State Department failed to plan or respond fast enough in Afghanistan collapse: US report

The State Department failed to do enough planning before the collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan, according to a Biden administration review of the department's performance during the chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies.

The review repeatedly blames the administrations of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for their efforts before and after the August 2021 departure of US forces from Kabul.

Republicans have in turn accused Biden of not taking responsibility for intelligence failures leading up to the Taliban's seizure of the country and for the scenes of chaos at Kabul's airport, where 13 Marines died in a suicide bombing.

The Biden administration released sections of the long-awaited State report on the Friday before the July 4 holiday weekend, though it withheld most of the report from public release.

It had released a National Security Council review of the withdrawal on the day before Good Friday and the Easter weekend but declined to issue internal Pentagon and State Department assessments.

A State Department task force helped bring out nearly 2,000 Afghan citizens in July and early August 2021, weeks before the August 31, 2021, deadline the US set for withdrawal.

They were eligible for processing under a special US visa program for Afghans. The US would eventually airlift more than 124,000 people from the capital.

But State “failed to establish a broader task force as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated,” the report says.

And as the military planned for an evacuation of American civilians and Afghan allies, “it was unclear who in the Department had the lead,” it says.

“The decisions of 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,” the report says.

“Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the (review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow.” As the Taliban took key cities far faster than most US officials expected and the fate of Kabul became unclear, the report says, State Department personnel began receiving an “overwhelming volume of incoming calls and messages” from lawmakers, other government agencies, and the public pleading for help saving people trapped in the country.

Staff working to facilitate the evacuation also faced confusing guidance that wasn't attuned to real-world conditions at the time, according to the report.

State has taken lessons from the failures of Afghanistan into account when evacuating people before and during the subsequent war in Ukraine and as a crisis developed in Sudan, according to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the department.

Officials declined to say why they had released the report just before a holiday weekend.