Former US Defense Official Says Afghanistan Again a Safe Haven for Terrorists and Criticizes Biden Administration

AA / Washington / Rabia İclal Turan

A former US Department of Defense official said on Tuesday that Afghanistan was “again a safe haven for terrorists”.

“Most of us know that what happens in Afghanistan, unfortunately, doesn’t stay there,” former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, Simone Ledeen, told a hearing. of the House Homeland Security Committee.

“In fiscal year 2022, 98 people on our Terror Watch List have, to our knowledge, crossed our southern border, and 324 people evacuated from Afghanistan have been allowed to enter the United States as they were on Department of Defense biometric watch lists,” she added.

“How many others entered without being identified?” she wondered.

Ledeen said the US was no longer a ‘trustworthy partner’, adding: ‘We have abandoned our collaborators and many of them have been tortured and murdered’

“This is not limited to Afghanistan. Our partners around the world have seen it. Saudi Arabia has gone, in two years, from the status of a potential partner in the Abraham Accords to dedollarization,” he said. -she adds.

Ledeen was speaking before the Board of Inquiry into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, along with former Goodwill Ambassador and Counterterrorism Coordinator Nathan A. Sales, Colonel at the retired Christopher J. Douglas and military operations analyst Jonathan Schroden.

Republican members of Congress have blamed President Joe Biden for the failed US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos at Kabul airport in August 2021.

In January, Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee asked the State Department for documents relating to the withdrawal, in order to open an investigation into this controversial operation.

The Biden administration released a pullout report earlier this month that blamed former President Donald Trump’s administration for a “lack of planning.”

*Translated from English by Mourad Belhaj

Only part of the dispatches, which Anadolu Agency broadcasts to its subscribers via the Internal Broadcasting System (HAS), is broadcast on the AA website, in a summarized manner. Please contact us to subscribe.