The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Michael McCaul, published its account of the evacuation chaos and broader failures of President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, The Washington Times writes.
According to the report, American diplomats stared at a pile of passports they had collected from Afghan allies who had assisted the war effort and were seeking a special visa to get them out of harm’s way. The U.S. officials decided to burn the documents rather than let them fall into Taliban hands.
That, however, meant Afghans who had devoted years to helping America suddenly could no longer prove who they were as they rushed for the Kabul airport to try to catch one of the U.S. evacuation flights out of the country. The State Department devised a solution. It emailed “electronic visas” to a list of addresses for Afghan allies. This was supposed to get those Afghan allies through the U.S. checkpoints at the airport and onto a plane to safety. Kabul residents quickly figured out the document was easy to duplicate, and forged copies rapidly found their way into the hands of folks who had no connection to the U.S. war effort, were not eligible for the Special Immigrant Visa.
Michael McCaul’s report said that while Biden and his team portrayed confidence when announcing Operation Allies Refuge in July 2021, they didn’t have a plan for evacuating people or where to send them. As reported, the guidance changed daily — one testified that it even changed twice in one day at some point. Officers on the ground were left to their own judgments about whom to refuse and whom to admit to the airport. The result was that more than 90% of Afghans who likely were eligible for the special visa were left behind when the U.S. completed its withdrawal. Roughly 1,000 American citizens were also left behind in the country, the House report said.
The report blamed Biden and his senior leaders for failing to understand the Taliban’s threat. In particular, the report said the Biden team ignored warnings about security risks leading up to the bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 American troops and 170 Afghans and wounded many more Americans and Afghans.
