The United state government has come under fire, criticized by the US State Department for failing to make preparations for the abrupt fall of the Afghan government in 2021 in a report on the “detrimental consequences” of the nation’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan.
According to the so-called After Action Review (AAR), which was published on Friday, the decision by US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan had “serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security.”.
In August 2021, the Taliban seized control of Kabul as US forces were chaotically withdrawn from the country, leading to the collapse of the Afghan government that the US had supported and Ashraf Ghani’s departure.
The review released on Friday also criticized the Trump administration for failing to address problems with the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which provides a route for Afghans who cooperated with the US government to immigrate to the nation.
The report specifically criticized the State Department for failing to establish a crisis-management task force that could have kept tabs on the situation in Afghanistan at the time and openly collaborated with the Pentagon in the event of an evacuation.
Although the US withdrawal was approved in a February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, it was not properly planned for by the Trump administration, according to the White House report, which echoed the report’s findings.
When the Trump administration left office, it said, “Important questions remained unanswered about how the United States would meet the May 2021 deadline for a full military withdrawal, how the United States could maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul after that withdrawal, and what might happen to those eligible for the [SIV program] as well as other at-risk Afghans.”.
The Biden administration published a review of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April, admitting that there had been a significant intelligence failure in failing to foresee a swift Taliban victory.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the time, “Clearly we didn’t get things right” on intelligence.
Even though no Afghan nationals were involved in the attacks, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. In the US-led invasion and subsequent war, hundreds of thousands of Afghans perished.
Under the pretense of battling the Taliban, American forces occupied the nation for 20 years. But in August 2021, as US troops left Afghanistan, the Taliban swiftly seized control of Kabul, the country’s capital.
