Monitoring Desk: “Taliban are and were a Terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with Alqaeeda. Attacks by terrorists for future attacks on the United States are not finished. It is clear and obvious that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted with the Taliban now in power in Kabul”.
This was said by General Milley in Senate Armed Services Committee. He feared Afghanistan would ahead towards civil war.
He was of the view that there was a series of failures that led to the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
Important points of his hearing are hereunder:
“It is clear and obvious that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted with the Taliban now in power in Kabul. We need to consider some uncomfortable truths that we didn’t fully comprehend. The fact that the Afghan army that we and our partners trained, simply melted away – in many cases without firing a shot – took us all by surprise and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.
My analysis was that an accelerated withdrawal, without meeting specific and necessary conditions, risks losing the substantial gains made in Afghanistan, damaging US worldwide credibility and could precipitate a general collapse of the NSF and the Afghan government, resulting in a complete Taliban takeover, or general civil war,” Milley said.
My view is that 2,500 was an appropriate number to remain and that if we went below that number, in fact, we would probably witness a collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan military”.