Pentagon report faults Biden administration for Kabul pullout chaos

An after-action report of the final withdrawal of US forces and civilians from Kabul faulted the Biden administration for the chaos that unfolded in the final days of the occupation of Afghanistan.

In the declassified report, published by The Washington Post on Saturday evening, officials at the Pentagon said specific decisions (or lack thereof) contributed to the problems faced by US forces, who were tasked with securing and holding Hamid Karzai International Airport as greater Kabul fell to the Taliban.

At particular fault for delays in the evacuation process was the number of US State Department officials still in the country, according to the document, which faulted that agency for numerous issues officials said contributed to delays and confusion.

According to the report itself: The “[d]elay in embassy staff drawdown, NEO declaration, and lack of agreed upon [indications and warning procedures] increased risk to mission upon [noncombatant evacuations operations] execution.”

In another part of the report, the State Department is faulted for separately rotating in a new team of embassy staffers in the middle of the evacuation process, a move the Defense Department said “caused confusion as the new consular team established operations” given the hundreds of US civilians and Afghans seeking passage out of the country through an unfamiliar application process.