Precis

I don't know what the Pashtun word for clusterf*ck is, but this is the most ridiculously outrageous screw up that I've ever experienced or even heard of." Strategic affairs analyst

In the baking Afghan summer sun, thousands of people made a desperate dash for the airport in Kabul. Their city was convulsed with fear after the country's leadership fled, leaving the Taliban back in the Presidential Palace. It was an inglorious end to the 20 year war effort to rid the nation of the Taliban.

"No one thought that it would be an absolute victory at this rapid scale like it was, it was lightning speed." Kabul resident

"Police officers took off their uniforms, ministers fled their ministries, immigration officers went home and then for a period we had total anarchy and lawlessness." Media owner

On Monday Four Corners takes you into the fall of Kabul. In interviews and videos from those on the ground, the program captures the drama and the chaos of the last 16 days.

"I'm not scared of dying, I really am not, but one thing that was on my mind the entire time was like, 'Oh my God, I don't want to be caught alive." Afghan pop star and women's rights advocate

The airport became the scene of an unfolding nightmare with massive crowds flooding the terminal and runway, while others were locked out.

"We had rocks coming in from the crowd. The crowd were just building up. To hundreds, probably 500, 600 people. And you know, it started to get pretty dangerous. And the Marines were firing warning shots to keep the crowd away." Former Australian soldier and contractor

Videos on social media showed the world the desperate lengths people were resorting to for a chance at freedom.

"Groups of people that were there, they rushed into the planes…The pilots also ran away, they were scared, so we couldn't take that plane that day." Afghan pop star and women's rights advocate

Stories emerged of Afghans, including a rising soccer star, losing their lives after clinging to the undercarriage of a plane.

"He called me and he said 'I'm going to airport, maybe I can get on the plane and go to another country, where I can have a better future… That day Zaki died by falling off the airplane." Friend and teammate

Pictures posted online showed hundreds of people squeezed into a US rescue flight, underscoring the scale of the crisis.

"We just had to sit down, legs crossed, and as we took off. The plane takes off pretty steeply and we just ended up in everyone's lap… people were relieved, they were exhausted." Former Australian soldier & contractor

Filmed around the world and on phones from secret locations, the program captures the stories of those who have escaped, and those who have been left behind.

"Afghan women are born warriors….I am a warrior. I'm going to fight my way through it, that's all I know." Female educator

4 Corners animated logo

Program theme music

00:00

Helicopters over Kabul

ARYANA SAYEED singer and women’s rights activist:  We heard the news that they're actually going get to Kabul very soon because they're just in the border. And that's when it just hit me.

00:11

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO, TOLO News founder: Police officers took off their uniforms, ministers fled their ministries,

00:24

Saad Mohseni 100%

immigration officers went home, and then for a period we had total anarchy and lawlessness. 

00:31

Armed Taliban on Kabul streets

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  On Sunday August 15, the insurgent army that calls itself the Taliban took the Afghan capital Kabul.   After almost 20 years and more than one trillion dollars spent by the United States and its allies, the city fell with barely a shot fired.   

00:37

OBAIDULLAH BAHEER, Kabul-based academic:  It's just no one thought that it would be an absolute victory at this rapid a scale

01:01

Obaidullah Baheer 100%

like it was, it was lightning speed.

01:06

Fall of Kabul GVs

ARYANA SAYEED singer and women’s rights activist:  My family and everybody was, like panicking,

01:08

Aryana Sayeed 100%

and they were calling me and they were like, ‘Aryana, you guys need to get out of there’.  

01:12

People flee to airport

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO, TOLO News:  People realised that the city had fallen, everyone rushed to the airport. So, you had thousands of people on the tarmac

01:16

Saad 100%

and everyone was attempting to get on the plane. 

01:26

Planes taking off

ROBERT DAVIS, Logistics contractor:   And I was just visualising that I'd get up to the end of the ramp. I got to the lucky cargo deck with 200-odd other people. We just had to sit down, legs crossed.

01:29

Robert Davis 100%, phone footage

And as we took off - the plane takes off pretty steeply – and we just ended up in everyone's lap as we took off.

01:44

People attempting to get on plane, running along tarmac

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  The desperation led to heartbreaking scenes at Kabul’s airport.

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  It’s a disaster and I cannot

01:52

Aryana 100%

believe that the entire world right now, they’re just watching and they just left Afghanistan in chaos, just like that. 

02:04

"Hassan" with children at window

“HASSAN”, Former Australian Defence Force interpreter:  Me and my family are just waiting, for visa to Australia. We cannot do anything. We can’t do anything.

02:10

People against metal fence, crossing canal

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  People of Afghanistan right now are living in a cage. Yes. I feel that. I feel we are in a cage.

02:23

Shukria Barakzai 100%

When there’s no freedom. And there’s no rights. When there’s no justice. When there’s no little hope.

02:32

Taliban fire, people flee

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  I don't know what the Pashtun word for cluster fuck is, but this is the most

02:41

David Kilcullen 100%

ridiculously outrageous screw up that I've ever experienced or even heard of.

02:48

Soldiers, crowd in canal

PROF. WILLIAM MALEY, Author, ‘The Afghanistan Wars’:  Some people inevitably will now begin to say that the Western project in Afghanistan was doomed.

02:52

William Maley 100%

I don't think it was doomed, it was botched.  

03:00

Crowd at airport

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Tonight on Four Corners, the tragic saga of the fall of Kabul, told by those who escaped, and those left behind. And how America’s longest war ended in ignominious failure.

03:03

GFX title: The Fall of Kabul

Music

03:20

GV Kabul/Communication towers

03:29

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:   On the morning of Sunday August 15, Obaidullah Baheer, an Australian-educated university lecturer, was at home in his apartment overlooking Kabul.

03:36

Obaidullah's apartment. Obaidullah's sitting at table

OBIADULLAH BAHEER, Kabul-based academic:  I remember waking up that morning, it was a very normal day. I had to go for a meeting. And I walked into the meeting, 30 minutes and the meeting was wrapped up.

03:47

Obaidullah 100%. Super:
OBIADULLAH BAHEER
Kabul-based academic

I sat in my car, and as I got out I realised -- I checked my phone actually – and I realised that the Taliban had entered the city, which were rumours actually. Because they were just outside.

04:00

People fleeing city

But, just that rumour was enough for the Afghan armed forces and the police and everyone who was associated with the government to just drop arms and walk away. Which meant that people were in a frenzy.

04:12

Saad working on laptop

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Afghan-Australian Saad Mohseni, the boss of Afghanistan’s TOLO News channel, was in London speaking with his editors in Kabul.

04:27

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO, TOLO NEWS:  By about 2 or 3 o’clock it became apparent that something was happening,

04:40

Saad 100%. Super:
SAAD MOHSENI
CEO, TOLO NEWS

or something had  happened. And when we inquired, we discovered that Ashraf Ghani and his close aides had fled the country. 

04:44

Armed Taliban in trucks on streets of Kabul

NEWSREADER: Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani has gone, he’s left the country, as Taliban leaders push for what they say is a peaceful transfer of power in Kabul.

04:52

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  We were talking to friends in the street, but also to members of the senior staff of President Ashraf Ghani, talking to a network of intelligence people who were tracking what was going on.

05:05

Kilcullen on phone

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  US based Military strategist David Kilcullen, who has advised international governments, was speaking to his contacts on the ground in Kabul. 

05:18

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  And all of our military contacts on the ground, the Special Forces guys and the local commanders who are holding the line on the eastern and southern part of the city, immediately realised the game was up.

05:29

Kilcullen 100%. Super:
PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW

And about a half hour after that, Ashraf Ghani was reported leaving the city in a helicopter, flying to Uzbekistan.

05:42

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO, TOLO News:  He should have stayed on.

05:50

Saad 100%

He’s the leader of a country. He should’ve risked it. He should’ve managed the transition process. And there was a transition process in play. He fled like a coward.

05:53

Kilcullen 100%

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  Shortly after that, I was on the phone with his chief of staff who was essentially abandoned on the landing zone with the President's bag as the President flew off.

06:04

Saad 100%

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO, TOLO News:  And then of course the news that Ashraf has fled, Ashraf Ghani had fled, triggered the total collapse of the government and the state. Police officers took off their uniforms, ministers fled their ministries, immigration officers went home. And then for a period we had total anarchy and lawlessness. The Taliban, who had committed to not come into the city, were forced to actually come in and fill that vacuum.

06:14

Al Jazeera news footage

NEWSREADER: Just showing you those pictures from earlier of Taliban fighters behind the desk of the Presidential Palace.

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  I was, right up until the last minute, quite sure that Kabul would hold out. And the reason that I thought it was, was because literally two days beforehand,

06:43

Kilcullen 100%

President Biden promised up and down in an answer, in the White House, that the US would come with air support, and all kinds of other support to enable the Afghans to hold out. And in the event, the US did nothing.

07:00

Driving shots through Kabul

Music

07:14

Crowds at airport

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Thousands of people descended on Kabul’s airport looking for a way out. Among the crowd was former Australian Army Major Robert Davis,

07:25

Still Robert Davis

who had been working as a logistics contractor in Afghanistan and was now trying to get out.

07:37

Photo and phone video. Kabul airport

ROBERT DAVIS, Logistics contractor:  When I got into the terminal, there was just bedlam, there was hundreds of people trying to get to the check-in counter.

07:44

Robert Davis video footage. Super:
ROBERT DAVIS
Logistics contractor

There was bags getting thrown over the top of people to get to the check-in counter, because the thought process was ‘my bag’s there, you must give me a ticket’.

07:52

Shukria Barakzai video footage

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Afghan parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai was at the airport, waiting to fly to India, when her flight was cancelled.

08:02

Super:
SHUKRIA BARAKZAI
Former Afghan MP

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  I saw a large a large number of my colleagues – former members of parliament, current members of parliament, ministers, deputy ministers. And I was like, what’s going on? And my colleague, he told me that ‘Taliban are getting into the Kabul’. So that was kind of like a kind of panic time. I was just laughing and I say, ‘It’s impossible’. But my colleague said ‘No, it is the truth. Taliban get into the Kabul'. And it was really shocking to me.

08:1

Aryana Sayeed sitting on bed with phone

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Popstar Aryana Sayeed, a long-time campaigner for women’s rights in Afghanistan, is one of the most recognisable faces in the country, and a long time target of the Taliban. She was desperate to escape. 

08:45

Chaos at airport

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  By the time we were at the airport, Taliban, you know, suddenly came, like, took over Kabul within a span of a few hours. And we were at the airport trying to check in and we heard gunshots and everything, and then all of a sudden, the entire security at the airport

09:05

Aryana 100%. Super:
ARYANA SAYEED
Singer and women's rights activist

and the entire staff, they run away and they left the airport, just like that, as a result of which the entire, like, groups of people that were there, they rushed into the planes and the planes were, like, full of them. And the plane couldn't take off. The pilots also run away, they were scared. So we couldn't take that plane that day. 

09:28

Ashraf Ghani mural on building. Kabul traffic

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  For many there would be no escape. Pashtana Durrani, the founder of a charity educating 7000 girls across the country, was one of many women who went into hiding. 

09:50

Pashtana 100%. Super:
PASHTANA DURRANI
Executive Director, LEARN Afghanistan

PASHTANA DURRANI, Executive Director, LEARN Afghanistan:  I completely lost myself that day. I did cry a lot. All of us were torn into pieces. We were shaken. And it was just a paralysing day.

10:06

Photos. People sleeping outside at airport

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  At the airport that night, Robert Davis sat in the airside gravel with a group of Afghans who were escaping their country.

10:19

ROBERT DAVIS, Logistics contractor:  We spent the night in front of the gate, in the dirt.

10:33

Robert Davis

I was walking up and down in front of the gate or past the gate and now I could see people jumping over the fence.  Sunrise came and went, and nine o'clock came, 10 o'clock came.

10:37

Video footage on plane

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Shukria Barakzai had managed to get onto another flight bound for Turkey, but it was one of many that never left.

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  Unfortunately, the plane could not take off

10:50

Shukria 100%

because of the huge crowd. And the captain announced that the passengers with the gun should leave their gun out. And they themselves should go out. But nobody was listening to that. The crowd was every minute get more and more and more. And where unfortunately, the captain switched off the ventilation system and the light. And I was struggling all the night without any facilities like water or ventilation.

11:08

Airport. Night

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Unable to get on a flight, Aryana Sayeed left the airport. Her fiancé recorded this video on his mobile phone. You can hear gunfire in the background.

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  After leaving the airport on the 15th, we went to a relative's house. We spent

11:42

Aryana100%

the night there, hiding, and then the next day, because Taliban had started door-to-door search, we had to take a risk and leave the house again and try to attempt to get to the airport one more time. So, we started driving and we passed about five Taliban checkpoints. One of them actually stopped our car, and he put the light inside and the minute he saw me – obviously I was covering myself with a hijab and could only see my eyes. Luckily he didn’t say anything, he said, ‘Just go’.

12:04

Aryana song video. Super:
Promotional video

Music

12:40

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: Aryana was a Taliban target, having been a television star and pop singer.

12:45

News report

Mullahs had asked for her head, and a bus carrying staff out of a TV station where she had performed was bombed.

12:55

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  I’ve been at threat for a long time and I’ve been through a lot of problems with the Taliban and the Mullahs and stuff like that.

13:04

Aryana 100%. Super:
ARYANA SAYEED
Singer and women’s rights activist

So for me, if I got caught by the Taliban, God knows what they would have done to me.  I mean, I’m not scared of dying, I really am not, but one thing that was on my mind the entire was like, ‘Oh my god, I don’t want to be caught alive…I’m sorry… and I was really scared of that, because I kept on remembering this woman that they burned her alive a few years ago, if you remember, her name was Farkhunda. And I was thinking, ‘If they catch me, that’s exactly what they would do to me’. And I was scared of getting raped. Even so, these things were on my mind and I was like, ‘Please God, it’s OK for me to die, I hope they just shoot me, but don’t take me alive’. 

13:11

Aftermath of bombing. Super:
News footage

14:02

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: Politician Shukria Barakzai also had good reason to be afraid.

14:07

Shukria in parliament/Visiting bomb site

She, too, had been outspoken about the Taliban’s treatment of women and had been targeted by a suicide bomber in 2014.

14:13

Airport

As she waited on a plane stuck on the tarmac, she learned they were hunting her again.

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  I got a message and photos that a group of militant or Taliban

14:23

Shukria 100%. Super:
SHUKRIA BARAKZAI
Former Afghan MP

loot my house so, the first door was been shut. The first hours they get into the Kabul, they went to my place… and whatever I had at the house, it was been looted. I realised that, ‘OK, they’re after me’.

14:36

Photo. Footage. People at airport

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Her plane never took off.

14:57

Shukria 100%.

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  I also noticed that whatever corner I am going, there was three guy of Taliban undercover – they were like, following me. When three times I found the same group of people are following me, and they are coming very close to at least to make sure to identify me, I was been terrifying. And the last time, when my husband was talking with the US Army soldier, we are trying to describe that to that soldier when Taliban came and it was like 50 centimetre away from the US soldier, Taliban was beat us with their gun they had. They were ready to shoot, but then thanks to the crowd, the US also started shooting. And that crowd give me the chance to run away from.

15:04

Crowd at airport run from gunfire

Music

16:06

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  That day, extraordinary scenes unfolded at the airport.  Gunfire erupted as US troops and Taliban fighters tried to control the crowds.

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO, TOLO News:  So it was complete mayhem. The pilots fled, the crew fled and these people stayed on. So the sense that we have to get out as quick as we can,

16:16

Saad 100%. Super:
SAAD MOHSENI
 CEO, TOLO News

because it’s going to be – we’re going back to the 1990s of strict Taliban rule.

16:39

Crowd runs along runway

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  A sense of panic drove Afghans to desperate acts.

16:44

OBAIDULLAH BAHEER, Kabul-based academic:  When I was passing by the airport, we heard this loud noise of a plane taking off.

16:55

Plane takes off

I remember just looking up with my friend who was driving, and we saw this grey aeroplane leaving,

17:02

Obaidullah 100%. Super:
OBAIDULLAH BAHEER, Kabul-based academic

and we knew that it was military. It was later that day that I saw the video of people clinging to the tyres of that plane for dear life.

17:13

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  At least two men fell to their deaths.

17:23

Photos. Zaki Anwari

One of them was Zaki Anwari, a teenage member of the Afghan national youth soccer team. He spoke to his best friend and teammate that morning. The young man is too afraid to be identified.

17:30

Friend 100%. Face obscured

FRIEND OF ZAKI ANWARI:  The day he went to airport he called me and said "Let’s go", but I didn’t because my family didn’t consent to it. He went to airport in fear of the Taliban and to flee the country. So, he can have a bright and happy future. And yes, the day he left he asked me too, but I couldn’t go. Zaki was a good person and also a good boy. We used to go school together, and he was like a brother to me. And that’s it. I was sad, I felt really bad that I lost one of my good friends. And I was really sad.

17:50

Obaidullah 100%

OBAIDULLAH BAHEER, Kabul-based academic:  The world should have that on their conscience. International community are the culprits for those scenes. They deserted these people. They promised them a life, then offered them a way out, and then they weren’t there to deliver. At the end of the day, normal human beings died. Afghans, common Afghans, people who had dreams, who had a future, and those were shattered. And it’s on everyone. That blood is on everyone.

18:43

Night. Airport chaos

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  As the chaos at the airport continued for another night,

19:17

Phone footage. Group hiding in demountable

Robert Davis and his group huddled in a small demountable building, waiting to be ferried to the NATO base to board a US plane.

19:26

ROBERT DAVIS, Logistics contractor:  It’s just like a little outpost, and we had rocks coming in from the crowd. The crowd were just building up to hundreds, probably more than 500, 600 people.

19:39

Davis 100%. Super:
ROBERT DAVIS
Logistics contractor

And it started to get pretty dangerous. And the marines were firing warning shots to keep the crowd away from the flimsy chain wire fence that separated us.

19:51

Aryana Sayeed and fiancé in car. Night.

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  As Aryana Sayeed and her fiancé arrived at the NATO base at the airport, he told her to wait in the car.

20:02

People arriving at airport

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  Because to get inside was like a nightmare. Because there’s like a little road,

20:14

Aryana 100%. Super:
ARYANA SAYEED
Singer and women’s rights activist

maybe two, three metres wide, and it was filled up, with like, thousands of people. And you had to literally push your way through people. It was crazy.

20:19

People arriving at airport

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  An Afghan woman handed Aryana her baby and asked her to take her through.

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  They were like, ‘Sorry, madam, we can let you in, but

20:34

Aryana 100%

we cannot let her and the baby in. Unfortunately, they didn't do that and when I got in, that’s actually the first time when I burst into tears. And that’s all because of that baby. That baby is, like still, I cannot take that picture out and I don’t know if it survived or not, I have no idea. But it was quite bad, it was really, really bad. It was just heartbreaking.

20:48

Aryana on to plane

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Aryana’s fiancé filmed their final moments as they got on the plane. They were the last two people to board that night. She had just a purse and the clothes she was wearing.

ARYANA SAYEED, Singer and women’s rights activist:  On the plane, people were like, I remember, they were like, so quiet, and everybody was like, really sad, really shocked. Because each one of them, every one of them, they've, they've left, you know, the rest of their families in Afghanistan.

21:19

Aryana 100%

And nobody was like, really excited and happy about being able to come out and being on the plane at that moment.

21:55

People board military plane

Music

22:03

Photos. People on C-17

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  By the time he, too, boarded a US military plane, Robert Davis been at the airport for almost three days. The hundreds of people bundled into American C-17s became iconic images of the fall of Kabul.

22:18

ROBERT DAVIS, Logistics contractor:  And as I walked up the ramp, there were side seats on the C-17, but there’s just cargo deck. And there was families with children on the seats, which is good. And I got the lucky cargo deck with 200-odd other people and we just had to sit down, legs crossed,

22:49

Davis 100%. Super:
ROBERT DAVIS
Logistics contractor:

and as we took off, the plane takes off pretty steeply. And we just ended up in everyone’s lap, as we took off. And people were relieved, they were exhausted. You’re safe, you’re with, you know, a big plane, a lot of people and you know you are heading to Qatar and just, just safety. So, it was just relief. 

23:09

Trump press conference

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: "Thank you very much everybody…"

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  The decision to withdraw by 2021 was made by former US president Donald Trump, who negotiated a deal that bypassed the elected Afghan government and legitimised the Taliban.

23:38

Super:
29 February 2020

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: "As far as the Taliban is concerned, everybody wanted this to happen. The Taliban wanted it to happen. President Ghani was very much involved in this as you know and he’s now dealing with the Taliban. But we’re talking about 19 years we’ve been there, 19 years, and other presidents have tried to do this. The Taliban has given a pledge and a very strong pledge, and we’ll see how that all works out. We hope it’s going to work out very well."

PROF. WILLIAM MALEY, Author, “The Afghanistan Wars”:  The agreement which was signed by

23:54

William Maley 100%. Super:
PROF. WILLIAM MALEY
 Author, “The Afghanistan Wars”

the United States with the Taliban on the 29th of February 2020 in Doha was probably the worst single exercise in diplomacy since the Munich Agreement of 1938 that sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

24:23

Maley sitting at table outdoors

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Professor William Maley has been writing about Afghanistan for 40 years. PROF. WILLIAM MALEY, Author, “The Afghanistan Wars”:  It ending up giving to the Taliban everything that they really wanted. They got a place at the high table with the United States and the status that flowed from that.

24:38

Maley 100%

They secured a strict timetable for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and contractors from Afghanistan. In that sense, it really was a catastrophic error of diplomacy.

24:55

Biden press conference

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Trump’s successor Joe Biden honoured the Taliban deal.

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  So this is a bipartisan screw up. It's not a President Biden, or a President Trump mistake. It's both.

25:08

Kilcullen 100%. Super:
PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN
Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW

And it goes back to the original decision to negotiate with the Taliban, but exclude the Afghan government from those negotiations, which effectively meant that the US was now treating the Taliban as a legitimate government.

25:21

Biden press conference. Super:
16 August 2021

JOE BIDEN, US President:  "The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened?  Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country.  The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision."

25:34

Kilcullen 100%

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  I mean, it was just ridiculous. And, at that point, the Afghans were still fighting incredibly hard, losing twice as many people killed every month, than the US has lost in 20 years fighting this war. So when President Biden and others came out later and said, "Well, it's not our fault, the Afghans wouldn't fight," that was the most nauseating piece of victim blaming that I've ever seen. But whatever, if it makes you feel better, you know, pretend that it was the Afghans’ fault.

26:06

Chaos at airport

Music

26:34

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  As President Biden tried to justify his decisions, thousands of Afghans were still trying to get into Hamid Karzai Airport.

27:00

Music

27:09

Quilty to phone camera in bus

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  It's 5:20 in the morning…

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Like many western expats in Kabul, Andrew Quilty was trying to get Afghans out.

27:19

Super:
ANDREW QUILTY
Photojournalist

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  A lot of warning shots are being fired by the Afghan security forces. Traffic’s bad. In the bus, kids are crying and the driver’s fallen asleep now.

27:33

Shots from bus / Quilty to phone camera in bus

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  It is 10am on Tuesday the 23rd of August. And we’ve just thrown in the towel in our attempt to get into the airport about 150 people.  We spent about six hours trying each of the three or four gates, a couple either side of the airport. And at each one we were turned away.

28:10

Chaos at airport

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  At the airport was a group of former interpreters for the Australian Defence Force who were trying to get to the gate. One of them is a man we’ll call “Hassan” who worked for the ADF in Southern Afghanistan for three years.

“HASSAN”, Former Australian Defence Force interpreter:   I went to the airport and when I saw, when I saw the situation, was really, really, bad and the Taliban was shooting people and more crowd over there and more than a thousand people over there.

28:43

"Hassan" with back to camera. Super:
“HASSAN”
Former Australian Defence Force translator:

So I wasn’t stay for long over there ,because everyone is looking for me, to kill me. And a risk for me. So, it is really, really dangerous.

29:17

"Hassan" and children at window

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  “Hassan” is on the run with his wife and his family of four young children. The family fled from their home in Kandahar to Kabul.

JASON SCANES, Founder, Forsaken Fighters:  The Taliban have no forgiveness for what these interpreters did, facilitating

29:33

Scanes 100%. Super:
JASON SCANES, Founder, Forsaken Fighters

our combat missions in Afghanistan, against the Taliban and against Al Qaeda. They will take out their retribution on those individuals – there is no going to the Taliban and saying “The Coalition are gone, I now support the Taliban”.  There’s no ifs, no buts, they will be killed. As will their family members. And anybody that is associated with them.

29:52

"Hassan" with back to camera

“HASSAN”, Former Australian Defence Force interpreter:  I have one request from Australia government. Please, please, take me and my young family to Australia. My situation is really, really bad and I just stay in my house like a prisoner, cannot go outside to work, and my family are also risky and I cannot send the kids to school. 

30:20

Photos. Scanes in uniform

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  Former Army captain, Jason Scanes, worked in intelligence operations for the 205th Coalition Advisory Team, “Hassan” was his interpreter.

30:49

Hanes with "Hassan"

JASON SCANES, Founder, Forsaken Fighters:  I worked every single day in Afghanistan for ten months with this individual.

31:03

Scanes 100%

He was cleared to live on our base, he was cleared to walk around on our base, eat in our mess and live amongst us, unescorted. That was the level of clearance. He was with me, conducting very high-level strategic operations against the Taliban.

31:14

"Hassan" in room

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: Hassan first applied for a humanitarian visa to Australia back in 2013. After eight years and being twice rejected because of an alleged association with the Taliban, 12 days ago, he was offered a temporary visa and told to go to the airport. Like many, he was unable to get one of the last flights out.

31:35

"Hassan" looking out window

JASON SCANES, Founder, Forsaken Fighters:  He’s now in danger because of the service that he gave, not only to myself, but to the Australian government, to the Australian Defence Force, and to other Australian officers,

32:02

Scanes 100%

on the ground, over a number of years, in Afghanistan. As a result of that service, he is now hunted down, and will be living in fear of his life, and his young family as well.

32:13

Plane takes over / Airport chaos

Music

32:27

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: In two weeks, the US flew more than 122,000 people out of Kabul, and Australia evacuated 4,100. Left behind in terrible conditions were thousands of Afghans who had queued outside the airport for days.

32:35

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  I was terrified at that point, as were the people I was with. It was just the crush of the crowd, the desperation, the fear,

33:02

Quilty 100%. Super:
ANDREW QUILTY
Photojournalist

the environment itself, I mean, it was thousands of people lined up along this sewage canal through which they would have to walk to get to the other side and into the airport, if they were lucky enough to have their names called out. It was dark, there were pickpockets, there were Taliban beating people back. It was a microcosm of a breakdown in society.

33:14

Airport chaos

Music

33:45

PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW:  What's happening outside the wire there is a humanitarian catastrophe in its own right. Children dying, people getting trampled, people running out of water. The troops and the aid workers on the frontline are doing their absolute best, but

33:51

Kilcullen 100%. Super:
PROF. DAVID KILCULLEN Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW

what is happening is that lots of people who don't have the right documentation have flooded to the airport, understandably. That's stopping people that do have the right documentation from making it the last 500 yards to get in. And, again this could all have been avoided, right. I don't know what the Pashtun word for cluster fuck is, but this is the most ridiculously outrageous screw up that I've ever experienced or even heard of. And t's just an embarrassment on the level of basic competence alone that this has been allowed to happen.

34:06

Maley 100%. Super:
PROF. WILLIAM MALEY Author, “The Afghanistan Wars”

PROF. WILLIAM MALEY, Author, “The Afghanistan Wars”:  Biden and his team seem, to me, to have made two catastrophic mistakes. One is a mistake of underestimating the dangers for stability in Afghanistan that would flow from the specifics of the agreement that was inherited from President Trump. And the other was to display an almost complete indifference to the over 30 million people in Afghanistan, who had put their trust in the United States. And that, I think, is one reason why the ramifications for the United States, of the failure in Afghanistan, are far greater than the ramifications even from the fall of Saigon, in 1975. Because the United States is seen in many parts of the world now as an untrustworthy ally. As a power that essentially became bored and decided to walk away.

34:37

Night. Plane taking off

Music

35:32

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: Eleven days after the fall of Kabul, the last Australian evacuation mission flew out. Within hours, a suicide bomber attacked.

35:40

Smoke from blast over Kabul

Music

35:52

Aftermath of blast, injured and dead civilians

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  The blast killed almost 200 people, including Afghan children and 13 US troops.

35:59

Crowd outside hospital

ANDREW QUILTY, photojournalist:  It’s quarter past seven on the twenty-sixth or seventh?

36:25

Quilty outside hospital

I’m standing out the front of the emergency hospital in central Kabul. It's the only trauma facility in the capital and there’s just been two blasts of some kind at one of the gates at Kabul Airport and they’re just streaming in here – like, I can’t – patients – I’ve been here for, I don’t know, fifteen minutes and there’s been at least I don’t know, a couple of dozen. And there were a couple of dozen that came before me. And they keep coming.

36:29

Quilty 100%. Super:
ANDREW QUILTY
Photojournalist

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  And I’d never seen such a steady stream. It was like a conveyor belt of dead and wounded coming in. Just one after the other after the other. 

37:05

Women wailing by roadside

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: It was a terrible irony for the United States, which went to Afghanistan 20 years ago to rid the country of terrorism.

37:14

Biden press conference

US PRESIDENT, JOE BIDEN: "To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this; we will not forgive. We will not forget.  We will hunt you down and make you pay."

37:30

Kabul airport. Night. Troops board plane

Music

37:5

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  A minute before midnight on August 30, the last US plane flew out of Kabul to the sound of Taliban gunfire.

37:59

PROF. WILLIAM MALEY, Author, “The Afghanistan Wars”:  Conversations I've had with people in Afghanistan,

38:17

Maley 100%

tend to reflect a pervasive sense of horror at how circumstances have changed. I think the worst single thing about the kind of macroscopic environment which has now been created, is a complete death of hope. I feel an immense sense of sadness at the way in which things have played out in Afghanistan. Some people, inevitably, will now begin to say that the Western project in Afghanistan was doomed. I don't think it was doomed, it was botched. It was botched on account of the clumsy and maladroit handling of the situation in Afghanistan by successive US presidents, who are simply not fit to hold major public office in an important state.

38:20

Shukria 100%. Super:
SHUKRIA BARAKZAI
 Former Afghan MP

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  I don’t want to say I’m hopeless, but allow me to say that it’s hard to be betrayed by your friend, rather than your enemy. It's hard to believe that we've been used for a political project rather than democratic values. It's hard for us to believe that all those beautiful sentences where it was been preaching by world-wide leaders for Afghanistan was just a lip service, nothing more. 

39:07

Pashtana 100%. Super:
PASHTANA DURRANI
Executive Director, LEARN Afghanistan

PASHTANA DURRANI, Executive Director, LEARN Afghanistan:  Women are going to suffer. A) because of the displacement, B) because of losing job opportunities – the majority of Afghanistan has widows and orphans and they want to get through their day in one piece. They have small jobs and all those jobs are going to be lost. Learning opportunities are going to be lost. Afghanistan is going to become a prison for women, because there is no mobility, no socialisation.

39:42

Taliban man talking to men in car / Armed Taliban patrol streets

Music

40:07

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter: While the Taliban leadership has promised a more enlightened regime, Afghans are sceptical. 

SAAD MOHSENI, CEO TOLO News:  It's going to be a very jarring experience. So just the idea of a Taliban-type regime re-emerging, even if it's Taliban-lite, it's going to be intolerable for most Afghans. It's going to be intolerable for the young,

40:12

Saad 100%. Super:
SAAD MOHSENI
CEO TOLO News

particularly for our women, for our minorities, for the middle class Afghans. So I can understand why people are hiding. I can understand why people are fearful. People are knocking on doors, they're asking for names, they're trying to figure out who's living where. People have disappeared.

40:38

Shukria 100%

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, Former Afghan MP:  When you don’t have the right to talk, when you’re hiding your identity, when you don’t have the right of free movement, or choice, what do you think? It’s not a cage? We are. People of Afghanistan right now are living in a cage. Yes. I feel that. I feel we are in a cage. When there’s no freedom. And there’s no rights. When there’s no justice. When there’s no little hope, what should I say? If I describe the situation at the moment, if I describe the situation and the frustration, and the chaos, it’s hard. I think cage is the right name I can give.

40:55

Photo. Shukria looking out window

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  The week after the fall of Kabul, Shukria Barakzai managed to escape and flew out to London.

41:47

Photo. "Hassan" and children

"Hassan" and his young family managed to cross the border into Pakistan, but the Home Affairs Department has now said his visa was issued ‘in error’. He remains, like others who served the Coalition forces, in limbo.

41:58

Andrew at desk with computer, looking at photos

Andrew Quilty has decided that for now, he’ll stay.

42:17

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  I think, personally, I’m in a bit of a numb stage where I’m just sort of

42:26

Andrew 100%

coming to terms with this new normal and trying to work out you know, where I fit in, how I fit in, if I can fit in. And still to an extent holding my breath about what’s to come like everyone else here.

42:33

Empty streets and airport

Music

42:54

LOUISE MILLIGAN, Reporter:  After the chaos, the crowds have now gone and Kabul’s airport lies empty.

43:03

Music

43:10

ANDREW QUILTY, Photojournalist:  Life, I don’t think, will go back to normal. I mean, a lot of Afghans won’t go back to the jobs that they had, the work that they did.

43:18

Andrew 100% /Kabul GVs

A lot of those jobs will cease to exist even, I think. Kabul has certainly become hollowed out. My community, really, has almost evaporated overnight. I’d say the future’s still uncertain and that Kabul, and Afghanistan as a whole, is still collectively holding its breath. The Taliban have said that they bear no grudges and that anyone who worked for government or security forces or foreigners in the past are free to stay, all is forgiven.

43:27

There are not many Afghans that I’ve met who believe them. And I desperately want to believe them. And I’m not sure whether I’m naïve to do so, but I desperately want to believe them. I desperately hope that their actions follow their words.

44:04

Kabul market

OBAIDULLAH BAHEER, Kabul based academic:  The West will be haunted by the decisions that they take with regards to Afghanistan.

44:20

Obaidullah 100%

If they do turn a blind eye today, the same way they did in the '90s, it will come back to haunt them. And it's a vicious cycle in repeat. 

44:29

Market

ARYANA SAYEED:  I want to spread the word, I want to spread the word, and I want the world to not forget about Afghanistan,

44:40

Aryana 100%

and not forget about Afghan people, Afghan nation. Because they're in dire need right now. So I know that they, they're living in fear right now. They're terrified. They're all scared. They don't know what to expect, and the only thing they're hoping and praying for is for the outside community, for the international community to actually do something for them and help them. That's all they're hoping for.

44:46

Credits [see below]

45:12

Outpoint

45:40