Misread warnings helped lead to chaotic Afghan evacuation

WASHINGTON — The warnings were clear: The Afghan government would likely fall once U.S. troops pulled out. One senior intelligence official said agencies did identify the risk of a rapid collapse of the Afghan government and grew “more pessimistic” during the last several months of the Afghan fighting season. Analysts have for years warned that the American withdrawal would destabilize Afghan forces trained at great U.S. expense and still heavily reliant on U.S. air power and intelligence gathering, current and former officials said. A public threat assessment in April warned that Afghan forces “will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.” One administration official said the intelligence community had reported to the White House that a rapid military collapse following the withdrawal would be possible as the Taliban took key provincial capitals. But Chris Miller, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 and later was the nation’s top counterterrorism official and acting defense secretary under former President Donald Trump, called the missed speed “an intelligence failure of cataclysmic proportions.” “We have something fundamentally wrong with the way we do our intelligence assessments in our country,” he said.