At his farewell ceremony at the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defence said that with the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, "terrible things have happened to Afghan women's rights".
Austin, who is now retired, said that efforts to improve the situation of Afghan women should continue. Austin, 71, America's first black secretary of defence, announced the end of his tenure at the Department of Defence on Friday.
He served the US military for 41 years and is a four-star general and a Pentagon leader who has had combat experience.
Austin retired from the military in 2016, but returned to the Pentagon in 2021 by President Joe Biden and was appointed as the first black US secretary of defence.
Austin's tenure coincided with three major military crises, including the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and the war in the Middle East.
"Over the past four years, we've stood up to our competitors, weakened our enemies, strengthened our friends, and invested in the future," Austin said at a ceremony marking the end of his tenure at Myer-Henderson Air Force Base.
However, his tenure coincided with the disastrous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban to power, which critics say is a historic defeat for the United States.
According to the Associated Press, the shocking fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban has affected Austin's tenure forever.
The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has still created a deep sense of betrayal among some veterans of the loss of Afghanistan, and is one of the issues that President-elect Donald Trump's team has repeatedly criticised.
Biden's decision to continue withdrawing troops from Afghanistan led to two weeks of turmoil in August 2021, when the Air Force evacuated more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan within 17 days.
After the Taliban's return to power, all the hard-won gains for women and democracy were wiped out.
"There were a lot of predictions that if we got out of Afghanistan, we would be attacked every day," Austin said. This has not happened."
"However, some terrible things have happened with women's rights. We must continue to try to improve these issues," he added.
The Biden administration had not yet recovered from the shock of withdrawing from Afghanistan when Russian President Vladimir Putin began amassing hundreds of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine.
In response to the invasion, Austin formed the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, a coalition of more than 50 countries that have sent more than $126 billion in weapons and training to Kyiv over the past three years.
Then, the Hamas-Israel war began on October 7, 2023, and since then, the United States has helped continue this war by providing strategic and military support to Israel. Israel, an ally of the United States, has been accused of genocide in Gaza in this war.
Austin sent two aircraft carriers to the region, and since then, the conflict has spilled over into the Red Sea, disrupting trade and plunging the US Navy into the fiercest naval battle since World War II.
In his closing remarks on Friday, Austin praised his country's "achievements" in these crises.
"We have united the free world to help Ukraine fight for its freedom against the aggression of the Putin empire," he said.
“We have led the NATO alliance, which is stronger, bigger and more united than ever. We have prevented a full-scale war in the Middle East, weakened Iran's proxies across the region, and worked tirelessly to rescue Palestinian civilians in Gaza," he added.
