American investigations continue about the failure of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rapid seizure of power by the Taliban despite the money and lives that America sacrificed there.
In the latest report on what happened, the Wall Street Journal revealed a widespread failure Major US intelligence agencies have been anticipating a rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan before the final withdrawal of US forces, and instead have provided sporadic assessments of the survival of the Afghan army and government for months after the US withdrawal. Twenty previously unreported intelligence assessments from four different agencies charted assessments of the Taliban’s progress from spring 2020 through July of this year, predicting that the movement would continue to make gains and that the US-backed government in Kabul was unlikely to survive without US support.
How long the Kabul government will survive
However, analyzes differed about how long the Afghan government and the Afghan army could last, as summaries show, with no expectation No attack by the movement on the Afghan capital by August 15 despite the presence of US forces
A month after President Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw all U.S. forces, for example, the CIA released a report on May 17 titled “Government in Danger of Collapse after U.S. Withdrawal.”)
But the report estimated that the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would fall by the end of the year. Less than a month later, the agency released another analysis entitled: “Afghanistan: Assessing the Prospects for a Complete Taliban Takeover in Two Years.”
Rural Isolation!
(Meanwhile, a Defense Intelligence Agency report on June 4 said the Taliban would follow a phased strategy to isolate rural areas from Kabul over the next 12 months and in an “executive note” on July 7, the agency said the Afghan government would keep Kabul, according to a statement. Mentioned by a person familiar with the report.
according to the report , a lack of intelligence fueled the failures of politicians that led to the chaotic mass evacuations of civilians in the deadly final weeks of Afghanistan’s 20-year war. obtained by Biden and Trump by US intelligence, as each president sought to end the war that killed 2,400 Americans and, according to some estimates, cost more than 2 trillion dollars.
Policy makers across the national security services rely on such intelligence reports to inform their decisions and planning.
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Conflicting Assessments
While diverse and conflicting assessments are common, inconsistencies can complicate efforts among decision makers to reach
For the Afghan withdrawal, contingency plans, including evacuations, relied heavily on intelligence assessments, said US officials familiar with the reports. Members of Congress on many aspects of the turbulent exit from Afghanistan, including the performance of the intelligence community, after the Taliban’s rapid takeover of power there.
