Thanks, Chair.
I'm glad to hear that you're staying in your chair. I'm going to have to stay in mine, because I asked some questions at the beginning of Mr. Ruff and I just haven't had an answer. I think the questions I asked are fair questions.
I respect Mr. Ruff very much. We've had a chance to chat over the course of our time on this committee together about some of his thoughts and ideas, and I very much respect his point of view, experience and his service to Canada as part of the forces in Afghanistan.
I need to understand better what's behind the motion. In other words, why is the information that would be provided in these reports relevant? What are these reports and the scope of these reports? I still don't understand what these reports include or don't include and how they would be relevant to our study. I'm at a point where I still haven't had the answers to those questions. I would really appreciate an explanation.
Ms. Damoff presented a thoughtful amendment. I think it allows us to make sure that the committee delivers this report on time. I don't even know what's in these reports, so I don't know how much information there is or how relevant it is. However, one can imagine a scenario where there's a lot of information that this committee won't have time to review, won't have time to ask witnesses about, and that puts us in a position where we can't meet our mandate as a committee, set down by the House, to have the report completed by June 8.
In not having answers to these questions, I'm concerned to begin with, but I'm really concerned, especially if we get a whole bunch of information that we then can't properly incorporate, or have to incorporate without proper background or context or witness testimony. To me, all of that raises a lot of flags. I think Ms. Damoff's amendment makes a lot of sense, to make sure that we can get the report done and move forward.
Also, Mr. Van Bynen raised a really important question, which is whether there are other sources for this information. Like I said earlier, since I don't really know what this information is, it's very difficult to answer that question. When I say “what this information is”, I mean what this information is that's in these reports that supposedly exist.
In the absence of understanding what's in these reports, I dug through some documents and some publicly available sources of information. I thought it would be useful that I share some of the information, and maybe Mr. Ruff can comment. He can choose not to—it's up to him.
In his motion, he requested these after-action review reports with respect to the evacuation of Kabul in August 2021. Mr. Van Bynen was asking whether there might be sources of information that we could tap into that might allow us to answer some of the things or provide some of the information that would be in these reports. So I looked through some public sources that might have some of the information that Mr. Ruff is looking for, and I want to lay some of that out here. When I'm done, maybe Mr. Ruff can tell us whether this is some of what he was looking for.
I found a sort of timeline of some of the key events leading up to August 2021. For example we know that on February 29, 2020, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an agreement that set the terms for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021—but they didn't release the information that set the conditions for the U.S. withdrawal. At the time of the agreement, the U.S. had about 13,000 troops in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General. The withdrawal of U.S. troops was contingent on the Taliban's action against al Qaeda and other terrorists who could threaten us, President Trump is reported to have said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The pact included the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters who were held prisoner by the Afghan government, which was not, of course, a party to that agreement. That was on February 29, 2020.
On March 1, 2020, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani objected to a provision in the agreement that would require his country to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners. He said: “Freeing Taliban prisoners is not [under] the authority of America but the authority of the Afghan government. There has been no commitment for the release of 5,000 prisoners.” That was on March 1, 2020.
On March 4, 2020, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, told the Senate armed services committee that the Taliban pledged, in a classified document, not to attack U.S. troops and coalition forces or launch what he called “high-profile attacks”, including in Afghanistan's 34 provincial capitals. He went on to say that the Taliban had signed up to a whole series of conditions and that all of the members of Congress had all of the documents associated with the agreement. Despite that agreement, the Taliban attacked Afghan forces in Helmand province and the U.S. responded with an air strike. That was on March 4, 2020.
On March 10, 2020, under pressure from the U.S., President Ghani ordered the release of 1,500 Taliban prisoners.
This is just for context. Originally the agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban was for 5,000. The Government of Afghanistan released 1,500, but they were also releasing them at a rate of about 100 per day.
On May 19, 2020, in releasing its quarterly report on Afghanistan, the Department of Defense inspector general's office said that the U.S. cut troop levels in Afghanistan by more than 4,000 “even though the Taliban escalated violence further after signing the agreement”. It went on to say that “U.S. officials stated the Taliban must reduce violence as a necessary condition for continued U.S. reduction in forces and that remaining high levels of violence could jeopardize the U.S.-Taliban agreement.”
That is according to the report, which covered the activity from January 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020. It went on to say, “Even still, the United States began to reduce its forces in Afghanistan from roughly 13,000 to 8,600.” That was on May 19, 2020.
On August 18, 2020—
