US

Afghanistan evacuation review critical of decisions made by Biden and Trump

Decisions made by presidents had ‘serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government’

US marines guard a wall at an entrance to the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 22nd, 2021. The US state department said it should better prepare for 'worst-case' scenarios and ensure that a wide range of views are considered in its planning. Photograph: Jim Huylebroek/New York Times

Jonathan Landay
Sat Jul 1 2023 - 11:47

A US state department report on Friday criticised the handling of the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan, saying decisions by president Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump to withdraw troops had “serious consequences for the viability” and security of the former US-backed government.

Adverse findings in the report also reflected badly on secretary of state Antony Blinken, without naming him. They included the department’s failure to expand its crisis-management taskforce as the Taliban advanced on Kabul in August 2021 and the lack of a senior diplomat “to oversee all elements of the crisis response”.

“Naming a 7th floor principal ... would have improved co-ordination across different lines of effort,” the report said, referring to the state department’s top floor where Mr Blinken and senior diplomats have offices.

The review, and a similar Pentagon study, contributed to a report released by the White House in April. But the state department review’s critical findings were not reflected in the White House report.

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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Mr Biden’s handling of the Afghan pullout.

“He had to make a decision,” Ms Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday. The US had poured “billions of dollars into a war with no end in sight” and “he wanted to stop that, he wanted to end that,” she said.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr Trump, wrote in an email: “There’s only one person responsible for the disastrous pullout of Afghanistan – Joe Biden.”

The White House report effectively blamed the chaotic US pullout and evacuation operation on a lack of planning and troop reduction rounds by Mr Trump following a 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw US forces.

“I can’t speak to that internal co-ordination piece and how the administration settled on the core conclusions that it presented” in April, a senior state department official said.

The official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, declined to say why the review dated March 2022 was withheld from release until the eve of the July 4th holiday weekend.

US president Joe Biden declared from the White House that he would withdraw the remaining few thousand US troops in Afghanistan by September 11th, 2021, and refocus American attention elsewhere, after two decades of conflict. Video: Reuters

The US troop pullout and evacuation of US and allied officials, citizens and Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution saw crowds of desperate Afghans trying to enter Kabul airport and men clinging to aircrafts as they taxied down runways.

An Islamic State suicide bomber killed 13 US servicemembers and more than 150 Afghans outside an airport gate.

The state department released 24 pages of an 85-page After Action Report – the rest remained classified – on its handling of the evacuation operation launched as the last US-led international forces departed after 20 years of backing successive Kabul governments against the Taliban.

It praised the performance of US embassy personnel working under difficult conditions like the Covid-19 pandemic and reduced security because of the US troop drawdown, whose speed “compounded the difficulties the department faced”.

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Some 125,000 people, including nearly 6,000 Americans, were flown out of Kabul before the last US soldiers departed on August 30th, 2021, as the Taliban consolidated their grip on Kabul after the US-backed government fled.

“The decisions of both president [Donald] Trump and president [Joe] Biden to end the US military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” the review said.

While those decisions were outside its scope, the review said that “during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow”.

A White House spokesman disputed that conclusion. He pointed to a White House report finding that there were extensive meetings and tabletop exercises to explore evacuation scenarios as part of the planning process, including contingencies “actually worse than the worst-case predictions”.

The state department review said department planning “was hindered” because it was “unclear” which senior official “had the lead”.

Senior administration officials also failed to make “clear decisions regarding the universe of at-risk Afghans” to be included in the evacuation by the time it started, nor had they determined where Afghan evacuees would be taken, it said.

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Preparation and planning “were inhibited” by the Biden administration’s reluctance to take steps that could signal a loss of confidence in the Kabul government “and thus contribute to its collapse,” the review found.

“The complicated department taskforce structure that was created when the evacuation began proved confusing to many participants, and knowledge management and communication among and across various lines of effort was problematic,” it said. – Reuters

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