The disastrous withdrawal of US troops from Kabul: Biden admits mistakes but no regrets

President Biden has admitted that he waited too long before ordering the evacuation of American troops and thousands of vulnerable Afghan civilians from Kabul when the Taliban were on the point of seizing back control of Afghanistan’s capital. Biden and his national security team made the decision to leave the evacuation to the last moment because they were worried a premature withdrawal would undermine the confidence of the Afghan army and lead to a collapse of the Kabul government. The admissions appear in a published White House review of the August 2021 evacuation which led to scenes of chaos and violence, ultimately opening an opportunity for an Islamic State suicide bomber to detonate a device which killed 170 civilians and 13 US service personnel. The withdrawal of US and coalition troops as the Taliban arrived in force provoked the very collapse which the Biden administration had hoped to avoid or at least delay. At the time of the evacuation which involved hundreds of flights out of Kabul international airport Biden described the military withdrawal mission as an “extraordinary success”. However, in the light of the disastrous suicide bombing and the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul after an unexpectedly rapid advance, the president ordered a “top to bottom” review of the withdrawal. The White House document detailing the findings revealed that the sober experience of the Kabul evacuation has forced the Biden administration to change its policy for any future withdrawal mission. Evacuations from foreign countries in the future will be carried out as soon as it becomes clear security is deteriorating, putting American lives at risk. “We now prioritise earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” the White House report said. “We did so in both Ethiopia and Ukraine, “ the report said. US troops had been participating in training programmes with Ukraine. But no US military were present in Ukraine when the Russians invaded on February 24 last year; and during armed conflict in Ethiopia, the US authorised the voluntary departure of non-emergency government employees and family members. In the months leading up to the August 2021 evacuation in Afghanistan, the Biden administration chose “ not to broadcast loudly and publicly about a potential worst-case scenario unfolding in order to avoid signalling a lack of confidence” in the Afghan government. The report is critical of the decisions taken when Donald Trump was president. Trump had ordered negotiations to begin with the Taliban in Qatar for an end to US involvement in the war. A 12-page summary of the review says Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions. “President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the report said. When Biden became president, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country”. “Clearly we didn’t get it right,” John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, said. But he said the purpose of the report was not to assign accountability but to learn lessons for the future. The Trump deal signed on February 29, 2020, committed the US to a full pull-out of troops by May 2021. In return, the Taliban made a number of commitments, including withdrawing all support for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is now accepted the Taliban failed to honour their commitments. Biden extended the withdrawal timetable to August, 2021 but stuck with Trump’s negotiated agreement to evacuate all troops, despite appeals from top US military commanders to leave 2,500 troops in Afghanistan as a safety precaution. The White House report blamed the Trump administration for striking a deal with the Taliban without a comprehensive withdrawal plan. The speed of the Taliban’s advance into Kabul took the Biden administration by surprise, even though the intelligence services had been warning of the risk of a potential collapse of the Afghan government. Kirby praised the US military for their actions in orchestrating the largest airborne evacuation of non-combatants in history during the chaos of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban.