Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story

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AMOS: So—well, I’m going to sneak in one more question—I have two minutes—and that is going forward, you know, we fought—we, the United States, the Americans—fought the Taliban for twenty years. Now we have to recognize them as a sovereign government. So I’m just wondering organizationally—putting aside the strategic questions—what could have been done differently? You know, the Second World War the construct is war bond drives and a national mobilization. The Vietnam War the construct is a draft that eventually leads to an anti-war movement that finishes that war. Escape From Kabul Airport also hears from the specialist unit of U.S. Marines tasked with managing the evacuation and whose plans are shattered when Taliban forces take the city at lightning speed. They speak openly for the first time of their hand-to-hand battle to reclaim the overwhelmed airfield whilst a humanitarian catastrophe unspooled around them. Taliban commanders and fighters who had recently taken the city describe how they encircled the airport perimeter and faced U.S. forces. The Atlantic wrote a piece. I teach journalism and I had a student write a fantastic piece about this. So there were a lot of people willing to talk and I had the idea there were a lot of people working on this.

BBC Two - Escape from Kabul Airport BBC Two - Escape from Kabul Airport

But, Jamie, I do have one question about the film. We got access to the Taliban, which was fabulous, and it was the in-the-trenches viewpoint, which really gives it a lot of credibility. My hat is off to those Marines that you talked with. So over in Kabul, made lots of links with people, with citizen journalists, and kind of pulling things in that way. Also, with members of the Taliban, who, especially near the end of the film, you’ll see they go into the airport and that was filmed by the Talib special forces member himself.

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I mean, any kind of help that the United States provides to support the Afghan people and to restore, you know, even a minimum level of economic activity is going to have some indirect propping up effect for the Taliban regime and there’s just no way around that. As the Taliban went door to door to execute ‘collaborators’, a small international task force set out on a daring mission to evacuate as many Afghans and their families as possible.

Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story by Levison Wood - Goodreads Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story by Levison Wood - Goodreads

And, you know, just to emphasize what Laurel said, the—you know, the evacuation itself—and Jamie really captures this visually so and in such an amazing way in the film—is so much of the messaging was, well, you know, if you have the paperwork or if you are an American citizen go to the airport and you will be allowed in.You could be a student, a female newscaster, a government minister on behalf of women, a family member of someone who assisted the US military, faced with an impossible choice – “we could die trying to leave, or we could be killed”, says Malalai Hussainy, a female student in her first year of university who stood for four days in sewage water, oppressive heat and crushing crowds for one of the 124,000 spots on an aircraft out of Kabul. A handful of Taliban commanders who were also surrounding the airport in the final days of the evacuation have their own justifications; one recalls how US forces slaughtered two of his family members. Others have fought the Americans since they were children. AMOS: So I want to talk about this. As a viewer you are catapulted into the action. You know, you’re almost immediately taken to August 15 when the Marines say all hell breaks loose and so you don’t have any chance to get used to how rapidly this whole thing is falling apart. But there was, frankly, a lot of Afghans who got out who never worked for the U.S. government, didn’t have any claim on getting this—there’s this category of Special Immigrant Visa for which people who did work for the United States were eligible and many were in the application pipeline, which was a long pipeline, at the time of the withdrawal. And then, lastly, if you’ll allow me, you know, I think the last point it’s very important not to lose sight of, particularly as we’re, you know, one year out from these events and we have other events that are begging for our attention like Ukraine and otherwise, is, you know, we have about eighty thousand Afghans who we’ve brought to the United States and they are currently here on a humanitarian parole. And so I want to thank everybody and congratulations to you, Jamie, for an astonishing film. Really astonishing. It could have been worse is the thought I came away with. Could have been a lot worse.