Our reporters recap Afghanistan news, Biden's military withdrawal: 5 Things podcast
Claire ThorntonOn today's 5 Things podcast: Through conversation and reflection, USA TODAY reporters help us process last month's Afghanistan news.
Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook discusses how American military officials cooperated with the Taliban in the final days and how that could have prevented even more violence and confusion.
White House Correspondent Courtney Subramanian traces Biden’s defense of his administration's exit strategy.Foreign policy reporter Deirdre Shesgreen shares her perspective on what went wrong with the withdrawal and what our challenges in Afghanistan will be now.
Going forward, the U.S. military will rely more heavily on drone strikes to address problems that arise in Afghanistan. Afghans who aided U.S. forces as well as U.S. citizens are still stuck in the country and need to leave. But with the official withdrawal end date having passed, evacuating will become increasingly challenging.
Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Claire Thornton:
Hey there. I'm Claire Thornton. And this is 5 Things. It's Sunday, September 5th. These Sunday episodes are special. We're bringing you more from in-depth stories you may have already heard.
Claire Thornton:
We've been overwhelmed with news out of Afghanistan this summer. After 20 long years of war, the U.S. military chaotically withdrew troops and Afghans who needed to leave the country. It was the largest airlift in U.S. military history and some people are still left behind. During evacuations at the Kabul airport, at least 92 people died from an ISIS-K suicide bombing.
Claire Thornton:
A majority of Americans supported ending the war in Afghanistan, but the jury's still out on whether the Biden administration will fall on the right side of history. Earlier this summer, before this brutal final stretch of the withdrawal, I had three USA TODAY journalists on the show to discuss what the end of the war could look like. Those journalists are back on the show today after reporting countless stories about the people, decisions and consequences that have dominated Afghanistan headlines. They're helping us process what happened and what went wrong through conversation and reflection.
Claire Thornton:
This round table interview was recorded Thursday, September 2nd. Here it is.
Claire Thornton:
I am joined by Tom Vanden Brook, our Pentagon reporter, Courtney Subramanian, our White House reporter, and Deirdre Shesgreen, who covers foreign policy. Thank you all so much for being here.
Tom Vanden Brook:
It's good to be here, Claire. Thank you.
Deirdre Shesgreen:
Thanks for having us.
Courtney Subramanian:
Thanks so much, Claire. Good to be here.
Claire Thornton:
Let's recap the last days of the withdrawal. The U.S. cooperated with the Taliban, ISIS-K took lives. There was a suicide bombing at the airport and there was overall chaos at the airport with thousands of people trying to leave. This was the largest airlift in U.S. history. I'm really curious to hear from you three, given your expertise in national security and international relations, just what was it like to watch this unfold? How are you processing everything right now?
Deirdre Shesgreen:
I'll jump in and just say, honestly, it was horrific. I mean, I don't think there's any way to see these images of desperate Afghans trying to flee the Taliban's brutal rule and not feel empathy. I was in touch with a few people inside Afghanistan, including a former interpreter for the US military who couldn't get out. And they're so scared and they're hiding and they're worried they'll be killed. So it was awful.
Tom Vanden Brook:
And they faced a horrible choice. It was to go to the airport where they knew the likelihood of suicide bombers being present was very high and obviously was, or staying home and not getting a flight. So it was a horrible choice for them to have to make.
Claire Thornton:
Because the Taliban took over so quickly, the US had to cooperate with an organization that was the motivation for us going to war. What can we take away from the fact that the US was fully cooperating with the Taliban in the final days?
Courtney Subramanian:
It's a weird way to sort of end this 20 year war and the fact that they became these sort of strange bedfellows and just from the White House standpoint, we had asked Jen Saki about this a couple of times and the sort of grim irony, and they're very upfront about it. I mean, they said that there's no time for self-reflection. This was just about the task at hand. And the reality was what they were faced with, which is that the Taliban controlled large swaths of Afghanistan.
Courtney Subramanian:
So, they're not thinking about that in maybe the way that we are, the sort of first and last chapter of the war in Afghanistan. But as Tom said, in war, you have to do what you, you must. And this was the moment they needed to be focused on the task at hand. And that was getting as many people out as possible, as safely as possible.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, I really wasn't any choice. There was, obviously we saw in those horrible images of Afghans swarming that C 17 and clinging to it and falling to their deaths. There was no way for the U.S. military sending in another 5,000 troops to secure the airport so we had to rely on the Taliban to provide security. And aside from one horrific incident, they did provide that security. It wasn't perfect obviously. They were keeping people away from the airport who we wanted to rescue. But on the other hand, they kept ISIS-K mostly at bay. And we just didn't have the capability to do that. We couldn't secure Kabul. So, without them keeping checkpoints and people from swarming the airport, we wouldn't have been able to do that. So we had to cooperate with them.
Courtney Subramanian:
Yeah.
Tom Vanden Brook:
And I talked to a senior military official in the final days of the evacuation, and he said their primary concern at that point was that the Taliban would just abandon the checkpoints and allow Afghans to swarm the airport again. And there was no way that we would have been able to keep tens of thousands of Afghans off the airfield. And then how do you get out of that mess? Do you have to start using helicopters to shoo them away? Do you have to use tear gas? How would that have looked? So, yeah. So, in this case, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Claire Thornton:
I didn't even think about that. Deirdre, you wrote a story about just what all went wrong with the withdrawal. You talked to Americans, Afghans, Republicans, Democrats. What are some different perspectives on what went wrong, where and how?
Deirdre Shesgreen:
Well, so I think, I mean, everyone agreed that the execution of the withdrawal was chaotic, messy, deadly, awful. The question is whether the U.S. could have done it differently, whether more planning or starting sooner would have made a difference. Biden's critics say absolutely yes, that this was horribly botched, and that the U.S. should have started a mass evacuation months ago, before the Taliban got to the outskirts of Kabul. Biden's allies say absolutely not, that if they had started sooner, that would've triggered panic, that would have triggered the collapse of the government. And then we would have seen the exact same situation unfold just sooner and essentially triggered by the U.S. government's decision.
Deirdre Shesgreen:
I mean, the White House has indicated that during a meeting with former Afghan President Ghani. Ghani Said, please consider the optics of starting to evacuate people too soon. It will signal that the U.S. doesn't have confidence in the Afghan security forces, in the government, and it will trigger panic. And, so that's, in some ways, what the White House is using as justification for not doing it earlier.
Deirdre Shesgreen:
But if you take a step back, I mean, some argue that this whole chaotic evacuation is emblematic of the 20 year war and that American policymakers have misled the public for years about what we were doing or what we could accomplish in Afghanistan, that some people argue that it was built on this fantasy of an ability to transform Afghanistan into a Western style democracy. But what we did instead was prop up a kleptocracy.
Claire Thornton:
What is the current state on the ground in Afghanistan right now then? Human rights, how are the aid workers going about their jobs?
Deirdre Shesgreen:
I mean, it's deeply uncertain. Women are staying home. Activists are hiding. Other U.S. allies are destroying documents that show affiliation with Western organizations. The Taliban have said that they will allow women to work and be more moderate in the past, but Afghans don't trust that. Americans don't trust that. And advocates in the United States, they feel the U.S. betrayed these women, activists, and allies who worked with the U.S. military during the war. They're fielding reports of abductions, of young girls being forced into marriages and other atrocities. And unfortunately, I think it's going to be harder and harder to know what's going on inside Afghanistan, as it becomes more dangerous for journalists in particular, to be there.
Courtney Subramanian:
One thing, just to add on that, one thing some folks I was talking to in the refugee advocate space, humanitarian groups, was this idea that, building on what Deirdre said, that for the last 20 years, we have told these women and young girls to have a voice, and we've provided the space to build them up, to build up this world where they could be independent, where they could be vocal, and then for them to pull out in this way and for to jeopardize all of that progress, these women who we told to step forward and be loud and find purpose, that is exactly what has put them under threat.
Courtney Subramanian:
So to, in this way, it's breaking a promise that we made to them 20 years ago and within the last 20 years. And I think that's a really good way of looking at it, for all these people who are over there and have built up these lives, as Deirdre said, promoting Western ideas, promoting democracy, promoting all of these values and ideas that we asked them to and encouraged them to. And now that's why they're in danger.
Courtney Subramanian:
There are still Americans in Afghanistan who want to leave. There are still thousands of Afghans who want to leave. Yesterday, a senior State Department official told reporters that the majority of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military are still in Afghanistan. Those people are eligible in many cases for special U.S. visas because of their service. Their lives are at risk there. The Taliban views them as infidels and spies. The evacuation and the State Department says we're still going to evacuate people. We're still going to get these Americans out. We're going to get these Afghans out. But it's not clear how. The airport isn't functioning right now. Overland routes are incredibly dangerous.
Courtney Subramanian:
So I think the crisis isn't over, even though the withdrawal is done, the images, the horrific images that we saw of these crowds at the airport, obviously that's over. But this is not over, this crisis is ongoing.
Claire Thornton:
We're still going to have that responsibility of withdrawing people who should come to the U.S. and that's going to be tricky now.
Deirdre Shesgreen:
Yeah. Withdrawing American citizens. Yeah. Withdrawing American citizens. And these Afghans who are eligible for visas, at the minimum. Not to mention, all these people who promoted Western style democracy, freedom of speech, encouraged by the United States effort to nation build.
Tom Vanden Brook:
There is some leverage that we still have to help people get out. And it is fairly significant. We've frozen all of the Afghan government's assets that we have. So that's billions of dollars. And we also have the ability to acknowledge or recognize the government of the Taliban or not. And they desperately want that recognition.
Tom Vanden Brook:
So if they're going to have some sort of semi-normal government, they're going to have to deal with countries like the United States and our intermediary Qatar. So there is a slim, it's not even that slim. I think it's a substantial hope that at least we can try to have some sort of semi regular relationship with them that will allow us to get people out who deserve and need to get out.
Claire Thornton:
That's a good point. Courtney, how has the Biden administration handled all this? Let's talk about, where do you think responsibility lies with Biden? Where was this mishandled and what about the previous administration that made the deal with the Taliban?
Courtney Subramanian:
Well, I think that's been part of the defense. I mean, the Biden administration has been extremely defensive of this withdrawal. We saw the president speak two days ago, echo some of the same points, which is that this was a deal that was struck by his predecessor, former president, Donald Trump, that he extended the deadline, that Trump had made this deal with the Taliban to pull out by May 1st and Biden extended that to August 31st. And he's also said that they didn't anticipate how quickly Afghan forces would collapse, that the government would collapse and the Taliban would sweep in. And that's a point of contention that both, I think Tom and Deirdre referred to, of whether there was an intelligence failure or whether he ignored advice from his own generals, but ...
Claire Thornton:
Based on everything you've learned, what do you think it most likely is?
Courtney Subramanian:
I think it's hard not to factor into this Biden's disenchantment with military intervention there, which is something that he's helped [inaudible 00:15:32] for a long time. So I think when Biden came to office, it was always a matter of we're going to go through with this, we're going to leave. It's just a question of whether how they left was the right way. And if he was ignoring advice given to him or intelligence that was put in front of him.
Courtney Subramanian:
One thing that he keeps point pointing out and even his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan said, when I asked him on this a few weeks ago, or a couple of weeks ago, was they say you can't bring a 20 year war to a close without the chaos and complexities and threats that they faced. But I think you have to point out that he's found himself at odds with not only Republicans and the foreign policy establishment, but people within his own party. And the calls for accountability of the messiness and the bloodshed that came with this process.
Courtney Subramanian:
I think you also have to remember that this is a guy who ran on his foreign policy chops, was the head of the foreign relations committee in the Senate. And so this idea that they were caught out by how quickly this all unfolded, I think confounded many, because this is a guy who supposedly understands the complexities of the ground and what's on the ground in Afghanistan.
Courtney Subramanian:
But at the end of the day, aside from all these harrowing images that we're seeing, aside from all these, these stories that we're hearing of desperation, I think the calculation within the Biden administration is that this was a hugely popular decision to leave. And most Americans did want to see the U.S. leave and that's what they're betting on. And so, as hard as it is to be confronted with these images, that they will eventually fade from memory. And I think Biden is making the gamble that he will come out on the right side of history.
Courtney Subramanian:
Obviously, whether that's the case remains to be seen. I think a big part of that will be what happens next in Afghanistan, some of the situations that Deirdre is describing. But it was certainly a gamble that he was willing to take and he made very clear from the outset before he announced this decision.
Claire Thornton:
So we know that we're going to continue doing drone strikes against ISIS-K. I've learned a lot about how remote drone pilots working in the U.S. experienced the traumas of war. I'm concerned that as a country we're going to be doing more of that going forward. And I'm really curious, Tom, what do you see going, what do you predict going forward?
Tom Vanden Brook:
I have done a fair amount of reporting over the years, and I know that Deirdre's has talked to one of my favorite sources as well. This guy named Dutch Murray, who is an air force intelligence guy who developed, he developed the targets that we hit back in 2014 to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And much of that was done by drones. And he has a lot of thoughts about what's going on in Afghanistan now.
Tom Vanden Brook:
There's really, we've left ourselves very few options there. We won't have forces that are going to be nearby. So there's going to be, I mean, there's always a possibility that we could have some sort of commando raids in Afghanistan. I'm sure that's a possibility, but the distances are so long that it would be very difficult to do it in a safe way. So we're limited to flying drones from Al Udeid, Qatar, which is a 12 hour round trip for these aircraft.
Tom Vanden Brook:
So that's basically going to be it. And they're piloted by airmen in North Dakota and other places. And they've got to sit there for 12 hours at a time and watch a lot of desert for the most part and try to figure out what they're going to hit. And then it comes down to making really, really difficult decisions.
Tom Vanden Brook:
And we saw this last weekend in Kabul where they had a very good idea that there were suicide bombers, again, headed toward the airport. And they had to make a decision whether to hit them and the decision was made to do it. And we use the hellfire missile that hit what the military says was a car full of suicide bombers and the secondary explosions, they say, killed a family. Well, they don't admit this, but on the ground, a family of 10 people was killed because the explosion from that car.
Tom Vanden Brook:
So, they have to make those decisions. And they're very difficult decisions because you save maybe hundreds of people from being killed at the airport, and then how do you weigh that against the 10 people in that family were killed. They're horrible decisions that have to be made. And those are the decisions they have to make every time. And somebody has got to pull that trigger. So it's very ... I wouldn't want that on my conscience and it's a very difficult thing to do.
Claire Thornton:
What else have you learned about this, Deirdre?
Deirdre Shesgreen:
I would say that in President Biden's speech earlier this week, he did mention in response to his critics, the toll that the war overall has taken on American troops. And he said in response to critics who have argued that we should have kept a small contingent of American troops there indefinitely, that there was a low cost way of maintaining America's presence there to guard against the resurgence of ISIS and Al-Qaeda and keep the Taliban at bay. And Biden's response was there is no such thing as a low cost or a low grade war. And he noted that only 1% of the US population puts on a military uniform and they have shouldered the burden of this war through multiple deployments over 20 years. And that some of those have not known a time when America wasn't at war. So I thought that was an interesting point that he made, a response to his critics that I hadn't heard.
Tom Vanden Brook:
The toll is horrible on the troops that have had to do it and be involved in it. But by multiples, the toll is harder on the civilians on the ground. And then they rarely have a voice in this. And there are tens of thousands of Afghans who've died during this war. And they're just people like you and me, and they're just trying to live their lives. And that gets lost in this. And we worry about our troops, as we should. But the toll on the Afghans is magnified and multiplied.
Claire Thornton:
That's a really good point. I mean, because we talk about, especially in the wake of the coverage of the suicide bombing, the 13 American service members who were killed. But more than 160 Afghans were killed in that at well.
Deirdre Shesgreen:
Including a lot of children.
Claire Thornton:
It does tend to get lost in the American media.
Tom Vanden Brook:
It's not over. Our involvement in Afghanistan won't be over. I mean, we're going to have to try to get people out, as Deidre's talked about, and we're also going to have to deal the threat from ISIS-K. That's not going away. So, as much as Biden would have liked to have closed this chapter, it's definitely not closed. It's just, or close the book. There's a new chapter. We don't know what it's going to say and it's likely going to be messy. And if you listen to people like Leon Panetta, the former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, we're likely going to have to go back with American troops in there at some point. So we tend to think that we can walk away from these things and hope that we can, but it seems like inevitably we're drawn back in.
Courtney Subramanian:
And I'll just say, to Deirdre's point and Tom's point about the Afghans, it's not just about the people that were getting out. It's also about the people that we are leaving behind, that don't have the opportunity to leave. And that was a point that was underlined by a lot of advocates I spoke to in humanitarian groups, which is we need to find ways to support women and girls who are left behind and have to stay there. And whether that's better coordination with some of these aid groups and funding to help them set up opportunities to help these women.
Courtney Subramanian:
One group I was talking to has a program where they provide cell phones for women, just to get help, to set up bank accounts so they can have their own independence through financially. And it's one program of many that we can help uplift even after we leave to continue promoting some of those ideals that we promoted while we were there.
Courtney Subramanian:
And so that's another part of this story that does get lost. But as much as this may end for people watching this on TV at home here in the US, this goes on for them. And in some capacity, there needs to be accountability on the US side for that.
Claire Thornton:
All right. Tom, Courtney, Deirdre, thank you so much for joining me.
Deirdre Shesgreen:
Thanks, Claire.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Thanks, Claire.
Courtney Subramanian:
Thanks.
Claire Thornton:
Thanks for listening. You can get more from Courtney, Deirdre and Tom by searching Afghanistan on usatoday.com. You may be asked to subscribe before reading.
Claire Thornton:
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Claire Thornton:
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Claire Thornton:
That's it for today. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with Five Things you need to know for Monday. And I'm Claire Thornton. I'll see you next Sunday. Until then, you can keep up with me on Twitter, where I'm at Claire_Thornto.