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Chaos Erupts at Kabul Airport; Commercial Flights out of Kabul Canceled; Biden to Address Nation in Coming Days on Afghanistan; U.S. Races to Complete Evacuations; Christopher Kolenda is Interviewed about Afghanistan. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 16, 2021 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[09:01:04]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good and busy Monday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

The breaking news this morning, the desperation and the escape attempts in Afghanistan as the country falls to the Taliban. This morning, a tragic scene erupting at Kabul's airport. Look at this. Thousands of people -- those are people scrambling to leave their country as the Afghan government collapses and the Taliban take control. Incredibly disturbing videos being posted all over social media this morning. You can see Afghans swarming the runway, trying to chase down U.S. Air Force planes, some clinging to the sides as they taxi down a runway. Witnesses telling CNN they've heard gunshots fired.

(VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: It's hard to see how that's, at all, a safe situation.

The U.S. embassy has been evacuated. And right now officials are warning Americans who are still in the capital not to travel to the airport. The U.S. has dispatched an additional 1,000 combat troops for a total of 6,000 to secure the perimeter at the airport and help get American diplomatic personnel and others out safely. That, by the way, is about twice as many who were there for the counterterror mission.

President Biden has been monitoring the situation from Camp David over the weekend. He is expected to address the nation in the next several days, though when not yet announced.

We are covering every angle of this developing situation in Afghanistan.

Let's begin with Nick Paton Walsh. He is in Kabul.

Nick, tell us what you're seeing there. I just wonder, I mean, is the Taliban now in control of Kabul? How are the people reacting?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean it is a very bizarre scene after years of being here to see the Taliban, who were always the hidden fighters in the forest somewhere, in the hills, openly walking on the streets, carrying their weapons, in often government vehicles, controlling the checkpoints of government facilities.

You mentioned the airport there, Jim. I've just come back from traveling up towards it. And we got actually up to the main entry checkpoint of that particular airport facility, essentially the last piece of Afghanistan that the United States has control over. And, fascinatingly, the Taliban are the ones at that sort of entry checkpoint, doing crowd control, to be honest. We saw them essentially telling people to get back. A lot surging towards that particular entrance and any entrance they could find, often rushing at those checkpoints, being pushed back.

I saw one man who had gone up on one of those enormous concrete walls that you see surrounding the airport, trying to get over. Utter chaos. Occasional gunfire. And, of course, the Taliban making use of vehicles given to the Afghan Security Forces by the Americans.

But it was bizarre to see essentially the people who had been flooding the American side of the airport, or the American-controlled airport, being held back by the enemy the U.S. has fought for 20 years or so.

It does seem as though the Taliban wants to show order, and their ability to control the situation here. But the scenes inside the airport are utterly shocking. Clearly that's the reason why we've seen the U.S. briefly suspend flights in and out. I did just hear a plane above. That's not evidence they've restarted but it might well be because where else is it necessarily going to land.

A massive operation afoot here and one that, of course, is imperiled by the fact it's surrounded by the Taliban.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

Nick Paton Walsh, good to have you there. Please be safe. Such an unpredictable situation.

Let's go to the Pentagon now. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

Barbara, we're in an odd situation now that the U.S. is going to have, I think, about twice as many troops now to secure the withdrawal as it had there to secure the country prior. How many total U.S. forces are going there and for how long?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, clearly the situation has radically changed in recent days. So they're looking at approximately 6,000 troops being on the ground.

[09:05:01]

And their very specific mission will be to provide the security to cover this withdrawal.

And as we see these videos of these Afghan folks trying to rush airplanes, desperate to get out, in fact, yes, they have shut down the evacuation operations at the airport. They hope tonight to use the hours of darkness and the evening hours to regain control of the air field, to move people out, to put in some crowd control measures so they can fully resume operations, evacuating people.

But they can't do it -- it's so dangerous, with the kind of videos that we're seeing, the kind of pictures we're seeing of people rushing airplanes. They can't land and takeoff these giant transport aircraft at all, or even the helicopters in these types of circumstances.

So look for them to try and get a handle on the security situation at the airport. That now is really job one.

Poppy. Jim.

HARLOW: Barbara Starr, we just, moments ago, got a statement from the spokesperson for the Taliban saying that they're in near, quote, full control of Afghan's capital of Kabul, saying the situation in Kabul city is coming under full control. This is, obviously, the exact opposite of what both the president, President Biden, said five-plus weeks ago and what the intelligence assessment on the ground was, how rapidly this happened.

Is there any response from the Pentagon to this statement from the Taliban?

STARR: Well, I don't know that there's an official response yet but I think it is really the obvious for -- since the weekend, that the Taliban are exerting control. President Ghani left. You know, all of the U.S. message points, if you will, that the Taliban wouldn't take immediate control, that there would be an orderly withdrawal, all of these message points really are flushed now. None of them have panned out.

The circumstances just have radically changed. The U.S. keep -- trying to keep up, reacting, trying to adapt to the situation, trying to get the Americans out safely. But I don't think anybody questions at this point that the Taliban are in control of the country.

SCIUTTO: Listen, they were treated, supposedly, as a peace partner, right, negotiations going back months.

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: Clearly no interest in a peaceful settlement.

Barbara Starr, at the Pentagon, thanks very much.

CNN's Arlette Saenz, he's live at the White House.

Arlette, so the White House now says President Biden will address the nation on this in the coming days. I mean the biggest question is, does the White House have answers, right, for what's happening there? What is their explanation? Are they taking responsibility? What are you hearing?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the White House has said President Biden will speak to the situation in Afghanistan soon but discussions are still underway about where and how and when exactly that will take place.

President Biden remains up in Camp David. He is currently scheduled to return from Camp David on Wednesday. It's unclear whether he might come a bit sooner than that.

But so far, the rounds of defense and explanation have all been coming down to top officials at the White House, who have continued to defend the president's decision to overall withdraw American military presence from Afghanistan while also acknowledging that they miscalculated the speed to which the situation was deteriorating in the country.

Take a listen to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan talking a bit earlier today.

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JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: What the president kept saying over and over again was that it was not inevitable that k Kabul would fall. And it was not inevitable. There was the capacity to stand up and resist. That capacity didn't happen.

Now, the president prepared for every possible contingency, including this one. The reason that there are U.S. force at the airport, effectuating a successful drawdown of our embassy, securing the airport to be able to get other people out is because the president pre-positioned those forces, thousands of them, in the Gulf, so they could be moved in rapidly in the event that there was a rapid collapse.

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SAENZ: Now, the White House has also shifted part of the blame to the situation, saying that there was a lack of will among Afghan Security Forces. And also saying that their hands were essentially tied by deals made under the Trump administration.

But the execution of this withdrawal, the scenes that we have seen playing out over the course of the past 24 hours, are something that will be tied to the current president. Biden has continued to receive updates while he's at Camp David. But the question now is how soon he will address this directly as commander in chief to the American people.

SCIUTTO: I mean to hear Jake Sullivan call this the successful drawdown of the U.S. embassy there, his words, I mean is almost comical, right? I mean I don't see how anybody can call that a successful drawdown given the circumstances we're seeing there.

SAENZ: No. And I mean one thing that you have heard over and over from a president -- the president's statement and also top officials is that this was going to be an orderly and safe drawdown.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SAENZ: But those images that we've seen are anything but.

[09:10:01]

And there will be more questions for this administration to answer about how exactly this all played out.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Arlette, thank you for the reporting from the White House.

Let's bring in Mike Rogers, former House Intelligence chairman.

Mike, good to have you, especially on a morning like this. Again, as the former House Intelligence chairman, how does the Biden administration miscalculate this intelligence so gravely by -- how can you be so -- so far off?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Well, I mean, to say that they were surprised by events is a little bit shocking because the intelligence for months has said that this thing is deteriorating quickly. And it was a combination of messages that were being sent to the Taliban. When in negotiations they started talking about, well, would you live our embassies alone? Well, the Taliban said that's a clue. When our last warrior commander, Scott Miller, packed up and flew out about a month ago, that sent another very strong message. So we moved all of our ability to have air strikes, to keep them back seven hours away.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: And so all of these factors led to this really horrific decision that is going to get a lot of very innocent people slaughtered.

And, remember, it's just about the people who work for the government. Yes, we need to help them, that stood up and supported the U.S. being there. But also people, just shop owners who turned on music or opened up an internet cafe are now at risk because they believed that the United States was going to be there to help them get through those freedoms, even though it was going to be a long, tough slog. And that, by the way, was the stability that Afghanistan needed.

Now, as of those people are at risk because the Taliban, as we saw in Jalalabad, closing girls' schools, telling women who are working in the workplace to go home, they're no longer allowed to do that, and they're punishing people with amputations.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: I mean it is the same awful Taliban that we've known about since they ruled the country back in 1998. SCIUTTO: So, Mike Rogers, you have two consecutive presidents, a

Republican and a Democrat, essentially making the same decision about Afghanistan, withdrawing. I mean Trump had the same plan. Set a negotiation. Withdraw by May 1st. And Biden doing the same thing.

What do you believe was the alternative? Do you believe it would have been smart -- I mean Mark Milley describes it this way, that the U.S. was the finger in the dam there, right? A small presence, 3,000 troops or so. You take your finger out of the dam, the dam breaks, which is what we're seeing now. Would you have supported keeping a small U.S. footprint there to prevent the scenes we're seeing now or do you believe that withdrawal at some point was the right call?

ROGERS: Well, I believe the small presence there was really critical and important because there was this fine line of the Taliban either believing they're winning or believing they're in this for the long haul.

Remember, before the withdrawal -- the first withdrawal of U.S. troops by the Biden administration, the Taliban was at least talking about shared governance.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: Well, once that happened, they stopped talking about shared governance. They basically said, you're leaving, we're taking over. We'll try not to slaughter as many as you think we should be slaughtering. I mean it was -- it's that bad. And I think we need to put -- call it like it is.

Negotiations actually started under Obama. Then they went into Trump. And Trump decided he didn't want to be there. And my argument on this has been this. We know that this is a place, because of this extremism, that will attract al Qaeda and ISIS elements. They don't always get along. But all they have to do is be left alone in a territory like Afghanistan.

HARLOW: So -- right. And --

ROGERS: And when -- but here's the thing. Just one last point on this. If the whole goal between Obama and Trump and now Biden was to quit and get out, that's one thing. But nobody said let's -- let's build this so that we can have few casualties, high-value operations for U.S. military, and then keep the Taliban back so you can allow democracy to flourish, girls to go to school, girls to get into the workplace. That was what was going to change Afghanistan. Now we just have this -- I mean there's just not enough lipstick around to make this pig look good. This is awful. It's dangerous. People are going to lose their lives.

HARLOW: And, Mike, to your point, in fact, Mark Milley said Sunday, yesterday, to senators in that briefing that essentially this will -- could accelerate terrorist groups using Afghanistan as a breeding ground. You had Mike McCaul saying to Jake, you know, this will be a threat to the homeland. And Liz Cheney also weighing in, saying this is not ending a war, this is perpetuating it. Do you agree with those sentiments?

ROGERS: Oh, absolutely. We've watched the al Qaeda elements. They went to Syria for a while. They actually changed their name to try to be creative, to try to get a foothold once ISIS took over there. We've seen them try to take footholds in places in Africa that are ungoverned. And so we know that they've had relationships and continue to have relationships in Afghanistan.

[09:15:05]

And, again, remember, those big swaths of ungoverned territory in Afghanistan, you know, by Tora Tora -- Tora Bora, excuse me, is exactly the kind of place that they're going to find friendly -- friendly faces and a more welcome, you do what you do, we're going to do what we do. And it's that environment that allows them to succeed. They know that and they're going to be there. Remember, even in western Pakistan, in the Fatah, the federally administrative tribal areas, the Taliban has done pretty well. The Pakistanis have actually gone after them and took serious casualties over the last decade, trying to fight the Taliban there. Now they have places on both sides of this border.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: I mean the (INAUDIBLE) that the group that kind of gives guidance to the Taliban is in Pakistan, it's in Quetta. They call it the Quetta Shura. So all of that dynamic means that they have large areas of which the -- al Qaeda can find friends and continue to finance, train and they (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Yes, which is exactly where we were before 9/11, a safe haven, a terror safe haven.

Mike Rogers, always good to have you on.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, the Taliban speak to CNN, claiming they will still allow women and girls some freedom. We'll see what that means. But what we're hearing on the ground, of course, a very different story. We'll get perspective from a retired Army colonel who has met with Taliban leaders face to face himself.

HARLOW: Also, as the COVID crisis continues, a top health official now warns the U.S. could actually soon be back at 200,000 new infections a day.

And in Haiti, a state of emergency after a deadly earthquake kills nearly 1,300 people. CNN is on the ground in Haiti, as a new tropical storm system may trigger flash flooding and mudslides there.

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[09:21:15]

SCIUTTO: Now that the Taliban, a brutal, medieval group of extremists, have taken back control of Afghanistan, Afghans are anxiously waiting to see how this regime will operate, how it will rule.

A Taliban spokesperson telling CNN that a new government would include non-Taliban Afghans. Can they be trusted?

This person also claimed women and girls will be able to continue their education. But while the Taliban say one thing, women in Afghanistan know those are just words. In their experience, reality likely to be much different and dangerous.

Here's what one activist says she is hearing on the ground there.

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MAHBOUBA SERAJ, WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST: All of those women that they are living in the provinces of Afghanistan, all the way back in the districts and nobody hears their voices, and they are in dire need of help. They are poor. They are not educated. Their children are dying because they are sick. You should have heard what the man -- how he -- the man talked to the woman today. When in Hera (ph) the woman went to him and told them about their lives, their work, their -- the permission that they should have to go to school and to go to work. The man absolutely refused them everything, everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Joining me now is retired Army Colonel Christopher Kolenda. He served in Afghanistan, later became a senior adviser at the Pentagon, instrumental in setting up initial talks with the Taliban.

Colonel, good to have you back on.

I know you've been in touch with folks, your contacts on the ground in Afghanistan the last 24 hours. What are they telling you about the situation on the ground now?

COL. CHRISTOPHER KOLENDA (RET.), FORMER SR. PENTAGON ADVISER WHO MET WITH TALIBAN: Jim, thanks for having me.

First of all, people are -- you know, people are very concerned. They're very upset. They're very -- high degrees of uncertainty about what's going on. People are scared.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KOLENDA: I've got friends in Kabul who are, you know, telling me about all of this. And I hear reports from NGOs that, you know, some say Taliban are having girls go to school. Women are still at work. In other places, the picture is different. So I think you've got a very mixed bag, you know, of -- you know, of policies going on in places where the Taliban control, which is now the whole (ph) country.

SCIUTTO: OK. Help people who are watching right now understand what this fight was for. Twenty years, $2 trillion in U.S. taxpayer money that went into the military there, the government, aid projects, et cetera, and more than 2,200 U.S. service members lost their lives and many thousands more injured. Were the last 20 years in Afghanistan a waste?

KOLENDA: Well, six of those soldiers who lost their lives were soldiers that I commanded. Tom Bostic (ph), Dave Boris (ph), Ryan Frigge (ph), Adrian Hike (ph), Jakecob Lowell (ph) and Chris Pfifer (ph). And I've got to tell you, Jim, the last couple of nights, you know, it's been sleepless for me and a lot of others. And, of course, much worse for the people in Afghanistan. It's -- you know, it's really frustrating to watch all of this unfold. It -- it also makes me a bit angry. You know, and all of the missed opportunities and unforced errors over the last 20 years that have led us to, you know, to this place, which is just -- it's a calamity and it's an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe on the ground.

SCIUTTO: The initial mission in Afghanistan, post 9/11, was to get at al Qaeda, right, and stop Afghanistan being a safe haven for al Qaeda to plot attacks on the U.S. homeland. Afterwards the mission became greater, building a government, you know, and punitive democracy, et cetera.

[09:25:03]

The Taliban is back. Does Afghanistan become a safe haven for al Qaeda and terrorists again?

KOLENDA: Well, I think time will tell. You really have two big scenarios that are likely to -- one of two scenarios likely to unfold. The first scenario is that the Taliban do as they've said, avoid trying to get a monopoly on power, negotiate with the remaining influencers, like Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, and others who are in Kabul and develop a way forward in Afghanistan -- a political way forward in Afghanistan that has buy-in from Afghans. So that's the -- that's the optimistic scenario.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KOLENDA: The pessimistic scenario is that the Taliban overreach, they monopolize power and they invite backlash against themselves. And in that case you're likely to see a wider civil war, you're likely to see Afghanistan descend into sort of war and theifdomes (ph), and that's the scenario in which international terrorist groups are more likely to come back.

SCIUTTO: Can the U.S. credibly address the terror threat from Afghanistan from outside the country, right, because now that troops are out, they're going to have to do missions from Kuwait, from Qatar, many hundreds of miles away. The drones are going to have to fly from bases outside the country, less time over target. Can the U.S. protect itself from outside Afghanistan?

KOLENDA: Well, the United States does it from -- protects itself from terrorist threats across the world where we don't have troops. So the short answer is, yes.

The longer answer, or the more complete answer is, look, we've got to work with what political agreement emerges on the ground in Kabul. There's an unfolding humanitarian disaster going on there, which we have an opportunity to work with the government that emerges in Afghanistan to alleviate. We have an opportunity to work with the government that emerges from Afghanistan to address the terror threat, to address human rights.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KOLENDA: And so I think, you know, now's the time to, you know, to begin setting those conditions.

SCIUTTO: Let me just ask you, because you mentioned before that six service members under your command lost their lives there. Can I just give you the opportunity to say their names again?

KOLENDA: Yes. Tom Bostic, Dave Boris, Ryan Frigge, Adrian Hike, Jakecob Lowell and Chris Pfifer.

SCIUTTO: Thank you. Just a reminder to viewers that those 2,217 U.S. service members who lost their lives there, they're not numbers.

Colonel Kolenda, thanks very much.

KOLENDA: Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: The Texas State Supreme Court sides with the governor and temporarily blocks mask mandates, but some major school districts, they're defying that order. We're going to have new details ahead.

HARLOW: We are also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Take a look here. Futures are lower this morning. Investors are concerned about data out of China this morning, that their economic recovery has slowed quite a bit. The Dow, the S&P 500, though, did close at record highs last week. We'll see if that can hold. We'll keep an eye on the markets. Stay right here.

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