US Acknowledges Afghanistan Evacuation Should Have Started Earlier

President Biden's decision to end a 20-year war in August 2021 has led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and military. His administration placed heavy blame on his predecessor.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration's nearly two-year review of the calamitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan found that the US officials should have started the evacuation sooner, but blamed much of the blame on President Biden's predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump.

The Security Council national on Thursday published a 12-page summary of the government's conclusions on the withdrawal in August 2021, which quickly turned violent. As US officials rushed to evacuate people from the international airport in the capital Kabul, an Islamic State suicide bomber carried out an attack that killed 13 US service members and up to 170 civilians.

At one point, a crowd of Afghans, desperate to escape, climbed onto the wings of a US military cargo plane and fell from the sky after takeoff. Within days of the US withdrawal, the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban took over.

"Obviously we didn't managed to get things done here with Afghanistan with the speed with which the Taliban have been moving across the country,” said White House spokesman John F. Kirby, who fielded questions from reporters. for more than an hour on the government's review.

According to the document, the government has changed its policies to carry out such evacuations earlier when security conditions are deteriorating.

But Mr. Kirby stressed that the steps taken by Mr. Trump - beginning with his dealing with the Taliban to withdraw US troops by spring of 2021, his hasty troop withdrawals and his subsequent failure to share relevant transitional materials with his successor's team - left Mr. Biden with few good options. According to the report, when Mr. Biden took office, there were only 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, down from around 10,000 when Mr. Trump took office. Those who remained outnumbered the ascendant Taliban forces.

"It's a general sense of degradation and neglect that the president inherited," Mr. Kirby. "And don't underestimate the effect the Doha deal has had on the morale and the will to fight the Afghan National Security Defense Forces," he added, referring to the deal. that Mr. Trump agreed with the Taliban to withdraw forces from Afghanistan. /p>

"It had a very corrosive effect on their will to keep fighting for their country," Kirby said. "Now we haven't seen that. We haven't seen that, and part of the reason we haven't seen it is that we couldn't see the plans. Ms. Trump said Thursday that the Biden administration was "trying to enlighten the American people for its disastrous pullout in Afghanistan that has directly resulted in the deaths of Americans and emboldened terrorists".

He added, "The world has become a more dangerous place under Joe Biden."

The summary released Thursday does not directly say that officials have made errors as they discussed evacuating the country and assessing how long it would take. But in two places the document says the government will prioritize rapid evacuations.

"We are now prioritizing early evacuations in the face of a deteriorating security situation," the administration said in the summary. "We did it in both Ethiopia and Ukraine," he added, referring to the ongoing conflicts in those countries. including the...