Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have released their findings from a three-year investigation into the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. Former President Donald Trump’s role was largely left out of it.
The over 200-page report blames the Biden administration for deciding to conduct the withdrawal “no matter the cost” and for “creating an unsafe environment” that exposed “U.S. Defense Department and State Department personnel to lethal threats.” Much of the language doesn’t ascribe responsibility to Trump, whose administration initiated negotiations, or to senior military officers, who ultimately planned and executed much of the withdrawal.
The Republican-led investigation says President Joe Biden’s administration refused to consider alternatives to a full withdrawal even as stability in the region collapsed. It quotes Col. Seth Krummrich, chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central, who testified that he told Biden that a withdrawal would give the Taliban full control. “There’s nothing that’s going to stop them,” Krummrich said, per the report. “The president decided we’re gonna leave, and he’s not listening to anybody.”
Thirteen American service members died during a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate during the withdrawal, and tens of thousands of Afghans with ties to the U.S. government were left behind.
Trump and Republicans have repeatedly highlighted the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in political messaging throughout the presidential campaign season. Family of soldiers who died during the operation were highlighted at the Republican National Convention, and scenes from the withdrawal have been used in Trump’s campaign ads.
House Republicans are calling for expanding their investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal, even as the election nears.
The report was led and written by only the Republicans on the committee. Democratic Ranking Member Rep. Gregory Meeks has previously called the process “political theater” and said Republicans “systematically ignored” what witnesses told the body. Democrats and the White House received the full report Sunday, Committee Chair Rep. Michael McCaul said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Democrats on the committee responded to the report with a 60-page report of their own Monday, saying that using the investigation as “a political cudgel” would only weaken any credible oversight in the future.
Democrats called the war in Afghanistan a “messy and awful endeavor,” and said the Afghanistan War Commission is the appropriate venue to investigate the issues that arose from the withdrawal, and “not only actions taken by the Trump Administration but also the Obama and Bush Administrations.”
House Republicans are adamant, however, that they will continue their probe through the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Their report describes the most chaotic and tragic scenes from the withdrawal, which captured Americans’ attention in the summer of 2021. Citing Testimony from Ambassador Ross Wilson, the report says Biden’s National Security Council was aware of increasing violence, particularly in Kabul, before the withdrawal. It says State Department officials were “completely rewriting a reporting cable” to avoid negative narratives.
Absent from the report’s conclusions, though, is the role military leadership played in the lead-up to the withdrawal and where the Trump administration had left plans upon leaving power. The report does little to establish how the Trump administration initiated a diplomatic recognition and relationship with the Taliban.
The one exception is with Trump-appointed Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who the report almost singularly blames for shoddy negotiations with the Taliban and for bringing about the release of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a founder of the Taliban. The report leaves out meetings other members of the Trump administration had with Baradar, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump, too, almost met with the Taliban leader at Camp David, per 2019 reports.
One former senior investigator on the committee, Jerry Dunleavy, who publicly resigned with complaints that the committee was not taking a full account of the events, said McCaul explicitly said he did not believe top military officials should bear responsibility for mistakes around the withdrawal.
“From Chairman McCaul on downward, the committee’s investigations oriented to let military commanders off the hook for the mistakes that they have made,” Dunleavy told NOTUS, adding that he believed the military commanders were “days … weeks behind” of the situation on the ground and shared the blame with Trump and Biden administration personnel.
“Chairman McCaul in his phone call with General [Mark] Milley and General [Kenneth] McKenzie, before the hearing with them, straight up told them that in his view, they were not responsible for what had happened in Afghanistan in 2021. That the responsibility lay elsewhere,” Dunleavy told NOTUS.
The majority party on the committee has previously rejected Dunleavy’s characterization of the investigation, telling The Spectator that it was the result of “thousands of hours of work.” The committee declined to comment on Dunleavy’s remarks.
The report recommends that Congress should “require the State Department and the Department of Defense to maintain standard operating procedures” for noncombatant evacuation operations, saying the State Department erred by not aligning with the Department of Defense’s standards. A spokesperson for the committee told NOTUS that it did not review past NEOs as it wasn’t included in the State Department’s review, leaving out context to compare both the State and Defense Department’s actions.
The report did do some historical review, however, with a focus on Biden’s foreign affairs record going as far back as 1975. The report referenced his past comments on the evacuation of South Vietnam to claim his decisions around Afghanistan follow a long-standing track record.
While the report blames Khalilzad for gaps and missteps in his negotiations and planning, House Republicans ultimately argue it was Biden who was set on directing U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan regardless of whether the prearranged plan was being adhered to.
“The first meeting I had with [President Biden] when he became president, the senior-level meeting, it was clear where his head was,” the report quotes Khalilzad saying. “That this was a godforsaken country, Afghanistan, and that we were never going to fix it.”
General Austin Scott Miller, the final commander of U.S. forces in the region, is quoted multiple times recommending that a few thousand U.S. service members remain behind to support intelligence, security and support operations in Afghanistan, alongside General McKenzie and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Milley.
“General McKenzie echoed General Milley’s concerns,” the report says. “According to him, with 2,500 troops plus a small contingent of special operations forces, the U.S. could have continued its counterterrorism mission, advised and assisted the Afghan military, and held onto eight bases including Bagram Air Base with the support of NATO allies.”
In the final recommendations, the report says that the Department of Defense should declassify the Abbey Gate investigation and the U.S. Army’s supplemental review of the withdrawal.
The House Republicans also suggest the investigation should continue, calling for testimony from military leaders and commanders who worked directly with McKenzie and were there during the Abbey Gate bombing.
The committee’s report comes after both the State Department report and the Department of Defense report on the Kabul airport attack, including the Abbey Gate bombing, which was reopened and finalized earlier this year. Congress previously established the Afghanistan War Commission, which is meant to review the entire conflict and is still ongoing.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Haley Byrd Wilt, a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this report.