A new report from Joe Biden’s administration has revealed that former US President Donald Trump had no plan for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. The report claims that the Trump administration provided Biden with no plan on how to carry out the troop withdrawal or how to evacuate US citizens and their Afghan allies. The paper notes that there is no indication that more time, more funding, or more Americans could have fundamentally changed the trajectory and that the administration, as a lesson learned, is now leaning toward “aggressive communication” about risks in a destabilized security environment.
The White House has sharply criticized the Trump administration, claiming that Biden inherited a chaotic and depleted operation in Afghanistan that crippled its response. The withdrawal was marked by chaos and the Kabul airport bombing, which claimed the lives of some 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US soldiers and was blamed on the local branch of the Islamic State. The Taliban invaded Afghanistan in August 2021, when the previous Western-backed government in Kabul collapsed surprisingly quickly and the last US troops were withdrawn. Under Trump, the US struck a deal with the Islamist Taliban to withdraw all US forces.
The White House has sent Congress the full version of the report, which includes classified information and discusses the preparations the US made for the departure of its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021. “The United States is on a stronger strategic footing and better able to support Ukraine and meet our security commitments around the world, as well as compete with China, because it is not fighting a ground war in Afghanistan,” said Security Council spokesman John Kirby.