Fall of Kabul: Government collapse confirms decision to withdraw troops - US staff

Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace. Photo / AP

In the upper ranks of the Biden administration, the rapid collapse of the government in Afghanistan only confirmed the decision to withdraw US troops: If the meltdown of the Afghan security forces would come so quickly after nearly two decades of American presence, another six months or a year or two or more would not have changed anything.

US President Joe Biden has argued for more than a decade that Afghanistan was a kind of purgatory for the United States. He found it to be corrupt, addicted to America's largesse and an unreliable partner that should be made to fend for itself. His goal was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, not building a country.

As vice president, he argued privately against Obama's surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in a bid to stabilise the country so that the US and its allies could then pull back their forces.

As president, Biden said in July that he made the decision to withdraw with "clear eyes" after receiving daily battlefield updates. His judgment was that Afghanistan would be divided in a peace agreement with the Taliban, rather than falling all at once.

While Biden has prided himself on delivering plain truths to the American public, his bullish assessment of the situation just a month ago could come back to haunt him.

"There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan," he said in July. "The likelihood there's going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely."

Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace. Photo / AP

Top US officials have been stunned by the pace of the Taliban's nearly complete takeover of the country as the planned withdrawal of American forces urgently becomes a mission to ensure a safe evacuation.

The speed of the government's collapse and the ensuing chaos has posed the most serious test of Biden as commander in chief, and he was the subject of withering criticism from Republicans who said that he had failed.

Biden campaigned as a seasoned expert in international relations and has spent months arguing that Americans of all political persuasions have tired of a 20-year war, a conflict that demonstrated the limits of money and military might to force a Western-style democracy on a society not ready or willing to embrace it.

By Sunday, though, leading figures in the administration acknowledged they were caught off guard with the utter speed of the collapse of Afghan security forces. The challenge of that effort became clear after reports of sporadic gunfire at the Kabul airport prompted Americans to shelter as they awaited flights to safety.

"We've seen that that force has been unable to defend the country, and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated," Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN, referring to the Afghan military.

The turmoil in Afghanistan resets the focus in an unwelcome way for a president who has largely focused on a domestic agenda that includes emerging from the pandemic, infrastructure spending and protecting voting rights.

A US helicopter flies over the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, amid evacuations from the city. Photo / AP

Biden remained at Camp David on Sunday, receiving regular briefings on Afghanistan and holding secure video conference calls with members of his national security team, according to senior White House officials. The next several days could be critical in determining whether the US is able to regain some level of control over the situation.

Biden is the fourth US president to confront challenges in Afghanistan and has insisted he wouldn't hand America's longest war to his successor. But the President will likely have to explain how security in Afghanistan unravelled so quickly, especially since he and others in the administration have insisted it wouldn't happen.

As recently as last week, Biden publicly expressed hope that Afghan forces could develop the will to defend their country. But privately, administration officials warned that the military was crumbling, prompting Biden on Thursday to order thousands of American troops into the region to speed up evacuation plans.

One official said Biden was more sanguine on projections for the Afghan fighters to hold off the Taliban in part to prevent a further erosion in morale among their force. It was ultimately for naught.

UK forces assist with evacuations in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also yearned to leave Afghanistan, but ultimately stood down in the face of resistance from military leaders and other political concerns. Biden, on the other hand, has been steadfast in his refusal to change the August 31 deadline, in part because of his belief that the American public is on his side.

A late July ABC News/Ipsos poll, for instance, showed 55 per cent of Americans approving of Biden's handling of the troop withdrawal.

Most Republicans have not pushed Biden to keep troops in Afghanistan over the long term and they also supported Trump's own push to exit the country. Still, some in the GOP are stepping up their critique of Biden's withdrawal strategy and said images from Sunday of American helicopters circling the US Embassy in Kabul evoked the humiliating departure of US personnel from Vietnam.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deemed the scenes of withdrawal as "the embarrassment of a superpower laid low".

Meanwhile, US officials are increasingly concerned about the potential for the rise in terrorist threats against the US as the situation in Afghanistan devolves, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.

General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators on a briefing call Sunday that US officials are expected to alter their earlier assessments about the pace of terrorist groups reconstituting in Afghanistan, the person said. Based on the evolving situation, officials believe terror groups like al-Qaida may be able to grow much faster than expected.

The officials on the call told senators that the US intelligence community is currently working on forming a new timeline based on the evolving threats.

Still, there were no additional steps planned beyond the troop deployment Biden ordered to assist in the evacuations. Senior administration officials believe the US will be able to maintain security at the Kabul airport long enough to extricate Americans and their allies, but the fate of those unable to get to the airport was far from certain.