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In the lead-up to the U.S. exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Biden administration tried to convince everyone it wasn’t Saigon, that the evacuation would be controlled, methodical and safe. It wasn’t. It was chaotic, bungled — and yes, it indeed was Saigon-like.
That was a tragic denouement to 20 years of failed nation-building, and one of its biggest casualties were the legions of brave Afghans who worked alongside U.S. troops, diplomats and contractors. Many were interpreters, drivers, and human rights activists. They weren’t Americans, but they committed themselves to the American project in Afghanistan.
Getting U.S. citizens out safely during America’s exit clearly was a top priority. It should have been just as vital to safely evacuate so-called Afghan allies who assisted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. For the most part, that didn’t happen.
A new State Department report says America failed those Afghans, leaving most of them behind and vulnerable to a Taliban regime bent on hunting down and punishing Afghans who in any way worked for the American side.
Only a month before Kabul fell, President Joe Biden had promised Afghans who had worked with the U.S. that they would not be abandoned. “There is a home for you in the United States if you so choose, and we will stand with you, just as you stood with us,” Biden said.
Tens of thousands of Afghan allies chose to leave, and had applied for special visas created specifically for Afghans who had worked for the U.S. along with their families. Only a fraction of those Afghans made it out.
According to a separate report released in April by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, more than 130,000 Afghan applicants for those special visas were still in Afghanistan and waiting for their visas to be processed a year after the evacuation. The inspector general’s office estimated that, combined with family members of those applicants, the number of Afghans waiting for special visa processing reached more than 500,000. Even worse, the office reported it could take an astonishing three decades or more to process, relocate and resettle Afghans seeking to leave.
All this serves as a sobering postscript to America’s longest and costliest war, one that Washington must learn from if it’s going to maintain credibility with willing allies in future conflicts.
The State Department report, titled “After Action Review on Afghanistan,” lays out in painstaking detail what led to the botched exit from Afghanistan. It began with the Trump administration, which signed a pact with the Taliban to militarily pull out of Afghanistan without settling crucial questions about how the U.S. would maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul afterward, and what would happen to Afghans who had put their lives on the line by helping the U.S.
When the Biden administration took over in 2021, the State Department tried to pare down the backlog of Afghan applicants for special visas. Crucially, however, the feeling in Washington was that Afghan security forces could defend Kabul from Taliban insurgents for weeks, possibly even months. Even when the administration began planning the evacuation, it failed to establish a point person for the mission, according to the After Action report.
Lack of leadership and planning spelled disaster for Afghans who had worked with the U.S., and their families.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
“Senior administration officials had not made clear decisions regarding the universe of at-risk Afghans who would be included by the time the operation started, nor had they determined where those Afghans would be taken,” the report stated.
By the time the evacuation from Kabul had begun in August 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans who had no role in helping the U.S. converged on what was then called Hamid Karzai International Airport and, in the chaos of the moment, were safely evacuated.
America still remembers the frenzy reflected in those days. There were the haunting images of Afghans clinging to airborne aircraft and eventually falling to their deaths, as well as the grisly aftermath of a terrorist bombing at the airport that killed 13 American service members along with more than 150 Afghans who had been trying to get into the airport. The attack happened in the waning days of the evacuation, a horrifying coda to a poorly planned, needlessly chaotic exodus from Kabul.
The U.S. likely will never be able to relocate all of the Afghans who courageously served alongside American troops and diplomats. Given their sacrifice, that’s a needless tragedy that America will pay a price for in years to come, as it encounters new conflicts and the need for allied partners on the ground in those conflicts. Some of those potential partners might now think twice.
Our fervent hope is that future administrations will heed the lessons of what happened in Kabul, and realize that fortifying bonds with allied nations mandates taking care of those who help America in its causes, and later find themselves needing America’s helping hand.
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