Episode 16: How Was Afghanistan Lost to the Taliban — Again? Part 2

In the final chaotic days of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan — two years ago this month — a young survivor of a Taliban attack was fleeing for the airport, the top American diplomat was trying to make the departure as orderly as possible, and the Afghan national security advisor was escaping with Afghanistan’s president on a helicopter. Among the fallout: a country once again ruled by a brutal regime that harbors terrorists and the United States seen around the world as abandoning its close allies.

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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[SOMBER MUSIC]

Breshna Musazai: His first bullet hit me in the leg. So the first thing that came into my mind was to play dead because I knew that I cannot run and I thought this is the only way to survive but he shot me again, maybe to make sure that I’m dead. So the second bullet that hit me was so painful. It hit me in the foot and I felt like my foot was exploded, I felt like nothing is left in my foot. Because I was too scared, I didn’t move and I didn’t make any sound. I was picturing him coming closer to me and putting his gun on my head. I closed my eyes and I was, I was ready to die.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

Breshna Musazai was a student at the American University of Afghanistan in 2016 when the Taliban — a militant Islamist insurgent group — shot her and left her bleeding out on the floor. Breshna played like she was dead and the Taliban moved on. But unfortunately 15 students and staff were not so lucky. They were killed by the Taliban.

Eventually, Breshna was rescued and she was flown to Texas for medical treatment. She spent six months getting put back together again. She decided to go back to Afghanistan, back to the university where the Taliban had attacked her. And she graduated.

She became something of an inspiration, and in 2019, she spoke to a group of young leaders from around the world at a conference in the United Kingdom.

ARCHIVAL Breshna Musazai: My father had tears in his eyes at my graduation ceremony as he looked upon an independent Afghan woman. Because I'm mentally healthy, I can be positive, and I can make the key decisions in my life.

Breshna gave that speech around the first time that we met, four years ago. I’ve been reporting on her story ever since. She was one of the lucky few Afghans who was able to get onto a military flight out of Afghanistan just as the Taliban took over the country’s government in August of 2021. She landed in Qatar, and it seemed like she was finally free and she put in her application for asylum in the United States.

But instead, she ended up confined on a U.S. military base in the Qatari desert, waiting for word from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, for more than a year. Almost as if she was in a prison.

Breshna Musazai: I'm a refugee here. The USCIS has to approve my case, so when they approve it, I can go to the United States.

[THEME MUSIC BEGINS]

Breshna’s story is emblematic of the bigger story — of what happened after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, something that was set in motion by the “peace” deal that the U.S. signed with the Taliban in 2020.With that deal, the Taliban won at the negotiating table what they could never win from the Americans on the battlefield.

It was a deal that ended two decades of progress in Afghanistan and it made a mockery of the sacrifices of the millions of Americans who had loved ones who served in Afghanistan or had served there themselves. And once the Americans left, it turned tens of thousands of Afghans into refugees, with little or no idea if they’d ever be able to return to their homeland again.

So why was the American exit from Afghanistan such a disaster? Now that the U.S. is gone, what happens to the Afghan people? And with the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan again, do they pose a national security threat to you today?

I’m Peter Bergen, welcome to In the Room.

[THEME MUSIC INTENSIFIES, THEN FADES]

When I spoke to Breshna Musazai late last year, she was clearly suffering. Her injuries still caused her a great deal of pain. She seemed depressed. She was having migraines. And she missed her family.

It’s also blazing hot in the Qatari desert where this U.S. military base is located, and so, like lots of other refugees there, she’d reversed her schedule. During the day, she would sleep. At night she would stay up.

And she still didn’t know what was happening with her asylum case.

Breshna Musazai: More than a month ago, the guy told me that my file was put under all the other files. That's why it took so long.

Breshna tried to find ways to pass the time. Like teaching English and learning German.

[SOUNDS OF BRESHNA TEACHING ENGLISH AND GERMAN]

Breshna Musazai: This camp doesn't look real to me, like a real place. The ground, the buildings, the sky, everything is so dull, you know, the same color…. It doesn't look real because real places are like, sky is blue and there are green trees and everything has its color.

Breshna was trapped on a U.S. military base thanks to the American withdrawal deal that took U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and handed the country to the Taliban. General David Petraeus, the former US commanding general in Afghanistan, has strong views about that deal.

David Petraeus: I think that ranks with the worst diplomatic agreements in our history. We gave the Taliban what they wanted: we’re leaving. The only thing we got in return is a promise that they wouldn’t attack us, sort of on the way out.

Let’s go back to the final days before those U.S. troops left, beginning with one of the U.S. diplomats who was overseeing the withdrawal.

Ross Wilson: My name is Ross Wilson. I'm a retired American diplomat. My most recent post was Chief of Mission in Kabul, Afghanistan.

When Ambassador Wilson got to Afghanistan, the situation was very tense. It was January, 2020.

The Taliban was routinely launching suicide attacks in the capital Kabul.Massive, towering concrete blast walls up to twenty feet tall loomed over the streets of downtown Kabul.A once-pleasant city was turning itself into a fortress. Tellingly, American diplomats traveled around Kabul not by car but by helicopter because it was so dangerous.

Meanwhile, the United States was about to sign a deal with the Taliban that it would pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the next summer. Wilson was pretty sure that his tenure at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul wasn't gonna be an easy ride. He knew they needed his help.

Ross Wilson: I was given to believe they had asked a number of others who had declined. I finally concluded maybe they should be asking somebody else, they were asking me, and it was my duty to do it.

Peter Bergen: Can you give a little bit more sense of what it was like to serve in the embassy, for you and the thousands of other people that you were in charge of?

Ross Wilson: It's unlike any embassy I'd ever been in before. We were kind of like a cruise ship in the heart of Kabul. The work that reporting officers do, of getting to know people and having a direct conversation with a bunch of folks and then putting together a picture — work that journalists do, too — that was hard. It was really hard. Because of the nature of the assignment and the danger and the difficulties of living there, Kabul was for most people a one-year tour. So you had… ‘the annual lobotomy,’ was a phrase one of my colleagues used, where like the brains were removed, or a big chunk of the brains were removed, and then you had newcomers who had to find their way around.

President Biden’s top military adviser General Mark Milley, told the president that unless the US kept a small force — around 2,500 troops — in Afghanistan, the Afghan military would collapse. And that would surely lead to a Taliban takeover.

But Biden seemed to be still scarred by the fights he’d had with the Pentagon back when he was President Obama's vice president and was the key voice in the cabinet arguing for a smaller U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan. And now, more than a decade later, he simply ignored General Milley’s advice.

On April 14, 2021 Biden addressed the nation.

ARCHIVAL Joseph Biden: I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time for American troops to come home.

I spoke with a top Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid. He says the Taliban couldn't believe their luck.

Zabiullah Mujahid: [MUJAHID SPEAKING DARI, KHALID MAFTON TRANSLATING:] When President Biden won the election, we suspected that he might insist on continuing the war. But when he announced that he was withdrawing his forces from Afghanistan, it was a source of joy.

As U.S. troops started to leave Afghanistan that summer, Ambassador Wilson saw the first signs of an impending catastrophe.

Ross Wilson: On the embassy side, we had a set of metrics for us to assess what was happening in the country against our ability to be there. And as you got into July, a number of them were, sort of in the red category and a number of others were trending in that direction.

Wilson was keeping tabs on the fuel and food making its way through Afghanistan to Kabul. As the Taliban began to take control of provincial capitals, they also took control of the roads and those supplies began to dry up. It was a measurable indicator of a full-scale disaster that was quickly taking over the country.

[MUSIC]

ARCHIVAL Reporter: We are flying over Bagram airfield once home to 38,000 US troops — now nearly abandoned.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 1: The Taliban has captured its first provincial capital in Afghanistan in five years. Zaranj in Nimruz province.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 2: The deputy governor of Sheberghan in Jowzjan Province says government forces have retreated to the airport.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 3: The provincial capitals Sar-e Pol and Taloqan are also largely in militant hands.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 4: The Taliban has now captured the key strategic city of Kunduz after days of heavy fighting.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 5: The U.S. and British embassies in Afghanistan are advising their citizens to leave the country immediately.

[MUSIC STOPS]

Ross Wilson: On about August 12, these indicators are hitting and really in the wrong direction. Taliban forces were at least in a broad sense encircling Kabul, from the north, from the south, from the east and the west.

Ambassador Wilson sounded the alarm. Clearly, the U.S. embassy was no longer safe. State Department officials would mothball the embassy, and a small group would relocate to Kabul airport.

Ross Wilson: At the time that we did this a hope was that, that the airport would be a reasonably safe place to stay. We still had a large American military presence there to ride out the transition that was coming and, and get everybody else out.

And then came the day that everything changed.

Roya Rahmani: August 15.

Ross Wilson: On the morning of the 15th…

Breshna Musazai: On August 15th…

Newscaster 1: On August 15th…

Ross Wilson: Taliban forces were now entering Kabul Province in large numbers.

Newscaster 2: By late afternoon, the Taliban made a brief incursion into Kabul, probing. They met no resistance.

For Breshna, who had been shot by the Taliban five years earlier, it was a complete shock. The Taliban seemed to take over the city so easily.

Breshna Musazai: My sister came to me and she said, what's going on? I heard that people are running on the streets, everybody's leaving their offices. What's going on? Maybe there's something bad is happening.

[ARCHIVAL SOUNDS OF THE TALIBAN ENTERING KABUL, CROWDS FLEEING]

Breshna Musazai: My father came to me and he said the Taliban are already in the presidential palace, and I was shocked. I couldn't believe that this is happening. I thought it's a bad dream.

Tens of thousands of Afghans were also looking for a way out. Anybody who had been associated with the Americans had good reason to fear that the Taliban would exact revenge.

Breshna, who had become something of a symbol of resistance against the Taliban, rushed to the airport with her brother. A contact from the American University of Afghanistan helped them get out.

But between her and the exit, stood the Taliban.

Breshna Musazai: When my brother and I left, we were told that, only take a backpack, no more than that. But I saw the Taliban in real life and I was too scared. I was too scared to look into their eyes. But then the Qatar ambassador, he told us, ‘don't worry we'll find a way, just stay here.’ So we waited, like for 10 hours. The plane from Qatar government came and they put us on that plane.

Peter Bergen: How did you feel when you were leaving?

Breshna Musazai: I was in shock. I didn't know what was happening. Even when I was in the plane, I had no idea where they're taking me. They told us it's Qatar, but I couldn't believe that it was real.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

As the Taliban encircled Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani was in his presidential palace holed up with some key advisers including Matin Bek.

Matin Bek: My last job was as a chief of staff to president of Afghanistan.

A backchannel with the Taliban had opened up. And Bek was hopeful that there would be a peaceful transfer of power.Perhaps even some normal contact with the outside world, like the continued presence of Western embassies. But then…

[SOUNDS OF A HELICOPTER]

President Ghani got on a helicopter and fled to neighboring Uzbekistan. When Bek found out, he, like many other Afghans, felt completely betrayed.

Matin Bek: He, he ran away and killed a small window of opportunity for the peace. He empowered the hard line Taliban. I would say a smaaaaall breathing space would be there for Afghanistan. Not ideal but small. That's why it makes me angry and betrayed. He shouldn't have done it. He was the president of a country in war. In war these things happens. You have to show leadership.

Another advisor to Ghani, Hamdullah Mohib, was Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser. He was on that helicopter with Ghani. In fact, he arranged the whole getaway.

[MUSIC PICKS UP]

Many years earlier, Mohib had been a student in London, pursuing a career in computer science. And that’s when he first met Ghani at a university event.

Hamdullah Mohib: I found him inspiring, there was something about him that I had not seen in other politicians. He did not talk about himself. It wasn't about him. It was about Afghanistan. The whole discussion was about how we can rebuild the country, how we can utilize the resources that Afghanistan has for its development, and build a bright future for our country. Something that really resonated with me and I stayed in touch with him ever since. And when he decided to run for president I was there to volunteer. I believed in his ideas, and to this day, believe what he was trying to achieve.

And Ghani also saw something in Mohib, a young man educated largely outside of Afghanistan, a fresh face, somebody different from the typical political operatives in the country.

Hamdullah Mohib: President Ghani asked me to be his deputy chief of staff when he became president. And after doing that for about a year, he asked me if I would go to Washington as his ambassador. I was surprised, because I had not served in the foreign ministry.

He told me that he wanted the United States and the American people to see the new generation of Afghans, because the Americans largely knew the older politicians, the warlords. I noticed that there was a lot of skepticism about Afghanistan in Washington. They didn't see the partners, they didn't see the achievements that the country had made.

Mohib and President Ghani met with President Biden in the White House in June 2021. It was a last ditch attempt to get some American support. Biden had already said he was going to pull all U.S. troops out. The Americans were pulling the plug, and Mohib and Ghani tried desperately to appeal to Biden to give them more military help, such as helicopters. Mohib recalled that Biden said they had a friend in the White House.

Hamdullah Mohib: But when we asked for anything real, which was support to Afghanistan, he went to repeat that we needed to have a ground strategy. The ground strategy that the United States was proposing to us was to withdraw from 22 provinces.

Afghanistan has 34 provinces. So Biden was telling them to pull out from more than half of the country and just hold onto the biggest cities. It was a strategy that Mohib and Ghani believed would never work.

Hamdullah Mohib: And so we are under attack at every front. And the one request we made to President Biden goes unsupported. So for me, my takeaway from that meeting was, we have nothing.

[EERIE MUSIC]

But President Ghani and Mohib had also contributed to this mess. Ghani had appointed Mohib to be his National Security Adviser in the middle of a war that was not going well, even though Mohib had no military experience of any kind. Nor, for that matter, did his boss. Ghani had also sacked several military leaders who were not loyalists, hollowing out the Afghan military

And now, the Taliban were really gaining steam. And for the Afghan government, that was deeply unsettling.

ARCHIVAL 1990s Newscaster: The Islamic Taliban militia is in control of much of the country…

The last time the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Mohib remembered the horror that unfolded.

ARCHIVAL 1990s Newscaster: One of the Taliban’s first acts was to execute the former Afghan president, Najibullah…

The former Afghan president, Mohammed Najibullah, was tortured and then publicly hanged.

Hamdullah Mohib: They went to the UN compound, dragged him out of the compound along with his brother who had just returned to visit him. He was dragged, beaten, and then hanged. And his body was… I’m sorry, just give me a moment here, sorry. [MOHIB TAKES A LONG PAUSE]

He wasn't just hanged. It is the humiliation and disrespect to a dead body, a former leader of Afghanistan that was shocking to Afghans all across even his opponents. But my concern was not that what happened to Dr. Najibullah would, would be repeated. I felt it was going to be worse than that.

[EERIE MUSIC RETURNS]

Afghans may have felt betrayed by President Ghani’s sudden departure. But Mohib doesn’t regret at all getting his boss to safety.

Hamdullah Mohib: My hope was that we are able to save his life. And I’m really glad we were able to do that.

But many Afghans felt Ghani should not have abandoned his post in their darkest hour. President Ghani had appointed Roya Rahmani to be the first female Afghan Ambassador to the United States. I asked Rahmani if she could ever forgive President Ghani for fleeing in that helicopter.

Roya Rahmani: As a citizen, as a woman that was brought up there, I cannot forgive him for not fighting for the opportunity to keep girls in school. At this point, I can't think beyond being just an Afghan woman who did have opportunities. I did live a life that, as a teenager, that I had no other hope than going to school. I cannot forgive the rest of the Afghan leaders for how selfish they have been. Like what is it in this life that would propel them to act so much in their own self-interest to be able and willing to sacrifice people, their lives, their hopes, their families who are starving, their children that have no education, no clothes, no fuel to burn.

Hamdullah Mohib: We are all at fault here, we all have a stake in this failure. But it’s important that we learn from what happened. Future generations need to know all sides of the story.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

U.S. Ambassador Wilson and his staff tried to evacuate as many people as possible. But the process was quickly swamped by crowds of desperate Afghans. They saw the Kabul airport as their only way out.

Ross Wilson: Afghan mobs, essentially, got onto the tarmac, thousands or many, many hundreds at least. Just streaming through airport security checkpoints, those soldiers, they'd abandoned their post. You could just walk in and, and Afghans did, We didn't know who they were. Uh, we didn't know if they had weapons.Virtually from the time of my arrival on the afternoon of the 15th to close to the 30th, we got, I got, my staff got, senior military people got, mid-level military people got… hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of phone calls, texts, emails, every hour.

Afghan Voice 1: You are my last hope.

Afghan Voice 2: My body is shaking.

Afghan Voice 3: Please help me to get to a safe place.

Afghan Voice 4: I am asking you as a fellow human being to save my life.

Ross Wilson: It was unbelievable. Please, please, please, please, help us.

Afghan Voice 2: Do something please.

Afghan Voice 1: Do something please.

Ross Wilson: You have the people come in, you have to fend off those who are not part of the group. Uh, you have to try to get that gate closed again. Because who knows what these people are carrying and who knows who they really are. Are they really who they say they are? And often enough they weren't. It was nerve-wracking and, you, you get the picture.

Peter Bergen: Were you prepared for that?

Ross Wilson: The whole, you, you can't… [WILSON PAUSES] Let me just stop for a second. [WILSON TAKES A LONG PAUSE]

You, you just can't imagine how hard it, how hard it was, for those people on the front lines. [WILSON PAUSES] And especially the, the choices they had to make, is life and death.

Ambassador Wilson’s worst fears came true: a suicide attack by ISIS, an Islamist terrorist organization, at the airport killed an estimated 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops.

[MUSIC BRIEFLY INTENSIFIES]

While the Taliban did stick to their promise not to attack Americans on their way out of Afghanistan, that was of little consequence to ISIS.

[FAST PACED MUSIC PICKS UP]

Biden’s withdrawal deadline loomed and the work of evacuating civilians simply stopped. It was time to get out.

[SOUND OF HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING]

Marines patrolled the airport, destroying as much U.S. military hardware as they could. Stray dogs wandered across the runways.

Shortly before midnight on August 30, 2021, Wilson took off on the lastAmerican flight out of Afghanistan. Around him buzzed U.S. helicopters, like tiny robotic mosquitoes. Taliban fighters looked on from the darkness. On the plane, there were four American diplomats and a group of U.S. soldiers.

They flew out of Afghan air space; the final dismal coda to America’s longest war.

Ross Wilson: It was very somber, absolute quiet. Everybody was utterly exhausted. And everybody is thinking about…what we'd left.

Biden asserted that Afghan forces were to blame.

ARCHIVAL Joseph Biden: American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

But for General David Petraeus, who had been the commanding general in Afghanistan, Biden's comments seemed way off base.

David Petraeus: I was particularly hurt by statements, 'Well, the Afghans wouldn't fight for their own country.’ 16 times as many Afghans died fighting for their country as did, uh, U.S. and coalition forces, something in that order. Afghans fought for their country and they died for their country.

And more than 800,000 Americans served in Afghanistan, nearly two and a half thousand of them were killed. More than 20,000 were wounded, many of them seriously.Millions of other Americans had loved ones who served in Afghanistan, often for multiple tours.

All this sacrifice: for what? The Taliban took over again. They continue to provide shelter to members of al-Qaeda. And while there’s no longer daily bombings, that’s little comfort to someone like Roya Rahmani, when she thinks about the bleak future of women back in Afghanistan.

Roya Rahmani: There is less number of people getting killed, which is an important factor. And only people who have lived war and have seen this realize how important it is, what does war and people getting killed does to the societies, to their families, to the nation and whatnot. So in that respect, the fact that less number of people are violently getting killed is a good thing. But I don't characterize that as being safe. It's not a safe place for anybody. I'm an Afghan and I can't even return. How about half of the population — women, do they feel safe? What is that definition of safety? When you think you could go out and you can be lashed just simply because of the virtue of being born a woman.

When the Taliban first took over, for a fleeting moment it seemed they might have softened their views on women’s rights.

But today, girls over 12 are still not allowed to attend school. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that bans girls from school and women from universities. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told us that the Taliban is still “paving the way” for this to happen.

Zabiullah Mujahid: [MUJAHID SPEAKING DARI, KHALID MAFTON TRANSLATING:] First, women’s rights will not be lost. They will not be discriminated against. We will proceed according to Islamic rules. We have not said that they can’t go to school. We have tried to pave the way so that they can go to school with confidence. Families should also be sure that their daughters can study peacefully.

Peter Bergen: But it's now a year and a half later. What's your plan? I mean do you have a date that this will happen?

Zabiullah Mujahid: [MUJAHID SPEAKING DARI, KHALID MAFTON TRANSLATING:]

I cannot make this prediction because the work of the Ministry of Education is separate. I do not know how far they have come in completing their plans. But it is necessary. The day will come when girls will go to school.

Of course that day hasn’t come yet, nor is there any sign that it’s even remotely close.

For Lisa Curtis, one of the top officials working on Afghanistan during the Trump administration, the failure of U.S. negotiators to push the Taliban for any terms related to women's rights is a huge regret.

Why did it turn out this way? The United States spent many months negotiating this deal with the Taliban. But did they even try to put women’s rights in that deal?

Lisa Curtis: No, unfortunately, we did not make a sort of forceful push for including these issues. Ambassador Khalilzad did raise these issues, but when it came down to it, he kept saying, you know, the, the most important issue for the U.S. is counter-terrorism. And I actually remember a meeting and Ambassador Khalilzad started the conversation by saying the number one concern for the United States in Afghanistan is counter-terrorism. And the number two concern is the status of women.

I spoke up and I said, “You know, look, I respectfully disagree with this framing of US interest.” And the two issues are interlinked. There's no way to separate them. The point is that the way the situation goes for women in Afghanistan will determine the future trajectory of terrorism.

Indeed, regimes like the Taliban and groups like ISIS, which wipe out women’s rights, are key sources of jihadist terrorism.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan was orchestrated by President Trump, President Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador Khalilzad. But none of these men are ever likely to take responsibility for this debacle.

What’s more, the withdrawal seems to have emboldened the rivals of the United States. It just doesn't seem entirely coincidental that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine just six months after the U.S. left Afghanistan.

[MUSIC STOPS]

David Petraeus: What happens in one part of the world reverberates around other parts of the world. I believe President Xi of China highlighted in one of his speeches that this showed that the U.S. was not a dependable, reliable partner and ally and also that, the way it was conducted showed that the U.S. was a great power in decline.

Why did Biden go through with the withdrawal plan that he inherited from Trump? It’s something of a puzzle. There was no large, vocal constituency in the Democratic Party that was demanding a total U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. And Biden’s top military advisers had clearly warned him of the risks of doing so.

There was also every possibility that a relatively small U.S. military presence could have kept the democratically-elected government of Afghanistan safe from a Taliban takeover. That might have safeguarded the striking progress that was made over the past two decades in reducing child mortality, providing jobs for women and education for girls, nurturing scores of independent media outlets, and holding regular, if flawed, presidential elections.

And now that is all gone.

What’s left is a country where experts estimate that more than 90 percent of the population may be living in poverty. Levels of hunger are skyrocketing — nearly twenty million Afghans are facing acute food insecurity, according to the United Nations. And, speaking of the UN, women in today’s Afghanistan are banned from working with the organization, along with other aid groups.

The one relationship that is doing quite well now in Afghanistan is the Taliban’s alliance with al-Qaeda. Within weeks after the U.S. was gone, the Taliban appointed an al-Qaeda leader to a high-level government position — equivalent to leading the US Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.And the fact that the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was living in downtown Kabul for months with the knowledge of leaders of the Taliban speaks for itself. Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul in July 2022.

After that news broke, Lisa Curtis tweeted that this proved that the U.S. deal with the Taliban wasn’t ‘worth the paper on which it was written.’

Lisa Curtis: I think we can expect terrorism to rear its ugly head once again. We've seen no signs that the Taliban have broken from al-Qaeda, so I think we have to assume that al-Qaeda's going to begin rebuilding its base in Afghanistan. As far as counter-terrorism goes, as far as human rights, we are back to square one. We are back to September 10th, 2001 in Afghanistan.

Certainly we’re back to September 10, 2001 in terms of the Taliban controlling Afghanistan and providing sanctuary to terrorist groups. But there’s a difference now.

The U.S. has counter terrorism capabilities like armed drones that it didn’t have before 9/11. The U.S. is also much better defended against terrorist attacks than it was back then.

But still, according to a report released in June by the United Nations, approximately 20 terrorist organizations are operating in Afghanistan and quote “terrorist groups have greater freedom of maneuver” under the new Taliban regime. Also worrisome: al-Qaeda is quote “covertly rebuilding its external operations capability,” according to the UN, meaning its ability to launch attacks outside of Afghanistan.

And you know how that can end.

Meanwhile, all you need to know about the Taliban’s mindset two decades after 9/11 is to hear from their top spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid who told us that Osama bin Laden wasn’t responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Zabiullah Mujahid: [MUJAHID SPEAKING DARI, KHALID MAFTON TRANSLATING:] We have not received proof that what the Americans claim is true or not because I have not seen any document on this issue.

Peter Bergen: Osama bin Laden was living in Afghanistan when the attacks happened.

Zabiullah Mujahid: [MUJAHID SPEAKING DARI, KHALID MAFTON TRANSLATING:] I confirm that he lived here… But we do not have any evidence that he was directly involved in the event.

Of course, that is total nonsense.

We now know that a more “moderate” Taliban was a mirage, and the Taliban today is just like the original Taliban with one major difference; this time around they’re far better armed than the Taliban that ruled over Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

That’s because the Taliban now ride into battle with 70,000 armored vehicles and more than 100 helicopters left behind as the U.S. military rushed for the exits during the summer of 2021, according to the United Nations.It’s an arsenal worth an estimated 8.5 billion dollars, which is more than the defense budgets of many European countries.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

For those you’ve been hearing from, the Afghan war is invariably tied up with regret. There’s nowhere to put all the shame, the anger, the sadness left behind. Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson carries with him the number of people he just couldn’t save, but he also remembers the victories.

Ross Wilson: We're proud of those that we got out because they have an opportunity to have a peaceful and secure life. Maybe not right away. We and our Western allies and partners invested a ton in Afghanistan's infrastructure. As a result of that, hundreds of thousands of Afghan babies survived infancy, that's important. Millions of Afghans went to schools. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Afghan boys and girls went to university and graduated from university. They got connected in a way with the rest of the world that was unprecedented for Afghan citizens at any time in its previous history.

When Ambassador Wilson thinks about all these young Afghans, he wonders just how long will the Taliban really be able to remain in power.

Ross Wilson: There are lots and lots and lots and lots of people who we would've liked to have gotten out or who wanted to get out of Afghanistan when we left. A lot of 'em are there. And as the Talibs demonstrate their exquisite and unique incapability to govern a modern country and the narrowness of their political base, I think those influences that we and our friends and allies and partners put into that country will, or certainly can have an impact. Ain't gonna be soon but, I think that's surely one of the best hopes for the future of the country.

(MUSIC SHIFTS]

Breshna Musazai spent more than a year sitting in purgatory at a U.S. military base in the Qatari desert, waiting for approval to go to the United States.

Breshna Musazai: Almost every night I come outside and I sit here and enjoy the night.

Just when Breshna was running on fumes, she got word that she'd been approved to join her parents and her sister in the United States. At the Doha military base, Breshna said goodbye to her brother and her sister-in-law who she'd shared a room with for the past year. She was approved to leave but they, like tens of thousands of other Afghan refugees, continued to sit and wait.

Breshna’s Brother: Good luck.

Breshna’s sister-in-law: We're gonna miss you.

Breshna’s Brother: Yeah. After a year together, you know, they, they just send one of us. Yeah. It's a long time. The ideal situation would've been that we all went together. But preferably we wanted you to go first.

Breshna Musazai: I feel kind of guilty, because I think we stayed because of me. I wanted to see the doctor and then now I'm leaving before you guys, so.

Breshna’s Brother: No, no, that's not an issue. It's fine. We are happy you're leaving. Let's see how long it takes for us to get there as well.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

Breshna Musazai: I remember the time when I entered the camp, one year ago. I cannot believe that I'm finally leaving.

I was in Iraq for a conference, and my return flight was connecting through Doha. In quite a coincidence, Breshna and I happened to be on the same flight.

Peter Bergen: When was the last time you saw your parents?

Breshna Musazai: It was when I left Afghanistan. 2021. Yeah. August 17th.

Peter Bergen: Are you excited? Worried?

Breshna Musazai: I am, like, I have kind of mixed feelings. Excited, like, happy to see my parents and finally leaving here, leaving this place, and nervous about life in the US, because it's a new place and it's because I've been here for a long time.

Flight Announcement: Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. We expect to be on the ground in forty-five minutes.

While we were on the plane, her sister Wasila left work early to drive their parents to the airport.

Wasila: I said, ‘I'm going. My sister is coming,’ and everyone was so happy.

After I got my bags and met Breshna’s family, Breshna spent hours being processed through U.S. Customs.

Peter Bergen: We landed in Dulles. Breshna is here. She's using a wheelchair.

Her family waited anxiously in baggage claim. Then, finally…

Wasila: Oh, she's there. She's there. She's there. She's there.

This is yours.

She said, I want to hug my parents. That's why.

[SOUNDS OF CRYING AND KISSING]

Breshna went to her new home. And prepared to see doctors about the pain she still has in her leg where the Taliban shot her. Her life in the United States was just beginning. But it’s a future that she never really wanted.

Breshna Musazai: I still cannot accept what happened to Afghanistan. So I'm not excited about going to the United States. I just need to go there because I don't have anywhere else to go.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

###

If you want to know more about post-9/11 Afghanistan, I recommend,

Carter Malkasian’s The American War in Afghanistan, which is an authoritative account by a Pashto-speaking historian who worked in Afghanistan as a U.S. State Department official.

We also recommend The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, by Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post, and Steve Coll’s deeply reported Directorate S:The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And if you enjoyed this episode of In the Room with Peter Bergen, please tell a friend, and rate and review our show on your favorite podcast app.

CREDITS:
In the Room with Peter Bergen is an Audible Original.
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Please note: This episode includes excerpts from a broadcast by One Young World, from
BBC News, and from the Times of London.