Gold Star families at Abbey Gate still mourn as anger towards Biden persists.
Thirteen Families Still Seek Answers and Accountability Two Years After Tragic Kabul Bombing
Exactly two years ago, 13 United States troops were killed in a tragic suicide bombing in Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal of Afghanistan, and while families continue to grieve, some are “pissed off” and are dismayed they still haven’t had answers from the Biden administration.
Thirteen families, all with different backgrounds living in cities across the country, have a trauma bond that connects them: they lost a son, brother, daughter, or sister on August 26, 2021, when a suicide bomber killed them, and nearly 200 people total in Afghanistan. The bombing occurred at Abbey Gate, one of the perimeter entrances to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, while U.S. troops were sifting through thousands of Afghans swarming the gates, hoping to get evacuated instead of living under a new Taliban regime that quickly overthrew the U.S.-backed government and its military.
Heartbreaking Loss and Frustration
The U.S. service members, ranging in age from 20-31, were the last of the roughly 2,448 military casualties of a war that spanned nearly the entirety of their lifetimes.
- Hoover, 31
- Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25
- Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23
- Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22
- Cpl. Daegan Page, 23
- Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, 22
- Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20
- Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20
- Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20
- Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, 20
- Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20
- Navy hospital-man Maxton Soviak, 22
- Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Christian Knauss, 23
Multiple parents of the service members described the profound loss of having to bury a child while also portraying a dueling frustration toward the people whom they believe are responsible for their loss — military leaders and ultimately President Joe Biden — and their perceived lack of accountability for the decisions that led up to the bombing.
“It never gets easier,” Cheryl Rex, the mother of Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola told the Washington Examiner. “Every day is a struggle. But every birthday, every holiday, it just feels like it hits all over again.”
Rex wanted Merola to attend college, but his mind was already made up — he wanted to join the Marines and did so at 17 years old, which required her to sign the paperwork for his enlistment. Similarly, Paula Knauss Selph, the mother of Knauss, said her son wanted to enlist at 17 and warned that if she didn’t sign the paperwork, he could seek emancipation from them.
“Mom, listen, this recruiter told me you don’t sign these papers for me to go in early that I can divorce you,” Selph told the Washington Examiner, relaying the conversation with her son. ”He said, ’I don’t want to do that, Mom, but this recruiter divorced his mom to get in early. I don’t want to do that unless it —,’ and I started laughing, and I looked at Ryan and said, ‘You would divorce me as your mother?’ And He was like, ‘Well, Mom, I don’t want to do that. But this recruiter told me that’s what I got to do. I’m gonna sign on early like he did.’ So, we sat back down at the table. We signed the papers. I was like, Ryan, you were born to do this.”
Seeking Answers and Accountability
The State Department released a 21-page After Action Review focusing on the Biden administration’s final months in Afghanistan in July, which praised both embassy officials and U.S. troops for their role in what ultimately became the largest noncombatant evacuation operation in history but also acknowledged the department’s shortcomings, including not being ready for worst-case scenarios.
“With this being the second [anniversary], I think the first one, we were still in a state of mourning, I guess, would be a good way to put it. And we still are, don’t get me wrong,” Darin Hoover, the father of Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, told the Washington Examiner. “This one now, that has come up, and we’ve not gotten anything from the administration or anything from the Department of Defense, or from the Marine Corps or the State Department. It’s to the point now where we’re pissed off. And we want the answers. You know, he gave his life for this country. And he loved his country.”
Details from the declassified after-action review of the Afghanistan NEO from U.S. Central Command revealed that the Taliban, which was aiding U.S. troops at the airport by providing the outer layer of security, did not conduct an assault on a building the U.S. suspected was where ISIS-K members were staging the bombing. Additionally, Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews emotionally recounted the bombing, in which he lost an arm and a leg, stating that he had identified a suspect he still believes to be the bomber beforehand but was not given the green light by his superiors to take out the threat.
“At this point today, I am so mad because they have not one chance but two chances to put the ISIS-K bomber, the guy that had the bomb, twice, and they didn’t do anything,” Coral Briseno, the mother of Humberto Sanchez, told the Washington Examiner. “They have better options to get the troops out of the country, and they chose the worst, so I just feel that the military or government never cared [about] our kids.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul asked Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this month to make Lieutenant Colonel Brad Whited, Vargas-Andrews’ commanding officer who did not provide his underling with the green light to engage with the suspected would-be bomber, available for a transcribed interview.
The ISIS-K terrorist who conducted the bombing, Abdul Rahman al Logari, had been arrested in India before being able to carry out an attack there, and he subsequently was brought to the Parwan prison at Bagram air base to serve his sentence. The Taliban freed him and thousands of other terrorists in the Parwan and Pul-e Charki prisons when they overpowered the Afghan military and overthrew the Afghan government in mid-August.
There are somewhat competing narratives, one from the families who feel the administration has hidden information and evaded accountability, and one from the administration.
“The President and the first lady continue to grieve with all the Gold Star families, and especially those who were killed in that terrible day at Abbey Gate,” National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said earlier this month. “There’s not a day that goes by that he and the first lady aren’t thinking about them, mourning with them, and understanding the loss and the sacrifice and the anguish that they’re still feeling.”
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