The committee sent letters to senior leadership at the White House, Department of Defense (DOD), Department of State, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Agency for International Development, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff demanding any documents relating to the military and diplomatic pullout from Afghanistan by the Biden administration.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is threatening to subpoena the State Department as part of a probe into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, CNN first reported late Thursday.
One year after the final U.S. military evacuation flight took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, thousands of Afghans remain in temporary housing at a facility in the Persian Gulf. But the State Department may be shutting down operations, leaving about 5,500 Afghans in a desperate limbo.
More than $7 billion worth of US-provided military equipment was in the hands of the Western-backed Afghan government when it collapsed last year — and much of it fell into the hands of the Taliban after the Biden bugout, the Defense Department’s inspector general said in a report released Tuesday.
It was Biden’s actions that ensured the collapse of the Afghan government and the takeover of the country by an integrated jihadist network — the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Haqqani Network — largely controlled by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
House Republicans are planning to bombard Joe Biden’s administration with investigations next year, from Hunter Biden to the border to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
This week, McKenzie testified in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“ISIS and AQ (al Qaeda) are seeking to exploit a reduction of U.S. CT (counter-terrorism) efforts in Afghanistan to reinvigorate their adherents and increase their ability to plot and direct external attacks,” McKenzie said in written testimony.
President Biden on Thursday said he rejected the accounts and findings of an Army investigative report in which military officials reportedly criticized Biden administration officials for failing to grasp the situation in Afghanistan as U.S. forces withdrew.
ZARANJ, Afghanistan — From their hide-out in the desert ravine, the migrants could just make out the white lights of the Iranian border glaring over the horizon.
The air was cold and their breath heavy. Many had spent the last of their savings on food weeks before and cobbled together cash from relatives, hoping to escape Afghanistan’s economic collapse. Now, looking at the border they saw a lifeline: work, money, food to eat.
The Department of Defense (DOD) was warned that the Afghan Air Force would collapse without help from the U.S. months before President Joe Biden announced the country would withdraw from Afghanistan, according to a declassified watchdog report.
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