Days before Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul was taken over by the Taliban, United States President Joe Biden and former Afghan leader had a telephonic conversation that touched base on topics like military aid, political strategy and messaging tactics. The conversation, which happened on July 23, lasted for nearly 14 minutes, according to media reports.

Biden praised the Afghan military during the conversation with Ghani and told him that he clearly had the best military. He added, “You have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well”, according to an exclusive report from Reuters that cited a transcript of the call.

The United States President also offered his Afghan counterpart military assistance from the air while putting a condition of Ashraf Ghani declaring that he could put a lid on the worsening situation in Afghanistan. Biden said, “We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is”, according to the exclusive report from Reuters.

Biden also said that Afghanistan was facing also facing a problem of “perception”. The American leader warned Ghani that the optics of the situation, from the perspective of other parties, were not in favour of Afghanistan.

The statement was followed by a suggestion that included prominent political figures from Afghanistan assembling in a press conference and projecting their trust in the Afghan government would “change the perception”, according to the media report.

The exclusive report from Reuters also suggests that both the world leaders failed to anticipate the forthcoming rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, which happened on August 15. Biden said in the phone call, “We are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows.”

As the Taliban flooded and stormed the Afghan national capital a few weeks ago, former President Ghani stepped down from his position and gave way to the reins of the country. He was later reported to be in the United Arab Emirates along with his family.