The American general, who was photographed as the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan, has seen a promotion blocked by only one Republican senator, several media reports.

The move comes amid separate reports that the incoming Trump administration is considering courts-martial for crimes such as treason for officers involved in the evacuation.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, 55, is Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the US military in Europe. On Thursday, his name was missing from a list of nearly 1,000 promotions approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, the senator who reportedly put a “hold” on Donahue’s promotion, did not comment. Citing a Senate aide, Military.com said Donald Trump’s transition team had requested the move.

A Pentagon spokesperson said: “Lieutenant General Donahue is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and has served his country for more than thirty years.

“His appointment comes at an extremely critical time in the European region. We urge the Senate to confirm all of our highly qualified nominees. Holding on to our nominees undermines our military readiness.”

The US withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, just under two decades after the invasion in response to the September 11 terror attacks. The withdrawal proved costly: a US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, while a suicide bomb at Kabul airport killed 13 Americans and more than 170 Afghans.

At the very end of the operation, Donahue was seen in a photo taken through night vision goggles, boarding the last plane. When he commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, he was a highly decorated two-star general. The promotion now in Washington would earn him a fourth star, the highest rank in the military in peacetime.

Mullin, 47, is a former plumber and cage fighter who joined Congress in 2013 and won a seat in the Senate in 2022. He was a famously combative man, but in September 2021 he caused controversy by attempting to enter Afghanistan on a private mission to rescue American citizens and Afghans who were working. with the US as Taliban forces advanced.

“I’m not Rambo,” Mullin said with emotion. ‘I never pretended to be Rambo… I’m the low man on the totem pole. And I understood that.”

He added: “Did we help get Americans out of Afghanistan? Yes… Am I extremely disappointed in the way we (the US) have left the Americans behind? … That would be an understatement.”

Trump initiated the American evacuation. In February 2020, his government and the Taliban agreed that US troops would leave on May 1 the following year. After losing the 2020 election to Biden, Trump ordered the rapid withdrawal of all troops, but this was blocked by senior officials. Instead, the US began to rapidly reduce its presence.

In April 2021, Biden announced that all US troops would leave Afghanistan by September 11 of that year, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. Citing Trump’s deal with the Taliban, he said: “We will not rush to the exit. We will do it in a responsible, conscious and safe manner.”

Trump initially sought credit for starting “the move out of Afghanistan,” but changed his tune after the evacuation proved chaotic. At home, amid the controversy over the Kabul airport bombing and Biden’s interactions with grieving families, the withdrawal became a political football.

Although a U.S. Central Command investigation found the bombing was unpreventable, Trump used the third anniversary of the attack this year to claim he would have overseen a withdrawal “with dignity and vigor.” He also accused Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice president who became Trump’s rival for the White House, of overseeing “the most embarrassing day in our country’s history” and “the collapse of American credibility and respect.” all over the world’. .

Pete Hegseth, the military veteran and Fox News host whom Trump nominated for secretary of defense, has called the withdrawal from Afghanistan a “humiliating withdrawal” and accused the generals who oversaw it of lying, mismanagement, violating their oaths and “disgracing our troops and our nation.”

News of Mullin’s block on promotion for Lt. Gen. Donahue caused an uproar in Washington, especially given a recent NBC report that said Trump’s transition staff was taking “very serious” steps toward “creating a committee to review the withdrawal to investigate”.

Such steps, NBC said, include “gathering information about who was directly involved in decision-making for the military, how it was carried out and whether military leaders could face charges as serious as treason.”

That echoed pre-election comments from Mark Milley, the retired Army general who was Trump’s last chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As author Bob Woodward reports, Milley fears that now that Trump is back in power, retired senior military officers could be called back into uniform to face court-martial.