A U.S. watchdog says the Trump and Biden administrations are to blame for the collapse of Afghanistan’s government due to the U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021.
One of them was that the Afghan government believed the United States would stay.
“Despite many official pronouncements throughout the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations about the U.S. desire to exit Afghanistan, contradictory messaging by U.S. officials failed to convey the seriousness of U.S. intentions,” Sopko wrote.
“Inconsistent U.S. policy statements amplified the confusion.”
Sopko cited the Trump administration’s 2020 deal with the Taliban, which had a conditions-based agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and a joint U.S.–Afghan government declaration reaffirming their commitment to militarily combat terrorism.
“Both the language of the U.S.–Taliban agreement and statements by senior U.S. officials left open the possibility that the United States would not leave Afghanistan until all the agreement’s conditions were met,” he wrote.
Sopko said that Biden’s April 14, 2021, withdrawal announcement should have put an end to that speculation. However, he said, “It is unclear whether the Afghan government, and particularly President [Ashraf] Ghani, fully grasped its meaning.”
He also noted that Afghan’s security forces were ill-prepared to fight the Taliban.
The second factor he identified is the United States’ leaving out the Afghan government and instead just negotiating with the Taliban.
“The agreement likely led Taliban leaders to seek a resolution with the Afghan government on the battlefield rather than through peace talks,” he wrote.
Sopko’s third factor is the Afghan government’s wanting the Taliban “to be integrated under the umbrella of the Republic.”
He wrote: “A senior member of the Afghan negotiating team, Fatima Gailani, told SIGAR that President Ghani was convinced that President [Joe] Biden would win the 2020 election, and would start negotiations over again from scratch. Accordingly, he refused to relinquish power until the last possible moment.”
Ghani fled Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021.
The fourth factor Sopko noted is that the Taliban was unwilling to budge.
“The U.S. promise to withdraw its military forces and the Taliban’s subsequent successes on the battlefield made the Taliban unwilling to negotiate or compromise,” he wrote.
“Moreover, the U.S.–Taliban agreement and the subsequent April withdrawal announcement gave the Taliban its core demand: the complete withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops, as well as contractors. From that point onward, the insurgency increasingly focused on defeating the Afghan government on the battlefield.
“By April 2021, a U.S. intelligence community assessment concluded that ’the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.' Over the next 2 months, the Taliban’s offensive accelerated as the insurgency rapidly gained control of half of Afghanistan’s 419 districts. On August 15, 2021, Kabul fell.”
The final factor is that Ghani relied on only a handful of advisers as opposed to working with the entire Afghan government.
In addition to the collapse of the Afghan government, another failure of the Biden administration has been the slow processing of Afghans who helped the United States and its allies during that almost-20-year war by giving them special immigrant visas (SIV), according to the watchdog.
According to the report, “as of late September 2022, the United States had only issued visas to approximately 20 percent of SIV applicants,” and ”according to one estimate, at the current pace, it will take 31 years to relocate and resettle all SIV applicants.”
The Department of Defense’s Robert Storch, the State Department’s Diana Shaw, and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Nicole L. Angarella—all watchdogs from relevant departments—also spoke at the hearing.
