Taliban’s Best Pals

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and CENTCOM Commander Frank McKenzie repeatedly ran cover for the Taliban’s behavior in 2021, denying that the Taliban had carried out attacks against U.S. and NATO bases during the withdrawal and defending the Taliban’s behavior during the evacuation.

In the weeks after the fall of Kabul, U.S. military brass such as Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would repeatedly testify that the Taliban had broken every provision of the Doha Agreement but one — its vow not to attack U.S. and NATO forces.

In fact, the Taliban had also violated that provision, because the Taliban attacked U.S. and NATO bases in Afghanistan multiple times, both before and after President Joe Biden’s “Go-to-Zero” order, including attacks on Bagram Air Base when U.S. troops were still there. The Taliban’s official spokespeople would often take credit for the attacks too.

The GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) final report from last year had a section about how “Taliban Attacks on U.S. Bases Continue[d]” during the U.S. military withdrawal in the spring and summer of 2021, but nowhere in that section nor anywhere else in the report did it include the key fact that Milley and McKenzie repeatedly and falsely claimed that these attacks hadn’t happened.

Multiple key Biden Administration officials also repeatedly praised the “businesslike” character of the Taliban during the non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), despite clear evidence that the Taliban was beating up some Americans and blocking some U.S. citizens from escaping Afghanistan, and in spite of overwhelming evidence that the Taliban was beating up and even executing some Afghans who wanted to flee Taliban rule. McKenzie played an especially key role in establishing this narrative, although Milley played his part too.