A report published by the Department of State this Friday, when millions of Americans were already beginning to enjoy the bridge for the national holiday of the Fourth of July, acknowledges serious failures of forecasting during the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The decisions by both President Trump and President Biden to end the US military mission in Afghanistan “had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” says the review team of the operation carried out two years ago. And he adds: “During both administrations there was a lack of high-level consideration of the worst-case scenarios” of the situation in the country as a result of the march of US soldiers, which should have started earlier, he points out.
Despite the self-critical forcefulness of the report and the fact that he left his Foreign Department, Biden tried to counter it and in a way reply to it when journalists asked him about it: “Remember what I said? I said that al-Qaeda was not I would be there. I said we would receive help from the Taliban. And what is happening now? Reread the press. I was right,” said the president in what could be understood as a reaffirmation of the theses he maintained at the time to justify the withdrawal .
In the document, the group responsible for the review suggests great confusion in the command of the August 2021 operation. The State Department’s planning for the evacuation “was hampered” by the fact that “it was not clear who had the leadership” to make decisions, the report states.
And, although implicitly, those responsible for the review do not fail to point out the responsibility of the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The head of the Department -they maintain- should have expanded his crisis management group when the Taliban advanced on Kabul that summer. He lacked a high-level diplomat “to oversee all elements of the response to the crisis,” the text states. And alluding to the floor of the Department where Blinken works with his most direct collaborators, he adds: “Appointing a director on the seventh floor would have improved coordination between different lines of effort.”
The publication of the report, excluding a good portion that is still classified, was a new jug of cold water for Biden and his government on a day that was already quite black after the ruling by which the Supreme Court annulled the student debt forgiveness plan. that squeezes tens of millions of Americans.
The US exit from Afghanistan, carried out over two weeks and with its nerve center in a single airfield in Kabul, allowed more than 120,000 people to be taken out of the country in a meritorious and risky air transport mission. But tens of thousands of Afghans who had helped Washington for 20 years in the war against the Taliban were left on the ground, to the fate of the fans.
In addition, and what was no less dramatic, a suicide attack killed more than a hundred citizens of the country and thirteen US soldiers. And a failed attack with a US Army drone killed 10 innocent people. Many other people were trampled to death in the hasty races to reach one of the planes that could take them away from hell.
The government of the Western superpower did not act with much reason. And now he admits it. Of course, in the middle of the June bridge.
