Pentagon leaders admitted on Tuesday to having underestimated the demoralization of the Afghan army, whose collapse in the last days of the withdrawal of foreign forces from Kabul allowed the Taliban to win without a strike after 20 years of war in Afghanistan . "
We built a state but we could not create a nation,
" admitted the US Minister of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was explaining to the elected members of the Senate on the chaotic end of the war in Afghanistan. “
The fact that the Afghan army, which we trained with our partners, collapsed - often without firing a bullet - took us all by surprise,
” said Austin. “
It would be dishonest to say otherwise.
"
Read alsoAfghanistan: Americans end the longest war in their history
"
We did not realize the level of corruption and incompetence of their high ranking officers, we did not measure the damage caused by the frequent and unexplained changes decided by President Ashraf Ghani in the command, we did not 'we did not foresee the snowball effect of the agreements made by the Taliban with four local commanders after the Doha agreement, nor the fact that the Doha agreement had demoralized the Afghan army
”, he enumerated . The administration of Donald Trump signed on February 29, 2020 in Doha a historic agreement with the Taliban which provided for the withdrawal of all foreign soldiers before May 1, 2021, in exchange for security guarantees andopening of unprecedented direct negotiations between the insurgents and the Kabul authorities.
After several months of reflection, Joe Biden had decided to respect this agreement, while extending the deadline for the withdrawal to August 31.
Chief of Staff General Mark Milley noted that the decision to withdraw military advisers deployed to Afghan units from Afghanistan has contributed to overestimating the capacity of the Afghan army.
"
We were not able to fully assess the morale and the will of the command,
" he explained.
“
You can count planes, trucks, vehicles, cars (...) but you cannot measure the human heart with a machine.
(...) You have to be there.
"
