A long-awaited GOP report analyzing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan paints a picture of a President Biden determined to leave the country but fumbling preparations that set the stage for a chaotic and deadly exit from America’s longest war.
The report from Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released in the shadow of the three-year anniversary of the U.S. exit, criticizes the president for a rushed effort undertaken regardless of counsel from allies and advisers that led to unnecessary deaths.
“The evidence proves President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha Agreement, or the advice of his senior national security advisors or our allies. Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan,” the report states, referencing the Trump administration agreement to leave the country.
The report accuses the Biden administration of failing to see warning signs of how quickly Kabul would fall to the Taliban and delaying the planning for and calling of an evacuation – fearing both the optics of such an exit and further destabilization in the country.
In response, the White House accused Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) of cherry picking details and failing to account for the role of the Trump administration.
“Everything we have seen and heard of Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan report shows that it is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start. As we have said many times, ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result,” White House spokeswoman Sharon Yang said in a statement.
“Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable position. He could either ramp up the war against a Taliban that was at its strongest position in 20 years and put even more American troops at risk or finally end our longest war after two decades and $2 trillion spent. The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
The report is being released ahead of the first presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, who has sought to use Afghanistan as a political issue against her.
Republicans in general have sought to buttress Trump’s arguments against Harris and Biden over Afghanistan, as the 17-day evacuation from the country marked one of the lower points of the Biden administration.
Just days into the evacuation, the Taliban overtook Kabul, much more quickly than the administration had anticipated. Crowds swelled around Hamid Karzai International Airport, and dramatic images were seen of people falling as they sought to hang on to places exiting the country.
An estimated 100,000 partners of U.S. government efforts were left behind, a figure that swells when taking into account others vulnerable under Taliban rule.
And a suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate entrance near the airport on Aug. 26, 2021 killed 13 U.S. service members as well as 170 Afghans.
It’s a detail Trump recently highlighted in a campaign stop, visiting the grave at Arlington National Cemetery of a Marine killed in the attack, igniting criticism from the Harris campaign and some veterans after cemetery officials said Trump had violated rules prohibiting election-related activities at the cemetery.
However, while the report condemns the actions of the “Biden-Harris administration,” it offers little discussion of any specific role played by Harris in the planning or execution of the exit.
Ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) likewise accused Republicans of politicizing the withdrawal and ignoring Trump missteps in brokering the deal, saying efforts to pin the exit on Democrats have “reached a crescendo” with the new focus on Harris.
“Republicans now claim she was the architect of the U.S. withdrawal though she is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the Committee’s interview transcripts,” he wrote in a simultaneously released minority report.
The GOP report also fails to address former President Trump’s role in prompting the U.S. withdrawal. It was the Trump administration that brokered the deal to leave Afghanistan, initially agreeing to have the U.S. withdraw all its forces by May of 2021.
And under Trump, immigration processing slowed to a crawl, including for those eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), the multi-step pathway for those who assisted the U.S. military or contractors to come to the U.S. The trickle of processing on the lengthy progress hindered the Biden administration’s ability to swiftly relocate allies.
Still, the report offers an inside look at the alarms raised by those working across government ahead of the August 2021 withdrawal.
One of the sharpest lines of criticism in the report is the Biden administration’s delay in planning for and formally igniting an evacuation – also known as a noncombatant evacuation operation, or NEO.
The report concluded that the administration had a “concern that a NEO equated to failure” and was also “more concerned about the optics of NEO than the dangers associated with failing to call” for one.
Those interviewed by the committee described a split between the military and the State Department, with the military stressing the likelihood that Kabul would fall as the diplomatic arm delayed plans to launch an evacuation, in part because of fears such plans could spark further chaos in the country.
One Kabul embassy employee told the committee that some began “having subversive NEO meetings” as leadership there otherwise seemed opposed to initiating an evaluation while another said planning for an evacuation came “too little too late.”
An evacuation wasn’t ordered until Ross Wilson, then the ambassador to Afghanistan, requested one on August 15, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on vacation.
As a result, many basic details of the evacuation were unplanned and decided in the moment.
The administration has long claimed intelligence didn’t indicate Kabul would fall as quickly as it did, and State Department officials said they didn’t contemplate a scenario in which they would have to conduct an evacuation with Kabul not under their control. The GOP report said this displayed a stunning lack of planning.
One State Department employee said that “the State Department’s Crisis Management and Strategy office — the team within the Secretary of State’s Executive Office responsible for 24/7 management of global crises — only became involved once “they were allowed to call it what it was – i.e. a NEO/suspension of ops.”
“This inexcusable delay was exacerbated by the department’s failure to formulate an emergency evacuation plan. The magnitude of the evacuation necessary became untenable, and departmental inaction condemned thousands of Afghan allies and Americans to a life under Taliban rule,” the report concluded.
The lack of planning left unclear who would qualify to be evacuated. Afghans with ties to the U.S. were often given conflicting messages about whether to report to the airport.
“In the end, the heartbreaking task of determining who could or could not get inside the gates of the airport were often left to rank-and-file servicemembers and foreign service officers,” the report determined.
Biden ultimately had to send additional troops back into Afghanistan while scattershot private efforts to evacuate Afghans succeeded in helping both citizens and allies exit the country.
While the report is highly critical of Wilson, Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, it’s largely centered on Biden.
The report asserts that Biden was not bound by the Doha Agreement negotiated under the Trump administration, arguing it allowed for the dissolution of the deal if the Taliban did not meet its commitments.
But Biden has made clear he viewed the U.S. as too far down the path of withdrawal to shift its approach and that doing so would commit the military to once again engaging with the Taliban.
“The choice I had to make, as your president, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban,” Biden said in a televised address in 2021.
A 2023 12-page review of the withdrawal prepared by the White House stressed that “when Biden] came into office he was confronted with difficult realities left to him by the Trump Administration.”
GOP lawmakers have indicated they plan to continue their probe, even though Biden will only be president for another four months.
McCaul has subpoenaed Blinken to discuss the matter in a Sept. 19 hearing.
“As Secretary of State throughout the withdrawal and NEO, you were entrusted to lead these efforts and to secure the safe evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies,” McCaul wrote.
The State Department on Sunday defended it’s role in the evacuation.
“[House Republicans] have done a disservice by relying on false information and presenting inaccurate narratives meant only to harm the Administration, instead of seeking to actually inform Americans on how our longest war came to an end,” department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
“The State Department remains immensely proud of its workforce who put themselves forward in the waning days of our presence in Afghanistan to evacuate both Americans and the brave Afghans who stood by over sides for more than two decades.”
Updated at 10:10 pm.