A damning new report says the US-led withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out with no planning, was mired in “chaos and confusion”, and led to “tragic yet avoidable outcomes”.
On the primary anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Kabul which led to the sudden mass evacuation of hundreds of displaced Afghans, Republicans on the US House international affairs committee have launched a file which outlines how they are saying the operation was dealt with.
The strongly-worded 121-page report doesn’t maintain any punches.
“The choices made in the corridors of power in DC,” it says, “led to tragic yet avoidable outcomes: 13 dead service members, American lives still at great risk, increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe.”
It claims President Joe Biden’s administration waited till simply “hours before the Taliban seized Kabul” to make key evacuation choices.
“Very little was done to prepare for a Taliban takeover of the country” or for the evacuation, it mentioned.
And it additionally claimed, regardless of acknowledging for months that not evacuating them represented a big safety danger, the administration didn’t make “any effort to prioritise the evacuation of US-trained Afghan commandos and other elite units who possess sensitive knowledge about US military operations”.
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Many of these personnel, it went on, “have been forced to seek refuge in Iran where they could be exploited for their information”.
The report claims even President Biden’s personal officers have described the top of the US presence in Afghanistan as a “strategic failure” and “an ugly final phase.”
More than 15,000 Afghan and British nationals had been evacuated from the town by personnel from the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force in what Defence Secretary Ben Wallace described as “the largest British evacuation since the Second World War”.
In its findings, the committee claims President Biden favoured an unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan, following consultations with senior US army advisors and allies.
However, it says: “There is ample evidence, including direct testimony from American military leaders and top NATO allies, that they supported a continued conditions-based deployment in Afghanistan.”
This meant protecting an advisory and counterterrorism mission in place made up of two,500 US army personnel together with 6,000 principally NATO forces.
The report additional claims:
• At the peak of the evacuation, solely 36 American consular officers had been on the bottom in Kabul, regardless of needing to course of greater than 100,000 evacuees
• Some 1,450 Afghan kids had been evacuated with out their dad and mom
• The issues through the evacuation had been exacerbated by blended messages from the State Department to Americans and Afghan allies on the bottom, and a scarcity of correct tools and personnel on the airport.
President Biden has referred to as the operation an “extraordinary success” that flew greater than 124,000 Americans and Afghans to security and wound up an “endless” warfare by which some 3,500 US and allied troops, and tons of of hundreds of Afghans died.
At the time, he instructed the American individuals: “Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan – the longest war in American history.
Read more:
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The mission was an ‘extraordinary success’
“We accomplished one of many greatest airlifts in historical past… greater than double what most specialists thought had been doable.
“No nation – no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.
“The extraordinary success of this mission was because of the unbelievable ability, bravery, and selfless braveness of the United States army and our diplomats and intelligence professionals.”
The US House of Representatives’ (decrease home) international affairs committee is made up of 27 Democrats and 24 Republicans, however the report was put collectively by the ‘minority’ social gathering solely, that’s, the Republicans.
Source: information.sky.com”