TRANSCRIPT: Afghanistan, 2021: Three perspectives on the brutal close of a 20-year war
Pashtana Durrani:
20 years, you do everything right by your country. And then one day somebody else decides that, "Okay, we want to pull out, we want to decide for the future." That's wrong. I didn't do anything to the United States. It was the Taliban who bombed them, so then why don't you ask them to pay for the consequences? Why do I have to pay with my rights for those consequences?
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you can find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, how America's withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into the biggest foreign policy crisis of Biden's presidency. I'll be breaking down how we got here and then speaking to two very different Afghans, one in hiding in the country and another in exile, about how they'll continue on now that the country they've known for 20 years has disappeared. Then, how one US military veteran views Afghanistan's collapse. Up first is Pashtana Durrani, founder and executive director of Learn, a charity focused on education in Afghanistan. Out of concern for her safety, I'm not disclosing where she presently is in the country. Let's get right to it.
Announcer:
The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients' needs first by providing responsive, relevant and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more. And GZERO World also has a message for you from our friends at Foreign Policy. COVID-19 changed life as we know it, but as the world reopens this moment also presents an opportunity. On Global Reboot, Foreign Policy looks at old problems in new ways. From US-China relations to gender inequality and racial discrimination, each week Ravi Agrawal speaks to policy experts and world leaders and thinks through solutions to our world's toughest challenges. Check out Global Reboot wherever you get your podcasts.
Ian Bremmer:
Pashtana, thank you so much for joining us today. I know that you are in Afghanistan and I obviously don't want to ask you more than that, but are you safe right now?
Pashtana Durrani:
I am on the move, so I don't consider it safe, but I keep on moving just for my safety. The minute Kandahar fell I had to move because that's the only option I had. And so I keep on moving from that day, and my initial response, yes, a few days I have been emotional. I cried, I was very worried. But right now we have to understand that it's a crisis mode and we have to make sure that we answer the crisis rather than focusing only on the emotional sides of things.
Ian Bremmer:
Can you tell us a little bit what the last few days have been like since the Taliban have taken over the country?
Pashtana Durrani:
Life is relatively calm. Life is calm, but the Taliban are pressuring the people. They have been to people's houses, taken their generators, whatever appliances that they can find. Whatever is valuable they take away and then they are lying about it on the international media that they are taking weapons. They are not, they're taking everything and anything that they can find. That's the first thing. The second thing is that at the same time, the schools are being closed down. The private schools in Kandahar are closed down right now, and it's a shame that nobody's talking about it. The girls in Herat were sent back home and they haven't resumed and it's been a week and nobody's talking about it. Everybody's talking about the fact that what will the Taliban do? What will their future hold? But what about the normal civilians caught up in the middle of the crossfire?
Ian Bremmer:
I mean, if there's no government other than one that is rapacious and incompetent.
Pashtana Durrani:
See, the public offices are paralyzed right now. The directorate for education is paralyzed. Directorate for healthcare is paralyzed. All these heads, the directors are all changed from technocrats, people who worked in planning policy are being changed and now people who are literally fighters, who are militia men, who have fought all their lives, military men are being set as the people who could lead the directorate. I mean, can you expect someone who fought 20 years to be leading our education directorate?
I don't think that's a practical thing to do, but they're doing it right now. And that's like, each directorate is for the whole province, and every province has 17, 16 districts, and all those districts have hundreds of villages. So you have to understand the crisis mode right now and the way they're handling it are two different things. And at the same time, they are not responding well. If they had a plan, if they wanted to run the country, they could have made sure that they have a plan in place, they have a mechanism in place. And they don't, they don't have a plan or policy to move further with it. Military men can never do public policy, we all know this.
Ian Bremmer:
We've heard a lot of things. I wouldn't necessarily say promises, but a lot of claims from Taliban representatives, for example, that women will still be allowed to go to school through university. First of all, do you think that's credible at all? And secondly, why are the schools closing right now if there isn't any such order?
Pashtana Durrani:
See, if the schools are closing right now because of their fear, the fear that they might be attacked, that's a relative real fear. At the same time, what they promised and what they're doing, two different things. I'll trust them when they say, "Okay, we have opened up schools. Girls can go to schools. We don't have any issues with that. We'll provide security for them. We won't burn down, we won't harass them." Then I'm going to accept that as a matter of fact and I'm going to say, "Okay, they have changed." Right now them saying one thing in Kabul, practicing that in Kabul, there are liberties. People are going out and doing protests. But then can you imagine the same thing in Kandahar? You will be literally torn into pieces. That's a different scenario right now. People are so scared.
I know myself, children are not going to school. They're abandoning their lessons because they're scared of the Taliban, because they're scared of the people patrolling on the streets, the Taliban. So you have to understand two different narratives. International media is focused on Kabul. People are in Kabul so they love talking about Kabul, and they're letting things go and slip by. The minute the world has another hot topic they will impose their law, they will impose their policing, they will police people and they will control them, from what they wear, to what they eat, to what they dress, to what they listen to, to how they conduct their life.
Ian Bremmer:
So who are these... I mean, these are Afghan citizens, of course, your fellow Afghan citizens. Who are the Taliban to you now?
Pashtana Durrani:
They are misogynistic, patriarchal-bred people and used as instruments by regional powers to wage their wars in Afghanistan. And most importantly, the regional powers are so afraid of the Afghan women, they use Afghan men to silence Afghan women. See, it's not just that they are fighters and all that. They were also used by the regional powers to be used to conduct their warfare in Afghanistan.
Ian Bremmer:
For the United States, this is the longest war that we've ever been involved in. And we're saying the war is over. Does the war feel over for you in Afghanistan?
Pashtana Durrani:
The war physically is over, but for rights it's still waging. For people, it's still waging. For children, it's still waging. For people who want excess education, it's still waging. War? Yes, bloodshed is one thing, but being suffocated is another thing. Peace means when you are able to live in peace, but at the same time progress in peace. The progress part is not coming in handy right now. So we have to understand that this side of the war, bloodshed is done, but the side where we talk about progress, that's not happening right now.
Ian Bremmer:
When did it become clear to you that the Americans were really out, and how do you respond to that? How did it make you feel?
Pashtana Durrani:
Them going out was never the issue. Even if they wanted to go out three years ago or now or five years ago when Obama said that we want to leave, leaving is not the issue. They're not superheroes the way they try to portray themselves in every alien movie, that they're the saviors of the world and somehow everything is going to change. Everything is going to be okay if the Americans are like... That's not reality. We all know that. So right now in Afghanistan, their presence was not the issue.
Them legitimizing the Taliban, them turning a blind eye on the Afghan civilians' bloodshed, those were the things that made me question all their leadership throughout the world. That's the point that you all should be questioning. Not the fact that they have their boots on the ground. Boots on the ground, they didn't even fight the war so what difference does it make? In the one year Afghanistan was still sustainable. Then how come in just a few days, the minute they pulled out, Afghanistan starts falling down like a dominoes. The reason is that they legitimized, they legitimized people, legitimized terror group. And now they expect us to fight back. With what?
Ian Bremmer:
So the decision to negotiate with the Taliban, the decision to bring them into the governing process was a fundamental mistake from your perspective.
Pashtana Durrani:
Fundamental mistake in a sense where they could have asked the Taliban to accept women rights. They could have asked them to accept children rights. They could have asked them to accept educational rights, working women rights. But they didn't do that. They had all sorts of leverage and they didn't do all those things. So for me, that's a question. That's a very important question. If you are not going to use your leverage where it's needed in human rights, then what good are you?
Ian Bremmer:
Now, you saw that my president during his speech a couple of days ago put the blame on the Afghan forces, said that if they're not prepared to fight for themselves, that the Americans can't fight for them.
Pashtana Durrani:
It's a shame that he's insulting, he's dishonoring the Afghan forces the way he is saying that they didn't want to fight back. If we didn't want to fight back, I wouldn't have 2,300 people in the army dead from my tribe only. And I'm a very small tribe. I come from Maru, a district that is all mountainous, and we as a district lost 2,300 men to this war in the past two decades. 2,300 men is a huge number for one district. So if they didn't want to fight, they didn't want to fight for themselves, why die, right?
Ian Bremmer:
How many members of your tribe total, just so everyone here understands what we're talking about?
Pashtana Durrani:
It's a very small district so it's relatively around 20,000 people or somehow like that. And it's all family included. Now, right now, if you go to those IDP villages, if you knock on every door, it's all widows and orphans, no men in the house. There are no men left to bury the men that are being murdered in the war in the past three weeks. So let me assure you that Afghans wanted to fight for themselves. It was orders that told them that the ceasefire has been there and there is a negotiation in place. TA peace deal has been reached. Don't fight, stand back. Let's not dishonor the Afghan army right now. I mean, politics aside, yes, our leaders were corrupt, but people, army, no, they were not corrupt. They were willing to fight. Don't put political leaders blame on an army that was holy and that was sacred.
Ian Bremmer:
So what happened? When the Taliban started taking all of this territory and virtually no shots were fired, why was it that the Afghan defense forces at that point basically just fled away?
Pashtana Durrani:
Because they were asked to stand by. You know how military works, you know how disciplined they are. If you tell them to stand back, even if somebody's murdering you, they will stand back. I have friends in the army, they will always stand back. They're disciplined people. They're not civilians, they are military.
Ian Bremmer:
I remember just two months ago when former president Ashraf Ghani said that under no circumstances would he leave the country, would he leave the people. And just as the American ambassador was fleeing the country, the Afghan president was fleeing the country as well. How do you feel about that?
Pashtana Durrani:
See, of one president, him leaving, him fleeing, that was disappointing. That was also emotional because we all voted for him. We wanted him to stand by us. We wanted him to do right by us. But he didn't, he did right by his group of corrupt leaders. So all those things are very emotional to take in. But then at the same time, you have to understand that by the time that Ghani when he had to leave, there was nothing that he could do about it anyway. Everything was taken. Of course, he didn't handle the crisis very well. He didn't do right by the people of Afghanistan. But at the end of the day, he was an elected president and he shouldn't be removed like that and democracy shouldn't be played with like that. You can't just bring in people, like let's bring in Taliban whenever we want. Let's bring in Karzai whenever we want. That's not how it's supposed to be.
Ian Bremmer:
You've been a very strong and vocal advocate for girls' education and spoken beautifully just about the happiness, the joy of getting up in the morning and going to school, something that had been taken away from you for so long. What has it meant for your generation to have access to a proper education?
Pashtana Durrani:
See, educational opportunities for people like us is opportunities to build our country, opportunities to educate more people into feeling responsible for this Afghanistan, for this country. We cannot be aid dependent all our life. We cannot be foreign aid dependent, foreign influence dependent. We have to do something on our own. And for that, it's very important to start by educating ourself, to start by becoming a scientist, a doctor, a teacher, to have that human capacity to serve the country for the greater good. But right now it's in jeopardy. 20 years, you do everything right by your country and then one day somebody else decides that "Okay, we want to pull out, we want to decide for the future." That's wrong. I didn't do anything to the United States. It was the Taliban who bombed them, so then why don't you ask them to pay for the consequences? Why do I have to pay with my rights for those consequences? I didn't do anything. I'm a humanist. Why should I pay for their mistakes?
Ian Bremmer:
What gives you hope going forward?
Pashtana Durrani:
The fact that I'm willing to put up a fight, the fact that other girls want to learn, the fact that all women are coming out right now, the fact that the Taliban one way or the other will have to listen to us. And the fact that the world is standing in solidarity with us. No matter what, whatever the leaders do, the civilians do feel for Afghanistan. And just by all these messages that I get from all these people throughout the world, it has been an amazing thing. You do understand that you are not alone. But at the same time, Afghanistan is right now a hot topic and you have to make sure that within this time they accept it and then they make sure that we won't go back on this right of educational rights or women working rights.
And those are important things. And for me right now, that is the hope. That's what I'm standing by so that they can accept it. That's my hope every day. When I wake up, making sure that they push for a statement so that they make everyone in 33 provinces, other than Kabul, go to schools, go to universities, continue with their life. Just because a few men in Kabul in our presidential palace change doesn't justify the fact that we have to change our way of life for them.
Ian Bremmer:
Pashtana Durrani, I'm very sorry for what's happening in your country right now, and I really appreciate you spending a little bit of time with us.
Pashtana Durrani:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Ian Bremmer:
And now to Ajmal Ahmady, the former head of Afghanistan's Central Bank, who fled the country last month, who argues the Taliban lacks the revenue and incoming investment to operate anything close to a functional government. Former Central Bank governor of Afghanistan Ajmal Ahmady, welcome and thanks for joining us today.
Ajmal Ahmady:
Thank you very much for having me on the program. It's a pleasure to be here.
Ian Bremmer:
There's obviously a much bigger story than just the Central Bank, and I want to talk about the Afghan economy going forward, but tell me a little bit about how you got out. What was your ability to get to the airport and to get on a flight?
Ajmal Ahmady:
Sure. It was, I think, the previous Thursday when a number of provincial capitals fell on the same day: Kandahar, Herat, Ghazni, Badghis, and perhaps one or two others. But then I went to work as normal on Sunday morning. I attended some meetings and the reports kept getting worse and worse. By this time Jalalabad had fell. There were reports that Pul-e-Charkhi prison to the east had fallen as well. And so at that point I decided to make my way to the airport. And when I got there, I was surprised to find that a significant portion of the government had left or was in the process of leaving. And then of course the news came that the president himself had already left, at which point, instinctively, I knew that there would be some chaos. So we went on a plane, everyone attempted to board this now infamous Kam Air plane that's still on the tarmac there.
Ian Bremmer:
The one that showed the people standing literally on top of the plane at the time?
Ajmal Ahmady:
Yes. And we boarded that and everyone tried to board that plane. It was a passenger plane for perhaps 300 people. Perhaps a couple of hundred or a thousand boarded that plane. I realized it wasn't going to take off. They had mentioned that the plane had no pilot, it had no fuel. So we went down to the tarmac and I think it was the beginning of the scene which now you see on TV where there's hundreds of people. Every person is trying to find some sort of aircraft.
There were various helicopters taking off in an ad hoc manner, a small military plane taking off. And there was one military plane not from the US that everyone was rushing towards. I wasn't hopeful, but I think we went towards it and it was a C-17 where the rear of the plane was going up. And my friends, my colleagues had pushed me on the plane. I was not supposed to be on that plane. It wasn't a military transport where I had a ticket to get on. It was essentially one that I forced my way on and was fortunate to get on at that point.
Ian Bremmer:
And this is part of why, in those initial photos, including that one incredibly overstuffed transport, it's mostly men, right? It's not women, it's not kids. Because I mean, you're just physical ability to get through the scrum of what is an incredibly chaotic period, that's basically the situation that the Central Bank governor finds himself in, in Kabul.
Ajmal Ahmady:
Yeah. So if the Central Bank governor is in that position, you can imagine the position of everyone else. At the end of the day, I boarded the plane. I had one or two bags, but I left them, and even one of my shoes came off and I was walking on the plane with one shoe. And that's how I left the country, which was not the way you want to leave.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, more broadly, tell me a little bit about how you respond to, how you feel about the decisions made by the Americans at the end: the evacuation, the desire of the US to pull out, the movement of the dates, what's happening on the ground now. Give me the perspective of someone who's been working with the Americans within your government and has now find yourself in exile. Talk a little bit about the decisions being made.
Ajmal Ahmady:
I would separate the decisions in two aspects. One was the strategic decision to withdraw, and the second is how that decision was implemented. I think the strategic decision to withdraw, of course, people have different views on that. I've seen yourself post about the strategic decision. I would disagree with it, but of course it's the US's decision to make their own strategic calculus and decide on that.
I think it created the conditions for the collapse, but again, that's sort of a medium term picture. The short term or the implementation, what I would say is I have worked and some people from the US government are supporting me. So the individual efforts by people within the US government to get people out is positive and it's quite remarkable. They're putting a lot of personal efforts to try to get people out. But in terms of the implementation framework, I think it could potentially have been better managed and thought through.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah. So what do we think happens to all of those Afghans who have worked with the US and the coalition for all of these years going forward? And do you think as we think about this August 31 date, I mean, do you have any sense of what that is likely to mean, assuming it occurs, for the majority of Afghan refugees? Excuse me. Do you have any idea of what that is likely to mean for the majority of Afghans that have worked with the Americans and the coalition now facing life under the Taliban?
Ajmal Ahmady:
I think it's going to be challenging. It's going to be very challenging for those individuals. Some were able to be evacuated. It's positive that they can begin their new lives. It's positive that the Taliban have provided an amnesty for all former government officials, although we don't know to what extent that will be implemented. There have been various reports that they've continued on identifying and taking people from their homes, so we can't validate those reports. For those that remain, I think it's going to be a quick adjustment. And the thing that's surprising is, again, I'm still trying to grapple with the speed of the changes happening, and I think most people in Kabul are. Just two weeks ago they were living their lives in a normal basis and now they find themselves under a completely new government within the span of a few days. So it's unsettling to say the least.
Ian Bremmer:
Let me get to the area that you know the most about, which is the state of and the future of the Afghan economy. Talk a little bit about both the timeline and the challenges economically that you expect this new government to face.
Ajmal Ahmady:
The economic challenges are going to be very, very large. I think, one, the stock of international reserves has already been frozen, so that's $9 billion which has been taken away from being utilized. Secondly, it's not only the stock but the flow of international aid that's going to be reduced. Thus far, I believe there have been reports that Germany has frozen $300 million in aid. The EU has frozen $1 billion in aid. I believe the World Bank has also frozen their portfolio, and there was about $3 billion provided on an annual basis for salary support and equipment support for the ANSF or the military. Of course, that's not going to be on the table.
Ian Bremmer:
How long do you think before there is, let's just say, a full-blown financial crisis?
Ajmal Ahmady:
I think there's a very short timeframe. We already are in a situation where the banks have been closed. I believe they should open soon. And once they open, individuals will not be able to take out all of their savings, and so there will have to be some sort of withdrawal limit placed on those persons, or those withdrawals. Inflation already is going to be rising. There are some reports that wheat prices have already doubled in the capital, and that's the basic commodity, foodstuff. The currency's going to depreciate. They're going to have to cut expenses significantly. They're going to have to cut services. And all of this is going to impact the people of Afghanistan.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, on the drug trade, the last time the Taliban ran the country they were banning poppy production. That has been the lion's share of the money that's been accessible to them over the past years. Does that make you think that actually opium production under this new Taliban government is going to continue going forward?
Ajmal Ahmady:
It's a good question. You're right, under their previous regime, they completely banned it, but they have been opportunistic afterwards to be able to tax opium production to form part of their own revenue base. So going forward, they've talked about banning it again, but it's difficult to say. I think they might be opportunistic. If there's other resources that are taken away from them, they may continue it to provide some revenue base for them.
Ian Bremmer:
You've now had a chance to see the beginnings of what this government is going to look like and their operations. Any surprises from you, any reason at all to believe that this is a new and improved Taliban from what we saw before?
Ajmal Ahmady:
I think it's tough to say at the moment. They are probably trying to figure it out themselves. We haven't seen the formation of or announcement of the form or structure. We've seen some people being announced in some positions, but those could be temporary placeholders until something takes hold. So, I think they're trying to figure it out themselves, but I would say they made many claims or many promises during the Doha process which were not upheld. They're now making some promises as well. I think until you actually see, or the international community doesn't see those actions being taken, I think there's no reason to believe them.
Ian Bremmer:
I'm wondering how you feel about American and European and other sanctions against this new Taliban government. You always wonder to what extent punishment being needed against a government you disagree with ends up causing more suffering on the ground than you had intended.
Ajmal Ahmady:
The Afghan people are undeniably going to be hurt over the coming months and years. Inflation's going to go up, incomes are going to go down, bank accounts are going to be frozen. And I wrote this in a op-ed where I think humanitarian assistance needs to begin even immediately. The question of whether that should be provided through government channels or through UN agencies I think I'll leave in the hands of the policymakers. But at the end of the day, there has to be some assistance for them beginning almost immediately. Based on my understanding, I think it's going to be difficult for Western governments to recognize the Taliban and to be able to unfreeze these large foreign reserves or to begin donor programs until a few steps are taken.
I mean, first of all, you have to have formed the government, which hasn't been formed. There has to be a review of that government, whether it is inclusive, whether they will uphold women's rights, women's education, other standards of international governance. And then within that framework, it's still challenging to be able to convince stakeholders in each of these countries that the Taliban is reformed and that they should be provided aid. So I think whether it happens or not, it's going to be a long timeframe, and I think it's going to be challenging and in the meantime, humanitarian assistance should be provided.
Ian Bremmer:
Ajmal Ahmady, I'm very glad you're safe, and I hope we'll be able to say that about as many of your fellow countrymen and women as humanly possible in the coming weeks and months. Thanks so much for joining us on GZERO World.
Ajmal Ahmady:
Thank you very much for having me on the program. It's a pleasure to be here.
Ian Bremmer:
And now to the perspective of one US veteran who served in Afghanistan and watched as the Taliban took over.
Matt Zeller:
My name is Matt Zeller. I am the co-founder of No One Left Behind. I'm an Afghan war veteran. I served also in the Central Intelligence Agency where I sat on the Afghan desk. The tragic and cowardly suicide attack of 26 August proves the futility of trusting security of anybody, Americans, Afghans, to the Taliban. We never should have let them be responsible for the security at the airport. We never should have let them dictate the terms of this evacuation. And we certainly should have never let them dictate the date upon which it would end. Because let's be clear, by allowing them to have control of those key factors, we are ending this evacuation before we are actually taking everyone who needs to be saved. By the estimation of the organization the Association of Wartime Allies, the US is on pace to leave behind some 175,000 people. Our coalition has been pleading with the administration since February to begin the evacuation of these people.
We argued that it should have occurred months ago when we still had US troops in place in the country, when the government of Afghanistan still stood firmly and we held every single airport in the country. If we had conducted this back then when we first requested it, it would've been orderly. You would not have seen the chaos that has unfolded. And I have to be honest, I don't think we would've seen that type of suicide attack. The people who perpetrated that attack were ISIS Khorasan. These individuals had been mostly rounded up in Afghanistan by the previous government and were actually being held in prison. When the Taliban took Bagram and Kabul within the last two weeks, the first thing they did was release all of those prisoners. So one has to wonder, given that the Taliban were the ones who freed ISIS prisoners within the last week, I question just how much the Taliban senior leadership actually knew about this attack before it happened, and whether or not if they did know about it and they didn't do anything to stop it, how complicit then are they in the deaths of American Marines?
The only reason I'm alive talking to you today is because my Afghan interpreter, Janis, saved my life in a battle. He killed two Taliban fighters who were about to kill me. He'd be the first person to tell you that he wouldn't have been standing next to me that day if he thought that Americans were people who didn't honor and keep their promises. That's my fear in all this. We have now betrayed hundreds of thousands of Afghans publicly to a global audience. Unlike Vietnam, everyone has been watching this unfold live on TV in real time, and the videos that are being captured are going to exist forever on the internet. They're going to circulate forever. They're going to follow Americans wherever we go abroad forever. And this is the thing that most concerns me is I don't know how we are ever going to be able to look people in the eye in the future and say, "You can work with us. We'll take care of you," and have anyone believe us, when the evidence is clear, we seem to abandon people in their time of need.
At least our government does, not the American people. So for the people who are being left behind in Afghanistan, try to put yourself in their shoes. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and all sports were banned. They were illegal. All music, all art, the things that make our culture vibrant and exciting and wonderful, banned, illegal. That's what Afghans are waking up to. Afghan women have no more place in public life. They can't leave the home without the escort of a male relative. They've been fired from all of their jobs because women can't work under the Taliban. This is the reality that all of those Afghans that we served with, who believed in our joint mission, who worked together shoulder to shoulder for the last 20 years trying to build a better Afghanistan, that dream is dead. The nightmare is now their new reality, and we have abandoned them to that.
The betrayal is absolute and fundamental, and it's going to be something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. And not to say that I speak for the greater veteran community on this, but I have to tell you, every veteran I know feels the same way. We're now going to carry a moral injury that will never abate, a scar that will never disappear. We'll do everything we possibly can to get them out, which is why I keep saying that while the American government might be ending its evacuation and betraying these people, the American people, the veterans, the diplomats, the aid workers who worked with these Afghans and befriended them over the course of the last 20 years, for us, this is just the beginning of a very long process and a very long mission.
So what you've seen on the television right now has been what we call phase one. It's actually been the easiest part of this operation. It's the part in which the global community was united, in which we had charter flights and military flights flying in Afghanistan, desperately trying to pick up anybody who we could load onto those planes. That effort is coming to an end, it's over. The far more difficult effort, the one that's actually going to rescue the majority of these people, what we're calling the Underground Railroad, phase two, that begins now. It's going to take years. We're going to have to try to open up additional air bridges, convince the Taliban government to allow us to send in additional flights, be them charter or military flights, into not just Kabul but other cities' airports. And that's something that it's going to take diplomacy to achieve and likely years.
We're also going to try to convince them to allow us to open up what we call ground humanitarian corridors. So these would be convoys that would be protected either by the United Nations or perhaps the Turkish or Qatari military since the Taliban seems more comfortable dealing with them, where we would load up people into buses in a preset location, say the soccer stadium in Kabul. Everyone go to the soccer stadium, get on a bus, have the Turkish military escort all those buses to Pakistan. They get off in Pakistan and they register as refugees seeking asylum. This is going to be an effort that will also likely require clandestine operations. I already know of at least several privately-funded operations that are currently ongoing that are utilizing helicopters and planes to fly secretly into parts of Afghanistan and pick up people at prearranged landing sites. We're going to need every bit of help that people can muster because the vast majority of the people who have been saved so far, the government's tracking around 105,000 people have been evacuated.
They got to the airport. They got out because of this Digital Dunkirk movement. It's a movement of veterans, diplomats, aid workers, anybody who served in Afghanistan or had a family member who did over the last 20 years and now feels compelled to help these people. We've been working nonstop, basically since the days before Kabul fell, to try to get as many of these people on flights and out of the country as possible. I know of at this point, tens of thousands of Afghans who only are alive today because some volunteer within this ad hoc movement that just sprung up globally amongst veterans and aid workers and diplomats and their families to save these people. They're the ones that have helped get people to safe houses, get the people from safe houses onto the airport, and then get them manifested onto flights to safety. They're going to be the individuals going forward who now help people inside Afghanistan hide from the Taliban, move secretly from place to place, and ideally and eventually extract them from the hell that we've now abandoned them to.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter, Signal.
Announcer:
The GZERO World podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients needs first by providing responsive, relevant and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more. And GZERO World also has a message for you from our friends at Foreign Policy. COVID-19 changed life as we know it, but as the world reopens this moment also presents an opportunity. On Global Reboot, Foreign Policy looks at old problems in new ways. From US-China relations to gender inequality and racial discrimination, each week Ravi Agrawal speaks to policy experts and world leaders and thinks through solutions to our world's toughest challenges. Check out Global Reboot wherever you get your podcasts.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
