No intel pointed to rapid collapse of Afghan government top US general

By Matthew KnottUpdated August 19, 2021 â€" 7.49amfirst published at 6.41am

Washington: US President Joe Biden has said he does not believe it would have been possible to extract US troops from Afghanistan without the chaotic scenes that have taken place in recent days.

Asked in an interview with American ABC News whether the withdrawal could have been handled better, Biden said: “No...The idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens.”

US President Joe Biden says chaos during Afghanistan pullout is to be expected.Credit:AP

Biden’s first interview since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan followed remarks by General Mark Milley, America’s top military officer, that there had been no intelligence to indicate that the Afghan security forces and government would collapse as quickly as they did.

Biden said the stunning demise of the Afghan government following two decades of support from western nations showed that it was well past time to end the war.

“When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country; when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off ... That’s simply what happened,” Biden said.

The US never anticipated the Afghan government falling in 11 days: Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.Credit:AP

Biden said it was not realistic to expect a small number of US troops to fend off the Taliban if the US had reneged on its commitment, made by the Trump administration, to withdraw from Afghanistan.

“I had a simple choice,” Biden said.

“If I said, ‘We’re going to stay,’ then we’d better be prepared to put a whole lot hell of a lot more troops in.”

Earlier in the day Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said intelligence had “clearly indicated, multiple scenarios were possible,” including a Taliban takeover following a rapid collapse of Afghan security forces and the government, a civil war or a negotiated settlement.

“The timeframe of rapid collapse - that was widely estimated and ranged from weeks to months and even years following our departure,” Milley said. “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated the collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”

US Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command, enters a plane evacuating people, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, on Tuesday.Credit:AP

The speed with which Taliban forces retook Afghanistan, as US and other foreign forces withdrew after a two-decade-long war, has sparked chaotic scenes at Kabul’s airport with diplomats, foreign citizens and Afghans trying to flee.

The US State Department sent a note to stranded Americans in Afghanistan on Thursday (AEST) warning them that the US cannot guarantee their security on the way to Kabul airport.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said US troops do not have the capability to help get people to the airport in Kabul to be evacuated because they are focused on securing the airfield.

But these people are struggling even to reach the airport though massive crowds and Taliban checkpoints.

“We’re going to do everything we can to continue to try and de-conflict and create passageways for them to get to the airfield. I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon.

US troops guarding the evacuation effort fired some shots in the air overnight to control crowds, but there were no indications of casualties or injuries, the Pentagon said earlier on Wednesday.

Austin said there are about 4500 US military personnel in Kabul and there “have been no hostile interactions with the Taliban, and our lines of communication with Taliban commanders remain open”.

“We do hear reports of people getting turned away from checkpoints. We’ve gone back and ... reinforced to the Taliban, that if they have credentials they need to be allowed through - and so that’s working better than it was,” Austin said.

with Reuters

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Matthew Knott is North America correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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