mr. scott is recognized. thank you, mr. chairman and gentlemen i need your help fairly immediately on two issues. one of which can t be discussed in this setting but the other one can. there are 145 afghan air force personnel in it is now september 29th. we need to get them out of that country. people who trained and fought with us and did everything we asked of them and we have got no assistance at all from the state department. to move them. i m asking all three of you for your help in addressing the issue. secretary austin, we need the help. acknowledged, sir. and we will get with state right away to see if we can
was suicide bomber i ll take your question for the record. thank you, mr. chair. i don t see eye-to-eye with many generals and certainly general milley and i have had disagreements. i think what was said earlier was accuse a member of the military they would tip off our opposition in any way and i would like to give general milley an opportunity to respond to that if he wants. if not i ll continue with my questions. as i said up front i won t tip off any enemy to what the united states is going to do with an actual plan. i m trying to persuade an add ver si sear that s heavily arm and clearly according to intelligence reports nervous about our behavior and what was happening inside the country. they thought president trump would launch an attack. i knew he wasn t. going to do that.
president trump relaxed rules of engagement for air strikes and there was a massive increase in civilian casualties. a 330% increase during trump s administration. compared to the previous 10 years there was a 95% increase in civilian deaths from 2017 to 2019. it was then president trump who add in 2018 ordered talks with the taliban without the afghan leadership and in february 2020 when that formal agreement was made. now, chairman milley, you identified the taliban as a terrorist organization. can you tell us anything about former president trump s intent to invite the taliban leadership to the united states or to camp david specifically? i have no personal knowledge of that invitation.
and we can also argue that the exit from the withdrawal was less than perfect. i certainly can say that i supported the trump administration and the biden administration in its goal to withdraw from afghanistan. but again, it has been less than perfect. and so for me i just want to shed a little bit of light and refresh some of the memory on some of the numbers going back a little ways. so general milley, i want to make sure that i understand our troop levels since the doha agreement that was reached with the terrorist taliban, signed by president trump between february 2020, when the agreement with the taliban was signed, to january 2021, and how many troops did the united
states withdraw from afghanistan how many troops were withdrawn from january 2017 to january 2021? 12,600 u.s. troops when the doha agreement was signed on that day. repeat that again. 12,600 u.s. troops on 29, february, 2020 with 8,000 nato and 10,500 contractors. the contractors are particularly important here. with respect to inauguration day i show 3500 u.s. troops, the 2500 advisors and some additional enablers there, 3500 u.s. troops on 20 january, 5400 nato, and 6300 contractors in afghanistan on that day. thank you. i only draw attention to that to show the withdrawal that started many years before. secretary austin and secretary