Afghanistan government military and police forces trained and equipped by the United States are finding themselves increasingly challenged by the Taliban outside the capital, Kabul.

The Obama administration’s theory in Afghanistan and Iraq is that their militaries’ forces can be strengthened to the point that US forces can be withdrawn without their governments being overrun by their enemies. In the case of Afghanistan, it’s the Taliban; in Iraq, the Islamic State.

In Iraq, the theory is being tested by the campaign to retake Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, by a force that includes Iraqi government forces, Kurdish fighters and Shiite militias supported by Iranians. The assault, supported by US air and ground forces, began on Oct. 17.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban, the persistent enemy of the Kabul government of President Ashraf Ghani, is carrying out a wide campaign of attacks on government-held centers outside the capital, in 14 of 34 provinces in the north, west and south of the country. Kunduz in the north is under siege, and severe attacks have occurred in Farah province in the west and in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south. A massacre of more than a hundred Afghan soldiers who thought they were being allowed by the Taliban to escape Lashkar Gah occurred Oct. 11.

Some 4,500 Afghan soldiers were killed between March and August with some 900 having died in August alone. The casualties and a high level of corruption in the Afghan military and police have lessened recruitment to replace those lost and prompted desertions. Discord within the leadership of the Afghan government, between Ghani and his supposed partner, Abdullah Abdullah, doesn’t help.

The US is still carrying out air and drone strikes against the Taliban, but it would not be realistic to believe that they can compensate entirely for the difficulties Afghanistan’s own military and police are experiencing as they try to hold ground against the Taliban.

It would not be unimaginable that the Taliban will be successful in resuming rule in the country they abandoned in the face of US post-9/11 warfare there in 2001. If that occurs, Washington should cease trying to prevent the inevitable and just keep close track of any anti-US actions being mounted there, through satellite and other intelligence oversight measures.

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)