The Daily - The Race to Evacuate Kabul

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban last week, everything and everyone has been focused on Hamid Karzai International Airport and the massive military operation to get thousands of Americans and Afghan allies out of the country.It is a monumental challenge — one of the biggest and most complicated military operations the Pentagon has had to deal with in decades.We explore these complexities and the challenges being faced by the U.S. as it attempts to evacuate the city. Guest: Eric Schmitt, a senior writer covering terrorism and national security 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 American withdrawal has coincided with a threat by the Taliban to stop Afghans from traveling to the airport, an ominous sign that the window may be slamming shut for thousands of people desperate to leave.The military has ramped up evacuations, increasing the number of flights out of Kabul, but questions remain about whether the military can sustain the pace as the deadline to end the operation draws near.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bilbaro. This is The Daily. Today, a look inside the complex and dangerous operation now underway to evacuate tens of thousands of Americans and American allies from Kabul without provoking the Taliban. I spoke with my colleague, Pentagon reporter Eric Schmidt. It's Wednesday, August 25th. Eric, I wonder if you can catch us up on what's been happening in Kabul

since the city fell to the Taliban about a week ago. Well, everything and everyone is focused on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. It's this final tiny little strip of land that the U.S. still controls in the country where they've been fighting this war for 20 years. And in the first few days after Kabul collapsed, it was total chaos. As every day passes, this relief operation

gets more and more urgent and desperate. Throngs of people rushing to the airfield to try and get on flights out of the country. Many here are deeply fearful for their future, and that's why we're still seeing these chaotic scenes at the airport. And over the past week, there's been this massive American military operation to try and get tens of thousands of American citizens

and foreign nationals and Afghan civilians to the airport, secure the airfield, and then get all these people out of the airport somewhere, figuring out where to fly them and what to do with them once they get to these locations. It's a monumental challenge, one of the biggest and most complicated military operations the Pentagon has had to deal with in decades. And it all has to be done by August 31st. That's the date that President Biden has set to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan. And that deadline is less than a week away. Right. So kind of stunningly complicated logistical, military, and diplomatic challenge, all under a very fast clock. Absolutely. And as we saw, one of the first challenges

was just securing this airfield, both the military airfield and a commercial airfield. You know, how do you at least bring some order to this airfield so you can start bringing in flights that will carry people to safety. So let's talk through that particular challenge, securing the airport in the days since Kabul fell. What exactly has that involved? Well, the first thing is the United States had to get in some 6,000 troops on the ground that could help secure the perimeter of this airfield. So you wouldn't have anybody just pushing their way in. And they're having to do this in a city that's now controlled by the Taliban, the enemy that they've been fighting in Afghanistan for 20 years.

So in a very unusual move, the United States commanders and senior officials have to begin basically negotiating with the Taliban, negotiating for the safe passage of Americans and Afghans and other NATO allies and other foreign partners so they can get through the streets. Because right now the Taliban has basically taken over the police functions in the city. They're the ones who control security outside the gate, even as the Americans are the ones controlling security inside the gate. Right. So the immediate goal is to work with your former enemy, if you're the Pentagon, and that becomes a huge challenge for the military.

And Eric, who is conducting these negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban there? So on a daily basis, the main interlocutor for the United States is a two-star Navy admiral named Peter Vasily. He is a Navy SEAL, an experienced warfighter, who had been basically assigned to oversee the United States forces after the American military withdrawal was completed throughout the rest of the country back in July. So Admiral Vasily is in touch with his Taliban military counterparts, and they are working out the details, kind of the rules of the road,

if you will, on how people can go clear checkpoints, what kind of paperwork and credentials they need to have to try and make sure that the Taliban are letting people through. And do we know what those conversations, those negotiation sessions are like? The Pentagon has deliberately been very vague in how they describe these, but we've been told it's probably a combination of in-person discussions on the phone, perhaps even Zoom calls or the equivalent thereof, but just regular communications on a daily, near-daily basis and working through problems as they've come up. And what do we know about the motivations of the Taliban in these negotiations? Because in a sense, they have the U.S. on the run and hold a lot of leverage. That's right. You might think, well, why would

we deal with the Taliban? Aren't they just going to try and make things worse for these people trying to get there and to embarrass the United States? That's not the goal, in fact. In fact, the Taliban are trying to show a different face than the Taliban that was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion 20 years ago. They are trying to demonstrate that they have now control not only of Kabul, but of all of Afghanistan, and basically end this war that's been going on on their terms. So the faster and more expeditiously they can get the American forces to leave and some of their Afghan allies, that's better for them as well.

So the Taliban's position is, what do you need to get the heck out of here as soon as possible? That's better for them as well. So the Taliban's position is, what do you need to get the heck out of here as soon as possible? That's right. But there's another wildcard factor in here that's pressing these two former enemies together, and that's the presence of ISIS-K, as it's known. That's a threat to both of these players inside of Afghanistan. And who exactly is ISIS-K, and how do they fit into all of this? So ISIS-K, and the K stands for Khorasan, which is this area of Central Asia,

is a group that was formed in 2015, shortly after the larger Islamic State rolled in from Syria into Iraq and started forming affiliates around the world. This group was made up of basically disaffected Taliban guys who didn't think the Taliban was radical enough. And so they formed their own group. And they've basically been a second tier ISIS affiliate. They haven't gotten much attention because in Afghanistan, there's much more attention being played to groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

But ISIS-K has carried out some very violent attacks just in the last few years. So they're a very dangerous organization made up of still a couple of thousand fighters who have now brought all their attention to bear on this huge operation in Kabul at the airport. Because what better target to get them kind of back on the map than would be some kind of attack in this frantic military evacuation. So the fear is that ISIS-K will attempt something dramatic as the U.S. finishes up this evacuation. Exactly. That they might carry out some kind of horrific truck bomb or a suicide bomb among these throngs of people you've seen pressing up the gates, or maybe even launch a missile at one of these military cargo planes as it takes off and carrying hundreds of passengers out of the country. So again, in this very brief time,

this common threat is pressing two former enemies, the Taliban and the United States, together in the short time the U.S. has left to try and get this evacuation completed. So given those dangers, how is the U.S. getting all these thousands of Americans and American allies safely through the streets of Kabul and eventually into this secured airport? So the American evacuation effort is trying to get many different groups to the airport and to safety. But the first priority is American citizens. The problem is American citizens face several threats on their way to the airport.

There's the threat of rogue Taliban fighters at checkpoints. There's the threat of ISIS-K perhaps carrying out suicide attacks targeting Americans. So this has forced the United States to come up with backup plans of how do you get these people to the airport. And so the U.S. has actually gone out and on two occasions at least conducted helicopter rescue missions to bring people in who were being threatened on the outside. The most dramatic of these missions happened last Thursday when 169 American citizens had gathered at the Barron Hotel just outside one of the gates to the airport. And they were intending to walk about 200 meters to the entrance. That was the plan. But they heard that there was a big mob of people at the gate, and they weren't sure their safety could be guaranteed.

mob of people at the gate, and they weren't sure, you know, their safety could be guaranteed. So the American commanders at the airport on the spot made a decision that they would fly a giant Chinook Army helicopter, one of these dual rotor helicopters, to a landing zone right next to the airport, scoop up these passengers, these Americans, and whisk them across the wall to safety inside the airport. Wow. This was a dramatic rescue mission in one of the largest single groups that was able to get out by this way. And the Pentagon has said they will do these kind of missions again, and they've done at least one in the last week to get large groups to safety.

But Eric, we are already hearing stories, especially from Afghan civilians who worked with the U.S., an interpreter named Abdul, for example, who is not able to get to the airport. And I have to imagine there are lots of people like this. They're basically terrified to leave home, terrified they're going to bump into the Taliban. And I'm curious, in your reporting, what you're learning about the plan to get people like that into the airport, through these checkpoints, and then out of the country. That's right. I think this is one of the biggest concerns of American officials now, is how to get these Afghans, particularly the Afghans who partnered with the American military or worked at the embassy or other places, other Afghans at risk, how do you get them in through these checkpoints at a time when the Taliban, despite their assurances from their senior leaders, now seem to be cracking down on this and turning people away? And while obviously the Taliban want to see Americans and many of their Afghan allies leave as soon as possible, there's also probably a growing concern that some of their

most qualified people, the people that they would want to help rebuild their country, are leaving as well. And they see these folks who've worked with the Americans as possible resources. And so I think what we're seeing now, perhaps, is some of these people who most desperately want to get out because they fear reprisals for what they've done, now perhaps are being blocked and their futures are unsure. So what you're describing is a Taliban fear of a brain drain that too many of the people they need to help run Afghanistan are trying to leave. That's right. And on Tuesday, the Taliban made this all the more complicated. They said, essentially, enough is enough. We've let as many Afghans go as we're going to want,

and they barred Afghans who were seeking to flee the country from going to the airport. This puts the Biden administration in an incredible dilemma because they have promised to take out as many Afghans as they can. And now the administration is left wondering, can it honor this pledge and not leave thousands of Afghans who they can. And now the administration is left wondering, can it honor this pledge and not leave thousands of Afghans who want to get out stranded?

We'll be right back. So Eric, let's turn to all the people who did make it into the airport, because you had said that they present a huge logistical challenge as well, which is how to get all these people out of the airport and to someplace safe. That's right. So you've got thousands of people inside the wire now at Karzai International Airport. The American military is saying, well, where do we take them? And the first place they look is Qatar, where the U.S. has a giant base called Al-Yudid. Qatar is a major Persian Gulf ally. And so they start flying into Qatar. But the problem is, despite Al-Yudid

being very large, the base just wasn't prepared for this. This is all happening kind of on the fly. And as hundreds of people arrive, they don't have enough food for them. They don't have enough beds. The air conditioning doesn't work. It's over 100 degrees, you know, in the desert there.

And the conditions are just, you know, really squalid in many places just because they're just not ready for all this. And then Al-Yadid basically fills up. They've basically gotten to capacity and that creates this backlog back into Kabul. They'd have to pause flights for six or seven hours because they've just basically run out of space to put them. So the military and diplomats have to go running around and dialing up other countries, you know, places like Germany, Italy, Spain have all agreed to take in some of these Afghans, at least temporarily.

And from there, the Afghans continue to be screened and vetted for the journey onward because the point here is to try and keep the refugees moving along from point to point. And ultimately, when they fulfilled all their paperwork, to be able to fly to the United States for the permanently resettled or to some other country that will accept them as well. Mm-hmm.

So how many of them do we expect will eventually make their way to the United States to be finally resettled here? So the Pentagon has basically said it has capacity now for some 25,000 Afghan civilians at four bases that they've opened up in New Jersey and Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin. But they made it clear that they may have to open more as the pipeline delivers more Afghan civilians to this country. So we're talking about tens of thousands finding their way here to the U.S. That's right. And the other problem that comes up is, do we have enough aircraft and we have enough

kind of the right aircraft? The United States now has more than 200 military aircraft involved in this effort. But what the United States did in a very unusual move over the weekend was to invoke this 70-year-old program that basically compels United States commercial airliners to contribute to this giant airlift. Wow. And so it just reflects kind of the extraordinary resources they're trying to throw at this, again, kind of all on the fly as they're kind of putting this all together to try and keep the flow moving.

So, Eric, I think this brings us to this August 31st deadline, which President Biden has set for the date that American troops will leave Afghanistan. Does it seem that the U.S. will be able to get all the Afghan civilians and Americans out of the country that we have committed to get out of the country by that date? Well, initially, it seemed like they weren't going to meet that date. In fact, President Biden wavered on the August 31st deadline and said, you know, we might have to see, we might have to extend it to get on all these people. But then we saw the Taliban rejected that idea and basically said that the August 31st was a firm deadline and U.S. forces had to be out by

that date and left it open the possibility that bad things could happen after that if the U.S. didn't comply. And why would the Taliban say that? You had said earlier that all the Taliban wants is for the U.S. to leave. So why not make it easier by extending that deadline? Well, I think what we've seen are the limits of the Taliban's patience in this cooperation with its former enemy, the United States, the United States military, and not having it appear that the United States can dictate terms to them when they obviously feel very comfortable dictating terms to Washington. And so how did President Biden respond to the Taliban saying, no, that's a hard line, do not stay beyond August 31st? So the president has basically said he too is seeking to try and finish this mission by August 31st, but he left open a sliver of hope that it could be slightly extended.

And what's important here is what his military commanders and intelligence advisors are saying. And that is they believe that the threat the Taliban is saying, don't go beyond that August 31st deadline, is a real one. And, you know, the military is basically saying, look, we are now able to pull out 10,000, 12,000 people a day. Let's try and do the best we can under these circumstances while we still have the Taliban's cooperation. If we push our luck and go beyond that, this all could end very disastrously just at a time when things seem to be looking up and doing much better than we were just a few days ago. Mm-hmm. So a combination of fear that the Taliban could follow through with reprisals if we overstay our welcome, as well as the fact that the airlifts seem to be going pretty well leads the president to want to try to get everything done within the bounds of that original deadline. That's right.

I'm curious what you think we're learning from this entire experience that you have laid out at the airport in Kabul, about both the Taliban and the United States. I mean, when it comes to the Taliban, on the one hand, they have been working with the U.S. for much of the past week to get a lot of Americans and a lot of American allies to the airport and to protect them from ISIS in Afghanistan. And on the other hand, they're drawing these red lines and issuing threats and saying enough is enough. So what is the takeaway from the last few days about the Taliban? Well, I think one takeaway is that obviously the Taliban have self-interest. They have

interest in trying to move out this foreign presence so they can focus on what they feel is their business of governing as well. But on the other hand, they're very conscious of the images of this exodus leaving their country and of wanting to assert control over the United States in the final days and the final stages of this mission. We'll kind of have to see in the coming months just what the Taliban does. Do they revert to their behavior that we saw 20 years ago, or do they show a different side? I think that will very much influence how the United States government treats them, how the rest of the world will treat them, really. And so I think those are many questions that are still unanswered. Okay, and what about the U.S.? The first few days of his operation were chaotic, as Biden himself has said, messy. But it now seems like, logistically speaking, the U.S. is making significant progress. So what are the lessons about what has happened at the airport when it comes to the U.S.? Well, certainly that last message, Michael, is what the administration, the White House, would want you to believe, that they have actually pulled off a remarkable logistical feat

in getting tens of thousands of Americans, NATO allied partners, and Afghans out of this war zone under the worst of conditions after a terrible start and actually have achieved something quite dramatic. That said, you're never going to be able to erase these iconic images for those first 24, 48 hours of the Capitol falling so dramatically, of the embassy fleeing to the airport, of first American cargo planes coming in and being surrounded on the tarmac. Those are going to be very hard to erase, no matter what the successes ultimately are. But that's basically what the White House is betting on.

And people ultimately who believe that it was the right decision to leave Afghanistan, they may cringe in horror at the way it was executed initially, but they'll look back, whether it's two weeks or two months or two years from now and say, well, despite a really bad start, the administration did mostly honor its promise to get as many people out as possible. They'll see which of these kind of images

really sticks in people's minds. That will ultimately be the legacy of this operation. Well, Eric, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. In a speech on Tuesday afternoon, President Biden reiterated his belief that the United States could complete the evacuations from the Kabul airport by August 31st. Thus far, the Taliban have been taking steps to work with us so we can get our people out. But it's a tenuous situation.

But he warned that because of the strained relationship between the U.S. and the Taliban, and because of the risk of attack from ISIS-K, the American operation is becoming more and more dangerous by the day. The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops. But the completion by August 31st depends upon the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport for those who were transporting out and no disruption to our operations.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, following the FDA's full approval of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, full approval of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, several of America's largest and best-known companies began requiring vaccinations from their employees. CVS Health, the Walt Disney Company, and Chevron all introduced mandates for large numbers of their workers. Meanwhile...

It is not a good time to travel to the islands. The governor of Hawaii, facing a surge of infections and a lack of open hospital beds, took the unusual step of asking tourists not to visit the state to lower the risk of transmission. The visitors who choose to come to the islands will not have the typical kind of holiday that they expect to get when they visit Hawaii. And in a major victory for President Biden, the House of Representatives gave its approval to a $3.5 trillion budget plan that would vastly expand the social safety network. The vote was a crucial step toward eventual passage of a two-pronged legislative program that includes a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure plan already passed by the Senate. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Claire Tennisgetter, Jessica Chung, and Daniel

Guimet, with help from Soraya Shockley and Robert Jimison. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, engineered by Chris Wood, and contains original music by Dan Powell. music by Dan Powell. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bolvaro. See you tomorrow.