According to information from the “New York Times”, American secret services already warned in July of a rapid collapse of the Afghan military and a growing risk for the capital Kabul.
In several reports at the time, they questioned, among other things, whether Afghan security forces would put up serious resistance to the militant Islamist Taliban, the newspaper wrote on Tuesday (local time), citing informed circles.
US President Joe Biden publicly announced on July 8th that the Taliban was unlikely to take over power in all of Afghanistan.
Despite the advance of the Islamists, he stuck to his withdrawal plans.
In the meantime, the Taliban have effectively taken power in the country.
According to information from the New York Times, a report said the Afghan government was not prepared for an attack by the Taliban.
The more cities fell into the hands of the Islamists, the faster it could collapse.
In April, however, according to the newspaper, the US secret services assumed that it would take at least 18 months to conquer Kabul.
Over the summer, however, the reports painted an increasingly gloomy picture of the situation, it said.
An unnamed high-ranking government official told the newspaper that the intelligence services did not make a clear prediction of an imminent takeover of power by the Taliban, even in July. Up until a week before the fall of Kabul, intelligence circles said that a takeover of the Taliban was not inevitable. It is unclear whether other reports over the summer gave a more optimistic assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, the newspaper wrote.