Republicans are trying to make the case that the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. personnel from Afghanistan in August, 2021 was primarily the fault of President Biden – and probably also Vice President Harris. The GOP-majority House Foreign Affairs Committee has released a 353-page report documenting that narrative. Committee Democrats cobbled and released a 59-page rebuttal of some points.
The Republican majority report fails to blame anyone in the Trump administration and neglects key factors that really explain US failure in Afghanistan. An honest accounting would say:
1. President Trump tried hard to get US forces withdrawn from Afghanistan and agreed to a deal with the Taliban that guaranteed their eventual victory.
2. President Biden was determined to end US involvement in the Afghan war and rejected the advice of most senior military and civilian officials to leave a small military contingent.
3. The US military executed a speedy withdrawal without regard to the loss of confidence and support its retreat engendered among Afghan military and civilian leaders.
4. The State Department strongly resisted closing its embassy in Kabul both to fulfill its diplomatic mission and to avoid the collapse of the Afghan government.
5. Senior officials thought they had time to accomplish the withdrawal, including of civilians deserving US protection, because official intelligence estimates, until hours before the fall of Kabul, forecast a Taliban takeover only at the end of 2021.
6.Both mistakes and heroic efforts marked the final days of the withdrawal. There are still lessons to be learned about those operations.
Overall blame for the outcome of the Afghan war can be widely shared. President George W. Bush started a successful war but then neglected it as he launched another war against Iraq. The US military created an Afghan force too much like its own and tended to fight the same one-year war 17 times. US diplomats amassed a huge international coalition of support but had trouble working with Afghan leaders and only at the end were willing to give the Taliban any share of power. Maybe we all were naïve about creating a strong central government in clannish Afghanistan.
Those are issues for the Afghanistan War Commission. Today the question is political blame for the final days.
Trump eagerly sought and approved the deal with the Taliban to withdraw troops
The Republican report’s first “Primary Conclusion” blames Biden but ignores the Doha deal dumped in his lap.
The Biden-Harris administration was determined to withdraw from Afghanistan, with or without the Doha Agreement and no matter the cost. Accordingly, 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.
It was President Trump who appointed Ambassador Khalilzad to negotiate a deal for withdrawal. It was Secretary of State Pompeo who supervised Khalilzad and who even attended the signing in February 2020. Trump and Pompeo apparently approved the ambassador’s refusal to engage with the legitimate Afghan government and who excluded US military participation. The Republican report admits this without admitting any blame.
Bowing to the demands of the Taliban, Ambassador Khalilzad excluded the Afghan government in these negotiations, undermining America’s ally and likely harming the Afghan government’s legitimacy. In addition, throughout the negotiations, Ambassador Khalilzad regularly excluded key military leaders from the decision-making process and turned a blind eye to concerns by American officials that the Taliban were not negotiating in good faith.
The Democratic report has a fuller picture of the Trump Administration role:
The Trump Administration Set a Time-Bound, Full Withdrawal into Motion Without Regard for Facts on the Ground and Failed to Plan for Executing It
➢ After years of steady Taliban gains, President Trump initiated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan through his February 2020 Doha Deal with the Taliban and, according to his lead negotiator, was impatient to get out of Afghanistan regardless. Testimony from 12 witnesses supports this finding, contrary to the claim that President Biden initiated the withdrawal.14
➢ The Doha Deal committed the United States to reduce to zero all its military personnel, including contractors, by a specific date, with minimal conditions required of the Taliban. The deal contained no stipulation on upholding women’s rights. The deal relied dubiously on the Taliban voluntarily reducing violence against and negotiating with the Afghan government, which the Trump Administration forced to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners under the deal despite not being a party to it. Testimony from 12 witnesses supports this finding, contrary to the claim that the Biden Administration failed to protect women’s rights or fulfill the deal.15
➢ President Trump unilaterally ordered multiple U.S. troop drawdowns, despite a lack of full Taliban compliance with the Doha Deal. This emboldened the Taliban and undermined U.S. and Afghan government leverage. Testimony from 13 witnesses supports this finding, contrary to the claim that President Trump adhered to a conditions-based approach.16
➢ Despite committing to a full U.S. withdrawal in the Doha Deal, the Trump Administration did not undertake necessary interagency preparations or contingency planning for an orderly drawdown. Testimony from 10 witnesses supports this finding, contrary to the claim that a withdrawal would have been smoother under President Trump.17
Trump tried to order a total withdrawal in November 2020, which would have been even more chaotic
During 2020 Trump ordered substantial reductions in US forces, as the Democratic report notes:
President Trump ordered a drawdown to 8,600 U.S. troops within 135 days of the signing of the so-called “Doha Deal,” as the agreement stipulated. He then unilaterally ordered further drawdowns—to 4,500 troops by September 2020 and, after tweeting on October 7, 2020 his intent to have all U.S. troops home by Christmas, to 2,500 troops by January 2021—despite the Taliban’s lack of full compliance with the Doha Deal.5 Trump’s own lead negotiator and U.S. diplomatic and military personnel testified to their uncertainty and surprise around these unilateral troop drawdowns and a lack of any commensurate interagency withdrawal planning process.
In a shocking event just after the elections and after firing his Secretary of Defense, Trump signed an order requiring the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan and Somalia by January 15. The document was prepared outside the National Security Council and was directed to the acting SecDef, who had never served above the rank of colonel but was loyal to the president. General Milley forced Trump to backtrack.
Just imagine how chaotic and dangerous such a pullout would have been.
The Republican report whitewashes the event:
President Trump, however, considered a complete U.S. withdrawal before the end of his presidency. On November 11, 2020, he issued a memorandum to then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, ordering him to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. [95] According to General Milley, he went to the White House with Acting Secretary Miller to discuss the memo with the president. Reportedly, the two men, along with NSC Advisor (NSA) O’Brien, advised the president against a complete withdrawal. [96] Shortly thereafter, the order was rescinded, and no steps were taken to withdraw forces. [97]
The Republican report also falsely suggests that Trump would have stopped short of withdrawal because of Taliban violations of the Doha deal. Some witnesses before the Committee argued otherwise.
General Austin Miller, commander of US forces in Afghanistan testified:
Q: Okay. So your testimony is that despite the United States signing explicit conditions on February 29th, 2020 -- A: Right. Q: -- in the Doha Agreement, by September, within 6 months of signing that deal, it was not conditions-based and steps to withdraw troops were being taken independently of conditions on the ground? A: That's fair.
A State Department official also said that the drawdown was approved without regard for whether or not the Taliban was complying. Secretary of State Pompeo never tried to slow or halt the withdrawals despite Taliban misbehaviors.
Biden kept his word on ending the war and saw risks in a small residual force
This left Joe Biden with an agreement to withdraw in 2021 and near unanimity among his advisors to retain a small 2,500-person force. Remembering how “conditions-based” withdrawals were a guarantee of endless war, he challenged the military how they would respond to Taliban attacks on the remaining US forces.
As the Biden Administration’s own white paper on the withdrawal said in April 2023:
President Biden asked his military leaders about the options he faced, including the ramifications of further delaying the deadline of May 1. He pressed his intelligence professionals on whether it was feasible to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and both defend them against a renewed Taliban onslaught and maintain a degree of stability in the country. The assessment from those intelligence professionals was that the United States would need to send more American troops into harm’s way to ensure our troops could defend themselves and to stop the stalemate from getting worse. As Secretary Austin testified on September 28, 2021, “If you stayed [in Afghanistan] at a force posture of 2,500, certainly you’d be in a fight with the Taliban, and you’d have to reinforce yourself.” Chairman Milley testified on September 29, 2021, “There’s a reasonable prospect we would have to increase forces past 2,500, given the Taliban very likely was going to start attacking us.” There were no signs that more time, more funds, or more Americans at risk in Afghanistan would have yielded a fundamentally different trajectory. Indeed, the speed with which the Taliban took over the country showed why maintaining 2,500 troops would not have sustained a stable and peaceful Afghanistan.
The Democratic report echoes this:
➢ There was broad agreement that further extending the deadline for, or reversing entirely, the Doha Deal would have resulted in renewed Taliban attacks against U.S. personnel and interests. Testimony from 13 witnesses supports this finding, contrary to the claim that the withdrawal could have been stopped or postponed without consequence. 20
And when the situation was collapsing in late August, Biden’s advisers endorsed complete withdrawal. General Milley said, “[I]f we stayed past the 31st, which is militarily feasible but it would have required an additional commitment of significant amounts of forces… maybe 25,000 troops.”
The US military prioritized withdrawal and failed to help the Afghans transition
The Republican report quibbles over how many meetings to plan the withdrawal were held, and which particular people were or were not in attendance at some of them, but that misses the key point: The Pentagon and State Department went their separate ways because of their powerful organizational cultures.
The US military obeys clear orders and tries to execute them quickly and safely. The Republican report admits that the Pentagon was concerned only about speed and safety, not about the effects of withdrawal on the capabilities and morale of the Afghans.
While the U.S. military’s strategy sought to minimize the risk to U.S. troops, the rapid retrograde had devastating and lasting consequences, including diminishing U.S. counterterrorism capabilities, abandoning the Afghan military in their fight against the Taliban, and handicapping the eventual NEO conducted out of HKIA.
Early on the Pentagon had warned that US military contractors were essential for the Afghan forces but that they wouldn’t stay in country without US protection. That problem never got solved before the collapse.
The Republican report falsely blames the Biden Administration for the problems with contractors.
At the same time, U.S. and international contractors were forced to withdraw alongside U.S. troops — contractors that were pivotal to the Afghan military’s operations against the Taliban, particularly the Afghan Air Force. The Biden-Harris administration was warned of the damage this loss of contractors would cause, including a July CENTCOM 2021 report that concluded, without contractor support, the Afghan air forces would risk inoperability.[21]
The contractors weren’t “forced to withdraw.” They were crucial to support Afghan military equipment and operations, especially aircraft, but they understandably wouldn’t stay in country without US protection. The Pentagon should have fixed this, but it also fell short in the rush to depart.
General Miller informed the committee in his testimony that the administration had yet to resolve the contracting piece by the time the Taliban seized Afghanistan on August 15, 2021. “There was an option to get pilots and [contractor logistics support] to UAE for continued training,” but the effort was still “in the works” when the Afghan military collapsed and the Taliban took over, at which point “it all became a moot point,” he said. [326]
Pentagon concerns about operational security led to overnight evacuation of some bases, leaving the Afghan forces shocked and discouraged. Instead of asking why DOD didn’t coordinate with State to minimize the psychological effects of early and sudden abandonment, the Republican report almost brags about the situation:
And finally, on July 1, 2021, U.S. forces handed over Bagram Airfield — the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. [339] On July 13, 2021 — a mere two and a half months after President Biden gave the order — CENTCOM announced more than 95% of the retrograde was complete, with nearly all its bases in Afghanistan shuttered and handed over to Afghan forces. [340]
By slashing the US military presence so quickly and so early – by mid-July – the collapse of morale was immediate. The Republican report notes this, without seeing its relevance.
By August 4, 2021, President Ghani reportedly informed U.S. officials he no longer had faith the Afghan military could continue its fight against the Taliban, asserting roughly three dozen Afghan battalions had reportedly collapsed near the start of the month. [731] From then onward, the Talban not only seized districts, but also swept through Afghanistan’s provinces.
The State Department resisted closing its embassy because it had so much work to do
Yes, the State Department didn’t want a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation [NEO]. The President and Secretary of State wanted to keep a US mission in Kabul to deal with whoever was in power. No Ambassador wants to close shop and end the chance for diplomacy. As the Republican report noted, “The investigation has revealed senior State Department and NSC officials equated a NEO with failure.” That’s their culture, and they are brave in the face of collapsing governments. The report continued: “The State Department rejected the military’s warnings. In response to those concerns, D-MR McKeon said to military officials, ‘We at the State Department have a much higher risk tolerance than you guys.’”
The Republican report criticizes State for keeping so many people in Kabul.
Instead, there was a dogmatic insistence to keep a large diplomatic footprint in Afghanistan across all levels of the Biden-Harris NSC and State Department. The committee’s investigation has uncovered that the size of the U.S. Embassy Kabul instead grew during the retrograde, even after the State Department implemented an ordered departure status.
The brave diplomats faced a Catch-22 problem: stay and help arrange the safe departure of Americans and those who had worked for us or leave, be safe, and let those needing transport suffer. The Republicans want to blame the Embassy for trying to get the job done and then criticize them for not doing enough.
Until August, the intelligence community told policymakers they had time before a Taliban takeover
Of course the planning was insufficient. Most planning for complex activities is. But they thought they had time.
Neither report says much about the intelligence estimates in 2021. Not much has been declassified, and the Foreign Affairs Committee probably had less access at the time than the intelligence committees. What has been reported is the following:
When the Biden Administration began its formal review, estimates said a total withdrawal could lead to a Taliban takeover by the end of 2021. General Milley acknowledged that.
[T]here was a general consensus that complete withdrawal of U.S. military force was going to lead to collapse of the government in the end. And so, the issue is timing, when that would happen. Most of the assessments indicated, the intelligence community assessments, were a 12-to-24-month sort of thing. The military actually had a tighter assessment, and we estimated that the earliest time of complete collapse could be in the fall, maybe around Thanksgiving, something like that. Nothing indicated August per se.
General Milley also testified that even in early August, on the 3d and 10th, intelligence estimates gave the Afghan government 30-90 days before collapse. “[Even during the summer, there was] no intel assessment that says the government’s going to collapse and the military’s going to collapse in 11 days… [At that time, the assessments] are still talking weeks, perhaps months.”
The Republican report summarizes some of the declassified reports:
In February 2021, President Biden held a principals meeting in the Situation Room, which included Secretary Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and General Milley. General Milley reportedly advised President Biden to keep American forces in Afghanistan, warning the United States’s withdrawal from Afghanistan would precipitate the Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan by Thanksgiving or Christmas 2021. [142]
In April 2021, prior to President Biden’s withdrawal announcement, ODNI stated, Afghanistan “will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support. Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.” [190]
U.S. intelligence community assessments in the summer of 2021 concluded the Afghan government might collapse within six months to a year after the U.S. military withdrawal. [717] Some intelligence agencies had been predicting the Afghan government might hold on two years after the U.S. withdrew. [718] A U.S. military officer involved in the NEO spoke of how the decisionmakers and, particularly, the administration’s NSC, believed the ANDSF could last another two years, saying, “There was no acknowledgement of the threat on the horizon. The military and civilian thought within the NSC was that the ANDSF was getting beat up but would recover. They were thinking that the ANDSF could hold for at least two years.”[719] Military intelligence assessments “weeks prior to the fall” of the Afghan government, however, found it was in “a downward spiral and likely not recoverable.” [720]
My personal guess is that the analysts didn’t appreciate the collapse of military morale with the end of Pentagon support and the collapse of the Afghan government’s morale as the evidence of the NEO became clear. The analysts saw the hardware and missed the incentives to deal or flee. But the policymakers relied on those overly optimistic estimates. After all, hope had sustained the war for 20 years.
The dissent channel controversy and Abbey Gate blame are red herrings
The Republicans wanted a copy of the cable sent by people in the Kabul embassy on July 13 but such documents are never released. The Committee was briefed and put this in the report:
On July 13, 2021, those unheard warnings manifested into an internal Dissent Channel cable signed by 26 U.S. Embassy Kabul officials and staffers, warning that Kabul would collapse soon after the military withdrawal. This cable — sent to senior State Department leaders, including Secretary Blinken and State Department Director of Policy Planning Salman Ahmed — foreshadowed the collapse of the Afghan military and a near-term Taliban takeover. The cable urged the State Department to take seriously its evacuation planning, address the backlog of SIV applications, secure the safety of those who aided the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and appropriately condemn Taliban violence. [616]
The Democratic report says this:
The July 2021 internal dissent cable on Afghanistan relayed concerns which senior Administration officials were already seized with addressing. Secretary Blinken read the dissent cable and ordered a response while protecting the confidentiality of the dissent channel.
These comments suggest to me that the FSOs were warning that things were collapsing more quickly than expected – and likely because of the rapid military withdrawal already accomplished in early July. They saw what the US military hadn’t prevented and the intelligence analysts hadn’t foreseen. They did their job.
The suicide bomber at Abbey Gate was not the responsibility of President Biden, despite continuing GOP efforts to blame him for the tragedy. The president was responsible for sending troops into harm’s way, but not for tactical security. As the Republican report admitted:
Brigadier General Sullivan was identified by CENTCOM as the decisionmaker behind keeping Abbey Gate open. [1157] Although he initially sought to close the gate on the eve of the terrorist attack, he changed course out of concern that British forces at the Baron Hotel would otherwise remain stranded.
The botched withdrawal was a tragedy with troubling consequences
President Biden’s reputation and public approval suffered after the troop withdrawal. Other nations and leaders had less confidence in US leadership and performance. There is still more to be learned about what happened, especially regarding the intelligence community’s performance.
But it is also unfortunate that the HFAC Republicans spent so much time only to issue such a one-sided political document. We deserve better.