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Taliban vs. Afghan Army: “This will be a test of their will and leadership”
“Given the numerical superiority of the Afghans, why does it appear that the Taliban is winning?” A reporter asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley at a Pentagon press briefing this afternoon.
“Given the numerical superiority of the Afghans, why does it appear that the Taliban is winning?
Before addressing the query directly, Gen. Milley answered with an abstraction: “Warfare is not just about numbers…there are other factors that determine outcomes.”
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Will and leadership are the two factors that Gen. Milley offered in his response after this, referring to them as “the two most important combat multipliers.”
More importantly, Gen. Milley also noted that, “There clearly is a narrative out there that the Taliban are winning. In fact, they are propagating an inevitable victory on their behalf. They’re dominating a lot of airwaves on that sort of thing.”
This comes as no surprise, given that the Taliban has long been involved in creating their own version of events.
Questioning the Taliban’s Narrative
If Gen. Milley is correct about any of this, it is certainly the fact that stories of the Taliban’s continued operational successes are being pushed through media outlets from all over.
This is in despite of the fact that, as Gen. Milley stated, “You’ve got 34 provincial capitals in Afghanistan. None of them have been seized.”
According to Milley, the “strategic momentum” in the area appears to favor the Taliban as a direct result of the narrative being disseminated throughout mainstream media outlets.
For perspective, the Taliban is currently operating with about 75,000 members. This means that their current personnel amounts to less than the total in the U.S. Army in 1910.
The Afghan Army now has a little over 270,000 soldiers.
The disparity in strength between these two powers, nearly 200,000 individuals, brings the narratives touting Taliban victories into question.
Whatever the true narrative of the current state of Afghanistan may be, actions are always louder than words.
And the Taliban’s words don’t mean much anyways.
