Reports now indicate that intelligence reports were predicting the collapse of the Afghan army as recently as July and that the White House was “behind the curve” in handling a rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground, even as President Joe Biden was reassuring the public that the Afghanistan government would hold following the United States’ withdrawal.
The New York Times, in a report Tuesday, countered the Biden administration’s public statements indicating that the Taliban onslaught was unexpected and that the debacle in Kabul played out faster than anticipated.
“Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials,” The New York Times said.
“By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital. President Biden said on July 8 that the Afghan government was unlikely to fall and that there would be no chaotic evacuations of Americans similar to the end of the Vietnam War,” the outlet noted.
One particular report, issued in July, even seemed to predict the situation that played out in Kabul, “noting that the Afghan government was unprepared for a Taliban assault” and that once certain areas fell to Taliban forces, the rest could topple like dominoes.
A Biden administration official claimed to the Times that, although the warnings grew dire, “intelligence agencies never offered a clear prediction of an imminent Taliban takeover” and that the intelligence community did not have a high degree of confidence in the pessimistic predictions.
A report, also published Tuesday, from Reuters, seems to indicate that the Biden administration was “behind the curve” on high-level decisions in Afghanistan and that the administration “badly misjudged” the on-the-ground situation in Kabul, leaving even American embassy employees stranded.
“U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that weeks before the Washington-backed Afghan government collapsed, the U.S. military wanted a bigger role in helping to evacuate Afghans at risk because they worked for the United States. The officials believe that a more orderly withdrawal would have been likely” but the “administration waited too long” to help Afghan allies evacuate before the situation became grim.
“We could have done a lot more to help. The administration waited too long,” a military official told Reuters.
“A person familiar with the situation said the Biden administration was behind the curve as things deteriorated in Afghanistan. ‘Every decision has come too late and in reaction to events that make the subsequent decision obsolete,” that source told the outlet.
The situation was especially problematic at the State Department and among the administration’s national security advisors. Diplomats were still arriving in Kabul even as the Taliban closed in and, on Sunday, embassy workers were receiving emails, they say, even as they could hear gunshots ringing nearby.
Biden took responsibility for authorizing the withdrawal in a speech on Monday but stopped short of discussing the humanitarian disaster that continues to play out on the ground in Kabul as Americans, Afghans, and allies desperately try to flee Taliban rule.