The Mistake of Gaining Skills Without Values

By Tim Elmore

The collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the speed in which Taliban fighters entered the Afghan capital recently despite 20 years of training and billions of dollars in American aid was nothing short of astonishing. What took decades to build was lost in a few days.

When President Biden announced that U.S. forces would withdraw from Afghanistan this summer without conditions, the demise of Afghan leadership began. In about a week, Taliban fighters overran more than a dozen provincial capitals and entered Kabul with no resistance, triggering the departure of Afghanistan’s president and the collapse of his government. Security forces in the districts surrounding Kabul simply disintegrated. By nightfall, police checkpoints were abandoned and the Taliban roamed the streets again.

As someone who visited Afghanistan in 2004, this was heartbreaking to me.

I wondered what malfunction on our part could have led to this downfall. Did we fail in the training process of militia? Was there a breakdown in communication? Did the Taliban execute superior military strategy? Was it advanced technology? Did they overwhelm the Afghan army with their ammunition? Did they have better equipment, bullets or bombs? 

Nope. None of these.

The Taliban simply offered bribes. They made elicit deals with government officials, and later with military officials that enabled them to walk into an abandoned province or city. When President Biden said he had no idea how quickly the Afghan army would fall, he was only calculating their ability to protect territory militarily. He neglected to calculate the power of a tempting offer to compromise all they’d worked for over twenty years. The Taliban only needed money to achieve their goals, not expertise. The shift occurred with little or no pushback.

To be fair, U.S. intelligence appears to have lacked a sustainable plan for the new government. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported the U.S. goals were often "operationally impractical or conceptually incoherent," the new SIGAR report says, running down a list of paradoxes the U.S. and its partners tried to navigate. Note the first two:

1. Root out corruption, but also jump-start the economy by injecting billions of dollars into it. This meant that money was suddenly available.

2. Improve formal governance and eliminate a culture of impunity, but also maintain security, even if it meant empowering corrupt or predatory actors.

Clearly, this is a complex scenario. It is about much more than leaders who caved because they were offered some cash. But my time spent in Afghanistan makes this is personal to me.

What I Witnessed with My Own Eyes
      
I received a phone call with an invitation from a liaison of Afghan government officials in 2004, shortly after the Taliban was removed from power. The country had established a new government and needed leadership training. These leaders had never held high ranking positions before. The reason they called me instead of someone more experienced, is that Afghanistan is a story-telling culture and they’d heard that we teach leadership with images, stories and conversations. 

I wanted to focus on character, values and ethics education, but locals said they urgently needed hard skills, such as prioritizing goals, planning and executing strategy, and team management. They felt they could deal with ethics questions later. While I was happy to cover such issues, I knew that skill training without covering ethics and values would be incomplete. Even hollow. And corruption can surface rapidly.

This month, we saw the outcomes of leaders who focus on skills instead of values.

Humans are naturally self-serving. While I don’t assume people are evil, left to ourselves we tend to focus on our own survival. We look out for number one. I’m concerned this is what government and military officials did in Afghanistan. It led to illicit deals and mass desertions. In contrast, our founding fathers knew that democracy could not stand without strong moral fiber throughout its citizens and leaders. John Adams stated it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” Ben Franklin said, “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom.” If a population loses its sense of virtues and ethics, it means they’ll require more laws to maintain order. A person void of personal ethics requires more public legislation. Here is how I break it down:

Morals - These are convictions people hold personally, but do not impose on others. For example, someone may choose not to drink alcohol or gamble.

Ethics - These are convictions people agree upon collectively, leading to a civil society. For example, citizens agree to not steal from others or cheat on their taxes. 

Values - Based on our ethics, a nation’s citizens agree upon shared values that dictate how they’ll govern. For example, Americans value freedom and independence.  

Laws - As a result of our values and ethics, a nation’s citizens create laws that govern behavior. For example, our leaders crafted the Bill of Rights and ongoing legislation. 

Is There Anything We Can We Do Today?  
   
I don’t fault the people in power in Afghanistan. They’re imitating what they’ve witnessed for centuries. Adults don’t change quickly. But the Afghan youth deserve better. While I was there, I taught leadership to university students who thirsted for values-based principles. If we don’t impart a set of values to our students, they’ll experience a vacuum inside. John Maxwell once told me that people without values are like a plastic bag sitting on a table. They don’t stand up well on their own and the slightest breeze can blow them over. That bag must be filled in order to stand. Those who don’t possess values tend to need others to communicate their value to them. The role of social media becomes increasingly important—millions crave and need the affirmation of others: their likes, their views, their shares, their comments. If we’re empty of values, we need approval to fill that void. It’s quite an emotional roller coaster ride. And so pitiful. A society cannot stand for long led by those with hollow hearts.

Centuries ago, the Great Wall of China was constructed. It remains one of the seven manmade wonders of the world. It was built tall and wide to prevent any invading army from penetrating the wall. Did you know, however, that intruders penetrated the wall three times within the first one hundred years? But in no case did they tunnel under the wall or climb over it. All they had to do was bribe the guards at the gate. What a picture of us today. We spend all our time constructing exterior walls and forget to shape the hearts of the young men guarding the gate.

Any lasting training must begin with values. Leaders are built from the inside out.

Let’s learn our lesson. We must not push for skill training at the expense of character training. In fact, let’s commit to always begin our training in leadership and social and emotional learning with character. We won’t live well without a set of values. In fact, without them, we can’t expect our students to tell a different story than the current events we read about today.