The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, admitted on Wednesday, before the House Armed Services Committee, that the United States lost the 20-year war in Afghanistan, a month after the US withdrawal from the country.

"It is clear, it is obvious to all of us, that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted, with the Taliban in power in Kabul," Milley told the Committee, adding that "the war was a strategic failure... in the sense of we accomplished our strategic task of protecting America against Al-Qaeda, but certainly the end state is a whole lot different than what we wanted."

Milley explained that when something as big as war is lost, many causal factors should be taken into account, which is something that needs to be figured out, and in this case, "there is a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back."

What factors contributed to the loss of war?

Explaining why his country failed, Milley listed a number of factors, such as lost opportunities to arrest or assassinate al-Qaeda's former leader Osama bin Laden, shortly after their occupation of Afghanistan began in 2001. Some other factors he cited included the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Washington's failure to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a Taliban sanctuary, and pulling advisors out of Afghanistan a few years ago. 

It is worth mentioning that the US completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 31, ending a 20-year occupation. Kabul Airport suffered an explosion a day before the withdrawal ended, which killed 60 Afghans and more than 13 US soldiers.