The White House says that while Joe Biden wanted to end the war, a lack of planning by Donald Trump “significantly limited” options.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has defended its decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, but acknowledged that it is a “lesson learned” that Washington needs to prepare early for “high-risk scenarios”.
The comments, made Thursday ahead of the release of a report examining the 2021 withdrawal, blamed the former administration of President Donald Trump for creating conditions that led to the chaotic nature of the U.S. exit from the country.
“While it always was [President Joe Biden’s] with the intention of ending that war, there is also no denying that the decisions taken and the lack of planning by the previous government [the] options available to him,” John Kirby, White House national security spokesman, told reporters.
The internationally backed Afghan government collapsed and then-President Ashraf Ghani fled in August 2021 as the Taliban took over the capital Kabul amid the withdrawal of US troops.
US troops — confined to the area around the city’s airport until their final withdrawal at the end of that month — oversaw a massive two-week operation to get desperate Afghans out of the country.
During the evacuation, a suicide bombing by the Afghan branch of ISIL (ISIS) killed at least 175 people, including 13 US military personnel.
On Thursday, Kirby said the US government could not have predicted that after 20 years of US support, the Afghan forces would “fail to fight for the country”.
“Another lesson we learned was the need to plan early and extensively for low-probability, high-risk scenarios,” Kirby told reporters.
He denounced the Trump administration for negotiating a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that he said excluded the Afghan government.
Kirby said Trump “negotiated the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners aided by the Ghani government without consulting the Ghani government.”