Taliban missed opportunity to eliminate ISIS before 13 US service members were killed: Book
The Taliban’s Failure and the Deadly Consequences: A Shocking Revelation
A new book has uncovered a startling revelation about the Taliban’s inaction and its impact on the deadly terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
As the U.S. military prepared to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban swiftly overthrew the U.S.-backed government, taking advantage of an Afghan army that had become overly reliant on American support. With the U.S. military conducting an evacuation operation from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, the Taliban provided an outer layer of security due to the threat posed by terror groups.
At the time, defense leaders argued that despite the Taliban’s less-than-ideal reputation, they could be trusted in this particular instance because both sides shared a common goal: the swift departure of the U.S. military from the country.
“They established a firm perimeter outside of the airfield to prevent people from coming on the airfield during our departure,” said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command at the time. “And we’ve worked that with them for a number of days. They did not have direct knowledge of our time of departure … But they were actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations.”
However, two years later, the U.S.’s relationship with the Taliban during the evacuation has come under scrutiny. President Joe Biden authorized the sharing of threat assessments with the Taliban just days after they seized power.
Intelligence officers had information indicating that ISIS-K was planning an attack near the airport. The U.S. requested the Taliban to take action against the hotel being used by ISIS-K members, but they failed to do so, as revealed in the declassified after-action review from U.S. Central Command.
The shocking details of the Taliban’s inaction have come to light in the recently released book, “Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End.”
“I think that this was something that was a failure in Afghanistan for 20 years, a lack of understanding Afghanistan and understanding the Taliban because things are always more complicated than that,” said Jerry Dunleavy, one of the authors of the book. “So did the Taliban have an interest that aligned with us? Well, the Taliban wanted us to leave? Right. And, President Biden wanted to stick to the withdrawal date of August 31 and so, in that sense, you know, the Taliban wanted us out, we wanted to get out. And so we worked together, right? But in other ways, the Taliban’s interests very much do not align with those of the United States.”
The problematic relationship with the Taliban goes beyond their role in providing security at the airport. The U.S. military abandoned its crucial airfield, Bagram, in early July 2021, which included prisons housing thousands of suspected terrorists. The Taliban gained control of the base and released the prisoners, including thousands of Taliban fighters.
Among the released prisoners was Abdul Rahman al Logari, an ISIS-K fighter who had previously been arrested for planning a terror attack in India. The CIA had tipped off the Taliban about his arrest, and he was brought to Parwan prison to serve his sentence.
Tragically, al Logari was the individual who carried out the suicide attack outside the Kabul airport, resulting in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and numerous Afghan civilians. This attack stands as one of the deadliest incidents in the U.S.’s two-decade presence in Afghanistan.
“Simply by maintaining Bagram, we would have not just had a much safer, much more orderly evacuation, we would not have just been more successful at getting Americans and Afghan allies out, we wouldn’t have just been able to maybe stop the Taliban from taking Kabul, but the terrorists who killed 13 Americans on August 26 would have been in jail, would have just been stuck behind bars rather than being freed,” Dunleavy emphasized.
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