11 December 2024, 17:34
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Congress Afghanistan. Picture: PA
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, facing questions for the last time about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The hearing comes at the twilight of Mr Blinken’s diplomatic career, with only weeks left before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and at the end of the chairmanship of Michael McCaul, who will no longer lead the committee in the next Congress.
It is the end of nearly four years of animosity between the two men over the end of America’s longest war.
“This catastrophic event was the beginning of a failed foreign policy that lit the world on fire,” Mr McCaul, a Texas Republican, said in his opening statement.
“I welcome your testimony today and hope you use this opportunity to take accountability for the disastrous withdrawal.”
Congress Afghanistan
Antony Blinken’s testimony is disrupted by protesters at the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington (J Scott Applewhite/AP)
Mr Blinken opened his appearance before the committee by turning to families of US forces killed in the withdrawal and apologising to them.
Cries of “genocide” and other protests from demonstrators in the audience repeatedly interrupted him.
Mr Blinken again defended the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, saying that the pull-out deal that Mr Trump negotiated with the Taliban before leaving office left him no viable alternative.
“To the extent President Biden faced a choice, it was between ending the war or escalating it,” Mr Blinken said.
“Had he not followed through on his predecessor’s commitment, attacks on our forces and allies would have resumed and the Taliban’s assault on the country’s major cities would have commenced.”
His long-awaited testimony comes months after House Republicans issued a scathing report on their investigation into the withdrawal, blaming the disastrous end on Joe Biden’s administration. They downplayed Mr Trump’s role in the failures even though he had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.
The Republican-led review laid out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Mr Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed America’s fundamentalist Taliban enemy to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last US officials flew out on August 30 2021.
The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.
Previous investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Mr Biden and Mr Trump share the heaviest blame.
By Press Association