“We are already starting to see some signs of some possible movement of al Qaeda in Afghanistan,” David Cohen, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a conference call. “But it’s early days and we’ll obviously keep a very close eye on that.”
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his defense of the Biden administration over its handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeatedly differentiated between the decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and the chaotic nature of the exit. He acknowledged the scale of the evacuation effort, but said it was poorly executed.
“Doing the right thing in the wrong way can be doing the wrong thing,” said committee chairman Sen. Bob Menendez (D., NJ).
Mr Menendez also said the State and Defense departments and the White House had provided unclear or conflicting information on the crisis.
Jim Risk of Idaho, the panel’s ranking Republican, said, “While I supported a responsible end to the war in Afghanistan, no American thinks we should have left that way.”
Members criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for refusing to appear before the committee. Mr Risk blamed the Defense Department for having poor records during the 20-year war, which hindered efforts to verify Afghans’ eligibility for their special immigrant visas.
“The administration is patting itself on the back for this evacuation, it’s like an arsonist who takes credit for saving people from a burning building he set on fire,” Mr Risk said.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said that many analysts had predicted the fall of the Kabul government for the Taliban, contrary to Mr. Blinken’s claim that “the most pessimistic assessments did not predict that government forces in Kabul would Will fall while US forces remain.”
Mr Rubio said the US had “every reason to believe and plan for the rapid collapse of the Afghan army and the Afghan government.”
Mr Blinken said intelligence assessments are conducted on an ongoing basis, but as of February, the worst-case assessment included a Taliban takeover of the country within a year of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan. He acknowledged that by July the security situation in the country had deteriorated.
Sen. Jean Shaheen (d., n.h.) stated that the factor leading to the massive evacuation effort was the fault of successive presidential administrations on both sides.
“Let’s stop with the hypocrisy about blame,” she said. “A lot of people are guilty, and we all share that.”
At the Intelligence and National Security Summit outside Washington on Tuesday, the CIA’s Mr. Cohen acknowledged that the withdrawal from Afghanistan has undermined the agency’s ability to track incidents there, but said the agency was completely over the so-called oversight. -Won’t rely on -Horizon platforms are located in other countries.
“We will also be looking for ways to work from ‘within the horizon’, as far as possible,” he said.
Current US intelligence estimates, which officials say could be revised, are that it will take one to two years for Al Qaeda to reconstitute its ability to threaten the US.
Mr Blinken testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday, where Republicans rejected his argument that the Biden administration was bound by the February 2020 agreement by the Trump administration, and accused the secretary and president of dishonesty and malice.
Democrats on the panel heavily blamed former President Donald Trump, while asking Mr Blinken for assurances of the safety of American citizens and the remaining vulnerable Afghans in the country.
Mr. Blinken told the House committee that the US military had long ago achieved its objectives by counterattacking the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and killing Osama bin Laden. Staying in the country could have increased American casualties without improving the political or security situation there.
“One of the lessons is that while we are very effective in dealing with and eliminating terrorist threats to our country, which we have done very successfully in Afghanistan, the idea of using military force to rebuild a society is something like Which is beyond our means and capability,” he said on Monday.
This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed
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