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A report released by the GOP lead by a top Republican lawmaker is detailing the chaotic and lame duck Afghan withdrawal by the Biden administration bringing America’s reputation to disrepute and endangering thousands of lives.
First Lady
Jill Biden’s office went outside the normal channels and begged veterans groups
to evacuate people having trouble navigating the difficult terrain.
She was not
alone as Vice President Kamala Harris’ office, top Defense Department officials
and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan made frantic moves to bring some
sort of order to the withdrawal process, according to the report released Sunday
by House Republicans, Washington Examiner reports. The report details the
failures of the Biden administration in the last days of U.S. mission in
Afghanistan.
What was Biden's failure in U.S. retreat from Afghanistan?
The report released by Rep. Michael T. McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that the fact that President Joe Biden’s own circle went outside his process to help underscores just how badly the administration planned and executed the U.S. retreat, according to Washington Examiner.
“There was a complete lack and failure to
plan,” Mr. McCaul told CBS’s “Face the Nation” as he revealed the report,
Washington Examiner reported. “There were so many mistakes.”
Exactly one
year after the cowardly withdrawal which coincides on Monday, the Taliban is
marking their anniversary of the toppling of the Western backed government that
collapsed like a house on cards. The Taliban pursued its military campaign
vigorously as it moved to take over the affairs of the state from the timid and
corrupt government along with an army that neither had the vigor nor courage to
engage the enemy in warfare. The U.S. had set an August 31 deadline for ending
its 20-year, $1 trillion war effort.
Biden abandoned tens of thousands of allies in Afghanistan
The report
said the evacuation started late, miscalculated at many tunes, abandoned tens
of thousands of allies it should have saved while bringing out tens of thousands
of others who worked with the U.S. forces in the country often considered
enemies by the Taliban. The chaotic withdrawal gave room to the August 26
suicide bombing that killed 13 American troops and several civilians.
Some of the
conclusions drawn by the report are as follows, according to Washington
Examiner.
1. The
number of American citizens the administration said were left behind and
looking to get out was much higher than the 100 or so reported. The State
Department has brought out some 800 since Aug. 31, and that doesn’t include
those rescued by private groups, according to the report.
2. At the
height of the evacuation, only 36 consular officers were working at Hamid
Karzai International Airport in Kabul, creating a logjam that spilled out to
the gates. People were denied entry because of the backlog, the report said.
3. Afghan
women involved in their country’s modernization effort had a particularly tough
time trying to get to the airport. They risked beatings or shootings if they
weren’t accompanied by a male. Only 25% of those who did make it out were women
or girls. In the final days of the evacuation, a convoy of 1,000 women and
girls circled the airport for hours in a failed attempt to enter. Less than a
third have been able to escape since the U.S. troop withdrawal.
4. Thousands of Afghan security force
members, including some highly trained commandos, fled across the border into
Iran, creating a national security risk should a foreign power recruit them.
“This
drastically limited the number of people we were able to evacuate. And it
likely led to sloppy processing as officers were drastically overwhelmed,” the
investigation concludes.
The report
said the Defense Department began compiling a priority list of high-risk
personnel who should be evacuated but as of February of the said year, the
Pentagon still hadn’t shared the list with the State Department.
“Afghans who
possess the knowledge specific to security operations, intelligence collection,
other aspects of security and defense forces that if it were to fall into terrorists’
hands would pose a national security risk to the United States, those people
will have a special category, I think there is just no way around it,” a senior
State Department official said, according to the report.
White House blames Trump over chaotic Afghan withdrawal
The White
House blamed the Trump administration for the chaotic withdrawal, dismissing Mr
McCaul’s report as “partisan”. It also blamed the agreement between the Trump
administration and the Taliban as having weakened allies.
“This
agreement empowered the Taliban and weakened our partners in the Afghan
government,” Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council,
said in a memo criticising the report.