The Afghan Evacuation: America Is Now Living with the Consequences

From Kabul’s Chaos to Homeland Vulnerabilities Today

The evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021 is one of the most significant national security failures in modern American history. Many of us who spent our careers in the federal law enforcement, intelligence, and counterterrorism world warned that the decisions made during that rushed withdrawal would come back to haunt us. Now those consequences have arrived, and this is only the beginning.

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Americans deserve to understand exactly what happened at Hamid Karzai International Airport and why the choices made under intense political pressure created long term risks to the homeland. What took place was not a controlled evacuation. It was a chaotic and accelerated process that forced the vetting system to collapse under its own weight.

I am in no way pointing fingers at the military personnel, the government civilians and several private groups who were on the ground carrying out the mission. They did the best job humanly possible while facing an almost impossible situation. We should also remember the thirteen service members who gave their lives during that evacuation. When you serve in the military or the government, your duty is to execute the mission regardless of who is in charge. The truth is that our brothers and sisters were not set up for success by the senior political appointees and elected officials who made the decisions that shaped this operation.

A System Built for Caution Forced into a Collapse

During the final days of the withdrawal, the United States evacuated more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan. Of that number, approximately 85,000 Afghan nationals were brought into the United States under humanitarian parole and Operation Allies Welcome (OAW).

The American public has been led to believe that these individuals were all interpreters, partners, or personnel who directly supported or worked the United States. That belief is false.

Many of the evacuees had never worked for the U.S. government in any capacity. Many had no documents at all. Some had only fragments of identification or unverifiable information. Under normal conditions, an Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicant would go through a process that takes more than a year and involves extensive background checks, in person interviews, and multi-agency verification.

At HKIA, that cautious system was reduced to a frantic process that lasted minutes. The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General later confirmed that evacuees were admitted with incomplete names, unverifiable dates of birth, missing documentation, and inconsistent biographical information. The safeguards that were created to prevent another September 11 style failure simply could not function.

Pressure From the Top Changed Everything

There has been debate about who is responsible for the catastrophic breakdown of the vetting system, but the pattern is clear. Pressure came from the White House and the National Security Council (NSC) to move faster, increase numbers, and avoid any delay that might stop the evacuation flow.

Senior officials publicly acknowledged waiving in person interviews for evacuees because the interviews could not be conducted during the collapse. Personnel on the ground described nonstop demands to speed up processing and increase throughput. Movement became the priority. Certainty, accountability, and verification were pushed aside. Several government officials even admitted that flying half-empty planes back to the United States would “look bad,” and the optics took priority over properly vetting and evacuating the right people. These decisions were made despite knowing the risks. Now the country is dealing with the consequences in the most predictable way.

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The Washington Attack Was a Warning of What Is Coming

On November 26, 2025, the United States saw the first deadly incident tied directly to the Afghan evacuation. A 20-year-old Army National Guard soldier was senselessly murdered and another soldier was seriously wounded in Washington, D.C.

The attacker was Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan evacuee brought into the United States through the HKIA pipeline. He previously worked for the CIA in Afghanistan.

Joe Kent, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), addressed this directly:

“Yes, he was vetted, but he was vetted to fight the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS in Afghanistan.
He was NOT vetted for living in American neighborhoods, integrating into our communities, or becoming a future citizen.”

This distinction matters. Screening someone as a battlefield partner is not the same as vetting someone who will live among American civilians.

Here is the detail the media glosses over. Whatever the investigation ultimately reveals, it is not a coincidence that Lakanwal’s half-brother was an Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) recruiter who was killed in a targeted operation in 2022 in Nangarhar Province, which is one of the most ISIS saturated regions in Afghanistan. That detail alone should have triggered immediate concern long before he was released into the country.

The Border Crisis Added Fuel to an Already Dangerous Fire

The Afghan evacuation did not happen in isolation. It took place at the same time the United States was experiencing historic levels of illegal border crossings. Border Patrol agents were overwhelmed. The asylum system was overloaded. The intelligence community was stretched thin.

These failures collided in a way that created the largest national security vulnerability we have seen in decades.

You cannot have historic illegal border crossings, an overwhelmed asylum system, rushed Afghan evacuations, waived interviews, missing documentation, and politically driven timelines and still expect that hostile actors did not slip through.

Risk does not disappear because officials want to move faster. Risk grows when discipline collapses.

Experience at Fort Pickett

During the evacuation, I was assigned to Fort Pickett, VA, which housed the largest concentration of Afghan refugees brought into the United States. Every morning when I arrived at the gate, I saw the same sight. A line of six or more Ubers sat waiting outside the front gate. Refugees simply walked off the installation, got into these vehicles, and left as they pleased with no accountability or tracking. Many never came back. No one knows where they went. We still have no idea today.

This was not an isolated event. It was the direct result of a system that had abandoned structure and accountability under political pressure.

The United States admitted people with unverifiable histories, no documentation, ties to hostile networks and terrorist organizations, family connections to ISIS, al Qaeda and Taliban factions, and individuals screened in minutes instead of months. The outcome we just saw in Washington was entirely predictable.

Every professional in this field understood that this was inevitable. The only unanswered question was when the first attack would occur.

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What Must Happen Now

The country can continue pretending the system worked, or we can accept that America now faces long term security challenges created by the decisions made during the evacuation. The path forward is clear and necessary.

Protecting the United States now requires restoring in person interviews for all parolees and asylum applicants, re screening the entire Afghan evacuee population with full intelligence community support, removing individuals with hostile ties or unverifiable identities, strengthening border security and interior enforcement, ending politically driven vetting shortcuts, and rebuilding the counterterrorism posture that kept the country safe for more than twenty years.

We also know that a large-scale terrorist attack against the homeland is already planned, yet many in the government refuse to acknowledge that the plot even exists. How many more innocent people have to die before we change course? If we fail to act, thousands of men just like Lakanwal are already here, waiting for their moment. This is not political rhetoric. This is national survival.

Stay safe and stay capable,
Ryan Geho

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