(Last Updated On: April 26, 2021) Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib implied this week that the troops’ withdrawal had come sooner than expected. In an interview with VICE Media, Mohib said: “We weren’t expecting it to come this soon so there hasn’t really been a proper transition,” he said. Mohib said the looming withdrawal has “put us at risk” in some ways but added that it forced the Afghan government to “expedite self-reliance and self-sufficiency with our security forces at a much faster pace than when what we were preparing for.” He said the concern was that “the Taliban could see this as an opportunity to attack us like they did and think that they could overrun a couple of provinces and put us in a situation where it may be hard for us to take them back.”