Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Fox News’ Jennifer Griffen in an interview aired on Saturday that what we saw unfold regarding the evacuation from Afghanistan was part of one of their plans.
According to Milley, “There was an extensive amount of planning in this.”
Milley also said that a civil war in Afghanistan is now “likely” and that we may see a resurgence of terrorism within 1 to 3 years. And all with a massive amount of American military hardware at donated to the cause.
Milley said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:20] “I think a couple of things. One, is the collapse of the Afghan Army happened at a much faster rate and very unexpected, by pretty much everybody, and then with that is the collapse of the Afghan government. So, that was definitely a surprise. But I will say that there was an awful lot of planning done, ROC drills, rehearsals, etc. And what you saw unfold with this noncombatant evacuation operation was one of the contingency plans. And the speed at which it was executed, the flow of the aircraft, we had planes taking off every 30 to 45 minutes or so. We had — we brought in 7,000 — or 6,000 U.S. troops, and then there [were] about a thousand or more or so Afghan troops that secured HKIA. The first day, it was clearly chaotic, no question about it. You saw that on video, etc. But within about 24 hours, that settled down and it became a much more orderly process. The security of HKIA was challenging to say the least, and we saw the bombing. But that would have happened no matter where it was. People talk about Bagram, wherever there’s a perimeter, if there’s no outside force, if there’s no Afghan force securing it, and there wasn’t any, then there’s going to be U.S. forces on the perimeter, on the edge. And they were doing what they were asked to do, which is go out and screen and process people.”
