instances of fratricide against their benefactors, rampant corruption and even ghost soldiers as a new book details sordid stories of beneficiaries becoming foes of their benefactors and in fact, being hand-in-glove with the Taliban all along.

There were "basic flaws that undermined the effort in Afghanistan. In a jarring disconnect, the United States and its allies could not agree whether they were actually fighting a war in Afghanistan, engaged in a peacekeeping operation, leading a training mission, or doing something else. The distinctions were important because some NATO allies were only authorised to engage in combat in self-defence", Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post writes in "The Afghanistan Papers – A Secret History Of The War"