German Spy Chief Pledges Revamp After Afghan Debacle

Faizan Hashmi Published October 27, 2021 | 08:48 PM

Germany's foreign intelligence chief pledged Wednesday to speed up his agency's response times as part of a revamp over errors in the lead-up to NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan

Berlin, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Oct, 2021 ) :Germany's foreign intelligence chief pledged Wednesday to speed up his agency's response times as part of a revamp over errors in the lead-up to NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan.

US-led international troops, including Germany, ended a 20-year deployment in the war-ravaged country in a pull-out widely denounced as "chaotic" and a "debacle" for NATO.

The head of the BND foreign intelligence agency, Bruno Kahl, told MPs that a "new organisational framework" would pursue the aim of "faster reaction" to threats abroad.

He acknowledged that the speed of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan had been "surprising" for the BND foreign intelligence service.

"We must admit that we did not count on the Taliban taking control in Afghanistan and its capital Kabul so quickly," he told an annual parliamentary hearing on Germany's spy agencies.

"We must and want to learn from that."