(A U.S. Army loadmaster stands on the rear ramp of a CH-47F Chinook and watches the sunset as it flies over Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Julie A Kelemen via DVIDS.)
As the Taliban strutted through Afghanistan’s presidential palace in Kabul today, the militant group laid waste to some the most pessimistic of predictions about what would happen in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal.
Online, between stunning photos and videos of the takeover and alongside pleas from Afghans, a pointed debate already began: Did the swiftness with which the Taliban routed the Afghan government and military amount to an intelligence failure on the part of America’s 17 agency-strong intelligence apparatus?
The chaos unleashed, including the failure to evacuate Afghans who helped the U.S. and are now threatened by the Taliban, is evidence that, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News, the Taliban takeover “did happen more rapidly than we anticipated.” Either the U.S. didn’t see it coming this fast at all, or policymakers ignored the intelligence analysis that did, if it exists.
Perhaps predictably, some high-profile former intelligence officials took to their former employers’ defense.
“The ‘intelligence failure’ drumbeat is starting. People should be careful about the charge if they have not actually seen/read the intelligence; I have not,” tweeted former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin. “I suspect we will learn someday that intell [sic] rejected rosy estimates and warned about growing Taliban strength for years.”
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His remarks were retweeted by former CIA analyst Tara Maller, who added that “typically, intel assessments tend to include analysis of different scenarios (including what potential worst case scenarios may look like) & tend to err on the side of warning for the possibility of such scenarios.”
Another former acting CIA director, Michael Morell, was more emphatic. “What is happening in Afghanistan is not the result of an intelligence failure,” he tweeted. “It is the result of numerous policy failures by multiple administrations. Of all the players over the years, the Intelligence Community by far has seen the situation in Afghanistan most accurately.”
Perhaps. And public reporting by the Pentagon’s inspector general did note in May that the Defense Intelligence Agency predicted that the Taliban “is very likely preparing for large-scale offenses against Afghan population centers and government forces.”
After this report was published, ABC News cited an unnamed intelligence official who claimed "[U.S.] leaders were told by the military it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything. […] No one listened."
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But based on public remarks and earlier media reporting, while the intelligence community appeared increasingly skeptical about a timeline to collapse, the lightning speed of the fall that came to pass has been even worse.
In April, U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad told lawmakers that he did not believe the Afghan government would collapse at all after U.S. troop withdrawal.
By the end of June, after relentless Taliban offensives, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence assessments said the Afghan government could collapse “as soon as six months” after the withdrawal -- which wasn’t supposed to be official until September.
But on July 8, President Joe Biden suggested that report was inaccurate. When asked by a reporter about the assessment Kabul would “likely” collapse, he responded, “That is not true. They did not reach that conclusion.”
“The jury is still out,” he said, “but the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
In an interview with NPR two weeks later, CIA Director William Burns said that there “are a lot of possibilities out there” for if and when the Afghan government could fall and said that it “doesn’t have to” take six months. The “trend lines,” he said, “are certainly troubling.”
“Fundamentally, it seems to me and to our analysts this is a question of willpower and unity of leadership and the ability of the Afghan military and security services to consolidate their positions, which are in the process of trying to do right now,” he said.
Then, just a few days ago, a U.S. defense official reportedly told Reuters it was feared Kabul could fall within 30 to 90 days. That prediction seems to have been about 26 to 86 days off.
But while the public record doesn’t look good, McLaughlin’s point stands. The public hasn’t seen the intelligence that was provided to Biden, and because of secrecy rules, likely won’t see it for some 20 years, barring media leaks or, hopefully, public testimony from America’s top intelligence officials.
In the meantime, former CIA analyst Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said today that she’d been briefed by the secretaries of State and Defense about the situation in Afghanistan.
“There will be plenty of time to Monday morning quarterback, but right now, we need the airport in Kabul open to all traffic, including civilian charters,” she tweeted.
[This report was updated Aug. 16 to include reporting from ABC News. Do you have a tip or question for Code and Dagger? Send it along at CodeAndDagger@protonmail.com. Also, consider contributing to Code and Dagger on Patreon at Patreon.com/CodeAndDagger.]