The slaughter of Afghan troops is an indictment of the West's policy

Of all the terrible stories around at the moment - the wildfires in California, the killing by police of yet another innocent black man, in Chicago, the continuing death of civilians in Yemen, the refusal of the Saudi government to accept responsibility for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, to name just a few - the slaughter by the Taliban of Afghan troops, trained by the US and Nato coalition partners, is among the most upsetting for me personally. The West's whole strategy has been to train and arm the Afghan national security forces to fight the Taliban on their own. Although it sounds a reasonable concept, it has never truly worked because in order to stand up for themselves the Afghans needed the full panoply of intelligence-gathering and logistical back-up which the Americans and others had always supplied in the past. Then Obama stopped all that, thinking it was time the Afghans defended their own country. But the Afghans couldn't cope. Then Trump arrived and agreed to reinstate some of the "enabling" stuff - intelligence, logistics, transport, medical evacuation - but basically the Afghans are still fighting on their own. They have mostly American advisers sitting back at local HQ but for every-day patrols they are on their own, and the Taliban have helped themselves. They have engaged in the wholesale slaughter of young Afghan soldiers and police. Even the Afghan special forces commandos who have proved to be doughty fighters, have been killed on a significant scale. It is incredible that Afghan men are still prepared to join the security forces. Ok they get a regular wage and food. But their chances of survival must be stupendously low. The attrition rate now, after more than 17 years, is appalling. And yet the Taliban hierarchy claims it is interested in a political "peace" settlement. The reason for the slaughter is obvious and it's gruesomely cynical. Kill as many of the US-trained Afghan soldiers as possible until Washington is forced to give major concessions for a settlement. And if the US agrees to concessions, the Afghan government will have to agree as well, and then the Taliban will grab most of the powerful appointments in a future government. The Taliban will be back in political control. So, 2,400 American service personnel and 454 British servicemen and women were sacrificed for this? The Afghanistan story is a terrible example of everything that has gone wrong in this world in the last 40 years.