The administration of US President Joe Biden has accused his predecessor Donald Trump of withdrawing from Afghanistan in a new report.
A 12-page summary of the report said Mr Biden was “deeply constrained” by Mr Trump’s decisions, including a 2020 deal with the Taliban to end the war.
But the report also acknowledged that the government should have started evacuating citizens earlier.
Mr Trump responded that the White House was playing a “disinformation game”.
The deadly evacuation in August 2021 ended America’s longest war.
Thirteen American soldiers and nearly 200 Afghans were killed as American troops struggled to evacuate more than 120,000 people over several days.
A review of the decisions and actions leading up to the withdrawal, conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon, was sent privately to Congress on Thursday.
Republicans in the US House of Representatives, who are investigating the recall, had been demanding to see the report for weeks.
The document remains classified, but a summary of its findings — compiled by the White House’s National Security Council with input from President Biden himself — has been made available to the public.
When the Afghan government collapsed, there were desperate scenes at Kabul airport as huge crowds tried to flee the Taliban.
On August 26, two suicide bombers attacked the airport, killing 170 Afghan and 13 American soldiers.
The US launched a drone strike in Kabul a few days later, saying it had targeted a suicide bomber, only to admit that the missile had killed 10 civilians, including seven children.
British troops were also involved in the evacuation, which Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said put Britain in a “very difficult position” at the time.
On Thursday, President Biden’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, blamed the chaos on the failed operation in Afghanistan inherited from the Trump administration.
The report cited “neglect — and in some cases willful degradation” — by the Trump administration.
Mr Kirby said the phrase referred to the deal the former president made a year ago to end the war with rebels in Qatar, as well as the withdrawal of US troops under Mr Trump, the release of thousands of Taliban prisoners. Release and hollow out. Outside the visa program used to expel Afghan allies.
“Transition is critical,” Mr. Kirby said in summarizing the report. “That’s the first lesson that was learned here. And the incoming administration didn’t tolerate it any more.”
Within hours of the report’s release, Mr Trump hit back on social media, accusing the “morons in the White House” of playing “a new disinformation game – for their utter incompetence in Afghanistan”. “Blame Trump.”
“Biden is responsible, no one else!” They said.
Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also criticized the administration for “brazenly glossing over its failure in Afghanistan.”
The report implies that the withdrawal of Americans and Afghans helping the war effort could begin sooner.
On page seven it says, “We now prefer pre-evacuation when faced with a deteriorating security situation.”
But the report, along with assessments by the U.S. military and intelligence community, blames the Afghan government and military for those delays.
Mr Kirby said Mr Biden had “followed the best military judgment and the best assessments of the intelligence community” but “some of those assessments turned out to be wrong”.
He declined to say whether the president regretted how the withdrawal was made, adding: “For all the talk of chaos, I haven’t seen it.”
After the fall of Kabul, the Biden administration faced intense criticism at home and abroad. Many expressed anger at the abandonment of Afghan and American weapons.
Mr Kirby said some lessons had been learned from the end of the war in Afghanistan, particularly the failure to predict the sudden collapse of the Afghan government.
He added that it influenced the US policy of supporting Ukraine before the Russian invasion.
At a heated White House press briefing, Mr. Kirby was forced to defend the timing of his release just before a holiday weekend in the United States.
Asked whether any officials involved in the defection would be removed from their posts as a result of the report, Mr Kirby said the aim was “not accountability”.
