MENA WATCH Blinken Faces Congress Questioning on Afghanistan Pullout

Top of the Agenda
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will testify (Foreign Policy) before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations today regarding the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. He defended Washington’s execution of the chaotic exit before the House of Representatives yesterday.

In response to criticism yesterday from lawmakers such as Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), who said the U.S. exit allowed the Afghan government to fall, Blinken said extending the U.S. troop presence would not have stabilized (NYT) the country. Democrats, too, criticized the Joe Biden administration for failing to evacuate all Afghans who helped U.S. forces. Many Afghans now fear political reprisal, and the country faces a dire humanitarian crisis (Al Jazeera).

Analysis
“[The Monday testimony] gave a glimpse of how U.S. lawmakers—many of whom approved funding for the Afghanistan war effort during their decades-long careers in Congress—will seek to understand how 20 years of costly nation-building and counterterrorism operations went up in smoke in a matter of weeks,” Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer and Zinya Salfiti write.

“The damage these events and images have inflicted on the United States’ reputation—for competence, for a commitment to human rights, and for playing a leadership role in the international community—is real and likely to persist,” Harvard University’s Joshua D. Kertzer