Blinken says he ordered reviews of State Dept's evacuation efforts out of Afghanistan

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on Wednesday that he has ordered a series of internal reviews of the State Department's planning and execution of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan and the relocation efforts, operations that were widely criticized as chaotic.

The United States' two decades-long occupation of Afghanistan culminated in a hastily organized airlift in August in which more than 124,000 civilians including Americans, Afghans and others were evacuated as the Taliban took over. But thousands of other U.S.-allied Afghans at risk of Taliban persecution were left behind.

In a speech unveiling new steps to modernize the State Department, Blinken praised the evacuation operation but also said the agency needs to learn from this experience and do better if a similar scenario presents itself in the future.

"There are many things that now, looking back, we can and should ask, 'Could we have done things differently?' 'Could we have taken that step differently?' 'Should we have tried that idea first?' 'Could we have gotten to that decision more quickly?'," Blinken said in the speech at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, attended by lawmakers, diplomats and others.

Reuters and other media outlets reported last week that the State Department's inspector general will review the end of the Biden administration's diplomatic operations in Afghanistan, including the emergency evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

The department's acting inspector general will also look into its Special Immigrant Visa program, the processing of Afghans for admission as refugees, and their resettlement in the United States.

Blinken did not give details about what precise steps of the evacuation and relocation would be reviewed.

"Now we owe it to ourselves, to our Afghan friends and partners, and to the future State Department employees who might find themselves facing a similar challenge one day to capture all that we learned, to study it, to apply it, to preserve it in a way that it enhances our future planning and helps us prepare better for future contingencies," he said.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)