Austin Scott Miller, the retired US general and former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said he was deeply unhappy with the way the US mission in Afghanistan ended and described the fall of Kabul and the withdrawal of US troops as shocking.<\/p>\n
In an interview with ABC News, Miller said that although he had already considered the possibility of problems during the withdrawal, the way events collapsed in Kabul and the end of the US presence left him “very upset and angry.” He said: “I was very unhappy with the way it ended in Afghanistan. I knew something like this could happen, but I was still angry.”<\/p>\n
According to him, one of the hardest parts of the episode was saying goodbye to his Afghan friends and colleagues, some of whom he had known for 10 to 15 years. Miller said leaving Afghanistan and telling these colleagues that US forces were departing the country was “a very unpleasant task” for him.<\/p>\n
He added that, despite carrying out US government policy as a military officer, the response of his Afghan colleagues weighed heavily on him. In his view, they felt as though they had been betrayed.<\/p>\n
Miller also said the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport after the capital fell were extremely difficult for him. He added that in those moments he felt there was nothing he could do, and if he had been able to, he would have returned to Afghanistan to help again.<\/p>\n
He went on to refer to the bombing at Kabul airport, an attack in which several US soldiers and Afghan civilians were killed. Miller said the attack was “a very hard blow” and almost broke him.<\/p>\n
The former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan said images of the chaos at Kabul airport brought back memories of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He added that scenes of some Afghans trying to reach American aircraft as they left Kabul were painful and shocking for many people.<\/p>\n
In response to a question about what could have been done differently, Miller said the risks in Afghanistan were not taken seriously enough. He added that the US could have moved some of the people who were due to leave Afghanistan to another country before the situation worsened.<\/p>\n
The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the fall of Kabul led to widespread chaos at the city’s airport, an event that drew global attention and became one of the most controversial stages in the end of the US’s 20-year presence in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former US commander Austin Scott Miller criticises Washington’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and describes the fall of Kabul as shocking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}