The U.S. department of war has announced, marking the fifth anniversary of the deadly ISIS attack at the “Abbey Gate” of Kabul International Airport, that a special task force tasked with reviewing the incident has uncovered classified and significant documents that had not previously been disclosed.
Sean Parnell, a senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary of War, said on Wednesday on social media that the investigative team discovered the documents in locations where, according to him, they had been deliberately kept in order to prevent their disclosure.
Parnell said that an examination of the documents revealed “why and who had tried to keep these records hidden.” He did not provide further details about their contents but emphasized that the investigation remains ongoing.
On August 26, 2021, during the operation to evacuate foreign forces from Afghanistan, an ISIS-K suicide bomber carried out an attack near the Abbey Gate of Kabul International Airport. The attack killed 13 U.S. service members and approximately 170 Afghan civilians.
Parnell said the fact-finding task force would pursue the evidence as far as possible and seek complete and impartial answers regarding the decisions that contributed to the circumstances leading to the attack.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced last year, on the fourth anniversary of the attack, that Sean Parnell would lead the special task force reviewing the incident. At the time, Hegseth said that the victims’ families and the American public had a right to know what happened in Afghanistan and that the military should be held accountable.
The decision to establish the task force came after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted a supplementary assessment of the initial investigation into the attack in April 2024.
That assessment concluded that the attacker was a member of ISIS-K and that the findings of the initial investigation were accurate; however, it determined that preventing the attack at the tactical level had not been possible.
U.S. officials have not yet announced a specific date for the completion of the special task force’s investigation. However, they say that the victims’ families and the public deserve a complete account of the circumstances and reasoning behind the decisions made before the deadly attack occurred.
Writer:Saeed Sameer
