(Headline USA) A new government watchdog report blasted the Biden administration’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, revealing that efforts to rescue and resettle the thousands of Afghan allies left behind in the region are failing due to “bureaucratic dysfunction and understaffing.”
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released its 2023 High-Risk List report on Wednesday. The report identified a number of problems caused by President Joe Biden’s sudden exit from Afghanistan, including the “humanitarian catastrophe” that resulted from the Taliban’s subsequent takeover and the mismanagement of financial aid that the U.S. has sent to the Afghan people.
Inspector General John Sopko said in the report that one of the biggest failures of the withdrawal has been the Biden administration’s inability to aid Afghan allies who partnered with the U.S. military.
“The U.S. promised to resettle its allies in safety, but the United States is failing,” the report read. “However, the United States has left most of its allies behind, and it will take a year, on average, until each family reaches safety.”
There are still about 175,000 Afghans waiting for the U.S. government to process their Special Immigrant Visas, or refugee applications, the report added. As of late September 2022, the Biden administration had only processed about 20% of all Afghan SIV claims. It could take more than three decades to relocate and resettle all of them, the report said.
Moreover, those Afghans who have been admitted into the U.S. have not been adequately screened, the inspector general said.
“The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General documented problems with vetting Afghans admitted to the United States in the fall of 2021, including two Afghans who were later determined to be national security threats and put into removal proceedings,” the report stated.
The report also found significant waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement of the more than $8 billion in aid that the U.S. has sent to the Afghan people since August 2021.
The White House has downplayed the consequences of the Afghanistan withdrawal, opting to blame the Trump administration.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House gaslighted earlier this month.
