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Evacuation Efforts Continue in Afghanistan. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 19, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Cyril, what happens if Haji doesn't get on an evacuation flight?

CYRIL VANIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, that's a great question.

Frankly, it's one that Corporal Hurley and Jimmy himself -- and Haji himself doesn't want to contemplate at this stage. I have asked Haji whether he sees a future for himself in Afghanistan in a Taliban-led Afghanistan. And the answer is a clear no.

Look, they came knocking at his door multiple times over the last few years looking for him. And he believes they would have killed him if they had found him. That's why he's been running from house to house with his wife and his young children, never staying in one place for more than a few weeks.

So, no, he doesn't believe the Taliban promise that they will just forgive. As for Corporal Hurley, well, he fought the Taliban in Helmand Province, the heart of the insurgency, so he also doesn't trust the Taliban.

This is the way out for Haji right now. There is no other way out for him.

CAMEROTA: And that is just one frightening story. And there are tens of thousands of those people waiting for a way out.

Cyril Vanier, thank you very much for bringing that to us.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: All right, thanks for staying with us on NEWSROOM. I'm Victor Blackwell.

CAMEROTA: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

The State Department says there are currently 6,000 people at the airport in Kabul who have been fully processed and will soon board evacuation flights.

According to the Pentagon, the U.S. has only been able to evacuate 7,000 people since Sunday. BLACKWELL: But getting to the airport, it's dangerous. Taliban fighters are intimidating people there with frequent gunfire and violence as well.

According to Reuters, 12 people have been killed in that area since the Taliban took control of the capital.

Nick Paton Walsh is CNN's international security editor. You are in Doha. Earlier this week, you were at the airport there in Kabul. You have got a new op-ed for CNN.com. And your first line there is, "In the end, it was a sin of inattention." Explain what you mean there.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: I think that real tragic fact about this, Victor, is that we are in this situation because we stopped paying attention to Afghanistan for really the best part of the last five, six, even 10 years.

It's a war that so few Americans have actually fought, in terms of proportion of the population. It's a war that has been bogged down by fatigue, by endless promises that we're leaving, starting with Barack Obama in 2014. I can't tell you the number of speeches I heard from him where he essentially said they were getting out.

Remember, he put us into that war in earnest because he believed it was the just fight and went through with the surge. And I think, too, there's been a serious problem in terms of holding the U.S. government to account about what they have actually done there.

It has been a staggering use of resources, over a trillion dollars. And, consistently, the messages from the State Department, from the Pentagon have always been, we're winning, we're doing well, there's an Afghan security force.

And had there been a little bit more scrutiny of that, a little bit more daily sort of fury about what this is all about, why we are there, then I think a moment like this, where, essentially, the emperor suddenly had no clothes, where the house of cards just came tumbling down in 11 days, would have been more avoidable. And certainly you would have less of an opportunity for people like Ned Price, for John Kirby to make some of the statements we have heard today, which often don't really jar, don't really gel with the reality of what's happening on the ground.

Not necessarily because they are choosing to be misleading, but because there's a culture, I think, of good figures being pushed forward, of good news, rather than addressing how bad things have been.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Nick.

I mean, and as you have pointed out, you were just there, you were on the ground in a way that Ned Price isn't. And you saw what the reality is, as we are all seeing at the airport, and how hard it is to get people out right now.

They still don't have an answer, Nick, of what they're going to do for the people who are not right at the airport.

WALSH: They don't.

But they do actually have an answer, because they sort of are suggesting that it's OK, that they have opened up a new gate, that there aren't closures, if they are, that they're brief. And that's sort of troubling, because it either means the messages coming from the airport are that we have got ahold of this.

And, look, I have to say I was there on Tuesday. So it may be that there's been a miraculous change not evidenced by the shocking number of videos coming out today that show even worse scenes outside the airport, and that this 6,000 number, essentially suggesting that in the last sort of 24 hours or so, they have managed to almost get through processing, ready for planes as many people as have left since this whole operation began, that we're going to see remarkable change.

But I don't have faith in that because I don't have faith in so many of the other parts of what we have been told is really happening there, when, clearly, on the ground, it's not.

CAMEROTA: Understood.

Nick Paton Walsh, thank you, as always, for your great reporting.

So, last hour, as Nick was alluding to there, we got a State Department briefing.

[15:05:00]

And CNN's Kylie Atwood was at that briefing.

So, yesterday, Kylie, I think we were all stunned to hear that the State Department said, I mean, and even our military leaders said that they could not ensure safe passage to the airport. And so, today, what did they say about that?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're still saying that they have no plans to expand their footprint beyond the airport at all.

And that is, of course, something that we have been talking about, not just the Taliban fighters, but also these massive groups of Afghans creating, frankly, a stampede-like situation at the places where they think these gates are going to open.

And I spoke with an Afghan this morning who had worked at the U.S. embassy who got a notice from the State Department just yesterday, telling him to bring his family to the airport, that there were flights. He took the chance, went to the airport at 4:00 in the morning, but then found himself in an untenable situation.

It was very, very unsafe. He was with his small children. There were people with guns and knives, he said. So they had to leave. And I asked the State Department today if they're doing anything taking action to help these Afghans get to the airport. They didn't really give us any new news on that front.

Listen to what Ned Price said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NED PRICE, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: What I can say -- and I'm seeing the same reports on Twitter that you are -- and every report of someone unable, for whatever reason, to reach the airport is something we take very seriously.

Our imperative is to relocate as many people as quickly as we can. And we have seen the reports of congestion. My understanding is that things are moving quite efficiently at this hour at the airport -- at the airport now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ATWOOD: So, Ned Price, as you guys said, said there are 6,000 people who are currently at the airport ready to get on flights. He said there should be about 20 flights that go out tonight that are full.

He also said the State Department is surging officials to the airport so that they can process a higher number of people. And I asked him if they thought that the number of people that they are surging to the airport is going to be sufficient to get to this 5,000 to 9,000 number that the Pentagon has said they can fly out.

He said they do think they will get with the resources that they're surging, but, of course, they will continue to monitor the situation, also still calling these talks with the Taliban constructive, even though we have seen the violence that has played out for many Afghans on their way to the airport.

BLACKWELL: Yes, it's also incumbent upon how many people the Taliban have let through, through these checkpoints, if they can even get to that 5,000 to 9,000 per day.

Kylie Atwood, thank you so much.

I want to talk more about this alert that went out to the embassy staff to go to Kabul for evacuation yesterday to the airport. Multiple sources tell CNN that some Afghans chose not to make that journey to the airport, despite really wanting to go.

One Afghan who worked at the U.S. Embassy for years put it this way to CNN: "I decided I would rather the Taliban shoot me in the head to being stuck in that situation."

And he and his family then turned back.

Joining me now is Ahmad Shah Mohibi. He was a translator for the U.S. military, also founded an anti-extremism organization called Rise to Peace.

Thank you for being with us. First, when you watch what is happening there to even Afghans who

worked at the U.S. Embassy, what are you thinking? What are you feeling?

AHMAD SHAH MOHIBI, FORMER U.S. MILITARY TRANSLATOR: I think it's a total chaos, a confusion and a mismanagement.

I think President Biden's evacuation plan literally failed. Look, at the moment, I have my journalists here inside that airport. You see most of these videos at the scene are being by the journalists.

Didn't understand who needs to get in. Instead of pointing an American gun on these people, we should have had a better plan. Who should get in?

So, if you're a SIV or allied, if you're green card, U.S. citizen, or activist, there has been a confusion until this day. When you call the hot line, the State Department, they tell fill out a form, for example. A lot of these people contact me.

I think there is an issue that the government needs to be honest to the people, and they need to understand they're pointing guns at them. They have to make a better plan, because we can still prevent a disaster over there.

What I am seeing right now is that it has been a complete failure and execution of the plan. We had thousands of U.S. citizens and green card holders, even U.S. personnel stuck at the airport while this premature withdrawal or the exit took place.

So I just see that your could be -- one of the things that really frightens me is that, who knows, there could be a Taliban who could be a terrorist in that plane, take them to Qatar, and the next day he's in Virginia or somewhere.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

MOHIBI: So, there is a lot of national security threats that we have to look into it.

BLACKWELL: So let me ask you about your -- you know the challenges of getting to and on one of those planes because you're going through this with your own family, your parents.

[15:10:05]

Where are they in the process?

MOHIBI: Well, my parents are not going anywhere to the airport. They are somewhere in Kabul.

I spoke to my mom when the Taliban took over. I told her, what do you think? And I'm worried. And she was saying, she left, and she told me that, you know what? We are used to this. You know with the blink of eye, 1996, Taliban knock our door asking for guns. So this is the regime change in Afghanistan. It's just people are so

used to it. You know what? I think personally, I'm personally numb. I think the president, Ashraf Ghani, he should have not betrayed his people. He should have not fled the country. He should have been loyal to his generals. He should have loyal to the people, the soldiers fighting for him.

And at the same time, I think President Biden should have had a better evacuation plan. I agreed with President Biden in terms of it's time for the U.S. soldiers to come to the U.S. But what frightens and what I did not agree in how the plan was executed.

I think there was a lot of intelligence failures, and I think U.S. intelligence capabilities are under question. And I also predicted in the future that, if we leave, it's going to have a bad credibility on the U.S. on the world.

So, looking at what's happening and putting my myself or my family, I think there's no way -- you could get killed among this crowd, if not by the Taliban.

BLACKWELL: Ahmad, last one here.

We know that your organization, Rise to Peace, is about anti- extremism, anti-terror. But will the promise potentially that will be broken if there are Afghans who worked with and for the U.S. and Western allies are left behind, will that be used, how will it be used to create potentially the next generation of extremists?

MOHIBI: The reason I founded Rise to Peace was to have an unique approach, to counter violent extremism by educating people, especially youth.

Look, if you look at it, 64 percent of Afghanistan population are under the age of 25. A lot of Taliban children are -- have grown in war. We have so much grievance. So my organization will now even focus, work with U.S. government, any international government, in order to build and rehabilitate, deradicalize these people.

A lot of them have grown in villages that have no clue what's happening in the world. So we want to teach them. Even we're a U.S. entity, one of the biggest success for us have been with focus on small, localized approaches, rather than bringing an ideology or a program from U.K. or United States and telling people what to do.

We let people to do what is best for them and your communities.

BLACKWELL: All right, Ahmad Shah Mohibi of Rise to Peace, thank you so much.

MOHIBI: Thank you for having me.

CAMEROTA: OK, take a look at this picture. This was taken by a U.S. military member. It shows an Afghan child sleeping on the floor of a U.S. Air Force plane draped in a service member's coat.

It, of course, is just one more image of the heartbreaking humanitarian crisis that is currently taking place in Afghanistan.

So, joining us now is CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann.

Do we know the backstory about that photo, Oren?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is just a few days ago.

And you're so right, Alisyn, that it's so often these pictures, these videos that define and really symbolize what's happening over there. And this will be added to that list of photos, just like the picture from a few days ago of 640 people on that C-17 crammed on that cargo aircraft trying to get out of the country.

This, the same type of aircraft, different flight, a young Afghan child under the coat of a U.S. Air Force service member getting out of the country, it speaks, again, to the desperation, the panic, and the need that so many feel to flee, to get out of Taliban control, to do anything possible to get out of the Taliban's control at Kabul International Airport.

And how hard people are first trying to get there and trying to get out of the country. It is these images that people will remember and that will define what is the end of the U.S. presence there and the rush to the exits. And given how many people have yet to be moved, I certainly don't think this is the last of these memorable images.

BLACKWELL: Oren, we have spoken with veterans of the war in Afghanistan who are frustrated by, angered by and really emotional, considering that some of the people that the promise was made to that you will be allowed to come here, that promise might be broken.

What is the Pentagon doing, if anything, to help the veterans who are dealing with the trauma brought on by what we're watching?

LIEBERMANN: The Pentagon is fully aware that this isn't happening in a vacuum. It's not just an effort to try to get people out of Kabul.

What's happening in Kabul now, what has happened there over the last few years and throughout the rest of the country is something that weighs on the minds of those who served there, the loved ones who have lost family members there, and so many others.

And for some, it is an incredibly difficult process to go through this and to see these images. And the Pentagon's not trying to downplay that. Quite the opposite. It's saying, look, reach out and talk to people.

Here is a statement, a partial statement from the Pentagon. I will read some of this. It reads: "You are not alone. Remember that what's happening now does not minimize or negate the experiences of all who served overseas. Talking can be very therapeutic, whether it's to a local chaplain, psychologist or someone you served with in the military. Do what feels right to you."

[15:15:00] And we have seen other statements like this from the chief of staff of the Army, from the commandant of the Marine Corps, acknowledging that this is difficult, this is very difficult for some people. And there has to be a way to deal with this.

In addition, there is, of course, the crisis hot line at the Department of Veterans Affairs. All of those are being used and will be used as part of this process, again, that isn't happening in a vacuum and has far-reaching consequences on those who served there as well.

CAMEROTA: And let's hope the troops take advantage of those things.

Oren, thank you for that.

So President Biden says the chaos in Afghanistan was unavoidable, despite the bipartisan criticism he's getting.

CAMEROTA: And the battle over masks continues. Three of the largest school districts in Florida are defying Governor DeSantis. He has just responded.

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[15:20:22]

CAMEROTA: President Biden says he always knew some chaos was inevitable, despite previously vowing an orderly exit from Afghanistan.

In a new interview, President Biden remained firm in his approach to drawing down U.S. troops from the region.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: So, you don't think this could've been handled, this exit could've been handled better in any way? No mistakes?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No. I -- I don't think it could've been handled in a way that there -- we -- we're going to go back in hindsight and look, but the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens.

I don't know how that happened.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, for you, that was always priced into the decision?

BIDEN: Yes.

Now, exactly what happened was not priced in. But I knew that they're going to have an enormous, enormous -- look, one of the things we didn't know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out, what they would do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: What us now is CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, CNN political director David Chalian, and former director of the joint intelligence in Afghanistan General Peter Zwack.

Thank you all for being here.

Kaitlan, let me start with you.

The president was defensive in that interview. There will be a lot that will be scrutinized. Those around the president in the White House, are they satisfied with his performance in that interview?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think they were trying to get the president's message out in comparison with the chaotic images that you're seeing coming from the airport over Sunday, when you saw, given what had happened after the Taliban took over Kabul.

Those were images that stunned even top aides inside the White House, who said they did not see that coming. They were not expecting that. And so they were really trying to I think remind people of why the president made this decision.

But there are still massive questions about how this drawdown went down. And I think what you're seeing from President Biden in this interview is, he is still being defiant. That's not surprising. He is still using the same rationale for leaving Afghanistan, also not surprising.

But the thing what the president is saying when he's saying he can't envision any kind of U.S. exit from Afghanistan that wasn't chaotic, it stands in contradiction of what he has been telling reporters and what he's been saying publicly for the last several weeks and for the last several months.

The White House says, well, the intelligence changes, whatnot, but President Biden had been saying publicly he thought it would be a safe and orderly drawdown. Of course, it has been anything but.

And so I think the White House, instead of really doing any after- action reviews, immediately, they are really trying to focus on getting people out of Afghanistan right now to try to patch up what has been a very chaotic exit so far.

CAMEROTA: So, General Zwack, let's talk about that, about the getting people out of Afghanistan, because, from where we sit, it looks very chaotic. OK?

So here's what we have learned; 2,000 people were evacuated in the past 24 hours. They keep saying that they will be able to accelerate it. We haven't seen that yet. There's something like 70,000 people estimated to still be there who need to get out.

The Taliban is blocking people. I mean, that's what all of the reports from our reporters on the ground say. They're blocking people basically at checkpoints. And no safe passage is being guaranteed by the State Department or the Pentagon.

So how is this going to happen in the next 12 days? Is it possible?

BRIG. GEN. PETER ZWACK (RET.), U.S. ARMY: First of all -- thank you for the question, Alisyn.

First of all, I think we need to get the 12 days, the discussion of the timeline, the 31st, out of our discussion. I think this should be event- and conditions-based, as we say, and not time-driven.

By pushing that, certainly, there's -- it generates panic, disheartens people, and emboldens, if you will, our opponents. So I think that's part of it.

This is a devilishly complex operation. And I know -- I mean, I just know you have got planners working hard, building contingencies. There are all kinds of things. Success in already a disastrous situation is if nothing worse occurs. That's where we are right now.

And then, when you think about all the other issues, to include the cast outside the wire, how quickly that could go bad. Good God, a suicide bomber could walk into the middle of these crowds. We in the security side always worried about big crowds and poorly, if you will managed -- and that could -- so there's a lot that's going on.

Last thing I would say is, as far as criticism and all that, sure, there's plenty to go wrong, but we're -- this isn't the time for postmortems.

[15:25:03]

We are middle of an unbelievably fragile operation. And everybody, political government, people need to pull together to sort this out, so it does not get worse.

BLACKWELL: David, let me come to you on a specific element of this interview with the president in which he was asked about those stunning pictures, the images that Kaitlan just mentioned.

Here's the exchange with George Stephanopoulos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: We've all seen the pictures. We've seen those hundreds of people packed into a C-17. You've seen Afghans falling--

BIDEN: That was four days ago, five days ago.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What did you think when you first saw those pictures?

BIDEN: What I thought was, we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: His answer was tactical, logistics.

What did you make of what you heard from the president there?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, I was really surprised that answer, a little defensive, obviously.

But, mostly, I was surprised because empathy is one of Joe Biden's sort of calling cards. And that was a moment that Joe Biden usually seizes when he gets a question like that about a human experience. Look at these pictures, what were you thinking, and he didn't go there at all.

And so the fact that he just sort of pushed aside any kind of opportunity to express empathy for those people who are running alongside an airplane and hanging from it or smushing into a military aircraft to get out, the desperate situation they were finding themselves in, for fear of what the Taliban may do, he just didn't want to go there at all.

I thought that was pretty surprising. But he's clearly in a position where his words aren't always matching what we're seeing. So, he says, hey, we my first thought was, we got to get control of this situation. And we did. And we have heard from the Pentagon that, indeed, operationally, they are in control of the airport.

But we see the chaos that still exists from our own reporters on the ground there. And getting the images on the ground to match the president's description of what's going on, that still seems a mission that this White House is on.

CAMEROTA: Generals Zwack, because you were on the ground in Afghanistan for 13 months in Kabul, I want to ask you about what former Vice President Mike Pence wrote in an op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal."

He said: "When Mr. Biden became president, he quickly announced that U.S. forces would remain in Afghanistan for an additional four months without a clear reason for doing so. There was no plan to transport the billions of dollars worth of American equipment recently captured by the Taliban, or evacuate the thousands of Americans now scrambling to escape Kabul, or facilitate the regional resettlement of the thousands of Afghan refugees who will now be seeking asylum in the U.S. with little or no vetting."

There's a lot there. But do you think that those four months were squandered, number one? and, number two, the U.S. -- the Afghan helpers, he says there was little to no vetting. Haven't we vetted them for the past 20 years? They were the helpers. They were people who saved the U.S. military's lives in some cases. Don't we know their histories?

ZWACK: I was mystified on what seemed to me how slow and, frankly, bureaucratic the process was. The tremors, the chatter out in the provinces was going.

And people were concerned. Nobody imagined the speed and the ferocity, if you will, the of the movement last few weeks. I think that -- yes, I think a lot of time was lost. And I think we got all wrapped in part with our own processes, the complex visas and everything else.

And, again, I think that nobody realized that the Taliban were going to -- that units, entire ANA units would collapse, melt away and you would have you had this.

So, yes, it came fast. We weren't ready. We didn't dispose of weapons. I was kind of surprised that our pullback from Bagram was more along the line of an evacuation than a withdrawal. It just seemed -- the idea and concept were there was OK. But the execution, in my mind, sadly, it failed.

And we're living the repercussions now.

CAMEROTA: Kaitlan Collins, David Chalian, General Zwack, thank you all. Really appreciate the insight. So, thousands of students and staff are now quarantined in Florida. And parents are still fighting with one another over mask mandates.

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