House Report Assesses Biden Ignored Warnings in Afghan Withdrawal

Last updated on September 9th, 2024 at 11:26 am

A new report, by the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, asserts that President Joe Biden’s administration had the necessary information to understand the U.S.-backed Afghan government would rapidly collapse as U.S. forces withdrew from the country in the summer of 2021.

The more-than 340-page report, released on Monday Sept. 9, is the product of an investigation led by committee Republicans in the less than two-years since taking the House majority, and comes just over three years after U.S. forces completed their withdrawal and civilian evacuation from Afghanistan.

“Our investigation reveals the Biden-Harris administration had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies,” Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-TX) said Monday. “At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security.”

While the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was set in motion in an agreement reached between the Taliban and President Donald Trump’s administration in Doha, Qatar in February of 2020, the House committee argues the conditions of this Doha Agreement were not being met. The committee faults the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, stating they “ignored the conditions in the Doha Agreement, pleas of the Afghan government, and the objections by our NATO allies, deciding to unilaterally withdraw from the country.”

The House report points to statements of various U.S. military and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials, urging the Biden administration to keep around 2,500 U.S. troops in the country, to assist the U.S.-backed Afghan government and forestall a Taliban takeover of the country.

The report also faults the Biden administration for its insistence that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

“Even as the Taliban closed in on Kabul, the Biden-Harris administration kept reiterating a Taliban victory was not inevitable,” the report reads.

The report goes on to cite members of the Biden administration team continuing to insist the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government wasn’t at hand as late as Aug. 13, 2021.

“We are closely watching the deteriorating security conditions in parts of the country, but no particular outcome, in our view, is inevitable,” then-White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Aug. 11, 2021.

“No outcome has to be inevitable,” then-Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said on Aug. 13, 2021.

The U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed two days later, on Aug. 15, 2021, as Taliban forces entered the capital city of Kabul.

As the Taliban seized Kabul, the U.S. military switched from withdrawing their own personnel and equipment to providing security for a civilian evacuation effort out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA).

The House report asserts the U.S. State Department didn’t begin planning for the noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) until Aug. 6, 2021, just over a week before Kabul fell. The report states State Department and National Security Council officials viewed such a civilian evacuation effort as an admission of failure and bad optics.

The delayed decision to begin planning for a civilian evacuation “is inexcusable in light of warnings from Embassy Kabul personnel and the Defense Department that a Taliban takeover was imminent following the military withdrawal,” the report reads.

According to the report, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, said because planners delayed the decision to prepare for a civilian evacuation, the one that occurred “was too slow and too late.”

“The failure to prepare for a NEO had ramifications not only for Americans and allies in Afghanistan, but U.S. personnel on the ground forced to evacuate desperate civilians in a hostile environment,” the report states.

One major ramification, identified by the House report, was the bombing attack at HKIA’s Abbey Gate entrance. 13 U.S. service members and around 170 Afghan civilians were killed, and dozens more were injured in the attack.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Democratic minority published a 59-page minority report on Monday, alongside the longer majority report. In it, committee Democrats accused their Republican counterparts of conducting a partisan review, without minority input.

The Democrats, in their minority report, accused Trump of committing the United States to a time-bound withdrawal “without regard for facts on the ground.” In an April 2024 interview, Austin Miller—the U.S. general in charge of NATO forces at the time of the withdrawal—told the committee’s minority that he felt it was a “fair” assessment that the Trump administration had begun to order U.S. force draw-downs in September of 2020, without regard for the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan.

Ultimately, it was Biden’s decision whether or not to stick to the withdrawal timeline Trump set in motion.

In an April 2023 statement, the Biden White House said intelligence assessments indicated the Taliban would resume its attacks on U.S. and allied troops if Biden didn’t stick to Trump’s “near-term” deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. Further, the White House insisted keeping 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond May wouldn’t have been enough to prevent the Taliban takeover. Biden altered Trump’s withdrawal deadline, and planned for the last U.S. troops to leave the country in September 2021.

The White House further defended Biden’s decision to finalize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of fighting.

“Ultimately, President Biden refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended for the United States long ago,” the White House statement reads.