Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

CNN Reports From Inside the Chaotic Scene at Kabul Airport; Biden to Address Nation Today of Afghanistan Crisis; States Warn of ICU Bed Shortage amid Spread of Delta Variant. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 20, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

CLARSSIA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And, listen, everyone is doing their best to stream this process, but you have to remember there's a huge amount of people, thousands and thousands and thousands, if not, tens of thousands, there are multiple gates and entrances, you have the Americans, you have the Brits, you the Italians, you have the French, you have the Hungarians. I mean, we have seen pretty much every nationality you can conceive of who has had a presence here in Afghanistan.

So you have a lot of -- and you have the State Department, and you have the Marines, and you have Special Forces, and it is very hectic and very difficult. You know, you see people looking for vehicles, traffic jams building up inside the base, people trying to squeeze around blast walls. There just isn't a coherent mechanism yet in place to process these people. You know, even something simple like tents, please, get these people some tents, okay? I'm okay. But the women with their babies, they can't be standing out in the 95-degree sun for eight hours, they just can't. They're getting water. They're handing out MREs, military meals ready to eat and they're doing the best they can, but it is still a really, really, really tough situation here.

JOHN AVLON, CNN NEW DAY: Clarissa, it's John. You know, first of all, it is extraordinary to see you in the airport. And we see the efforts to kind of corral this chaos, but given the still humanitarian disaster and desperation you are seeing, where is the failure occurring? Is it a lack of resources? Is it a lack of leadership? What needs to be done to bring some more order to this chaos and pain around you?

WARD: I mean, look, afterwards, there will be a time to sort of do a proper revision of what happened and what went wrong and what could have been different. And, clearly, there was not enough preparation in place. Clearly, people should have been evacuated or that process should have begun many months ago, okay? That goes without saying.

I think the main issue right now is that front gate. I mean, we were driving around the airport every single gate now. At 5:00 in the morning, as hundreds of people just clambering, waiting for maybe a soldier to open the door for two minutes and then they just start shoving themselves into that space.

So, what's happening as we understand it, is that the U.S. and the Taliban are starting to engage and work together. And that's what needs to happen because the two sides are the ones who will ultimately be the ones to try to resolve this bottleneck and to try to come up with a better mechanism for processing these people. For example, how about different lines for different people? Do you have a SIV, do you a green card, are you a U.S. national? Have you partially completed your paperwork? You need to have multiple sort of lines or processing areas at the same time.

Look, that's easy for me to say, right? I just arrived here and, you know, it's all well and good being an armchair critic. I understand how difficult it is and how hard everyone is working. But, still, more needs to be done. More needs to be done to help these poor people.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: You know, there's actually to that point, Clarissa, it's very interesting because you're talking about more organization getting people to go certain places. There is domestically in the U.S. a giant army of people who are in touch with Afghans on the ground. Those people, probably some of whom we're seeing in the pictures outside of the gates of the airport, you know, there is a way to at least communicate even in an ad hoc way with some people at the airport in a way that could help. But I don't know that we're seeing any sort of marshalling of that, any coordination of that.

WARD: I mean, the problem is whenever you have this kind of a situation where there's so much going on and there's so much fear, it's a little loud at the moment you can probably hear another military plane just landed, but whenever you have that kind of a situation, the rumor mill goes into overdrive. The panicking starts. You have people -- they're turning up here with like a piece of paper with a United States flag on it. Obviously, that is not going to be enough to get you on to a flight to the U.S. I'm sorry. I'm really having to shout here.

KEILAR: We can hear you, Clarissa, don't worry. We can hear you.

WARD: You can hear me?

KEILAR: Yes.

AVLON: Yes.

WARD: So I'm just stepping out of the way so you can see the plane crossing.

[07:05:00]

You can see HR7 (ph). And we've seen -- we've seen about three planes take off today, which is -- it started out well. They were taking off a lot. And then in about a last two or three hours, it's been a lot quieter. I don't know what's going on. We've been told that there are delays on the airfield. We're still waiting as well for our evacuation flight. And we're lucky, by the way. Boy, are we lucky. We get to fast track this process, much more than all these poor people, some of whom, as I said before, have been waiting here for two days. I mean, just try to wrap your mind around that, two days. KEILAR: I'm not sure, Clarissa, if you -- who your cameraman is, maybe it's Will, but is there a way that he can pan around kind of slowly to show us some of what is happening around you?

WARD: Yes. So, he's going to try to pan. Our signal is not great. So I just warn you about that. You can see there, there're U.S. military vehicles. This is a sort of holding area here where there are a lot of people. And there are several of these holding areas. They have been standing, waiting here for, I don't know, about three hours. It's very hot. There's no shade. There's water.

But I wonder if we can get a little bit closer even and just take a look. You see children lying on the ground here. Imagine being here with your family for two days in the scorching sun trying to take care of your children with no sense of what the future will hold, what happens when you get to America.

I spoke to one woman who actually got separated from her family. She was inside here. But the rest of her family was stuck outside the base. There is no mechanism for dealing with a situation like that. If you lose your family, you lost your family. There's no way to reconnect people at this stage. There's no way to bring them in from the front gates. Honestly, there's no way to rescue anyone from the front gate. It's survival of the fittest, Brianna.

AVLON: I mean, if you lose your family, you lose your family.

WARD: My phone line has just cut out, so I lost you guys. We're going to step outside. But, yes, sorry about that. I'll try to reconnect in a moment.

AVLON: Thank you, Clarissa, just heroic and extraordinary reporting, as always.

But, those are the lucky ones, the ones that are inside. She made that point. Indelible image of this is the mother throwing her baby up to a soldier and thankfully that child was returned. But that's the indelible image of the desperation these people are feeling right now.

KEILAR: I do think it is the images of the children that are all the indelible images. In fact, even just in the pictures of what Clarissa was showing us there, I saw one little girl who was skipping.

As Clarissa said, you know, Clarissa, and I think you're back with us now. But you were saying the future for so many of these Afghans -- and we need to be clear, these are afghan allies of America, right? These are Afghans who served as translators and cultural advisers, who kept Americans safe and alive throughout their service and this is their family, right? These are people who qualify legally to immigrate from Afghanistan.

And I did notice when your cameraman was panning around, there was a little girl who was skipping. And it just made me realize the difference between what the future holds if you are an Afghan inside the airport walls or you're outside. WARD: And that's what's so heartbreaking. You know, we're actually traveling with a local member of staff of ours, a great translator and a great friend. And last night, it dawned on him as we were getting ready to try our luck getting into the airport this morning, he said, what will happen to me? What will happen to me? Where do I go? What happens when I get off the plane? Who will meet me? Where will I stay? And it's so heartbreaking. What do you tell people? They're stepping into an unknown. They're leaving their families, many of them. They're starting a new life with nothing.

[07:10:00]

And it's very hard, honestly, as an American to be here and to be witnessing all of this and to be at a loss for words as to what to tell people in terms of what will happen. And as I said before, they're the lucky ones. These kids behind me sleeping on the gravel on a piece of card board box are the lucky ones, because there are many others, thousands of them, just outside the front perimeter, which I saw with my own eyes, with Taliban fighters beating them, with mothers throwing their babies, trying to get them inside the airport compound. It is just a picture of desperation, of failure as well, failure to protect our allies, failure to plan for this eventuality.

And I think everybody here understands that no one could have predicted how quickly things would unravel but, still, talking to the people all day, as we have, there's a lot of heartache and there's a lot bitterness that every eventuality wasn't planned for, that evacuations didn't begin earlier.

And so I guess maybe now is not time for finger-pointing and the blame game and it's always easy to do Monday morning quarterbacking, but certainly seeing these scenes, seeing this heartache, seeing this desperation and seeing this chaos, you have to ask yourself, surely there was a better way. Surely there was a better way.

AVLON: Surely there was. And you're right. There will be time for that kind of an assessment. But I want to ask you about a threat assessment that's just come down, Clarissa, showing that the Taliban seem to be increasing their retaliation against U.S. allies in Kabul and across the country, just on the other side of that wall. What are you hearing about that and what have you seen of that?

WARD: Well, for the first couple of days, the Taliban were on their best behavior. They were trying to show the world that they were an effective political force, that they were mature, responsible state actors. They were trying to escape basically their reputation from the late 90s and early 2000s and then, of course, two decades of bloody, ambitious insurgency. But, listen, it hasn't taken long to start to see their true colors coming out, right?

Yesterday in Kabul, peaceful protests, Afghanistan Independence Day, a bunch of young people went protesting in the center of town just waving Afghan flags. And our colleague, (INAUDIBLE), was near where the protest was happening. He heard gunfire erupt. And then a huge crowd of people just started running towards them. He asked them what had happened and they said the Taliban fighters had opened fire on the crowd to disperse the crowd, even though the Taliban had previously said you can fly whatever flag you want.

And that's the reason people don't trust the Taliban. That's the reason despite the pledges of a blanket amnesty, despite the sort of pledges that no one will face retaliation for working with foreigners or working with Afghan forces, that's the reason people just don't believe them because they say one thing, their leadership, and then the fighters on the street do another thing all together.

Now, it remains to be seen what is going to happen if indeed there is going to be some kind of a purge or a bloodletting with regards to people who worked with the Americans or worked with the Afghan forces. The Taliban has given their word it wouldn't happen. We hear rumblings here and there, nothing that we've been able to confirm. But it's deeply troublesome. And, of course, you know, I think that all the various parties involved, whether it's the U.S., the U.K. who are talking to the Taliban here on the ground make it clear to them that if you behave in that way, you'll be an international pariah.

And from the conversations that I've had with the Taliban's leadership, it is quite important to them to be internationally recognized. There's a lot of money and aid and funding that is associated with that recognition that you don't get if you're a pariah state. That's basically the only leverage right now that the international community has to try to stop the kind of revenge attacks and bloodletting that you're talking about, John.

KEILAR: And, Clarissa, the president will be speaking today at 1:00 P.M. I wonder what questions do you think that he needs to be addressing.

WARD: Well, I think there needs to be a push. I think what people here would like to see and their families and friends who are on the other side of the gate, an ironclad guarantee.

[07:15:07]

You worked with us. We're getting you out. And so far, we had vague assurances for people who are looking for an ironclad guarantee. I still get messages honestly Brianna like every half an hour, can you help get this person out, can you help get that person out? There is such desperation. There is no real sense -- that most people hear, that's what they want to hear from President Biden. They're less concerned with apologies and they don't expect them because listening to his last couple of speeches, you know, --

KEILAR: All right. We may have lost Clarissa there. So, we're going to try to reestablish some contact there. But Clarissa has been broadcasting live for us from the airport there in Kabul where, as she says, the people behind her are the lucky ones, right? They are the lucky ones. They are the ones who have gotten through. They have spent hours there in the hot sun just on the airport side of things. But they're expected to get out.

So, let's go ahead now as we try to maybe reestablish contact with Clarissa. Let's try to analyze this a little bit, what we have just heard, what we have just seen with Shamila Chaudhary, who was a former White House Adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

I wonder as you're -- that is the calm, okay? This is the calm side of things at the airport. But we know what is happening on the walls, on the other side of the walls of the airport. It is utter chaos. That really has not changed now for days.

SHAMILA CHAUDHARY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER ON PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN: That's right. And I think there's going to be plenty of time for post mortems, but what is clear today and every day since the fall of Kabul, there's no one in charge at the airport. Now, the Taliban have secured the perimeter, of course, but there's no sense of processes or procedures or logistics as you are getting that. It's not even clear if the Afghans showing up have papers.

I read the U.S. embassy Kabul's warning to American citizens this morning and it said, show up at the airport but we can't guarantee you a seat. You may be waiting there for a long time. So the guidance actually applies to everyone. It's not just the Afghans.

KEILAR: They're all in it together. I mean, this is one giant mass of people. It's just a mix of people.

CHAUDHARY: It is and a microcosm for what's happening on the other side, as you said. And this is what we can expect of moving forward, which is a crisis of governance, not knowing who is in charge and chaos amongst the Afghan people, rightfully so, as to what to do for their own safety and livelihoods.

AVLON: So, what should the White House be doing today to try to rectify the situation, try to communicate to the American people the crisis that's unfolding and how they will try to fix it?

CHAUDHARY: So I'm going to be looking for a focus on communicating with the Taliban to further secure the airport. I mean, they have taken over the government. They have secured the perimeter of the airport. The United States has said that they are in conversation with the Taliban to make sure their citizens get out. There should be more of that happening. And we need to know what those conversations are about.

KEILAR: John Harwood joining the conversation now on this. That's clear. We heard over and over from American officials, they are -- and they seem to, in a way, sort of be patting themselves on the back for keeping a safe and secure airport but that misses the big issue here, which is that what's the point of a safe and secure airport if you cannot get there, right? What are they doing about that?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, what they're doing is the conversations that Shamila was talking about with the Taliban to try to figure out how they can allow people to get there. It is not going to be a perfect process. And I think it's important to recognize that if you got a country of 40 million people and you've had a long war in that country, and a civil war, and one side of that civil war collapses, there is no scenario, no amount of planning that is going to avoid desperation, people trying to leave the country. When the United States has been the protector of one side of that war, there are people aligned with the United States who are going to want to leave. Even if you had a smooth evacuation process before the U.S. troops left and the government fell this fall, you would have scenes of people saying Americans come help me get out. That is simply inevitable. The best the Biden administration can do right now is try to increase what they were calling yesterday the throughput from that Kabul airport to try to use the leverage that they have, some financial.

They have got F-18s flying over as well. They have gotten the IMF and the Fed to freeze financial assets that otherwise might be available to the Taliban to try to sustain that cooperation, count on the desire of the Taliban not to be a pariah and do the best they can to move people, get people to the airport and out.

[07:20:14]

Yesterday, they said that there were 6,000 people that were prepared to get out. They've got to do that day after day after day and the success of that operation, so far, there have been not been U.S. troop casualties, we have not seen rough treatment, for sure, by the Taliban of people trying to get there, but we don't have information about mass casualties elsewhere. If they can sustain that for the next couple weeks and beyond, as the president indicated that they would go beyond August 31st if this process is working, that's what they can do to try to salvage this situation. But there's going to be no avoiding the heartbreak, the desperation, the things that Clarissa is the middle of right now. It's a very tough situation.

AVLON: And, Shamila, I mean, the image of heartbreak and desperation that I think sums up the fact that that wall around the airport right now is the dividing line between life and death. Is this image of the baby being thrown up by a mother and picked up by a soldier to try to help it survive, what was dehydration, heat exhaustion, that sums up the emotions here. When you see that, what does it make you feel?

CHAUDHARY: Well, when I see these images, I'm reminded that Afghans have a long memory. They're desperate and they're worried for their safety today but it's because they remember how the Taliban treated them in the '90s. They are traumatized. This is a traumatized society. And the U.S. withdrawal with our intense focus on ourselves, rightfully so, that's our first priority, exacerbates that trauma. And I do think that we have a moral responsibility but we as a government and a country haven't put ourselves in a position in terms of our policies to fully execute that moral responsibility, whether we feel it or not.

HARWOOD: And, guys, this is why it is such a difficult choice to leave. It is true that polls have shown people want to end the longest war and get out. But those views are not deeply held. Americans have been distracted from the Afghanistan war for a long time. And when you then interpose the images that we're seeing now that people think of it differently, when you hear talk about, well, maybe terrorism comes back from within Afghanistan, that will change public opinion. There's no political reward from this situation. And that's why it hasn't happened for 20 years and Joe Biden is going to suffer some political consequences from this, no getting around it. It's very, very hard decision.

KEILAR: And, look, an opposition to the war but also compassion and accepting responsibility to the effects that the U.S. had in Afghanistan, these are not mutually exclusive things, but we're going to see politically in the U.S. how they are approached, if people really care. We will see. That is still to be determined. But this moment may determine it.

Shamila Chaudhary, thank you so much, John, thank you so much for being with us and talking about all of this.

As President Biden warned about this, a potential catastrophe occurring in Afghanistan weeks ago, we're going to speak live to the White House.

Plus, just in, parts of northeast bracing for a possible hurricane this weekend.

AVLON: And hospitals in the United States are sounding the alarm, they're at a breaking point and running out of ICU beds, not just for the unvaccinated, but for everyone.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

KEILAR: Hospitals across the country are nearing capacity. They are struggling to cope with this wave of COVID infections. Just listen to this Alabama Department of Public Health officer describing the situation there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SCOTT HARRIS, HEALTH OFFICER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Because hospitals can expand within their own four walls and add some alternative spaces, we actually got to a negative number, which is remarkable. We have more critically ill patients than we actually have beds.

This is the highest we have seen. You know, this is the whole reason for doing all the things we have done and tried to preserve the capacity of our healthcare system. And right now, it is just straining. We really aren't going to be able to take much more here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: All right. Well, thank God, we have got Tom Foreman to break it down for us. Tom, tell us about ICUs right now across the country, because we know levels are going up. How is it looking?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The colors tell you how it looks. It's bad out there. Look at this, everything out there that has any shade of red, that's over 70 percent ICU bed utilization. Now, bear in mind, this isn't all COVID but this is a measure of how much pressure on these ICUs. And, yes, many hospitals out there have been designed to try to not have a bunch of excess beds sitting around, but this shows the strain on the system.

And, importantly, you'll notice this, we have six states here, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky up here, Mississippi and Texas, where they're over 90 percent utilization, so virtually no headroom in these states.

AVLON: And then what happens when you add in COVID?

FOREMAN: Well, COVID is part of this. The question is what percentage is COVID. And now look at this. Now we're at 50 percent every place that is dark, dark red down here, over 25 percent if it's the other way. So, we have four states over 50 percent COVID usage.

And I want to point out this area right down here, this is also the biggest cluster of states that has the lowest vaccination rate and where we have seen some of the biggest pushes against some of the idea of mask mandates, vaccination mandates, vaccine passports, everything. The huge political push there to say we don't want to do that, they're resisting masks in schools and yet look at the numbers.

AVLON: And that's the compounding problem. So, sometimes statistics, percentages can confuse people. What do the real numbers look like, people behind this?

[07:30:00]

FOREMAN: This is very simple to see. If you look at the actual number of beds that are available, look at his, Florida, 468 beds, Louisiana, 175 --