State Department report criticizes Trump, Biden administrations for Afghanistan withdrawal

WASHINGTON 

The US State Department released its Afghanistan report Friday that blamed the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden for the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021.

“The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” said the unclassified report, Afghanistan After Action Review (AAR).

“Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” it added.

The report was publicized Friday after a 90-day review, during which the AAR team conducted more than 150 interviews with current and former State Department officials at all levels and reviewed documents and materials.

The end of the US military mission posed an enormous challenge for the State Department, according to the report.

“Some officials questioned how and whether the Department could sufficiently mitigate the loss of military support, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) warned of the level of risk that the Department would be accepting,” it said.

Noting the signing of the February 2020 US-Taliban Agreement, and Trump’s signaling of his desire to end the military presence in Afghanistan, the report said: “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”.

Recalling Biden’s announcement in April 2021 to withdraw forces by Sept 11 deadline, the report said the “speed of that retrograde compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers.”

“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),” it said.

“Due to the enormous challenge of providing security for the large diplomatic mission in a conflict area, there was a plan to retain some U.S. forces to provide critical security, but the details of that – and what stay-behind force the Taliban would accept as consistent with the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban Agreement – had not been clearly established by the time Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021,” it added.

The report also found that “naming a 7th floor principal (at the State Department) to oversee all elements of the crisis response would have improved coordination across different lines of effort.”

The US presence in Afghanistan, which began in October 2001, came to an end after 20 years with the withdrawal of American troops in 2021. The Biden administration is blamed by Republican lawmakers for the “failed” withdrawal and the chaos at the Kabul Airport.

In January, Republicans on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee requested documents related to the withdrawal from the State Department to begin an investigation into the controversial withdrawal.

In April, the White House released an after-action report on the withdrawal that blamed Trump’s administration for “lack of planning.”

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