The Daily - The End of America’s 20-Year War

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

After a 20-year war, the United States has effectively ended its operations in Afghanistan with little fanfare.In recent weeks, the Americans have quietly vacated their sprawling military bases in the nation, and without giving Afghan security forces prior notice.What does this withdrawal look like on the ground?Guest: Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a correspondent in the Kabul bureau for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: The Americans have handed over Bagram Air Base — once the military’s nerve center — to the Afghans, effectively ending operations.Just a mile from the base, where U.S. forces departed on Thursday, shops sell items left over from two decades of fighting. Each one tells a story.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Over the past few weeks, United States military forces in Afghanistan have quietly abandoned their military bases across the country, signaling the end of America's 20-year war there. signaling the end of America's 20-year war there. My colleague, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, has been reporting on what it actually looks like as the U.S. leaves. It's Thursday, July 8th.

Is that a helicopter, by the way? Yeah. It's the way? Yeah. It's pretty loud. Yeah. Do you hear that all throughout the day and night? Yeah, well, the Americans are supposed to not fly from, like, 9 at night till 8 in the morning, but they've thrown that out the window with the withdrawal. So, yeah, it's pretty much—I sleep through it.

But, yeah, we're right underneath the flight path to the embassy. Right. I guess it's, like, white noise at this point. Yeah. Well, Tim, what exactly is the state of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which you just hinted at, at this point? Right. So the state of the withdrawal at this moment is that it's almost complete. But looking at this moment and how we got here, I mean, the question is, what does the end of a nearly 20-year-old war look like?

I'm now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth. You know, in mid-April, President Biden announced that all American forces or the war effort would end by September 11th. President Biden ordered U.S. troops to begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan starting today. After 20 years, U.S. and NATO are aiming to withdraw thousands of troops by the end of the summer. Ending America's longest war. Now, what that's looked like since then has kind of been this moving target.

I think it's a question that everybody asks, what does the end look like? The U.S. is leaving very, very quietly. All of the troop movements are practically state secrets. It was such a lack of transparency on the American military side. And increasingly since the beginning, of transparency on the American military side. And increasingly since the beginning, the press has been monitoring the closure of these bases across the country. With little fanfare, the massive air base that served as the anchor of America's two

decade long war is now in Afghan control. Bagram Airfield, once home to 38,000 U.S. troops, now nearly abandoned. The fighter jets gone, nearly everything gone. Closures of these bases that have names, Bagram, Dwyer, Kandahar, Airfield, that resonate with the hundreds of thousands of troops that have rotated through here. They're little mini cities where lives transpired, people died and were shipped home. These base closures is how much of the American public is charting this withdrawal, this end that Biden set out to accomplish by September 11th. Well, what does it actually mean for the U.S. to walk away from a base? What does it look like?

Well, what does it actually mean for the U.S. to walk away from a base? What does it look like? So I visited one base in Helmand Province about two weeks after the Americans had left or handed it over to the Afghan security forces. So this base is called Camp Shorab. It's kind of this little base that sprouted up in the last few years as the Americans tried to recommit forces to advising the Afghan security forces, specifically the army. And Tim, you're a former Marine before you were a Times journalist. You served in the U.S. military and were in Afghanistan.

We've talked to you about that in the past. So I assume that you've perhaps spent time at a base like this one? I did. So I spent time there in 2008 and 2009 when I was a Marine. Mark, Dave, say hi to the camera. I'm doing it. What's going on? Here we go.

More tots and tents. There's the post over there. When I first showed up in Afghanistan as a Marine, it's not that we were staying in a city or a town. We were staying at these installations, which kind of became our homes. That's Mills' dinner. Mills, put it in your mouth. Put it in your mouth. Put it in your mouth. Oh, yeah. And it's kind of, for me, it was all these different moments

of my, I guess, young adulthood, especially in the beginning. Here's my rack, my radio, my M-16s over there. And that's about it. Until next time. And my first encounter was this kind of barren installation that was getting larger as the war effort grew. And when you say larger, how large did your base get? As far as the mileage, I mean, I think you could run around the perimeter a couple times and it'll equal 10 miles.

I mean, to me, in my head, it's, you know, these sprawling tan structures and fireproof tents and post exchanges and motor pools and helicopter pads and landing strips, you know, all bustling. This is right as Obama started his big surge. So it was this high of activity and launching from the base were airstrikes and medical evacuation missions. How many people do you think were on a base like that in its heyday? I mean, well over 10,000, I would assume, with contractors and the troops rotating in and out. So what you're describing very much sounds like a miniature city.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what these places were. They had mess halls and chow halls and internet centers and phone centers and post exchanges where you can buy energy drinks and little tchotchkes to send home to your mom if you wanted to pay the postage. And I spent Christmas there. And in 2009, we had stockings from the USO up over our cots. It just kind of felt like this different universe that we'd kind of walked into this, I mean, the heart of a war, I guess.

So let's talk about what it looked like when you returned a few weeks ago after the US had left this base. When you walked in, what did it look like? So we walked in where there was a couple Afghan soldiers guarding the gate, and they let us in. And it was the base kind of as I had remembered it from a few years ago. There was the motor pool. There was some vehicles that the Americans had left behind, There were some vehicles that the Americans had left behind, off-road ATVs. I think there was a Land Cruiser. And walking around, I kind of just felt like at any moment somebody would open a door and they would pop out in uniform going from A to B.

But it was totally quiet. The outdoor gym was still, you know, there was dust over it at this point, but there's still weights on the weight racks. All the first aid equipment was still there in case there was a rocket strike. There was little engravings on the tables. The porta potties were still there, soap in the soap dispenser. And then we walked to the barracks or these living quarters, I guess they're called container housing units, these boxes, and walking in there, the bed frames were upturned, stickers had been scraped off the walls, but there was some evidence of who had lived there

just by how it smelled. What do you mean? One room smelled like Axe body spray, the other room smelled like someone smoked a lot. You know, it was almost as if it was still warm. It felt like they had left but were coming back. One of the last places we went to in the base, you know, I had wanted to see the chow hall

because I had sat there as a reporter in 2016 and in 2017 talking with soldiers and Marines and you know inside inside the mess hall that was that was unlocked it was one of the few buildings that wasn't locked the lights were off and we couldn't find a way to turn them on so we had our headlamps that we turned on and, you know, it said, Shorab, DFAC, dining facility. And it was like today's menus. And there were just these empty little folder holders where the menus would have been. You know, we went to the freezers that were still cold. The Americans had left enough fuel in the generators to keep the food from going bad.

So the Afghan troops could take the food, you know, the fuel for the American military, you know, sodas and pies and cookies that were really good and mozzarella sticks that I had a hankering for. And as we walked through, you know, the serving stations were wrapped in saran wrap and the lights kind of reflected on it. And it just felt post-apocalyptic. You know, the end of a movie, you know, this idea that this is it. You know, this is the war, kind of saran wrapped in an empty, dark dining facility.

Hmm. It's very ghostly. Yeah. I I mean it felt it felt kind of haunting I mean we're always looking I think right I'm a reporter I'm a veteran like we always look especially now at the end of it you're kind of looking for these moments that

can say this is the end you know like an open casket funeral I guess to say goodbye and I think definitely that dining facility will be logged as one of those memories. Well, I want you to say more about that. I mean, what did it mean to you, particularly as a former Marine who served in this war,

to see a base in this, as you said, post-apocalyptic state, just kind of frozen in place, no longer said, post-apocalyptic state? Just kind of frozen in place, no longer occupied by your fellow soldiers. Yeah, I mean, it was an outer body experience, right? Experiencing something that is so simple, like a saran wrap serving station, an empty defect menu, a clock on the wall,

and knowing that you're experiencing something that you'll have to process for a long time. I mean, that's kind of FNSN. It's the Hotel California you can check out, but you can't ever leave. You go through these very chaotic moments, I guess, in my early 20s. And then to link that to the present, you know, is important, right? Like, this is what the end looks like. You remember the middle and maybe the beginning. But now you have this moment where you can kind of close it out. So selfishly, I mean, I think it was really important for me. I mean, I think it was really important for me. Tim, you said earlier that the Afghans now control these bases. And I wonder what that handover looks like and what now happens to these bases.

Right. I mean, the handover of these bases has been kind of a mystery. You know, for some of the larger bases, they were handed over in the middle of the night. And it seems with a lack of complete coordination with the Afghan security forces, the American military would push back and say this has been extremely well coordinated. But at the heart of it, the Americans and, you know, quote unquote, operational security concerns seemed inclined to not give the Afghan security forces their exact time of departure because there's a fear of, you know, some kind of attack or insider attack or someone in the security forces might leak something to the Taliban or a disgruntled soldier, Afghan soldier, would fire on the Americans. So I think it's played out a little disjointedly as far as that's concerned. Right. And it sounds like these transfers are happening with no ceremony and no fanfare and some level of distrust for the people who are taking it over. And I have to say, although this was personally

powerful for you to see as a veteran of the war, it all feels very anticlimactic, the end of these bases after a 20-year war, after all the blood and treasure that was devoted to it, to have such a rushed, disjointed, as you said, middle-of-the-night handover of these bases from the U.S. to the Afghan forces. Right. And anti-climatic is the word to use. I mean, the fact that this is kind of just quietly happening and the press has to kind of rush and find out that it happened to write their story or, you know, to use it as a mile marker or a monument to, to the war. I mean, it is, is really underwhelming. I mean, I've, you know, seen friend on Facebook kind of asking,

well, when, when is anyone going to talk about this? When is anyone going to come out and say what this was supposed to mean? Right. Because at the end of the day, I don't think anyone in Washington or in the military here really knows how to answer, how does Because at the end of the day, I don't think anyone in Washington or in the military here really knows how to answer, how does it end? So they just leave and one base closes after another and a press release goes out with, you know, 50% of the withdrawal is complete, 90% of the withdrawal is complete because no one's been able to answer that question. no one's been able to answer that question. I mean, everyone's kind of wrestling, myself included,

what that looks like or how that's supposed to feel. And I think the closest they've been getting is these closures of these bases that have kind of become monuments to the war itself. Because that's something you could point to. It's something concrete. We'll be right back. We've been talking about the experience of these base closures for the American forces. I wonder how this is all sitting with the Afghan people, the U.S. leaving these giant installations that have become fixtures in their lives as well. Right, and that's a question that I've had for some time,

and I think one of the better examples of that handover would be Bagram Airfield, right? That was the Americans' biggest base, you know, twin runway, where basically it was the anchor of the American war effort. And I wanted to see, you know, how this base closing

would affect the local communities. So last week, I went up to Bagram Air Base right before it closed, and I talked to people around the base to see how they felt about it closing. Tim, I wonder if you can describe the scene that you found outside of Bagram Air Base. So to describe the scene outside of Bagram,

you kind of have to understand the air base itself, right? And it was built in the 1950s as an airstrip that the Soviets turned into their hub for their war when they invaded in 1979. And then in 2001, when the Americans arrived, it was run down, kind of just the remains of a Soviet airbase. And throughout the years until the height of the war, I mean, the Americans built it up. They built another airstrip. There was a prison there that was extremely notorious. Two inmates died.

And by the height of the war, I mean, there were tens of thousands of people there. There were pizza huts, shopettes, post exchanges. I mean, it was very much a city. And as the base grew, the town around it kind of fed off it. There was a local economy that was based off of the scraps and trash that came off the base. And there were people from the town who worked on the base as contractors who would commute every day from their homes and line up at the gate early in the morning and then walk on. And on the base, they would do odd jobs, laundry, maintenance, you name it. And then in

2014, as the base started to shrink, as American forces and international forces began to leave, these contractors were fired, less stuff came off the base, less scrap, less material. So by the time that I visited last week, it was very much the end of that chapter. So we've just arrived outside the gates of Bagram Airfield. It's the largest U.S. base still in the country.

It's the last base. We had visited this row of shops, these brick and steel door, I guess it's really a shopping mall called the Bagram Shops. We're here, there's lines of shops. People are kind of going about their day as if the Americans are still here. But on the other side of the walls, there's barely anything left. So, I mean, looking into these stores, I mean, the best way to describe it is you're kind of looking at the cross between a pharmacy and a Humvee trailer. What else? Yeah, a turn kit, da-da-da, trauma shears,

little pouches. I mean, they have bathing supplies, shampoo, they have food and energy drinks, mostly snacks, you know, little desk fans. I mean, just imagine an office and everything in your office as you move out that you don't really want or you're not going to take home. What else? Oh, where did you get these little plaques from?

That's kind of what a big chunk of this inventory is, on top of the miscellaneous things that just seem really random, whether it's a tourniquet, you know, a tourniquet or a pair of trauma shears. What's a meal? Ready to eat? What flavor is it? A military backpack, a lone energy drink, what have you. But like, who is the clientele for everything you're describing? Tourniquets, trauma shears, and also energy drinks and snacks? Is that U.S. soldiers? Is that local Afghan people? Who are these stores for? It's whoever, you know, maybe people come from Kabul, you know, from nearby towns to buy these

things that you can't really find anywhere else. Doctors or local shops or stores or, you know, what have you that needs one of these items. It's just kind of this random grab bag of things that maybe you and I wouldn't think you'd ever need, but someone around the town of Bagram would at some point. And so what did these shopkeepers say would become of their businesses once Bagram closed, given how reliant they obviously are on the base? So I walked down this row of shops with another reporter, Fatima Faizi, and we talked to kind of one after another as we came up to the doors and poked our head in.

How's business been? One owner said, you know, business is getting worse by the day and that, you know, the Bagram shops are going to have to be closed. Has business been good lately? Another said, you know, business was fine because more people were coming, because the Americans were leaving and there was more inventory. But, you know, once that goes, he might have to close.

Is he going to leave Bagram? So maybe I go to Charlie Carr in the center of Parwan and start a new job. And then, you know, one older gentleman who got very hesitant when I took out my phone to record and didn't want to use his name. You know, I had asked, he had a piece of body armor in his inventory. And he said something along the lines of, I'm not selling this anymore. This is for me, paraphrasing, because tomorrow there's going to be a war. Right. Just very hesitant and afraid, you know, that the Taliban were getting closer and closer to Bagram and that he was going to have to use these things that were on the base

to defend himself and his family. And how he conveyed that was hostile. He didn't know that I was American, but he felt like he was talking to someone who kind of represented the base that I had put him in this situation. I think that kind of spoke to most of these shopkeepers that there was just this sense of betrayal, right? That the Americans had left this puzzle, these 20 years of war without any resolution. The Taliban still running around the countryside, civilians dying from airstrikes. Nothing had really changed in the last 20 years except the Americans were leaving. That was the feeling, whether that's the reality or not. I mean, you could debate that for

hours, but that was definitely how these shopkeepers felt. Is he worried about having to fight the Taliban soon? Yes, we have to. If they can occupy our land, yes, we have to pick up guns and fight it. And this is going to happen. There's this distinct fear of the Taliban returning. You know, they're within 50 miles of Bagram and getting closer as they advance across the north

and other parts of the country. But they're not just afraid of the Taliban, right? This idea that keeps getting floated around of another civil war. I mean, you could argue that Afghanistan has been in some degree of a civil war for the last 40 years. But as the Taliban get closer and everybody starts picking up weapons, it's impossible to tell who's the good and the bad, who's taking out a local feud on someone or not, or what have you. So, I mean, this idea of militias rising up, of being threatened not just by the Taliban and the government,

but maybe by your neighbor, is very real. Well, that makes me wonder, TM, on the ground, where you are in Kabul and where you were around Bagram, how much can you see and feel this rising sense of peril, whether it's in the form of the Taliban approaching, you said they're within 50 miles, or militias picking up arms and the country descending into civil war? How real is all that threat at this moment, given the state of the U.S. withdrawal? Yeah, I mean, in Kabul, it's kind of like a bubble. You know, things carry on as you'd expect. I mean, there's this conversation of what comes next. I mean, that's all around the city on every street corner, absolutely. But I'd say the indicator that I've encountered that kind of telegraphs that things are getting bad and getting bad quickly was a recent trip to the passport office. These are city blocks that looks like a street festival as far as the amount of people trying to get passports, families of nine, with people out on the corners with printers trying to talk through, you know,

the paperwork needed to fill out the appropriate documents to get a passport to leave, go to Iran, go to Pakistan. And there's certainly some level of exodus happening. And I think, you know, again, it was very apparent down at the passport office. So the best evidence that people are terrified is that people are trying to flee the country. Correct. Yeah. I'm curious how the U.S. leadership, in particular President Biden, is talking about this moment, the base closures, the U.S. leaving, and the terror that it is striking in the hearts and the heads of the people of Afghanistan.

Right. So, I mean, you know, looking at the April announcement, you know, this resolute President Biden saying, you know, we're ending the war in Afghanistan, you know, this is going to be it. We're going to be out by September 11th. And over the last few months, that narrative has kind of changed where he's kind of trying to do two things at once. this is going to be it. We're going to be out by September 11th. And over the last few months, that narrative has kind of changed where he's kind of trying to do two things at once. On one hand, he's trying to convey to the Americans, we're leaving. And then on the other, to the Afghans, he's saying, well, we're leaving, but we're going to keep supporting you. We're not abandoning you. We're going to keep, you know, giving you money for humanitarian projects, for the security forces. We're going to keep 650 troops at the U.S. embassy.

And it's a line that I think is impossible to walk, right, because there's still going to be that sense of abandonment in Afghanistan because the Taliban are taking broad swaths of the countryside. So I think in the next couple of weeks or by September 11th, President Biden will have to find a way to deliver whatever that final message is going to be, that this is over or we're still going to be here helping the Afghans just without as much troops. I always think back to 2001, to September 11th, and to the reality that the U.S. entered this war in order to try to take out the Taliban, which it believed was harboring Osama bin Laden, who planned September 11th.

And now, 20 years later, the U.S. is leaving these bases just as the Taliban is surging towards all these key places and key bases. And that always makes me want to understand what that turn of events feels like to somebody who fought in this war. And you have fought in this war. And so I wonder how you kind of make sense of 20 years of fighting to try to take out the Taliban and then watching the Taliban gaining more and more power at the end of this conflict. Yeah, I mean, that's the ultimate question.

That's the, you know, lying bad at night and stare at the ceiling kind of uh kind of question and yeah you ask maybe the pentagon and they'll say well we were there to make sure that there were no terror attacks any more terror attacks on on the united states from afghanistan and we accomplished that mission you You know, Biden will say, you know, the Americans killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. So we accomplished the mission. But as you said, you know, the initial invasion was to oust the Taliban who had been harboring bin Laden. And fast forward all these years, you know, almost two decades, and like you said, they're achieving some level of military victory all across the country. And for someone like me who fought, it's pretty easy to stare up at the ceiling and say, we lost. I mean, that's as bad as far as I can get right now.

Well, TM, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The government of Haiti declared a state of siege on Wednesday after its president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated by gunmen at his home. The president's wife was also hurt in the attack, but is expected to survive. Four suspects in the attack were killed in a gun battle with police, and two others were arrested, but their motive remains unknown. The attack came at a tumultuous moment for both Haiti and Moise, who has clung to power for the past year, even after many had argued

that his presidential term had expired. Everyone, every sector of the country, has to do it alone to condemn Saqib Ibrahim. In a speech, Haidi's interim prime minister condemned the attack and called for calm. Keep calm. The security of the country is under control. Long live the nation. the attack and called for calm. Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug, Rob Zipko, and Stella Tan. It was edited by Paige Cowett, contains original music by Rochelle Banja and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.