Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is smacking down the suggestion that there were indications that Afghanistan’s military would collapse as quickly as it did.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Milley said, “I’m seeing all over the news that there were warnings of a rapid collapse. I have said previously from this podium and in sworn testimony before Congress that the intelligence clearly indicated multiple scenarios were possible. One of those was an outright Taliban take over following a rapid collapse of the Afghan security forces and the government, another was a civil war, and a third was a negotiated settlement.”
“However, the time frame of a rapid collapse that was widely estimated it ranged at weeks to months and even years following our departure. There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,” he added.
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According to a report in The New York Times, “Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials.”
“By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital,” the report added.
Additionally, the intelligence reportedly indicated that “should the Taliban seize cities, a cascading collapse could happen rapidly, and the Afghan security forces were at high risk of falling apart.”
However, an unnamed administration official told the Times that as late as a week ago the overall intelligence assessment was that a Taliban take over was not inevitable. Additionally, the official noted that the assessments were not given a “high confidence” level of certainty.
During remarks at the White House on Monday, President Joe Biden admitted that the collapse of Afghanistan “did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”
He added, “So, what’s happened? Afghan political leaders gave up and left the country. The Afghan military collapsed.”
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday, “We were clear-eyed going in when we made this decision that it was possible that the Taliban would end up in control of Afghanistan.”
“Now, as the president said in his remarks yesterday, we did not anticipate that it would happen at this speed,” he added.