In 2007, NATO Needed A Warlord To Beat the Taliban. Signs Of Eventual Collapse Were Everywhere. – Forbes

Dutch forces at the Battle of Chora.

Back in the summer of 2007 when I first landed in Afghanistan to cover the war, I assumed I was too late.

The U.S.-led occupation was six years old. Fighting was sporadic. The Bush administration was surging forces into Iraq in a desperate bid to quell violence it had unleashed in that country. Attention was elsewhere.

For the United States, Afghanistan was a strategic afterthought. That soon would change.

What wouldnt change were the basic conditions on the ground. Even in 2007, signs were everywhere pointing to fragmentation, insecurity, an illegitimate and essentially powerless central government and an enduring insurgency.

I was too young at the timejust 29to understand what I was seeing. Looking back 14 years later, it all makes more sense. After the years-long draw-down of U.S. and NATO forcessteady at first, swift in the endthe Taliban easily recaptured Afghanistan last week.

U.S. and allied troops fell back to Kabuls airport. A last toehold in an new Islamic emirate.

An emergency airlift began hauling out thousands of embassy staff, foreign contractors and Afghans who had worked for occupying countries. Tens of thousands of other Afghans mobbed the airport and chased taxiing planes, hopingmostly in futilityfor rescue.

An Australian soldier in Tarin Kowt.

Back in June 2007, I rode a NATO helicopter to Tarin Kowt, a dusty town in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. A contingent of Dutch soldiers patrolled the town, glad-handed with provincial officials and trained a local warlords gunmen as auxiliary police. An Australian reconstruction team ran a trade school.

On the afternoon of June 15, I drove into Tarin Kowt with the Australians. An infantry squad kept guard as engineers built a soccer field for the local kids.

Nearby, a Dutch convoy threaded along the towns narrow streets for a meeting with some local officials. I couldnt see the Dutch troops from where I stood. But when the bomb exploded alongside the convoy, I sure as hell saw that. And heard it, too. A deep crack sound.

The blast killed Pvt. Timo Smeehuijzen, a popular young Dutch soldier, along with several Afghan school children. Later, I watched video of the attack. The children, their bodies shattered by the bomb, died slowly, moaning like something out of a horror movie.

The Australians raised their weapons. But the ambush was over. In truth, the bomb merely was a preview of things to come. The next day, scores of Taliban attacked the nearby town of Chora. The fighting would continue for several days and kill nearly 200 people.

Dutch troops hunkered down at the district center. An American Apache helicopter fired a missile, killing dozens of Taliban hiding in a farmhouse. Dutch F-16s dropped bombs. A Dutch howitzer fired shells.

Warlord Rozi Khan offered to help the NATO troops. Col. Hans van Griensven, the Dutch commander, was skeptical. Warlords such as Khan had a bad habit of switching sides. But the situation in Chora was dire. There were reports the Taliban were forcing local men to fight.

A rocket struck an American convoy in Tarin Kowt, killing U.S. Army staff sergeant Roy Lewsader Jr. I picked on him and teased him about his hair, the way he ate or slept, just about anything I could think of, his younger brother Mark said. I dont claim him as a hero, I claim his as a brother.

A piper plays as Dutch troops move Timo Smeehuijzen's remains.

Dutch and Australian troops seized a strategic road. Afghan reinforcements arrived by helicopter. A mortar shell malfunctioned and exploded, killing Dutch sergeant-major Jos Leunissen. At one time, six F-16s were in the air over Chora.

The bombing broke the Taliban force. On June 19, Khan and the NATO troops counterattacked and recaptured Chora.

Officials tallied the dead. One American. Two Dutch. Sixteen Afghan fighters. Seventy-one Taliban. Sixty-five civilians. A NATO inquiry blamed many of the civilian deaths on the alliances F-16s and artillery.

Khans fighters, some of them wearing the uniform of the Afghan National Auxiliary Police, had helped win the battle for NATO. But it was a pyrrhic victory. It was clear the cops answered to Khan, not to NATO or the Afghan government.

The auxiliary police force was barely trained, had poorly defined rules of engagement, underwent minimal vetting and was famously corrupt, Human Rights Watch explained. They were abusive, hijacked by warlords and open to infiltration by the Taliban.

NATO quietly shut down the auxiliary police program, only to restart it under a different nameAfghan Local Policea few years later. The rebranding did not solve the fundamental problem. The most important fighters in Afghanistan answered to unelected local leaders with local agendas.

Hundreds of Dutch and Australian troops gathered for Smeehuijzens memorial service. I dont speak Dutch, so I didnt understand the words. But the words were beside the point. All around me, men wept.

Australian troops accidentally shot and killed Khan during a nighttime operation in 2008. The Dutch left Uruzgan in 2010. The Taliban seized the provinceincluding Chora and Tarin Kowton Friday.

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In 2007, NATO Needed A Warlord To Beat the Taliban. Signs Of Eventual Collapse Were Everywhere. - Forbes