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No top U.S. intelligence agency predicted that the Taliban would take over Kabul with such ease and before troops were withdrawn from the country in August, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal, which obtained a review of the classified assessments, reported that there was a general consensus that the Taliban were on the offensive and could take over the country by the end of the year.
William Burns, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, appeared for a discussion at Stanford University and said the intelligence at the time showed some “very troubling trend lines,” according to the WSJ.
“So does that mean we, with mathematical precision, can say that, you know, former President [Ashraf] Ghani in Afghanistan is going to flee his office and not tell his senior-most aides on the 15th of August? No.”
Trends Journal has reported extensively on the U.S.’s misadventure in the country. Gerald Celente, the publisher, had forecast when the Afghan War began that America would lose: “If Alexander ‘The Great’ couldn’t pull it off, if the British couldn’t beat them and neither could the Russians, there is no way America will win.” (See “AS CELENTE FORECAST: U.S. WOULD LOSE AFGHAN WAR LAUNCHED BY BUSH. THE WORST IS YET TO COME.”)
Celente also noted that the U.S. had not won a war since World War II. As a result of his forecast, Celente, once a popular guest on mainstream media who has appeared twice on Oprah, was blackballed from the press and TV and accused of being anti-American. (See the movie, “ZIZI and HONEYBOY,” starring Doris Roberts.)
The Journal said it was these “shortfalls” that “underpinned some of the policy failures that resulted in chaotic mass-civilian evacuations in the deadly final weeks” of the U.S.’s involvement in the war.
What the withdrawal means for U.S. security remains to be seen.
Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that ISIS in Afghanistan could attack the U.S. within six months.
“It’s precisely that threat that we need to remain vigilant and disrupt,” he said. “We actually are fairly certain they have the intention to do so.”
Kahl also told the committee that Washington is in talks with Islamabad to continue its agreement to use Pakistani airspace to attack terrorist threats in Afghanistan, according to USA Today.
It has become evident what the withdrawal meant for the average Afghan.
The conditions in the country are dire, with billions in international funds frozen. The best Kabul can pull in is $500 million to $700 million in revenue, which is not enough to pay public salaries or provide basic services, the Associated Press reported.
There is an ongoing drought in the country and the United Nations predicts that 95 percent of the population “will go hungry and as much as 97 percent of the country risks sinking below the poverty line.” Of the country’s 38 million, 19 million cannot access sufficient food each day.
“Every Afghan man, woman, and child knows there is a really deep crisis unfolding,” Dick Trenchard, Afghanistan country director for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said, according to the Financial Times. “We haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”
TREND FORECAST: As we have long noted, the business of America has been war, and the business of China is business. The 20th century was the American century, and as we have forecast the 21st century will be China’s… and one of our 10 Top Trends for 2021, is “China 2021.”
Moreover, the United States and Europe will lose in the economic challenge against China. While President Biden stated that Beijing would not surpass Washington in power during his term in the White House, that has zero to do with U.S. policy or the Biden administration.
Indeed, we published an article titled, “WILL TALIBAN CASH IN ON $1 TRILLION WORTH OF AFGHAN MINERAL WEALTH?”, in our 24 August issue, the country—although poor—is sitting on iron, gold, copper and lithium, which has attracted China’s attention.
We forecast that the hard facts and analyses project China to surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy within a decade, and the U.S.—incapable of winning a war since WWII—would be defeated by China in a military confrontation.