Pentagon’s Afghanistan exit report to Congress casts blame, notes evacuation delay

The Pentagon on Thursday provided Congress with reviews examining the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021, with the White House offering its own unclassified outline defending the decisions surrounding the exit and blaming the previous administration for creating unfavorable conditions.

But the 12-page document also acknowledges that the administration learned the evacuation in Afghanistan should’ve been started earlier.

Agencies within the State Department and Pentagon involved in the withdrawal have conducted after-action reviews of the effort over the past several months, and classified versions will be given to relevant committees in the House and Senate, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Thursday. 

Officials had previously indicated they would turn over reviews to Congress by mid-April.

The review comes as House Republicans have pledged to use their new majority to scrutinize the withdrawal, including the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans.

The unclassified outline released by the White House defended the decisions around the withdrawal and said that President Biden took the advice of military commanders on the tactical decisions about the “operational retrograde of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, including the dates they closed facilities.”

“While it was always the president’s intent to end that war, it is also undeniable that decisions made and the lack of planning done by the previous administration significantly limited options available to him,” Kirby said.

“Despite having his options curtailed, President Biden led a deliberate, rigorous, and including decision-making process that was responsive to the facts on the ground,” he added.

Much of the contents of the 12-page document released by the White House blames the previous administration for a host of issues.

The outline blamed the Trump administration at length for their lack of preparation going into the withdrawal and for what Biden inherited when he came into office, pointing to drawdowns of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the former president’s consideration of hosting Taliban leaders for negotiations around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The outline also said the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program had a 14-step process and there was a backlog of over 18,000 SIV applicants when Trump left office. It said that Biden issued an executive order early in the administration to streamline the application process for SIV applicants.

“The departing Trump Administration had left the Biden Administration with a date for withdrawal, but no plan for executing it. And after four years of neglect—and in some cases deliberate degradation—crucial systems, offices, and agency functions that would be necessary for a safe and orderly departure were in disrepair,” it read.

But Kirby on Thursday disputed the suggestion that the Biden administration was trying to pass off accountability. He also downplayed the idea that the White House was trying to bury the report by releasing it on a holiday weekend.

When questioned about if the outline conveys that the president has any regrets or just blames the Trump administration, Kirby said releasing the outline “shows you how seriously the president felt about learning lessons from this withdrawal.”

He added that Biden is “very proud of the manner” in which his administration conducted the withdrawal, adding that not a single operation goes according to plan and “things happen.”

The Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021 marked a low point for the Biden administration, with the president’s approval ratings falling sharply and the White House drawing intense scrutiny over the death of U.S. troops and whether it had misread the strength of the Afghan government before it rapidly fell.

Biden has been adamant in the aftermath that he does not regret his decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, arguing the U.S. had spent millions of dollars and lost hundreds of lives over two decades fighting there and could maintain an over-the-horizon presence.

The outline said that in the months leading up to the withdrawal, intelligence reports continued to suggest that Kabul would be more difficult for the Taliban to take and that the Afghan National Security Forces would defend it. 

Then, when the security situation worsened over the summer and the Biden administration started to lose confidence in the Afghan government, the Biden administration decided to privately reach out to Americans and Afghan partners about the situation but not to “broadcast loudly and publicly,” according to the outline.

The outline said that one thing the White House learned from the withdrawal is to “now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” noting officials used lessons from Afghanistan to improve procedures in Ethiopia and Ukraine.

Kirby added though that no agency had predicted that the Taliban would take over so quickly and that the Afghans would “fail to fight for their country, especially after 20 years of American support.”

Kirby said the outline is the result of months of work by the agencies to “voluntarily” review the withdrawal, adding that the Biden administration thought it was responsible to provide the review to Congress.

“What you’re seeing today is the result and the cumulation of a lot of work,” he said. “It’s an effort to be as open and transparent as we can be.”

Updated 2:20 p.m.