Depends what part of the Afghan army we’re talking about. Many of the higher ups pocketed money that was supposed to go to the troops and the Afghan government believed that the US wasn’t going to leave so they didn’t try as hard as they could to root out the corruption and reform the military. The Afghan government also failed to negotiate any sort of power sharing agreement with the Taliban meaning their military was going to have to fight everywhere at once.

In the end many Afghan troops were left with spoiled food and insufficient ammo with commanding officers who were chosen for loyalty versus competence. I’m not sure how much of the blame lies on the average soldier, versus the officers, versus the politicians, versus the US military versus the US politicians. I’m also not sure how much credit should go to the Taliban for actually winning. I think there is a lot of blame to go around but there are also a lot of people who fought the Taliban with every ounce of strength they had and I don’t want to sweep them up in the blame. Overall I’d probably blame the average Afghan soldier the least and put more blame on the officers, Afghan politicians, US military and US politicians.