Inside the Taliban's Takeover of Afghanistan

[Music] tonight panic chaos a staggering collapse the taliban have taken afghanistan ben solomon was in kandahar just before that city was seized riding with afghan forces in full retreat ben is here to talk about how the country's fall happened in just weeks plus hassan saw firsthand what could lie in afghanistan's future when she and her team snuck themselves into taliban controlled territory earlier this year tonight what she learned on the ground and it's hard to dream up a worse failure of american foreign policy and intelligence 20 years four presidents trillions spent and thousands of service members killed liz landers reports on how the u.s political machine is responding to the taliban's takeover good afternoon [Music] this is vice news tonight i'm krishna nevolu how did this happen so fast and why didn't we see it coming that's what i've been wondering all day watching the horrifying videos coming out of afghanistan and i'm not alone afghan leaders are blaming president ashraf ghani who fled yesterday without warning the public or the rest of the government officials say ghani made the country's problems worse by refusing for months to work with the taliban to create a path for a peaceful transition of power the acting defense minister tweeted that ghani and his cohorts tied our hands from behind and sold the country in the u.s president biden blamed and i can't believe i'm saying this the afghan military we gave them every chance to determine their own future we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future but our own ben solomon was just in afghanistan and says the failure to stop the taliban had nothing to do with a lack of will he joined me earlier today to talk about what he saw ben thank you for joining us and happy to see that you're back in the united states safely i understand that you were in kandahar in southern afghanistan that you were able to leave with the afghan military as they were throwing down their weapons effectively on a cargo plane out of a city what was that like so in the end our experience in kenar was was was a problem because we we got caught there we got stranded when we flew in on a commercial flight the expectation was take a few weeks even when the fighting started to really get serious we'd be able to kind of get out what we didn't expect when we didn't foresee was that these soldiers would just so quickly give up the city when it did happen the airlines all shut down flights the u.n evacuation flights also shut down everything was shutting down and when that was happening we started to kind of worry what we were going to do by the end we found ourselves with one of the most elite units in the country called the zero three unit they are cia trained american funded these guys are spent 20 years becoming the go-to military force that america relies upon in their stead us never lets access to them but in this case it was so desperate that we just kind of found ourselves with them and protected with them they were the ones preparing for what was going to be the last stand against the taliban they set up a front position right next to the airport surrounded the area kind of made a perimeter and they said this is it you know we only have about a thousand soldiers the taliban probably has a couple thousand where we're gonna fight all night we're gonna do everything we can and we were getting ready for what was gonna be one of the most harrowing hairy nights of our lives and just when the sun was about to go down they announced that they had come to a truce and the military commanders of top and the higher up in the military had decided to stand down have their soldiers put down their weapons give up all of their heavy gear their humvees their artillery all of their bigger weapons they literally just left the cars running and went to the airfield and the taliban agreed to give a truce and let these planes fly in and fly everyone out so in the middle of the night about 2 am six carrier planes with um filled with just hundreds of military soldiers east it was just a really intense scene of hundreds of people kind of packing in and trying to climb onto these you see them now happening in kabul but then it was surprising to see these military units you know basically like fighting for their lives to get out of there and it was a really harrowing scene seeing in the distance they could see the shots in the air of tracers for the taliban shooting in the air and celebrating and we could get the sense that you know this was a bittersweet moment because although they didn't have to fight lose their lives this was how the war was kind of faring for them which is they were losing i think the story that people in washington might be trying to tell is that the afghan military forces had the resources they need they just lacked the will to fight from what you've seen and how it went down like what do you make of that i think it's an oversimplification we spent a lot of time on the front line with the fighters in kandahar and they were exhausted they're outgunned they were underfed they were under supplied and they just were exhausted by it all so this idea that they weren't they didn't have the like gumption they didn't have the ability or the like will to like get into the fight it's not true and it's disrespectful of these people that were really fighting and when the dominoes started falling and these people were all handing it over the bigger reality is the soldiers that did want to fight didn't have the support thousands of taliban guys compared to just a few hundred willing soldiers is not a fair fight i'm wondering what you're hearing about people on the ground that you have been in contact with who might be trying to get out who are fearful of what a taliban regime might entail in the near and future and what's going on you know it's the biggest problem right now is that the people that are trying to get out it's not specific to people that work with the military or people that were interpreters you know it's not just any one subset it's everyone everyone in the country is looking for a way out some way or another i'm getting calls from high military officials asking if i know anybody that they can talk to they're calling you calling me asking if i have some contacts at some embassy or something that they don't know about getting calls from all of the people we worked with looking for any way out and it's it's there's really no answer so now you know we're living in this world where there's not a real thought going into what's gonna happen with the afghan people well thank you ben uh glad to see you're back safe and there's so much more to talk about um and to see from your reporting thanks so much thanks [Music] we can hear around gun firings [Music] there is no one on the road in the streets we can only hear our gunfire there were some armed men came to our block parking they were screaming and shooting on the air my family and my neighbor's family were screaming and crying for this as the taliban advanced across afghanistan our reporters reached out to friends and contacts to find out how they were these are the messages we got back hello uh since last two weeks especially last to four days that we got information to taliban capture the capture i lost myself we can't tell you their names because they're afraid for their lives but we will keep bringing you their voices this week i don't have sleep i cannot eat anything and i afraid of that they will come to my home kill me because i am a female activist and now there will be no right for romans and i am i have a family yesterday when we heard the taliban enter to the carvel i just shocked it was the hardest and the worst condition that i have ever experienced and i want that americans know that our life is in danger [Music] the u.s government loves to say we don't negotiate with terrorists but for the last few days u.s military officials have been meeting in doha trying to work out a deal with the taliban that would protect afghan civilians seb walker is in qatar tonight to get a sense of how the talks are going and if they're going to be able to save any lives seb what are you hearing well christian we are hearing those reports that you're probably referring to that there was a conversation over the weekend with a senior u.s commander here from the u.s military's central command which is located here in qatar and officials from the taliban representatives from the taliban sitting down with the u.s military for conversation about the unfolding situation on the ground um i mean this is something which obviously we don't have access to it's all happening behind closed doors but one thing that i am hearing is that the us doesn't have a great deal of leverage left in this situation now that there's been this lightning advance with cities falling and finally kabul falling to the taliban fighters as well there's not a lot of bargaining that the u.s can do in a situation like this and seems like the message was kind of along the lines of what we heard from president biden earlier today basically that the us will defend itself if there's any attack and there should be you know an evacuation allowed of american personnel and other civilians but at this point there's not really a huge amount of pressure that the u.s can bring to bear on the taliban just because of what we've seen unfolding on the ground and wasn't that supposed to be the point of all those negotiations that took place there the nature of how things have collapsed in afghanistan the i mean everyone's very surprised i've been speaking with officials who are also kind of astonished at what they're seeing on unfolding but um i think one of the main points that they they would make here is that the americans gave a timeline for this and that was something that they think was a strategic mistake and and i'm hearing that from various parties that you know if you have a ticking clock down to the moment where you've said you're going to withdraw your forces then really the taliban has the advantage of being able to just wait it out the famous expression is that um from the taliban side you know you have the watchers and we have the time they they have the time to wait and that's how it's unfolded and i think what i'm hearing here on the ground is that um for the afghan partners for the u.s partners in kabul the afghan government um there was an expectation that president biden would draw this out a bit longer that there would be some kind of change in policy from the trump administration that was a surprise to them there was a moment where they thought with a new president things are going to be halted there's going to be some kind of reassessment and they were pretty surprised by all accounts of the the way that this policy continued thanks for that seb him hassan has been reporting on afghanistan over the past year this spring she and her team snuck into taliban-controlled territory putting their safety in the hands of the taliban themselves while there she saw firsthand how the islamist group runs a government and doles out justice there's little due process in these sharia courts disputes here are settled by mobile justice and in some cases taliban commanders who have the autonomy to carry out punishments how they see fit [Music] what you're seeing right now is pretty much a taliban court you have in front of me is a local taliban commander talking to somebody who's been accused of stealing surrounded by a group of taliban fighters the accused is forced to give a deposition to camera about whether he stole sheep from a local herder as well as other crimes he's been sitting in taliban jail since his arrest and has no representation at this hearing in terms of the cases that you've dealt with today what are the potential punishments that they could be served in the end of the man that was sat in front of you that was accused of stealing potentially at the end of the court case he might have his handcuff human rights organizations would look at this scene and see men who don't have representatives who don't have anybody putting forward their case who have people who don't necessarily have the judicial or legal experience to be able to be handing out punishments deciding the fate of an individual and they would say that that isn't justice what would you say to them so is this the justice system that you would like to see implemented in kabul and across afghanistan would you consider bringing back stoning if you were to be in government is that something that you would do for adultery action [Music] hin that joins me now from turkey hind you spent some time with the taliban what was that like and what did you learn about what afghanistan might be underneath them yeah it was quite surreal we spent around five days and two nights with the taliban and what was really clear was just how powerful they were and that despite what was coming out of kabul on washington the taliban had absolutely no intention to take part in intra-afghan talks which would lead to them integrating into what was the current political system in kabul in terms of their strength they have a whole new generation of fighters some of them weren't even bored when the war began they were all armed and they also showed us how to make their weapon of choice which was ieds and in terms of the older fighters they had an incredible knowledge of the region and the terrain and regardless of what capabilities you had as an army the united states and their allies or even the afghan government would find it and they did find it impossible to battle against something like that in terms of the future and what that holds for afghanistan we also spoke and spent some time with the afghan government around seven months ago and we spoke to the national security adviser handle emoji in a conversation when we were speaking about potential intra-afghan talks and where they were going because at that point they were failing quite significantly he told me that he still believed that they could convince the taliban to take part in a democratic system or in their current political system we think that democracy is the best way or the best system because in that the taliban can exist do you really believe that the taliban would ever support a democracy do you honestly believe that i think we can convince them and it was clear even back then that that was a complete fantasy because every time we would speak to the taliban every time we'd have a conversation we'd put to them what the government had said to us and we would ask them do you have any intention in partaking in these intra-afghan talks and integrating into the political system and their answer would be repeatedly no their intention has always been to rule afghanistan and for afghanistan to adhere to their very specific interpretation of islamic law well thank you hint for your reporting and we'll talk again i'm sure that's hindasan who's in turkey tonight we've been following the crisis in afghanistan and now we turn to its impact on american politics republicans are obviously blasting president biden for allowing the situation to get so bad but that outrage is bipartisan liz landers reports from dc president biden returned today to the white house from camp david and addressed the nation saying that he stands by his decision to withdraw american troops from afghanistan of course there's political point scoring happening right now but there are even some democrats who are expressing their frustrations with the way this evacuation has been handled my problem is with how the withdrawal is going how it's being managed and what's clearly a lack of planning that's prevented many of our american citizens and allies from getting out safely until this point do you think he addressed those concerns no he he barely mentioned them and he made an excuse that just doesn't hold any water for not evacuating our afghan allies which is that many of them don't want to come look there's been a backlog of visas since i came to congress and if you just look at the pictures coming out of kabul right now there are thousands of afghans clamoring at the gates of the airport to get out so don't tell me that they don't want to come are you getting emails calls tweets about those special immigration visas that you mentioned i was on the phone until very late last night with an afghan american trying to get his wife here my team and i have been dealing with this really for months but especially over the last 72 hours the other thing i'm doing is i'm continuing to pressure the administration to do the right thing there's still time to save innocent lives and that depends on the administration's response and what the military and the state department are willing to do over the next few days so i know some people think that i'm being quite critical of the administration as a fellow democrat look i love joe biden and i agree with much of what this administration has done but to say that this is going fine right now would be dishonest and i'm not going to do that brett bruin global engagement director during the obama white house says that president biden might need to consider firing his national security advisor in the wake of what has transpired in the last few days has all the work that you and four presidential administrations put into afghanistan been undone at this point i would say not only has it been a done word or worse fun and the taliban is able to use american military equipment and know how they are battle hardened from two decades of fighting our forces and they also have the value the propaganda value of having waited us out and you know in their words i'm sure one an important victory what do people fail to understand about what has happened in the last 72 hours in the last week i think there is not an appreciation for the broader impact a lot of people are focused on the shiny object and not looking over the horizon how is this going to impact our relations around the region and across the globe that's where i fear we are going to see the next wave of reverberations we're going to see the next wave of impact because there are a whole lot of allies that are having emergency meetings right now reviewing their relations with the us reviewing the vulnerabilities where's the next place that joe biden is going to decide is no longer worth america's engagement that's it for vice news tonight make sure to tune in throughout this week we're going to stay on top of this situation in afghanistan and you can catch all the latest at vice.com [Music] you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 10,137,296

Keywords: Afghanistan, Ben C. Solomon, Corruption, KRISHNA ANDAVOLU, Kandar, TERRORISTS, Taliban, america, cities, country, documentary, in-depth, major, nation-building, news, overrunning, reporter, swaths, takeover, taking over, undoing, vice_videos:premiere, war, weeks

Id: atUQb_8WsiE

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021