When Biden left Afghanistan, he left behind more than a thousand Americans

In a damning report released Wednesday, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the Biden administration has no plan to help the thousands of Afghans who helped the US during its 20-year war against the Taliban but are still stuck in the crumbling country. This is according to the report from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

In a two-page summary of Rep. Michael McCaul's 115-page report, Republicans on the panel wrote that the White House had repeatedly said that "about a hundred" Americans would be left behind when the last US troops left Kabul on August 31, 2021.

But, they said, "Since that date, the State Department has evacuated more than 800 US citizens." Several hundred more Americans have been evacuated by groups outside of the military. This means that more than 1,000 Americans were left in a country run by a terrorist group.

McCaul, a Republican from Texas, warned that "those Afghans most at risk of retaliation from the Taliban remain trapped in Afghanistan" and are still at risk of being killed by the fundamentalist government.

There are "tens of thousands" of former elite Afghan military members, interpreters, and women leaders who were left behind. The US had promised them refuge.

“One year after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, the Committee Minority has found the Biden administration still lacks a plan to help these at-risk Afghan allies who fought shoulder to shoulder with U.S. forces, despite the administration admitting these former battlefield allies have been subjected to killings and forced disappearances,” McCaul wrote.

During the weeks-long mission, the US and its allies airlifted nearly 130,000 people out of the country. However, McCaul's report makes it clear that many more people were left on their own.

The lawmaker from Texas said that those who were left behind were so afraid of the Taliban's oppression that a watchdog report from May of this year found that about 3,000 members of the Afghan security forces fled to neighboring Iran when the Western-backed Kabul government fell.

"It is possible that these former Afghan military and intelligence personnel could be recruited or forced to work for one of America's enemies with a presence in Afghanistan, such as Russia, China, or Iran," McCaul said. "This is a major national security risk because these Afghans know the U.S. military and intelligence community's tactics, techniques, and procedures."

As part of making the report, McCaul's team read hundreds of reports and memorandums about the evacuation, talked to witnesses, and went to Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. They found a number of things that went wrong, which they say led to the botched pullout.

For example, the report says that only 36 State Department employees were in Kabul to screen 124,000 evacuees, which is "roughly one consular officer for every 3,444 evacuees." Republicans on the committee think that processing could have gone faster and saved more people if there had been more people on the ground.

"Several U.S. Marines stationed at [Kabul airport's] Abbey Gate told Army investigators that they rarely saw U.S. State Department employees on the ground, and when they did, they did so in a random way," the report said.

The report also said that Ross Wilson, who was the acting ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, went on vacation for two weeks in late June and early July 2021, when the Taliban were getting ready for their final attack. An American military officer is quoted in the report as telling Army investigators, "No decisions were made in the Embassy until he [Wilson] came back in mid-July."

The Republican report also criticized how the evacuation was planned, saying that it was "so disorganized that senior leaders in Vice President Kamala Harris' office and First Lady Jill Biden's office" asked veterans' groups to help get vulnerable Afghan allies and Americans out of the country.

The report said, "The fact that high-level members of the administration felt the need to go to a volunteer organization and tactical-level commanders on the ground instead of using the formal internal processes of the State Department or other government entities shows that planning 'for all contingencies' was not done, no matter how many times the administration said it had."

The US has continued to keep an eye on Afghanistan from afar, and on July 31, a drone strike in Kabul killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. However, the report criticized the Biden administration's "over-the-horizon" counterterror strategy, saying that it has let Afghanistan go back to being a safe haven for terrorists like it was before 9/11.

The Office of the Inspector General at the Pentagon released a report on Tuesday that backed up this claim. The report said that without American troops on the ground in Afghanistan, it has become harder for the US to fight terrorism there.

“The U.S. Government has been significantly challenged in its conduct of counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan due to the absence of a physical presence in-country, lack of partner forces, scant intelligence, and lack of access to nearby military bases,” the Pentagon report said. 

It also said ISIS-K continues to have “the intent and capability” to attack US government facilities, equipment and personnel in South and Central Asia. However, it noted the group has so far only focused its attacks on non-US targets in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. 

“ISIS-K probably has the intent but not the capability to attack the U.S. homeland,” the Pentagon report said. “The [Defense Intelligence Agency] reported that it saw no indications that ISIS-K has planned, trained for or executed terrorist operations targeting the U.S. homeland.” 

The Pentagon report also said that the Taliban took about $7.1 billion worth of military equipment that the U.S. left behind in Afghanistan. This included about $923,3 million worth of aircraft and $4.1 billion worth of military vehicles, some of which were broken when the U.S. left.

"The Afghan forces relied heavily on support from U.S. contractors to keep their fleets of planes and cars in good shape," the report said. "Without this ongoing support, it would be hard for these assets to work in the long run."

According to a Pentagon report, the amount also included about $294.6 million in aircraft munitions and $511.8 million in weapons like rifles, grenade launchers, and howitzers, but it is not clear how many are still working.

In his report, McCaul asked for more studies of the withdrawal and evacuation mission "to find full answers about how this happened and how to make sure something like this never happens again."

-------------

Follow us on Google News