GOP to zero-in on Biden’s handling of Afghanistan at initial hearing

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is preparing to launch its first public hearing stemming from its investigation into the evacuation of Afghanistan, vowing to examine President Biden’s role in the chaotic U.S. exit from the country.

The hearing – and those that follow – will zero in on one of the most dramatic months of the Biden presidency. While Biden allies tout the largest evacuation in history as a success despite inheriting difficult circumstances and a deal brokered by the prior administration, the GOP has cast the event as nothing short of a disaster.

Lawmakers on the panel will meet Wednesday with two leaders of outfits that organized amid the withdrawal, staging charter flights to aid Afghans seeking to escape the country, as well as other veterans, including a former Army medic on the scene amid a suicide bombing just outside the airport gates.

The U.S. evacuated roughly 88,500 Afghans in August of 2021, but that exit came at a steep price. Thirteen service members lost their lives as the military tried to maintain control of Hamid Karzai International Airport while numerous Afghan allies were left behind.

The country, now under Taliban rule, is facing an economic crisis and food shortage, while many of those who aided the U.S. during its 20-year mission in Afghanistan have struggled to flee the country or remain in hiding.

The committee, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), is seeking to focus on the difficulty of evacuating allies as the U.S. rushed to meet an end-of-August deadline to leave the country.

“What happened in Afghanistan was a systemic breakdown of the federal government at every level – and a stunning failure of leadership by the Biden administration. As a result, the world watched heartbreaking scenes unfold in and around the Kabul airport,” McCaul said in a statement to The Hill.

“I want every gold and blue star family member, and every veteran out there who watch this hearing to know: I will not rest until we determine how this happened – and hold those accountable responsible.”

That story will be told from the veteran perspective on Wednesday. 

Scott Mann with Task Force Pineapple and France Hoang with Allied Airlift 21 will speak about their efforts to organize charter flights out of Afghanistan. Aiden Gunderson is the medic who will testify about the scene on the ground, as will Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a sniper who was working at the airport gates.

Peter Lucier, a veteran who works with Team America Relief, which worked to help Afghans seeking to evacuate and is still working to assist those who wish to leave the country, will testify at the invitation of committee Democrats.

Veterans’ groups and lawmakers spent months sounding the alarm the U.S. was not moving fast enough to process the Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) given to those who assisted military efforts in the country. It was many of those same voices that sprang into action during the evacuation.

But it was the horrifying images of Afghans running on the tarmac with luggage and even hanging from airplanes that captured public attention.  

Numerous private groups launched in the hectic days of the withdrawal, raising significant private funds to secure charter flights to ferry Afghans out of the country.

Still, the efforts had their own complexities.

On the one hand, they aided vulnerable Afghans in escaping the country, in some cases even after the U.S. had withdrawn, assisting those who otherwise may have had little chance of escaping.

Many were organized by those with ties to the military, determined to rescue those they had connected with over their service.

But some who were evacuated to official U.S.-connected intermediate sites fell short of the standards needed to secure passage to America, including Afghans who worked with the military for less than the three years required to secure an SIV. Some remain abroad, left to pursue a journey to the U.S. though the refugee system, which often takes years.

Absent from Wednesday’s hearing are any Afghan people evacuated during the withdrawal or other representatives from the Afghan community.

“This was an issue that was very intimate and close to the Afghan diaspora in the U.S.,” said Mustafa Babak, executive director of the Afghan-American Foundation, noting that many were working to get their own relatives out of the country during the evacuation. 

He said the group has struggled to get answers to their own questions about the evacuation that continues to impact those who fled.

“Some of these questions we have been asking from the very beginning, since August 2021 when the whole process started. Whether it be what’s happening to those who are still left behind, SIVs, the evacuation process, and the resettlement process,” and future for those who made it to the U.S., he said.

The U.S. commitment to leave Afghanistan was negotiated under the Trump administration through the Doha Agreement, which required the removal of all U.S. troops.

But the terms of the agreement collided with already slow SIV processing times that diminished to just a trickle under the Trump administration.

Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the committee, nodded to the circumstances leading up to the evacuation, saying through a spokesperson that any review “cannot be done with a lens focused only on those days in August 2021.”

“As we continue the relocation effort, it’s important to learn from both the success and challenges of the evacuation. However, any efforts to paint a narrow picture that strips out the context of our policy decisions leading up to the 2021 evacuation would be a disingenuous attempt to mislead the American public and politicize the issue.  Democrats on the committee will seek to understand that context so the same mistakes are not repeated going forward,” a spokesperson for House Foreign Affairs Democrats said in a statement to The Hill.

The first hearing could also mark a significant shift in the power dynamic for a former GOP minority that has struggled to get cooperation from the Biden administration.

McCaul’s team previously released a report criticizing Biden for the withdrawal, which while failing to deliver any smoking guns, offered a detailed look at the circumstances leading up to the withdrawal as well as the evacuation itself.

“The Biden administration’s, and specifically the State Department’s, refusal to provide Congress with the necessary information regarding America’s unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan has hampered the Minority Committee’s ability to complete a thorough investigation,” said the report, which was released at the anniversary of the withdrawal last August.

The committee has made clear it hopes to use its newfound power to secure more cooperation from the Biden administration. “I have subpoena power. I reserve that until necessary,” McCaul recently said in an interview with Fox News.

“But I’m prepared to do that to get answers to these questions.”