“The sudden departure of President Ghani from Kabul and the fall of the city to the Taliban happened with a speed that caught almost all close observers by surprise,” the report said, noting that “until Kabul fell, commercial flights out of Afghanistan were available and even Afghans planning to depart were taking time to sell property and settle their affairs.” That evacuation operation had to be expedited when in mid-August 2021, following rapid gains by the Taliban, President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan and the government in Kabul collapsed. “Critically, the decision to hand over Bagram Air Base to the Afghan government meant that Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) would be the only avenue for a possible noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO),” the report stated.
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Once Biden decided in April 2021 to proceed with full withdrawal, with a new deadline of September 11, 2021, the subsequent speed of the US military’s “retrograde” from Afghanistan “compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers,” it stated.
The report noted that “when the Trump administration left office, key questions remained unanswered about how the United States would meet the May 2021 deadline for a full military withdrawal, how the United States could maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul after that withdrawal, and what might happen to those eligible for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program as well as other at-risk Afghans.” That document blamed the Trump administration’s decisions for creating the conditions that led to the chaos of the evacuation, and did not overtly admit any mistakes. The State Department’s report contains much sharper criticism around the Biden administration’s actions than the White House summary document released in April. Sharper criticism of Biden admin actions than earlier White House document However, accusations about who was responsible for the chaotic final weeks have fallen largely along party lines, with Republicans pointing fingers at the Biden administration and Democrats, including the White House, casting blame on the Trump administration for the deal that set the US withdrawal into motion. The Biden administration’s frenzied withdrawal after 20 years of US involvement has come under immense scrutiny by predominantly Republican lawmakers. “I was right.”Ī US intelligence assessment last August found that al Qaeda had not reconstituted in Afghanistan following the US withdrawal. “I said we’d get help from the Taliban,” the president said in response to the shouted question after remarks at the White House. The report was publicly released more than a year after the 90-day review of the evacuation was completed and includes findings around the tumultuous final weeks of the US presence in Afghanistan, as well as a number of recommendations for improvement moving forward.Ī senior State Department official did not explain why it had taken so long for the report to be published, nor why it was released before a holiday weekend, saying they would not discuss questions related to “process.”Īsked about the report on Friday and whether he admitted there were “mistakes during the withdrawal,” Biden noted that he had vowed that al Qaeda “wouldn’t be there.” “Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR (After Action Review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” it said. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” the unclassified report said. “The decisions of both President (Donald) Trump and President (Joe) Biden to end the U.S. The US State Department on Friday released its long-awaited Afghanistan After Action Review report, which found that both the Trump and Biden administrations’ decisions to pull all US troops from Afghanistan had detrimental consequences, and details damning shortcomings by the current administration that led to the deadly and chaotic US withdrawal from that country after nearly two decades on the ground.
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