Washington: America’s top general Gen Mark Milley told senators on a briefing call Sunday that the United States could now face a rise in terrorist threats from a Taliban-run Afghanistan. Gen Mark Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The warning comes as intelligence agencies charged with anticipating those threats face new questions after the US-backed Afghan military collapsed with shocking speed.
Less than a week after a military assessment predicted Kabul could be surrounded by insurgents in 30 days, the world Sunday watched stunning scenes of Taliban fighters standing in the Afghan president’s office and crowds of Afghans and foreigners frantically trying to board planes to escape the country.
Milley said that US officials are expected to alter their earlier assessments about the pace of terrorist groups reconstituting in Afghanistan.
In June, the Pentagon’s top leaders said an extremist group like Al-Qaida may be able to regenerate in Afghanistan and pose a threat to the US Homeland within two years of the American military’s withdrawal from the country.
Two decades after the US invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban harboured al-Qaida leaders, experts say the Taliban and Al-Qaida remain aligned, and other violent groups could also find safe haven under the new regime.
Based on the evolving situation, officials now believe terror groups like Al-Qaida may be able to grow much faster than expected, according to the person, who had direct knowledge of the briefing but was not authorised to discuss the details of the call publicly and spoke to this agency on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration officials on the call with senators – among them were Milley, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — said U.S. Intelligence agencies are working on forming a new timeline based on the evolving threats, the person familiar with the matter said.
Current and former intelligence officials Sunday pushed back against criticism of what was widely seen as a failure by the agencies to anticipate how fast Kabul could fall.
One senior intelligence official said that ‘a rapid Taliban takeover was always a possibility. “As the Taliban advanced, they ultimately met with little resistance. We have always been clear-eyed that this was possible, and tactical conditions on the ground can often evolve quickly,” the official said.
But President Joe Biden didn’t suggest such an outcome at a July 8 news conference. He said ‘the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely’. But now Biden’s prophecy has gone wrong and the US faces terror threats again, officials said.
The reduced US troop presence in Afghanistan — down to 2,500 troops at the end of President Donald Trump’s term — may have hindered intelligence efforts in Afghanistan. Retired Lt Gen Robert Ashley, who led the Defence Intelligence Agency until October, said having fewer Americans embedded with Afghan forces meant there was less insight into how those forces would perform.
“It’s very, very difficult to gauge the morale down at the unit level because you’re just not there anymore,” Ashley said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if Afghan leaders would tell us only what we want to hear anyway,” Ashley added.
Monitoring terrorism threats in Afghanistan will be even more difficult with US troops withdrawing and the Taliban in control. Intelligence agencies in Afghanistan work side by side with troops. Without the same military presence, spies are severely limited in what they can collect about the morale of Afghan troops or support for the Taliban.