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Repeated watchdog, intel warnings undercut Biden’s public assurances on Afghan army

By John Solomon

Updated: August 17, 2021

Fresh from the Fourth of July holiday, President Biden confidently assured the American people last month that the Afghan army was up to holding the line against the Taliban as the U.S. withdrew it forces after 20 years of warfare. “I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war,” the president declared from the White House’s ornate East Room on July 8.

A few days later, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave a less rosy assurance, but disputed claims a Taliban takeover was inevitable. “A negative outcome – a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan – is not a foregone conclusion,” Army Gen. Mark Milley told reporters. “…I don’t think an end game is yet written.”

But inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and the independent U.S. watchdog for Afghanistan, the warning lights were blinking red that the Afghan Army that the United States spent 20 years training and tens of billions of dollars equipping had a glass jaw that could be crushed easily, according to Just the News interviews with a dozen U.S. officials and a review of several hundreds of pages of memos and reports.

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and a lifelong Democrat, explicitly warned that Afghans couldn’t even handle their own re-fueling operations, their soldiers were prone to defections and allegiances to tribes over command structure, and their fighter jets were far less ready than the American military commanders had portrayed.

“Five of the seven airframes experienced decreases in readiness in the last month of the quarter [June],” Sopko wrote in one warning report days after Biden and Milley made their assurances. “This coincided with the Taliban offensive and the withdrawal of U.S. and Coalition forces, including aircraft-maintenance contractors. The combined effect of the two appeared to reduce aircraft readiness rates.”