US Chief of Staff Mark Milley (63) has expressed concern that Afghanistan could slide into civil war after the Taliban came to power and international troops withdrew.
“I don’t know whether the Taliban will be able to consolidate their position of power and establish a government,” Milley told Fox News on Saturday in an interview at the US air force base in Ramstein in Rhineland-Palatinate. “My military assessment is that the situation is likely to develop into a civil war.”
Terrorist groups could spread further
Such a development could in turn lead to terror groups taking advantage of the power vacuum in Afghanistan, warned Milley. It is to be feared that al-Qaeda will regroup, that the extremists of the Islamic State (IS) will expand their influence “or that a large number of other terror groups” will spread out in the Hindu Kush. «It could be that within 12, 24 or 36 months we will see how terrorism, starting from this region, is growing again. And we will watch it. “
With the departure of the last US soldiers from Kabul airport, the international Afghanistan mission came to an end after almost 20 years on Tuesday night. The US government’s most important argument in favor of troop withdrawal was that the Al-Qaeda terrorist network had in fact been broken up and was no longer able to attack targets in the US from there.
According to the United Nations, al-Qaeda was already present in almost every second Afghan province before the withdrawal of international troops. (zis / SDA)