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Kabul: Frank McKenzie, a former top general who led United States Central Command from 2019 to April 2022 admitted the US failure in the Afghanistan.
He has said that Pakistan was right about Afghanistan all along, “Pakistanis never believed that we would stay, always thought that we would leave,” McKenzie told NBC News, adding, “You know that? They were right, we left.”
McKenzie also admitted that Washington engaged in failed nation-building in Afghanistan and insisted on a Western model for the country which was wrong.
“We began to engage in nation-building operations and maybe some of that was necessary in a narrower sense to protect our interests but the broader things we did probably ultimately in the long term didn’t help us. They diffused our efforts,” he said.
“I don’t know that Afghanistan is governable or sustainable with a Western model. I know that Afghanistan is governable and sustainable from an Afghan model. But we paid too little attention to Afghan realities on the ground,” he said.
McKenzie admitted that getting Afghan allies out of the country is a very “slow” process but did not promise anything on that “moral obligation”.
The top US general agreed that Afghanistan was a bipartisan failure for four US administrations in two decades and added that it was a combination of “military and diplomatic failures”.
Stressing that the Afghanistan is still a breeding ground for threats to the US, he said it is still too early to say what is going to happen in Afghanistan. Extremist groups in Afghanistan will pose new dangers for future US leadership, he said.
The US declared the completion of the Afghanistan pullout on Aug, 30, 2021, ending the 20-year war.
