Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly told U.S. senators on Sunday that officials expect to change their earlier assessments about the rate at which terrorist groups are expected to rise in Afghanistan in light of the Taliban taking power in the country.
People familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that Milley and other administration officials told senators that the U.S. intelligence community is now working to create a new timelines. The AP notes that Pentagon officials had said in June that extremist groups could regenerate in Afghanistan within two years of the U.S. withdrawing its forces.
One person familiar with the briefing told the AP that the timeline is expected to be much shorter and terrorist groups like al Qaeda may be able to grow much faster than expected.
During a Sunday appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked if he was concerned about Afghanistan becoming a hotbed of terrorism now that the U.S. has withdrawn and the Taliban has taken over.
“We have tremendously more capacity than we had before 9/11 when it comes to counterterrorism,” Blinken said.
“I can’t tell you what, what the Taliban is going to do, but again in their self-interest, allowing a repeat of what happened before 9/11 — which is a terrorist group to reemerge in Afghanistan that has designs on United States —well they know what happened last time so I don’t think it’s in their self-interest to allow that to happen again.”
When asked if the U.S. would ever recognize the Taliban as a legitimate power, Blinken said an Afghan government that respects human rights and doesn’t harbor terrorist groups was a government “we can work with and recognize.”