WASHINGTON — The State Department didn’t do sufficient planning earlier than the collapse of the U.S.-backed authorities in Afghanistan, in keeping with 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. The U.S. evacuated an estimated 124,000 Afghans from the nation.
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 U.S. troops and about 170 Afghans died in a suicide bombing.
The Biden administration launched sections of the long-awaited State report, which was accomplished in March 2022, on the Friday earlier than the July 4 vacation weekend, although it withheld many 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 launch inner Pentagon and State Department assessments. The Pentagon’s report remains to be categorised as secret.
A State Department activity drive helped deliver 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 had been eligible for processing below a particular U.S. visa program for Afghans.
But State “failed to establish a broader task force as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated,” the report says.
And because the army 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 sooner than most U.S. officers anticipated and the destiny of Kabul turned unclear, the report says, State Department personnel started receiving an “overwhelming volume of incoming calls and messages” from lawmakers, different authorities businesses, and the general public pleading for assist saving individuals trapped within the nation.
Staff working to facilitate the evacuation additionally confronted complicated steering that wasn’t attuned to real-world circumstances on the time, in keeping with the report.
State has taken classes from the failures of Afghanistan under consideration when evacuating individuals earlier than and in the course of the subsequent battle in Ukraine and as a disaster developed in Sudan, in keeping with a senior State Department official who briefed reporters Friday. The official spoke on situation of anonymity below floor guidelines set by the division.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated in a letter to workers that the overview was “vital to building a stronger Department that is better prepared to respond to future challenges and to fulfill our missions around the world.”
Officials declined to say why they’d launched the report simply earlier than a vacation weekend.
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