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The Pentagon has officially confirmed it will launch a Special Review Panel to investigate the US military’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Some shit you should know before you read: Shortly before President Trump left office in his first term, he struck a deal with the Taliban in 2020, known as the Doha Agreement, which committed the United States to a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 2021 in exchange for a pledge to negotiate peace with the Afghan government. When President Biden assumed office, he postponed the planned exit until August 31, 2021, but was widely criticized for not preparing for the swift downfall of Afghan forces, despite repeated intelligence alerts. As US forces began to exit, the Taliban launched a nationwide offensive, capturing major cities and, ultimately, Kabul on August 15, 2021, before the withdrawal was complete. This led to a chaotic situation at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, culminating in an ISIS-K suicide bombing on August 26 at Abbey Gate that killed 13 US service members and approximately 170 Afghan civilians. The Pentagon came under fire for misjudging how quickly the Taliban would overrun the country and for overestimating the durability of the U.S.-backed Afghan regime, which had been bolstered by over $80 billion in US military funding. Adding to the controversy, an estimated $7.1 billion in US military equipment—ranging from aircraft to small arms—was left behind and is now in Taliban hands.
What’s going on now: In an announcement, the Pentagon confirmed it is launching a Special Review Panel to reexamine the US military’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, a move ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Over the last three months, the Department has been engaged in a review of this catastrophic event in our military’s history,” Hegseth wrote in a memo to senior defense officials. “I have concluded that we need to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure that accountability for this event is met and that the complete picture is provided to the American people.” The review is intended to analyze prior investigations and scrutinize the decision-making processes that led to what Hegseth called “one of America’s darkest and deadliest international moments.”
The panel will be led by Sean Parnell, a senior advisor to Hegseth and a combat-wounded Afghanistan War veteran. Parnell will be joined by retired Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller—who was court-martialed after publicly criticizing military leadership over the withdrawal—and Jerry Dunleavy, a former investigative reporter and congressional staffer who previously helped lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s investigation into the evacuation. “Sean and his team will look at the facts, examine the sources, interview witnesses, analyze the decision making, and post-mortem the chain of events that led to one of America’s darkest moments,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth noted that the Department of Defense has “an obligation, both to the American people and to the warfighters who sacrificed their youth in Afghanistan, to get the facts.” As of now, the Pentagon has not indicated how long the review will take.
