US authorities lacked “a sufficient sense of urgency” when planning for the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a State Department report.

The long-delayed and now unclassified version of the report, only 24 pages have not been redacted, lays out in detail the obstacles the government encountered in planning for the withdrawal, which grew chaotic as Afghanistan was overrun by Taliban fighters far more quickly than officials had expected.

The report released on Friday will provide ammunition to congressional critics of the Biden administration who have spent months investigating alleged missteps by the State Department.

Confusion and desperation on the ground in Kabul ultimately led to the death of 13 US service members and dozens of Afghans. It also left thousands of Afghans with ties to the US government stranded in Afghanistan.

Asked about the State Department report, President Joe Biden defended his administration’s handling of the withdrawal.

Biden shrugs off any blame

“I was right,” he told reporters on Friday, adding that currently US forces are “getting help” from the Taliban and al-Qaeda is “not there”. While the new report acknowledges that mistakes were made, Biden did not.

The report pointed to problems with inter-agency planning.

The US military had largely left the country by mid-August, leaving the Kabul embassy in charge of the situation until troops could be sent back in.

Co-ordination between the military and the State Department was “hindered by the fact that it was unclear who in the Department had the lead”, according to the report.

Issues also arose when significant numbers of officers, including the senior regional security officer and head of the consular section, had arrived in Kabul “only weeks and in some cases days” before the Taliban got there.

“The fact that so many personnel were new placed a tremendous burden on them to get up to speed on post-specific crisis planning and responsibilities as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated,” the report said.

The administration’s worries about political perceptions also limited contingency planning, the report contended.

Officials avoided accelerated departure of at-risk Afghans in the months leading up to the withdrawal deadline for fear of publicly undermining then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

White House: It’s all Trump’s fault

That left officials scrambling when Taliban fighters began to rapidly advance toward the capital. Concerns about a loss of confidence in Ghani “impeded preparations for a worst-case scenario in Washington and Embassy Kabul”, according to the report.

The Biden administration has largely defended its handling of the withdrawal, noting widespread public support for ending the 20-year conflict and blaming former president Donald Trump for striking an agreement with the Taliban that boxed in the next administration with little planning for the withdrawal’s realities.

“The Department itself had been slow in setting up its own task force structure,” the report cautioned, “but there may have been no way to prepare fully for the situation once Kabul fell to the Taliban and the NEO (Noncombatant Evacuation Operations) morphed into the largest humanitarian evacuation since the fall of Saigon”.

-AAP