Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs released the final report of an investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The report follows a substantially similar House Republican interim report published in 2022, but was ostensibly broader in its consideration of the “catastrophe” caused during the U.S. exit in the summer of 2021.
The report provides a trove of new information about the withdrawal along with recommendations for future operations. In particular, it encourages Congress to pass legislation to require executive branch agencies to better prepare for and plan “noncombatant evacuation operations” – the evacuation of civilians from a threatened area outside the United States, which are often referred to as “NEOs” – when certain security conditions deteriorate abroad. In pursuing any such reform, it would be wise to look to other historical precedents, including the U.S. government’s evacuation of 140,000 Vietnamese and Cambodian allies from North Vietnam in the mid-1970s.
Political Dynamics of the Committee’s Report
The Committee is transparently motivated by more than a desire to document historical lessons, as demonstrated by the descriptive title on its cover (“Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chaos that Followed”). Before the report was released, the Democratic members of the Committee released a minority staff memorandum criticizing the report, and suggesting the Congressionally-mandated Afghanistan War Commission is conducting a more meaningful effort to draw lessons from the end of America’s longest war. The Commission released its first interim report last month detailing its objectives and methodology to meet its mandate by 2026.
Shortly after the Committee released its report, the State Department released a lengthy rebuttal, stating it would “not stand by silently” while being used to “further partisan agendas.” The National Security Council also dismissed the report as partisan, and much of the media seems to agree.
Notwithstanding the many disagreements between the Committee and executive branch agencies, the report provides a trove of information on the withdrawal, including over 100 pages endnotes pointing to interview transcripts, hearings, and 20,000 pages of U.S. government records, among others. The report also provides substantial recommendations for future operations, some of which are similar to the State Department’s unclassified March 2022 After-Action Review, including organizational changes for crisis response, and communication with U.S. citizens abroad. When it comes to future NEOs, the report recommends concrete legislative action which, if implemented, could provide a clearly codified process for initiating these important operations.
A U.S. Mistake to Sign the Doha Agreement
Additionally, the Democratic members of the Committee and the State Department forcefully object to the Committee’s description of the planning shortfalls for the NEO, and efforts to process former U.S. government employees applying for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), among others. However, there is one point on which all of these groups agree: That it was a mistake to sign the “Doha Agreement,” which committed the United States to withdrawing its troops and contractors from Afghanistan, with the Taliban in February 2020. Even before Congress’ interim report in 2022, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) concluded that the “single most important factor” for the collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces was “signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement.” The State Department similarly called it “a flawed agreement,” and the Committee report (and its minority memorandum) provided a series of criticisms of both the negotiation process and the substance of the final agreement.
A more thorough analysis of the Doha Agreement, published soon after it was signed, can be found here. But the Committee report provides helpful background and insight into the negotiations. U.S. officials had been attempting to negotiate peace with the Taliban since at least 2011. Those efforts had mostly been fruitless until a batch of negotiations began in 2018, after President Donald Trump selected Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to serve as the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation. The Committee’s interview of Khalilzad is especially helpful in understanding the thinking of U.S. officials before, during, and after negotiations with the Taliban.
Khalilzad ostensibly seemed like a good choice, given his background. He was raised in Kabul, received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, and had previously served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But the Committee report seems determined to place blame for the agreement on Khalilzad, describing his efforts to work with the Taliban as naïve, at best. The minority memorandum points to testimony from Khalilzad (and that of other U.S. officials) indicating that Trump “was impatient to get out of Afghanistan” regardless of any agreement. The Committee report states that Khalilzad was dismissive of reports that the Taliban was not negotiating in good faith, emphasizing instead the written agreement itself, which in fact, was decidedly lopsided in favor of the Taliban. In substance, the agreement requires specific, measurable steps from the United States, in exchange for vague promises about security from the Taliban (e.g., “the Taliban will not allow any of its members, or other individuals or groups … to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”).
The Doha Agreement required the United States to remove all U.S. Forces from Afghanistan (down to 8,600 within 135 days of signing, and full withdrawal 9.5 months later), and agreed to seek a 5:1 prisoner swap within a short period of time. The Committee report repeats SIGAR’s finding that the agreement de-legitimized the Afghan government by cutting it out of the negotiations. Although the agreement consistently refers to the Taliban by qualifying that it “is not recognized by the United States as a state,” the terms of the agreement clearly envisioned the Taliban as the controlling power over Afghanistan. For example, the Doha Agreement prohibits the Taliban from issuing passports or visas to enter Afghanistan “to those who pose a threat to the security of the United States.”
The Committee report points to other specifics in the agreement, which accelerated the collapse of the Afghan government, including the removal of U.S. contractors, which effectively eliminated the Afghan government’s ability to continue air operations, and the demoralizing effect the agreement had on Afghan Forces. The report even goes so far as to assert that the agreement undermined long-standing U.S. policy not to negotiate with terrorists.
Learning from the U.S. Withdrawal from Vietnam
But of course, the Doha Agreement is not the first U.S. experience in negotiating peace with an enemy over the objections of a more proximate ally. In January 1973, the U.S. signed “The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam” (also known as “the Paris Accords”). The Paris Accords was the first agreement signed by the United States to end an armed conflict since 1951, as peace treaties became less common following the U.N. Charter. Similar to the Doha Agreement, it was not submitted to the Senate for ratification, but was concluded as an executive agreement (authorized by statute rather than treaties under Article II of the U.S. Constitution). In the case of Vietnam, the United States had been conducting formal negotiations to end the war since May 1968.
For years, North Vietnam would not compromise on its demands, a negotiating posture which President Richard Nixon found unacceptable and described as requiring the United States to “join our enemy to overthrow our ally.” More productive negotiations occurred privately in late 1972 between the U.S. National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, and North Vietnam’s lead negotiator, Le Duc Thu. The two men who would later receive the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts (Thu refused to accept). Substantively, the Paris Accords agreed to, among other things, an indefinite cease-fire, withdrawal of U.S. Forces (but not contractors), and a return of all prisoners of war. It also established an international organization to observe the agreement’s implementation.
Unlike the Doha Agreement, the Paris Accords included South Vietnam as a party, though South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Theiu did not agree to sign the final draft until after Nixon issued an ultimatum, and a written promise to respond to violations with U.S. airpower. Also, unlike the Doha Agreement, U.S. officials negotiating the Paris Accords understood they were under extreme domestic pressure to withdraw U.S. forces, with or without any agreement in place. For example, earlier that year the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, in the majority in 1973, voted in favor of a policy requiring the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. Forces from Vietnam, conditioned only on the return of U.S. prisoners of war.
Many critics question Nixon and Kissinger’s motives in concluding the agreement, arguing they did not seek peace, but a “decent interval” to avoid the appearance of defeat. But Kissinger states in his memoir, Ending the Vietnam War, that he understood the Paris Accords were unlikely to result in lasting peace. He optimistically hoped North Vietnam would adhere to its terms because of what he viewed as the agreement’s carrot and stick. The stick, though not mentioned in the agreement itself, was the threat of U.S. airpower. The carrot was an unspecified amount of financial reparations that Article 21 of the Paris Accords promised the United States would provide North Vietnam for “healing the wounds of war.” In fact, when North Vietnam commenced its full-scale invasion two years later, there was no U.S. airpower response, and Congress never appropriated any funds for reparations.
In the abstract, an international agreement is naturally an ideal solution when both sides hold the same primary goal. Namely, in these two cases, the withdrawal of U.S. Forces. But perhaps the single biggest lesson to learn again from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is one that seems obvious: It is generally a mistake to negotiate an agreement with an enemy that does not respect the rule of law.
Better Planning for NEO Procedures
Perhaps one other item worth highlighting from the Committee report is its recommendation for legislative action to establish authorities, responsibilities, and mandatory triggers for NEO planning and execution. This recommendation was provided, in part, because the Committee report describes a series of challenges faced by U.S. officials in executing the NEO from Afghanistan. Among other challenges, U.S. officials in Kabul in August 2021 were often unclear about who qualified for evacuation among the vaguely defined “at-risk Afghans.” Three clear categories eventually surfaced: (1) U.S. citizens and their family members, (2) Special Immigrant Visa, applicants with documents or other evidence to indicate they “could be approvable,” for the visa, and (3) others permitted for undefined humanitarian reasons. The Committee reports that in August 2021 the first category included approximately 12,000, the second approximately 20,000, with the remainder in the final category of humanitarian parolees. The report states that ultimately 120,000 were evacuated. But just as in Saigon in 1975, the report states that “the heartbreaking task of determining who could or could not get inside the gates” was determined primarily by “rank-and-file servicemembers and foreign service officers,” often in moments of chaos.
In 1975 the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam was similarly reluctant to plan for an evacuation, fearing it would incite panic. But when evacuation of U.S. citizens became inevitable, U.S. officials sought to bring those Vietnamese persons for whom the United States held what President Gerald Ford called “a direct and special obligation.” It would ultimately include approximately 140,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians. But in April 1975, there was ambiguity as to whether the U.S. government had the legal authority to evacuate Vietnamese citizens and bring them to the United States. This question was answered through two actions: (1) The Attorney General exercised a rarely used power to formally grant parole status to certain categories of Vietnamese and Cambodian persons under what was Section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), and (2) Congress created the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975, authorizing $455 million to assist persons “who have fled from Cambodia or Vietnam.”
In Afghanistan, Congress had already created a statutory framework for many evacuees through the Afghan Allies Protection Act, and others were similarly granted parole by the secretary for homeland security under the INA. However, as the State Department rebuttal suggests, NEOs are complex operations that require extensive coordination within the U.S. government, and international agreements with allies. Currently, Executive Order 12656, makes clear that the State Department holds primary responsibility for the evacuation of U.S. citizens abroad, in consultation with the Department of Defense. But perhaps the most comprehensive source on NEOs is the Department of Defense’s doctrine, Joint Publication 3-68, “Joint Noncombatant Evacuation Operations.” Though not legally binding, the document establishes clear roles and responsibilities for Defense Department personnel and describes the roles performed by other agencies.
Questions of broad authority and responsibility are not generally problematic for NEOs once the process has begun. However, a binding law may help codify these roles, and more specifically, as the Committee report recommends, a statute could also create specific, mandatory triggers for NEO planning and execution. This could, potentially, clarify some confusion over the initiation of a NEO. Whereas today JP 3-68 states a NEO is initiated upon request by the secretary of state, the Committee report suggests a requirement for NEO preparations to begin anytime a U.S. diplomatic mission is designated at Level 4 Travel Advisory (Level 4 is the highest level of travel warning issued by the State Department, based on safety and security concerns. Level 4 indicates “Do Not Travel”). Formal travel advisory designations may also be subject to secretary of state discretion, but establishing a statutory trigger would, at least, place NEO initiation within clear, formalized process. The Committee optimistically hopes such a process could more effectively avoid repeating the chaos seen in Saigon and Kabul.