Biden administration failed to plan before Afghanistan collapse, U.S. report finds – National | 24CA News
The State Department didn’t do sufficient planning earlier than the collapse of the U.S.-backed authorities in Afghanistan, in response to a Biden administration overview of the division’s efficiency in the course of the chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies.
The overview repeatedly blames the administrations of each former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for his or her efforts earlier than and after the August 2021 departure of U.S. forces from Kabul.
Republicans have in flip accused Biden of not taking accountability for intelligence failures main as much as the Taliban’s seizure of the nation and for the scenes of chaos at Kabul’s airport, the place 13 Marines died in a suicide bombing.
The Biden administration launched sections of the long-awaited State report on the Friday earlier than the July 4 vacation weekend, although it withheld a lot of the report from public launch. It had launched a National Security Council overview of the withdrawal on the day earlier than Good Friday and the Easter weekend however declined to subject inner Pentagon and State Department assessments.
A State Department activity power helped carry out almost 2,000 Afghan residents in July and early August 2021, weeks earlier than the Aug. 31, 2021, deadline the U.S. set for withdrawal. They have been eligible for processing below a particular U.S. visa program for Afghans. The U.S. would ultimately airlift greater than 124,000 individuals from the capital.
But State “failed to establish a broader task force as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated,” the report says.
And because the navy deliberate for an evacuation of American civilians and Afghan allies, “it was unclear who in the Department had the lead,” it says.
“The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” the report says. “Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the (review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow.”
As the Taliban took key cities far quicker than most U.S. officers anticipated and the destiny of Kabul grew to become unclear, the report says, State Department personnel started receiving an “overwhelming volume of incoming calls and messages” from lawmakers, different authorities companies, and the general public pleading for assist saving individuals trapped within the nation.
Staff working to facilitate the evacuation additionally confronted complicated steerage that wasn’t attuned to real-world situations on the time, in response to the report.
State has taken classes from the failures of Afghanistan into consideration when evacuating individuals earlier than and in the course of the subsequent conflict in Ukraine and as a disaster developed in Sudan, in response to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters Friday. The official spoke on situation of anonymity below floor guidelines set by the division.
Officials declined to say why they’d launched the report simply earlier than a vacation weekend.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
