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A Marine's harrowing account of how he knew Afghanistan was doomed nine years before the withdrawal
As Afghanistan marked the three-year anniversary of the withdrawal of coalition forces, the Taliban paraded through the streets with glee while citizens looked on in horror.
Crowds chanted ‘God is great’ and ‘jihad is our way’ in Kabul as a truck dragged a Star-Spangled Banner with a red X crossing out the stripes.
At Bagram, the airbase that served as the backbone of U.S. operations after 9/11, Soviet-era tanks and abandoned American weapons were shown off to an audience of militant officials and Chinese and Iranian diplomats.
What wasn’t on display were the oppressive and inhumane policies of the regime that have taken the rights of Afghans back 20 years.
Marine veteran Christopher Izant watched in disbelief. The footage stopped him in his tracks. But no matter how hard it was to watch, he says it is crucial not to look away.
Nine years before the calamitous and bloody withdrawal in August 2021, he was in Helmand Province on a mission to try and help the Afghans avoid the situation that unfolded.
Marine veteran Christopher Izant deployed to Afghanistan nine years before the withdrawal in August 2021. Even then he foresaw the chaotic scenes that unfolded
For him, there was a sense of inevitability even a decade before the terrorists overran Afghanistan and took back the power they lost in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack.
The Taliban had been pushed into the mountains and were in retreat during the earliest years of the hunt for Al Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden.
But as time went on and the U.S. made it evidently clear they weren’t going to be on the ground forever, the Taliban started to gain their foothold.
In Izant's book Final Engagement: A Marine's Last Mission and the Surrender of Afghanistan , he lays out the conditions and strategic blunders that all but guaranteed defeat in America’s longest war
Izant knew that however long the Marines stayed, the Afghans wouldn't be ready to stand on their own, and he was given a timeframe that meant his mission was almost impossible.
He imagined it was similar to the frustrations Marines felt at the tail end of the Vietnam War.
The question for Izant is: Were we complicit in the defeat, or victims of it?’
‘Looking away is what got us in this position to begin with,’ he told DailyMail.com
‘People were disengaged, not paying attention to what was happening in Afghanistan until it hit the news three years ago, with all the dramatic footage and imagery.’
The imagery was desperate evacuees clinging onto planes leaving Kabul International Airport as the terrorists took over the capital.
The footage was the aftermath of the ISIS-K suicide blast on August 26 that killed 170 Afghan civilians wanting to escape and 13 U.S. service members.
Izant predicted the chaos that would ensue. When he served alongside the Afghan military in 2012 and 2013, he knew they weren’t ready to go it alone.
In his book Final Engagement: A Marine's Last Mission and the Surrender of Afghanistan, he lays out in harrowing detail the conditions and strategic blunders that all but guaranteed defeat in America’s longest war.
He documents the violence that transformed a generation of American and Afghan warriors from idealist volunteers to disillusioned veterans.
For Izant, what unfolded in August 2021 was a longtime coming. He saw it during his deployment.
Then-Lieutenant Izant and his team of advisors were sent to Combat Outpost Taghaz in October 2012, one of the most isolated compounds in Helmand Province
Izant predicted the chaos that would ensue. When he served alongside the Afghan military in 2012 and 2013, he knew they weren’t ready to go it alone
And it was only a matter of time when in 2016 the Taliban took over the Afghan borderlands district where he advised the local military just three years before.
Then-Lieutenant Izant and his team of advisors were sent to Combat Outpost Taghaz in October 2012.
He was as prepared as he could be.
He learned Pashto so he could have conversations with members of the community and acclimatized by training in the heat of the desert at the California base, Twentynine Palms.
As leader of Border Advisor Team 1, he was assigned to work with 1st Kandak, who were rated ‘independent with advisors’.
Izant thought it was a generous way of indicating that the only assistance they received from the NATO coalition came directly from his team.
For Izant, there was a sense of inevitability even a decade before the terrorists overran Afghanistan and took back the power they lost in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack
By then, the clock was already ticking for the Afghan forces.
President Barack Obama had a timetable for American troops to come home and the coalition forces were focused on assisting their local counterparts to take on the Taliban alone.
Izant was helping them get to that point.
The Marines were rarely involved in any combat, and only advisors like him were going outside the wire for operations against the Taliban.
Taghaz was one of the most isolated compounds in Helmand Province.
Just a couple of miles from the Pakistan border, the area was a hub of drug and weapons trafficking and a hotbed of insurgent activity.
It couldn't be reached by coalition artillery and mortar fire, and Izant and his Marines had only six months to try and sustain the advances gained over years of fighting.
A surveillance balloon high above the compound tracked insurgents for miles around, and U.S. Hellfire missiles were a crucial defense during Taliban attacks.
Every Marine on his team carried an M203 grenade launcher and a bandolier of 40mm high explosive grenades.
‘Unless we prearranged to have aircraft accompany our patrols or managed to call them in on request, we would have to drop our own bombs’ he writes.
It was the headquarters of Afghan Border Police, and Marines were there to make sure their native colleagues were able to stop the Taliban when the Americans were gone.
As Afghanistan marked the three-year anniversary of the withdrawal of coalition forces, the Taliban paraded through the streets with glee while citizens looked on in horror
At Bagram, the airbase that served as the backbone of U.S. operations after 9/11, Soviet-era tanks and abandoned American weapons were shown off to an audience of militant officials and Chinese and Iranian diplomats
Izant arrived at a precarious point in Operation Enduring Freedom. There had been an uptick in ‘Green on Blue’ incidents, where Afghans turned on U.S. forces.
That August, 10 U.S. service members had been killed in insider attacks and by the end of the year they made up 15 percent of all coalition deaths.
‘While we hoped that good relationships would save us, we prepared for the worst’, Izant writes.
Marines had to take extra precautions to try and avoid it happening while they were alongside the Afghans on patrols.
The Taliban was still peppering outposts with rocket-propelled grenades and U.S. bases were shutting down.
His interpreter was threatened by the Taliban.
A headless body was sent to his family with a note warning him to never come home. In the end they helped him get a visa so he could leave Afghanistan.
The Taliban was also biding their time. Patient and relentless, they knew American forces were on a deadline, and were lying in wait.
Ambushes were common, and each time U.S. and Afghan forces left their post they would be targeted.
They would lay out traps and pounce at any opportunity.
‘What stood out to me, most painfully and most obviously, was the disconnect between what our leaders were saying about the Afghan security forces and the reality on the ground,’ Izant said.
‘I went out on patrol and was in firefights with the Afghan border police. I saw how they were living on their combat outposts with about a third of the men that they should have had.
‘They were totally undersupplied. They were miserable. Their morale was low. They were afraid, because they knew we were leaving.’
Izant says that commanders were singing a ‘totally absurd’ different tune about how the Afghans were ready to fight and take the lead.
Izant arrived at a precarious point in Operation Enduring Freedom. There had been an uptick in ‘Green on Blue’ incidents, where Afghans turned on U.S. forces
‘The Taliban ran free and really started harassing and doing some damage against the Afghan forces in the area.
‘But all that was swept under the rug, because the leaders were told, your mission success looks like following this timeline.
It was a demoralizing time for both the Afghans and Marines. The U.S. didn’t want to publicly state that the Afghans were heading for failure.
But the projection of confidence of their military readiness would lead to devastating consequences.
There were many examples that showed Izant the Afghans weren’t ready to hold the positions earned through the sacrifices of the Marines and coalition partners.
One of the Afghan Border Police commanders sent a sergeant out on patrol instead of going himself.
They had a zero ability to counter IEDS, in an area that was littered with hidden explosives laid by the Taliban.
Their casualty evacuation capabilities were essentially driving the wounded across the desert in trucks as fast as possible.
‘They were great people, doing their best with what they had, but they needed a lot more time and a lot more training to be an effective fighting force,’ Izant says.
‘From small unit leadership to tactics, to weaponeering, it all needed to be drastically improved if they were going to stand a chance.’
During one night raid, communications with the outpost went down and they got lost.
It was freezing and they were stationed outside a building where they thought the Taliban were holed up, trying to catch people fleeing.
They were ready to engage when one of their men popped up on the roof and they discovered there were no insurgents in Afghanistan.
His corporal then warned him of the smell of marijuana, and it was the Afghan soldiers getting high in the middle of an ambush.
‘It was a really fun operation but it was full of risks.
‘Looking back, you ask yourself what were those risks for? It's really hard to get that answer.
‘It makes me think about what we achieved in all the sacrifices that earnings gave.
Afghan evacuees sit on the floor of U.S. Boeing C-17 in August 2021, during the fall of Kabul
After two firefights in a day, the Marines were told they weren’t allowed to leave the outpost with the Afghans.
For Izant, the message received was essentially: You’re leaving soon. If the Afghans haven’t got it by now, they’re going to have to figure it out on their own.
There was also endemic corruption within the military that filtered down from the Afghan government.
A sergeant Izant fought with told him he needed to hand over $2,000 if he wanted to be commissioned as an officer, and there was no way he could come up with that money.
‘It was abundantly clear to me that the right people were not in the leadership positions because of that kind of structure,’ Izant says.
Even though he had the leadership abilities, the man who ended up paying the bribe was lazy and incompetent.
August is now a week of celebration for the Taliban. The abandoned Afghans forced to live under their cruel policies are helpless, and society continues to deteriorate.
Girls are being turned away from schools and women are restricted from going out in public.
Public beatings are frequent. Arrests are random and without due process.
Just last week the government limited the sound of women’s voices in public under stricter virtue laws.
The people have lost liberties enjoyed for 20 years under the far more liberal US-backed Afghan government.
It was that way of life that Izant was trying to preserve.
He was honored to be in a position where he could make a difference. He also feels lucky that he was able to bring all his men home.
When asked if he thinks the deployment and the wider operation was worth it, he says the question is not for him to answer.
‘Those who should answer that question are the people who paid full price.
The Gold Star families, the children who don't have a father now, the spouses that don't have a wife, the parents that don't have their children.
‘You ask them, was it worth it? And I think you’re going to get a pretty clear answer.’
Five days after he got home in 2013, while he was on a U.S. base, the Boston Marathon Bombing happened.
He was full of disappointment and anguish over how he left, wondering how long the Afghans were going to last without them,
Izant was then confronted with terrorism and violence in the streets of the city he considered a second home.
‘It was a crystallizing moment for me, and showed me that we have enemies here at home.
‘Why are we going abroad in search of monsters when we're not even protecting the homeland?’
That’s when he decided he wanted to keep serving his country with a more concrete impact, so he became an FBI agent.
‘A lot of us are still trying to work that same kind of mission.’
For Izant the global war on terrorism is far from over, even though the U.S. has left Afghanistan.
‘It hasn't stopped for me. It hasn't stopped for the families of the fallen. It will never stop for them.
‘And I think we do a disservice to everyone that's still working it if we pretend that it's over now.’
He admits his deployment was relatively easy compared to those who went in right after 9/11.
But the moral injury suffered by thousands of Americans has generated an enormous cost of the war that may never go away.
And every year the images from the withdrawal are replayed on cable news and reprinted in newspapers, those memories return.
With his book he wants to say thank you to the Afghans who volunteered to join us in the battle.
He also wants to apologize on behalf of the U.S. for letting them down.