How a ‘rapid withdrawal’ from Afghanistan is logistically possible
November 30, 2020
Written by
Gil Barndollar
Like many of Donald Trump’s tweets, the president’s October 7 declaration on withdrawing from Afghanistan was swiftly dismissed by most observers.
While Trump initiated a substantial drawdown — 2,000 troops before his term is up— the goal of a full withdrawal was attacked across the political spectrum. News anchors and senators raised the specter of Saigon and helicopters on rooftops. Trump’s own national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, publicly described his boss’s diktat as aspirational. But could the United States bring all its troops in Afghanistan home by Christmas?
Past pullouts, such as the 2013–2014 withdrawal of U.S. Marines from Helmand Province, were a lengthy and deliberate process run by units like R4OG, the Redeployment and Retrograde in Support of Reset and Reconstitution Operations Group. Tens of thousands of principal end items (vehicles, weapons, and other significant gear) were pulled back to major bases, cleaned, inventoried, and either shipped back to the United States or destroyed. From 2012 to 2014, the Marine Corps alone sent home well over one billion dollars of equipment. Tens of thousands of other items, from Humvees to hammocks, were given to Afghan security forces, as were 50 miles of bottled water. Sprawling Hesco hubs like Camp Leatherneck, once a garrison city of nearly 30,000 inhabitants, were rapidly shrunk before being turned over to Afghan soldiers.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/11/30/how-a-rapid-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-is-logistically-possible/
