Republicans in the US House of Representatives will release a long-awaited report on Monday criticising the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden for failures linked to the chaotic and deadly US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The report said the administration made the decision to evacuate noncombatants too late, formally ordering it on Aug. 16, failed to communicate between departments in Washington and officials in Afghanistan, and bungled paperwork for the departure of Afghan citizens eligible to leave the country.
It is the result of a three-year investigation led by Representative Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“America’s credibility on the world stage was severely damaged when we abandoned Afghan allies to the Taliban’s retaliatory killings — the people of Afghanistan we promised to protect,” the report said. “And the moral damage to America’s veterans and those still serving remains a stain on this administration’s legacy.”
The withdrawal has become intensely political ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5. Last month, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, shot a video for his campaign at Arlington National Cemetery, where he appeared at a ceremony honoring soldiers killed in the evacuation.
Trump has also attacked Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over their exit from Afghanistan during the campaign, and blamed them personally for the deaths at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate. On August 26, 2021, as US forces were trying to help Americans and Afghans escape as the Islamist Taliban movement took control of the country, 13 Americans were killed in a suicide attack at the Abbey Gate entrance to Kabul’s airport, further fuelling America’s sense of defeat after two decades of war.
Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee.
Democrats have insisted that some of the blame for the war’s messy end — less than seven months after Biden became president — should also be apportioned to Trump, who began the withdrawal process by signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020.
“When former President Trump took office, there were approximately 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Just days before leaving office, the former President ordered the number reduced to 2,500,” Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, said in a letter to committee Democrats about the investigation.
Republican committee aides dismissed the claim as partisan politics and said Biden could have ignored Trump’s deal or implemented it. They accused officials who served during Biden’s presidency of allowing the Taliban to disregard its commitments.
Nearly 800,000 American troops have served in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda.
2,238 US troops were killed and nearly 21,000 wounded during the war. Independent estimates put the number of Afghan security forces and civilians killed at more than 100,000.
McCaul has subpoenaed Secretary of State Antony Blinken three times in connection with the Afghanistan investigation, most recently last week, saying he wanted him to testify in person.
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