State Department Comment on House Foreign Affairs Committee Afghanistan Review

The Department appreciates the Committee’s longstanding interest in Afghanistan policy, and we strongly believe in Congress’s independent role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. We remain committed to working with Congress on its oversight requests and advancing the interests of the American people.

Since 2021, we have expended thousands of hours fulfilling congressional requests for documents, briefings, and interviews related to Afghanistan. The Department has provided approximately 20,000 pages of documents to Congress, conducted nine high-level briefings for committees and members of the House of Representatives and Senate, and made available or engaged 15 senior officials for transcribed interviews to House Foreign Affairs Committee staff and members. This includes the Department taking the unprecedented step of providing Congress with a highly-sensitive cable and internal memos related to the Department’s After-Action Review.

Additionally, Secretary Blinken has testified before House and Senate Committees 14 times on Afghanistan, including four times directly before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It was critical to have done so. Americans deserved to hear directly from their leaders on the decisions made to end America’s longest war and the steps taken to fulfill our commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of two decades.

As the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority and Minority members complete their review of the 2021 withdrawal from Kabul, the Department wants to especially recognize the dedicated State and Department of Defense professionals who showed extraordinary courage and tenacity as they worked tirelessly on the ground in Afghanistan, in Washington, and at other sites, alongside other critical U.S. Government and civil society partners, to evacuate and assist as many people as possible in the closing days of our presence in Kabul. Our people remain our greatest asset.

We also share our abiding respect and reverence for the 13 servicemembers whose lives were taken by ISIS-K during the withdrawal. These heroes embodied the very best of who we are as a nation and we owe them an immense debt we can never repay. Their selfless sacrifice in the line of duty saved thousands of lives. Our deepest sympathies are with the Gold Star families they left behind.

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Ending America’s longest war was never going to be easy. But President Biden pledged to do so, and within months of taking office, he made the difficult but necessary decision to end America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan. He inherited an agreement his predecessor had reached with the Taliban to remove all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. As part of that agreement, the previous Administration compelled the Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including several top war commanders helping the Taliban achieve their strongest position in 20 years. Meanwhile, the agreement reduced our force presence to 2,500 troops.[1]   And while the Taliban had agreed to cease attacks on our troops, it was contingent that all were withdrawn by the May 31 deadline.

It was, and remains, a flawed agreement that hampered efforts to end the war through negotiations among Afghans. As General McKenzie, the CENTCOM Commander who served both the current and past administration, testified: “The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military…”[2] 

Due to this agreement, when the Biden Administration entered office it found a revitalized and emboldened Taliban, along with a decimated SIV program and a complete lack of planning for a withdrawal.

The President acted in the best interests of the American people when he decided to bring our troops home and end America’s longest war. This decision ensured another generation of Americans would not have to fight and die in Afghanistan — a full decade after Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice. It strengthened our national security by better positioning us to confront the challenges of the future and put the United States in a stronger place to lead the world.  It freed up critical military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other resources to ensure we are better poised to respond to today’s threats to international peace and stability – whether that be Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault on Ukraine, China’s increasingly assertive moves in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, or a persistent and global terrorist threat.

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In the three years since the end of our country’s longest war, important questions have been asked about what could have been done differently. The Department has made every effort to answer these questions transparently – whether they be from Congress, members of the media, the American public, or our own workforce.

As the Department has undertaken this effort, regrettably, others have sought to advance their own interests or agendas that have almost nothing to do with learning important lessons to strengthen American national security. Even more unfortunately, misinformation about the Department’s role and efforts have sought to tarnish the reputation of dedicated non-partisan professionals, many of whom tirelessly worked on Afghanistan policy for years.

The Department has a deep respect for Congress’ legislative mandate and responsibility, and as stated above, cooperated extensively with the Congress to provide the information necessary to do that important work. This is why it remains frustrating that time and time again, Majority members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with their Republican counterparts in the House, issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture.

Their so-called midterm report on Afghanistan in 2022 did a deep disservice to the American people by further politicizing U.S. policy towards Afghanistan instead of focusing on bipartisan solutions. There is little reason to believe the final report will be anything different than the conclusion of a blatantly partisan exercise.

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One of the most persistent misunderstandings of the leadup to the withdrawal was that the State Department lacked a strategy, specifically a “Noncombatant Evacuation Operations” plan to close operations in Afghanistan. This is not accurate.[3] 

Noncombatant evacuation operations – often called NEOs – are partnerships between the Department, the U.S. military, and the host government to “assist the Department of State (DOS) in evacuating noncombatants, nonessential military personnel, selected host-nation citizens, and third country nationals whose lives are in danger from locations in a host foreign nation to an appropriate safe haven and/or the United States,” as described by the United States Military Joint Publication.  The planning for a NEO originates within the State Department before the President approves the action to bring in the military to assist in any needed evacuations. It is a whole-of-government action — planned and decided through a National Security Council process — and statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are inaccurate.

State Department officials who spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee explained during their hours-long interviews that there was extensive planning by the State Department for a possible diplomatic exit from Afghanistan. Planning began in April 2021, with multiple inter-agency and embassy exercises, using a range of scenarios.  The inter-agency developed detailed indicators and warnings to inform a decision to declare a NEO — including the encirclement or siege of Kabul, the closure of HKIA, resumed attacks on American forces, and a declared or demonstrated Taliban intent to take Kabul.

As Brian McKeon, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources during the Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, described, there was continued development of a NEO between the State Department, the Department of Defense, and CENTCOM – with the latter traveling to Kabul in July of 2021 to “further refine the NEO planning.”[4] 

Additionally, the U.S. government intended for the U.S. Embassy to remain open after the end of the war — a decision Congress broadly supported. So, while U.S. military forces would end combat operations, Department personnel planned to operate out of Embassy Kabul to assist Americans and Afghan allies, coordinate diplomatic and development activity and investments, and help protect and advance U.S. national security interests after August 2021. Given those expectations, along with the continued operation of commercial flights out of Kabul until August 15, executing the NEO before that date would have signaled to the people of Afghanistan the U.S. had lost all confidence in the then-Afghan government and precipitated the very collapse we sought to avoid.

The government of Afghanistan controlled all 34 Provincial Capitals until August 6. Between August 6 and the 14, they began to fall rapidly, crossing the indicator and warning trip wires established by the inter-agency. On August 14, State initiated the NEO through an inter-agency agreement. On August 15, President Ghani abandoned his office and fled the country, and the Afghanistan Republic security services and government collapsed. The Taliban then entered Kabul.

Again, while the State Department formally triggers a NEO, the decision to do so is a collective, inter-agency one, coordinated by a National Security Council process that includes multiple Principal and Deputies Committee meetings.  Statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are false – moreover, principal-level discussions did not conclude a NEO should be initiated prior to the collective interagency decision that was reached on August 14.

Executing a NEO requires substantial military and diplomatic resources, so the State Department, alongside our military colleagues, quickly adapted to the situation on the ground.

Throughout the crisis, there was intense coordination between military and Department personnel. As former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass described, there was engagement “on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis in terms of the operational coordination of aspects of the NEO” engagement with “the senior military commanders regularly.”[5] 

A NEO is but one tool in the diplomatic toolbox, and one of last resort. And NEO planning was far from the only preparation State took in the weeks and months leading up to August 2021.[6] 

In March, the Department began urging Americans living in Afghanistan to leave the country. At the end of April, the State Department placed Embassy Kabul on ordered departure status.[7]  That same month, State senior leaders and officials traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan alongside Department of Defense personnel to prepare for the forthcoming absence of the United States military in the region.[8]  In total, between March and August, the Department sent 19 unique messages with warnings to Americans living in Afghanistan to leave, as well as offers of help, including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets.[9]

Despite these efforts, when Kabul fell, approximately 6,000 American citizens remained in Afghanistan — almost all dual nationals who had been living in Afghanistan for years or decades. Almost all were evacuated by August 31 thanks to a relentless effort by the State Department to identify them, contact them, and help bring them to the airport.  This effort included more than 55,000 phone calls and 33,000 emails in a two-week period.  It was unprecedented in scope and scale.

On August 31, several hundred American citizens remained in Afghanistan who could not or would not leave because they could not reach the airport, did not want to leave extended family members behind, or simply chose to remain.  Secretary Blinken vowed to facilitate the departure of any remaining Americans. “We’re continuing our relentless efforts to help any remaining Americans… leave Afghanistan if they so choose,”[10] the Secretary said publicly. Between September 1 and the end of 2021, the State Department made good on that pledge, facilitating the departure of nearly 500 American citizens.

In February of 2021, the President took a crucial step to ensure America lived up to its enduring commitment to the individuals who stood side-by-side with us in Afghanistan by issuing an executive order directing a review to improve the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which was undertaken with great care. Domestic resettlement agencies have traditionally welcomed Afghan SIVs to the United States, but these critical partners had been deliberately left in shambles by the previous Administration and needed massive investments to be reinvigorated.[11] 

As the White House’s summary of Pentagon reviews of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan details: “The Department of State began seeking transit agreements for Afghans with third countries in June, secured agreements with Qatar and Kuwait in July, and negotiated arrangements with other countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, UAE, Bahrain, Kosovo, and Albania. Setting up this network of transit sites— “lily pads”—would not have been possible without the support of international partners across the Middle East and Europe.”[12] 

In late July, the State Department, along with the Department of Defense and interagency partners, initiated Operation Allies Refuge to begin evacuating SIV applicants in the final stages of processing.[13]  U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Europe worked successfully and quickly with host government and Department of Defense personnel to establish temporary housing for tens of thousands of evacuees. During the U.S.-facilitated evacuation, vulnerable Afghans went to overseas Defense Department facilities for security screening, vetting, and the administration of public health vaccinations.[14]  Afghan evacuees were then transported by air to eight Department of Defense domestic safe-havens. More than 10,000 State, Defense, and Homeland Security personnel supported this unprecedented humanitarian effort alongside other U.S. Government partners and a cross-section of America.[15] 

Throughout the first half of 2021, the Administration was constantly assessing the likelihood of President Ashraf Ghani’s government’s staying in power and considered multiple scenarios.  Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict the government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained.  As General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has previously said, “Nothing I or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”[16]  In an August 14 2021, phone call to Secretary Blinken, President Ghani expressed his intent “to fight to the death” to stave off the Taliban takeover before subsequently fleeing the next day.[17] 

Nonetheless, we planned and exercised a wide range of contingencies.  Because of that planning, we were able to draw down our embassy and move remaining personnel to the airport within 48 hours and the military, which had  pre-positioned in the region, was able to secure the airport and start the evacuation within 72 hours.[18]

The U.S. Government achieved the largest airlift in U.S. history with approximately 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and third-country nationals departing Afghanistan in those final two weeks of August 2021.[19]

Throughout this process, the Department relied heavily on the expertise and guidance of those on the ground and across the globe to assess the fluid environment in Afghanistan. Secretary Blinken has spoken publicly of his respect and appreciation for the selfless work of all these individuals, who stepped up to help others in their time of need, and his commitment to hearing from any State Department employee who wanted to share their Afghanistan-related insights.

Much attention has been paid to the State Department’s highly-valued dissent cable – a way for State Department employees at all levels to directly reach a Secretary of State with dissenting views on U.S. foreign policy. As Secretary Blinken previously stated in public testimony before Congress, the cable did not suggest the Afghan government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure. As the Secretary also said publicly, the Department agreed with the concerns raised in the cable, and in fact, a number of the recommendations the cable made were already in motion before it was received. Still, the opinions expressed in the dissent cable were heard at the senior-most levels of State Department leadership. The Secretary personally read and oversaw a response to the dissent cable, and its contents were factored into his thinking.

“With regard to the so-called dissent channel cable, it’s something I’m immensely proud of. It’s a tradition that we have and you’re right, I read every such cable, I respond to it, I factor into it my own thinking and actions, and that cable did not predict the collapse of the government or security forces before our departure. It was very focused and rightly focused on the work we were doing to try to get Afghans at risk out of the country and pressing to speed up that effort,” the Secretary told the Congress.[20] 

The continued distortion of the dissent cable – which remains classified – by Members of Congress to further a political talking point is deeply disappointing, especially after the Department went to extraordinary lengths to allow members of the Foreign Affairs Committee the ability to review the document — the first time since the inception of the dissent channel during the Vietnam War this access had been granted.

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The State Department remains committed to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of the past two decades.  As Secretary Blinken has said: our commitment to these individuals is enduring.

When President Biden took office, the State Department inherited an SIV program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by Congress involving multiple agencies – and a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applicants.  There had not been a single SIV applicant interview in Kabul in nine months, going back to March 2020.[21]  The program was basically in a stall as the previous Administration made no senior-level or interagency effort to address the SIV backlog or consider relocation and resettlement options for our Afghan allies and their families as they worked to negotiate a military withdrawal.

Within two weeks of taking office, State re-started the SIV interview process in Kabul.  On February 4, one of President Biden’s first executive orders directed the State to immediately review the program to identify causes of undue delay and find ways to process SIV applications more rapidly. Starting in the Spring, Secretary Blinken surged resources to the program, quadrupling the staff dedicated to processing applications by May 1 and increasing it six-fold by August 1.  The administration went from issuing 100 visas per week in March to more than 1,000 per week in August.

To date, the Administration has worked to resettle 165,000 Afghans who the American people have welcomed to communities across our country.[22] 

Our commitment to helping resettle thousands of Afghan allies has continued well past the withdrawal.

Over the past few years, we’ve worked to resettle tens of thousands of Afghan families within the United States, welcoming them to their new homes and communities and demonstrating the very best of American generosity. Many international partner nations and organizations assist us in this ongoing effort. Since September 1, 2021, the Administration has approved or welcomed to the United States more than 80,000 Afghans under the SIV program. In Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) alone we issued more than 18,000 Afghan SIVs, the most in a single year. In this fiscal year (FY2024), we have already surpassed that total.

The Department has also rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which was deliberately undermined and partially dismantled by the prior administration. Drawing on best practices from processing Afghan cases in near real-time has helped make this rehabilitation a success story and speaks to the strength and ingenuity of Department and interagency personnel, as well as our refugee resettlement nonprofit partners. So far for this fiscal year, we have interviewed more than 20,000 Afghan refugees in 44 countries, contributing to the admission of one of the highest numbers of refugees through USRAP in a single year in more than three decades.[23]

Ensuring we fulfill our promises to those individuals who stood by our side is one aspect of our continued commitment to the people of Afghanistan. Since August 2021, the United States has provided more than $2.2 billion in funding toward the humanitarian response inside Afghanistan and for Afghans in neighboring countries through established partners with rigorous vetting standards.[24]  The United States is also the single largest humanitarian donor for Afghans in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, providing more than $844 million in humanitarian assistance in FY 2023.[25] 

The Department also stands with the women and girls of Afghanistan and has repeatedly called for their access to education and careers to be restored following edicts by Taliban leaders banning women from universities and working with NGOs. For example, through the establishment of the Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience initiative, a public-private partnership between the Department of State and Boston University, the Department has catalyzed innovative and scalable partnerships between the private sector, civil society, academia, government, and Afghan women leaders to support Afghan women’s education, employment, and entrepreneurship.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a launching pad for terrorism, and we continue to push the Taliban to fulfill all their counterterrorism commitments. We are taking a whole-of-government approach to our Afghanistan counterterrorism efforts, cooperating with partners and allies. We are working vigilantly to prevent the re-emergence of external threats from Afghanistan.

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There are valid and important criticisms of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and how it concluded, which is why the Department has remained focused on evolving and growing from this moment, learning important lessons and making sustainable changes to crisis operations.

In December 2021, the Secretary asked retired Ambassador Dan Smith — a long-serving veteran of the Department — to lead a review of how the Department carried out its duties between January 2020 and August 2021. Ambassador Smith and team interviewed 150 people — including Secretary Blinken — and had access to all contemporaneous records. Studying and learning from Ambassador Smith’s review is a vital component of building a stronger Department that is better prepared to respond to future challenges and to fulfill our mission.

This after-action review[26]  made recommendations on several areas where the Department could have done better by improving processes and systems.  In the interest of maximum transparency, the unclassified sections of this after-action review have been made public.  The Department has already taken more than 40 concrete actions and identified additional steps to guide itself in responding to future crises, including a new, state-of-the-art Operations Center opened in August 2022 with increased surge capacity and modern technology to facilitate information sharing, streamline coordination, and promote a common operating picture.

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The Department once again expresses its respect for the Congress and its Members who remain dedicated to reviewing the actions taken ahead of and during August 2021. It is our sincere hope the Administration can work hand-in-hand with Congress to make improvements from the lessons learned from the withdrawal. The Department stands ready to work alongside any Member who expresses serious interest in finding legislative and administrative solutions. However, we will not stand by silently as the Department and its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.