U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin remarked that the Afghan army were “consolidating their forces around the key population centers. In terms of whether or not it will stop the Taliban, I think the first thing to do is to make sure that they can slow the momentum and then be able to put themselves in a position where they can retake some of the ground that they’ve lost”. “They are committed to that”, he added. “They have the capacity to make progress and to really begin to blunt some of the Taliban’s advances. But we'll see what happens”.