Blinken defends Afghanistan withdrawal in contentious House hearing

Washington – Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday defended President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan when he appeared before the Republican-led Foreign Affairs Committee, which has long sought to question him about his deadly exit.

“I firmly believe that the president’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was the right one,” he told lawmakers.

Blinken refused to blame the decisions made before the exit, explaining that the actions taken by the first Trump administration left the Biden administration in a weak position and that intelligence assessments expected Kabul to remain in the hands of the Afghan government.

Blinken’s testimony came nearly three months after the committee you voted in line with the party’s recommendation that the nation’s top politician be held in contempt of Congress amid disagreements over his appearance before the panel to discuss its investigation into Congress. 2021 cancellation.

The committee and the State Department have been at odds for months, leading Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman, to issue multiple subpoenas for Blinken to testify in September. McCaul said Blinken’s appearance is important as the committee considers “legislation that may be intended to help prevent catastrophic withdrawal errors.”

Afghanistan hearings

“Sadly, more than three years after the removal of this administration, you have finally come to bear responsibility,” McCaul said on Wednesday, accusing Blinken ahead of his exit of denying “dangerous and dangerous threats to American interests, American citizens. and our Afghan partners for ten years, all this time, the Taliban captured province after province on their march to Kabul.”

Republicans on the committee are exempt long report in September that detailed their year-long investigation into the outbreak of violence in Afghanistan and accused the Biden administration of misleading the public about the end of the 20-year war.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, on Wednesday called the report “biased and misleading” and said Republicans had “messed up the facts” about whether the bombing that killed 13 members of the US could have been prevented.

Blinken, whose opening statement was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, acknowledged the fallen service members and their families, saying he deeply regrets that the US “didn’t do more and can’t do more to protect them.”

“With the choice that President Biden was facing, it was between ending the war or escalating it,” said Blinken. “Three years have passed since the end of the longest war in our country. All of us, including me, are grappling with what we could have done differently at that time and in twenty years.”

Blinken also admitted that the Taliban did not comply with the agreement that the Trump administration made with the group to withdraw US troops from the country in May 2021. This agreement, known as the Doha Agreement, set a series of conditions for the Taliban to fulfill in order for US forces to fully withdraw from Afghanistan.

“The Taliban has violated the Doha Agreement in many ways,” he said. “It was wrong when the previous administration brought down the soldiers again and again. This was a violation when we were in office before we were released.”

According to Blinken, the Biden administration successfully tried to get the Taliban to comply with the terms and negotiate with the Afghan government.

“They didn’t do that,” he said. “But because we had a deadline, and because we hoped that the Taliban would start attacking American forces again, which would have required us to send tens of thousands of Americans back to Afghanistan, we followed through with getting them out.”

He said the Doha Agreement had “created a huge crisis of trust” in the Afghan government. The Afghan government was not included in the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban that led to the deal.

Blinken said he was on the phone with then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani the night before he fled the country as the Taliban closed in.

“He told me that he wants to continue to make a deal with the Taliban, but if he can’t, he will stay and fight until he dies,” said Blinken. “And he left the next day.”

Although the US tried to contact all American citizens in Afghanistan, Blinken said, hundreds who wanted to leave the country did not leave before withdrawing. I’m just talking about every American who has expressed his desire to leave and has been given the opportunity to do so,” he said. But others returned after withdrawing and were detained, he said.

“We work every day to get them out and bring them back,” he said.

Report of the committee

During its investigation, the committee conducted 18 written interviews with Biden administration officials and obtained more than 20,000 pages of documents from the State Department, some obtained through subpoenas. Blinken was not among those who testified on the report, but the State Department noted during a standoff with the committee that he had testified before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times.

The report accused President Biden and his administration of ignoring repeated warnings from military officials, national security advisers and US allies about the dangers of withdrawing all US forces from Afghanistan, Mr. ”

Blinken was among those at fault in the report, who said he was “mainly absent during the State Department’s withdrawal program” and the evacuation.

“Indeed, the witnesses interviewed, as well as documents produced by federal agencies following the investigation, confirm that Secretary Blinken may have assigned personnel under his responsibility in Afghanistan,” the report said.

Blinken urged that the US Embassy in Kabul remain open regardless of how the military withdraws, according to the report, which says the desire to maintain a diplomatic presence has contributed to “the State Department’s lack of urgency and its delay in planning worst-case scenarios.”

The report also noted that embassy officials on the ground expressed concern about the commitment to keep the embassy open despite the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, culminating in a July 2021 opposition cable warning that Kabul would fall after the planned withdrawal. Two weeks before US troops leave Afghanistan, State Department leaders agreed to close the embassy, ​​the report said.

Republicans have threatened to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress in 2023 as he seeks to overhaul the classified opposition cable. The State Department at last allowed lawmakers to view a slightly redacted version.

“You’ve learned this yourself, sir,” McCaul said when he questioned Blinken on Wednesday. “Why are you ignoring the cries? Why did you leave the embassy open?”

McCaul also said it appears Blinken passed on his responsibility and pressed him about who fired the gun.

“In order to pass legislation and move forward, I need to know who was in charge,” McCaul said, asking Mr Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan to testify before the committee.

About 20 minutes later, McCaul announced that Sullivan had agreed to testify on Tuesday.

Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused Republicans of politicizing the repeal and said the majority took “some pains to avoid the facts about former President Donald Trump.”

Last year, the The White House is freed its 12-page summary of the classified review of the Afghanistan withdrawal that heavily criticized the Trump administration for the Doha Agreement. Other report It was scaled back and released by the State Department last year, faulting both the Trump and Biden administrations for “adequate” planning associated with the withdrawal.