Senior White House officials resisted efforts to move quickly in the evacuation from Afghanistan amid the Taliban’s rapid advances last August, thus hampering safety, according to an Army investigative report.
Testimony by senior military leaders about the weeks leading up to Kabul’s fall suggests the Biden administration was unwilling to take the steps needed to speed the U.S. exit from Afghanistan because doing so would suggest Washington had erred in how it approached the evacuation.
During an Aug. 6 meeting, a National Security Council official said that an evacuation would suggest “we have failed,” Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Farrell J. Sullivan told investigators. “In my opinion, the NSC was not seriously planning for an evacuation,” Sullivan said.
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The first provincial capital fell that day, with the White House urging the Taliban to “choose to devote the same energy to the peace process as they are to their military campaign.” President Joe Biden’s press secretary said during a press briefing that he remained committed to drawing down American troops and that staying in the country past May 1, the original deadline for departure, drew the risk of Taliban attacks on U.S. or NATO troops.
Three days later, Biden’s National Security Council advisers decided unanimously that shuttering the U.S. Embassy in Kabul “was still premature,” a person familiar with the situation told the Washington Post, which obtained the Army documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. The officials met through July and early August to review the security situation in Afghanistan, evaluating Taliban advances against benchmarks for action that the Council had previously identified, the person said.
The report raises questions about the White House’s resolve at a critical moment and the willingness of top officials to listen to military personnel as diplomats pushed back.
Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely “was trying to get the ambassador to see the security threat for what it really was,” said a military official. With local districts falling daily to the Taliban, this person said: “The embassy needed to position for withdrawal, and the ambassador didn’t get it.”
Discussions with the embassy were “like pulling teeth” until early August, said Sullivan, the Marine officer involved with planning the U.S. evacuation.
While communication improved, Vasely said military personnel would have been better positioned “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.”
According to the report, Sullivan, the Marine general, sought weeks earlier to prepare for evacuations from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul but could not discuss the issue with allies other than the United Kingdom. Other military leaders said administration officials feared that a departure by occupying countries would speed the collapse of Afghanistan’s government.
On Aug. 12, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan pressed Ross Wilson, the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, to speed up. Kabul fell three days later.
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Biden has repeatedly defended his withdrawal from Afghanistan and said that the deaths of 13 service members in the final days of the exit were inevitable under the circumstances. He has drawn criticism from allies of the United States and leaders in Congress, including Democrats, over claims that his administration was unprepared for the Taliban’s takeover.
The White House did not respond by press time to questions about whether Biden’s national security advisers were slow to act.
