While President Joe Biden and his advisers were confident the rapid collapse of the Afghan military was unlikely, intelligence assessments showed something different.
According to The New York Times, in classified assessments, American spy agencies “painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military” over the summer despite Biden’s belief it was not going to happen as quickly.
Many intelligence reports questioned whether Afghan security forces could resist and whether the government could keep the capital, Kabul, by July, as the Times reports.
On July 8, Biden said, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
A person familiar with the intelligence said one report in July showed the Afghan government was unprepared for an attack from the Taliban. Intelligence agencies suggested a collapse could occur rapidly, and there would be a high risk of Afghan security forces coming undone if the Taliban seized cities.
One senior administration official told the Times even by July, agencies never clearly predicted a Taliban takeover. The official also said the assessments were not given a “high confidence” judgment.
The official explained to the outlet that the intelligence assessment up until a week before Kabul’s fall was that a Taliban takeover was not inevitable yet.
Another July CIA report pointed out security forces and central government had lost control of the roads leading into the capital and discovered “that the viability of the central government was in serious jeopardy.”
During his speech on Monday, Biden explained, “The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So, what’s happened? Afghan political leaders gave up and left the country. The Afghan military collapsed…If anything the developments of the past week reinforced that ending military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”
He added, “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”