Brian Cloughley, author of War, Coups and Terror: Pakistan’s Army in Years of Turmoil, discusses his article “System Failure: Training the Afghan Army;” why it’s difficult enough to field an army of countrymen who are literate and share a common language – and near impossible to cobble one together in Afghanistan; the new low of US-Afghan relations following the recent massacre; and expectations that US withdrawal will plunge the country into civil war, like when the Soviets departed in 1989.
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