By Jon King / jking@whmi.com


A Livingston County veteran who served in Afghanistan says the scenes unfolding of the Taliban taking over the country amid chaos are “gut-wrenching”.

Adam Smiddy of Howell joined the U.S. Army in 2004 after graduating from Brighton High School, eventually becoming a Green Beret assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group based out of Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. He made five overseas deployments, including in Iraq twice and then in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012, where he served as a Special Forces Communications Sergeant.

During his three combat deployments, Smiddy says his Special Forces team conducted hundreds of raids to capture high-value targets, distributed aid to Iraqis and Afghanis, and conducted various intelligence operations in both theaters.

Smiddy says while watching the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and takeover by the Taliban has been “gut-wrenching” and “really demoralizing,” he’s not interested in playing the blame game, saying there is plenty of that to go around. "There's a lot of finger-pointing when it comes to politicians and politics, there is really no time and place for that. The American people are honestly as a whole just as responsible for any one of these outcomes that have happened. We have all voted through the political system for the people that have made these deals, that have made these strategies. This is something that I feel that all of us Americans need to own."

Smiddy says if one reason has to be picked for the failure in Afghanistan it was the constantly shifting strategy that took place over the last twenty years, particularly the loss of focus once the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

He adds that the cards were stacked against ultimate success in Afghanistan as countries like Pakistan served as a safe haven for Taliban forces, where they could retreat, regroup and then return to fight again. "Countries like Pakistan and others where we were coming out of one fighting season, knowing that fighters were leaving the country for safe haven and then just to return the following spring. It puts the country and the strategy as a whole in peril because of this process where the people that we were fighting in the summer had respite during the winter outside of the area that we controlled. The increasing shifting of strategy and then the broader international response and support really are primary factors, I think, for what happened."

Smiddy says while the outcome itself isn’t a shock, he was surprised by the rapidity of the collapse, saying they always knew the Afghan government would be difficult to deal with in the sense that it’s hard to root out self-interest and corruption in certain societies because of the way their cultural norms exist.

However, he was more surprised by the lack of institutional efforts on behalf of the Afghan army and security forces. He says there were reports of Afghan Special Forces trying to hold their line, but the only food provisions were a "cupboard full of slimy potatoes" and no one can be expected to hold a contested battle line without proper supplies. “Nobody’s going to be able to hold a position with that level of supply and support from their government. So when it comes to the actual guys on the ground, I really don’t blame them. They were put in an incredibly difficult position and they were not set up for success by their own government.”

As for allegations of endemic corruption by Afghan leaders, he says he never personally observed it, and if he had he would have reported it, but that they certainly heard about it and he has no doubt it was a factor.

Smiddy says his experience on the ground with Afghan soldiers was that they were willing and able to fight and he could always count on them to immediately return fire against the Taliban. He says while they may have argued later about specific tactics, they never failed to respond.

He says the fears about what type of treatment the Afghani people, especially women, will face under the Taliban are absolutely justified, noting that the “Taliban are who they are” and that while they may be holding back from open displays of violence, that’s mainly because the eyes of the international community are focused on them right now. But Smiddy has no doubt that in those areas in which there are no reporters, retribution is taking place.

He further believes we as a nation have an obligation to the people, especially the interpreters, but really to everyone who supported us while we were there, to get them to freedom. “Which, to me, is America. We really need to do what we can to welcome those people to our community. They want all the freedoms that we all hold dear and they fought for those same freedoms beside us, but under a different flag. I absolutely believe that we should really look at these people with an empathetic view and understand that they are us and we should be supporting them.”

Photos courtesy of Adam Smiddy