Afghanistan withdrawal to diminish US intelligence abilities: CIA
The withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan will restrict the Central Intelligence Agency’s intelligence abilities in the country, the CIA head says.
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said Wednesday that the planned withdrawal of US military from Afghanistan would hurt the agency’s ability to gather intelligence in the country.
“Our ability to keep that thread in Afghanistan in check, from either al-Qaeda or ISIS (Deash) in Afghanistan, has benefited greatly from the presence of US and coalition militaries on the ground and in the air fueled by intelligence provided by the CIA and our other intelligence partners. When the time comes for the US military to withdraw, the US government's ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. That’s simply a fact,” William Burns told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
“So all of that, to be honest, means that there is a significant risk once the US military and the coalition militaries withdraw,” he added.
The comments by Burns came a day after a senior official in the US administration announced that the country “will begin an orderly drawdown of the remaining forces before May 1 and plan to have all US troops out of the country before the 20th anniversary of 9/11.”
The plan is expected to be formally announced on Wednesday by US President Joe Biden, pushing back a withdrawal deadline set in a deal with the Taliban.
Under a February 2020 “peace” deal between the Taliban and the Trump administration, Washington vowed to withdraw all 2,500 US troops remaining in Afghanistan before May 1. In return, the Taliban pledged to stop attacks on US troops.
However, attacks continue to plague the South Asian nation, including a recent upsurge in killings of journalists, aid workers and government employees.
The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 under the pretext of the so-called war against terror.
Washington has spent more than trillions of dollars waging war on the impoverished country, which has left thousands of Afghan civilians and American soldiers dead.
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