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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian Lehrer, who's got the week off. Coming up on today's show, we'll talk to a child psychologist about what might be stronger than usual back-to-school jitters for kids, as the second full pandemic-affected school year is about to start. Plus, your calls with what's left on your summer bucket list. We'll talk about the state of global COVID vaccine efforts, and why Americans should be concerned about how slowly it's going.

First, a conversation about the ongoing situation in Afghanistan. As of this week, President Biden has reaffirmed his commitment to withdraw most US troops from the country by August 31st. This comes despite a swift and unexpected takeover of the country by Taliban forces, and it comes amid more than a week of ongoing chaos on the ground, as the US scrambles to evacuate Americans, as well as Afghans, who are eligible to leave the country.

Two members of Congress who traveled to the country earlier this week said they don't believe the US will be able to evacuate remaining citizens by that deadline, and yet a spokesman for the Taliban has said if the US government delays its departure, there could be consequences should they remain in Kabul into September.

Of course, Biden's planned exit was scheduled to proceed the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks, which drew the country into this longest war ever. Yet late Wednesday, US Embassy in Kabul warned Americans trying to depart from the airport to evacuate immediately because of an unspecified terror threat. So many questions remain about what comes next for the country, its people, and the Americans still on the ground there. Missy Ryan is a reporter for The Washington Post, covering diplomacy and national security who joins us now, to help explain how we got here and what she'll be watching for in the days and months ahead. Missy, welcome back to WNYC.

Missy Ryan: Thank you.

Brigid: Listeners, do you have a question for The Washington Post's Missy Ryan as you watch this situation unfold in Afghanistan? We've just heard some breaking news about an explosion outside the airport in Kabul. We're going to try to fit some of those questions in, the number is 646-435-7280. Again, that number is 646-435-7280, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer.

Missy, before we get to what is happening now, I want to start with a little bit of context. President Biden announced back in April, that the US would withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this month. That was actually pushing back the date the Trump administration had originally negotiated with the Taliban for a troop withdrawal. Can you remind us of the background there?

Missy: Yes. President Biden came into office promising to get the United States out of Afghanistan. It was a long-held belief by the president, going back to the early days of the Obama administration that US interests were not served in a large

military conflict in Afghanistan. The then vice president preferred to focus on counterterrorism in Afghanistan. He didn't win that argument back during the Obama administration. As a candidate and now as president, his instincts clearly have been to withdraw and focus American military resources elsewhere.

He came into office with that foreign policy agenda, but also a deal that was brokered under President Trump back in February of 2020 between the United States and the Taliban that specifies that the United States would withdraw from Afghanistan by May of 2020, in exchange for Taliban commitments to break with Al-Qaeda and start engaging with the Afghan government in peace talks.

When Biden came in, he launched a big review of Afghanistan policy and it took several months. Ultimately, he announced that the United States would withdraw from Afghanistan in keeping with Trump's deal, but just a few months late, by September, he said, just because of the timing by which they have actually been able to reach a decision. In recent months, the military has taken forces and equipment out of Afghanistan, hoping that the Afghan forces could then step in and block the Taliban from taking over the country, but what happened instead, is that province after province, city after city, has fallen to the Taliban, and it culminated on the takeover of the Afghan state on August 15th, in this really stunningly swift collapse of the Afghan government and victory for the Taliban after 20 years.

It's just been this very dramatic chain of events that has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, an economic crisis. Now, we've seen this huge rush of Afghans trying to evacuate the country because they fear the Taliban, and that they're trying to do that before the president's current deadline for leaving, which is August 31st, next week.

Brigid: As you stated there, so much has happened in these most recent months. US troops leaving the Bagram Airfield in July. The takeover of key provinces and cities by the Taliban, up through August 15th. Yet, just earlier this week, President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to that August 31st deadline. I want to play a clip of that. It's about a minute long.

President Biden: We agreed that we will continue to close our close cooperation to get people out as efficiently and safely as possible. We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st. The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops, but the completion by August 31st depends upon the Taliban continuing to cooperate, and allow access to the airport for those who we're transporting out, and no disruptions to our operations.

In addition, I've asked the Pentagon and the State Department for contingency plans to adjust the timetable should that become necessary. I'm determined to ensure that we complete our mission, this mission. I'm also mindful of the increasing risks that I've been briefed on, and the need to factor those risks in. There are real and significant challenges that we also have to take into consideration

Brigid: Missy, as we talk about risks, let's start with the reports this morning, about both the threat to the Kabul airport last night, where Americans were warned to

immediately depart from three gates in that airport. Then, just moments ago, some of the reports that we're seeing that there's been an explosion outside the airport. This is breaking news. I'm wondering, have you heard any more about what is happening there now?

Missy: Yes. There's been an explosion outside the airport. There are some reports that it was near a hotel where a lot of foreigners had staged in order to get into the airport. Obviously, we know that there have been massive, massive crowds of Afghans clamoring to get in at these entry points that are controlled by foreign forces, in recent days. Just incredibly desperate to try to-- many of them with documents and tickets to get out, but these huge crowds often are not able to get past these checkpoints. This is a sort of prime target for any militant group that actually might want to sow chaos.

The Biden administration has been warning for days now that the local branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan had been planning threats against the airport. Now, we hear, as he said, just in recent moments, that there was some explosions at one of the gates, presumably a suicide bombing, or some sort of IED. Reports are still coming in about the casualties and the details of that, but it's really an indicator that things may be starting to really deteriorate even further in Afghanistan and potentially derail the efforts to evacuate people in this very, very short window of time that remains before the 31st of August.

Brigid: We are also seeing reports from CNN that they are reporting, that it appeared to be a suicide bomb, but we haven't seen reports yet on any casualties. Missy, I'm curious, I know that you are in contact with people on the ground there. I'm wondering when an alert like that went out yesterday, telling Americans they need to evacuate the airport suddenly, I think about being in JFK. What would you do in a situation like that in terms of the sense of chaos that that could create? Are you hearing from people about just what it's like to be there at this time, and to live amidst this ongoing spiraling situation?

Missy: Absolutely. In the past 24 to 48 hours, I've gotten a number of frantic messages from people who are either in direct touch with people at the airport, people who are attempting to get former colleagues and friends out of the airport, and there are many people with travel documents with what they think is the right paperwork required to get past the gate, and they're being turned away. People with small children, people who have missed flights that were scheduled to take them out of the country because they weren't able to get in. People are weighing a number of threats if they try to make the attempt to depart, and that's not just what had been the vague undefined threat of military attacks the airport. It was also the threat of being potentially singled out by the Taliban on the way in.

There are Taliban checkpoints across the city and at the airport itself, reports that the foreign forces have had to turn away many people, for security reasons or for other reasons. The Afghans who want to get out are weighing all of all of that. Many are choosing to stay home for those reasons and just take their chances. It's a really chaotic situation and it underscores the extent to which the Biden administration was  

caught off guard by the Taliban takeover and didn't plan for this swift unravelling.

Brigid: Certainly, there are other risks that the president is being briefed on as the administration monitors the situation. Even in those comments that we just played, Biden has said that he's asked the Pentagon and State Department for contingency plans to adjust the timetable, "should that become necessary," has the administration indicated what would make that necessary?

Missy: Not directly, but they have suggested that they've indicated that their highest priority is the safety of American citizens. There might be a scenario where if there was some significant number of American citizens who had not been able to reach the airport, that could delay the departure. They've also said they would like to help, to the extent possible, Afghans who are part of this Special Immigrant Visa category, who are Afghans who work with the US military, the US government. That's a special program and there were about 20,000 people and their families who were part of that. Some of whom have been able to get out, some of who haven't.

The reality is, things are, they've been moving in recent days toward departing entirely by the August 31st deadline, in part because the Taliban has said publicly that they're not willing to extend it, that they are expecting that the United States and all foreign forces will be gone at that point. The Biden administration is just basically dealing with the fact that they have very limited leverage at this point.

Brigid: When we talk about that August 31st deadline, the evacuation deadline, should we be thinking about it in terms of the evacuation of just citizens and potential Afghans who might be departing the country or are we really talking about that is when there will be no troops on the ground? Do we expect troops to remain there from what officials have said?

Missy: No, we don't expect troops to remain after August 31st. The US has said that it's already abandoned the embassy complex in Kabul, which is a short drive from the airport.

They are making plans to do some counterterrorism surveillance and potentially strike activity from afar, from the sky. At this point, the United States, as far as I know, does not plan to keep any military personnel in Afghanistan, in part, because the risk associated with that would be very high for any of those individuals. The number of people that would have to stay in order to meet the security requirements that the Pentagon would feel comfortable with would be so large that the Taliban just wouldn't agree to it.

We're talking about a full departure. Maybe at some point, the diplomatic presence would resume. The Taliban has said that it would like foreign embassies to continue their operations. We're talking about something that's far in the future, if ever.

Brigid: What's interesting is given the statements from President Biden and the US commitment to wrap up this mission, we're hearing that echoed from European nations who are also evacuating their forces. Can you talk about some of what leaders from France, Germany, even Turkey have been saying about their plans in

the coming days?

Missy: Absolutely. Biden made this decision despite public appeals from some of the United States' closest allies, including Britain, and France who wanted the United States to stay longer. They were looking at this crush of Afghans who want to get out and have legitimate reason for fearing for their safety, and the difficult logistics of pulling off an evacuation mission under these circumstances. They had urged the United States, including in a G7 meeting that Biden held a few days ago with other leaders from Europe and other nations, but Biden made the decision to stick to his timeline and so that meant for those European countries that they actually have to leave before August 31 because those countries are reliant on the United States for security, for some sort of military enabling.

For example, Germany wrapped up its operations today, France is expected to wrap up its operations today. We're going to see a dramatic curtailing of the evacuation operations in coming days and of course, the insecurity and the fact that we saw this attack at the gate could really affect, exacerbate that, and affect dramatically the number of people who are able to get out.

Brigid: We've been talking about the evacuation and as those efforts continue, US officials have really described it as the largest airlift in US history. In an update yesterday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that 1,500 Americans who may still be seeking to leave are on the ground there. Later in the day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said officials were actually in touch with about 500 of those folks so that number is really closer to 1,000.

That's still not an insignificant number of people and that's before we've even begun talking about all the Afghans who are potentially seeking to evacuate. Can you talk about the pace? You started to touch on it, how you think it will slow the pace of these evacuations, and is it reasonable to think the US will be able to get these people out?

Missy: Yes, it seemed to reach a high point, the pace of evacuations the day before yesterday, about 20,000 people were taken out in a 24-hour period. That dipped yesterday, potentially, in part related to the security concerns. There are some hundreds, at least, of Americans who remain there and want to get out. Others, from the reports we're hearing, have chosen to remain. Some of them have families or relatives that they don't want to leave and they want to stay there in Afghanistan.

As Blinken said yesterday, the United States only has sketchy numbers about the number of US citizens, just because of the way that the registration system operates. It's definitely plausible that many could get out, presuming that this most recent attack doesn't totally shut things down, because the Biden administration is prioritizing the evacuation of American citizens so clearly. I think the picture is much less optimistic for Afghans, even for the SIV holders.

Brigid: Listeners, do you have a question for the Washington Post's Missy Ryan as you watch the situation unfold in Afghanistan? Our numbers is 646-435-7280. That

number again, 646-435-7280. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. We'll have more on what's happening in Afghanistan, including your calls, just after this.

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Brigid: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, good morning again, everyone. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. I'm talking about the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan with Missy Ryan, diplomacy and national security reporter for The Washington Post. I want to bring one of our callers into this conversation, May in Mercer County. Welcome to WNYC, what's your question?

May: My question is why the 24/7 coverage of what's going on in Afghanistan? There are other things going on in this country and around the world that are as important or more important. Afghanistan has been a mess, and even if we stay there 10 more years, it would probably still be a mess because there was so much corruption. I'm just wondering, is there any COVID over there? Are any of these people being vaccinated that are being evacuated?

Brigid: May, thank you for your question. I want to pivot to Missy on this. I think part of what may is raising is this issue that we're focusing a lot on one piece of a really complicated story here in Afghanistan. We've got both the longest war in US history, something that clearly has fatigued Americans, probably part of what prompted President Biden's decision in the first place, but we've also got this ongoing global pandemic, which has fatigued Americans and people around the world. To what extent do you know about the issue with COVID in Afghanistan and how much of that is factoring into some of the decisions that are being made about the US policy there?

Missy: Afghanistan has been undergoing a significant COVID outbreak for months. The vaccine penetration is low. The US embassy in Afghanistan actually paused operations and went into a reduced activity level earlier this spring because of COVID. That's been a major concern, and Afghanistan has been facing a triple crisis in recent months. COVID, has had a big drought, insecurity, and now, because of the Taliban situation, they've been plunged into this economic crisis related to the availability of currency and food prices. Things have been very dire. COVID, to be honest, is fading into the background at this moment, just because of the urgency of these security threats.

People are being evacuated without vaccines. There are reports that some of them are going to be receiving vaccines when they land in third countries, but I think frankly, among all the other things that people have to worry about, including suicide bombers and the threat of the Taliban, COVID is something that people are willing to set aside at this point.

Brigid: Missy, you started to talk about the Special Immigrant Visa program. We know that government is prioritizing evacuation of US citizens but who are some of the people who might qualify for this SIV program? What's the population we're talking about here?

Missy: The SIV program was designed to help people who had worked closely with the United States government or the US military. Mostly interpreters, or people who had worked for the embassy, but it does have a pretty strict set of eligibility criteria, including two years of service, and the ability to have testimonials from the former employers. That has been a difficult process for many Afghans to navigate, especially because over the course of 20 years, you can imagine the number of military personnel and diplomats who cycle through the country.

Sometimes it's been difficult for them to get the right paperwork, but the US government has committed to trying to help those people. On July 30th, they began airlifting SIV applicants into the United States.

Initially, some of them were housed in a military base in Virginia. They've also introduced a further program for Afghan employees of US-based organizations, US-based non-governmental or aid groups, but those people were required to apply for refugee status from a third country, so they needed to get out of Afghanistan. That's been very difficult and then there's this whole much larger category of Afghans who are at risk, but don't qualify for any special visa consideration.

That would include women's activists, judges, religious or ethnic minorities, and they really bought into the new Afghanistan, and the democracy, and the societal ideals that the United States had promoted over two decades in Afghanistan, but now they're having a really difficult time getting out. I don't think that there's much chance that those people will be able to evacuate before August 31st, in large numbers at least.

Brigid: It's so interesting. I want to pick up on that point, both in terms of people seeking to evacuate through the SIV program, and then those others who might be seeking to evacuate, but might not have the connection to the US government that folks in applying for that program do. Here's about a minute of an exchange yesterday from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki from questions from an NBC reporter, Peter Alexander, I believe, just trying to get a sense of what is the baseline the US government is trying to set in terms of how many Afghans they are seeking to evacuate from the country. Let's play this clip and I'll get your reaction to it.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki: There are people who are not yet through the process, who may or may not count as an SIV applicant at this point in time, or may be eligible for a range of programs. Our objective, as you've seen by the numbers over the past several days, is to evacuate as many people as possible who qualify for any of these programs.

Peter Alexander: Why can't the White House or the administration say what that stated goal is even as a baseline so people get a sense of what we're shooting for in this process? What's the harm in saying that?

Press Secretary Jen Psaki: Because I don't think there's a benefit in giving a cap. That's not our objective.

Peter Alexander: It gives context to when you say 80,000, 80,000 is a lot, but as an  

out of how many?

Secretary Psaki: Fair. I think important context though, is that we've now evacuated, again, 88,000 people, well, 82,000 people on US military and coalition flights. Just a week ago, some people were saying we couldn't do 50,000, we've done 82,000. Just to put into context again, that's a flight yesterday, every 39 minutes, that is thousands and thousands of people coming through the airport every single day, 19,000 people yesterday. I think these numbers do provide context and we're going to continue to press every single day to get more people who are eligible out of the country.

Brigid: Missy, a lot going on there. Officials stressing that they've helped 80,000 people the country, but why do you think the administration is so reluctant to say how many Africans they are trying to relocate?

Missy: Well, I think they don't know exactly how many they're going to be able to relocate in the remaining days that we're talking about before August 31st. I don't think they want to commit to a goal that they're not going to be able to achieve, but look, the messaging is very difficult for the Biden administration here. You have these wrenching images of families trying to get out people waiting through a canals of sewage, or trying to get babies onto over the gate and all of these things. I think there for an administration that has a lot of officials who have worked on Afghanistan for a long time and understand the optics of that, it's hard to come out and say that they're going to wrap things up with a lot of these people being left behind.

On the other hand, Biden very clearly is doubling down on what he thinks is the right thing to do from a national security perspective, which is get out of Afghanistan. What the White House is trying to do to thread that needle is highlight, rightly so, the legitimate efforts, the remarkable efforts in terms of tens of thousands of people being airlifted, which is a pretty significant feat, but they don't want to highlight the other side of that, which is all the people who probably won't be able to get out.

Brigid: Let's go to Dennis in Brooklyn. Dennis, welcome to WNYC.

Dennis: Good morning. How are you guys doing today? It is surreal listening to you to speak and the rest of the media, as if this is just something that just happened, that we're having a discussion about it, with no outrage, no shock, and disgust at the competency of what's going on at our highest levels. I just watched a documentary about Ted Bundy. Some psychologists said that he sat with him for many, many, many hours, and said he was a great guy. He said he had a great time with him. Excellent conversationalist. It was great. Obviously, he was saying how weird it was talking to a mass murderer.

The outrage that WNYC had when Trump said that a third world country is an asshole, I think that's what he said. You all thought the world's coming to an end. Here, you have people who literally don't care about human life, zero. They don't care about women, girls, gays, and dare I say, regular people, regular men, and you talk about it as if it's just a piece of news. There's no outrage. How aren't you calling for people to resign? What is going on in our world? It's unbelievable listening to you two. It's unbelievable.

Brigid: Dennis, thank you for your call. I think he raises a point that some people who are watching the situation, whether they are supporters of President Biden or not, may be feeling, particularly people who have been working on issues related to Afghanistan, working in the military, in particular. Missy, you're a journalist, I don't know how much you want to talk about your outrage right now, but I think, do you want to respond to the caller in the sense that, I think there's definitely some surprise at how quickly the events turned, and that may speak to why the coverage of this event is different than what we've seen in previous days, weeks, months, and even years.

Missy: Well, there's no question that nobody expected the country to fall this quickly. That caught, not just journalists and the Afghan government by surprise, but also the entire intelligence community, the military that was there on the ground in Afghanistan. I think that there probably would have been some degree of wall-to-wall coverage about this situation, even if that hadn't been the case, just because of the sheer human trauma that we're witnessing on television, the families that are clamoring and desperate to get out.

The United States has invested trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, thousands of American service member lives, and the United States has a long history with this country. Think about the number of veterans who have served there, Gold Star families who had lost relatives in Afghanistan.

I think that people are going to come down differently on the fundamentals of Biden's decision whether or not the United States was right to withdraw or not. That's going to be debated in the media, and probably in classrooms for decades to come. Right now, as a member of the media, I think we're just trying to document the extent that we can, given the fact, especially, that most of the foreign media has left Afghanistan, what is occurring, so the world can understand it.

Brigid: Comrade in Brooklyn. Comrade, welcome back to WNYC. I understand this is the moniker you prefer.

Comrade: Hi. As-salamu alaykum and good morning.

Brigid: I think you might need to turn off your radio if it's on in the background.

Comrade: Oh, I see. Let me do it. Okay. I'll try my best to do it. Brigid and Brian, I think one of the two voices who's giving us a conscience in this country which is badly needed. In the way we portrayed at this moment of our highest official's brain that how they are failed to make a strategy, and this is not a new time. It happened in 1975 in Saigon. We can assemble thousand, millions army and weapons and planes when we go to invade to other countries, maybe in the name of the woman's right, maybe in the name of the human rights and democracy, and proven this thing is always not good to the west.

Problem with this is the media and the highest official. Pakistan USA Freedom Forum, which I am a secretary, we requesting that the Congress will call a special meeting publicly, people know what we're talking, and call them the war resistant

leaders of USA, so they can share their feelings and they can tell what's the best for the future of this country, the United States, honor and respect.

Brigid: Comrade, thank you.

Comrade: Yes, we'll let the war--

Brigid: Go ahead, I'll let you finish. [clear throat]

Comrade: War in Afghanistan. We have a leader, we call the shot. We are responsible.

Brigid: I want to pause for a moment there. Comrade drew that parallel obviously, between what we are seeing here in Afghanistan and of course the war in Vietnam. I'm wondering, Missy, to what extent you want to react to that, it's certainly not the first time that parallel has been drawn.

Missy: Sure. In 1975, the United States airlifted more than 100,000 Vietnamese allies out of that country as the American military effort was wrapping up there. One of the interesting things about the parallel is the fact that most of those people were airlifted to Guam, and ultimately resettled in the United States. It draws attention to the fact that the Biden administration did not choose to bring Afghans in large numbers to any US territory. They're bringing small numbers of vetted Afghans directly into the United States, but there was a lot of pressure from Congress, from advocacy groups, to take a step like establishing an airlift to Guam in the last few months, and they chose not to do so.

I think that that draws attention to the fact that the Biden administration has incorporated political calculations into their decision-making on Afghanistan, and they felt potentially that the perception of this being a security threat, or the reality of some level of security threat was reason enough to decide instead to take it more slowly, before this all fell apart, and to bring people to third countries in the Middle East and Europe, rather than doing a wholesale airlift to Guam.

I think that's one contributing factor to the chaos that we're seeing at this moment, and that's going to be one of the factors that I think lawmakers will want to look into. There's already talk of congressional probes about how this has unfolded. We're going to, I think, see some reckoning over that.

Brigid: Jerry, in Yonkers has a question that I think some folks who are listening to this conversation probably also share when we talk about this evacuation of Americans in Afghanistan. Jerry, welcome to WNYC.

Jerry: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I'd like to know, give us some profiles of, who are these Americans that have been in Afghanistan? What do they do? Are they there to earn money? Are they there for humanitarian work? Why did they stay so long? Why is it all the sudden difficult, that they were waiting for the last minute? I just can't imagine-

Brigid: Who are they really?

Jerry: - myself if I was there.

Brigid: Jerry, thank--

Jerry: If I was there, why would I want to be there?

Brigid: It's a complicated question, Jerry, thank you for it. Missy, I think you probably can speak to who some of these people are. Jerry, in part, I think answered some of his own question, right? Some of them are humanitarian aid workers, but they are also people with families, right?

Missy: Yes. There were certainly journalists, there were security contractors, maintenance contractors, aid workers who were American citizens in Afghanistan, but also a big group I think of Afghan Americans who maybe had been naturalized or who were born in the United States, but still had family in Afghanistan. There are accounts of people going back to visit relatives, or students who, they're on their vacation visiting family. That's a significant category of American citizens.

Brigid: Missy, in our final couple of minutes here, we've heard some callers express that outrage and frustration with both what they're seeing and also, with, I think, the Biden administration. This is also an issue that's going to be viewed through a lens of the perception of the US around the world. Ultimately, I'm wondering, how damaging do you think these past few weeks have been to the Biden administration on the world stage?

Missy: I think it's been very damaging. One of the things that Biden portrayed himself as going into his first few months in office was restoring competence to government after the chaos of the Trump administration, and showing compassion as a leader. It's one thing that Biden is known for, it's his his ability to connect emotionally with everyday Americans. He often references his son, and gets emotional when he's talking to COVID patients or whoever, and he brought with him this deep bench of very experienced foreign policy hands. This really raises questions about his ability to continue to portray that.

It's also caused some strains with European countries, just at a time when the Biden administration has been trying to repair the frictions that were created under Trump. Many allies have complained that they weren't adequately consulted before Biden made his decision, that certainly they weren't successful in persuading Biden to extend the timeline this week. I think it's going to be a real challenge. We'll just have to see how that affects his agenda on other things like trade, like climate change, and all of that.

Brigid: We'll have to leave it there for today. I've been speaking with Missy Ryan, a reporter for The Washington Post covering diplomacy and national security. Missy, thanks so much for joining us.

Missy: Thank you.

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