Blinken faces critics who say Afghanistan withdrawal ‘lit the world on fire’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, facing questions for the last time about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The hearing comes at the twilight of Mr Blinken’s diplomatic career, with only weeks left before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and at the end of the chairmanship of Michael McCaul, who will no longer lead the committee in the next Congress.

It is the end of nearly four years of animosity between the two men over the end of America’s longest war.

“This catastrophic event was the beginning of a failed foreign policy that lit the world on fire,” Mr McCaul, a Texas Republican, said in his opening statement.

“I welcome your testimony today and hope you use this opportunity to take accountability for the disastrous withdrawal.”

Mr Blinken opened his appearance before the committee by turning to families of US forces killed in the withdrawal and apologising to them.

Cries of “genocide” and other protests from demonstrators in the audience repeatedly interrupted him.

Mr Blinken again defended the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, saying that the pull-out deal that Mr Trump negotiated with the Taliban before leaving office left him no viable alternative.

“To the extent President Biden faced a choice, it was between ending the war or escalating it,” Mr Blinken said.

“Had he not followed through on his predecessor’s commitment, attacks on our forces and allies would have resumed and the Taliban’s assault on the country’s major cities would have commenced.”

The 20-year US military occupation of Afghanistan succeeded in routing the al Qaida militants responsible for the September 11 2001, attacks on the United States, whom Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban militants had allowed a home.

But as the US began its pull-out, as set by Mr Trump’s deal and carried out by Mr Biden, Taliban fighters routed the US-allied government and military, capturing control of the country within months.

An extremist group’s bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 US service members and nearly 200 Afghans as Americans, Afghan allies and others thronged the airport in hopes of seats on the last flights out.

Mr Blinken said all of the “hundreds” of Americans and dual citizens stranded by the sudden scramble from Afghanistan have now been able to leave, if they have chosen.

His long-awaited testimony comes months after House Republicans issued a scathing report on their investigation into the withdrawal, blaming the disastrous end on Joe Biden’s administration. They downplayed Mr Trump’s role in the failures even though he had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

Mr Blinken denied Republican charges that he and others ignored warnings from lower-ranking administration officials that the US withdrawal would go badly wrong, and that the US had to move faster on getting out Americans and the Afghans who had worked for and allied with them.

“We anticipated that Kabul would remain in the hands of the Afghan government” through to the end of the year, Mr Blinken said. “This unfolded more quickly than we anticipated including in the intelligence community.”

“Waiting until the last minute is not executing a plan,” Mr McCaul said.

The Republican-led review laid out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Mr Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed America’s fundamentalist Taliban enemy to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last US officials flew out on August 30 2021.

The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

Previous investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Mr Biden and Mr Trump share the heaviest blame.

Mr Blinken is returning to the Middle East this week on his 12th visit since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last year.

It will be his first trip since the ousting of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which has sparked new fears of instability in a region now wracked by three conflicts despite a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.

Mr Blinken will travel to Jordan and Turkey on Thursday and Friday for talks expected to focus largely on Syria but also touch on hopes for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza. Other stops in the region are possible.