Gen. Mark Milley Says ‘Civil War’ in Afghanistan Is Likely After U.S. Withdrawal

Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin pressed General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and whether the U.S. is more safe today.

Griffin spoke with Milley at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where thousands of Afghan refugees are waiting to be processed.

Most Americans support withdrawal from Afghanistan, recent polls indicate, but are critical of the way it was handled.

“Could the withdrawal have been done better?” Griffin asked. “Was it military planning that caused people to not feel that the withdrawal was as it should have been?”

“The collapse of the Afghan army happened at a much faster rate and very unexpected, by pretty much everybody,” Milley responded. “And then with that is the collapse of the Afghan government. So that was definitely a surprise. But I will say that there was an awful lot of planning done.”

At one point Griffin asked how many troops the U.S. would have needed to retake Bagram Air Base.

Milley said it probably would have required thousands of additional forces and would’ve run the risk of “reinitiat[ing] a war with the Taliban, which, of course, we could do, but that’s what would have happened.”

Griffin even directly asked Milley, “Is the U.S. safer today since the U.S. has withdrawn from Afghanistan?”

“This is something that I’ve thought a lot about,” Milley responded. “The conditions are likely to develop of a civil war. I don’t know if the Taliban is going to able to consolidate power and establish governance. They may be, maybe not. But I think there’s at least a very good probability of a broader civil war and that will then in turn lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to a reconstitution of al-Qaeda or a growth of ISIS or other myriad of terrorist groups.”

“The short answer to your question is we don’t know yet. But the conditions are very likely, in my opinion, that… you could see a resurgence of terrorism coming out of that general region within 12, 24, 36 months. And we’re going to monitor that.”

You can watch above, via Fox News.