Monday 30 August 2021

Afghan Evacuation Crisis, Intelligence or Political Failure?


Fast forward to August 11, 2021, when it was widely reported that U.S. intelligence sources conceded that the Taliban could isolate Kabul in 30-60 days and capture the city within 90 days. Given the widespread low sentiment (on the ground and online) and defections across the country, those intelligence projections should have been crosschecked by the coalition partners and evacuation plans gone into overdrive –if it did not happen before, now it was the critical moment to do it. Nevertheless, did you hear of any intelligence projection originating in any country other than the U.S.? Ironically, this happened at the time those British ministers decided to go on holiday. When they returned from holiday evacuations did go into overdrive, but precious time was lost....

Countless volumes will be written about the last few weeks of the U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan and the evacuation crisis that engulfed it. It would be easier to wait for the last airlift plane to take to the skies before writing anything about it. However, we hope that the three separate views in this article will help the reader to start thinking critically about what went wrong and the lessons that must be learned. ...

Read the rest of the post at MilitaryEcology.com GO>>

See a timeline of events leading to the fall of Afghanistan at PrivateMilitary.org GO>>




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