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Petraeus calls outcome of US war on Afghanistan 'catastrophic'

Tuesday, 17 August 2021 3:53 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 17 August 2021 5:30 PM ]

Retired US Army General David Petraeus

Retired US Army General David Petraeus has described the outcome of the US war on Afghanistan as “catastrophic”.

Petraeus, who has previously served as the top US commander in Afghanistan as well as the CIA director, when asked by NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday whether the US military was defeated in the war in Afghanistan, replied that the situation unfolding in the region was “heartbreaking” and “tragic.”

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"This is an enormous national security setback and it is on the verge of getting much worse unless we decide to take really significant action," Petraeus said in an earlier interview.

The top brass said he had anticipated the "psychological collapse" of the Kabul government after the US withdrawal of troops prompting the removal of NATO troops along with thousands of contractors who had maintained the Afghan Air Force which gave the government special forces a military advantage over the fighters.

“If we communicate effectively with the Taliban that they need to halt what they are doing or we will bring the might of the US military down upon them, we can stop this,” he said.

In related news, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg described the Taliban’s Sunday takeover of Kabul as a "tragedy".

However, he refused to take any responsibility for the "messed up” situation in the war-torn country.

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“And people like me who kept saying that there’s no military solution, who know the history of Afghanistan, we were called — people like me were called anti-American. I was called Taliban Khan.”

Stoltenberg blamed the failure on Afghan leadership.

"Ultimately, the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and to achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted," he said. "This failure of the Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today."

On Monday, US President Joe Biden justified his order to pull US troops out of Afghanistan which resulted in the lightning takeover by the Taliban.