MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th April, 2023) The rapid fall of Kabul in 2021 took the United States by surprise and showed deficiencies in the US State Department's preparedness for the worst-case scenario in Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.
Blinken spoke at a staff meeting on Thursday after the White House released the results of an after-action report on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Politico said it had gained access to the closed online event.
"This (the fall of Kabul) was seen as a very low probability, but obviously, potentially very high impact event and more could and should have been done to prepare for it," Blinken said, as quoted by Politico.
Blinken spoke, as cited in the report, about the five lessons derived by the State Department from the review spanning from January 2020 to August 2021. In addition to poor planning, this included "competing and conflicting guidance" from Washington and lack of clear authority during evacuations, insufficient tracking of Americans in Afghanistan, and the US's not wanting to "send the wrong signal to Afghans and to the (US-backed Afghan) government," which eventually "inhibited" Washington's own contingency plans.
The Taliban (under UN sanctions for terrorism) took power in Afghanistan in August of 2021, triggering the collapse of the US-backed government and accelerating the US's troop pullout. On August 31, 2021, US forces completed their withdrawal from the country, ending the 20-year-long military presence there.
The withdrawal of US troops featured images of utter chaos at Kabul Airport and beyond, with experts comparing the images to the fall of Saigon. The situation resulted in thousands of stranded Afghan allies and Americans left behind, a Taliban terrorist attack that left 13 US troops and 170 Afghan civilians dead and a retaliatory US strike that mistakenly killed an innocent family.
