2020, where we committed to leave by a date certain. there was a particular provision or a didncondition, if you will about negotiations between the taliban and the afghan government. there was even a date specified, march 10th, 2020, less than two weeks after the signing of the doha agreement. clearly, that condition was not met. by question is, and general milley, you re the only one who overlapped the two administrations, were there any efforts on behalf of the prior administration to enforce that condition of negotiation with the afghan government and the taliban? senator, as i said in my opening remarks, the conditions that were required of the taliban, none of them were met except one. my question is did we attempt to enforce those conditions? did we inform the taliban, for
0 thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo upped significantly, the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie, routinely engage the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troop, and further stiffen their defenses. to no avail. to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military, and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. mr. secretary, i don t mean to interrupt you but my time is elapsing. so this gets to the overestimation that i think the overly optimistic assessment. even as late as july you re still encouraging the afghan special forces. you re expecting the ghani government to remain, but that was not the case. in december of 2019 the washington post reported that the u.s. military commanders privately expressed a lack of confidence that the afghan army a