The failings in Afghanistan can’t be blamed on a single administration, but rather all of them since President George W. Bush, according to a retired Army officer.
“What’s happening in Afghanistan was inevitable,” said Retired Army Col. Brey Sloan, who spent a year in Afghanistan as a foreign affairs officer and National Security Council mentor to Afghan officials. “We went in with a clear objective. Once we achieved it, we should have gotten out.”
That mission to disable the Taliban turned into a 20-year project in nation building, a 20-year project that unraveled in nine days. Still, no one expected the Ghani government to fall so quickly, Sloan said.
“Our ideals got in our way,” said Sloan, who served in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007. “We cared more about the future of Afghanistan than the Afghans did. Every administration for the last 20 years is culpable. Not just Bush, not just Obama, not just Trump or Biden.”
Sloan says her biggest concern right now is that the Taliban’s promises to let women keep some of their social gains of the last two decades and no reprisals against those who worked for the U.S. military or embassy is just P.R. She fears the terrorist group will go back to its “normal” – read violent – behaviors pretty quickly.
Already, media reports are common of Taliban foot soldiers firing into crowds of protestors and those trying to get to the Kabul airport.
“They have no mercy,” Sloan said. “I wonder how long it will be before the beheadings begin. I suspect we’re headed back to the days of (public) stonings in soccer stadiums.”
Knowing that the Trump administration had arranged for an August troop withdrawal, and that President Biden intended to honor that decision, American diplomats, NGO workers and others should have advised Americans in Afghanistan months ago to start discretely slipping out of the country.
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“We knew what this (withdrawal) was going to happen. We could have had people going down to Kabul for months,” Sloan said. “You know, tell them to decide they need to make a trip down to Kabul” and to get out while they’re there.
Slow withdrawals present their own problems, though, Sloan said. The host country or other allies can lose confidence in the country withdrawing, and the situation can unravel fast.
Sloan is particularly concerned about NGO workers – contractors and others – and Afghan nationals who served as translators or had other positions that helped Americans.
“Those NGOs, they’re trapped,” she said. “It’s criminal.”
Afghan women who worked in the American-backed government have been “told to hide and just wait on the knock on the door to come,” Sloan said. “Some really impressive people have been left behind.”
Afghan women are another concern.
“That’s another part of the tragedy – 20 years of telling women and girls there’s hope,” Sloan said. “In the northern provinces, they’re already collecting the names of girls and women – what is it? From 14 to 45? The Taliban ‘freedom fighters’ need wives.”
Sloan anticipates that those serving in the U.S. diplomatic corps and the military will have sufficient assistance to get out.
“They’ll be able to the embassy staff out,” she said.
American officials are already preparing to receive the influx of Afghan refugees, Sloan said. Fort McCoy in Wisconsin is already preparing to receive at least some of the refugees. Some reports say Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas may also be a landing spot for some Afghans. Getting to America is just the first step of a long process, Sloan said.
“They’ll all have to be vetted, have health assessments and deal with the politics of [getting] visas,” she said.
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The former colonel and now owner of Riverwatch Brewery in downtown Augusta found her time in Afghanistan almost surreal, she said.
“It was a lot of theatre when I was there. Staff meetings were like staff meetings at the Pentagon, just another day in the office,” she said. “I was in the green zone, but I never got a sense I was in a massive war zone. We were trained to fight in a combat situation, not go to the office and have coffee and watch CNN. That bothered me a lot.”
That didn’t mean Sloan was never shot at or in danger. Friday mornings were the worst, she said, because that was the Muslim population’s day of rest and prayer. Those who opposed the American presence had leisure time for not just shooting but bombing, too, Sloan said.
The times she was most vulnerable, most in danger were when she was driving her little Mitsubishi around Kabul and she got caught in a traffic jam.
“These women in burqas would come up to the car and tap on the windows for money,” Sloan explained, “but you never knew what they had under those burqas.”
They could have had guns or been suicide bombers, she explained.
Sloan, who has a true appreciation for the ironic, says she enjoyed her time in Afghanistan because of the weird juxtaposition of things there. She remembered making a trip outside the green zone to a reservoir. Army regulations required her to go in full battle gear – body armor, multiple guns, knives, first aid kit, all told, about 80 pounds of gear. When her party arrived at the reservoir, they walked up to the edge and looked over, only to see Afghans paddling around in the water in gigantic swan paddle boats while she was looked on in her full armor.
Sloan also recalled another time when she accompanied a group to the Kabul Golf Club. The course wasn’t really playable, in large measure because it had been seeded with landmines, Sloan explained, but a local boy had figured out a way to make money by providing visitors with a golf ball and a club and taking their pictures. She recalled that she had her picture taken in full battle gear.
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“My swing was awful because I had to have my arms straight out in front of me because of all the gear,” she said.
Sloan said her ball didn’t go very far, but she had her picture taken and sent it out via email to friends and family with an (joking) explanatory message that she’d been working on landmine disposal. Her father wrote back that some of the recipients had not been amused at the mention of landmine disposal.
“I made a note to self to take Dad off the distribution list,” she said, laughing.
On a more serious note, Sloan said her experience in Afghanistan had not been typical. She was in a protected headquarters area, not stationed in a dusty combat outpost. Her work was more in the areas of nation building and diplomacy. One of her jobs was to work with local officials such as a provincial governor with whom she is still in touch via social media. Another was to plan and host visiting members of congress who wanted to see for themselves what was happening in Afghanistan.
MORE: Opinion: Consequences and Contexts Afghanistan are Not Unique to the United States
“Some were great and some were not so great,” she said referring to her experiences there.
Sloan particularly enjoyed working as a National Security Council mentor for local officials and helping them create plans and policies for their areas of responsibility. She didn’t always enjoy congressional visits. One congressman asked for freshly squeezed orange juice and Bailey’s Irish Cream for his visit. Sloan said she asked the congressman’s military aid if his boss understood he was coming to a war zone.
Sloan said she doubts Afghanistan has changed much since she was there 14 years ago. She suspects the Taliban is still making backroom deals with people, and she knows the national government in Afghanistan has lost a lot of support. She’s no fan of the Taliban, and she anticipates its leaders will continue “doing what they want,” no matter what they say their policies are.
Debbie Reddin van Tuyll is Editor-in-chief of The Augusta Press. Reach her at debbie@theaugustapress.com.
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