Our disgracefully chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan

A few days ago, I wrote about how Afghanistan has become, once again, a staging ground for terrorism — something Joe Biden said he wouldn’t tolerate. I relied on a Washington Post article that cited a U.S. intelligence report.

In passing, I mentioned the disastrous botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. I this post, I want to examine that withdrawal from the perspective of a patriot who, in her private capacity, worked tirelessly to facilitate the escape from Kabul of American citizens and Afghans who had worked with the U.S.

Simone Ledeen is former Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. She served in Afghanistan in non-combat roles in 2005 and again in 2009-10.

In August 2021, Ledeen joined a chat group that included active and retired military members, as well as people with experience in the intelligence community. The purpose of the group was to assist Americans and those who assisted Americans get out of Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, Ledeen testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence. Her statement to the committee is here.

Ledeen testified that, as she tried to help Americans escape, it quickly became clear that “the stories I was hearing did not align with the picture the U.S. government was trying to publicly paint about the withdrawal.” It also became clear that, to a disturbing degree, the U.S. government was missing in action:

Over time we helped more and more people—American citizens, legal permanent residents, interpreters, intelligence assets, and some Afghan Commandos—leave. Yet, as the messages rolled in, I had to wonder—where was the U.S. government? The urgent, time-sensitive information we sent to the State Department did not receive a response. The U.S. government did not seem to have a full accounting of the number of people that needed to leave. How did we get to the point where volunteers in a group chat were offering more resources and support to evacuees than our own government?

(Emphasis added)

Ledeen provided a series of examples of just how weak our government’s efforts in Kabul were. Here are a few:

*As we tried to help people flee, we could not identify who was running the airport. We were contacted by many groups, including civilian volunteers, NGOs, universities, and corporate entities who had planes either on the ground or en route to assist in evacuating people. However, these planes could not get in contact with anyone from the U.S. or any government on the airfield, nor could their passengers access the gate. . . . Until the final days, many chartered planes that were able to land in Kabul left nearly empty because the people who needed to leave on them could not get inside the airport. Outside the airport gates, the area was not secured for Americans waiting to enter and the U.S. failed to create an organized process to identify individuals who should have been permitted entry. For example, members of our group organized night operations for American citizens to climb ladders to leap over airport fences. To further complicate the situation, the U.S.’s abandonment of Bagram Air Base meant that there was no air traffic control in place other than for military planes.

*On August 24, U.S. officials on the ground announced they would no longer accept Afghan locals and issued a final call for American citizens to report to the airport. We learned later that a deal was made with the Taliban to expedite withdrawal by August 31st. The White House claimed they had contacted all American citizens, but many Americans we were trying to help had never heard from anyone from our government. As the State Department screened individuals at the airport, they began turning away some Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients and high-risk Afghans. Once they were sent back outside the airport, they faced certain death.

*On August 25. . .we received reports from several American citizens and high-risk Afghans who struggled to reach the airport due to Taliban checkpoints, as well as conflicting information from the U.S. government. Some families, including U.S. citizens, were beaten by the Taliban while attempting to enter the airport. That evening, 11 buses filled with American citizens and high-risk Afghans could not gain entry to the airport, and an urgent security alert advised U.S. citizens to avoid the airport gates. Despite multiple efforts to contact relevant authorities, American citizens were left stranded outside the closed gates, with some eventually gaining access only after intervention from higher-level officials. Many of the high-risk Afghans were denied entry, and to my knowledge never made it out.

*Cleared data-science professionals within our group created and refined a tool we used to deconflict manifests and track who was leaving and where they went. As days passed, they met with leaders at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) who were so impressed with this tool that they integrated it into their own efforts. By the evacuation’s conclusion, we had tracked 7,000 evacuees through our own efforts—including 1,600 American citizens and 3,000 SIVs—and over 41,000 in partnership with SOCOM. While these figures certainly do not cover everyone who left, including on flights organized by other countries, our data suggest that the Administration’s estimate of the number of evacuees who departed via the airport—124,000—is likely inaccurate and overstates the total number of evacuees.

*Intelligence tools had been removed too quickly and too completely from Afghanistan. Following the catastrophic deaths of the 13 service members during the withdrawal, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) executed a strike based on bad intelligence that resulted in civilian deaths. Chairman Mark Milley defended the strike, calling it “righteous.” But CENTCOM had pulled all of its intelligence collection tools out of Afghanistan already and incredibly said they were relying on the Taliban—a force we had been fighting for 20 years—for force protection.

(Emphasis added)

Ledeen’s statement also discusses the resurgence of terrorism in Afghanistan (the subject of my earlier post). And it contains recommendations.

But above all, her testimony presents a damning account of the withdrawal, one that amply demonstrates this conclusion:

More than ever, I believe the deaths of our 13 servicemembers, in addition to catastrophic injuries sustained by the dozens of young men and women at Abbey Gate, were avoidable and should never have happened. Our government’s failure to secure the safety of our own citizens and those who risked their lives for us led to the most disgraceful and shameful national security crisis in our lifetime. To this date, nobody has been held accountable.

For more about the Biden administration’s lack of planning and lack of accountability, see this article from Real Clear Politics about Secretary of State Blinken’s refusal to provide Congress with a key internal State Department dissent document signed by 23 U.S. diplomats at the embassy in Kabul. The classified cable, which was sent to Blinken and top leadership at State in July 2021, reportedly urged the administration to accelerate evacuation plans because the Afghan government was on the brink of collapse.

Had the cable been taken seriously, the withdrawal would have looked very different and there’s every reason to believe that those thirteen servicemembers would be alive today.