It’s been three days since the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan took a turn for the chaotic. And the fog of war — or more aptly, the fog of the end of war — means we’re still not quite sure exactly how all of this happened.
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Critics are calling for hearings into that question, with even some top Democrats saying flatly that the administration failed to adequately prepare for the withdrawal. Not only were the scenes ugly as the Taliban took control of Kabul amid the withdrawal, but there remain huge questions about how the United States will evacuate thousands of Americans still in the country and provide refuge for the many more who aided the two-decade U.S. war.
Below are a few key questions — both immediately and in the after-action.
1. What the administration was told — and when
The most inexplicable aspect of the withdrawal debacle was how much the administration played down — and in some cases utterly dismissed — the possibility of what we eventually bore witness to.
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Last month, President Biden called it “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would overrun the country. He pledged that there would be no repeat of the helicopter evacuations from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon — before that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed the publicly reported intelligence suggesting that the Taliban would not retake the country nearly as quickly as it did. And the Biden administration played up the ability of the Afghan National Security Forces to defend the country, before they quickly capitulated without much of a fight.
Biden acknowledged Monday that “this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,” but also claimed, almost in the same breath, that “we planned for every contingency.”
But this contingency sure seemed to catch it off guard. From there, the question is: Was this about bad intelligence? Or was it about an administration that didn’t place enough emphasis on the worst-case outcomes and plan accordingly? Or somewhere in between? It’s popular to dismiss the so-called political “blame game,” but figuring out where things broke down is hugely important.
After Afghanistan falls, the blame game begins
We are learning some new things on this front.
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It had been reported previously that intelligence assessments gradually narrowed the potential window for a Taliban takeover, from a year and a half to eventually as little as a month. That assessment came last week. But was that the full picture?
The New York Times reported Tuesday that classified intelligence assessments this summer did warn of a swift collapse of the Afghan military — even as Biden administration officials were stressing its ability (if not necessarily its will) to defend the country. But it’s not clear how imminent the assessments suggested that outcome might be or what other assessments at the time were saying. The Times also reports that the dire warning was not delivered with high levels of confidence.
In other words, this doesn’t shed a ton of light on this central question yet. But it will be a focal point moving forward.
2. What’s the full story on the slow evacuations?
One of Biden’s more controversial claims in his speech Monday involved the second major issue right now: The lack of evacuations for Americans and U.S. allies ahead of the fall of Kabul. The U.S. military is still trying to get thousands of people out (more on that later).
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Biden offered a couple explanations for why more Afghan allies, specifically, weren’t evacuated more quickly: First, they didn’t want to leave yet because they were “still hopeful for their country,” and second, the Afghan government discouraged a mass exodus for fear of triggering “a crisis of confidence.”
Biden didn’t explicitly cast these as the sole or even the overriding issues, but his suggestion was clear that these were big hurdles. Even some Democrats have cried foul, noting the huge backlog of Afghans who have been seeking visas.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan responded to that criticism Tuesday, saying there had been an acceleration of the Special Immigrant Visas program for Afghans. But he doubled down on Biden’s claim.
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“But the Afghan government and its supporters, including many of the people now seeking to leave, made a passionate case that we should not conduct a mass evacuation lest we trigger a loss of confidence in the government,” Sullivan said.
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The evidence for these claims will be crucial. As with predictions of the potential collapse of the country, perhaps these were things the White House didn’t want to play up in real time for strategic reasons. Saying, “We want to get people out now, but Afghanistan’s leaders aren’t letting us,” would be a pretty counterproductive thing to say about a government you are hoping will hold strong against the Taliban.
But the Biden administration has set this up as its talking point, and now it will be scrutinized.
3. The Aug. 31 deadline question
This was the most conspicuous part of Tuesday’s news briefing by Sullivan and White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
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Sullivan and Psaki were asked repeatedly whether the United States would guarantee the evacuation of Americans and U.S. allies even if they were still in Afghanistan after Biden’s full-withdrawal deadline of Aug. 31. And they both punted.
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Both emphasized the task “at hand” of evacuating people now and taking it “day by day.”
“I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals,” Sullivan said.
U.S. officials said Monday that they had evacuated 1,600 people over the previous 48 hours, and Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said the goal is to evacuate as many as 5,000 people per day moving forward.
The situation at the Kabul airport, though, remains tenuous, and CBS News reported Tuesday that American citizens are being told that the U.S. government can’t ensure their safe travel to the airport itself.
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There are obviously sensitive negotiations underway, and nobody wants to talk about blowing the Aug. 31 deadline by having to keep troops there to facilitate evacuations. But the expected answer would be, “We will get everyone out” — especially U.S. citizens — and the White House for some reason stopped short of that Tuesday.
4. How many Americans are left?
Another reflection of the confusion that surrounds all of this: Different estimates of the number of people whom we need to evacuate. We got two different answers Tuesday when it comes to how many Americans remain in Afghanistan — both of them uncertain.
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Early Tuesday, Kirby said there were believed to be between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans left “near Kabul.” By Tuesday afternoon, Psaki said there were about 11,000 “self-identified” Americans in Afghanistan, but that others might not have identified themselves yet.
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It’s possible the difference reflects the region — Kirby was talking about the Kabul region while Psaki emphasized “around the country” — but Kirby acknowledged that there was no specific number available. And some have suggested that the number could be significantly higher than even Psaki’s qualified estimate.
This is relevant for a couple reasons. First, it reinforces the apparently haphazard nature of the withdrawal planning (one would expect that we’d have a greater handle on this kind of thing in advance). And two, it matters greatly when it comes to the difficulty of the evacuation task that lies ahead.