Republicans in the US House of Representatives issued a sharply critical report into the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, putting the blame squarely on President Joe Biden’s administration.
Democrats have hit back, calling the report biased and noting that former President Donald Trump negotiated the withdrawal.
The House report comes after years of investigation into the US pullout.
The withdrawal led to desperate scenes and violence, including suicide attacks at Kabul’s airport which killed 170 Afghans and 13 US soldiers.
Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said the chaos of the withdrawal was “preventable” and that the White House was guilty of a “dereliction of duty”.
“Our investigation reveals the Biden-Harris administration had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies,” Mr McCaul said in a statement in advance of the report release Monday.
“At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security,” he said.
The report says that the administration chose to evacuate non-combatants far too late and had too few personnel and supplies to carry out an effective evacuation. It says that the withdrawal once again created the conditions for terrorist groups to operate in Afghanistan and that the Biden administration spread bad information as part of a “coverup”.
Mr McCaul said his report was not based on politics or influenced by the upcoming presidential election, but the Biden White House and Congressional Democrats pushed back on the account.
“Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan report is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterisations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start,” White House spokeswoman Sharon Yang said in a statement.
“Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable position,” she said.
“As we have said many times, ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result,” she said.
House Democrats issued a response letter saying that Republicans took “particular pains to avoid facts involving former President Donald Trump”.
Last year, the White House released a 12-page summary of a classified report of the withdrawal, which mostly put blame on the Trump administration for the deal it made with the Taliban.