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Washington, DC – In a new report, Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have placed the blame for the chaotic 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan on the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The assessment by the majority on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released late on Sunday, said the Biden administration chose “optics over security” as it oversaw a withdrawal agreement reached by former President Donald Trump and the Taliban in 2020.
Democrats, meanwhile, released their own minority report on the 18-month investigation on Monday, accusing Republicans of shutting them out of the probe and choosing partisan politics over the pursuit of truth
The Republican report said the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government”.
Such planning would have allowed Washington to “safely evacuate US personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies”, said the more than 350-page report, titled Willful Blindness.
It added that Biden and his vice president, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, “misled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal” in what amounted to a White House-led “misinformation campaign”.
The assessment came just before Harris and Trump are to face off on Tuesday in their first presidential debate. Republicans have increasingly criticised the Democratic administration over its foreign policy record, especially the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Democrats on the committee swiftly condemned the Republicans’ framing, saying in their own report: “The American people deserve the truth.”
“We owe it to them to highlight the facts elicited in this investigation without undue spin and with respect for the seriousness of the subject and the witnesses who have voluntarily testified to us about it,” the Democrats’ report said.
“We must continue to wrestle with these matters not to rewrite the past or assign partisan blame, but to identify lessons that can help us better fight and end wars in the future.”
Chaotic exit
The two reports are only the latest evaluations of the end of the US involvement in the two-decade war in Afghanistan. Several government agencies, including the independent Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), have conducted their own probes.
US involvement in Afghanistan began with coalition troops toppling the Taliban from power in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks. It ended with the Taliban’s lightning offensive in 2021 as American troops withdrew and the US-backed Afghan government crumbled.
The Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15, 2021, just days before the last US soldiers left the country.
While the Biden administration had pushed back an earlier withdrawal date agreed to by the Trump administration, the final days of the withdrawal devolved into chaos.
The disarray turned particularly deadly on August 26, 2021, when an attack by ISIL (ISIS) outside the Kabul airport – where tens of thousands of Afghans had gathered in hopes of boarding a Western evacuation flight – killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 US military personnel.
The withdrawal also left hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Afghans – many of whom had worked directly with US forces – in the lurch, prompting an ongoing refugee crisis.
In February 2023, a report by SIGAR said actions by both the the Trump and Biden administrations “ultimately accelerated the collapse” of the Western-backed Afghan military and government.
Biden administration responds
For its part, the Biden administration has broadly defended its decision to go forward with the withdrawal. It has given only muted acknowledgement to shortcomings in its execution.
Instead, the administration has largely emphasised Trump’s role in reaching the initial deal with the Taliban, which White House officials have criticised for imposing an unrealistic timeline while sidelining the Afghan government.
On Monday, White House spokesperson Sharon Yang said the Republican report was based on “cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterisations and pre-existing biases”, according to The Associated Press news agency.
In a lengthy statement responding to the Republican report, the Department of State also said the Trump deal “was, and remains a flawed agreement that hampered efforts to end the war through negotiations among Afghans” and that Biden entered office to find a “complete lack of planning for a withdrawal”.
The State Department also pushed back on claims in the Republican report that the Biden administration relied on “severely limited” input from officials on the ground in Afghanistan before the withdrawal as well as claims that US officials rewrote reports to water down security warnings.
The Republican report cited witness testimony and records collected throughout the probe.
In its statement, the State Department said “it stands ready to work alongside any member [of Congress] who expresses serious interest in finding legislative and administrative solutions”.
“However, we will not stand by silently as the department and its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.”
Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, who led the investigation, has denied the report’s release was timed to impact the November 5 presidential election.
Its release comes as Republican candidate Trump has sharpened attacks seeking to tie Harris to the Afghanistan withdrawal. The former president has regularly featured family members of US soldiers killed during the evacuation at his campaign events.
“This is not about politics to me – it never has been,” McCaul said in a statement.
“It’s about getting to the bottom of what happened so we can make sure it never happens again. And it’s about finding who was responsible for this catastrophe so they can finally, after three long years, be held accountable.”
