Marking 3 years since Afghanistan withdrawal
Washington — Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused the Biden administration of misleading the public about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in a report reviewed by CBS News that detailed the panel’s two-year investigation into the 2021 pullout.
Republicans have hammered President Biden over the deadly evacuation, in which 13 U.S. service members died in a suicide bombing in Kabul, and they are now also criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
The lengthy report, which will be released Monday but was shared exclusively with CBS News, is highly critical of Mr. Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, accusing the president and his administration of ignoring repeated warnings from military officials, national security advisers and U.S. allies about the risks associated with drawing American forces down to zero because he “prioritized politics and his personal legacy over America’s national security interests.”
“President Biden appears to have believed his historic position on Afghanistan would ensure his legacy,” the report says, adding that Harris “appears to have been working in lockstep” with the president to withdraw all U.S. troops.
Mr. Biden has rarely commented on the Afghanistan withdrawal, but he said in September 2021 that he “was not going to extend this ‘forever war,’ and I was not extending a ‘forever exit.'”
Last year, the White House released its own report summarizing a classified review of the Afghanistan exit that largely blamed the Trump administration for a deal it struck with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from the country by May 2021. The deal, known as the Doha Agreement, laid out a series of conditions for the Taliban to fulfill in order for U.S. forces to fully leave Afghanistan. Another report released by the State Department last year faulted both the Trump and Biden administrations for “insufficient” planning surrounding the withdrawal, which was partially declassified and released.
The White House’s report said the intelligence community’s assessment was that the Taliban would make gains only after a complete U.S. military withdrawal, and not before, but that’s not what ultimately happened during the summer of 2021.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee report includes the overly optimistic statements spokespeople at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon made in the weeks and days leading up to the withdrawal, even as the Taliban was consolidating control of the country. One example cited a Pentagon statement that Kabul was not in imminent danger. Two days later, Kabul fell to the Taliban.
In its investigation, the committee has conducted 18 transcribed interviews with Biden administration officials — including former ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson, Gen. Austin Miller and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, according to the committee. The panel also received over 20,000 pages of documents from the State Department following subpoenas for the materials, along with holding public hearings since the probe began.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not testify in front of the committee for the report despite requests from chairman Michael McCaul. Last week, McCaul subpoenaed Blinken for testimony in a public hearing on the withdrawal from Afghanistan taking place later this month.
The report includes recommendations to prevent a similar situation, including reestablishing a Crisis Bureau in the State Department and congressional action for the State Department and the Pentagon to maintain standard operating procedures. The report also calls for the Defense Department review of the Abbey Gate investigation to be declassified.
The report also details the chaotic month of August 2021, including when Wilson fled with embassy staff, leaving the entire evacuation support operations team to fend for themselves. The diplomat took a two-week vacation in July and August, despite the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, the report says.
Local employees were “actively deprioritized” in the evacuation, and the report says many left the Kabul airport in tears. U.S. lawful permanent residents without American passports were beaten by the Taliban and denied entry, while there were also times when American citizens were beaten, including a 12-year-old boy from Virginia, the report says.
Jim DeHart, the consul general in charge of the special immigrant visas, described the scene at the airport as “apocalyptic.” The report says the Taliban would whip and kill entire groups of Afghans who showed up at the airport, and U.S. service members were forbidden from intervening.
The committee largely blames the White House National Security Council and national security adviser Jake Sullivan for providing the talking points used during this period, accusing them of being “the source of the majority of that misinformation campaign.” Sullivan and the National Security Council failed to solicit input from key U.S. officials in Afghanistan, the committee said. Republicans have requested that Sullivan testify, which he has so far declined to do.
The report also faults Zalmay Khalilzad, who helped broker the Doha Agreement. Khalilzad was appointed by President Trump, and continued in his position as special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation under Mr. Biden.
The report accused Khalilzad of undermining the Afghan government by excluding it from negotiations, as well as undermining longstanding U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists. Top military officials said Khalilzad did not consult the U.S. military during negotiations and left them “in the dark” about the exact terms of the deal.
In his testimony before the committee in November 2023, Khalilzad “explained there was never a comprehensive assessment by the [Biden] administration on whether the Taliban was adhering to the Doha Agreement,” according to the report. State Department documents obtained by the committee through a subpoena showed that the administration was aware in March 2021 that the Taliban was violating the agreement.
Still, the next month Mr. Biden announced the decision to withdraw the remaining 2,500 troops from Afghanistan. They would leave before the U.S. marked 20 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said.
Former State Department spokesperson Ned Price told the committee in December 2023 that the Taliban’s adherence to the deal was “immaterial” to the administration’s decision to withdraw.
Despite the decision to withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan, the State Department was determined to keep the U.S. embassy in Kabul, according to the report. The report criticizes the State Department’s lack of preparation for the worst-case scenario that there would need to be an emergency evacuation while the Taliban controlled Kabul.
Multiple witnesses told the committee that planning for a non-combatant evacuation operation to evacuate the embassy, U.S. citizens and Afghans who had helped the U.S. military did not begin in earnest until August 2021, according to the report, after the Taliban had made sweeping gains across the country.
As a result, when the evacuation began, the “State Department was not operating off of a plan,” which led to chaotic decisions on the ground because of the pressure to evacuate as many people as possible.
The evacuation did help more than 124,000 people leave Afghanistan, but according to the report, not everyone who was eligible, like many of the Afghans who had helped the military in the 20-year war, were able to leave.
The committee said the Afghanistan withdrawal would have long-term consequences on U.S. national security.
“When Kabul fell, many drew comparisons to Saigon as, once again, U.S. helicopters were ferrying Americans off a U.S. embassy, abandoning longtime allies. But this investigation reveals what happened in Afghanistan was far worse,” it said.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in a letter attached to the minority’s report warning that he anticipated a “partisan” report from committee Republicans, who he claimed have attempted to “politicize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.” The New York Democrat argued that the Republican majority would take “particular pains to avoid facts involving former President Donald Trump,” while ramping up criticism of Harris as Election Day nears.
In the minority’s report, which was shared with CBS News, the committee Democrats defend the Biden administration’s preparations for the withdrawal and response amid swiftly changing conditions. The report accuses the Trump administration of setting the withdrawal in motion without the “necessary interagency preparations or contingency planning for an orderly drawdown,” along with conducting a policy handover to the Biden administration that was “shambolic and non-cooperative.”
“President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more American troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban,” Meeks said. “Rather than send more Americans to fight a war in Afghanistan, President Biden decided to end it.”
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