Frontline employees were full of desperation amid the disorganized environment in the State Department as they attempted to respond to thousands of calls and emails from US and Afghan citizens stranded in Afghanistan, the report said.
In many cases, the officials said they did not know the scope of their authority and what they were allowed to do to facilitate the evacuation.
“We’re not used to failure at State and in every single possible circumstance it was failure,” the report quoted one of the officials as saying. “You’re failing with the email, you're failing with getting guidance on what we could do and what we could not do. We weren't empowered enough. No one really understood what our policy was.”
Several cited officials described the Afghanistan evacuation campaign as having damaged them emotionally while another said they were seeking therapy, the report said.
“This experience broke a lot of people, including me,” the report quoted another official. “We were all getting inundated by personal requests to help specific people from everyone we’ve ever known or worked with. And we were powerless to do anything, really. Feeling like you’re supposed to be the government’s 911, but knowing the call for help didn’t go very far beyond you was extremely demoralizing.”
The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan was completed at the end of August, ending the nearly 20-year military presence in the country. Thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan having failed to be evacuated but their exact number is not known.