Pentagon issued dire warnings to Biden even before he took office

WASHINGTON • President Joe Biden's top advisers concede that they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taleban.

The past 20 years show they should not have been. If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the US$83 billion (S$112 billion) the US has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taleban.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the defeat of Afghan security forces that has led to the Taleban's takeover "happened more quickly than we anticipated", although he maintained the Biden administration's position that keeping US troops in Afghanistan was not in American interests.

"We would have been back at war with the Taleban," Mr Blinken said in an interview on CNN, calling that "something the American people simply can't support - that is the reality".

The Pentagon issued dire warnings to Mr Biden, even before he took office, about the potential for the Taleban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks.

Commanders knew that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: The deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, and the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone weapons.

Mr Biden's aides said that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and military in perpetuity.

In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks.

In the end, an Afghan force that did not believe in itself and a US effort that Mr Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed would alter the course of events combined to bring an ignoble close to America's longest war.

The United States kept forces in Afghanistan far longer than the British did in the 19th century, and twice as long as the Soviets - with roughly the same results.

For Mr Biden, the last of four US presidents to face painful choices in Afghanistan but the first to get out, the debate about a final withdrawal and the miscalculations over how to execute it began the moment he took office.

Defence Department leaders had already been fending off former president Donald Trump, who wanted a rapid drawdown. After Mr Biden took office, top Defence Department officials began a lobbying campaign to keep a small counter-terrorism force in Afghanistan for a few more years.

By March, Pentagon officials said they realised they were not getting anywhere with Mr Biden. Although he listened to their arguments and asked extensive questions, they said they had a sense that his mind was made up.

The intelligence assessments in Mr Biden's briefing books gave him some assurance that if a bloody debacle resulted in Afghanistan, it would at least be delayed.

Even so, the Pentagon moved swiftly to get its troops out, fearful of the risks of leaving a dwind-ling number of Americans in Afghanistan and of service members dying in a war the US had given up for lost.

Before the July 4 weekend, the US had handed over Bagram Air Base, the military hub of the war, to the Afghans, effectively ending all major American military operations in the country.

"Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the air force they have, which we are helping them maintain," Mr Biden said at the time.

A week later, he argued that the Afghans have the capacity to defend themselves. "The question is," he said, "will they do it?"

"Ultimately, it is up to the Afghans themselves," Mr Blinken said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. "It is up to the Afghan government, it is up to the Taleban to decide the way forward for the country, including Kabul."

NYTIMES