Withdrawal from Afghanistan: the US army admits a “strategic failure” – franceinfo

Less than a month after the final departure of American troops from Afghanistan at the end of twenty years of war, senior officers, as well as the Minister of Defense, responded on Tuesday, September 28 to questions from a Senate committee, to Washington. It is “a strategic failure“, they answered to the senators who questioned them. Some also questioned the word of the American president.

On August 19, barely four days after the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, Joe Biden assured that no one at the Pentagon had advised him to keep troops in Afghanistan. A version denied Tuesday for the very first time by two senior officers, including General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the central command ensuring that[il] had “recommended maintaining 2,500 men.“

“And earlier, in the fall of 2020, I also recommended maintaining 4,500 men, he continued. That was my point of view, and I also believed that the withdrawal of these troops would for sure lead to the collapse of the Afghan army.“.

However, the military does not overwhelm the current administration. They include in this global “strategic failure”, the Afghan army whose level of decrepitude had been undervalued according to Lloyd Austin, the Minister of Defense: “The fact that the Afghan army – which we and our partners had trained – collapsed without even defending itself took us by surprise, to say the opposite would be dishonest.“.

Before the US Senate committee, the Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, admitted that the main consequence of all this is the risk of a reconstitution of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State group, “a very real possibility“, he admitted.