U.S. Acknowledges Afghanistan Evacuation Should Have Started Sooner

WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday acknowledged that the government should have started evacuations from Afghanistan earlier at the end of the war in 2021, and said the government has changed policies to carry out such evacuations sooner when security conditions worsen.

That finding was tucked inside a 12-page summary of the government’s review of the August 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which led to the swift collapse of the Afghan government. As U.S. officials rushed to evacuate people from Kabul’s international airport, an Islamic State suicide bomber carried out an attack that killed as many as 170 civilians and 13 U.S. service members.

“Clearly we didn’t get things right here with Afghanistan with how fast the Taliban was moving across the country,” said John Kirby, a White House spokesman, who fielded questions from reporters for more than an hour about the government’s review.

The summary does not directly say that officials made mistakes as they discussed evacuating the country and assessing how much time that would take, but in two places, the document says that the government has changed its policies and will prioritize swift evacuations.

“We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” the administration said in the summary. “We did so in both Ethiopia and Ukraine,” referring to continuing conflicts in the countries.

Nearly two years after the withdrawal led to days of chaos in Kabul, with Afghan allies hanging from airplanes amid a life-or-death scramble to escape the country, the summary, produced by the National Security Council and characterized as part of an “independent review,” largely defended the actions of President Biden and his administration.

The summary heavily lays blame on actions taken by former President Donald J. Trump, beginning with his deal with the Taliban to withdraw American troops by the spring of 2021 and his later failure to share relevant transition materials with his successor’s team.

Mr. Kirby, who suggested that reporters did not have experience reading government intelligence or did not understand the review process, denied that the withdrawal was haphazard, saying “I didn’t see” any chaos in Kabul during the evacuation of Americans and Afghans. He also praised the work of soldiers and diplomats and said that no one would lose their jobs because of the events during the evacuation.

“This document isn’t about accountability,” Mr. Kirby said. “It’s about understanding.”

Asked repeatedly if the president took responsibility for the withdrawal, Mr. Kirby said “he’s the commander in chief, and he absolutely has responsibility for the operations our men and women conduct and the orders that they receive.”

Mr. Biden initially defended the withdrawal as an “extraordinary success” and declared the end of an era in which the American government used military power “to remake other countries.” But polling at the time showed that less than 40 percent of Americans supported how he handled the withdrawal, and Mr. Biden eventually demanded a “top to bottom” review of the pullout.

According to the summary of the review, officials said they did not expect the speed with which the Taliban overtook the country, despite assurances of the strength of the Afghan government and military, and said they would err on the side of “aggressive communication” about risks in the future.

The document says that in the months before the military pulled out, the Biden administration chose “to not broadcast loudly and publicly about a potential worst-case scenario unfolding in order to avoid signaling a lack of confidence” in the Afghan government.

In a speech in August 2021, just days after troops began leaving the country, the president called the withdrawal “hard and messy,” but insisted that the decision to pull American troops out and the timing were both correct.

“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Mr. Biden said, adding that he would not “shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today.

The acknowledgment by the Biden administration that they should have started the evacuation sooner than they did is a reversal from the repeated denials by Mr. Biden; Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser; and other top officials. They had insisted that evacuating sooner would not have prevented the chaos at the airport and would have undermined confidence in the already shaky Afghan government.

In May of 2021, several refugee organizations participated in a zoom call with staff at the National Security Council to plead for them to start evacuating Afghans who had worked with the United States and would be threatened by the Taliban’s return.

The officials at the time were noncommittal about an early evacuation and ultimately did not start bringing Afghans or Americans out of the country until after the military’s withdrawal, leading to chaotic and deadly scenes at the Kabul airport as American allies desperately tried to escape the violence.

On Thursday, when asked if the president was preparing to outline the review’s results to the public, Mr. Kirby said that Mr. Biden had already shared his views on the withdrawal.

“You’ve heard from the president; he has talked many times about his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan,” Mr. Kirby said. Mr. Biden was already en route to Camp David for the Easter weekend as Mr. Kirby fielded questions.

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.