Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story

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In terms of top level, we approached at the very senior level the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps, and, initially, I mean, we were met with quite a lot of resistance and we were told that was coming from the White House, and we were told that was coming from the White House and the Biden administration didn’t want to share about what happened in Kabul, really, is what we were told, and we were told that quite a few times. At the same time, I think we lose sight of the fact that, like, you know, we are the United States of America and NATO. I mean, we have significant military resources at our disposal to change those dates, to bolster our forces. The entire Eighty-Second Airborne Division, for instance, out of Fort Bragg, one of their key divisional tasks is air fort seizure. That’s what they—that’s why they are parachute qualified.

BBC iPlayer - Escape from Kabul Airport BBC iPlayer - Escape from Kabul Airport

So, yeah. I mean, it may not be a highly, you know, sort of popular media focus of attention but I do believe there is information out there and there will continue to be. So the American Civil War, the construct was, if you look, the blood—the first ever draft in the United States comes out of the American Civil War. The treasure—the first ever income tax that we have is also from the American Civil War. So somewhere there’s a real hierarchical nature, which I’m sure you know, of the Taliban. So if you spend enough time speaking to people, explaining to them why this story is important and treating them with just regular respect, but a lot of green tea, again, passed up the chain of command, you kind of get somewhere that way. There’s different departments that you can kind of work, as it were.Jamie, I want to start with you and ask sort of the—you know, a technical film about the documentary, part of the power of it was the recordings off of people’s film—phones, that that somehow showed the chaos, and there was a moment where I thought this could have been even worse than it was. ROBERTS: With the Marines, I mean, I think a lot of them are extremely proud of what they did. But there was definitely a lot of frustration with, I think, the Biden administration, the situation they were put in, and maybe also the credit that they were given or not given. 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.

BBC Two documentary Escape From Kabul Airport to show New BBC Two documentary Escape From Kabul Airport to show

But the pandemonium at the airport—I mean, getting to the front of one of these crowds to signal a Marine to get waved into the airport it was like the equivalent of telling someone to go to see—you know, you’re going to go to see the Rolling Stones at Altamont and you need to wave to the band on stage and get them to call you up onto the stage. So I—you know, I thought contingency planning for rapid collapse was, certainly, warranted, given the plausibility but, you know, unpredictable likelihood of that scenario. AMOS: Elliot, I wanted to get to one more point before we open it up to the audience and that is, you know, so many of you worked on getting Afghan translators out and in many cases you did not succeed. There are still people there in hiding and afraid for their lives, and I wondered if you can talk a little bit about how big that operation got. You know, I had lunch with the Taliban almost every other day and it was just for the means of trying to get access because they want to hear you out. They’re interested. There wasn’t many Westerners around. They want to know your story.One thing I would just—I think it’s sort of just culturally maybe germane to bring up, and Jamie and I were talking a little bit about this before the session started, is—and maybe why the Marines want their story told—is, you know, these wars have been waged increasingly out of sight for most of America. I thought the sort of grinding on fight for the urban areas was somewhat more likely. I mean, it was the sort of the—you know, the problem with this kind of analysis and projection is that it’s always easier to predict a continuation of a trajectory that you’re on than a dramatic change to that trajectory.

Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story by Levison Wood | WHSmith

Have you seen any credible estimate of the number of immediate and extended family members of the Afghan translators and other assistants to the U.S. who wanted to get out? What is the bottom of the iceberg? Because my concern was we were never going to be able to meet the demand in the short time that we’ve had till the end of August.ROBERTS: Yeah. I mean, they were at pains to tell me that, some of them, not least because I think, you know, they didn’t come in like some of their fathers may have where they’d taken people’s mobile phones or they’d remove televisions and, you know, they weren’t out there destroying cassette tapes and throwing them around like possibly they had in the past. We’re looking for a lively discussion about the film, about policy a year after Kabul was taken over by the Taliban. We’re going to talk for thirty minutes, as you heard. I think that maybe that a lot of them felt like the story of their experience people outside hadn’t really understood and understood the kind of cards they’d been handed. It was—you know, they didn’t have the weapons they needed, the vehicles they needed. The situation wasn’t as it should have been. AMOS: Can I ask you, Jamie, a question? Did the BBC—were they aware that this would come out around 9/11? Was that the point?