The United States “lost” the war waged for 20 years in Afghanistan, admitted Wednesday the American Chief of Staff Mark Milley before a parliamentary committee, a month after the chaotic end of the American intervention in this country.
“It is clear and obvious to all of us that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted, with the Taliban in power in Kabul,” General Milley explained during a hearing in the House of Commons. representatives.
“When something happens like a lost war – and it has been, in the sense that we have fulfilled our strategic mission to protect America from Al Qaeda but certainly the end situation is quite different than what we wanted, ”he admitted.
“When something like that happens, there are plenty of explanatory factors,” he said, noting that this “strategic failure” was “the consequence of a series of strategic decisions that go back a long way.” .
He notably cited the missed opportunities to capture or kill the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, shortly after the launch of the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 having drained many soldiers. , Washington’s failure to prevent Pakistan from becoming a “sanctuary” for the Taliban and the withdrawal of military advisers deployed to Afghan units in recent years.
The American retaliatory operation, launched after the September 11 attacks, evolved into a vast enterprise of rebuilding the country to prevent a return of the Taliban to power, which nevertheless happened on August 15 after a lightning offensive.
The collapse of the Afghan army and government precipitated the withdrawal operations of the US military and their Afghan civilian allies, marked by a deadly attack claimed by the Islamic State group at Kabul airport.
On Tuesday, Pentagon leaders admitted to the Senate that they had underestimated the demoralization of the Afghan army after the agreement reached in February 2020 between the administration of Donald Trump and the Taliban.
This provided for the withdrawal of all foreign soldiers from Afghanistan before May 1, 2021, in exchange for security guarantees and the opening of unprecedented direct negotiations between the insurgents and the authorities in Kabul.
Despite the lack of progress in inter-Afghan discussions, Joe Biden had decided to respect the agreement, while extending the deadline for withdrawal to August 31.
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