Topline
The White House pinned the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan on the lack of planning from the previous administration and admitted it should have started evacuations sooner but stood by the decision to pull out of the country in a summary of an interagency report released Thursday.
In this handout provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, a Marine with the 24th Marine Expeditionary unit … [+]
Key Facts
The summary said that the administration was “severely constrained” by actions of former President Donald Trump’s administration, including the 2020 agreement Trump made with the Taliban to withdraw American troops by the spring of 2021.
While the summary acknowledged the evacuation of Americans should have begun sooner, it blamed delays on imperfect assessments from the intelligence community, the Afghan government and the Afghan military.
When President Joe Biden entered office the Taliban were in the “strongest military position” they had been since 2001, “controlling or contesting nearly half of the country,” the White House summary said in defense of the withdrawal, during which a suicide bomb at the Kabul Airport took the lives of 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby noted Thursday the evacuation from Afghanistan has led the administration to prioritize earlier evacuations in more recent conflicts in Ukraine and Ethiopia.
Members of Congress received access to the classified report on Thursday, White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that a 12-page summary was publicly released.
There are no plans to declassify the full report—which combines after action reviews done by the State Department and the Department of Defense—Kirby said Thursday.
Key Background
In August 2021, Biden pulled the final troops from Afghanistan ending the 20-year-long war the U.S. became deeply involved in after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. That withdrawal was negotiated by the Trump administration and the Taliaban and set for May 2021. Once Biden came into office, his administration extended the deadline by several months but continued to commit to pull out of Afghanistan. The withdrawal itself however was largely criticized and described as chaotic. As the U.S. began pulling troops out of Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly took over territory and the U.S.-backed government collapsed more quickly than many expected. That collapse allowed the Taliban to regain power after a 20-year battle attempting to prevent that.
Big Number
$7 billion. That’s how much military hardware was left behind in Afghanistan after the withdrawal, a DOD report found in April 2022.
Further Reading
Trump’s Deal With The Taliban, Explained (Washington Post)
U.S. Withdraws Final Troops From Afghanistan, Pentagon Says (Forbes)
Most Americans Now Think U.S. Should’ve Kept Some Troops In Afghanistan—Despite Previously Backing War’s End (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/04/06/white-house-review-of-2021-afghanistan-withdrawal-blames-trump/