BENJAMIN OMOIKE WITH AGENCY REPORTS
There were desperate scenes in the final days of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan US President Joe Biden’s administration has released a report blaming its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan on his predecessor, Donald Trump.
The 12-page report says Mr Biden was “severely constrained” by Mr Trump’s decisions, including a 2020 agreement struck with the Taliban in Qatar.
But halfway through the report is a suggestion the government could have begun evacuations earlier.
The deadly pull-out in August 2021 ended America’s longest war.
The review was put together by the White House National Security Council, with help from Mr Biden himself.
US House of Representatives Republicans, who are investigating the pull-out, have been demanding to see the report for weeks.
The document remains confidential, but a summary of its conclusions was made available to the public on Thursday.
When the Afghan government collapsed, there were desperate scenes at Kabul airport as huge crowds tried to flee the Taliban.
On 26 August, an attack at the airport by two suicide bombers killed 170 Afghans and 13 US soldiers.
The US carried out a drone strike in Kabul days later, saying it had targeted a suicide bomber, only to admit that the missile had killed 10 civilians, including seven children.
On Thursday, President Biden’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, blamed the chaos on a deal that former President Trump made with the Taliban a year earlier.
The report refers to a “deliberate degradation” by the Trump administration.
Mr Kirby said that phrase refers to the drawdown of US troops during Mr Trump’s tenure and the freeing of thousands of Taliban prisoners, as well as the Doha agreement with the insurgents to end the war.
“Transitions matter,” said Mr Kirby, as he presented a summary of the report. “That’s the first lesson learned here. And the incoming administration wasn’t afforded much of one.”
The report implies that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan could have started sooner.
“We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” it says on page seven.
But the report faults the Afghan government and military for these delays, together with US military and intelligence community assessments.
Mr Kirby said that Mr Biden had “acted in accordance with the best judgement of his advisers” and refused to say if the president regretted how the withdrawal was carried out.
Some lessons had been learned from the end of the war in Afghanistan, he said, especially around the failure to predict the sudden collapse of the Afghan government. Mr Kirby said that had influenced the US policy of supporting Ukraine ahead of Russia’s invasion.
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At a heated White House press briefing, Mr Kirby was forced to defend the timing of the release just ahead of a holiday weekend in the US.
Pushed on whether any officials involved with the withdrawal would be removed from their posts as a result of the report, Mr Kirby said its purpose “is not accountability”.
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