U.S. Central Command’s Gen. Frank McKenzie warned on Tuesday it will be challenging to continue fighting terrorism from afar in his first congressional testimony since President Joe Biden rolled out his Afghanistan exit plan.
Biden announced his plan for a full withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops there by Sept. 11 despite the Taliban’s flouting of several aspects of a peace deal signed with the Trump administration last February. Lawmakers have pointed to the fact that the Taliban has not broken with al Qaeda terrorists, and violence has risen in Afghanistan over the last year. Concerns also persist that the Afghan government will fall once U.S. military protection is withdrawn.
“I don’t want to put on rose-colored glasses and say it’s going to be easy to do,” McKenzie said when asked how terrorists will still be targeted in Afghanistan without troops and assets on the ground.
“If you’re out of the country and you don’t have the ecosystem that we have there now, it will be harder to do that. It is not impossible to do that. It would just be harder to do it,” McKenzie explained. “We are further planning now for continued counterterrorism operations from within the region, ensuring that the violent extremist organizations fighting for their existence in the hinterlands of Afghanistan remain under persistent surveillance and pressure.”
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House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith and ranking member Mike Rogers offered differing assessments of Biden’s plan.
“There was no win, win, win where everything is going to be fine no matter what we did,” said Smith, a Washington state Democrat. “We accomplished much of what we set out to accomplish in terms of degrading al Qaeda. Certainly, we killed Osama bin Laden.”
Smith warned that a “hot war” and U.S. casualties would resume after a yearlong lull if the peace agreement with the Taliban was allowed to expire on May 1 with no withdrawal plan in place.
Rogers did not address the threat to American service members’ lives but said Biden’s decision raises the terrorist threat emanating from the region.
“Gen. McKenzie is facing tremendous challenges from hardened terrorists and nations bent on our destruction,” Rogers, an Alabama Republican, said. “President Biden’s decision to unconditionally withdraw all forces by Sept. 11, 2021 will only complicate matters.”
In particular, Rogers demanded an explanation from the White House as to what “over the horizon” options will exist for the U.S. to respond to counterterrorism threats in the event the Taliban takes over Afghanistan.
“I’ve yet to hear how the president intends to conduct counterterrorism operations without any U.S. troops in the region,” Rogers said.
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McKenzie assured that ISIS has been reduced to “several hundred fighters” in Afghanistan, and the Taliban has agreed not to allow the resurgence of al Qaeda.
“We will watch closely what they do,” he said, noting that negotiations with neighboring countries are already underway for the positioning of U.S. intelligence and reconnaissance assets. “We’re examining this problem with all of our resources right now to find a way to do it in the most intelligent, risk-free manner that we can.”
