US intelligence predicted collapse of Afghan govt long before Biden's public admission

Despite US President Joe Biden's promises that Kabul would not fall, a classified assessment by American intelligence agencies anticipated the collapse of the Afghan military and Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. Even as US President Joe Biden told the public that Kabul was unlikely to fall, intelligence assessments depicted a grimmer picture, according to Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, and Adam Goldman in the New York Times.

US intelligence predicted Afghan military collapse

By July, many intelligence reports had become increasingly dismal, raising doubts about whether Afghan security forces would mount serious resistance and whether the government would be able to maintain control of Kabul, the capital. According to the New York Times, President Biden stated on July 8 that the Afghan government is unlikely to fall and that there would be no chaotic evacuations of Americans like there were at the end of the Vietnam War.

According to a person familiar with the intelligence, a report released in July, as dozens of Afghan districts fell and Taliban fighters attacked several major cities, laid out the growing threats to Kabul, noting that the Afghan government was unprepared for a Taliban assault, said Mazzetti, Barnes, and Goldman. Intelligence services anticipated that if the Taliban took control of cities, a cascading collapse would occur quickly, putting Afghan security forces in danger.

According to the New York Times, a historical analysis presented to Congress determined that the Taliban had learned lessons from their takeover of the country in the 1990s.  This time, the terrorist organisation will control border crossings, grab provincial capitals, and seize large areas of the country's north before marching in on Kabul, according to the report, which proved to be right.

But, according to Mazzetti, Barnes, and Goldman, critical American decisions were taken long before July, when intelligence agencies agreed that the Afghan government could cling on for up to two years, leaving enough time for an orderly pullout. According to administration officials, when the State Department ordered the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the embassy in Kabul on April 27, the overall intelligence assessment was still that a Taliban takeover was at least 18 months away. Even as the situation became more turbulent in July, intelligence services never made a firm prognosis of an imminent Taliban takeover, an official said. 

Afghan military collapse

According to the New York Times, their assessments were also not awarded a "high confidence" judgement, the agency's highest level of certainty. The overall intelligence analysis was that a Taliban takeover was not yet inevitable a week before Kabul's collapse, the official added. Officials also stated that around the time of Biden's July remarks, in which he called on Afghan officials "to come together," he and aides were privately pressuring them to make concessions that intelligence briefings showed were needed to prevent the government from collapsing.

The CIA's spokesperson and the Director of National Intelligence's spokesperson also declined to comment on the evaluations presented to the White House. According to the New York Times, intelligence officials recognised that their agencies' analysis was sober and that their evaluations had altered in recent weeks and months. Faced with incontrovertible proof of Afghan troops' collapse, American authorities have begun to assign blame internally, including White House statements implying an intelligence failure.

(with ANI inputs)

Picture Credit: AP/RepresentativeImage