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      US withdrawal triggered catastrophic defeat of Afghan forces, damning watchdog report finds

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      US withdrawal triggered catastrophic defeat of Afghan forces, damning watchdog report findsReport by special inspector general blames Trump and Biden administrations, as well as the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani Afghan armed forces collapsed last year because they had been made dependent on US support that was abruptly withdrawn in the face of a Taliban offensive, according to a scathing assessment by a US government watchdog.A report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) on the catastrophic defeat that led to the fall of Kabul on 15 August, blamed the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden as well as the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani.“Sigar found that the single most important factor in the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces’ (ANDSF) collapse in August 2021 was the decision by two US presidents to withdraw US military and contractors from Afghanistan, while Afghan forces remained unable to sustain themselves,” said the congressionally mandated report, which was released on Wednesday.Afghanistan stunned by scale and speed of security forces’ collapseRead moreThe Sigar account focused on the impact of two critical events that it said doomed the Afghan forces: the February 2020 Doha agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban, and then Biden’s April 2021 decision to pull out all US troops by September, without leaving a residual force.“Due to the ANDSF’s dependency on US military forces, these events destroyed ANDSF morale,” the inspector general said. “The ANDSF had long relied on the US military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The US-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population.”The ANDSF were dependent on US troops and contractors because that was how the forces were developed, the report argued, noting “the United States designed the ANDSF as a mirror image of US forces”.“The United States created a combined arms military structure that required a high degree of professional military sophistication and leadership,” it said. “The United States also created a non-commissioned officer corps which had no foundation in Afghanistan military history.”It would have taken decades to build a modern, cohesive and self-reliant force, the Sigar document argued. The Afghan air force, the main military advantage the government had over the Taliban, had not been projected to be self-sufficient until 2030 at the earliest.Within weeks of Biden’s withdrawal announcement, the contractors who maintained planes and helicopters left. As a result, there were not enough functioning aircraft to get weapons and supplies to Afghan forces around the country, leaving them without ammunition, food and water in the face of renewed Taliban attacks.The US had begun cutting off air support to the Afghan army after the Doha agreement was signed. Exacerbating its impact on morale was the fact that the deal had secret annexes, widely believed to stipulate the Taliban’s counter-terrorism commitments and restrictions on fighting for both the US and Taliban. They remain secret, apparently, even from an official enquiry.“Sigar was not able to obtain copies of these annexes, despite official requests made to the US Department of Defence and the US Department of State,” the report observes.The secrecy led to unintended consequences, the report said.“Taliban propaganda weaponised that vacuum against local commanders and elders by claiming the Taliban had a secret deal with the United States for certain districts or provinces to be surrendered to them,” it said.The Sigar report also blames the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, who changed ANDSF commanders during the Taliban offensive, appointing aged loyalists from the communist era, while marginalising well-trained ANDSF officers aligned with the US.It quotes one unnamed former Afghan government official as saying that after the Doha agreement, “President Ghani began to suspect that the United States wanted to remove him from power.”According to the former official and a former Afghan government Ghani was afraid of a military coup. He became a “paranoid president … afraid of his own countrymen” and particularly of US-trained Afghan officers.Ghani fled Afghanistan on the day Kabul fell.TopicsAfghanistanAshraf GhaniUS foreign policyTrump administrationBiden administrationSouth and central AsiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden vows to tackle ‘grave threat’ of untraceable ‘ghost guns’ – as it happened

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      Biden to announce restrictions on ‘ghost guns’

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      Biden announces ghost gun restrictions, seeks to end ‘terrible fellowship of loss’

      Joe Biden said it was “basic common sense” to want untraceable, so-called ghost guns off the street, during a White House address to announce new firearms restrictions.
      In an event at the Rose Garden attended by numerous survivors and families of victims of gun violence, the president said he was clamping down on the kit-form guns to try to prevent others joining the “terrible fellowship of loss.”
      He also took a swipe at Republicans in Congress, and the gun rights lobby, including the national rifle association (NRA), that have opposed his efforts to enact reform.
      “The gun lobby tried to tie up the regulations and paperwork for a long, long time. The NRA called this rule I’m about to announce extreme,” Biden said. More

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      ‘Fake’ US federal agent claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, prosecutors say

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      ‘Fake’ US federal agent claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, prosecutors sayArian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, accused of posing as homeland security officials and cultivating Secret Service access One of two American men arrested in Washington for posing as US federal security officials and cultivating access to the Secret Service, which protects Joe Biden, claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, a federal prosecutor told a judge.Justice department assistant attorney Joshua Rothstein asked a judge not to release Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, the men arrested on Wednesday for posing as Department of Homeland Security investigators.Pakistan court orders Imran Khan confidence vote to go aheadRead moreThe men also stand accused of providing lucrative favors to members of the Secret Service, including one agent on the security detail of the first lady, Jill Biden.Rothstein told the court that in 2019, just months before the two began cultivating security professionals in their Washington apartment building, Ali had travelled to Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Qatar, and transited Doha multiple times.In addition, Rothstein said, Ali “made claims to witnesses that he had connections to the ISI, which is the Pakistani intelligence service”.The Department of Justice (DoJ) is treating the case as a criminal matter and not a national security issue. But the Secret Service suspended four agents over their involvement with the suspects.“All personnel involved in this matter are on administrative leave and are restricted from accessing Secret Service facilities, equipment, and systems,” the Secret Service said in a statement.According to an affidavit filed with the court, Taherzadeh and Ali, both US citizens, lived in an apartment building in Washington where numerous federal security-related employees live.They convinced some of those agents that they themselves were special homeland security investigators, displaying uniforms and documents in support of those claims.Both were initially charged with one count of false impersonation of an officer of the US, which could bring up to three years in prison.But Rothstein told the court that the charge could be expanded to conspiracy, which carries a maximum of five years in prison.The motives of the two men were unclear, but at one point they recruited a third person to work for them, assigning him “to conduct research on an individual that provided support to the Department of Defense and intelligence community”.Taherzadeh meanwhile provided several Secret Service and homeland security employees with rent-free units costing as much as $4,000 a month, according to the affidavit.He also gave them iPhones, surveillance systems, a television, and law enforcement paraphernalia, according to the affidavit.Taherzadeh offered a $2,000 assault rifle to the Secret Service agent who worked on Jill Biden’s team, and did favors for the agent’s wife, including lending her his car.The affidavit said Taherzadeh and Ali appeared to control several units in the apartment complex, and that Taherzadeh had access to the building’s entire security system.Like many in law enforcement, the two drove large black GMC-brand SUVs affixed with emergency lights.Taherzadeh carried handguns that are used by US federal law enforcement, and demonstrated to others that he had secure access to what appeared to be homeland security computer systems.TopicsUS newsUS foreign policyUS domestic policyPakistanSouth and Central AsiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognition

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      Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognitionJoint event had been planned ahead of Doha Forum that would have set process in motion to grant group diplomatic recognition The US was poised to set the Taliban on the path to diplomatic recognition before the plan was derailed by the Afghan rulers’ sudden U-turn on a promise to allow girls’ education, the Guardian understands.The group prompted international outrage and confusion on Wednesday when it reneged on a deal to allow teenage girls to go to secondary school, just a week after the education ministry announced that schools would open for all students.Taliban decide against opening schools to girls in Afghanistan beyond age of 11Read moreUS diplomats had been so optimistic that the Taliban would make good on the promise that a joint event had been planned ahead of this weekend’s Doha Forum in Qatar that would have set the process in motion to grant diplomatic recognition to the group.A seat had been reserved for the Taliban at a panel at the forum dedicated to girls’ education in which a Taliban representative would have addressed the role of women with Afghan female activists.The sudden reversal undermined the argument that a more “moderate” leadership now dominates the Taliban, and such optimism was further clouded this weekend when the group ordered Afghanistan television stations to remove BBC news bulletins in Pashto, Persian and Uzbek.In a statement on Sunday the BBC said “This is a worrying development at a time of uncertainty and turbulence for the people of Afghanistan. More than 6 million Afghans consume the BBC’s independent and impartial journalism on TV every weekWestern officials made it clear that diplomatic recognition will be impossible unless the decision on girls’ education is reversed. The move will also make it harder the international community to raise money for an international pledging conference next week, and require tighter handling of any cash raised so that it does notThomas West, the US special envoy for Afghanistan, said: “I was surprised by the turnaround this last Wednesday and the world has reacted to it by condemning this move. It is a breach first and foremost of the Afghan people’s trust.“I believe hope is not all lost. I am hopeful we will see a reversal of that decision in the coming days.”But West defended the US engagement with the Taliban saying that a complete diplomatic rupture would mean abandoning 40 million Afghans amid growing concerns over a possible famine in the country.“We are talking about the modalities of an urgent humanitarian response, the need for more than a humanitarian response, a policy not just an admire the problem of a broken banking sector but find ways to fix it, a professionalisation of the Central Bank so that the international financial community can begin to have confidence in it, we are talking about terrorism and we are talking about women’s rights.“One of the first times we sat down in October in a formal setting they had a request of us ‘please put our civil servants – 500,000 – back to work’. We thought a logical place to start given the sector resonated so much in the international community was education. We had requests of them, as well. Number one, women and girls could attend at all levels across large swathes of Afghanistan. Number two we wanted to see a monitoring mechanism and third there be a serious and rigorous curriculum. Over the following the months the international community receive the necessary assurances, and more importantly the Afghan people were told on March 23 we would see girls attend secondary education and that did not occur.”Hosna Jalil, a former interior minister was one of many Afghan women at Doha to claim the Taliban will not be able to keep a lid on the demand for education. She said the last 20 years had not been a waste but left a positive legacy. “We facilitated a generation, two thirds of the population, that knows what a better life looks like. That is why we will not give up. They are loud, they believe in freedom and democracy.”Malala Yousafzai, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for all children’s right to education, told the Forum that times had changed since the Taliban first banned girls’ education in 1996. Taliban U-turn over Afghan girls’ education reveals deep leadership divisionsRead more“It is much harder this time – that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered. This time is going to be much harder for the Taliban to maintain the ban on girls’ education. They are learning in the hide-outs. They are protesting on the streets. This ban will not last forever. They were waiting outside the school gates in their uniforms and they were crying. Seeking education is a duty of every Muslim,” she said.Dalia Fahmhy, an Afghan professor of political science said in 1999 no girls were in secondary schools. “Within 15 years later there were 3.7 million girls. Over that period a thousand women became business owners. This cannot be curtailed. We live in a digital age and 68 % have cellphones and 22 % are connected to each other and to the world. This cannot be curtailed. 27 % of the parliament were women.”TopicsTalibanAfghanistanUS foreign policyUS politicsSouth and Central AsianewsReuse this content More

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibilityJoe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stallRead moreThe president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode.Officials insisted Biden had been referring to cyber attacks and paramilitary activities and not Russian troops crossing the border. That failed to entirely calm nerves in Kyiv and other European capitals, especially as Biden also raised eyebrows by predicting that Vladimir Putin would “move in” to Ukraine because “he has to do something” and would probably prevail.The analysis of Nato’s weaknesses and Putin’s intentions was no doubt widely shared but Biden had said the quiet part loud, contradicting what his own officials had been saying. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had just been telling Foreign Policy that one of the great successes of the Biden administration was that “the 30 allies of Nato [were] speaking with one voice in the Russia-Ukraine crisis”.Aides who have shadowed Biden through his long career as senator and vice-president are used to his prolix ways, his tendency to draw on his deep foreign policy expense to over-explain, but the stakes are immeasurably greater as a president, trying to stare down Putin as Europe stands on the threshold of war.The stumble distracted from some of the foreign policy achievements of Biden’s first year – the mending of transatlantic ties, the bolstering of US support for the embattled government in Kyiv and the development of a consistent policy towards Moscow – which combined a openness to talks with a readiness to inflict punitive measures and a refusal to be divided from Nato allies.None of those gains were a given in US foreign policy after four years of Donald Trump, a president who frequently put domestic political and business advantage ahead of strategic national interests, particularly when it came to Russia. Mending alliances, returning to multilateralism and restoring predictability to US policy after the volatile Trump era is widely regarded as Biden’s greatest success so far in foreign policy.His claim on taking office that “America is back” was backed up by a quick deal to extend the New Start treaty in Russia and thereby salvage the only major arms control agreement to survive Trump. The US rejoined the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, re-engaged with major powers in nuclear talks with Iran, and convened a virtual Summit for Democracy in December.All those steps were in line with a broad strategy which Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs, describes as a Biden doctrine.“I think it’s a strategic reorientation towards competition/conflict with China and, the other side of that coin, strengthening relationships with partners in Europe and in Asia, both bilaterally and multilaterally,” Tocci said. “And relying less on the military instrument in order to pursue US foreign policy goals.”The Ukraine stumble was not the first time that strategy has been impaired by its execution. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was intended to be a decisive break with the past, extricating the US from its longest war so it could focus on its most important geopolitical challenge, the rapid rise of China.The departure turned to chaos when the Afghan army, which the US had spent $83m and 20 years trying to build, collapsed in a few days in the face of a Taliban offensive. The scenes of desperate Afghans trying to cling to departing US planes, some dying in the attempt, are an inescapable part of Biden’s legacy.Biden has argued he was boxed in by the Doha agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020, under which the US was due to leave by May 2021. Biden was able to stretch that deadline by four months but maintained that staying any longer would have led to renewed attacks on US troops.Nathan Sales, an acting under secretary of state in the Trump administration, argued that the Doha deal was no longer binding on Biden, and he could have left a force to maintain US leverage.“When one side of an agreement breaches it serially and flagrantly like the Taliban did, I think the Biden administration would have been well within its rights to say: ‘We’re not bound by it either,’” said Sales, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.Current US officials argue that whether the US declared the Taliban had been in violation or not, there would have been renewed attacks on US troops, forcing a decision to cut and run or send large-scale reinforcements. The status quo, they say, was not sustainable.Putin, a ‘rogue male’ on the rampage, threatens to start a war no one wants | Simon Tisdall Read moreEven considering the constraints imposed by the previous administration, the withdrawal was a fiasco. US planners failed to anticipate the speed of the collapse even though a government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, had warned in 2021 that without US contractors to service planes and helicopters, the Afghan air force would no longer be able to function, depriving troops on the ground of a key advantage.For Afghans who worked with the US and its allies, and for the country’s women and girls, the departure seemed like a betrayal, raising a serious question mark over the administration’s claims to have restored human rights to the heart of US foreign policy.Its record in that regard was already mixed.On one hand, the administration had taken a firm stand against China’s mass persecution of Muslim Uyghurs, declaring it a genocide. Furthermore, the assembly of a coalition of some 130 countries to establish a global minimum tax was, according to Matt Duss, foreign affairs adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, “a step toward addressing global economic inequality which is one of the drivers of conflict and authoritarianism”.“It’s an important first step and a courageous one,” Duss said. He also pointed to the sanctions against surveillance companies like the Israeli NSO group, whose software was used by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents.“​​That was a very consequential move, and there has been a massive pressure campaign trying to get them to roll it back, but they’ve stood firm,” he said.However, the steps taken against the Saudi monarchy for the heavy civilian toll from its air war in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi felt well short of what human rights campaigners and progressive Democrats had hoped for. The Biden administration continued to sell Riyadh substantial quantities of advanced weaponry.“We’ve basically returned to the traditional US approach of supporting human rights in countries that don’t buy our weapons,” Duss said. “I very much hope that changes.”‘A lot of bad blood’Another way in which the manner of the US exit from Afghanistan undermined the administration’s wider objectives was by alienating European allies, who felt left out of a decision they were obliged to follow.“The pull-out really caused a lot of bad blood unnecessarily,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “You can call it the root cause of unhappiness within the alliance.”The formation in September of Aukus, a partnership with the UK and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines, was another sweeping move in the pivot towards Asia.Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in UkraineRead moreBut the protagonists had omitted to inform France, who discovered on the same day that their contract to sell Australia diesel submarines had been cancelled. Biden was forced to acknowledge the “clumsy” way it had been handled, and the rift clouded bilateral relations for months.Putin’s threat to Ukraine has helped rally the transatlantic alliance but as Biden revealed in his own public reflections, there are still serious divisions below the surface, limiting his room for manoeuvre.The president’s freedom of action on other global issues, like making progress in climate action or finding a nuclear compromise with Iran, will be hindered still further if Republicans gain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. In that case, the administration’s record until now, mixed as it is, may prove to be the high point of the Biden doctrine.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryUS politicsUkrainefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Inside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste

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      The ObserverAfghanistanInside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste A Taliban commander invited the media to inspect the site where America plotted killing raids and tortured prisonersEmma Graham-Harrison in KabulSun 3 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTThe cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left. Below their ashy grey remains, pools of molten metal had solidified into permanent shiny puddles as the blaze cooled.The faux Afghan village where they trained paramilitary forces linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the war had been brought down on itself. Only a high concrete wall still loomed over the crumpled piles of mud and beams, once used to practise for the widely hated night raids on civilian homes.The vast ammunition dump had been blown up. Many ways to kill and maim human beings, from guns to grenades, mortars to heavy artillery, laid out in three long rows of double-height shipping containers, were reduced to shards of twisted metal. The blast from the huge detonation, which came soon after the bloody bomb at Kabul airport, shook and terrified the capital city.All formed part of the CIA compound that for 20 years was the dark, secret heart of America’s “war on terror”, a place were some of the worst abuses to sour the mission in Afghanistan would fester.The sprawling hillside compound, spread over two square miles north-east of the airport, became infamous early on in the conflict for torture and murder at its “Salt Pit” prison, codenamed Cobalt by the CIA. The men held there called it the “dark prison”, because there was no light in their cells, the only occasional illumination coming from the headlamps of their guards.It was here that Gul Rahman died of hypothermia in 2002 after he was chained to a wall half-naked and left overnight in freezing temperatures. His death prompted the first formal CIA guidelines on interrogation under a new regime of torture, eviscerated in a 2014 report that found that the abuse did not provide useful intelligence.The base has for two decades been a closely guarded secret, visible only in satellite photos, navigated by the testimony of survivors. Now the Taliban’s special forces have moved in and recently, briefly, opened up the secret compound to journalists.“We want to show how they wasted all these things that could have been used to build our country,” said Mullah Hassanain, a commander in the Taliban’s elite 313 unit, who led the tour of destroyed and burnt-out compounds, “burn pits” and incinerated cars, buses and armoured military vehicles.Taliban special forces include suicide attackers who recently marched through Kabul to celebrate seizing the capital. Vehicles now emblazoned with their official “suicide squadron” logo escorted journalists around the former CIA base.It was a grimly ironic juxtaposition of the most cruel and ruthless units on both sides of this war, a reminder of the suffering inflicted on civilians by all combatants in the name of higher goals, over several decades.“They are martyrdom seekers who were responsible for the attacks on important locations of invaders and the regime. They now have control of important locations,” said a Taliban official, when asked why suicide squads were escorting journalists, and if they would continue to operate. “It is a very big battalion. It is responsible for the security of important locations. They will be expanded and further organised. Whenever there is a need, they will respond. They are always ready for sacrifices for our country and the defence of our people.”They planned to use the CIA base for their own military training, Hassanain said, so this brief glimpse of the compound is likely to be both the first and last time the media is allowed in.The men guarding it had already changed into the tiger-stripe camouflage of the old Afghan National Directorate of Security, the spy agency once in charge of hunting them down. The paramilitary units that operated here, based in barracks just near the site of the former Salt Pit jail, included some that were among the most feared in the country, mired in allegations of abuse that included extrajudicial killings of children and other civilians. The barracks had been abandoned so fast that the men who lived there left food half-finished, and barracks floors were littered with possessions spilled out of emptied lockers, cleared in an apparent frenzy.Mostly they had taken or destroyed anything with names, or ranks, but there were 01 patches, and one book that was filled with handwritten notes from weeks of training.Nearby, the site of the Salt Pit jail had apparently been razed a few months earlier. A New York Times satellite investigation found that, since spring, a cluster of buildings inside this part of the CIA compound had been levelled.Taliban officials said they did not have any details about the Salt Pit, or what had happened to the former jail. Rahman’s family are still searching for his body, which has never been returned to them.Other torture techniques recorded at the site included “rectal feeding”, shackling prisoners to bars overhead, and depriving inmates of toilet “privileges”, leaving them naked or wearing adult diapers.Construction equipment was abandoned on the site, with concrete slabs half poured. Next door, a building that had once been fortified with high-tech doors and equipment had apparently been firebombed, its interior as totally destroyed and reduced to ash as the cars outside.Destroying sensitive equipment at the base would have been complex, and there was evidence of several burn pits where everything from medical kits and a manual on leadership was put to the flames, along with larger pieces of equipment.The Taliban officials were jumpy about letting journalists into areas that had not been officially cleared. They had found several booby trap bombs in the rubble of the camp, Hassanain said, and were worried that there might be more.For days, helicopters ferried hundreds of people from the base to inside the airport, where men from the 01 force – aware they were likely to be prominent targets for reprisals – helped secure the perimeter in return for evacuation in the final hours, under a deal struck with the US.Untouched nearby was a recreation hall with snooker, ping-pong, darts and table football gathering dust. A box in the corner held brain teaser puzzles. It was unclear what the Taliban, once so austere that they even banned chess, would do with the trappings of western military downtime.TopicsAfghanistanThe ObserverTalibanCIACIA torture reportSouth and Central AsiaTortureWar crimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US Afghanistan withdrawal a ‘logistical success but strategic failure’, Milley says

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      US militaryUS Afghanistan withdrawal a ‘logistical success but strategic failure’, Milley saysGeneral and other military leaders in heated cross-examinationMilley defends loyalty to country and rejects suggestion to quit Julian Borger in WashingtonTue 28 Sep 2021 14.44 EDTLast modified on Tue 28 Sep 2021 17.00 EDTThe withdrawal from Afghanistan and the evacuation of Kabul was “a logistical success but a strategic failure,” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has told the Senate.Gen Mark Milley gave the stark assessment at an extraordinary hearing of the Senate armed services committee to examine the US departure, which also became a postmortem on the 20-year war that preceded it.Milley appeared alongside the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the head of US Central Command, Gen Kenneth ‘Frank’ McKenzie, in the most intense, heated cross-examination of the country’s military leadership in more than a decade.At one point, Milley was obliged to defend his loyalty to his country, in the face of allegations of insubordination in last weeks of the Trump administration, and to explain why he had not resigned in the course of the chaotic Afghan pullout.General defends himself over Trump and says his loyalty to nation is absoluteRead more“It is obvious the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted,” Milley said, noting “the Taliban is now in power in Kabul.”“We must remember that the Taliban was and remains a terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with al-Qaida,” he added. “I have no illusions who we are dealing with. It remains to be seen whether or not the Taliban can consolidate power, or if the country will further fracture into civil war.”It was a long and very difficult day in Congress for the Biden administration, which has been trying to move past the reputational damage caused by the sudden fall of Kabul last month and subsequent scramble to evacuate Americans and allies, which left tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans behind.Milley, Austin and McKenzie all confirmed that when the Biden administration was considering its policy on Afghanistan in its first few months in office, they had believed a small US force of about 2,500 should remain.None could explain Joe Biden’s claim in an interview last month that he had not received any such advice.“No one said that to me that I can recall,” Biden told ABC News on 19 August.Milley adamantly rejected a suggestion by Republican senator Tom Cotton he should resign because that advice was rejected.“It would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to just resign because my advice is not taken,” he said, staring straight at Cotton. “This country doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we’re going to accept and do or not. That’s not our job.”In his 19 August interview, Biden had said that US forces would stay until all American citizens had been evacuated. But when the last soldier left on a flight on 30 August, there were still believed to be more than a hundred Americans – most if not all dual nationals who had delayed their decision to leave until it was too late.Milley said it was the advice of the military leadership to stick to the end of August deadline to complete the departure, which the Taliban had accepted.If the US had stayed on into September to try to evacuate more people, he said: “We would have been at war with the Taliban again,” requiring an extra 20,000 troops to clear Kabul of Taliban fighters and retake Bagram air base near the capital, which the US had abandoned in July.Milley also had to defend himself against charges that he deliberately sought to undermine Donald Trump’s authority as commander-in-chief out of fear that the former president would launch a foreign war as a diversion to distract attention from his election loss in November.“My loyalty to this nation, its people and the constitution hasn’t changed and will never change,” Milley told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday. “As long as I have a breath to give, my loyalty is absolute.”Milley was facing hostile Republicans, some of whom have demanded his resignation following revelations that he spoke twice to his Chinese counterpart, reassuring him that the US would not launch a surprise attack.Mark Milley, US general who stood up to Trump, founders over Kabul strikeRead moreThe revelations are contained in a new book, Peril, by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.According to the book, Milley also ordered officers assigned to the Pentagon war room to let him know if Trump ordered a nuclear launch, despite the fact that the chairman of the joint chiefs is not in the chain of command.The general said his two calls with the Chinese army chief followed intelligence suggesting China was fearful of an attack, and were intended to defuse tensions.“I am certain President Trump did not intend to attack the Chinese,” Milley said, adding he had been directed by the defence secretary to convey that message to the Chinese.“My task at that time was to de-escalate,” he said. “My message again was consistent: stay calm, steady and de-escalate. We are not going to attack you.”He said the calls were closely coordinated with the defence secretary and other senior officials in the Trump administration, and that several senior Pentagon officials sat in on the calls.On the question of his actions on nuclear launch procedures, Milley said he had a responsibility to insert himself into those procedures in order to be able to perform his role to advise the president properly.“By law I am not in the chain of command and I know that,” he said. “However, by presidential directive, and [defence department] instruction, I am in the chain of communication to fulfil my legal statutory role as the president’s primary military adviser.”TopicsUS militaryAfghanistanSouth and Central AsiaUS foreign policyUS CongressUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More