The Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombings at Kabul Airport killed more than 180 people, including 13 members of the United States military, and marked an ugly end to America’s 20-year war against terror in Afghanistan.
Republicans have clamored for analyses of the blundered withdrawal for nearly two years, although the GOP’s rhetorical chorus has conclusively and uniformly laid sole responsibility for the calamity on the decisions, and alleged distracted indecision, by the Biden administration.
Democrats and Biden administration officials have countered that the genesis of the chaotic August 2021 evacuations was laid when former President Donald Trump signed the Doha Agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, consenting to deplete, and then totally withdraw, U.S. forces by May 2021, a drawdown they say that fostered the rapid deterioration of the Afghan government and turned a planned, orderly departure into a retreat debacle.
“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,” the AAR states in the first of the report’s 28 findings identifying mistakes made by administration officials, by intelligence agencies, by the Pentagon, and within the State Department.
The first finding also acknowledges that individual “decisions of both President Trump and President Biden” are “beyond the scope of this review,” but reflect a collective pattern that “there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow” within both administrations’ Afghanistan policies.
The report specifically chides the Biden administration for failing to respond quickly to the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Kabul in the summer of 2021 as the Taliban consolidated control of the country and the Afghan government collapsed. It cites miscommunication between the State Department and the Pentagon, between intelligence assessments and reality on the ground, and between those in Kabul and decision-makers in Washington.
Troop ‘Retrograde’ Accelerated Taliban Rout
When Biden assumed the presidency in January 2021, there were 2,500 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, down from 13,000 in February 2020 when the Doha deal was signed.On April 1, 2021, Biden said the United States would not begin withdrawing the last 2,500 combat troops in May as planned, but all would be gone by Aug. 31, 2021, to ensure the proper evacuation of American citizens and Afghan allies.
Early that month, only 650 U.S. combat troops remained in Afghanistan, all in Kabul to protect Hamid Karzai International Airport and the U.S. embassy.
The report cites the “retrograde” of U.S. armed forces set in motion by Trump’s Taliban Doha deal as the beginning of the end of the U.S. in Afghanistan.
“Mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers” was never addressed in any evacuation scenario, which “compounded the difficulties” undermanned State Department officials found themselves as the Taliban closed in on Kabul and thousands of Afghans seeking to escape swelled around the airport.
“The speed of that retrograde compounded the difficulties the [State] Department faced,” the report states, citing the decision by the Biden administration to hand Bagram Air Base over to the Afghan government in July meant Hamid Karzai International Airport would be the only avenue for a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO).
“U.S. military planning for a possible NEO had been underway for some time, but the Department’s participation in the NEO planning process was hindered by the fact that it was unclear who in the Department had the lead,” the report said.
Much of the confusion in Kabul can be at least partially attributed to instability within the new Biden administration, the AAR states.
During the January-August 2021 span examined in the AAR “many critical domestic and overseas Department positions were not filled by Senate-confirmed appointees, but rather career employees serving in an acting capacity” who “did an outstanding job under difficult circumstances” but were never certain who was in charge of what.
The “prolonged gaps in filling senior domestic or chief of mission positions overseas” contributed to the chaos, the report states, citing the then-vacant South and Central Asian Affairs deputy secretary position as an example of leadership voids that hamstrung the State Department and other agencies in Kabul in August 2021.
“No matter how qualified the ‘acting’ person is, it is not the same as having a confirmed official in position,” the report states.
Intelligence Reports Were Wrong
The AAR states the State Department relied on a July 2021 U.S. intelligence assessment that concluded Karzai’s Afghan government could survive between six-and-12 months without U.S. troops.The report cites another U.S. intelligence assessment issued on Aug. 10, 2021, that said Kabul could hold out at least “30 to 90 days.” In reality, it fell five days later.
“With the sudden collapse of the Afghani government and the Taliban’s entry into Kabul on August 15, 2021,” the report said the State Department was faced with “a task of unprecedented scale and complexity … to coordinate and execute a massive humanitarian airlift and evacuation from a dangerous and often chaotic environment.”
The incorrect intelligence reports and uncertainty within the Biden administration combined to exacerbate the deterioration initiated by the Doha pact, the report said.
“Senior administration officials had not made clear decisions regarding the universe of at-risk Afghans who would be included by the time the operation started nor had they determined where those Afghans would be taken. That added significantly to the challenges the [State] Department and [Department of Defense] faced during the evacuation,” the AAR states.
The AAR praises individual State Department officials on the ground, noting they “responded with great agility, determination, and dedication, while taking on roles and responsibilities both domestically and overseas that few had ever anticipated.”
Nevertheless, the report maintains the State Department specifically and the Biden administration generally should “have been better prepared for a worst-case scenario, especially when it came to planning for a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) with the potential to expand into a large humanitarian airlift.”
The report begins with a statement honoring those lost on Aug. 26, 2021, noting they gave their lives to protect people in what is the largest evacuation of civilians from a war zone in history.
“We salute them and the brave members of our military, 13 of whom lost their lives in this operation. Together, they safely evacuated roughly 125,000 people, including nearly 6,000 private U.S. citizens,” it states.
The 85-page report released by the State Department, days before the July 4 holiday, is its unclassified iteration and was assembled over a 90-day span. It has been sitting on the shelf for more than a year.
During the 90-day review, the State Department’s “AAR team” said it conducted more than 150 voluntary interviews with often unnamed current and former State Department officials “either for attribution or on background.”
“In order to protect the integrity of this process and in anticipation of future after action reviews,” the report states, “the AAR team strongly recommends that the requests of those interviewed–either to be fully anonymous or to not be named in the report–be fully respected.”
With those “same considerations in mind,” the report “does not directly cite the interviews or actions of individual Department personnel below senior-level officials.”
Most of the AAR’s 28 findings address specific State Department actions and reactions during those eight months with recommendations for how it can be better prepared for future large-scale evacuation scenarios.
The report maintains the State Department needs to plan better for worst-case scenarios, rebuild and strengthen crisis management capabilities, and ensure senior officials receive challenges to intelligence reports.
“Many [State] Department bureaus and offices are conducting their own lessons learned, and some have already begun implementing changes. We hope that this review will further inform and advance those efforts,” the AAR states.
House Committees Want More Answers
A day before the report’s release, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding the State Department produce “the missing” AAR files, presumably deemed classified, by July 14 or face a subpoena.The panel has been investigating the Afghanistan withdrawal. McCaul has expressed frustration with State Department’s “noncompliance” with the committee’s requests for months.
He was not happy with the AAR issued on the eve of a summer holiday.
“In January, I asked the State Department to produce all documents resulting from its internal reviews relating to the Afghanistan withdrawal—including the After-Action Report. They have yet to do so,” Rep McCaul said in a tweet after viewing the AAR. “I’m committed to getting answers and accountability.”
House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is also demanding more public transparency regarding the Afghanistan evacuation from the Pentagon.
In a June 8 letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Rogers said he was disappointed in “the lack of accountability and transparency” in the Pentagon’s classified AAR provided to Congress.
Rogers said there were “multiple discrepancies in the classified version” of the AAR “concerning the botched and deadly withdrawal of U.S. Forces from Afghanistan” and that it included Austin’s “associated personal reflections” in an attached memo.
“Sadly, your memorandum does not accept responsibility, and propounds outright untruths, related to the Biden Administration’s actions and inactions in failing to secure a safe and orderly withdrawal of troops and related Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO),” he wrote without revealing what those classified “outright untruths” are.
Both McCaul and Rogers maintain the State and Defense Departments’ alleged failure to be candid and accountable mean the Afghanistan calamity is likely to be repeated.
“While the fog of war is likely to result in mistakes and even tragedy, an honest appraisal of the Biden administration’s involvement in implementing the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan has still not occurred,” Rogers wrote to Austin. “Towards this objective, it is incumbent on the committee and its oversight responsibilities to determine what went wrong and how such a catastrophe can be avoided in the future.”
