By ROB CRILLY, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ARIEL ZILBER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 18:44 EDT, 31 August 2021 | UPDATED: 19:41 EDT, 31 August 2021
As Biden repeats claim that ‘nobody could have known’ Afghan Army would collapse, bombshell transcript from July reveals he pressured Afghan President Ghani to create ‘perception’ Taliban wasn’t winning ‘WHETHER IT’S TRUE OR NOT’
- Reuters on Tuesday released excerpts from last call between Biden and Ghani before the Afghan president fled – Bing
- They talked for about 14 minutes on July 23 as the Taliban advanced rapidly
- Biden told his counterpart of a perception that the fight against the Taliban was not going well
- ‘There is a need, whether it is true or not … to project a different picture,’ he said
- Comments are indication Biden knew it was matter of time before Taliban won
- In months leading up to withdrawal, Biden predicted pullout would go smoothly
- Neither appeared to realize just how badly things would go
- Less than four weeks later the Taliban had captured Kabul
President Joe Biden wanted the now-departed Afghan president to create the ‘perception’ that his government was capable of holding off the Taliban – an indication he knew it was only a matter of time before the US ally fell to the Islamic group even while reassuring Americans at home that it would not happen.
In the last phone call between Biden and his Afghan then-counterpart Ashraf Ghani, the American president said they needed to change perceptions of the Taliban‘s rapid advance ‘whether it is true or not,’ according to excerpts published on Tuesday.
Four weeks before Kabul collapsed, Ghani pleaded for more air support and money for soldiers who had not had a pay rise in a decade.
A transcript obtained by Reuters reveals two leaders oblivious to the impending disaster and an American president focused on spinning the message.
‘I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,’ Biden said.
‘And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.’
The Taliban were already capturing district after district across the country, while the US and Afghanistan were at loggerheads over tactics.
In the months leading up to the chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed on Monday, Biden was telling the public a different story – that the withdrawal would be done smoothly and that Washington’s Afghan allies were in control.
‘I don’t think anybody anticipated that,’ Biden told ABC News when asked about the swift disintegration of the Afghan security forces.
In April, Biden said that the US couldn’t stay in Afghanistan forever and that it was time to bring the troops home.
‘We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely. And we will do it in full coordination with our allies and partners, who now have more forces in Afghanistan than we do,’ Biden said.
‘And the Taliban should know that if they attack us as we draw down, we will defend ourselves and our partners with all the tools at our disposal.’
In July, Biden said that the withdrawal, which was to be complete by August 31, was ‘proceeding in a secure and orderly way.’ He gave no indication that it would be chaotic.
When asked if a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable, the president responded: ‘No, it is not.’
Biden said that the Afghan government has ‘300,000 well-equipped (forces) as well-equipped as any army in the world – and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.
‘It is not inevitable.’
When Biden was asked if he trusted the Taliban, the president replied: ‘No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war.’
The president was then asked about his own intelligence community’s assessment that the Afghan government would likely collapse.
‘That is not true,’ Biden responded. ‘They did not reach that conclusion.’
‘The intelligence community did not say, back in June or July, that in fact this was going to collapse like it did,’ Biden told ABC News earlier this month.
Biden said that he was not told that the Taliban would take over as quickly as they did. Instead, he said there was a possibility it would take more time.
‘Not even close,’ Biden said.
Behind the scenes, however, Biden apparently knew that the situation was more precarious.
Two weeks after his remarks to reporters denying that a Taliban takeover was inevitable, Biden and Ghani spoke for about 14 minutes on July 23. It was their last conversation before the Taliban captured the capital.
Ghani fled the presidential palace, Kabul and the country on August 15.
By then a chaotic evacuation was already under way, helping tens of thousands of people to safety as the cost of 13 American troops and dozens of Afghans killed in a suicide attack on Kabul airport.
But in mid July, Biden was intent on Ghani delivering a public message and public plan that would shore up confidence in the Afghan government.
‘You clearly have the best military, you have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well, we will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is and what we are doing,’ he said.
He pushed Ghani to allow his Defense Minister General Bismillah Khan Mohammadi to pursue a strategy that would focus on defending major population centers.
And he urged the Afghan president to bring together some of the most powerful anti-Taliban warlords in a show of support to reverse perceptions of a crumbling government.
‘But I really think, I don’t know whether you’re aware, just how much the perception around the world is that this is looking like a losing proposition, which it is not, not that it necessarily is that, but so the conclusion I’m asking you to consider is to bring together everyone from [Former Vice President Abdul Rashid] Dostum, to [Former President Hamid] Karzai and in between,’ he said.
‘If they stand there and say they back the strategy you put together, and put a warrior in charge, you know a military man, Khan in charge of executing that strategy, and that will change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think.’
Ghani responded by saying Afghanistan was facing not just the Taliban, but their foreign backers.
Taliban special forces fighters arrive inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military’s withdrawal
‘We are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this,’ he said.
But he also asked that American close air support be ‘front loaded’ to help with the challenges faced by the Afghan army immediately.
Details of their conversation emerged a day after the last U.S. troops were flown out of Kabul ending America’s longest war.
In a follow-up call later that day that did not include the US president, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, General Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie spoke to Ghani.
Reuters also obtained a transcript of that call.
In this call, too, an area of focus was the global perception of events on the ground in Afghanistan.
Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Ghani ‘the perception in the United States, in Europe and the media sort of thing is a narrative of Taliban momentum, and a narrative of Taliban victory. And we need to collectively demonstrate and try to turn that perception, that narrative around.’
‘I do not believe time is our friend here. We need to move quickly,’ McKenzie added.
A spokesperson for McKenzie declined to comment. A spokesman for Milley did not respond by publication time.
Taliban fighters spotted in US Humvee – Bing video U.S. War in Afghanistan Ends as Final Evacuation Flights Depart
BY Adam Nossiter and Eric Schmitt
The last United States forces left Afghanistan late Monday, ending a 20-year occupation that began shortly after Al Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11, cost over $2 trillion, took more than 170,000 lives and ultimately failed to defeat the Taliban, the Islamist militants who allowed Al Qaeda to operate there.
Five American C-17 cargo jets flew out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul just before midnight, the officials said, completing a hasty evacuation that left behind tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to flee the country, including former members of the security forces and many who held valid visas to enter the United States.
“A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday evening. “It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy. The military mission is over.”
But the war prosecuted by four presidents over two decades, which gave Afghans a shot at democracy and freed many women to pursue education and careers, failed in nearly every other goal. Ultimately, the Americans handed the country back to the same militants they drove from power in 2001.
Jubilant Taliban fighters and their supporters reveled in victory as the news became clear. Celebratory gunfire broke out across the city in the predawn hours on Tuesday in Kabul, the arc of tracer rounds lighting up the night sky.
“The last American soldiers departed from Kabul airport, and our country has achieved full independence, thanks to God,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said on Twitter.
Control of the airport was left in the hands of the Taliban, who said they were still working on the shape of their new government.
At the airport, where scenes of mass desperation and carnage this past week became indelible images of the Americans’ final days, only a few hundred Afghans still waited at the gates on Monday night as the last flights departed.
The war began under President George W. Bush as a hunt for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader who oversaw the 9/11 attacks on the United States. On that score, it succeeded: Al Qaeda was driven out and Bin Laden was killed by an American SEAL team in Pakistan in 2011.
But the United States, confident it had routed the Taliban, refused their entreaties for a negotiated surrender and plowed ahead with an enormous effort to not only drive them out but to construct a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. The lengthy occupation allowed the Taliban to regroup, casting itself as the national resistance to the American invaders and, three American presidents later, driving them out in a war of attrition, much as Afghans had done to the Soviets in the 1980s.
The United States departure was marred by a ghastly burst of civilian casualties that seemed emblematic of the American missteps in the war.
A drone strike that the U.S. military said was aimed at thwarting an attack on the airport killed 10 civilians, survivors said, including seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization, and a contractor with the U.S. military.
Such so-called civilian collateral damage was a primary reason so many Afghans turned against the Americans after initial good will in the early years of the U.S. intervention. In the end, the number of Afghan civilians killed in the war — more than 47,000 according to Brown University’s Cost of War project — approached the number of dead fighters.
The Taliban gave few signs on Monday that they were ready to govern a country of nearly 40 million facing a major humanitarian crisis, with about half the population malnourished, according to the United Nations. The Taliban’s leader, the cleric and judge Haibatullah Akhundzada, remained out of sight, having issued no statement since the insurgents seized Kabul two weeks ago. One Kabul-based diplomat expressed doubt over whether he is even alive, though a Taliban spokesman insisted Mr. Akhundzada was in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.
“They are a little bit stunned by running a big urban center like Kabul,” a city of up to 5 million at its peak, the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. “They are really playing from a very weak hand.”
The diplomat said that an unresolved rift between the group’s moderates, like the political chief, Abdul Ghani Baradar, who led the negotiations with the United States, and hard-liners like the Haqqani brothers, the military leaders, was further weakening the ex-insurgents.
The claim that the American drone strike on Sunday caused civilian casualties would be, if confirmed, a bitter parting legacy of the military intervention.
On Monday, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command reaffirmed an earlier statement that the military hit a valid target, an explosives-laden vehicle it said was driven by operatives of the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, and which posed an “imminent” threat to the airport. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed more than 170 people, including 13 American service members, at the airport on Thursday.
The spokesman, Capt. Bill Urban, said that the military was investigating the claims of civilian casualties, and suggested that any civilian deaths may have resulted from the detonation of the explosives in the vehicle. The New York Times could not independently verify whether the American missile strike killed the 10 civilians.
The site of the strike Monday was a scene of devastation. Relatives of the aid worker, Zemari Ahmadi, a technical engineer for the charity organization Nutrition and Education International, said that his car was struck just after he arrived home from work. Children who had clambered in to greet him were killed alongside him, while others were fatally wounded inside the house.
One of the dead was Ahmad Naser, 30, a former Afghan army officer and contractor with the U.S. military, who had applied for an American Special Immigrant Visa based on his service as a guard at Camp Lawton. He had come to Kabul from Herat, in western Afghanistan, in the hopes of being evacuated.
Mr. Ahmadi’s daughter Samia, 21, was inside when she was struck by the blast wave. “At first I thought it was the Taliban,” she said. “But the Americans themselves did it.”
The enormous evacuation operation, unfolding after the unexpectedly rapid collapse of the Afghan government, airlifted some 123,000 people out of the country in the last two months, including about 6,000 Americans.
As some of the last American diplomats were preparing to leave Kabul on Monday, five rockets were fired at the airport, a parting shot claimed by the Islamic State. An American missile defense system shot down one of the rockets, and there were no initial reports of casualties.
President Biden, who took responsibility for ending a war that may yet come to define his presidency, had set a Tuesday deadline for completing the withdrawal.
But senior commanders decided to depart unannounced roughly 24 hours earlier, partly because of stormy weather forecast for Tuesday but also to build in a cushion in case of any snags, military officials said, including further attacks by ISIS-K.
In the final hours of the evacuation, American surveillance and attack aircraft locked down the skies over Kabul, circling high overhead until the last transport plane was aloft.
“Job well done,” said Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne, who was on the last plane out. “Proud of you all.”
A military official said that every American who wanted to leave and could get to the airport was taken out. But a number of Americans, thought to be fewer than 300, remain, either by choice or because they were unable to reach the airport.
But the evacuation did not reach all those Afghans who had assisted the United States over the years, and who now face possible Taliban retribution. An unknown number of those who made it through the tortuous process for special visas granted to American collaborators never even made it to the airport, much less onto an evacuation flight.
“Because I worked with the Americans, I won’t be able to put food on my table, and I won’t be able to live in Afghanistan,” said one special visa holder, Hamayoon, in an interview on Monday from Kabul. “I risked my life for many years, working for the Americans, and now my life is at even greater risk.”
“If I go back to my family house, the Taliban will chase me,” he said. “Our neighbors already told them I worked with the Americans. I am in a miserable situation. The Americans betrayed us.”
Mike, a former interpreter for the U.S. Special Forces who asked to be identified only by his nickname, said everyone in his village knows that he worked for the American military.
“Of course we are disappointed that we’re left behind,” he said. “We have sacrificed a lot. We wake up in the middle of the night and think about what’s going to happen to our life and to our children.”
Students at the American University of Afghanistan, one of the largest American civilian projects in the country and the target of a deadly Taliban attack in 2016, were also left behind. Some 600 hundred students and relatives had boarded buses to the airport but in the end were not cleared to enter the airport gates.
Mr. Blinken said the United States had “worked intensely” to evacuate Afghans who worked with the Americans and were at risk of reprisal.
“We’ve gotten many out but many are still there,” he said. “We will keep working to help them. Our commitment to them has no deadline.”
He also said that the Taliban had pledged to let anyone with proper documents “freely depart Afghanistan.”
Conditions are bound to get much worse soon, both in Kabul and across the country, U.N. officials warned. Food stocks will likely run out at the end of September, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.
The Taliban have promised amnesty to those who opposed them, but it is a promise they may not have the power to keep.
“The Taliban are going out of their way to emphasize the amnesty message,” the veteran diplomat said. “But they may not have full command and control.”
In Kabul, “we may be on the brink of an urban humanitarian catastrophe,” the diplomat said. “Prices are up. There are no salaries. At some point millions of people will reach desperation.”
Do not be deceived as Joe Biden and his handlers knew exactly what they were doing when he left our very own behind and placed them in the hands of our enemies. #LockThemAllUp #Treason
Your Sorry Ass Will Be Dead Soon….. But Do you think of the younger generations you demented bastard @POTUS
Taliban Are Giving Deadly Ultimatum ‘Night Letters’ To Those That Helped Western Troops – UNILAD
Taliban take control, promise religious rule amid reports of executions, forced marriages | Fox News
Afghan Family Says U.S. Missile Killed 10, Including 7 Children – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
So inept, so incompetent and so dismissive, so careless.. John Kirby states “Americans get stuck in other countries all of the time!” Are you kidding me? What a disastrous thing to just “accept”! We have LOSERS running our country right now! — BRING TRUMP BACK!
