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Teacher Discusses School Reopening During Ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic; Many Still Attempting to Flee Afghanistan Through Kabul Airport as Taliban Takes Over Country; Gunshots Heard as CNN on Streets of Taliban-Controlled Kabul. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 18, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JENNY GILLIS, TEACHER PLEADING IN VIDEOS ABOUT COVID FEARS: They did have a school board meeting night before last. But we were also told that if we were exposed to COVID, that they recommended that we quarantine, but that we were not going to be receiving any pay for that quarantine and that we would have to use our paid sick and personal days to do so.

And after that meeting, teachers on my campus at different meetings that I went to, like I said in the video, the conversations are about how we're going to pay bills and what we're going to do if our paychecks are going to be docked if we have to quarantine once or twice. And so there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of worry, which led to the tears, because starting school is stressful enough. And we just -- we wish more than anything that there could be better safety protocols and procedures in place to keep our unvaccinated students safe, to keep our staff safe. So that's --

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: To be clear, you are vaccinated, correct? So is your concern primarily with your own health or with the health of the students who might not be vaccinated?

GILLIS: I have mitral valve prolapse, and I have some family members who have health issues, and I have family members who are unvaccinated because they're too young to get the vaccine. I have colleagues who have young children. And those are, those are all concerns. I have students who are going to come in who will be unvaccinated. So it's all of that above.

BERMAN: And school is coming back, it's always a time of high pressure, high anxiety, and now one more thing to worry about. Jenny Gillis, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts.

GILLIS: Thank you so much for this opportunity. I appreciate it.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: A very good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I am Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman, and we certainly do have breaking news this morning. Chaos and gunfire at the airport in Kabul. Moments ago Taliban fighters opened fire to disperse large crowds that had gathered hoping to get out of Afghanistan. This is the one way that they can get out if they can get through. CNN's Clarissa Ward speaking to us a short time ago in the middle of this increasingly dangerous situation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're about 200 yards, even less than 200 yards away from the entrance to the Kabul airport. We just drove through it quickly. It's absolutely impossible to stop there. And I say we drove through it quickly. You can't drive through it quickly. It's bumper to bumper. Cars are barely moving. There are Taliban fighters all around. We actually did see them physically with truncheons trying to get them back. We have seen them and heard them a lot as well firing on the crowds to disperse the crowds.

It's a little difficult to see from this vantage point, and it's a slightly edgy situation, so I don't want to push our luck. But all along the roadside over there, there's just hundreds of people who are basically waiting, desperately trying to get out of the country. It's not clear if they have their paperwork in order, if they've been declined and told that they can't enter the gates, or if they simply don't have the wherewithal to get inside.

A cameraman is just panning off right now. You can see it's a pretty large crowd who has formed around us already because this is a slightly unusual situation to be doing live shots from here, I think. But it's definitely chaotic. It's definitely dangerous. I will say this -- the Taliban appears to be trying to disperse the crowds, and there are crowds there of young men who seem to be disengaging in like criminal activity. I don't know if you heard that. They're kind of running towards the Taliban and then running away from them again, almost like it's a game. But when there's bullets firing like that, Brianna and John, it's clearly not a game.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Clarissa and her team are perfectly safe now. We should note and heard some remarkable stories from the people in that crowd. Tens of thousands of Afghans and up to 15,000 Americans are still in the country trying to get out. Just about 80 miles away in Jalalabad, Taliban fighters had clashed with protesters for removing the Taliban flag from the main square and replacing it with an Afghan flag. Witnesses say shots were fired into the crowd and some protesters were beaten.

[08:05:04]

Let's go back to Kabul right now and bring in CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward. Clarissa, every time you come up on the screen, we're excited and interested to find out where you are this time because you keep on moving around, giving us a different look at what's going on. So what are you seeing? WARD: So, we had to move away, John, because the situation where we

were when we did our last live shot was pretty chaotic. But then after the live shot we went and got very close to the airport, and it was extremely chaotic. We had Taliban fighters all around approaching us, shouting, one man shouting at me to cover my face or he wouldn't talk to me. He was carrying this huge makeshift whip. It was a bicycle lock that had basically been split in two, so the heavy metal padlock was in the middle. And he's just using it to just get anybody out of his way who gets in his way.

There was a consistent stream of gunfire. We also were just accosted by people. John, it's so heartbreaking. Everybody coming up to us with their papers, their passports, saying, please, I worked at Camp Phoenix. I was at this camp. I was a translator. Help me get in, help me get to America, help me get my SIV, my visa to get out of the country. And then the Taliban would come through.

At one stage this one firefighter just lifted his gun in the air as if he was about to start firing rounds, so we had to run and take cover. And then the most frighting moment for our team came when our producer Brent Swails was taking some video on his iPhone. Two Taliban fighters just came up with their pistols and they were ready to pistol whip him. And we had to intervene and scream. And it was actually another Taliban fighter who came in and said, no, no, no, don't do that, they're journalists.

But really, I've covered all sorts of crazy situations. This was mayhem. This was nuts. This was impossible for an ordinary civilian, even if they had their paperwork, no way they're running that gauntlet, no way they're going to be able to navigate that. It's very dicey. It's very dangerous. And it's completely unpredictable. There's no order. There's no coherent system for processing people, separating those with papers from those who don't have papers. And honestly, to me it's a miracle that more people haven't been very, very seriously hurt.

KEILAR: It is truly a miracle. And you say that a lot of people, they're just not going to be able to run the gauntlet here. We heard you talking to one man who said that some of the paperwork he needs he would need from it sounded like a contractor who closed up shop in Afghanistan in 2014. Impossible to get certainly when you have no wi- fi, you're in a different country, and you have a failed state. Do you get the sense that any of that is going to stop people, though, from at least trying?

WARD: I think they're trying. But if they're sending emails to a former employer and they're not replying or you have got the email address wrong, what do you do? Because as the Americans prepare to really pull the ripcord here -- we're not talking about leaving a small footprint. We're not talking about having a downsized embassy. We're talking about all Americans will be gone. So for people like that man that you referenced, there is no recourse. There is nowhere to go when you get stuck with your paperwork. There is no one to call to find out how to get that letter of recommendation you need, or why it is that your application was rejected, or how you can start that application again. And that's what makes it feel so tragically unfair, frankly, is that these people thought they had longer, Brianna. They thought they had months to prepare for this moment. And instead they had a matter of hours.

BERMAN: Clarissa, we actually have the tape of you speaking to that young man who spoke perfect English about his attempt to get out of the country. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

WARD: Are lots of people in the same situation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, all the same, they have -- they don't have their recommendation letter. But most of them, they lost their badge.

WARD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So --

WARD: What's your message to America right now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our message to America, we helped the America people, so that's their job to help right now here. This is a very bad situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It's their job to help us right now right here. Clarissa, there is a disconnect, and it's not small. It's huge. There is an epic chasm right now between the promises the United States is making and the ability for anyone in that country to really realize those promises. It doesn't matter if the airport is open if you can't get in the door. And so far, I have not heard a solution about how they're supposed to get there other than, well, we think the Taliban is going to let it happen.

[08:10:01]

WARD: What was interesting when we were pushing up very close to the entrance of the airport, and this Taliban fighter came out, and he was just high on I don't know what. He was really, really hopped up and quite scary, I must say. And he was like, what are you doing here? And brandishing this sort of makeshift truncheon. And we told him we were journalists, we told him we were westerners.

And when he knew that we were from America, he was ushering us through, and he was trying to get us through, and then we had to explain to them we weren't actually trying to leave the country. We were trying to cover the situation, the mayhem that was unfolding.

But if you are a foreigner and you're willing to brave it, you can get in. They will let you in. They're not interested in having you stay around, but they are equally uninterested in having Afghans leave, because the Taliban are not stupid. They know that these images are bad. They know that thousands of people flooding a runway, clinging to the fuselage, doesn't look good for them because it speaks to the fact that so many people here are petrified. So many people here feel that their future has been just ripped away in a matter of moments.

And I'm speculating, but I'm guessing that's part of the reason that they are desperately trying to really discourage ordinary Afghans from trying to get close to that airport. And they know the Americans will be gone August 31st, it will all be over. They will be in full control of the airport, and they will be the ones to have the final say on who comes and who stays.

BERMAN: Clarissa Ward, you and your team please stay safe. Thank you so much for showing us what's happening on the ground there. We'll let you get back to reporting.

KEILAR: And thank you, Clarissa.

Joining us now to discuss the unfolding situation in Afghanistan is retired General David Petraeus who, of course, commanded U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. He's also the former CIA director. Sir, thank you so much for being with us this morning. First, I would just like to get your reaction to the conditions there that Clarissa is reporting on in Kabul.

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS (RET), FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. AND NATO TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN: Well, it's heartbreaking. Frankly, it's also shameful, because there were three successive American administrations that failed to meet our moral obligation to these individuals who qualify for the special immigrant visa, a program that was really started at the very end of the Bush administration, for those who have served two years on the ground with our soldiers, sharing hardship and risk as battlefield interpreters. And then there are many, many others. There are probably hundreds of thousands, not just tens of thousands, who put their lives and the their lives of their families at risk by serving with our forces, with our diplomats, our development workers, and so forth.

And obviously it's a scene of complete chaos, and it reflects the fact that we moved so sluggishly, the bureaucracy around the SIV process was glacial at best, and now we are seeing the results of that. And we have to do everything we can. I've said that this is a Dunkirk moment. These are friendlies who are stranded, and we must help them get out.

And you're not going to do it, by the way, by micromanaging it from Washington and having names. You're going to have to have people that are empowered on the ground to whom delegation of authority has been given, military, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security since they do, of course, visas and so forth, and allow them to make these terrible choices that are going to determine who gets to get on a plane and get out of a country that is now going to be ruled by ultraconservative Islamist emirate leaders, and those who have to stay and find out whether the Taliban is going to be a kinder, gentler version of their old self, or if they will revert to form. And I'm somewhat skeptical as to how that will transpire.

And I am curious about your skepticism on that. I do want to ask you, though, about this process of trying to identify at-risk Afghans, eligible Afghans, because you're right, it does seem that this is largely being done from the United States, which obviously is not ideal. I've heard from -- honestly, there is not a veteran I've heard from who isn't trying to get someone out, isn't trying to send names to nonprofits, NGOs, the State Department. Is it clear to you who is in charge of the situation there at the airport? And what does the Biden administration need to do to get a handle on this?

PETRAEUS: It's not completely clear to me. I am also getting innumerable emails and LinkedIn messages from individuals that are trying to get out or individuals who are trying to get others, family members out. Some have figured out how to navigate this system, and it generally is, as always, you have to figure out a way around all the different obstacles. Some have found a back gate. Some have figured out a way to link up with the entry control point.

[08:15:03]

There are some at-risk individuals I won't identify, a group of West Pointers were able to figure out how to get them through this chaotic scene outside the entry control point through it and actually on a plane and now are in safety.

Again, this is not something that you can run from Washington. You're just going to have to put your trust in these great people who are on the ground, who have reestablished security and a perimeter at the airfield, give them some broad guidelines and tell them to make the decisions.

And again, it would be military, state and department of homeland security. I think perhaps some other agencies in there as well.

KEILAR: Yesterday, the spokesman for the Pentagon told us that once the American efforts are fully operational, they're looking at a capability of maybe 5,000 to 9,000 people they can evacuate per day, a mix of Americans and Afghans. But yesterday, we found out they were only able to evacuate 1100. So they're very far from being fully operational.

Can America get this done or even close to complete by August 31st?

PETRAEUS: I doubt that we can get it done by that deadline. And obviously they need to consider that is something that Washington can do, and that is to determine that we should extend that deadline.

By the way, keep in mind, we're just talking about what we're seeing at Kabul. What about all those out in Kandahar and around Bagram and all the other air bases around the country? It might be a test of the Taliban to say, how about letting us go back into Bagram or into Kandahar? Huge airports, by the way, much bigger than what you have at Kabul, which is a postage stamp compared to those in capacity and capability.

But, look, if we can put over 600 Afghans on a single C-17 -- by the way, that can easily lift that. It can put two M-1 tanks on there. The question is not the weight. But that -- by the way, there's a lot of people are fixated on the image, rightly, understandably, the tragic case of Afghans trying to hang onto a C-17 as it's taking off. I'd like to focus on the photo of 650 Afghans inside a C-17 where a

pilot and air crew decided to put as many on there as they could and taking off and landing safely.

That expresses what Americans will do in a situation like this. I believe firmly that we can do this. The question is can we authorize the individuals on the ground to make these very, very tough choices? Or are we going to stay with the bureaucracy, in which case we're going to leave tens, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals in significant risk.

KEILAR: Yeah, I mean that's what it came down to in Saigon in the final moments, right? We saw certainly the state department, they did take some action before the last moments. But it was really people on the ground who were making those calls and really asking for forgiveness, not permission.

I do want to play something --

PETRAEUES: Sure. And, by the way, people on aircraft carriers shoving helicopters off so they could land the final individuals. By the way, they did apparently on a number of different ships.

KEILAR: Yeah, unbelievable images. And those were just rank and file guys making the calls. It's really amazing. I do want to ask you, because the president has talked about what went wrong here, and this is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what's happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, some without trying to fight. Americans cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: You were skeptical of President Trump's draw down plan. You were skeptical, of course, of Biden's draw down plan. I do wonder what you thought and think of how he is communicating on these final days to the American people.

PETRAEUS: Well, on the issue of whether Afghans will fight, it is very important to remember that well over 25 times as many Afghans have been lost in combat as have Americans, way over 60,000. So the idea that they wouldn't fight if someone had their back, and the problem here is the psychological blow. And I did talk about this months ago, and I did say that I feared that we would regret this decision, and I certainly do. I think an awful lot of others now do as well.

With the psychological blow of the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal, really the psychological blow of the Trump administration forcing Afghanistan to accept a negotiated agreement which was one they didn't even participate in.

[08:20:10]

They weren't allowed to, and then forcing them to release over 5,000 detainees who, many of whom went back to fighting for the Taliban. It started with that. Certainly, other previous presidents have all made it very clear, they wanted to get out. That's not the way, by the way, you negotiate from a position of strength with an adversary like the Taliban.

And then with this administration saying that clearly, again, we're going to get out. Then we actually did get out. I think people still thought that they would look into the abyss, the administration and say, whoa, this could be really ugly. Let's not do that perhaps after all.

And then it was the withdrawal of the contractors who kept the Afghan air force going. You know well, your husband is a Special Forces officer who served with Afghan commandos. They will go to the fight. They just have to get there.

And as the Afghan helicopters and fixed wing aircraft readiness eroded, they no longer could provide the kind of reinforcements, emergency resupply, and closer air support, that Afghans in far-flung posts around the country. Yes, they're more numerous, but the Taliban could mass where they chose to do so and they could achieve local dominance over those organizations.

And then once Afghan soldiers and local leaders see that no one is coming to the rescue, I think it's almost predictable at that point, especially, again, as they see others surrender, cut a deal or flee, that that then just follows. And it becomes infectious. You have this kind of infectious psychological collapse that led to this very rapid collapse of the state overall.

And the senior leaders will have to answer for what they did for themselves later on, but for right now, we have to recognize what the situation is, that we do own this at the end of the day. Yes, others failed to do their duty. Yes, on and on.

Yes, there was an agreement by a previous administration, although this administration has reversed many other of the policy decisions by the previous administration, not the least of which was the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Iran nuclear deal and the WHO.

But again, let's focus on where we are now and let's focus on this moral obligation that we have, that we have not discharged properly over a period of several administrations, not just this one by any means. And now let's try to make this good. Let's try to start re- establishing our reputation and our credibility around the world by what we do now. And we can argue later on about whether or not this was the right decision to take and who is to blame for that.

KEILAR: Yeah, you know, where is that credibility? Because when we see what happened with the abandonment of the Kurds under President Trump, we're seeing this happen now in Afghanistan, you know, that's actually something that affects really just a very small percentage of the American population. Not very many people fight.

And President Biden is well aware that most Americans want out of this war. You know, his finger is on the pulse when it comes to that. But I wonder what your message is to Americans who, yeah, they are tired of this war going on. Most of them want to leave, but they're watching all of this unfold in Kabul right now.

PETRAEUS: Well, this was not Vietnam. This is not a war that we could not sustain. We have not lost an American military, man or woman, in the last 18 months in Afghanistan. There were sustainable sustained commitment options that were there, they were recommended, in fact, as is very publicly known by the military and so forth.

But, again, where we are now is, needless to say this is disastrous. I don't think there is any other way that you can describe it. To see a government, however flawed and however many shortcomings it had, at least provided enormous freedoms for its people, and those are about to be extinguished. In fact, women by and large are staying off the streets right now as I think Clarissa reported yesterday.

So let's focus forward, though. Let's figure out how do we start rebuilding credibility, which China and Russia, by the way, are having a field day, saying, so, this is your partner? European leaders are questioning despite the success of E.U. Summit and G7 meeting and all the rest of that, because they, many of them, if not all, wanted to stay.

So -- but focus forward and figure out how we do take this forward? And then meet that moral obligation that I described earlier, because it is a very significant one.

And, by the way, one last comment if I could.

[08:25:03]

All that our young men and women in uniform who have called the America's new greatest generation, all that they did, all that they sacrificed, all that they bled for should not be discredited by the way we have left Afghanistan. We provided 20 years of real hope for Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Their leaders may not have capitalized on all the opportunities. There were shortcomings and so forth. But at the end of the day, they saw something and experienced something that they had not had before.

And I certainly hope, frankly, the Taliban recognized that this is a different Afghanistan. This is not the Afghanistan that they ruled up until the 9/11 attacks or planned on Afghan soil by al Qaeda, allowed to have a sanctuary on their watch.

And, by the way, they need to help us now, supposedly they agreed that they would cut ties with al Qaeda, so why don't they prove that? Why don't they invite us back to Bagram air field and establish a terrorism force and coordination with our authorities and make sure al Qaeda and now the Islamic State are not able to establish a sanctuary once again on Afghan soil. KEILAR: Well, sir, I will -- I think I might safely say I do not see

that happening, certainly even if you think that that is something that should happen. You know, it's going to be very interesting to see how the Taliban does relate to the international community and how America relates to the Taliban.

We'll be seeing that in the future. We'll be talking more about that with you, General. General David Petraeus, thanks so much for being with us.

PETREAUS: Thanks, Brianna. And, again, the future starts here and how we react to the tens, if not hundreds of thousands whose lives are in jeopardy because of their service with us.

KEILAR: Yeah, and we are watching. We will keep watching. General Petraeus, thanks again.

BERMAN: I want to pickup on the last thing General Petraeus said, there is a now issue in Afghanistan.

KEILAR: That's right.

BERMAN: There is a lot of discussion about what went wrong and who is to blame. There is a now problem, a huge urgency with thousands of lives in the balance and we're seeing it through the eyes of our chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward who has been on the streets with her team over the last several days, heroically.

And this morning they went near the airport to try to see how thousands of Afghans are trying to get out of that country, and they're not really able to right now. And I want to play one exchange she had with a man who had worked with the Americans, and now wants what he was promised.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Lots of people in the same situation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, all the same. They have issue letter -- but they don't have the recommendation letter. Most of them lost their badge.

WARD: Right. And what's your message to America right now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our message to America, we help the American people, so that's their jobs to help right now here. There is a very bad situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, joining us now is David Sanger, CNN political and national security analyst -- of course, reporter at "The New York Times."

David, what we've seen from Clarissa this morning illustrates a huge issue, a huge problem for what is going on and how the United States will fulfill the prove is made by President Biden.

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's absolutely right, John. I think that the core issue here is that in April when President Biden reaffirmed that the United States would leave, though we gave it some more time under the Trump era agreement, that's when they really needed to go put into hyper drive the effort to go get these former interpreters, aides and others through.

And the White House has made the case, not illegitimately, that it's a big bureaucratic problem governed, in part, by a law that they actually had to go get Congress to go amend some. But the fact of the matter is that the rushed effort right now to get people through the gates, which Clarissa has shown, could have been done in a much more paced way in those months between April and the collapse of the government.

Everybody thought they had the benefit of time, and that's where this concept that there was 18 months or six months, and that there would actually be a fight for -- to defend Kabul went wrong. But you're seeing the human cost now of the fact that we just got the timing here wrong, and we didn't move fast enough when we had the chance.

BERMAN: Just so people know what this man on the screen is showing us right now is what he says is his green card. It's his documentation that should get him through that gate right now. He has every right by the documentation he apparently has to get out of the country right now and he's showing to Clarissa and he can't get through that door.

Sorry, Brianna. I didn't mean to jump in.

KEILAR: Oh, no, no. I'm so glad you pointed that out because we're hearing all of these stories of people, whether they worked with Americans -- I mean, they have -- they can rightfully live in America. It's really stunning to see.

[08:30:00]