The former commander of the United States forces and responsible for the NATO mission in Afghanistan during the withdrawal of 2021, retired General Scott Miller, has acknowledged his "discontent" with the chaotic exit of U.S. and international troops from the country, amid the advance of the Taliban and the fall of Kabul.
"I was quite discontent with the ending in Afghanistan. Although I knew it was not going to end well, and I knew this could happen, but I was angry, and I would say I was not being very reflective," the retired general pointed out in an interview with the U.S. network ABC, five years after the Taliban came to power and the chaotic evacuation of international forces, as well as Afghan collaborators and civilians.
In his analysis, Miller attributes the chaos of the withdrawal to a "disconnection" between political decisions and the operational reality on the ground. "The risk was increasing on the ground and I am sure it was not fully assessed, and part of that has to do with the fact that you can lighten the load you have to face in an emergency before the emergency occurs," he indicated.
In this sense, he acknowledged that he would have preferred broader planning to get more people out of Afghanistan before the Taliban entered Kabul. "If you start to analyze the evacuation itself, there were a number of people you knew you were going to get out of the country, and I would have liked to see some of them leave while we still had the whole air bridge, while we were withdrawing the military forces," he explained.
Regarding the scenario left by the withdrawal, the retired military emphasizes that, in many aspects, the country "looks a lot like Afghanistan before 2001," especially regarding the situation and rights of women.
Likewise, he has expressed his concern for the situation of the members of the Afghan Armed Forces who remain in the country, considering that "they are at risk" and recalling that they continue to be persecuted because "they constitute a potential threat to the regime" of Kabul.