Veterans testify of ‘catastrophic’ impact of Afghan collapse

WASHINGTON — Active-service members and veterans provided first-hand testimony Wednesday about the implications of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, describing in harrowing and explicit detail the trauma experienced on the ground while imploring Congress to help the allies left behind.

The initial hearing of a long-promised investigation by House Republicans displayed the open wounds from the end of America’s longest war in August 2021, with witnesses recalling how they saw mothers carrying dead babies and the Taliban shooting and brutally beating people.

Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews testified to Congress about the stench of human flesh under a large plume of smoke as the screams of children, women and men filled the space around Kabul’s airport after two suicide bombers attacked crowds of Afghans.

“I see the faces of all of those we could not save, those we left behind,” Vargas-Andrews, who wore a prosthetic arm and scars of his own grave wounds from the bombing, said. “The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion. And there was an inexcusable lack of accountability …”

Wednesday’s testimony opened what’s expected to be a series of Republican-led hearings examining the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal. Taliban forces seized the Afghan capital, Kabul, far more rapidly than U.S. intelligence had foreseen as American forces pulled out. Kabul’s fall turned the West’s withdrawal into a rout, with Kabul’s airport the center of a desperate air evacuation guarded by U.S. forces temporarily deployed for the task.

The majority of witnesses argued to Congress that the fall of Kabul was an American failure with blame touching every presidential administration from George W. Bush to Joe Biden.

Testimony focused not on the decision to withdraw, but on what witnesses depicted as a desperate attempt to rescue American citizens and Afghan allies with little U.S. planning and inadequate U.S. support.