Why USA failed in Afghanistan in 2021?

 The U.S. withdrawal (and effective defeat) in Afghanistan in 2021 was the result of strategic, political, military, and cultural failures over two decades. It's not as simple as a battlefield loss—there was no final, decisive battle—but more a collapse of objectives, trust, and sustainability. Here's why the U.S. ultimately lost or withdrew:

1. Unclear and Shifting War Objectives

  • Initial goal (2001): Defeat al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban for harboring them.

  • Later goals (2002–2010s): Nation-building, promoting democracy, women’s rights, rebuilding institutions.

  • Final goal (2010s–2021): Just exit without total collapse.

This lack of a clear, coherent end-state made long-term success elusive. You can’t win a war if you don’t know what winning looks like.

2. The Taliban Had a Clearer Strategy

  • The Taliban had one mission: wait out the foreigners and regain control.

  • They were locally rooted, ideologically driven, and had sanctuaries in Pakistan, allowing them to regroup and strike again.

  • They didn’t need to win every battle—just survive long enough for the U.S. to leave.

3. Corruption and Fragility of the Afghan Government

  • The U.S. poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Afghanistan, but much of it was lost to corruption, inefficiency, and patronage.

  • The Afghan government never gained real legitimacy in the eyes of many Afghans. It was seen as foreign-imposed, weak, and riddled with self-serving elites.

  • The Afghan military, trained and funded by the U.S., depended heavily on U.S. air support, logistics, and paychecks. When the U.S. pulled back, they collapsed almost instantly.

4. Pakistan’s Role

  • Pakistan’s intelligence services (ISI) provided sanctuary, funding, and support to the Taliban.

  • Despite being a U.S. ally, Pakistan helped undermine the U.S. mission by backing the very insurgents it was fighting.

  • This allowed the Taliban to sustain a long insurgency that the U.S. could never fully extinguish.

5. U.S. Domestic Politics

  • After 20 years, American public and political will eroded.

  • Presidents from Obama to Trump to Biden all concluded: This is unwinnable.

  • Biden decided to follow through on Trump’s withdrawal agreement, believing that staying longer would just repeat the same failures at greater cost.

6. Military Limitations

  • U.S. forces could win battles, but not the war for hearts and minds.

  • Bombing raids and drone strikes often killed civilians, turning locals against U.S. forces.

  • The counterinsurgency approach (COIN) was too resource-heavy and never fully worked in Afghanistan’s complex tribal and rural landscape.

7. Collapse in 2021: Speed and Symbolism

  • As U.S. troops pulled out, the Taliban rapidly seized cities with little resistance.

  • The Afghan president fled, the army dissolved, and Kabul fell.

  • The chaotic U.S. evacuation from Kabul airport became a symbol of failure, like Saigon in 1975.

Summary:

The U.S. lost in Afghanistan because it tried to win a war it didn’t fully understand, with allies who couldn’t stand on their own, against an enemy that knew the terrain, the culture, and had time on their side.

Afghanistan didn’t just defeat an army. It defeated a model of intervention.

If you're interested, I can compare this to the Vietnam War or explain how this affects U.S. credibility today.

Same thing will going to happen if  USA and Israel invade Iran; they can burn half of Iran, but ultimately it will be a total failure like Afghanistan, history repeats itself 

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