Blinken grilled on US withdrawal from Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — US Congressional Republicans on Wednesday grilled Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

Blinken appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, capping a long period of animosity between his agency and the committee's Republican leadership, which has accused the top US diplomat of ignoring its numerous subpoenas.

Republicans, led by President-elect Donald Trump, have lambasted the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, which saw 13 US soldiers killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport in the final hours of the retreat.

"This catastrophic event was the beginning of a failed foreign policy that lit the world on fire," said Committee Chairman Republican Michael McCaul.

It was clear "it was going to be a disaster," said Florida Republican Representative Brian Mast, who will take over as chairman of the committee in the next Congress.

The hearing, which was briefly interrupted by protesters against Israel's military assault in Gaza, came as Blinken headed to Jordan later on Wednesday to discuss the unrest in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

It came at the end of Blinken's diplomatic service under President Joe Biden, with just under six weeks left before Trump takes office, and at the end of McCaul's time leading the Foreign Affairs Committee. It served as a capstone to nearly four years of animosity between the two over the end of the longest war of the United States.

There was little new ground broken on the US withdrawal, after years of blame-trading between Republicans and Democrats. Blinken pointed to the planned 2026 release of a government-appointed Afghanistan War Commission's review as the best prospect of an independent full report on the disastrous events of the summer of 2021.

Previous investigations and analyses by a government-appointed special investigator for Afghanistan and some private policy groups have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Biden and Trump share the heaviest blame.

Blinken stressed that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan had been made during Trump's previous administration in an agreement with the Taliban.

"To the extent, President Biden faced a choice, it was between ending the war or escalating it," Blinken said.

Addressing US soldiers' relatives present in the hall, Blinken said: "I deeply regret that we did not do more, and could not do more to protect them."

The US withdrawal saw Taliban fighters sweep aside Afghan forces, forcing the last US troops to mount an evacuation from Kabul's airport that got more than 120,000 people out of the country in a matter of days.

Biden has long defended the decision to leave Afghanistan, which critics have said helped cause the catastrophic collapse of Afghan forces.

During the hearing, McCaul also announced that White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will also testify in front of the body on Dec 17 on the matter, which has been a key part of Trump's election campaign against Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Agencies Via Xinhua