Washington – Last year the United States made a fatal mistake.Rejected the Taliban's offer, allowing US forces to secure Kabul during a failed withdrawal. The Issues Committee argued in a report released this week.
After the fall of his Western-backed Afghan government on August 15, 2021, Taliban representatives told senior US military officials that if the US agreed to secure Kabul, they would said to stay away from Kabul. Republican Texas Rep. Michael McCall said in a 115-page report.
Instead, the US declined and chose to allow Taliban fighters to secure the city – a former senior defense official told McCall's team, "For US forces to secure the perimeter. We would have been able to avoid relying on the Taliban for a second time,” said Hamid Karzai International Airport, the epicenter of the evacuation effort.
,leading to an ISIS-K attack that killed 13 US soldiers, wounded a further 45 US soldiers, and killed 160 Afghans. just outside the airport.
Allowing the United States and its allies to secure Kabul could have prevented bottlenecks and congestion of hopeful evacuees outside the airport, McCall argued. , added that locating the processing center farther from the airport gates may have avoided frequent closures. By teaming up the crowd.
This congestion ultimately made the airport an ideal target for his August 26 Abbeygate attack, according to the report.
"The chaos at the gate and the Taliban's inability to control the perimeter meant that US military personnel were crowded together trying to screen evacuees, leaving them in a more vulnerable situation. Bombers have caused many casualties," the report said.
Even if the bombings could not have been prevented, McCall said casualties would have been greatly reduced had the United States not relied on the Taliban to provide security around the airport. said to be sexual.
"The lack of planning by the Biden administration and its refusal to accept the Taliban's offer to secure Kabul during [the mission] made the bombing so deadly," McCall said. said in the report.
General Frank Mackenzie, commander of the US Central Command, told Congress last September that he had turned down a Taliban offer to allow US forces to secure the city. Mission.
There; It wasn't an instruction," Mackenzie said.
Mackenzie told Fox News on 4 September 2021 that about 15,000 to 20,000 additional US troops on the ground were needed to secure Kabul. However, the report said these figures were "needed to fight the Taliban to control the city,"
"given that the Taliban leadership wanted the United States to secure the city. It probably wasn't necessary," McCall wrote.
If the US had asked her NATO allies to contribute to the effort, fewer US troops would be needed, according to the report. But President Biden's administration did not tell allies about the offer, British officials told investigators. Defense officials also told Republicans on the House Foreign Relations Committee that the military believed the White House had "prohibited them from considering such a proposal," thus creating a plan for the United States to take the initiative in Kabul. said he did.
That point was borne out by consistent statements by the administration before and after the evacuation ended on 30 August 2021.
"Our aim was not to have a military presence to control Kabul. The president has been very clear about this," then-White House press secretary Jen Psakih told reporters on Aug. 31, 2021.
Despite the death toll and turmoil in evacuations, Biden has repeatedly defended his decision to rely on the Taliban to secure Kabul.
“When asked if he thought it would be a mistake to delegate responsibility for airport external security to the Taliban, President Biden said [26 August], saying 'No, it isn't. , to emphasize, it is in the Taliban's 'interest' to cooperate in the evacuation," McCall wrote.
