On August 30, 2021, one minute before midnight, the last American soldier flies out of the airport in the capital of Kabul, Afghanistan. It is 24 hours ahead of the deadline set by US President Joe Biden for the withdrawal of troops from the country, a decision that ends America’s longest war. The Taliban regained power even before the last American soldier left.
Following the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration launched a review of experience within the State Department and the Pentagon. Two confidential reports have just been sent to Congress. These classified documents have long been requested, especially by Republicans.
On Thursday April 6, the White House also published, for the attention of the general public, a twelve-page summary. It globally defends the decision and the execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In this document summarizing the way in which this withdrawal was designed and executed, the American executive concluded that there was no other “scenario” conceivable.
“At the end of the day, after more than 20 years, spending more than $2 trillion, and organizing an Afghan army of 300,000, the speed and ease with which the Taliban took control of Afghanistan suggest that there was no other scenario that could have changed the trajectory, except for a permanent and significantly reinforced American military presence”, according to the account distributed to the press.
“We were wrong”
John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, a body directly attached to Joe Biden, acknowledged that the White House had not anticipated this lightning victory. “No agency has predicted a Taliban takeover in nine days,” John Kirby admitted Thursday, answering questions from the press for an hour. Nor did she anticipate the massive disaffection of the Afghan army and authorities.
‘Clearly we got it wrong’ in terms of intelligence, he told a briefing, adding that Washington had also not ‘taken full measure of the degree of corruption among Afghan officers’ . “Ending any war is not easy, certainly not after 20 years,” he said, however, adding: “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the sadness.” In the summary document, “at the end of May 2021, the assessment was that Kabul was unlikely to come under serious pressure until late 2021, after the departure of US troops.”
As noted The world, the summary makes no mention of the fact that the US Army staff had repeatedly expressed strong reservations about the date of August 31, 2021, seen as rushed for such a heavy operation. An American withdrawal from Afghanistan “has always been the intention of President” Biden, recalled John Kirby. The Democratic president has repeatedly explained that the American army, having carried out its initial mission which was to counter the terrorist threat in Afghanistan, had to redeploy its forces to face other threats.
The White House, without going so far as to openly acknowledge an error, assures in the document released Thursday that Washington “now gives priority to earlier evacuations” in the face of “situations of security deterioration”, giving the example in particular of the evacuation of American diplomats from Ukraine or even Ethiopia.
The Biden administration also considers that the speed with which the Taliban took control of the country, despite assurances from the Afghan government about its ability to maintain stability, was proof that the American government should lean in the future in favor of of “aggressive risk communication”. The document states that in the months leading up to the U.S. military withdrawal, the Biden administration chose “not to air out loud and publicly a possible worst-case scenario in order to avoid signaling a lack of trust.” in the Afghan government.
The White House criticizes Donald Trump
The White House further instructed former Republican President Donald Trump: “It is also undeniable that the decisions made by the previous administration and the complete lack of preparation have markedly limited the options available.”
The Biden administration considers its room for maneuver in Afghanistan to be “severely constrained” by the “difficult realities” left as a legacy by its predecessor. According to the document, when Joe Biden took office, there were only 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, compared to around 10,000 when Donald Trump took office.
In February 2020, Donald Trump had reached an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, at the end of which the United States had committed to a withdrawal in fourteen months. In exchange, they agreed not to launch attacks against American forces and no longer harbor terrorists from Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. On April 1, 2021, Joe Biden made the decision to conclude this operation on August 31. “Do not underestimate the effect the Doha agreement has had on the morale and will to fight the Afghan National Security Defense Forces,” John Kirby said Thursday. relates the New York Times. It had a very corrosive effect on their will to keep fighting for their country.”
In response, Donald Trump strongly criticized the Biden administration’s statement, accusing “fools in the White House” of blaming him for this “disaster”. “Joe Biden is responsible, no one else!”, He said on his Truth Social network.
In a statement Thursday, Republican Michael McCaul, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “President Biden made the decision to step down and even chose the exact date. He is responsible for the massive failures in the planning and execution”.
As early as March 8, 2023, Michael McCaul believed that what happened in Afghanistan “was a systemic collapse of the federal government at all levels”. He then threatened to issue subpoenas for the Pentagon and State Department reports, demanding the release of a diplomatic cable sent by embassy officials in Kabul in July 2021. Last March, Michael McCaul had also conducted an investigation into the State Department’s role in the airport evacuation, reports the New York Times.
“This chaos we are talking about, I haven’t seen it”
John Kirby also praised the scale and speed of the evacuation operation led by the Americans, who took out more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan in a few days, by air rotations. “This chaos we are talking about, I have not seen it,” even declared the spokesperson.
The fact remains that this historic withdrawal has left, whatever John Kirby says, an impression of chaos, in the United States and beyond. Images of Kabul airport surrounded by a crowd trying at all costs to board departing planes have gone around the world.
America was shocked by the death of 13 American soldiers in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group and which also killed 170 Afghans on August 26 near the airport. This attack is systematically invoked by the Republicans in their criticism of the management of the withdrawal.
As related The world, the document tries to clear Joe Biden of any political responsibility in this suicide attack. “The president repeatedly asked if the army needed additional support to accomplish its mission” at the international airport, can we read in the summary, specifying that the highest ranking officers considered their resources “sufficient”.