One Year Later, Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster Still Reverberating

AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott

One year ago this month, Major General Chris Donahue quietly boarded the last C-17 out of Kabul. After weeks of tragedy and chaos accompanying Biden’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan, the 82nd Airborne Commander was the final American service member to leave the country after twenty years of U.S. involvement there. While General Donahue could take comfort that he was bringing all 1,000 of his paratroopers home alive, the scene nonetheless marked an ignominious final chapter to America’s longest war.

With all that has happened in the past year, it is worth looking back on the events of August 2021 in all their horrible detail. The scale of the catastrophe that was Biden’s Afghanistan exit has not diminished with time – in fact, its full contours may only now be coming into view.

The story of the United States’ greatest foreign policy embarrassment since Vietnam actually began in February of 2020, when former President Donald Trump reached a preliminary agreement with the Taliban to begin an ordered withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country. Under the terms of the agreement, the Taliban would have to negotiate with the U.S.-backed Afghan government, permit the education of women, and cut all ties with Al-Qaeda. Any failure to meet these provisions, Trump promised, would be met with swift military retaliation – a threat that the Taliban had come to learn was not empty in 2019 when Trump launched a withering aerial bombardment after an American service member was killed by a Taliban car bomb.

Fast forward to April of 2021, when The Washington Post reported that President Joe Biden intended to have all combat troops out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2021 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Biden no doubt hoped it would be a high-profile accomplishment for his administration that he could tout on the anniversary. Privately, however, Biden’s national security team and military leaders warned that withdrawing all U.S. forces would make it nearly impossible to ensure the Taliban did not reclaim total control as they had pre-9/11. They also warned that a civil war was likely inevitable without some form of U.S. support. Yet Biden was unmoved. Later, under pressure from the Taliban, Biden moved up the withdrawal deadline to August 31.

As U.S. forces began their departure, the Taliban began a rapid advance through the country. While the number of American troops on the ground was small by 2021, thousands of American private contractors still worked with the Afghan military. According to Foreign Policy, “The Afghans had relied on contractors for everything from training and gear maintenance to preparing them for intelligence gathering and close air support in their battles against Taliban fighters.” With this critical support withdrawn, the Afghan military was crippled and quickly folded before the Taliban insurgents.

Even as the Biden administration conceded the Taliban were advancing more rapidly than predicted, they dismissed concerns that the Afghan government could collapse completely. In a June 7 congressional hearing, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said confidently, “If there is a significant deterioration in security, I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

Just over two months later, Blinken was proven dead wrong. The Taliban rapidly took control of one province after another—and after the Biden administration abandoned Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, that too was captured by the Taliban, and thousands of hardened terrorists were released from the base’s prison.

On August 15, the Taliban suddenly took control of Kabul, beginning a two-week scramble to get American equipment and personnel out of the country – an effort that would ultimately prove a dismal failure.

As the U.S. military desperately tried to hold on to the city’s airport for evacuations, the Taliban began their reign of terror over the Afghan people.

Tens of thousands of panicked residents gathered at the entrances to the airport, begging to be on one of the last few planes out of the country. Thousands of Afghan citizens who had worked with U.S. forces were now prime targets of the Taliban. Many were executed in broad daylight, while others were sold into slavery.

Those Afghans who were able to make it into the airport were packed into cargo holds and passenger jets, often at random. Some even clung to the wheel wells of departing C-17s, falling hundreds of feet to their deaths. On August 16, one of these planes leaving Afghanistan had to make an emergency landing in Qatar after the wheels of the plane failed to close. Upon landing, they discovered that an Afghan refugee had attempted to escape by crawling into the wheel well and was crushed to death.

Despite the rapidly deteriorating security conditions, American heroes on the ground showed tremendous bravery. Placed in an impossible situation by their leaders in Washington, U.S. military service members kept their nerve and risked life and limb to perform their duties with honor. The terrifying reality, however, was that the safety of American troops was ultimately at the mercy of the very terrorists they had spent twenty years fighting, since the Biden administration had struck a “deal” with the Taliban that U.S. forces would not leave the vicinity of the airport.

Then, on August 26, a suicide bomber detonated a homemade explosive device outside the airport. 13 American servicemembers and 183 civilians were killed – the bloodiest day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan in years. Biden’s response was to urge the evacuation efforts to move faster.

With the last plane taking off on August 31, Biden would tout the 120,000 civilians evacuated by America’s armed forces, incredibly calling the operation a “success.” But in addition to tens of thousands of American allies, hundreds of American citizens were left behind, breaking Biden’s central promise to get every American out.

Today, the Taliban control Afghanistan with a brutal hand. The country produces 80% of the world’s heroin, and is once again a safe-haven for terrorists of all stripes. Last month, Amnesty International released a report with the blunt and horrifying title, “Death in Slow Motion; Women and Girls Under Taliban Rule.” It details how “in less than a year, the Taliban have decimated the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.” The people live in fear, all while the Taliban enjoy the tens of billions of dollars in military equipment left behind by evacuating U.S. forces.

Americans are rightly still asking how it all went so wrong so fast – and, perhaps more importantly, why no one in the Biden administration has been held accountable for the colossal failure. Biden himself has continued to shirk responsibility, claiming he was “handcuffed” by the agreement Trump signed in 2020. He appears to want the credit for pulling American troops out, yet none of the blame for how it was handled.

Meanwhile, the fallout of these events—the worst humiliation of the U.S. military in generations—continues to play out around the world. The past year has seen a Russian invasion of Ukraine, China rattling its saber over Taiwan, and Iran rushing to put the finishing touches on a nuclear bomb. As bad as Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal was, it looks increasingly possible that we have not yet seen the worst of its effects.

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.