CENTCOM HEAD CALLS FOR REVIEW OF AFGHAN PULLOUT
▶ US military chief thanks UAE for help during Afghanistan withdrawal
The US needs a “whole of government” assessment of how the withdrawal from Afghanistan went wrong, US Central Command chief Gen Kenneth McKenzie has said.
Speaking to The National yesterday, Gen McKenzie discussed the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan before an August 31 deadline and said the US would carry out “a pretty deep study into what went wrong”.
He also spoke about the reaction of Washington’s allies to the situation in Kabul, as well as the pressing threats to the Middle East.
Gen McKenzie, who oversees US military operations in 20 countries from Egypt to Pakistan, said Washington was aware the Afghan government risked collapsing as US forces withdrew, but it was surprised by how quickly it happened.
“I think we felt there will be a grave danger as we drew down our forces to near zero in August. I don’t believe anyone saw how quickly the actual collapse of the military and the government ... would occur,” he said.
“We will do a pretty deep study into what went wrong and why the Afghan military, that we spent so much money on, failed so quickly.
“But at the same time, our investigation won’t be limited to solely military matters. We need to look at the whole of government approach.”
His focus is now on ensuring the Taliban lived up to promises made at talks with the US in Doha, when the group said Afghanistan would not become a safe haven for terrorist groups plotting attacks against American interests.
“I’ve learnt a long time ago never to listen to what the Taliban say [but] instead to look at what they do. And there’s no evidence yet that they have done anything to sever ties with Al Qaeda or to suppress the ISIS-K to the degree that it needs to be suppressed,” he said.
He said the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan was a “shot in the arm” for global extremism.
Any US recognition of the Taliban’s rule and any support or aid sent by Washington will be contingent on the group living up to the commitments made in Doha, Gen McKenzie said.
The group also must not “roll back the dramatic improvements in rights of women, education, other things that have occurred over the last two decades”, he said.
Th withdrawal operation, when the US led a global effort to fly out tens of thousands of Afghans and foreign citizens from Kabul airport, highlighted America’s partnerships in the region and further afield.
“We also recognise the contributions of our allies, in particular what the UAE did to help us with the flow of evacuees out of Afghanistan [which were] the actions of a true friend in a time of need,” he said.
Gen McKenzie moved to ease the concerns of allies.
He said his visit to Abu Dhabi yesterday was part of an effort to provide reassurance.
“This is an important region to us. We are a global power with global responsibilities,” he said.
Turning to Iraq, where President Joe Biden has raised the possibility of withdrawing troops by the end of the year, Gen McKenzie said any decision would happen in talks with Baghdad.
But it “is clear to me that they want our continued presence … in some form”, he said.
Nato also had a significant training mission in the country that he expects to continue, he said.
The general said he felt there were clear lessons to be learnt from the collapse of the Afghan military this year and the Iraqi military in 2014 when ISIS invaded.
“I think the lesson of 2014 is we left very quickly and we didn’t leave anything behind,” he said.
“I think the lesson of Afghanistan in 2021 is we left very quickly and we didn’t leave anything behind – I think you can draw two lessons from that.”
His suggestion was modelled on the US presence in Iraq today. “If you remain behind at a relatively small level, as we are doing in Iraq right now, you can continue to allow Iraqi forces to gain success against ISIS,” he said.
While he said the once global terrorist group was diminished, it remained “an ongoing threat”, but one that could be managed through partnerships with local forces.
“One of the things we know about ISIS is they do like to hold ground; they want to reestablish the caliphate, even if it’s small and far-flung,” he said.
“What we want to do is prevent them from being able to gain interconnected tissue. We want to prevent them from going global.
“The idea would be, you keep them local, where local security forces can deal with them. An example would be Iraq, where I think we’re making very good progress.”
The Taliban released “about 1,000 hardened ISIS fighters” when they threw open prison doors after taking over, leaving “a very capable force in Afghanistan today”.
Gen McKenzie said that, rather than ISIS, Iran was the region’s most pressing security concern.
“Iran is a very serious threat. They have an aggressive theocratic regime that’s outwardly facing. I think they seek hegemonic status in the region. I think they seek to be a dominant power,” he said.
Particularly, this threat comes from Iran’s “massive building of ballistic missiles, through their proxy warriors who fight across the region, to the rising threat of land-attack cruise missiles and unmanned aerial systems, which we have seen them employ against Saudi Arabia and others here in the past couple of years”.
He said the rise of drone warfare was an issue for countries around the world to confront and something that worried the US, which is investing heavily in ways to stop drones.
“The larger drones are actually easier to deal with,” he said.
“They look like aeroplanes and they can be dealt with like aeroplanes.
“But a small drone is an enduring problem and we have still got a way to go to solve that problem, but it’s not for lack of hard work on the problem, let me assure you.”
He hopes talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal will limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions, although he said he backed Mr Biden’s desire for a broader agreement that takes account of its missiles and proxies.
He said the US Central Command’s job was to “deter Iran so the diplomats can do that very hard work”.
He said the US wanted to support the Lebanese military, whose country had been devastated by an economic crisis and where Iran-backed Hezbollah supporters and their allies had fought street battles with gunmen they say are backed by the Christian Lebanese Forces.
Asked if that included helping to pay salaries and even providing food for servicemen, he said the US provided a several things to the Lebanese military as well as others in the region.
He declined to answer specifically about contingencies for removing US and foreign citizens from Lebanon in the event of a broader conflict, as the US did in 2006 during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah, although he told The National the US military had “contingencies for everything”.