Three years later, pressing questions remain, and even federal investigators have been unable to get the Biden administration's Defense Department to answer how many troops have actually been evacuated from Afghanistan during the 2021 withdrawal.
The Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan was a chaotic operation that initially left 13 service members dead and thousands of Americans stranded. The State Department estimates that the withdrawal effort has evacuated more than 125,000 people from Afghanistan, including 6,000 U.S. citizens, but the State Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) stated in a report: Report The figures could not be verified Tuesday because the necessary data was not available from the Defense Department. (Related article: “It still hurts”: Special Forces soldier describes harrowing day comrade died during failed Afghanistan withdrawal)
“The Department of State OIG was unable to verify the number of people evacuated from Afghanistan with U.S. government assistance in 2021,” the agency said in the report.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan has drawn harsh criticism of the Biden administration from both sides of the political aisle. Multiple post-action reports said the administration poorly planned the operation, incorrectly predicted that the Taliban would not overrun Afghanistan quickly enough, and left troops scrambling to safely execute the withdrawal. A State Department post-action report also found confusion within the department about who was in charge of the operation during the operation.
Feeling ignored by Biden administration, families of Americans held captive in Afghanistan plan to meet with Taliban https://t.co/zPal7JWhjv
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No one in the Biden administration Fired or resigned over his role in the failed withdrawal. President Joe Biden has continued to defend the decision to withdraw, although he has been privately criticized for not addressing the issue more thoroughly.
According to the agency's report, the DoD OIG spent several months in late 2023 and early 2024 attempting to obtain relevant documents from the Pentagon to “verify the number of people evacuated,” but the Pentagon did not respond to its inquiries until May of this year. Pentagon officials told the DoD OIG that “source data may have been available,” but that data was not provided “despite multiple attempts to obtain it.”
The report said the State Department relied on the Department of Defense for evacuation statistics during the withdrawal because U.S. forces were in charge of operations there. The State Department also had difficulty verifying details of Afghans applying for special visas, “due in part to poor record-keeping on the part of the Department of Defense.” [the Pentagon].”
The State Department OIG recommended that both the State Department and the Defense Department improve data collection and sharing between agencies.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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