A key House Republican argues that a top general’s decision to turn down the Taliban’s offer to allow the United States to secure Kabul and instead rely on the Taliban and the terrorist Haqqani network was the “original sin” that led to the suicide bombing in which 13 U.S. service members were killed.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican and Marine veteran, grilled Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, during a Wednesday hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.
Gallagher asked McKenzie if it was true that the Taliban offered to allow the U.S. to maintain security over all of Kabul, not just the airport, when the Afghan government collapsed on Aug. 15. The general confirmed it and said he turned the offer down.
McKenzie said he met with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, now the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, on Aug. 15 “to pass a message to him that we were withdrawing and if they attempted to disrupt that withdrawal, we would punish them severely for that.” McKenzie added: “As part of that conversation, he said, ‘Why don’t you just take security for all of Kabul?’ That was not why I was there. That was not my instruction. And we did not have the resources to undertake that mission.”
The general added: “I did not consider that to be a formal offer, and it was not the reason why I was there, so I did not pursue it.”
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The Republican asked if the Taliban’s offer was ever relayed to President Joe Biden, and McKenzie said the offer was also made in the presence of the president’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and that McKenzie conveyed the offer to his chain of command, but he did not confirm that it reached Biden.
Gallagher told the Washington Examiner: “I view that decision to ignore the Taliban’s offer to let us secure all of Kabul instead of just HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport] as a critical decision. And the fact that McKenzie dismissed it as nonserious, and that he does not know whether it got reported up the chain to the president seems significant to me.”
“You could’ve taken the offer to the president and asked for more troops to secure Kabul … We would’ve avoided being entirely dependent upon the Taliban and the Haqqani network for security around the airport, which I believe is the original sin which led to the suicide bombing.”
Gallagher asked the general whether the Taliban’s Badri 313, an elite Taliban unit that Gallagher said “specializes in suicide bombing attacks,” was providing security in front of the Kabul airport during the evacuation, and McKenzie admitted the unit was part of it.
The congressman told the Washington Examiner that Taliban complicity in the Kabul suicide bombing was at least plausible: “I don’t have proof that they opened the floodgates and allowed an ISIS-K suicide bomber, but I think at a minimum it merits further scrutiny because this is a group that has a history with suicide bombings in charge of security at the moment a suicide bombing attack kills 13 Americans. At a minimum, I think it proves the folly of relying upon the Taliban as our security partner.”
McKenzie has cast doubt on the Taliban letting the ISIS-K bomber through and suggested the Taliban prevented other attacks against the airport.
Gallagher also asked the general whether the ISIS-K suicide bomber had been held at the prison at Bagram Airfield, and McKenzie said they were still trying to figure that out.
When the congressman asked the general if al Qaeda had renounced an oath to the Taliban, McKenzie said, “The Taliban and al Qaeda have a very close relationship, and I do not expect the Taliban to seriously interfere with their basing or repositioning in Afghanistan.”
The congressman told the Washington Examiner that McKenzie should know that al Qaeda has “repeatedly” sworn allegiance to the Taliban, adding, “There’s nothing in the recent history of Afghanistan that suggests the Taliban is conflicted about its relationship with al Qaeda … And the fact that Haqqani is part of the government makes me further concerned.”
The Republican pointed out to McKenzie that Sirajuddin Haqqani is the new interior minister for the Taliban government, and McKenzie said there was no evidence the Haqqani network has broken with al Qaeda.
Gallagher told the Washington Examiner: “I think we’re putting a lot of our future strategy where it rests on a certain set of assumptions around the Taliban acting as rational actors trying to maximize utility and gains from the international community, which I think is flawed, and also that over-the-horizon counterterrorism operations can work effectively when your only partner on the ground is the Taliban, whose closest partner on the ground is al Qaeda. I think those two things are huge problems for our strategy going forward.”
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The congressman said, “We still have to do counterterrorism … And if we don’t understand the basic operational relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban, how are we going to do that?”
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this week that the U.S. evacuation and withdrawal in Afghanistan was “a logistical success but a strategic failure.” Gallagher told the Washington Examiner he strongly disagreed with it being a logistical success, pointing to hundreds of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies being left behind, billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment falling into Taliban hands, reliance upon a “terrorist enemy” for airport security, “humiliation” in the eyes of the world, “10 civilians, seven of whom were children, slaughtered in a bad drone strike” by the U.S. in Kabul, and “13 American service members dead that didn’t need to die.” He asked: “If that is success, then what the hell does failure look like?”
