The Biden administration failed to properly plan and foresee Kabul’s rapid collapse during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a damning State Department report confirms.
The research found serious pitfalls in leadership and questions about who was in charge before and during the chaos, which resulted in the deaths of 13 US servicemen and hundreds of Afghan civilians.
The Biden administration publicly released only half of its 87-page report on the disastrous end of 20 years of US involvement on the Friday before the July 4 holiday.
It is likely to anger Republicans and veterans who have long accused the Biden administration of shrugging off its actions leading up to August 2021.
The conclusion confirmed what critics had long believed, that there had been a litany of strategic failures as the Taliban overran cities and that “worst case scenarios” were not adequately taken into account.
As a result, thousands of allies who aided the US in the war were left behind and chaos ensued at Hamid Karzai International Airport as men, women and children desperately tried to flee.
The Biden administration failed to properly plan and foresee Kabul’s rapid collapse during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a damning State Department report concludes.
Although planning for Kabul’s evacuation had started “somewhat” in advance, the State Department was “hampered by the fact that it was unclear who was in charge within the ministry.”
In April, National Security spokesman John Kirby blamed the Trump administration for the failures, saying, “All this talk of chaos, I just don’t see it”.
The review repeatedly blames the administrations of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for their efforts before and after the departure of US troops from Kabul in August 2021.
It had released a National Security Council review of the withdrawal the day before Good Friday and Easter weekend, but declined to release internal assessments from the Pentagon and State Department.
A State Department task force helped release nearly 2,000 Afghan citizens in July and early August 2021, weeks before the August 31, 2021 deadline set by the US for withdrawal.
They were eligible for processing under a special US visa program for Afghans.
But the state “failed to establish a broader task force as the situation in Afghanistan worsened,” the report said.
And while the military planned for an evacuation of US citizens and Afghan allies, “it was unclear who was in charge within the ministry,” it says.
“The decisions by both President Trump and President Biden to terminate the US military mission in Afghanistan had serious implications for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” the report said.
“Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the (review) team found that in both administrations there had been insufficient thought at senior level about worst-case scenarios and how quickly they might follow.”
As the Taliban took key cities much faster than most U.S. officials expected and Kabul’s fate became unclear, the report said, State Department staff began receiving an “overwhelming volume of incoming calls and messages” from lawmakers, the report said. other government agencies and the public. beg for help in rescuing people trapped in the country.
Thirteen US servicemen were killed when the suicide bomber detonated ball bearing explosives amid the chaos at the city’s airport
The US Marine Corps posted a photo on Twitter of the flag-draped coffins of their fallen brothers who died in the Kabul suicide bombing after the coffins arrived back on home soil on August 29, 2021
The research found serious pitfalls in leadership and questions about who was in charge before and during the chaos, which resulted in the deaths of 13 US servicemen and hundreds of Afghan civilians.
Personnel working to facilitate the evacuation also faced confusing guidance that was not tailored to actual conditions at the time, according to the report.
The state has learned lessons from Afghanistan’s failure to evacuate people before and during the ensuing war in Ukraine and as a crisis developed in Sudan, according to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters on Friday.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity according to the basic rules set by the department.
Officials declined to say why they released the report just before a holiday weekend.