The Afghan National Army wasthe land warfare branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. The Army's roots could 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. 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.
After the resignation of President Najibullah in 1992, the Islamic State of Afghanistan took control of the Army when that government was driven from power in 1996 by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban regime), which lasted until late 2001 and the United States invasion of Afghanistan.
By 2014, most of Afghanistan came under government control. 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. Despite its significant manpower on paper, in reality a significant portion of the Afghan National Army manpower were made up of ghost soldiers.
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 army largely disintegrated. Following the escape of President Ghani and the fall of Kabul, remaining ANA soldiers either deserted their posts or surrendered to the Taliban. Some army remnants reportedly joined the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front of Afghanistan in the Panjshir Valley.
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