Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
Lloyd AustinPentagon seeks to hire commercial airlines to help evacuate Afghanistan US military finds “alternative routes” to Kabul airport amid ISIS-K threats: reports Threats, turmoil and talks mark Afghan evacuation MORE he said in an interview Sunday that “no one predicted” that the Afghan government would “fall in 11 days.”
“It was very difficult to predict accurately. All this happened in a span of about 11 days. No one predicted that, as you know, the government would fall in 11 days, “Austin told host Martha Raddatz on ABC’s” This Week “a week after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. , triggering chaos in the region.
Austin said the assessments he reviewed prior to the insurgent group’s acquisition estimated that it could be several months or a year or two before the Afghan government falls.
He told Raddatz that U.S. officials watched as Afghan military forces surrendered and “evaporated” as the Taliban began to make gains.
When pressured about whether U.S. planning for the withdrawal was “acceptable and appropriate,” Austin responded, “I base it on, you know, what we were looking at and the contributions of the plan,” before criticizing the previous administration to provide a situation in which “there were no good options.”
“But I think we need to go back and look at what the administration inherited. I mean we went in, we met with a deadline of May 1 to have all the forces out of the country. This agreement had been reached with the Taliban. So he had to quickly go through a detailed assessment and examine all the options as to what, you know, what he could do. And none of those options were a good choice, ”Austin said.
“It went through a very rigorous, very detailed process. He heard input from all stakeholders in the inter-agency process. And so, at the end of the day, the president made his decision. But, again, he found himself in a situation where there were no good options, they were all very hard “, he added.
Austin’s statements come after a week of turmoil in Afghanistan as the U.S. military worked to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan allies from the region amid the Taliban offensive.
The Pentagon announced Saturday that approximately 17,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan last week and that some 22,000 people have been removed from the region since late July. Approximately 2,500 Americans have been evacuated from the country.
However, reports say Americans and Afghan citizens face cases of violence and harassment as they head to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
For this reason, the U.S. embassy in the capital sent a security alert on Saturday to ask Americans not to travel to the airport or approach the airport gates “unless you receive instructions. individuals from a U.S. government representative to do so, “citing” possible security threats. “Outside the airport.
The Biden administration has been criticized for its handling of the situation in Afghanistan, and many have questioned whether the president should have proceeded with his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the region, who left. advancing the Taliban’s accelerated offensive.
Several officials are now calling on the administration to do more to get American and Afghan allies out of the region.