The highest officials within the Department of Defense expressed wariness about a continued relationship with the Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said during a Wednesday press conference at the Pentagon that although the two sides worked together to secure Hamid Karzai International Airport and evacuate more than 120,000 people in August, it was not necessarily indicative of a continued relationship now that the United States has withdrawn all of its troops.
The secretary said U.S. forces and Taliban fighters worked together on a “very narrow set of issues,” which he explained was “to get out as many as we possibly could.”
VETERANS AFFAIRS SUICIDE HOTLINE RECEIVED MORE THAN 35,000 CALLS DURING AFGHANISTAN EVACUATION
“I would not make any leaps of logic to broader issues. I would just say, again, I am immensely proud of what our troops have done to this point. It’s hard to predict where this would go in the future,” Austin added.
Milley went one step further in describing the Taliban as a “ruthless group,” citing his own “personal experience.” However, he said it was “possible” that the U.S. and the Taliban could coordinate attacks against ISIS-K.
ISIS-K has taken responsibility for last week’s bombing at the airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghans. Many of the military members who lost their lives in the attack were too young to remember the start of the war in Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2001.
In response to the bombing, the U.S. conducted two airstrikes directed at targets described as ISIS “planners and facilitators,” though their identities have not yet been made public. After the first one, the Pentagon said it hit the target, later acknowledging two targets had been killed.
The second airstrike targeted a vehicle supposedly carrying explosives that the Pentagon said resulted in a subsequent explosion, which would indicate the presence of other explosives. There have been reports that up to 10 civilians, including children, were killed during the second strike.
“At the time, and I think this is still valid, we had very good intelligence that ISIS-K was preparing a specific type vehicle at a specific type location. We monitor that through various means, and all of the engagement criteria were being met with the same level of rigor we’ve done for years,” Milley explained. “We know from a variety of other means that at least one of those people that was killed was an ISIS facilitator. So, were there others killed? Yes.”
Both Milley and Austin acknowledged the troops killed last week and the other 2,461 U.S. service members who died during the longest war in U.S. history.
The people successfully evacuated will “never [know] the 13 who died, and they will never know the 22 who were wounded, nor the thousands of dead and thousands of wounded who came before them. But they will now live in freedom because of American bloodshed on their behalf,” he added.
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“Now, both as secretary and as a veteran of our Afghan war, my thoughts have been with the brave Americans who stood up to serve after al Qaeda attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and my heart is with their families and loved ones, and with our friends and allies, and with our fellow citizens whose lives were lost or changed forever over 20 years of war,” Lloyd said. “We remember 2,461 American service members and personnel who paid the ultimate price in this war, and more than 20,000 wounded Americans, some still carrying the scars that you can’t see on the outside.”
