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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On today's program, is it necessary to get a booster shot? For some people, probably yes, but experts disagree on for whom. Is it moral to get a booster shot or even the right strategy for ending the pandemic when most of the world hasn't gotten one shot? Experts disagree. Is it moral not to get vaccinated at all when other people's lives depend on it? There's much less disagreement on that.

Later in the show, we'll talk about the morality and practicality of President Biden's new booster recommendations and answer your booster questions with Dr. Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association, that's coming up but first, there are both moral and logistical challenges of this desperate moment for Afghans who helped the West during the war. Here is Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley from the news conference yesterday.

General Mark Milley: We fully intend to successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan, all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan. They are our priority number one. In addition, we intend to evacuate those have been supporting us for years, and we're not going to leave them behind, and we will get out as many as possible.

Brian: We're not going to leave them behind says General Milley, but here is President Biden yesterday in an exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

George Stephanopoulos: Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out is out?

President Biden: Yes.

George: How about our Afghan allies? We have about 80,000 people. Is that too high?

President Biden: That's too high. The estimate we're giving to somewhere between 50,000 and 65,000 folks, total, counting their families.

George: Does the commitment hold for them as well?

President Biden: The commitment holds to get everyone out that in fact we can get out, and everyone should come out, and that's the objective. That's what we're doing now. That's the path we're on. I think we'll get there.

Brian: That's the path we're on, but less of a promise for the Afghan allies. The president also says in that Stephanopoulos interview that there's more difficulty getting out those who helped us when we were in there. He also said that. Should they go in again into Kabul, if not around the whole country, lose more lives to save more lives? Here's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin yesterday.

Secretary Lloyd Austin: Well, we're going to do everything we can to continue to try to deconflict, and create passageways for them to get to the airfield. I don't have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul.

Brian: I don't have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, from yesterday's news conference. The moral and logistical dilemma facing the US. The unknown risk of being killed by the Taliban for those tens of thousands of Afghan allies, whatever the exact number is. Given the current constraints, what is the best the US military can do and how can they do it?

With me now, Wall Street Journal national security reporter Jessica Donati, her latest article out this morning is called Afghan Women Are Already Fading From Public View as Fear of the Taliban and Uncertainty Prevail. It begins with one horrific incident from this week that we'll get to, she is also author of the book, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War. Jessica, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Jessica Donati: Thank you for having me.

Brian: General Milley said in the first clip we played that we intend to evacuate those who have been supporting us for years, and we will not leave them behind. President Biden said to George Stephanopoulos that we're having more difficulty with Afghans who helped us when we were in there. Is that a mixed message or do those two answers hang together in some way?

Jessica: Oh, absolutely, it's a mixed message. Afghans have been promised for years since the SIV program was created that they would be helped getting to the United States.

Brian: That's a special visa program, the SIV program, right?

Jessica: Right, exactly. The visa program which was designed to help interpreters and other Afghans to work closely with the United States that were at risk of reprisal for the Taliban. This program, they were supposed to get visas processed within about nine months. Instead, the average visa's taking three or four years. Not only that, but the requirements for these visas are so complex, there's 14 steps and a lot of paperwork, that for many Afghans, completing the process on their own is really difficult. It's difficult navigating all the legal procedures. It's difficult collecting the documentation, particularly as I also reported last month, for Afghans that worked for the CIA.

A lot of them have never received the documentation that they need to apply for visas. I think that the promises that they're hearing now are not going to be very reassuring, particularly as they haven't guaranteed that they will get these Afghans out. They've only really guaranteed that they will get American citizens out.

Brian: Based on the answer you just gave, I'm even more confused about what the mission is right now with respect to those Afghans. Is it to get out only those Afghans who fully completed their visa applications and had them approved, because it sounds like there would be tens of thousands of others who've got applications in process?

Jessica: Oh, it is very confusing. I think the main mission at the moment for the White House is damage control. They're doing it in step-by-step process. First, getting their own staff out, and then getting their Afghan staff out, and then getting Afghans SIVs who've already completed pretty much the entire process.

Once they have those people out, they'll then turn to Afghans whose applications are in the process that they're further along, that may be halfway, or steps missing. They're planning to evacuate those to third countries. We've heard of places like Qatar taking them in, but this was weeks before the airport situation, and before the Taliban took over the country. For those guys, I think that whether or not they'll be able to get out is very much in question.

Brian: The third clip we played, Defense Secretary Austin saying he doesn't have the capability of going beyond the airfield into Kabul. Would it be more accurate to say Jessica, that he could have the capability if they chose to, but the urban house-to-house combat to find and rescue all the Afghans who helped the US could be worse than not doing that?

Jessica: Absolutely. I lived in Kabul for four years, and during those four years, US embassy staff rarely ever left the compound. If they traveled to the airport, they would travel there by helicopter. Generally, it was just to enter or exit the country because in the later years, the situation in Kabul was very risky. They were very averse to any sorts of casualties, and so you didn't see Americans out and about.

The the fact is that Kabul Airport is a civilian airport. It's in the middle of the city. It's definitely vulnerable. What they could have done was kept their foothold in Bagram, for example, which is about an hour away, which is a huge sprawling base that once had up to 60,000 people living there, huge air strip. They could have had complete control over flights there. They could have got people in and out. People could have got there by road. It would have been much easier to carry out the massive evacuation operation. From Kabul Airport very, very difficult.

Brian: In your book that came out last year, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War. Did those last special forces have a common opinion about whether the US should fully withdraw or did they anticipate in general, the kind of horrific scenario that we're seeing today?

Jessica: Absolutely. That's what's so frustrating to all of the soldiers that deployed, that all of this was avoidable. Since 2015, when the US officially pulled out of Afghanistan and moved over to a training mission, they've been using special operations soldiers in combat, on the front lines, to sometimes recapture cities from the Taliban, or prevent them from falling to the Taliban. It was very obvious to the thousands of guys who served on these missions, men and women, that the Afghan government was not prepared to take over.

There's really no excuse for the military to say, "Well, we're surprised that Afghan forces weren't ready." It was clear in 2015 that they couldn't defend cities when they lost Kunduz without a shot fired. We saw that happen another three times, culminating in what we saw over the past week. Definitely not a surprise, and for these soldiers, who've lost friends, who some of them have suffered life-altering injuries, it's incredibly frustrating to see what is happening now.

Brian: Well, I caught just a little of you on Morning Joe today, and it seemed like the conversation was about whether a relatively small number of US special forces, like 2,500 or maybe 5,000, deployed long-term could have prevented a Taliban takeover without much risk to themselves. Is that your view?

Jessica: I think it's a very difficult question. I think a lot special operators of the community would have mixed views. Some of them are very glad to be out of Afghanistan now. Some of them think that the mission should have continued forever. I think that the question is, what was this mission going to achieve?

The Afghan government clearly was never going to take over, never be able to take charge. It was too much corruption, leadership was poor, but what they could have perhaps done was being there long enough to get a better settlement, or some sort of settlement, because by pulling out like this with absolutely no contingency plan, nothing to help them with logistics, air force, completely undermining morale means that the Taliban now have full say over what happens to the country. That is really terrifying to the women who were there, who grew up under the US, wo have ambition to wants to study, who want to work.

Certainly keeping a small force there a little bit longer could possibly have extracted the settlement, but again nobody really can say how long the Taliban would have been prepared to fight to get everything.

Brian: If going militarily into Kabul or elsewhere is not an option for rescuing these tens of thousands of Afghans who help the US-led coalition during the war, what are the US forces, or US diplomats, or whoever else doing to try to get as many of those Afghans out as they can?

Jessica: Well, this is the amazing thing. Now, their only course of action is to negotiate with the Taliban on access to the airport, because while the US controlled the airport--

Brian: Oops.

Jessica: Hello? Sorry, I think I lost you for a moment. I'm back.

Brian: Yes, lost you for just a second. Good.

Jessica: Sorry about that. While the US controls the airport, the Taliban control everything else, so getting access to the airport entirely depends on the Taliban agreeing to it. That is really the only recourse that they have, and at the moment it's proving very difficult. That's why we're hearing all of these stories about people with tickets being turned away, dual citizens being turned away, shots fired. It's really a very risky situation at the moment.

Brian: I guess that brings us to your article in the Wall Street Journal today called Afghan Women Are Already Fading From Public View as Fear of the Taliban and Uncertainty Prevail, because it begins with a woman physician who you called, Dr. Zuhal, being whipped for filming the chaos at the airport. Can you describe that incident in more detail?

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. I saw the beginning of the video that she shot, and it was really terrifying. She was rolling past the airport in the taxi, and she was filming the crowd of people and narrating it, and a fighter, heavily armed, spotted her and marched towards the vehicle, and she desperately tried to roll up her window, but couldn't make it in time. He yanks her out through the door, and then the video cuts out. She's a doctor. Many women depend on her. She's returned to work, but she's really, really afraid of what the future will hold, not just for her, but for her patients and for her daughter who's just six years old.

Brian: Taliban security forces were roaming around with whips?

Jessica: Yes. Apparently, this is what they did back in the 1990s, and that's what they'd been doing at the airport. We've heard many reports of people trying to get inside the airport, or them using whips to control crowds. It's just one of the tools that they use. That is also another reason why people don't feel encouraged when they hear their words saying, "We've changed. We will respect human rights, women's rights," because a lot of the behavior that they're seeing is similar to what happened in the 1990s. That's why people are so afraid.

Brian: Do you have reason to believe that if the doctor filming at the airport had been a man that he wouldn't have been whipped, or is that too hypothetical a question to even ask?

Jessica: I think it's a great question. When you talk to Afghans, I think a lot of Afghans will tell you that she was targeted particularly because she was a woman. The Taliban have a history, and a continued, let's say, history of cracking down on women. They don't want them to appear in public. They don't want them to take public actions like filming them. I think she was even more of a target for being a woman. Although, from what I've heard from the airport, they'd be pretty indiscriminate about who they hit with the whip, so I've heard of a woman who was pregnant being hit, and having to go to hospital. I've heard of lots of really horrifying stories that do not discriminate between the gender.

Brian: Listeners, any Afghans or Afghan Americans happen to be listening today who want to call, 646-435-7280. Any Afghanistan War veterans, or anyone else with a question or a comment on the rescue mission or does it even deserve the dignity of that label now underway? Especially for the tens of thousands of Afghans who might be facing death or other reprisals for having helped the US-led coalition?

By the way, listeners, if it seems like we're doing, announced the same segment three days in a row, yes, we are. This is a moral emergency. This is not a time to step back and look hypothetically at what might've happened if the US had done this or had done that differently leading up to this crisis. This is happening right now. Decisions are being made right now that are going to affect us. We've been hearing potentially the fates of tens of thousands of people, and that Afghans who helped the United States are being treated differently on this list of priorities than the Americans who are being evacuated from Afghanistan, so yes, we're talking about it again, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

With your comments or your questions for Wall Street Journal correspondent, Jessica Donati. Her latest article is called Afghan Women Are Already Fading From Public View as Fear of the Taliban and Uncertainty Prevail. She is author of the book Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War. 646-435-7280, or you can tweet your comment or question @BrianLehrer and we will watch those tweets go by and read good ones on the air. Jessica, the premise of your article is that even without the Taliban setting out new rules officially, women are retreating from their lives outside the home out of what the Taliban might physically do to them. Am I reading it right?

Jessica: Right. That's what to me is most frightening and depressing, because women now are too scared to test the waters. Especially younger women who have no experience of the Taliban, who don't even own burqas, which is the all-covering dress that women were expected to wear during their rule, so they're staying home. There have been different reports of women being turned away from the workplace, to women being beaten, and this is also spreading fear.

What to me was really the most depressing thing was I put in calls to Afghan women who were public figures, well-known activists who have always been open to speaking, readily available, they want to speak out, and these women now are quiet. They say they can't speak. They're too afraid to speak. It's not the right time. I think that is what is most frightening when these voices disappear.

Brian: You compare the restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia and Iran to those the Taliban imposed the last time they were in charge in Afghanistan, 1996 to 2001. You're right. The Taliban's rules were much more restrictive than Iran or Saudi Arabia. What were some of those differences, for people not familiar with the rules in any of those countries?

Jessica: They vary between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but in the case of the Taliban, they were most extreme, because women were denied education, even very basic education, which is extreme. They weren't allowed out of the house without a burqa, which covers your eyes as well. You look at the world through a blue grill, which I've worn many times in my reporting, and I tell you, it's really hard to wear. It's very isolating. In the summer, it's very hot. These are all things that the Taliban imposed on women.

Not only that, but a woman couldn't go out if she was in labor and had to deliver a baby. She couldn't go out unless she had a man accompanying her, if she was injured. There were many restrictions that led to high mortality rates among women, depression, and all sorts of other things. Whereas, if you compare it to Iran or Saudi Arabia, obviously they have different rules, but women do get access to education and healthcare.

Brian: Bryan in Bridgeport, Connecticut, you're on WNYC with Jessica Donati from the Wall Street Journal. Hi, Brian.

Bryan: Hi, there Brian, and hi, Jessica. I've been thinking about it a little bit. It just occurred to me this morning that we shouldn't just depend on the good graces of the Taliban by any means, and just hope for the best that those who can escape their grasp do get into the airport and evacuate. I think we probably have a master list of everybody who's ever been associated with our occupation there. Then we should just tell the Taliban, "We're not going to vacate the airport until we interview all of these people."

They're at risk, too. If they mass their forces at the airport, they're going to be subjected to our air power, and I sure don't want bloodshed. It may be a very impractical suggestion, but it's at least a possibility, and that's basically it. I just think we have to do our very best to try to get these people out.

Brian: Bryan, thank you very much. Jessica, what about that scenario?

Jessica: I think that one of the problems is that while you would think that the US would have a master list somewhere, they actually do not. All the different departments and agencies, particularly the further you go back into the war, record-keeping was not that good. One of the problems that SIV, these visa applicants faced, is that the government can't verify the information about them. They may not have their ID numbers, and there may be similar names. They don't have any sort of digital identification, like fingerprints, or eye scans. Part of the problem is that they actually don't know who all these people are.

Brian: What about the other part of this scenario that the caller suggests? There's this August 31st deadline. Maybe you can explain, because even I don't understand whether that's a Biden-imposed deadline or whether that's a Taliban-imposed deadline for the US to finish the evacuation process from the Kabul Airport. What if Biden were to say, "If we are not done, and you're not giving us access to all the Afghans we want to interview and consider for this, then we're still going to take some military action just for that limited end."

Jessica: I think it would be a very risky situation, because as I mentioned earlier, Kabul Airport is heavily populated area. Any kind of airstrikes that they would carry out against Taliban, high risk of civilian casualties there. I think it's risky. As to the deadline, August 31st, you're right, there's been so many different deadlines to end the war, starting from back in 2011 or so when the Obama administration said they were leaving Afghanistan by 2014, and then that became 2016.

We've had a lot of deadlines. The latest deadline is imposed by the Biden administration. He announced, as you'll remember, earlier this year that he wanted all troops out by September 11th, and then commentators noted that September 11th was a really bad date to choose to commemorate the US exit. It would give extremists more reason to celebrate that date, so it became August 31st.

This is the current working date that the military has for staying. I think that they don't actually know what the Taliban will do if they stay beyond that date, but, as I mentioned earlier, they're in a very weak position, because the airport is in a heavily populated civilian area. They're vulnerable to rocket attacks. There have been many rocket attacks on that airport in the past.

They really have limited options. If the Taliban decide that they're going to make their life difficult, they may be forced to leave because the Taliban have a very high tolerance for casualties on their own side, and America really does not want to lose any more soldiers.

Brian: Larry in Sunset Park, you're on WNYC with Jessica Donati. Hi, Larry.

Larry: Hi. Good morning, Jessica. Good morning, Brian. When I think about their treatment of women, go out and ask the question. These men who are doing all these terrible things. They may not have wives, they may not have girlfriends, they may not have daughters, but obviously have mothers and grandmothers. If you ask that question, are they beating, are they treating their own, their mothers, and grandmothers, and those who have wives, and daughters, and this is how they're treating them that way?

Secondly, a civil war is eminent when you consider that 65% of the population, men included, are under age 25. They know nothing else than what has happened in the past 20 years. I don't think they can accept this Taliban nonsense. If the Taliban should go back to their old ways, the coalition should get back in there and obliterate them. It's nothing hard to do. We know that. America and the coalition have the superior own firepower. They don't have to put men on ground, boots on the ground. We know that. It can be done. That's what's my comment. Thank you.

Brian: Thank you, Larry. Please call us again. Well, he's got three very substantive comments in there that I will like to get your reaction to, at least briefly. On the last one, that's the one I'm most skeptical of. If it was so easy to do, we would have done it over 20 years, and we wouldn't be in this position of defeat right now, right?

Jessica: Exactly. I think that the Taliban certainly are banking on the fact that the US has got zero appetite to redeploy and start the war in Afghanistan again. On the other hand, what we saw in Iraq, when we had a similar collapse and a much scarier, on the face of it so far, organization, the Islamic State takeover, the US did go back in, so I wouldn't totally discount that.

The soldiers that I talked to, some of them think they could well be sent back to Afghanistan if things go terribly there. It's skeptical, but I wouldn't rule it out. On the youth, a lot of the Taliban, if you look at pictures of them in the media, these are young guys. The fact is that Afghan culture is very conservative, and the fact that it has been a war economy for so long, that many people haven't had access to education and other opportunities other than war. The Taliban clearly have a certain measure of popularity because of how easily they took over the country and how many people they have out there.

I wouldn't discount the fact that because people are young and they won't accept them. On the other hand, the Taliban clearly recognize some need to appeal to a more moderate and modern population because they have their own social media. They're saying all the right things supposedly about women, about freedom of expression. They clearly recognize that the world has changed, and they don't want to have the same pariah status that they had back in the 1990s.

Brian: To the caller's final point about why men would even do this to their own women, and their own daughters and, yes, they're doing it. You report that in some areas that the Taliban have captured. Just recently, they've already gone so far as to ban women from leaving their homes without a male relative, as well as requiring them to wear the full body burqas. Can you explain to Westerners who find it incomprehensible, not that there isn't a lot of sexism and misogyny in the West, but not at that level, perhaps we can say. Can you explain why any Taliban who consider themselves leaders believe that's the right thing to do, even to their own women, wives, and daughters?

Jessica: I think that it's about protecting honor. I wouldn't say that I am necessarily the best person to advocate or explain sort of a very complex culture, but for men, it is about protecting women's honor. It's about protection really, and pride. I would add that there is quite a range in the Taliban. As in our story, it's noted, there are Taliban leaders who have sent their daughters overseas to university, so wide range within the Taliban of what is acceptable, and what women should have, because within the limits of Sharia law, women, theoretically, could be afforded all the rights that they have.

I think how things turn out will be more clear once we know what the Taliban government is actually going to look like, and what kind of people will be making the decisions, whether it is the more conservative or the more liberal factions in the Taliban.

Brian: Yes, and they're being cagey right now about that, aren't they? It seems to me. I heard a Taliban spokesman who does media interviews say they will respect women's rights as guaranteed within Islam, but then he said there were different interpretations of what the religion requires. To my ear, he was leaving the door open to that very strict and repressive interpretation. I'm curious if you've heard things that way.

Jessica: Absolutely. I think the door is still totally open to that kind of interpretation, and that's why women in particular, as so fearful because they haven't said. Part of it is likely that they don't themselves know. I don't think even the Taliban expected to sweep to power quite so quickly. They don't have a government ready to go. There's be no announcement nowadays, since they took over the capital over who will leave the country and how the government will work. They've never said what kind of structure the government should have. They haven't specified anything really about their policies. All of this is still really open to question.

Brian: Myrna in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi, Myrna.

Myrna: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Thanks to the journalist who's there with you. I live and worked in Saudi Arabia for 22 years as a registered nurse. I'm working as a nursing administrator. The US State Department has an agreement and arrangement with US employees working there, that they don't have to follow the full fledged dress code. As long as our arms are covered, neck and ankles are covered. You have on socks, and a decent blouse, no sleeveless, but I'm concerned about the journalist who visit Saudi Arabia.

They're escorted, the emphasis, escorted to areas where they want them to see. Those of us who live there, know the real story that goes on within the country. There was a couple of a couple of-- Excuse me.

Brian: Is this to say, Myrna, that the differences between Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, if we said earlier, if our guest said earlier, that it's a little less repressive for women in Saudi Arabia, that we shouldn't take that at face value. Is that your underlying point?

Myrna: Yes. Because when the Taliban militia, whatever they're called, in the late '90s Taliban militia surfaced, one of my coworkers called me in my apartment. She told me to put on BBC quick. She said we have a lot to be thankful for. We don't have the Taliban people here. When we began to see the documentary, we were in Heaven in Saudi to how the Taliban people treat women. It's all men. You don't see any women with them.

Brian: Myrna, thank you very much. Jessica, are there any women in Taliban leadership?

Jessica: There are not any women in Taliban leadership. In fact, they didn't have any women at all during the negotiating process that they had in Doha, whereas the Afghan government had a couple of women on their teams. It's fair to say, the leadership positions in the Afghan government are all with men and not with women, but that has also often been the case in Western countries as well.

Brian: If the policy is so oppressive with respect to women as it looks to us here, would you say that a meaningful number of Afghan women or women in Taliban-led families, if that's the right way to put it, think that their honor is being protected, that they are somehow being protected, that this is the right way for society to organize itself, or do you think most Taliban women consider themselves prisoners in effect?

Jessica: It's hard for me to say because we don't have a lot of access to these women, because of the fact that they are generally confined to their homes. There certainly are women who are more conservative, and who help the men enforce these stringent rules. It's well-documented that women have suffered widely in Afghanistan for not having access to education, and not having access to healthcare, two really basic human rights that women have not got access to. I think that the last 20 years particularly, have been an awakening, which is why it is so painful now to see that it could all be lost.

Brian: Jessica Donati, Wall Street Journal correspondent. Her latest article out this morning, it is called Afghan Women Are Already Fading From Public View as Fear of the Taliban and Uncertainty Prevail. She is author of the book, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War. Jessica, thank you so much for your time today.

Jessica: Thanks for having me.

 

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