United State (U.S )President, Joe Biden’s administration has defended its decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan.
In summary the United States government agencies involved in the pullout blamed former President Donald Trump’s administration for issues that led to the chaotic US exit from the country.
Biden said the decision that led to 2021 withdrawal highlighted that Washington must better prepare for “high-risk scenarios” in the future.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” it read.
The Trump administration had negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that Biden pledged to honour. But the review criticised the former Republican president for a lack of planning to carry out the deal.
“During the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration, the outgoing administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies,” the report said.
“Indeed, there were no such plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the agreed upon full withdrawal just over three months away.”
The internationally backed Afghan government collapsed and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in August 2021 as the Taliban took over the capital, Kabul, amid the withdrawal of US forces.
American troops confined to the area around the city’s airport until their final withdrawal at the end of that month oversaw a massive, two-week operation to get desperate residents out.