In a scathing indictment of the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis during the final set of events that led to Taliban’s takeover of power in 2021, the US State Department confirmed Washington’s bureaucratic sluggishness as a significant reason behind the chaos that gripped West’s evacuation from Afghanistan and successive fall of democratically-elected Ashraf Ghani government.
The 21-page report highlighted that both former President Donald Trump and President Biden failed to grasp the consequences of a US military withdrawal on the stability of the erstwhile Afghan government.
The US reportedly had standard diplomatic rotations in Afghanistan weeks before August 2021, which resulted in diplomats who had only been in the country for a short time being responsible for the US evacuation as Kabul collapsed to the Taliban, report revealed.
Consequences for Biden
The report appears set to provide ammunition to Biden’s critics, as it sheds light on his handling of the crisis that ultimately handed Afghanistan over to the Taliban. The repercussions included the loss of unspecified Afghan lives, as well as the deaths of at least 13 US service members.
US did not consider worst-case scenario: State Dept
Among its findings, the report notes that while the US military had been planning a full evacuation of Kabul for some time before it began in mid-August 2021, the State Department’s involvement in the planning process was hindered by a lack of clarity regarding who had the lead role.
According to the report, senior US officials failed to give sufficient consideration to worst-case scenarios before the collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021.
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The US withdrawal from Afghanistan culminated in a chaotic and deadly two-week evacuation from Kabul’s airport in August 2021.
Tens of thousands who had assisted the American war effort since its invasion after 9/11 attacks were left behind in a process marked by chaos and violence. This included a suicide bombing by the Islamic State that killed 13 US troops and approximately 170 Afghans.
The evacuation began with the swift return of thousands of US troops to Kabul after most had been previously withdrawn. In an agreement arranged hastily, Taliban forces provided security to US troops outside Kabul’s international airport, while US troops managed the airfield and attempted to determine who should be evacuated.
In only 30 days, the Taliban captured all 34 provinces in Afghanistan—33 of the 34 within a 10-day period starting on August 6, 2021. By August 15, 2021, the Taliban did chilling “victory rounds” in Kabul to mark their return to power. By this time, President Ghani fled the country and the United States completed its military withdrawal, giving away the fate of over 40 million Afghan citizens to Taliban hardliners.
