we have also been working with democracy campaigners who have had to flee hong kong, many have gone into arrest, many coming over here, families at risk, information kicking around in my office and my colleagues offices, and we now discover an individual who is an agent of the chinese government working their way around parliament, could have access to my office when i ve been out, i don t know, and also busy paying money in to persuade people to become supporters of this brutal regime. it is a brutal regime, it is guilty of genocide, of forced labour, of smashing the christians and threatening the taiwanese. i mean, this is a threatening government, and here it has taken years, apparently, and we didn t know anything about this. why wasn t action taken? and apparently they have given lots of money to the labour party and barry gardiner s office, got access to david cameron and theresa may. why won t they warned about this? i gather she gave
clarification. so the evacuation was chaotic, and yes, we are really grate that feel our military performed magnificently and evacuating over 120,000 people. secretary austin, blinken acknowledged that no one believed the afghan government and military could collapse as rapidly as it did, especially in the first weeks of august. however, u.s. forces conducted at least a couple of air strikes in the middle of july aimed at blunting the taliban s rapid advance. in july you were aware that the situation was deteriorating rapidly by july. why wasn t action take on the
why wasn t action taken to secure the kabul airport or retake bagram then? thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo had picked up significantly, yet the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie routinely engaged the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops 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.
0 why wasn t action taken to secure the kabul airport or retake bagram then? thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo had picked up significantly, yet the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie routinely engaged the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops 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. i don t mean to interrupt you, but my time is lapsing. this gets to the overestimation, i think the overly optimistic assessment, because even as late as july you re still encouraging the afghan special forces, you re expecting the ghani government to remain. in december of 2019, the washington post reported that the u.s. military commanders privately express
0 there s no doubt in my mind that our efforts prevented an attack on the homeland from afghanistan which was our core original mission. and everyone who served in that war should be proud. your service mattered. beginning in 2011, we steadily drew down our troop numbers, consolidated and closed bases and retrograded equipment from afghanistan. at the peak in 2011, we had 97,000 u.s. troops alongside 41,000 nato troops in afghanistan. ten years later, when the ambassador signed the doha agreement lton 29 february 2020 the united states had 12,600 troops with 8,000 nato and 10,500 contractors. this has been a ten-year multi-administration drawdown, not a 19-month or 19-day one. under the doha agreement, the u.s. would begin to withdraw forces contingent upon taliban meeting certain conditions, which would lead to a political agreement between the taliban and the government of afghanistan. there were seven conditions applicable to the taliban and eight conditions applicable to the united