Abbey Gate and the Withdrawal From Afghanistan, the Record in Order

Picture a moving company that, before the job is done, sends its biggest truck back to the warehouse, lets the neighbors know the date it will be out, and then finishes the job from a loading dock in the middle of the city, using one small door. Now suppose that the company's spokesman later calls the whole thing an extraordinary success. You would not hire that company. You would also not want your furniture to be in the middle of it, let alone your son.

That is not a joke about people. It is a joke about a plan, and the plan had a cost that no joke can touch. On August 26, 2021, thirteen American service members were killed in a suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. This post puts the record in order. It does not need adjectives. It needs dates, and then it needs us to ask what each decision cost.

How to read a timeline like this

Two cautions, because the subject is raw and the temptation to score points is strong.

First, a sequence of events is not the same as a proof of cause. Some of the things that went wrong in August 2021 were set in motion years before, and I will say which. Second, the judgment of a decision should be based on what a reasonable person knew at the time, not only on what we know now. Where the record shows that warnings were given and set aside, I will say so, because that is different from hindsight.

I am relying on the public record: the text of the agreements, the announcements, the congressional testimony, and the facts reported by the government itself. Reviews of the withdrawal were conducted inside the executive branch and in the House of Representatives, and they are worth reading in full. Where a figure is an official estimate, I have said so.

Phase one: the road to Doha, 2020

February 29, 2020: the Doha agreement

The United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar. The American negotiator was Zalmay Khalilzad. The Taliban's signatory was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Under it, the United States committed to reduce its force levels in stages and to withdraw all remaining forces within fourteen months, by May 1, 2021, if the Taliban met their commitments. Those commitments included a pledge not to let al-Qaeda or any other group use Afghan soil to threaten the United States and its allies, and to begin talks with the Afghan government. The agreement also provided for a prisoner exchange, with the Afghan government expected to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners.

What it cost: The Afghan government, which had to release the prisoners, was not a party to the agreement. A war ally was asked to pay the price of a deal it did not sign. The Taliban also kept the legitimacy of an agreement with the world's superpower, and the deadline became a fixed date on the Taliban's calendar. Whatever the agreement's merits as an effort to end a long war, it contained a schedule that favored the side that was only waiting.

November 2020 to January 15, 2021: the cut to 2,500

President Trump ordered a further reduction. By January 15, 2021, American troop levels in Afghanistan had been reduced to about 2,500.

What it cost: A smaller force meant fewer eyes, less air support and a thinner buffer. Whatever one thinks of the policy, the number set the baseline for what followed. The next president inherited a force of 2,500 and a May deadline.

Phase two: the decision to leave, spring and summer 2021

April 14, 2021: the announcement

President Biden announced that the United States would withdraw all remaining forces, and set the end date at September 11, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of the attacks. He later moved the target to the end of August.

What it cost: The announcement set a clock, and it passed the May 1 date in the Doha agreement. The date also meant that the fighting season, when the Taliban could be expected to press, would coincide with the withdrawal itself.

Late June to early July 2021: the departure from Bagram

American forces left Bagram Air Base, the largest American installation in the country, in early July 2021. Reports at the time said they left at night, and that the Afghan commander at the base learned of it only after the Americans had gone.

What it cost: Bagram was the strongest military airfield in the country. It had long runways, a large perimeter and extensive facilities. The alternative was Hamid Karzai International Airport in the capital, a civilian airport embedded in a city of millions, with a perimeter that was far harder to defend. The decision to leave Bagram meant that, if an evacuation became necessary, it would have to take place from a crowded city airport.

In congressional testimony that September, the commander of Central Command, General Frank McKenzie, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said they had recommended keeping about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. In an August ABC interview, asked whether advisers had urged him to keep 2,500 troops, President Biden answered, "No one said that to me that I can recall." The White House later said the advice had been split. It is one of the central disputes of the whole affair, and it is a useful place for a citizen to read the testimony.

July 8, 2021: the August 31 date

The President said that the military mission would conclude by August 31.

What it cost: The date was publicly known. It told every Afghan soldier, every Afghan who had worked with the United States, and every Taliban commander when the support would end.

Phase three: the collapse, August 2021

August 6, 2021: the first provincial capital falls

Zaranj, in the southwest, fell to the Taliban. Over the next week, the pace accelerated. By August 13, Kandahar and Herat, two of the largest cities, had fallen.

What it cost: The collapse was faster than most public assessments had predicted. It meant that the plan, which had assumed that the Afghan forces would hold Kabul for a considerable time, had no margin.

August 12 to 14, 2021: troops sent back

The Pentagon announced about 3,000 troops for the airport on August 12 to help secure an evacuation, and on August 14 the President authorized another 1,000, bringing the total to about 5,000.

What it cost: The country was withdrawing troops while sending thousands back in to do the evacuation that a different plan might have avoided or begun earlier.

August 15, 2021: Kabul falls

The Taliban entered Kabul. President Ashraf Ghani left the country. The government, which American policy had supported for twenty years, dissolved in a day.

What it cost: The Afghan state that had been the point of the long mission disappeared, and the airport became the only way out.

August 16, 2021: the airport

Crowds poured onto the airfield at Hamid Karzai International Airport. A U.S. Air Force C-17 transport took off crowded with Afghans, and video showed others clinging to its side as it rolled. The images went around the world.

What it cost: The evacuation began in disorder, and it stayed difficult for days. Thousands of people, including Americans, Afghan allies who had worked with the American mission, and others, sought to reach the gates. The coverage of those days, I'll say frankly, often used the word "chaotic" as if the chaos were a weather system. It was not. It was the result of timing, planning and decisions made earlier, and the people who made them could be named.

Phase four: Abbey Gate

August 26, 2021: the bombing

A suicide bomber attacked the crowd at the Abbey Gate, one of the airport entrances, and gunmen followed. Thirteen American service members died: eleven Marines, a Navy corpsman and an Army soldier. Around 170 Afghan civilians were also killed, according to commonly reported counts. ISIS-K, the Islamic State's Afghan affiliate, claimed responsibility.

What it cost: Thirteen families. I will not dress that up. These were young men and women who were at the gate because the plan had them standing among crowds at one of the weakest points in the perimeter, in coordination with a Taliban whose members controlled the approach. The enemy that struck them was not the Taliban but a rival of the Taliban. The threat had been publicly warned about, and the Embassy had advised people to avoid the gates shortly before the attack. A force protection plan built around a single airport in a hostile city is a plan that offers any attacker a crowd.

August 27 and 29, 2021: two drone strikes

On August 27, the United States struck ISIS-K targets in Nangarhar province in retaliation. On August 29, a drone strike in Kabul targeted what American officials believed was a vehicle carrying a threat to the airport. The Pentagon later acknowledged that the strike had killed ten civilians, including seven children, and that it had been a mistake.

What it cost: A family in Kabul lost ten members. To the credit of the Defense Department, it acknowledged the error publicly, and that is the right thing and the harder thing. It also showed how thin the intelligence was in a country the United States had just left.

August 30, 2021: the last flight

The last American military flight departed Kabul on August 30. Major General Chris Donahue of the 82nd Airborne Division was the last American soldier to board. The President announced the end of the mission the next day. The President called the airlift an "extraordinary success" and put the number evacuated at more than 120,000, a large number by any standard, and one that deserves recognition. Secretary of State Blinken said that fewer than 200 American citizens, perhaps closer to 100, remained and wanted to leave.

What it cost: The country left behind American citizens, as well as thousands of Afghans who had served alongside us and who had applied for special visas. The mission's end date was met, and the mission's purpose, getting out all who should have been got out, was not. The more than 120,000 evacuated is a figure to be honest about: it is evidence of the extraordinary effort of the people on the ground, and not of the quality of the plan around them.

The argument, in numbered steps

Now for the argument. I am a plain talker, so here it is in order.

1. The decision to end the war was a legitimate decision. A President has the constitutional authority and the electoral mandate to end a war, and the American people had grown tired of this one. Nothing in this post disputes that. The question is not whether to leave. It is how.
2. How you leave is part of the policy. A withdrawal is an operation, and operations need plans that survive contact with the enemy. Leaving the strongest airfield first and announcing the date turned a withdrawal into a race.
3. Advice was given and not taken. The senior military leaders testified that they recommended keeping 2,500 troops. A civilian leader may overrule a general, and the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief for exactly that reason. But the leader who overrules owns the result. Hamilton, writing in Federalist No. 74, said the direction of war "most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand." In Federalist No. 70 he argued that a plural executive tends to destroy responsibility. The power is single, so the accountability is too.
4. Deterrence reads these events. Every adversary of the United States studies how we leave as closely as how we fight. See Deterrence Fails When an Enemy Thinks You Will Not Pay the Price for why that matters, and The Weinberger Doctrine Set Six Tests Before Sending Troops to Fight for a checklist that asks not just when to go in, but whether the exit has been planned.
5. The war's roots were earlier. The earlier choices, from the Doha deal to the cut in forces, and the long years of nation-building before them, shaped the field. The Doha agreement was signed by one administration, carried out by another, and neither made the Afghan army self-sufficient. For the longer story, see Why Did We Lose in Afghanistan? Twelve Questions the Record Can Answer.

The best defense of the withdrawal, answered

Fairness requires that the other side get its due. The defense of the withdrawal goes like this: the United States had been in Afghanistan for twenty years; the Doha agreement already committed us to leave; staying would have meant renewed fighting with the Taliban and more American casualties, for a war that was not winnable at an acceptable cost; and the evacuation, for all its difficulty, moved an extraordinary number of people in two weeks.

That argument has real weight, and I give it all of it. The war was long, the public was weary, and the Doha agreement had set a track that was hard to reverse. A President who campaigned on leaving and then left was keeping a promise.

But the argument proves less than it claims. It shows that leaving was defensible, not that this method of leaving was the only one, or the best. The commanders believed that a smaller footprint could be sustained, at the cost of staying in a low-level fight. You may judge that cost too high. But then you owe the public an honest accounting of the other cost: thirteen dead at one gate, many Americans and allies left behind, an enemy regime restored in days and an adversary's confidence raised. A good defense argues that the costs were worth it. A bad one pretends there were none.

The constitutional anchor

The Constitution does not have a clause on how to withdraw from a war, and that is itself a lesson. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power "To declare War" and to "raise and support Armies." Article II makes the President "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." The war in Afghanistan was authorized in September 2001 by a joint resolution of Congress, and it ran for two decades under that authority with no further vote. The ending of it, like the beginning, was done almost entirely by the executive. See Commander in Chief Means Less Than Presidents Claim and More Than Critics Say and Sixty Words Passed in 2001 Still Carry America's Wars, and That Is a Problem for the argument that Congress has let this power drift. A Congress that votes to start a war and then declines to ask how it will end has been a spectator at its own constitutional duty.

There is also an accounting question that conservatives of every stripe should care about. The equipment, the contracts and the training programs that the United States built in Afghanistan were funded by taxpayers, and the audit of what became of them is a matter of public record in the reports of the Special Inspector General. See The Pentagon Has Never Passed an Audit, and Conservatives Should Mind.

What it teaches, beyond Afghanistan

The thirteen who died at Abbey Gate were ordinary Americans in uniform, doing what they were asked. The lesson of the record is not about them, and it is certainly not that they should have refused. It is about the people who make the plan, and about us as citizens who elect them.

Here is what a citizen can fairly demand of any leader who ends a war. A plan for the exit, published in outline. A force sized to protect itself, not just the mission's schedule. A date that is not a gift to the enemy. A reckoning with those left behind. And a willingness to answer questions afterward, in public, under oath. These are not partisan demands. They are the minimum we owe those who go to the gate.

You may note that none of this requires an opinion about whether the war should have been fought. I have my own views on that, and I suspect you have yours. The record in order tells a story that stands regardless: a war that ended by calendar and not by plan, and thirteen who paid for the difference.

The case in brief

1. The February 29, 2020 Doha agreement, signed without the Afghan government, set a withdrawal schedule that favored the side waiting for it.
2. The decision to leave Bagram in early July 2021 and to announce the August 31 date left a single civilian airport as the way out, and senior generals testified they had recommended keeping 2,500 troops.
3. Kabul fell on August 15, the Abbey Gate bombing on August 26 killed thirteen American service members, and the last flight left on August 30 with some Americans still behind.
4. A President may end a war, but how it ends is part of the policy, and the Commander in Chief owns the result of overruling his commanders.
5. A Congress that authorized the war in 2001 and never voted on its end has left a constitutional duty undone.

What you can do: read the congressional testimony of General Milley and General McKenzie on the withdrawal, then write your House member to ask what oversight steps Congress took after Abbey Gate.