Costs & Blunders: Hard Questions Remain On Anniversary of Biden’s Chaotic Afghanistan Withdrawal

Today, 31 August, marks the first anniversary of the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan after a 20-year deployment. Questions remain over the way the Joe Biden administration handled what has been dubbed a chaotic and “disastrous” withdrawal from the Central Asian country. It allowed the Taliban* Islamic group to sweep through the US-backed Afghan government and reclaim power despite close to $2 trillion being pumped into Afghanistan by Washington over two decades.

The Afghanistan war spanned more than four US presidencies, originally launched by former US president George W Bush in pursuit of terrorists from al-Qaeda* - including the group's leader Osama Bin Laden - for masterminding the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

A United States-led military offensive 'Operation Enduring Freedom' was started under the pretext that the Taliban had failed to comply with Washington’s demands to expel al-Qaeda from the country so that the terrorist group’s leader, Osama bin Laden, might be extradited.

American-led forces overthrew the Kabul-based Taliban government, and Bin Laden was killed nearly a decade later, in 2011, by a group of Navy SEALs who raided his compound in Pakistan.

It fell to the administration of the 45th POTUS, Donald Trump, who had wanted out of Afghanistan from the outset, to cut a deal with the Taliban in 2021. The Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, commonly known as the US/Taliban deal or the Doha Agreement, was a peace agreement signed by the United States and the Taliban on 29 February 2020 in Doha, Qatar, to bring an end to the 2001 to 2021 war in Afghanistan.

The US was to pull out of the country in 14 months and, in exchange, the Taliban agreed not to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists and to stop attacking American servicemen. The Taliban agreed to start peace talks with the Afghan government and consider a cease-fire with the government. The deal stipulated a deadline of 1 May the next year for all US troops to leave the country.

Trump’s successor, Democrat Joe Biden, was a long-standing critic of the Afghanistan war. On 14 April 2021, Biden, who was enjoying an average approval rating of about 53 percent, unilaterally deviated from the peace deal by extending the timeframe of withdrawal. Biden vowed to remove all US troops from Afghanistan by 11 September 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Finally, in early July, Biden announced that the US military mission in Afghanistan would conclude by 31 August.

Biden reckoned that being the POTUS who ended the “forever war” would give him an added political boost. Yet, things did not go as planned.

None of the American intelligence assessments ahead of the withdrawal from Afghanistan had predicted that it would result in such a swift collapse of the US-backed Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani.

American officials might have predicted in June that Kabul could capitulate within six to 12 months after the start of the withdrawal, but the emboldened Taliban proceeded with a lightning-swift onslaught. Seizing huge swathes of the country and facing little to no resistance, the Islamist group swept into the capital, Kabul.

Just weeks before Biden’s withdrawal deadline, on 15 August 2021, in a matter of hours, the city was taken over by the militants, while Afghan officials, including Ghani, fled.

The hasty withdrawal prompted a huge airlift operation from Kabul International airport. Thousands of Afghan citizens, many of whom had cooperated with American troops, desperately sought to flee the country fearing the Islamist group’s return to rule.

The whole world was stunned by images of Afghans clinging to a US military plane as it took off, with several men falling to their death on the tarmac.

On 26 August, 13 US troops and an estimated 170 others were killed outside the airport in a suicide bomb attack blamed on an Afghan offshoot of Daesh**. Shortly after, on 29 August, a botched US drone strike killed 10 civilians - seven of them children.

After the last US aircraft left Kabul, Afghanistan, on 31 August, hundreds of US citizens and tens of thousands of Afghans who aided the American mission were left behind.

Millions of dollars’ worth of arms and vehicles paid for by the US government were abandoned in the withdrawal. The Taliban is said to have recovered more than $7Bln in US military hardware as the US departure came to an end.

One year on, the Taliban remains firmly in control in Afghanistan. Washington has refused to recognize its government, curtailing nearly all aid to the country. The close to $8.5Bln in international aid to Afghanistan that was canceled is equivalent to 43 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Washington also froze $7Bln in foreign assets owned by Da Afghanistan Bank, the country's central bank. This has created an “epic humanitarian crisis on the verge of a development catastrophe”, according to a group of United Nations human rights experts.

The United Nations has warned of “unprecedented” levels of hunger, affecting tens of millions in Afghanistan.

As for Biden, the "disastrous" withdrawal had a lasting impact on voters’ perception of his incompetent performance that he has been unable to shake off.

Subsequent fall-out from the stalled negotiations over an infrastructure bill and voting rights legislation, soaring inflation and gas prices have all contributed to Biden’s overall job approval numbers sinking to the low 40s in September 2021. The lows remained until July, when the 46th POTUS' approval plummeted to an all-time low of 38 percent.

Even Democrat voters want the party to nominate someone other than Biden, polls show, with some House Democrats openly questioning whether he should seek reelection in 2024.

The US Republican Party has roundly criticized the Biden administration's handling of the messy withdrawal, vowing hearings on Afghanistan if it wins November's congressional elections.