House Republicans issue scathing report criticizing Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal

That figure meant there was “roughly one consular officer for every 3,444 evacuees,” outlined in a highly significant report examining the chaotic U.S. withdrawal last August. It’s one of several previously unpublished details.

The House Foreign Relations Committee Republican report comes out just one year after the country’s capital. fell into the hands of the Taliban, New details have surfaced about the failure of the Biden administration to properly plan and execute the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The report also said the administration did not accurately portray the nature of events on the ground and failed to develop a plan to prevent US-trained Afghan special forces from being recruited by US enemies. It also states that

“Many of the Biden administration’s evacuation plans took place in the spring of 2021, some even before the president announced his withdrawal. Despite the deterioration, the plan was not updated despite revised intelligence assessments, Rep. Michael McCall, the top Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, said.

President Joe Biden has announced that the United States will withdraw all remaining troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that launched the United States into war in Afghanistan, in mid-April. announced that it will Biden has long wanted to end U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan, but that decision was partly due to the Trump administration’s pledge to withdraw by May 1, 2021, brokering with the Taliban. I believe that we are in a deal.

She fled Afghanistan with her law degree sewn into her dress.many of her colleagues were left behind

In the weeks and months that followed, bipartisan lawmakers made sure plans were in place to ensure the protection of Afghans who worked for the United States during the nearly 20-year conflict, including evacuation options. I asked the government to confirm.

Both the State and Defense Departments have conducted their own reviews of the withdrawal, but neither department has released its findings. A Pentagon review is ongoing, and the State Department closed it in March, said a source familiar with the review. Its delay in publication is due, in part, to an interagency review process compounded by concerns about politics, optics, and effective implementation of lessons learned.

The House of Representatives reported that until mid-June 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul will hold an Operational Planning Team (OPT) meeting with members of the U.S. military and U.S. diplomats to conduct a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO). A U.S. military officer involved said it was “the first time” the embassy had “started considering the possibility of NEO.”

Due to a “complete lack of proper planning by the Biden administration,” there were consequences: Evacuation flights were “taking off at only about 50% of their capacity,” five days after NEO, the report said. The report cites slow processing at the gate and mayhem outside the gate — the government’s evacuation process is so chaotic and chaotic that Vice Presidents Kamala Harris and Jill Biden Even the First Lady’s staff were contacting outside groups to try and kick people out. The group told the commission.

Evacuation flights are overwhelmingly male

Despite concerns that women were deprived of their liberties when the Taliban came to power, it was overwhelmingly men who were able to disembark on these flights, according to the report.

“Through data from the Department of State and Homeland Security, we know that only about 25% of those displaced during the NEO in Afghanistan were women or girls. , women and girls account for more than half of emergencies.Refugees are pouring out,” Ambassador Kerry Curry, ambassador to the State Department’s Global Women’s Affairs Office under the Trump administration, wrote in the report.

When Kabul fell and then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, two senior U.S. officials – then-commander of the U.S. Central Command, General Kenneth “Frank” Mackenzie, and then-Special Representative for Afghanistan, US-Taliban Deal Under Trump’s Zalmay Khalilzad Trump Administration — Meeting with Taliban officials in Doha, militant groups have proposed that security in the capital be controlled by the United States.

Mackenzie announced to Congress in September 2021 that he had accepted the offer, stating, “It was not my reason for being there, it was not my direction, and I did not have the resources to carry out that mission.” I testified that I refused.

A new US intelligence agency assessment found that al-Qaeda

But Khalilzad told the commission that he “could have considered it,” the report said. The former official also said the US had not ordered the Taliban to stay away from Kabul.

“We didn’t say ‘Don’t go.’ We advised them to be careful,” Khalilzad said, according to the report. Meanwhile, US officials have repeatedly said the US supports peace talks between the Taliban and the Ghani government.

Those who tried to flee the city were forced to contend with the threat of the Taliban as they tried to reach the airport. There, thousands gathered outside the gate, desperately trying to board the plane. And in the early days of the evacuation, the airport was so poorly run that groups of Afghans boarded the runway and desperately tried to hold on to departing planes.

“It was a very tactically difficult situation, given that the regime ceded control of Kabul to the Taliban. In some cases, I would have avoided letting it go,” McCall said.

While that chaos unfolded, the report claims the administration “repeatedly misled the American public” by downplaying the dire situation on the ground and instead painting a picture of capability and progress.

The report juxtaposes comments from State Department officials with internal memos. At least seven of his Afghans “died while waiting outside the access gates of the HKIA[Karzai International Airport],” the August 20 memo said, adding that the Taliban had “dead acceptance.” I refused.” Remains of corpses stored at the airport.

“At one point, State Department spokesman Ned Price was urging people to head to the airport, telling the media that the evacuation was ‘efficient and effective’, but the airport gates were closed. and an internal memo also talked about how it was done: there are a lot of dead bodies at the airport and they don’t know how to deal with all of them,” McCall said. rice field.

Biden administration refuses to participate

The committee requested transcripts of interviews with more than 30 administration officials, but the Biden administration refused to participate. For its report, the commission relied on interviews and information from whistleblowers, conversations with people who were in Kabul during the evacuation, and fact-finding trips to the area.

The Republicans leading this inquiry are in the minority, meaning they don’t have the power of the subpoena, but if the Republicans take over the House in this year’s election, they will issue a subpoena and investigate a withdrawal. to continue. They call this an interim report.

The report also says the administration has failed to take action to prevent US-trained Afghan special forces from being recruited by America’s enemies such as Iran, China and Russia.

“The U.S. government evacuated approximately 600 Afghan security force personnel who assisted in the evacuation by providing perimeter security and other functions, but these were U.S.-trained personnel who fought alongside U.S. forces. A SIGAR report earlier this year added that 3,000 Afghan security forces had fled to Iran.

As of July, the Biden administration still did not have a plan to prioritize evacuating these Afghans from the area, and the State Department is awaiting policy decisions from the NSC, the report said.

Source: www.cnn.com

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