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Taliban Say They Are Nearing Full Control of Kabul; Stunning, Chaotic End to America's Era in Afghanistan; U.S. Resumes Air Operations at Kabul Airport But Officials Expect Sporadic Suspensions. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 16, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

The breaking news out of Afghanistan this hour, things moving very fast there. The Taliban now say they are nearing full control of the country's capital of Kabul. It follows disturbing scenes like this one. Thousands of people at the airport in Kabul, so desperate to flee the country, hopping, trying to cling to U.S. military jet as it leaves. Some lost their lives, people hearing gunshots around the airport as well.

HARLOW: CNN has also just confirmed U.S. troops on the ground in Kabul shot and killed two armed men at the airport after they fired on U.S. forces. A defense official says they believe this was an isolated incident. We will see all of this chaos has prompted the U.S. military to temporarily suspend air operations at the airport this morning while U.S. troop try to clear the airfield of those Afghans who flooded it.

The U.S. has dispatched also, we've just learned, an additional 1,000 combat troops now bringing the total up to 6,000 new troops in the country to secure the airport perimeter and help get American diplomatic personnel and others out safely.

Let's begin this hour with our colleague, Nick Paton Walsh. He joins us in Kabul for the latest on -- let's begin, Nick, the situation at the airport. What we just saw was complete chaos, anything but an orderly drawdown.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes. I'm going to have to tell you now, Hamid Karzai International Airport here is sort of the symbol of the American presence here, the order, how the money is spent, how to ferry in and out U.S. contractors, diplomats consistently over this 20-year presence here. And to see people clamoring over parts of walkways desperate to jump on to cargo aircraft, utterly startling scenes and the rattle of gunfire in the distance obviously a reminder of the panic being felt by U.S. troops trying to secure the area. And essentially so many Afghans left because of this unconditional withdrawal and the lightning move for the Taliban into this capital left with no choice but to try and get civilian flights out, they've been canceled. The U.S. evacuation flights for its personnel temporarily suspended today because of those chaotic scenes.

I got as far as the last -- the entry checkpoint, essentially the way into the airport compound earlier on this afternoon and it -- the Taliban were essentially in control of that roundabout that leads into the airport. Remarkable that the United States' 20-year enemy is simply up against them, they weren't obviously talking or appeared to be in confrontation but right close to each other at that symbol of America's modernization of parts of Kabul.

The Taliban remarkably, too, were doing crowd control to keep people away for the last chunk of Afghanistan that America still controls, pushing people back, using vehicles taken off Afghan security forces to control people from moving from away. But those crowds were trying anything, rushing in large numbers some of the gates. We heard crackles of gunfire as they were pushed back.

And we also saw -- I saw one man actually clambering up one of these sort of 10, 20-foot huge concrete walls, used to push away blasts when the insurgency would attack the airport. A man on top of that simply tried to jump over and get on to the airfield. I never imagined I would see anything like that, but also startling too to see the Taliban trying to bring some degree of order to those crowds thronging towards the airport.

SCIUTTO: Well, they run it now. They run the capital, they run the country. Nick Paton Walsh, in Kabul, thanks very much.

Well, the nation is still waiting to hear from President Biden as the chaos unfolds in Afghanistan. The president is expected to address the country in the coming days.

HARLOW: Let's bring in our Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny and White House and National Security Correspondent for the New York Times David Sanger. Great to have you both this morning.

I mean, Jeff, the key question is, I think, where is the president?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, we know that he is in Camp David, not far from Washington, what was supposed to be his August vacation. But we also know many presidents in the past, August has a way of intruding on vacations. So we know that the president is engaged on this. We know that he's been getting briefings. But I talked to White House officials a few moments ago, and as of now he's still not scheduled to speak in the coming hours or perhaps even today. That could change.

But less important of when he's going to speak is what he is going to say. And that is one of the reasons for a delay. Because there is, in fact, very little that he can say that is good news. He is the commander-in-chief. There was a clearly an intelligence failure from his team, from people who report to him. So that is what is behind the delay having him address the nation on this.

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They simply do not know exactly at this point what he is going to say. It has been six days since we have heard from President Biden on Afghanistan. And things have changed dramatically there as we can see. That is an understatement of the highest proportions here.

So we do know that at some point he will address this. He has to address this. Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around of previous presidents but he is the commander-in-chief at this moment and this is on his administration here to really explain how all of this happened so quickly.

SCIUTTO: David Sanger, the images of Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021, I think we have pictures of this, that desperate escape atop the embassy in 1975 in Vietnam and now a desperate escape from Kabul in the year 2021. I just wonder, was this avoidable, right? Could the U.S. have withdrawn in such a way to prevent the rapid collapse of the country?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, certainly, Jim, I think it is the view of many of those who support President Biden and even some inside his organization who believe that this could have been executed a lot better. There are sort of two separate issues here. The first was a question of whether to get out. And I think there, President Biden feels that he's on pretty solid ground making the case that if you couldn't change the country in 20 years, an additional one or two or five years wouldn't have a difference.

But having announced in April that we were leaving and that we were leaving in by a date certain, September 11th, something he actually moved up some, there was a new responsibility to get the interpreters, the others who helped the American forces out of the country quickly, to diminish the size of the U.S. embassy, something the Pentagon had urged them to do so there wouldn't be a rush to the exits.

The resistance to that idea was understandable. They didn't want to look to be abandoning the government of -- that was in place, President Ghani's government. But I think they felt that if they left too quickly, it would seem as if they believe the Taliban were going to run right in. And then as Jeff said, they had intelligence, had said they had18 months and then at least six months.

HARLOW: Right. So, Jeff Zeleny, to David's point and Jim's good question about could this have been different, one thing we know for sure that doesn't depend on the intelligence is that the Biden administration could have acted much more quickly and listened to even many of their fellow Democrats in Congress, like Congressman Seth Moulton, who have been saying for months, you have to do more to get out those who aided the U.S., right? You have to do more. You have to do it now.

Congressman Seth Moulton, a huge voice on this overnight, with a scathing statement. He says, to say that today is anything short of a disaster would be dishonest, worse, it was avoidable. And to what the president is going to say whenever he does address the nation, he is going to have to answer to those critics as well in his own party.

ZELENY: No doubt about it. And the reality, as David was just saying there, this has been a date circled on the calendar by the president himself for the last several months. There has been a quiet conversation of how to get the interpreters and others who have supported this effort for the last 20 years and America's longest war. So they have been starting -- several thousand have been removed already. But no one was anticipating this to happen as quickly. I was talking to a White House official on Friday who was essentially saying they had so much more time. That clearly did not prove to be the case here.

So going forward, the president has to acknowledge what he did, but going forward, what failures. And the reason is this. The credibility of this administration is on the line unlike at any point that we have seen in his presidency. Not about this necessarily but foreign policy challenges going forward. That is why it is important what he says.

SCIUTTO: David, put this in the broader sweep of the Biden administration, because one of his stated goals was to regain American respect abroad, respect for alliances, NATO, respect in Europe, respect from China, Russia. What does this withdrawal do to that respect?

SANGER: Well, Jim, I think there are two elements that have hurt him. The first is that they came in saying they were going to restore competency. And they did. We had 70 percent of the adult population vaccinated, the economy was coming back. This certainly hampers the argument that they have thought every step through.

But then the second one is there are a lot of close allies, as your question suggests, who say, look, if the United States is going to make a set of assurances that will always be there to aid you, what is going to happen once people recognize that you didn't really stay to stand up for your closest allies on the ground in Kabul.

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And that is why it was such a big mistake not getting those who aided the American effort out much more quickly.

SCIUTTO: Just remember the outrage when Trump attempted twice to leave the Kurds in Syria, right, leaving their allies.

SANGER: That is right.

SCIUTTO: Jeff Zeleny, David Sanger, thanks very much.

ZELENY: Sure.

SANGER: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Joining me now to discuss is Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss. He is a marine and a former platoon commander in Afghanistan. Congressman, thanks so much for taking the time this morning. REP. JAKE AUCHINCLOSS (D-MA): Good to be on.

SCIUTTO: You served, as I mentioned, in the Marines in 2012 in Afghanistan. You lost bothers in arms there, as many marines did. Do you now feel that that effort was wasted?

AUCHINCLOSS: There were two missions in Afghanistan. There was a counterterrorism mission that was designed to deny safe harbor to terrorists who would strike the U.S. homeland and to bring to justice the architects of 9/11. The counterterrorism mission was largely successful in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is dead. There have been no attacks from Afghanistan.

But it morphed under Bush and Rumsfeld into a boondoggle of a counterinsurgency mission and, yes, that has failed and that was always doomed to fail because counterinsurgency is not fundamentally military effort. It is a political effort. It requires a political partner and the leaders in Kabul were never that partner.

SCIUTTO: So, on the counterterrorism mission, because you have the director of the CIA, you have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs both saying that the U.S. has lost intelligence capabilities on the ground. U.S. Counter-terror missions are going to have to be run from outside of the country, hundreds of miles away. Can the U.S. safely protect the homeland from groups, like Al Qaeda, from outside Afghanistan now?

AUCHINCLOSS: This is going to be a focus of questioning in the national security briefings that members of Congress will receive in a couple of weeks from the administration. I would add to what you said that the Taliban have freed prisoners at Bagram Air Base who have close affiliations with Al Qaeda. The United States needs to ensure that its over the horizon counterterrorism capabilities are sufficient to eradicate any imminent threats to the homeland that might be coming from Afghanistan.

SCIUTTO: But the fact is, I mean, you have the director of CIA saying, we as a country have lost intelligence-gathering capability by being out of the country. Those forces are going to be farther away. The drones are going to be flying from farther away. That means less time over target. As a practical matter, aren't we less safe?

AUCHINCLOSS: And what I would say to critics who say we're less safe is what is the alternative? The alternative is more boots on the ground. It was not status quo. It was not keeping 2,000 or so troops in Afghanistan. It was to ramp up to counter the Taliban fighting season in 2021. And that means more gold star families. That means another year, more troops, more time, more treasure in a failed forever war. This president had the integrity to tell a hard truth to the American people. We can't win it.

SCIUTTO: Listen, I spent time embedded in Afghanistan too. I met soldiers there, including Marines who lost their lives. I will never underplay the sacrifice that American families have had. But I want to ask why then does the Biden administration keep troops in Iraq, right, to help stabilize the country, fight terrorism, in Syria, to fight the remnants of ISIS there, but not in Afghanistan? I mean, what is the consistent approach?

AUCHINCLOSS: The consistent approach is counterterrorism. It is the overarching mission that is really actually across all nations of the world that the United States retains the prerogative to neutralize terrorist threats wherever they are and, if necessary, will insert SEAL Team Six to neutralize the terrorist threat even if they're in Afghanistan.

What is different though is that we are not nation building any more in Afghanistan. To nation build, you need a partner. And given the chance of a lifetime, the leaders of Kabul lined their own pockets, they devolved into corruption and incompetence and they did not build the nation alongside of it.

SCIUTTO: Listen, it is a fair point, by the way. And I've spoken to people inside Afghanistan who noted this was a corrupt government and that the military made a calculation that they didn't want to fight for this government, right? But it is also true that the Afghan security forces saw the U.S. leave them. And they calculated they were being abandoned, and, therefore, why fight, in effect. And I just wonder, why wouldn't it have been worth to keep a small U.S. footprint there to give them at least confidence that the U.S. wasn't walking away?

AUCHINCLOSS: The Afghan security forces were abandoned by their own leadership. We built Afghanistan an army, 300,000-plus. We built them a world class air force.

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But frontline troops couldn't get enough bullets or rations. That is gross incompetence and corruption from their own leadership. They would have fought. I served alongside Afghan unit police in Southern Helmand. These are good tacticians. They care about their homeland. But as everybody who's been in combat knows, without leadership, you cannot hold the line.

SCIUTTO: I hear you. And, listen, Helmand Province, a hellish battlefield. I saw it myself and I know you experienced it far more than me.

Listen, going forward we saw the U.S. withdraw from Iraq in 2011 and had to go back in, right? ISIS rose, had to go back in and fight that battle again. Do you see the U.S. perhaps having to turn around and go back into Afghanistan if Al Qaeda, ISIS make it a base of operations?

AUCHINCLOSS: Well this president has been clear and I think rightfully so that he's not going to hand off a failed forever war to yet another administration. Now, having said that, the United States is always going to defend the homeland by neutralizing terrorist threats wherever they arise. So we're not going to close any avenues for military action that are necessary to not defend Americans but we are also not going to be in the business of nation building our counterinsurgency in Afghanistan any more.

SCIUTTO: Congressman Auchincloss, thank you for taking the time this morning. More importantly, thank you for the service that you did in Afghanistan.

AUCHINCLOSS: It is good to be with you.

HARLOW: The Taliban say the U.S. should trust its new government. Where do foreign relations go from here? We'll speak with a former soldier would served two tours in Afghanistan, an expert on all of this.

Plus, many Afghan journalists say they are absolutely petrified, that is a quote from one, amid the Taliban takeover. A reporter from the New York Times joins us live from Kabul as his parents are desperately also trying to escape the Taliban.

SCIUTTO: And a surge in coronavirus infections across the south. Now, multiple school districts are openly defying their state's governors, pushing forward with mask mandates in classrooms. We're going to be live, coming up.

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HARLOW: Breaking news out of Afghanistan. U.S. military flights have just resumed at Kabul airport for now. This comes to us from a U.S. defense official.

SCIUTTO: The flights were suspended because of crowds storming the airfield desperately trying to escape, even clinging to U.S. military aircraft. The crowds have now been cleared but the military is standing by to prevent more crowds from gathering.

HARLOW: The rapid fall of the Afghan government could turn into a humanitarian crisis as thousands are trying to flee the country. Leaders around the world like, the British defense secretary, are worried that some people will not make it out of Afghanistan. Listen to that concern here.

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BEN WALLACE, U.K. DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think I also and it is part of regret for me. Look, some people won't get back. Some people won't get back. And we will have to do our best in their countries to process those people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why do you feel it so personally, Mr. Wallace?

WALLACE: Because I'm a soldier -- because it is sad. And the west has done what it's done. And we have to do our very best to get people out and stand by our obligations and 20 years of sacrifice is what it is.

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SCIUTTO: People can't get out. He says. Jason Howk, he served two tours in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne. He's also an interfaith leader. Good to have you on, Jason. Thank you as well for your service through the years there. You heard that account there, which I know you're familiar with because you're doing your best to get people out of the country. Who are you talking to there? Is it possible to get them out?

MAJOR JASON HOWK (RET.), SERVED TWO TOURS AND WORKED EXTENSIVELY WITH AFGHAN OFFICIALS: Yes, absolutely, my friends and I across the military and diplomacy and intelligence world are just fielding calls, filling out recommendations to try to get people to the right places. The airport has a U.S. consul (ph) service, even though the U.S. embassy has stopped tweeting. That is where everybody needs to go if they're going to get out, unless they went throughout some other routes outside of its circles. And Britain just announced they are taking people without visas and refugee status. There are ways for everybody that has to need to get out.

HARLOW: Major Howk, you previously in your career, actually helped build the Afghan National Army. And you even wrote earlier this year the Afghan Security Forces and their leadership have always been the key to victory. I thought it was notable that the former Afghanistan ambassador under President Obama, Ryan Crocker, told our colleague, Anderson Cooper, what he believes at least partially broke the Afghan will to fight is that the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban, cut the Afghan government out, and that that was a key moment in what has become a complete deterioration. Listen to what he said.

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RYAN CROCKER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO AFGHANISTAN: That was a key Taliban demand. We acceded to it and it was a huge demoralizing factor for the Afghan government and its security forces.

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HARLOW: Do you agree having helped build them up to what they were believed to have been?

HOWK: Yes, absolutely, Ryan Crocker is correct there. This is -- I started in 2002 with the first couple of battalions. The ADSF was on their way and but they're still a young army at 19 years old.

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Give me a break. They have a 19-year-old kid. One thing that we wouldn't do and Ambassador Crocker didn't do there either is stop the Pakistan ISI from running a terrorist pipeline out of their country and in Afghanistan.

When we made a deal with the Taliban to get ourselves out, the Afghans, all Afghans, government and military and civilians knew they had been completely betrayed over Pakistan and that Pakistan was going to make good on their promise to turn Afghanistan into a fit (ph) province. And they did. They launched every terrorist asset they had in there and fought their way around the country avoiding a fight until they swamped the entire country.

SCIUTTO: Yes, it is a good point because that was one advantage for the Taliban, is it? They had bases, safe zones outside the country in Pakistan.

I want to ask you this, because you will hear from a lot of people, including the Biden administration, we have no choice, right? End the endless wars, we've heard that before, we had to get out. But is that true? Could the U.S. have kept a relatively small military footprint there and avoided this? And would that have been in our interest?

HOWK: Absolutely. All we had to do when the Taliban didn't want to play ball in the Doha peace process, we just needed to suspend the talks, blacklist them as terrorists, put terrorism sanctions on Pakistan for supporting them and hold Bagram and Kabul with a counterterrorism task force. We do this all over the world. We're in a hundred countries with our special operations that do this for a living. Pakistan doesn't want a war with Americans. The Pakistan and their paramilitary is going to wipe out Afghans. We just opened the door for them.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: But for how long, Major? Because there is the counterargument from the Biden administration, from members of Congress, like former Republican Congressman Justin Amash, who tweeted, the Taliban's rapid gains in Afghanistan underscore the futility of permanent occupation. The U.S. wasn't able to meaningfully shape circumstances throughout the 20 years of war.

So I guess my -- is your argument then forever that the U.S. should keep their presence there for the foreseeable future, should have?

HOWK: When you've got a nuclear-powered state, like Pakistan, that runs the largest terrorism factory in South Asia and we walk away from the only country that is our strong ally against it, what do we expect? We have not left Korea yet. I'm pretty sure we ended that quite a while ago. We're still in Japan, Italy, Germany. If we don't have the spine to say Pakistan is the biggest terrorism group (ph) in South Asia, they hid bin Laden, they (INAUDIBLE), they hid the Taliban, they have got 20 other terrorist groups there. We need to investigate Pakistan and anybody who did not sanction Pakistan in the last 20 years because they put a lot of soldiers at risk, a lot of diplomats and the Afghans sacrificed everything and trusted us and got betrayed as we turned them over to Pakistan.

Pakistanis are cheering in the streets, as are China and Russia right now because of what we did and how we left here.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Major Jason Howk, thank you from both of us for being here but for what you're doing for people on the ground right now.

SCIUTTO: Let's hope he could get more out.

Still ahead this hour, local officials in Texas fighting back against the governor as coronavirus infections rise there. Why one school district is defying a state Supreme Court decision on masks.

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