Afghan Army

Islamic National Army
اسلامي ملي اردو
The emblem of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan serves as the badge for all branches of the armed forces
Founded	c. 1722
Country	Afghanistan
Type	Army
Role	Land warfare
Part of	Afghan Armed Forces
Headquarters	Kabul, Afghanistan
Commanders
Army Chief	Qari Fasihuddin (from 2021)[1]
Insignia
Flag

The Islamic National Army (Pashto: اسلامي ملي اردو, Islāmī Milli Urdu),^[2][3][4] also referred to as the Islamic Emirate Army and the Afghan Army, is the land force branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. The roots of an army in Afghanistan can be traced back to the early 18th century when the Hotak dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power. It was reorganized in 1880 during Emir Abdur Rahman Khan's reign.^[5] Afghanistan remained neutral during the First and Second World Wars. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the Afghan Army was equipped by the Soviet Union.^[6]

After the resignation of President Najibullah in 1992, the army effectively dissolved. In 1996 the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban regime) took power, creating their own army, which lasted until the United States invasion of Afghanistan in October–November 2001.

By 2016, most of Afghanistan came under government control.^[7] However over the next few years the government slowly lost territory to the Taliban and eventually collapsed, with Kabul falling to the Taliban in 2021. The majority of training of the ANA was undertaken in the Kabul Military Training Centre. In 2019, the ANA had approximately 180,000 soldiers out of an authorized strength of 195,000.^[8] Despite its significant manpower on paper, in reality a significant portion of the Afghan National Army manpower were made up of ghost soldiers.^[9]

Following the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, in the face of a rapid Taliban offensive, the Afghan National Army largely disintegrated.^[10][11] Following the escape of President Ashraf Ghani and the fall of Kabul, remaining ANA soldiers either deserted their posts or surrendered to the Taliban.^[12] Some ANA remnants reportedly joined the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front of Afghanistan in the Panjshir Valley (see Republican insurgency in Afghanistan).^[13]