Republicans try to tie Harris to botched Afghanistan withdrawal

Kamala Harris had limited involvement in the decision on whether and how US forces withdrew, but it still presents a key avenue of attack for Trump, particularly in Wednesday’s debate.

Afghans struggle to reach the foreign forces to flee the country outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul. Picture: EPA.

When President Biden met his Afghan counterpart in the Oval Office as part of a high-stakes meeting to discuss the withdrawal of American troops after a 20-year war, Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t in the room.

Harris wasn’t scheduled or expected to attend the June 25, 2021, meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, but her absence illustrated her minor role during the internal debate over Biden’s withdrawal decision as well as the international diplomacy that followed. Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s national security adviser at the time, said Kabul didn’t consider Harris a major player during months of back and forth talks.

“I never heard anything about her commentary on Afghanistan,” he said. “Maybe she had other things to work on.” The reality of Harris’s limited involvement complicates both her pitch for the presidency and the Republican effort to saddle her this week with what followed the withdrawal decision: the killing of 13 American service members in the final days of the war, the Taliban’s return, and a devastating humanitarian crisis. It is also likely to be a contentious issue that will come up during today’s debate, especially since Harris boasted of being “the last person in the room” before Biden made the final call to leave.

Harris has sought to take credit for what the administration holds up as foreign-policy successes, like its defence of Ukraine, while at the same time sidestepping any responsibility for what happened after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Her allies quickly note the U.S. departure from Afghanistan began in 2020 after then-President Trump struck a deal with the Taliban to bring all U.S. troops home by May 2021. But the Harris campaign and White House still want to portray her as vital to key discussions in hopes of boosting her national-security profile ahead of the presidential election.

Stranded Afghan nationals at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing point in Chaman in 2021. Picture: AFP.

Harris was “involved in and participated in … all major foreign-policy decisions of the administration,” including the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Such claims, however, have given Trump an opening to say Harris directly caused what he described as the “humiliation in Afghanistan.” Interviews with multiple current and former U.S. officials make clear Harris was an ancillary figure during the deliberations on whether to withdraw and then, after Biden took the decision, was on the margins during the hurried evacuation.

In multiple meetings in the Situation Room and Oval Office, Harris asked questions about the impact U.S. forces leaving Afghanistan would have on American citizens in the country, women’s rights and counter-terrorism efforts. She also tasked the Pentagon and State Department to project what their specific proposals would mean for Afghanistan after six months, a sign she wanted the administration to keep an eye on long-term effects.

But on the ultimate question – how to stay or go – Harris kept her thoughts to herself during group discussions, a common approach for a vice president, and reserved her overall assessments for private meetings with Biden. Officials familiar with those private meetings declined to detail what she told Biden, but added that she was well aware the president entered office wanting to end the war and that he considered foreign policy his greatest strength.

“Vice President Harris was direct and engaged with her questions. She did not reveal her positions, and I have no idea where she stood on the options we were discussing,” said ret. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who was the top military commander at U.S. Central Command during the withdrawal.

“I had no issue with the questions she asked. They just did not reveal her position.”

Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani at the White House in 2021. Picture: AFP.

In the months following Biden’s April decision to withdraw all American forces, the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and pushed into Kabul. The ensuing chaos required Biden to order an emergency evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies from the capital’s airport, marked by harrowing scenes of people clinging to C-17s and a crush of people clamouring to catch the next plane out of Afghanistan.

Day-to-day logistics for that operation were handled mainly by the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council. Even so, McKenzie said Harris participated in nearly daily meetings in August – the war’s last month – led by Biden, even while she was on a week long trip to Singapore and Vietnam.

But former officials who attended those meetings said Harris didn’t feature prominently in them, largely because she was on screen, not in the room. “I do not recall her playing, or her staff playing, any particular role during the [evacuation] or the actual withdrawal in August,” one of those officials said.

Republicans see the withdrawal, which Harris has called “courageous” and “right,” as a weak spot for the Democratic nominee.

The Taliban’s authoritarian regime is back in place. Many of the group’s officials who were in charge of Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks have returned to power, like Hassan Akhund, now the acting prime minister. In the late 1990s, he was one of the Taliban leaders who refused to turn over al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden to the Americans.

The Taliban has sought to strip women of nearly all of their rights, including the right to work and receive an education. Meanwhile, other extremist groups, like Islamic State, currently operate in the country.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Harris, as vice president, failed to use her authority to compel a course correction by the administration.

“Vice President Harris had the opportunity to stop this from happening – even more than anyone else, with the exception of President Biden,” he said. “She is just as culpable for this catastrophic failure of epic proportions that resulted in the death of 13 U.S. service members as President Biden,” McCaul said, referencing the deadly terrorist attack outside Kabul’s airport during the August evacuation.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson posthumously presented the Congressional Gold Medal to the 13 troops killed during the final days of the war.

Republicans on McCaul’s panel this week released the result of their three-year investigation into the withdrawal, a 350-page document that blasts the Biden administration for failing to adequately anticipate and stem Afghanistan’s swift collapse. The document fell short of saying Harris was personally responsible for any of the failures, but it describes Harris as being “in lock-step with President Biden behind the scenes to withdraw all U.S. troops.” It also repeatedly referred to the Biden-Harris administration when describing decisions related to the war.

A Democratic memorandum in response to that report accused Republicans of politicising the withdrawal ahead of the election. To defend Harris, Democrats stated in their rebuttal that the vice president “is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the Committee’s interview transcripts.” Instead, the document suggests that there wasn’t enough attention on Trump’s role making a deal with the Taliban that led to the U.S. departure.

The Harris campaign has used that same line of attack in its messaging, insisting Trump’s actions gave the Biden administration no choice but to withdraw troops on a rushed timeline. Harris’s team also references how Trump tried to organise a Camp David meeting with the Taliban in September 2019 – just days before the 9/11 anniversary – before the backlash led him to cancel the effort.

If Afghanistan comes up during Tuesday’s debate, it would present Harris with her first real opportunity to discuss her views on the war, its end and the extent of her role in all of it.

In the 2020 vice presidential debate between Harris and then-Vice President Mike Pence, Afghanistan didn’t come up once. Harris also didn’t discuss Afghanistan during the Democratic Party debates she participated in during her 2020 presidential campaign.

Yet in a questionnaire for the Council for Foreign Relations, Harris responded that she supported a full withdrawal but didn’t spell out a detailed plan.

“I will bring together our military leaders, national security advisers, and top diplomats to co-ordinate and implement that withdrawal plan,” she wrote. “I want to ensure that the country is on a path to stability, that we protect the gains that have been made for Afghan women and others, and that it never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists.” – Lara Seligman contributed to this article.

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