Republican report slams Biden's 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal

Republicans on Sunday released a critical report on US President Joe Biden's 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan -- reigniting criticism over the chaotic end to America's longest war.

The report repeated long-standing Republican criticisms of the withdrawal, which saw the deaths of 13 US service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport and the near-immediate retaking of the capital by the Taliban.

Written by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the report criticized Biden for failing to "mitigate the likely consequences of the decision" to withdraw, which had been made by the previous administration under Donald Trump.

Republicans pointed to concerns shared by military leaders that the US should have kept troops in the country, continuing the war launched there in 2001 after the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Democrats slammed the report as timed to upset the upcoming US presidential election.

"If they have had three years to assess what happened, why are they delivering a report after Labor Day in a presidential election year?" Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asked on Saturday, ahead of the report's release.

"Look, this administration made the decision not to allow this war to be inherited by a fifth president and to end that conflict," he told CNN.

House Republicans charged that "Biden's decision to withdraw all US troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha agreement, or the advice of his senior national security advisors or our allies."

"Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan."

- Doha agreement -

The Doha agreement was signed on February 29, 2020, between the Taliban and the United States under Trump.

It paved the path for the US withdrawal, but excluded Afghanistan's ruling government.

Biden has been criticized for pushing through with the withdrawal agreed to in Doha without holding the Taliban to conditions such as a ceasefire deal between the militants and the government in Kabul.

Instead, in the months and weeks leading up to the US withdrawal a Taliban offensive surged.

Kabul fell to the Taliban within days of US troops leaving, a situation that the report says has "increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe."

Democrats say the withdrawal reflected a growing, bipartisan consensus among the American public to end the two-decade long war, and that they were hamstrung by Trump's deal with the Taliban.

The House report comes as Trump, who enjoys support among hawkish lawmakers and voters, has himself tussled with the military while on the campaign trail for the November's election.

During a recent campaign visit to a hallowed military cemetery outside Washington, the Republican broke rules barring photography there for political purposes, posing with relatives of US service members killed in Afghanistan in content that was later shared by his campaign on social media.

Democrat Kamala Harris, Biden's vice president whom Trump is running against in November, slammed Trump for having "disrespected sacred ground."