But some of the criticism from former Trump administration officials has strayed from the truth.
In public statements last week, former Vice President Mike Pence, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller have criticized Biden in one way or another for the chaos that has unfolded in Afghanistan this month. While some of these criticisms have been accurate, many of them have attempted to imprecisely rewrite the Trump administration’s own history in Afghanistan, denouncing Biden, and also deceptively omitting the actions of Trump and his administration. .
Here is a check of their claims.
On Tuesday, former Vice President Mike Pence published a publication in the Wall Street Journal that exclusively blamed the Biden administration for the current situation in Afghanistan.
Pence went so far as to claim that the Trump administration’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban “immediately brought to Afghanistan a stability not seen in decades.”
“In the last 18 months, the United States has not suffered any casualties there. When we left office, the Afghan government and the Taliban each controlled their respective territories, neither of the two offensives was significant and America only had 2,500 U.S. soldiers in the country: the smallest military presence since the war began in 2001, “Pence wrote.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well
claimed this week, on Twitter and in an interview with Fox Business, that the Trump administration “kept the country stable.”
Facts first: There is no legitimate argument that Afghanistan experienced anything resembling “stability” after the U.S. agreement with the Taliban. Although Pence is right that no more American troops were killed in combat after the agreement, the war continued to rage and large number of Afghan and civilian troops he continued to be killed or wounded.
The Department of Defense inspector general reported that “the Taliban further increased violence” immediately after the agreement was signed. The United Nations reported that, although “there was a fall in the number of documented civilian casualties during the first nine months” of 2020, “in stark contrast, the last three months of the year saw a slight increase. of civilian casualties, a critical fact indicative of the nature of the conflict. The year ended with a greater focus on levels of violence and a decline in hopes for lasting peace. ”
“The anguish caused by the armed conflict continued to be widespread and felt in cities and rural areas by people of all ages, genders, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds,” the UN said in its annual report on the war, in what He noted that civilian casualties increased by 45% in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.
The total number of Afghan civilian casualties recorded by the United Nations for 2020, 8,820, was the lowest since 2013, but was even higher than in any of the five years between 2009 and 2013. (The UN began this systematic follow-up in 2009; actual war casualties are often higher than documented casualties.) Therefore, even by this basic metric, there is no case that there was invisible stability “in decades”.
“There was stability in the U.S. military bases, not in the country,” said Sher Jan Ahmadzai, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.
Ahmadzai also argued that the Trump deal between the US and the Taliban “paved the way for further potential instability by undermining the legitimacy of the Trump government itself, president and previous administrations, which they supported.”
“A momentary pause in violence does not constitute significant political stability,” said Benjamin Hopkins, an expert in Afghanistan and a professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University, adding that the agreement “did not address none of the fundamental issues of the conflict “. on internal affairs in Afghanistan “.
Experts also argued with other parts of Pence’s opinion, including the headline: “Mike Pence: Biden broke our agreement with the Taliban.”
In the piece, Pence argued that, under Trump, “Taliban leaders understood that the consequences of violating the agreement would be swift and serious.” But experts in Afghanistan say the Taliban had never fulfilled their commitments in the deal.
“The Taliban did not respect the part of the Doha agreement that required them to sever ties with Al Qaeda: intelligence reports have shown that the Taliban continue to maintain these ties,” said Madiha Afzal, a policy fellow. outside the Brookings Institution think tank.
Nikki Haley criticizes negotiations with the Taliban
After the White House announced Wednesday that the Taliban would allow “safe passage” to Afghan civilians traveling to the capital’s airport, Nikki Haley, Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the administration. of Biden to trust the word of the Taliban.
“Having our generals say they depend on diplomacy with the Taliban is an incredible scenario,” Haley said.
he tweeted. “Negotiating with the Taliban is like dealing with the devil.”
Facts first: Haley did not mention that the Trump administration itself negotiated with the Taliban and that she herself had spoken favorably of these peace negotiations while serving the administration.
“We are seeing that we are closer to the talks with the Taliban and the peace process than we have seen before,” Haley said on January 17, 2018 at the UN in New York. Haley added that Afghan officials “are confident that the Taliban will come to the table” and that “U.S. policy on Afghanistan is working.”
In the summer of 2018, the Trump administration said it was ready to begin negotiations with the Taliban and, after much unrest, signed the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban for the U.S. to withdraw troops to Afghanistan. in early May 2021. Haley resigned from the administration in October 2018.
Despite continued Taliban attacks and their failure in the areas of the agreement, the U.S. continued to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. On January 15, days before Biden’s inauguration, Trump’s acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller announced that U.S. forces had reached the country’s lowest levels since the start of the war.
“U.S. force levels in Afghanistan have reached 2,500. Led by President Trump,” Miller said in a statement, “and as I announced on November 17, this downfall is bringing U.S. forces to the forefront. country at the lowest levels since 2001.
We do not discuss Haley’s negative assessment of the Taliban. However, his tweet completely ignored the Trump administration’s own negotiations and his earlier praises of the strategy.
Christopher Miller claims that Trump’s promise to retire completely was just a hoax
Christopher Miller, who served as acting secretary of defense for less than three months at the end of Trump’s presidency, said in an interview with Defense One that Trump’s 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw all forces of the United States of Afghanistan on May 1, 2021 was just a “play,” and Trump wanted to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan for counterterrorism purposes.
Facts first: While we don’t know what Trump might have talked about with Miller in secret, statements from other administration officials and even Trump himself questioned Miller’s claim. Trump has repeatedly said publicly, even after leaving office, that his plan was to take “all” troops home. A senior Trump administration official told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Miller’s claim is false.
As president, Trump called for a total withdrawal on Christmas 2020, even before the May 1 deadline. And just on Aug. 12, Trump issued a statement suggesting he would have followed the full withdrawal plan if he had won the 2020 election, though he claimed he would have been “much more successful” than Biden.
In an April 18 statement that has been removed from his website, Trump said, “Leaving Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I had planned to retire on May 1 and we should keep it. us as close as possible to this calendar. “And on June 26, Trump stressed that his administration was responsible for initiating the process to recover all troops,
saying “I started the process. All the troops are coming home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t you think?”
