‘We lost Afghan war’: Top US generals tell Congress
Top defence officials tell lawmakers that Kabul’s collapse can be traced to a Doha deal signed in 2020
WASHINGTON/KABUL: Top US generals have told lawmakers at a congressional hearing that America lost the Afghanistan war and that it was caused by miscalculations spanning several administrations, and the collapse of the previous Afghan government in August could be traced to a 2020 deal between the US and the Taliban.
“It wasn’t lost in the last 20 days or even 20 months. There’s a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back,” Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told the House armed services committee on Wednesday.
“Strategically, the war is lost the enemy is in Kabul,” he went on to say, referring to the Taliban group taking power in Kabul.
Milley cited several reasons that he said needed to be looked into, such as the decision to move forces from Afghanistan for the war in Iraq and the failure to “effectively deal with Pakistan”.
Frank McKenzie, head of the US Central Command that piloted the war in Afghanistan, told lawmakers that the rapid collapse of President Ashraf Ghani’s government in Kabul, which caught the US completely unprepared, could be traced to the agreement that the Trump administration had signed with the Taliban group in Doha in February 2020.
Doha agreement in 2020 had a ‘pernicious effect’
“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military psychological more than anything else. But we set a date certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.
The Trump administration had kept the Ghani government out of the agreement, which had set a timeline for the US and international forces to leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, based on some conditions, which, the US generals told lawmakers, were largely not unfulfilled with one exception - the Taliban will not attack US or coalition forces.
Defence secretary Lloyd Austin testified alongside Milley and Mckenzie and agreed with their assessments of the way the Afghanistan war ended. The three officials had earlier told the Senate that they had recommended to the president that the US should retain 2,500 personnel in Afghanistan.
Mckenzie said that cutting troops to below 2,500 “was the other, sort of, nail in the coffin”. “It has been my position in my judgement, that if we went below an advisory level of 2,500 [military personnel], I believe the government of Afghanistan would likely collapse and the military would follow... that was going to be the inevitable result of drawing down to zero,” said the top US general.
Taliban disperse women protesters with gunfire
The Taliban on Thursday cracked down on a women’s rights rally, firing shots into the air and pushing back protesters, AFP reported. Women gathered outside a school in Kabul demanding the right for girls to return to secondary school. They unfurled a banner that read “Don’t break our pens, don’t burn our books, don’t close our schools”, before Taliban guards stepped in. A Taliban fighter then fired into the air.