Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Get our free Inside Washington email
Kamala Harris’s campaign has hit out at Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban in retaliation to the damning Republican report on the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A day before the first presidential debate, House Republicans have released a scathing report into the US exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, which left behind an estimated 100,000 partners of the US government, while 13 American soldiers and 170 civilians were killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul.
The report solely blames the Biden-Harris administration’s “failure to plan for all contingencies” for the disaster, but Harris’s campaign has been quick to remind voters how Trump “cut a bad deal” with the Taliban in 2020, when the former president was the one who agreed the US would withdraw from Afghanistan by May 2021.
Committee chair Michael McCaul, leading the investigation, accuses the Biden-Harris administration of “fail[ing] to plan for all contingencies, including a noncombatant emergency evacuation” an “refusing” to order an evacuation “until after the Taliban had already entered Kabul.” The administration “misled” and “lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal,” the report also claims.
“The evidence proves President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha Agreement, or the advice of his senior national security advisors or our allies,” it says. “Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan.”
Donald Trump ‘cut a bad deal’ with the Taliban in 2020, the Harris campaign said (Getty Images)
But Harris’s campaign has hit back. Morgan Finkelstein, the Harris-Walz national security spokesperson, said: “Trump shamelessly attacks the Vice President because he hopes he can trick the country into forgetting that his own actions undermined U.S. strategy and put our troops and allies in harm’s way.”
“Trump wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David just days before September 11th—think about that,” Finkelstein added. “He cut a bad deal with the very same people who violently took over Afghanistan, leading to the collapse of the Afghan government. Trump’s chaotic actions led to catastrophic consequences in Afghanistan.”
The White House also furiously hit back at the report, adding that Trump’s deal meant President Biden “inherited an untenable position” when he entered office in January 2021.
White House spokesperson Sharon Yang said in a statement the report’s author “cherry-picked facts” and maintained ending the war “was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result”.
Taliban fighters celebrate the third anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, in Kabul (The Associated Press)
Congressman Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the committee, also slammed the partisan report, accusing Republicans of politicizing the withdrawal and omitting Trump’s role.
“The Republican majority has taken particular pains to avoid facts involving former President Trump— including his committing the United States to a full, date-specific withdrawal in a deal he negotiated with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government or any reference to the rights of Afghan women and girls,” he wrote in a minority report released the same day.
“President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more American troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban,” Meeks added.
Trump lays a wreath at Arlington Cemetery at a visit last month (Getty Images)
Meeks also noted that Harris was only referenced three times in the 3,288 pages of the Committee’s interview transcripts.
McCaul brushed off accusations the report was being used politically. “This is not about politics to me – it never has been,” he said in a statement. “It’s about getting to the bottom of what happened so we can make sure it never happens again. And it’s about finding who was responsible for this catastrophe so they can finally, after three long years, be held accountable.”
The chaotic withdrawal saw unprecedented scenes where hundreds of thousands of Afghans and other citizens tried to flee Taliban rule in a mass panic and scrambled to enter Kabul airport. Videos showed men clinging onto aircraft as they taxied down runways and others trying to climb the big walls of the airport.
Trump has used the Afghanistan withdrawal throughout the presidential campaign as means to attack the vice president, including accusing her of being responsible for the deaths of the American soldiers who died in the suicide bombing. In response, Harris’s camp has accused him of politicizing a visit to Arlington Cemetery last month where he met with the families of the servicemen who died.
The report is the latest in a long-running blame game over the disastrous withdrawal.
A State Department report released last year detailed the failures of both the Trump and Biden administrations. The Afghanistan After Action Review report concluded both administrations were at fault and laid out the shortcomings of a “chaotic and dangerous environment” during the pullout.
“The decisions of both President (Donald) Trump and President (Joe) Biden to end the US military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” said the unclassified report.
“Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR (After Action Review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” it added.
