Pentagon review of chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan nearing completion

A Pentagon panel examining the hectic U.S. pullout from Afghanistan five years ago reviewed more than 9 million documents and interviewed over a dozen high-ranking military officers, including the former commander of U.S. Central Command and the last American soldier to leave Kabul.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth established the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel at the direction of President Trump to conduct “the most comprehensive military after-action review in modern history.”

“We have now interviewed key figures involved in the planning and execution of the withdrawal,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, who is leading the review, said Thursday. “This will be the most thorough, transparent, and honest accounting the American people have received of what happened in August 2021.”

The officers interviewed include retired Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, former head of Central Command, and Army Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, the current commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

Gen. Donahue was the two-star commander of the 82nd Airborne Division and the senior U.S. officer on the ground at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport during the final stages of the withdrawal. He was the last soldier to leave the country, boarding a C-17 aircraft on Aug. 30, 2021, marking the end of the 20-year war.

“We are executing at the direction of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to deliver a full and unflinching examination of the system, institutional, and leadership factors that contributed to the collapse,” Mr. Parnell said in a statement.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops has been widely characterized by historians and military analysts as chaotic, despite the successful evacuation of more than 120,000 from Afghanistan. The turmoil was primarily a result of the rapid and unexpected collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban’s swift entry into Kabul. It forced a desperate and unplanned mass evacuation at Hamid Karzai Airport.

A suicide bombing at a gate leading into the airport complex killed 13 U.S. military personnel and about 170 civilians.

“Our purpose is to identify failures in decision-making so that we may prevent the United States from ever repeating this tragedy,” Mr. Parnell said.

A previous review during the Biden administration examined about 3,000 documents and was “significantly” narrower in scope, Mr. Parnell said.

“The [Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin]-led effort was also over-classified at the highest levels, which effectively kept the most critical and relevant information from public scrutiny,” Mr. Parnell said.

The review panel is preparing its findings and recommendations. Mr. Parnell said the report will be delivered to Mr. Hegseth and the American people in the coming months.