Biden administration defends Afghan troop pullout, blames Trump for chaos

Joe Biden’s administration has defended its decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and blamed former U.S. President Donald Trump for creating conditions that “severely constrained” his successor

Joe Biden's administration has defended its decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and blamed former U.S. President Donald Trump for creating conditions that "severely constrained" his successor and led to the chaotic withdrawal from the war-torn country in 2021.

The White House on Thursday released a 12-page document on the conditions that led to U.S.' exit from Afghanistan in 2021 and sent related classified documents to various Congressional committees.

The report places much of the blame on the previous Trump administration, saying President Biden was “severely constrained” by former president Trump’s decisions.

"President Biden's choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the report said.

The Trump administration had negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that Mr. Biden pledged to honour. But Thursday’s report criticised the former Republican president for a lack of planning to carry out the deal.

According to the report, when Mr. Biden took office on January 20, 2021, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”

At the same time, the US had only 2,500 troops on the ground, the lowest since 2001, and President Biden was facing Trump’s near-term deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021, or the Taliban would resume its attacks on U.S. and allied troops, it said.