And America has "just" the biggest invested army world wide. I guess you need more than money to win the fight sometimes.

Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary, exemplifies really well how limited commitment to fight a war, will result in similar situation as in Korea (to a degree, I guess), Vietnam, almost in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.

Wars are not meant to be win. If you win a war quickly you don't make any profit.

US pulled out only because the general American public was bored of being in Afghanistan. Americans would had stayed there forever if they wanted to, and kept the Taliban at bay.

petro-dollar support from the gulf if actually exists was peanuts compared to 100s of billions from the US, Nato and India.

What makes you think they don’t get the same amount from the Gulf?

Only US and NATO provided military assistance. Others like India invested billions in constructive projects like Salma dam.

What would the talibans do with the money? It is quite obvious the Afghan army has a more expensive operation than talibans with rifles and pickups.

I guess the Afghan army should have focused more on quality than size to be able to afford talanted soldiers.

I don’t think that’s a valid question. What would they do with money? Buy more weapons, I guess? Invest in training. Hire more recruits.

Both you and the parent poster are missing the forest through the trees.

The failure is not in money, training, or conscription. The failure is in not giving the army any reason to fight.

If you don't give a rat's ass about your cause, and there's a serious possibility of defeat, why would you keep fighting?

The problem is that in twenty years, the coalition-supported government failed to make enough of its constituents give a rat's ass about their cause. They might not like the Taliban much, but they seem to prefer to live under them, than die for what is perceived as a corrupt, self-serving, ineffective government.

Ye well I agree. It is still astonishing how the army could collapse in this way. I guess the general staff more or less folded in some agreement with the Talibans. There should have been plenty of reports of artillery shelling with civilian causalities otherwise. Some kind of blood bath when high ranking officers have their backs against the wall.

> If you don't give a rat's ass about your cause, and there's a serious possibility of defeat, why would you keep fighting?

Keep fighting? My understanding is that there was no serious effort to fight from the army's side.

Exactly this.

Not really. Most Gulf states are petrified of militant Islam, and the Taliban subscribe to a creed (Deobandi) that's not particularly popular among Arabs.

Nevertheless, the funding they receive is more than enough to keep them going, as such point where US pulls out and they could fight the fledgling Afghan army.