This account from inside the White House's five-day scramble as Afghanistan collapsed is based on interviews with 33 U.S. officials and lawmakers, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.
The mood was dramatically different from the celebratory spirit on display just hours earlier in the dining room.Events were growing so dire that the president ordered Austin and Milley to prepare a plan for deploying additional troops to the region, where they would reinforce those put on standby months earlier to evacuate American personnel.
The email went out so late that the Situation Room staff also started calling those aides to make sure they would be on time Thursday morning.KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - AUGUST 12: Displaced Afghans from the northern provinces are evacuated from a makeshift IDP camp in Share-e-Naw park to various mosques and schools on August 12, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. People displaced by the Taliban advancing are flooding into the Kabul capital to escape the Taliban takeover of their provinces.
“It was a pretty sobering meeting,” the official said. “We thought we had months ahead of us to draw down the embassy and do processing and relocation.” Across Washington, Congress was also growing increasingly alarmed by the deteriorating situation. In some cases, lawmakers took it upon themselves to learn more about what was happening, absent guidance from the Biden administration.
That support wasn’t enough as the Afghan military laid down their arms en masse. In an interview, Waltz described the tepid air support as “putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.”Later on Thursday, around lunchtime, a White House official called Rep. Jason Crow , a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, to provide an update on the deteriorating situation.had been urging the Biden administration for months to move faster to evacuate Afghans who assisted the U.S.
Brad Israel, a former Green Beret who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, received a frantic email on Thursday evening from his former Afghan interpreter. That included incinerating American flags and other U.S. government logos “which could be misused in propaganda efforts,” according to a memo issued to embassy personnel. And, according to Rep. Andy Kim , passports of Afghan citizens who had applied for American visas were among the documents burned — making it almost impossible to identify them as they seek to leave the country in the coming days.
Plans called instead for using helicopters to ferry Americans from the embassy compound in central Kabul to Hamid Karzai International Airport, a few miles away, rather than risk getting bogged down or ambushed in the Afghan capital’s clogged traffic. It would mean risking exactly the kind of chaotic scenes Biden had vowed would not happen — indelible, Saigon-style images of America in retreat.
But that meant deciding which Americans and Afghan allies who were stuck in Kabul should get evacuated first.of Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. during the war. Officials were still compiling a “priority list” of interpreters to evacuate.to Biden in early June expressing growing concern “that you have not yet directed the Department of Defense be mobilized as part of a concrete and workable whole-of-government plan to protect our Afghan partners.
Pentagon officials were realizing far too late that the Taliban had waged an effective influence campaign in addition to the physical one, taking advantage of tribal dynamics to build ties with village elders and others who played key roles in the group’s mostly bloodless march across the country. Biden was still at Camp David, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt and accompanied only by a few more junior aides. In a lengthy statement, he announced the troop movements and other steps the administration was scrambling to make, then pivoted to a thumping defense of his withdrawal decision.
Milley also warned lawmakers that with the Taliban ascendant, so was the threat that al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups seeking to attack the U.S. might once again be able to plot from Afghan territory. By the end of the day, the American flag no longer flew over the U.S. Embassy. Foreign diplomats posted selfies online from the insides of Chinook helicopters, while photographers captured the arresting sight from afar. And the fresh U.S. troops on their way to Kabul would be protecting an airport in chaos.
U.S. soldiers stand guard along the perimeter at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. | Shekib Rahmani/AP Photo Milley defended the military’s decision to close Bagram, which has two runways to Kabul’s airport but is nearly 40 miles from the embassy. With fewer than 2,500 troops left on the ground at the time, Milley said, officials had to choose between securing Bagram and the commercial airport.
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