US Intelligence Warns Withdrawal Could Lead to Afghanistan Being Controlled by Afghans

"Suggesting that the Afghan security forces remain fragile despite years of training by the American military and billions of dollars in US funding"

US intelligence agencies have warned the Biden administration that if the United States withdraws its military presence from Afghanistan under current circumstances, the nation would be at severe risk of falling under the control of the people who live there.

A New York Times article titled “Officials Try to Sway Biden Using Intelligence on Potential for Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan” warns that an intelligence assessment has predicted that if “U.S. troops leave before any deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the militant group will take over much of the country.”

“The intelligence estimate predicted that the Taliban would relatively swiftly expand their control over Afghanistan, suggesting that the Afghan security forces remain fragile despite years of training by the American military and billions of dollars in U.S. funding,” NYT reports.

The New York Times, which has consistently supported all US wars including the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, informs us the Taliban has been “stalling” to avoid signing a power-sharing deal with the existing government in Afghanistan.

“The Biden administration is making a final effort before May 1 to show progress in slow-moving negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Doha, Qatar,” NYT reports. “The Taliban, according to American officials, are stalling.”

And, I mean, why wouldn’t they? As Defense Priorities policy director Ben Friedman puts it, “If this assessment is right, and the Taliban could take most of Afghanistan if US forces left, and they want that, why sign a deal limiting themselves to less? Or why not sign to get the US out and renege? Keeping US forces there is just a delaying tactic.”

If the most powerful faction in Afghanistan wants power and has the ability to simply take it, they stand nothing to gain by signing a power-sharing agreement with a faction that is incapable of holding power. The New York Times and the US intelligence cartel (if one can even categorize these as separate entities at this point) are trying to spin the ongoing military presence in Afghanistan as a temporary situation awaiting conditions which will be arriving shortly, and that’s simply false. The Taliban will not voluntarily choose to make itself less powerful.

And, after the Afghanistan Papers exposed the fact that the US war machine has been lying left and right to justify the continuation of the occupation of Afghanistan, you would have to be out of your mind to believe that’s not intentional. The US military is in Afghanistan not to protect women’s rights from control by the illiberal Taliban forces, but because it’s a crucial geostrategic region that the US stands much to gain on the world stage by controlling. This is why the Afghanistan Papers were quickly memory-holed by the mass media as soon as they came out, and why now all we hear about is more made-up reasons why leaving would be disastrous.

When the US-centralized power alliance babbles about “conditions” which need to be met before there can be a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the conditions they are really referring to are a puppet regime in Tehran, in Moscow, and in Beijing. As long as Iran, Russia and China successfully resist absorption into the empire-like blob of US client states, the military presence will remain and narratives will be manufactured to justify it.

The Taliban is an entirely regional power with entirely regional goals; there is no defense-based argument for using military force to keep them out of power in a nation on the other side of the planet. Arguments that they must be kept out of power by military force to protect Afghan women from their regressive ideology is nonsensical unless you also say the US military must be used to forcibly end all illiberal cultural norms everywhere in the world, which would also be absurd.

All the US empire and its narrative managers are really saying when they claim the Taliban will take power if the US leaves is that without the US in Afghanistan, the US won’t be controlling Afghanistan anymore. And, like, duh. Of course it won’t. The people who live there will be determining the fate of their own nation, by violence if they so choose. Giving a nation back its sovereignty necessarily means letting them control their own fate, per definition. Using that self-evident fact to argue against the cessation of military force is just admitting you don’t believe other nations should be self-sovereign.

Saying there might be violence and oppression without an oppressive force of violent thugs controlling things is silly in a couple of different ways. It is a known fact that Australian forces occupying Afghanistan have already committed horrific war crimes there, and if the US government stopped obstructing the International Criminal Court from investigating potential war crimes of American forces it would certainly find a lot there too.

The US is at this point making the argument, “If we don’t keep killing the Afghans, they might kill each other.” The Taliban has warned that if the United States remains in Afghanistan after the May 1st deadline established in a previous peace deal they will begin attacking occupying forces, so pretending the US empire is maintaining the peace by continuing the occupation is entirely baseless. They’re not there to maintain peace, they’re there to maintain control.

Should the US military permanently occupy foreign countries to control what happens there? That’s really the argument on the table right now. Ignore all the narrative distortion and focus there.

Source: Caitlin Johnstone

6 Comments
  1. yuri says

    taliban controls most territory anyway
    if the US morons stay the diversity and equality of heroin production will be enhanced, something vital to improve the welfare in their LGBT/BLM ghettos

  2. Ron says

    The US is there to first, control the opium production (CIA drug cartel) and second to control the region. To not inform the reader that with the Taliban controlling the country, Opium production went to nearly zero is lying by omission. When the US government invaded in 2001, Opium production immediately went up to 90%. This is not coincidence boys and girls.

  3. Mr Reynard says

    Quote:US Intelligence Warns Withdrawal Could Lead to Afghanistan Being Controlled by Afghans

    Hmm is the US Intelligence a definition of a perfect oxymoron ??

  4. silver9blue says

    No one talks about population reduction in Afghanistan since US NATO moved in? Why not say they are there to keep the Taliban down and out when its their country and have been there longer than the US existed.

  5. Alberticus says

    “military intelligence” is an oxymoron.
    The M.I.C. is not about protecting America, it is about LOOTING America.
    The PENTAGRAM has not won a war since the Spanish American Bully on a Pipsqueak mess.
    Twenty YEARS & $6+TRILLION in the Mideast and the Taliban/AlQueda are stronger than they were on 9/11.
    Eisenhower warned Us about the MIC …. the PENTAGRAM is America’s ENEMY, not Our protector. 
    An Army is supposed to protect the BORDERS …. not go thousands of miles away to LOSE “wars” 
    LOSING covers lots of LOOTING.
    Terrorism is similar to pearl production …. you get a grain of irritation and use it to create layer after layer of support, which soon feeds itself. Remove the grain of irritation (ISRAEL) and the pearl of terrorism would quit growing and melt away. How do you remove the irritation? Quit giving Israel weapons and money. Within 5 minutes Israel would “learn” to live in harmony with it’s “semitic brothers” ….
    The big lie about killing a ISIS leader like Al-Baghdadi is that you have accomplished anything in fighting a war against ‘terrorism’. You can’t fight a war on terrorism because leadership keeps changing and adapting.
    Short on conducting genocide, the blood and treasure of any empire is dissipated in fake wars like this. Afghanistan is a case in point, the British Empire was the first example, and the USSR followed with failure and we learned nothing. Hubris and idiocy.
    Bin Laden allegedly quoted the following passage: “If I were president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and sincerely – to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce to every corner of the world that America’s global military interventions have come to an end.” The quote is from Blum’s 2004 book Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire,
    In 2001 there were a few hundred terrorists, mostly just barefoot illiterates with small bases in Afghanistan and Somalia with NO presence in Iraq. Now, thanks to the superior war fighting skills and knowledge of the Military Geniuses in the Pentagon there are tens of thousands with strongholds in Libya, Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, Syria/Iraq, Afghanistan,Pakistan, etc.
    Thanks to Abu Graihb,Guantanamo, Secret Dungeons out of the Feudal Dark Ages ……… Thanks to OUR misconduct and stupidity.
    Popular Christian Zionists such as Pat Robertson, Robert Jeffress, Jerry Falwell Jr., Kenneth Copeland, Paula White, Franklin Graham, et al. are making it easier for Islamic radicals to recruit anti-Christian extremists. Every American bomb dropped on innocent Muslim people, every drone attack, every missile attack, every joint CIA and Mossad assassination and act of military aggression increasingly puts the lives of Arab Christians in mortal danger. And all of this is due entirely to the flagrantly false teachings of Christian Zionism. I’ll say it straight out: These Christian Zionist warmongering preachers in the United States have the blood of untold thousands of Arab Christians dripping from their pulpits.
    Terrorism is CRIMINAL not “warfare” and must be handled as criminal in order or it will matastise. This is proven by the complete and total failure of America’s “war on terror” 
    The entire purpose of terrorism is to provoke an OVER reaction by the target …..in order to create sympathy and allies for your cause. As we have seen since 9/11 ….. they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. We have created terrorist recruits everywhere thanks to Abu Graihb, Guantanamo,torture.
      (1) Terrorism is defined as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”. So terrorists exaggerate their destructive abilities in order to increase intimidation and push their aims  (2) The more damage people believe that a terrorist group has inflicted, the more donations and funding they will receive from radical extremists. Specifically, radicals are more likely to fund terrorists who are “effective” in inflicting damage than those who can’t pull off murder and mayhem
    Terrorism works especially well when we have so many people with a vested interest in it’s success. Politicians, intelligence agencies and law enforcement reap far greater rewards than a meagre 72 virgins and apparently it is also for eternity. I promise you there are some very rich people now that have plenty to show for it. Every “War on (whatever)” builds profits for somebody, and that’s why those wars never end.
    The true Terrorist’s are the governments that use this shit to justify the sacrifice of YOUR rights at the alter of Politics.
    “A tactic of using violence more for psychological purposes than for physical damage and that is intended primarily to delegitimize a regime by showing it to be ineffectual or by inciting it to overreact.”

  6. Bob says

    By Afghans? That would be horribly for the Opium crop!

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