In the wake of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, President Joe Biden attempted to deflect blame away from his administration, claiming he was forced to withdraw from the country because the Doha Agreement, which was former President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban.
But, a new report shows that the Taliban violated every aspect of the Doha Agreement and invalidated it, meaning Biden was not obligated to adhere to it and withdraw from Afghanistan.
The report also directly contradicts the testimony of two Pentagon officials, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense, who appeared before the U.S. Senate on September 28, 2021.
Milley and Austin both testified that the Taliban never attacked U.S. forces in the time between signing the Doha Agreement and evacuating Kabul, meaning they did not violate that element of the Doha agreement.
Milley stated that the Taliban broke almost every requirement of the Doha Agreement, but that “The one [requirement] that was met was the most important one, which was ‘do not attack us or the coalition forces.’ And they did not.”
Similarly, Austin testified that “the only thing that they lived up to was that they did not attack us.”
Milley and Austin’s testimony, however, is flatly refuted in a new book, 'Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End,' authored by Jerry Dunleavy and James Hasson, and published on August 15, the two-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover.
Dunleavy and Hasson cite numerous sources, including Pentagon watchdog reports and public statements from Biden administration officials, which clearly state that the Taliban attacked U.S. forces in between the Doha agreement and the withdrawal.
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For example, the Lead Inspector General’s (Lead IG) report to Congress stated that the “Taliban conducted limited attacks on coalition bases” and that “The Taliban fired rockets at an airport in Khost where U.S. troops were based. U.S. forces responded by conducting clearing operations in the vicinity.”
The Lead IG report also stated: “On April 7, the Taliban launched another rocket attack, this time against Kandahar air base, where several hundred U.S. troops were still based.”
Dunleavy and Hasson also cite the exhibit 174 of the Pentagon’s after-action Abbey Gate Report, which shows that the Taliban conducted an indirect fire attack on Bagram Airforce Base on June 28.
Milley and Austin’s testimony is further undermined by the administration’s own public statements.
Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby, for example, publicly stated in a May 3 press briefing: “What we’ve seen are some small, harassing attacks over the course of the weekend.”
Despite this clear evidence of attacks, Milley and Austin still testified that the Taliban had not attacked U.S. forces leading up to the withdrawal, and therefore had not violated every requirement of the Doha agreement.
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