Biden administration review of 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan puts blame on Trump

US President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday blamed his predecessor, Donald Trump, for the deadly and chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021 that led to some of the darkest moments of Biden’s presidency.

The White House publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of the “hotwash” of US policy on the end of the country’s longest war, denying responsibility for its own actions and insisting that Biden was “deeply deterred” by Trump’s decision.

He acknowledged that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner, but blamed the delay on the part of the Afghan government and military, and the assessment of the US military and intelligence community.

The short document was drafted by the National Security Council at the White House, rather than by an independent entity. The administration said the detailed review conducted by the US State Department and the Pentagon, which was delivered privately to Congress on Thursday, was highly classified and would not be released publicly.

“President Biden’s options on how to conduct his withdrawal from Afghanistan are severely limited by the conditions created by his predecessors,” the White House brief stated, when Biden entered office, “The Taliban are in the strongest military position they have been in since 2001, controlling or competing with almost half of the country.”

The report criticized the intelligence community’s overly optimistic assessment of the Afghan army’s willingness to fight, and said Biden was following military commanders’ recommendations for pacing the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“It’s clear that we were wrong,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday, but declined questions about whether Biden had any regrets for the decisions and actions that led to his resignation.

‘We are now prioritizing evacuation earlier’

Kirby said of the report that “the goal is not accountability,” but “understanding” of what happened to inform future decisions.

The White House emphasized Afghanistan’s missteps in its handling of Ukraine, where the Biden administration has been credited with supporting Kyiv’s defense against a Russian invasion. The White House said it simulated a worst-case scenario ahead of a February 2022 invasion and moved to release intelligence about Moscow’s intentions months in advance.

“We are now prioritizing early evacuation in the face of a degrading security situation,” the White House said.

In an apparent attempt to defend national security decision-making, the Biden administration also noted that it issued a pre-war warning over “strong objections from senior officials in the Ukrainian government.”

Republicans in Congress have been highly critical of the Afghanistan withdrawal, focusing on the deaths of 13 service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport, which also killed more than 100 Afghans.

Former Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was seriously injured in the blast, told a congressional hearing last month that the retreat “was a disaster” and “there was an inexcusable lack of accountability.”

The administration’s report appeared to place some blame on the August 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Kabul airport, known to the military as HKIA, saying the US military made the key decision.

“To manage the potential threat of terrorist attacks, the President repeatedly asked whether the military needed additional support to carry out its mission at HKIA,” the report said, adding, “Senior military officials confirmed that they have sufficient resources and authority to mitigate the threat.” .”

Kirby credited U.S. forces for conducting the largest air evacuation of noncombatants in history during the chaos in Kabul.

“He ended the longest war in our country,” he told reporters. “It’s not going to be an easy thing. And as the president himself said, it’s not going to be low class or low risk or low cost.”

Since the US withdrawal, Biden has criticized the February 2020 agreement Trump reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, saying the US would leave the country. The agreement gave the Taliban significant legitimacy and was blamed by analysts for undermining the US-backed government, which would quickly collapse a year later.

‘General sense of degradation and neglect’

The Afghan government released about 5,000 Taliban prisoners after the Doha agreement was a condition for holding peace talks with the Taliban. Kirby noted that the release and other examples of what he said is a “general sense of degradation and indifference” inherited by Biden.

But the agreement also gave the US the right to withdraw from the agreement if Afghan peace talks failed – which they did.

The agreement requires the US to withdraw all troops by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed for a full withdrawal by September but refused to delay, saying it would escalate a long-running war that needs to end.

Since the withdrawal, the US has carried out a successful operation to kill al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri – the group’s No. 2 leader during the September 11 attacks – which the White House sees as proof that it can still contain the terrorist group. Afghanistan.

But the images of the disturbance and violence when it fell in Kabul still reverberate, including the sight of Afghans falling from the undercarriages of American planes, Afghan families handing babies through the airport gates to save them from crushing and violence from the crowd, and the destruction after. The bomb went off at the Abbey Gate.

Pressed by reporters Thursday afternoon, Kirby repeatedly defended the U.S. response and efforts to withdraw American citizens and argued with reporters who called the withdrawal chaotic. At one point, he stopped in what appeared to be an attempt to gather his emotions.

“For all this talk of chaos, I just don’t see it, not from my perch,” said Kirby, who was a Pentagon spokesman at the time of the resignation. “At one point during the evacuation, there were planes flying full of people, American and Afghan, every 48 minutes, and not a single mission was missed. So sorry, I’m not going to buy the whole argument. of chaos.”