By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State Antony Blinken will testify to a Republican-led House of Representatives committee on Wednesday on the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending a long dispute with the panel weeks before the end of his term.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the State Department have have been wrangling over Blinken’s appearance for months. Panel Republicans voted in September – weeks before the presidential election – to recommend the top U.S. diplomat be held in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena.
The U.S.’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war became intensely politicized during the 2024 president campaign pitting President-elect Donald Trump against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20, has decried the withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. During his campaign, he said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
Democrats have insisted some blame for the messy end of the war – less than seven months into Joe Biden’s presidency – should be laid at the feet of Trump, who began the withdrawal process by signing a deal with Afghanistan’s militant Islamist Taliban in 2020.
The State Department had contended the Foreign Affairs panel was provided with large amounts of information, with Blinken testifying before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times and the department providing nearly 20,000 pages of records, multiple high-level briefings and transcribed interviews.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Michael McCaul, released a report on Sept. 8 on a Republican investigation of the Afghanistan withdrawal, blasting Biden’s administration for failures surrounding the evacuation.
“While I wish he had not delayed this crucial appearance until the end of his tenure as head of the State Department, I look forward to hearing his testimony and asking poignant questions to help House Republicans and the next administration ensure nothing like this ever happens again,” McCaul said in a statement.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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