The administration of US President Joe Biden has largely blamed the previous administration under Donald Trump for the difficulties with the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Biden was “severely constrained” in his decisions about how to carry out the withdrawal by the conditions created by Trump, according to a report released yesterday by various intelligence services led by the National Security Council.
Terrorist attack just before the withdrawal
Biden had been heavily criticized for the withdrawal at the end of August 2021. Two weeks earlier, the Taliban had marched into the capital Kabul and taken power. Dozens of Afghans and 13 US soldiers were killed in a terrorist attack outside Kabul airport a few days before the final withdrawal.
The report blames Republican Trump for the unfavorable balance of power in Afghanistan at the time Biden took office. When Democrat Biden moved into the White House, the Taliban were in their strongest military position since 2001, it said. At the same time, only 2,500 US soldiers were in Afghanistan, fewer than at any time during this period. The reason for this was an agreement concluded by Trump with the Taliban in February 2020.
It was agreed that the United States would withdraw all soldiers from Afghanistan by May 2021. In return, the Taliban no longer wanted to attack the US units. As a result, the US presence was greatly reduced, it said.
Biden under time pressure
However, no plans for the final withdrawal or evacuation of the remaining US citizens and Afghan allies had been handed to the President by his predecessor. Biden then pushed back the deadline for the withdrawal in coordination with the Taliban, National Security Council communications director John Kirby said at a White House news briefing yesterday.
However, the report suggests that Biden was pressed for time in preparing for the exit. The document quotes a statement by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin dated September 28, 2021, according to which there was clear information that the Taliban would continue their attacks on US troops should the agreement not be complied with. In the end, the last US soldier left Afghanistan on August 31st. With the withdrawal, the international military operation in Afghanistan ended after almost 20 years. It is considered the longest war in US history.
When the last US military aircraft took off from Kabul airport, dramatic scenes took place there. Fearful of being left behind, people clung to the landing gear of an airplane and fell to their deaths. Crowds gathered at the entrance to the airport hoping to be taken out of the country. In this situation, on August 26, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of one of the entrance gates in the midst of a crowd, killing several people.
Trump reacted sharply as usual
Trump and other political opponents of Biden yesterday sharply criticized the report’s portrayal of events. On Trump’s social network Truth Social, the former president described his successor and his White House staff as “morons” who, with the help of disinformation, blamed him for “their blatantly incompetent surrender in Afghanistan”. “Biden is responsible, nobody else!” Trump wrote.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, Republican, said in a written statement: “President Biden made the decision to withdraw, even setting the exact date. He is responsible for the massive errors in planning and execution. “
Kirby said Biden has responsibility for US military operations and for the orders he gives as president. But Biden still believes the order to pull out of Afghanistan was the right one, Kirby said. The US is now strategically stronger and better placed to support Ukraine, meet its global security obligations and compete with China because it is not involved in a ground war in Afghanistan. He considers it a success that the US military managed to safely fly more than 124,000 people out of Afghanistan before they left Afghanistan.
Criticism of the Afghan government at the time
Kirby stressed that one could not have expected the dramatic developments that took place in connection with the withdrawal in Afghanistan. The intelligence services predicted neither the rapid takeover of power by the Taliban nor the rapid flight of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The same goes for the fact that the more than 300,000 trained and equipped Afghan soldiers and security forces are not fighting for their country, Kirby said. The United States had been assured the opposite by the Afghan side.
The report released yesterday is the summary of an investigation commissioned by the US government after the troop withdrawal and the results of which were presented to Congress, it said. You learned from the deduction. An earlier withdrawal is now a priority if the security situation at an operation site deteriorates, the report says.
