Washington (ST): Pentagon officials have acknowledged miscalculation that led to their country’s “strategic failure” in Afghanistan.
AFP quoted US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and US Central Command official General Kenneth McKenzie as saying publicly for the first time during a hearing before senators that they had advised US President Joe Biden to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to avoid the collapse of the Kabul regime.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the fact that the Afghan army, which we had trained with our partners, often collapsed without firing a single shot, surprised us, adding that it would be false to claim otherwise.
The Taliban movement captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, on August 15, after seizing large areas of the country in recent months, with the hasty withdrawal of US and NATO forces from this country after twenty years of military intervention that led to chaos and instability in this country.
K.Q.