>> I didn't do anything to the United States, right?

It was the Taliban who bombed them, right?

So then why don't you ask them to pay for the consequences?

Why do I have to pay with my rights for those consequences?

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today, how America's withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into the biggest foreign policy crisis of Biden's presidency.

I'll be breaking down how we got here and then speaking to two very different Afghans, one in hiding in the country and another in exile about how they'll continue on now that the country they've known for 20 years has disappeared.

Then how one U.S. military veteran views Afghanistan's collapse.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history.

I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.

>> The reality is that Joe Biden has been looking for a way out of Afghanistan for decades.

And regardless of how ugly things get, he's not turning back.

In 2009, then-Vice President Biden argued against President Obama's 30,000-troop surge and reportedly told the President that it would "not be that bad" if Afghanistan's government fell.

So when former President Trump reached a deal with the Taliban in 2020 to end the war, Biden decided to stick with the arrangement, overruling his own generals.

The thing is, I actually agree with Biden on the decision to get out, at least given the situation on the ground that he had inherited back in January.

There's no denying the Taliban were stronger and gaining ground in Afghanistan.

Biden would have either had to expand U.S. troop presence or pull out entirely.

And ending the war in Afghanistan has been overwhelmingly popular with the American public for years.

With a late August CBS News poll finding that two thirds of Americans still want the U.S. out of there.

But what I did not foresee, knowing so much of Joe Biden's foreign policy team personally, was the incompetence of their execution.

In that sense, the last few weeks have constituted the greatest foreign policy crisis for President Biden to date and one that was largely self-imposed.

Four key failures led to this debacle.

The first was the military and intelligence failure.

U.S. intelligence agencies thought Kabul could hold off the Taliban for two to three years.

Once the Taliban's offensive kicked into high gear, the intelligence assessment dropped to two to three days.

After 20 years and $88 billion in training Afghan forces, the U.S. still did not understand or did not want to understand their true capabilities and their willingness to fight without the Americans.

The second was a failure of coordination.

The U.S. fought alongside allies in the coalition for two decades, but when the time came to pull the plug, Biden did so alone, both in making the decision, the announcement, the execution, and in the aftermath.

>> Twin blasts and what the United States is calling a complex attack involving suicide bombers.

>> Locals have told reporters on the ground the first explosion, in fact, resulted in complete panic.

>> U.S. allies expected a different American attitude towards its friends, especially following four years of Trump's America First.

The third was a planning failure.

Getting the intelligence and the coordination wrong did not have to spell disaster had the Biden administration effectively planned for alternative scenarios.

Based on everything we know, the administration did not.

The U.S. had to airlift troops in from the mainland to assist in the evacuation, sending in 3,500 more than it had withdrawn in the first place.

And the final was a communications failure.

In selling withdrawal, Biden weeks ago assured Americans that it was "highly unlikely" for the Taliban to be overrunning everything and owning the whole country.

He insisted that there's going to be "no circumstance" where you see people being lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy.

Yet as these predictions unraveled in real time, the administration pivoted to insisting that we have succeeded in Afghanistan.

What should have been a tough but necessary decision became a debacle, opening Biden to charges from political opponents that he is personally responsible for the failed war, a ludicrous charge for a 20-year and $2 trillion failure, but one President Biden now partially owns.

This is, of course, far more than a policy failure.

To grasp what the Afghan people are going through now requires more empathy than ever.

And as tens of thousands of them risked their lives to get on one of the last planes out of Kabul, millions more aren't going anywhere.

In fact, many of those staying put have somehow found the courage to continue to speak out at great personal risk.

Education activist Pashtana Durrani is one of them.

And I spoke to her recently from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.

So, Pashtana, thank you so much for joining us today.

I know that you're in Afghanistan, and I obviously don't want to ask you more than that, but are you safe right now?

>> I am on the move, so I don't consider it safe, but I keep on moving.

Just for my safety.

>> Can you tell us a little bit what the last few days have been like since the Taliban have taken over the country?

>> Life is relatively calm.

Life is calm, but the Taliban are pressuring the people, right, like they have been to people's houses, taking their generators, whatever appliances that they can find, whatever is valuable they carry, and then they are lying about it on their media, that they are taking weapons.

They are not.

They are taking everything and anything that they can find.

That's the first thing.

The second thing is, at the same time, the schools are being closed.

The private schools in Kandahar are closed down right now.

And it's a shame that nobody's talking about it.

The girls in Herat were sent back home and they haven't resumed.

And it's been a week and nobody's talking about it.

So everybody's talking about the fact that, like, you know, what will the Taliban do?

What will the future hold?

But what about the normal civilians caught up in the middle of the crossfire, you know?

>> We've heard a lot of things.

I wouldn't necessarily say promises, but a lot of claims from Taliban representatives, for example, that women will still be allowed to go to school through university.

First of all, do you think that's credible at all?

And secondly, why are the schools closing right now if there isn't any such order?

>> See, if the schools are closing right now because of their fear, the fear that they might be attacked.

That's a relative real fear, right?

At the same time, what they promise and what they are doing, two different things.

Now, they're saying one thing in Kabul, practicing that in Kabul.

There are liberties.

People are going out and doing protests.

But then can you imagine the same thing in Kandahar?

You will be literally torn into pieces.

That's a different scenario right now.

People are so scared.

I know myself.

Children are not going to school.

They're abandoning their lessons because they're scared of the Taliban, because they're scared of the people patrolling on the streets, the Taliban.

So you have to understand two different narratives.

International media focus on Kabul.

People that are in Kabul city love talking about Kabul, right?

And they're letting things go and slip by.

The minute the world has another hot topic, they will impose their law.

They will impose their policing.

They will police people, and they will control them from what they wear to what they eat, to what they dress, to what they listen to, to how they conduct their life.

>> So who are these -- I mean, these are Afghan citizens, of course, your fellow Afghan citizens.

Who are the Taliban to you now?

>> They are misogynistic, patriarchal-bred people and, like, you know, used as instruments by regional powers to wage their wars in Afghanistan.

And most importantly, they are regional powers are so afraid of the Afghan women, they use Afghan men to silence the Afghan women.

So it's not just that they are like, you know, fighters and all that.

They are also used by the regional powers to be used as like, you know, to conduct their warfare in Afghanistan.

>> Now, you saw that my president put the blame on the Afghan forces, said that if they are not prepared to fight for themselves, that the Americans can't fight for them.

I am hearing a very different message from you, and I'd like to give you the chance to raise that.

>> It's a shame that he's insulting, he's dishonoring the Afghan forces the way he is saying, that they didn't want to fight back.

If we didn't want to fight back, I wouldn't have 2,300 people in the army dead from my tribe only, and I'm a very small tribe.

I come from Maruf, a district that is all mountainous.

And we as a district lost 2,300 men to this war in the past two decades.

2,300 men is a huge number for one district, right?

So if they didn't want to fight, they didn't want to fight for themselves, why die, right?

>> You've been a very strong and vocal advocate for girls education and spoken beautifully just about the happiness, the joy of getting up in the morning and going to school, something that had been taken away from from you for so long.

What has it meant for your generation to have access to a proper education?

>> See, educational opportunities for people like us is like, you know, opportunities to build our country, opportunities to educate more people into being feeling responsible for this Afghanistan, for this country.

We cannot be dependent all our life.

We cannot be foreign-aid dependent, foreign-influence dependent.

We have to do something on our own.

And for that, it's very important to start by educating ourselves, to start by becoming a scientist, a doctor, a teacher, to have that human capacity to serve the country for the greater good.

But right now, it's in jeopardy, right?

20 years you do everything right by your country.

And then one day somebody else decides that, okay, we want to pull out.

We want to decide for the future.

That's wrong, right?

I didn't do anything to the United States, right?

It was the Taliban who bombed them, right?

So then why don't you ask them to pay for the consequences?

Why do I have to pay with my rights for those consequences?

I didn't do anything.

I'm a humanist.

Why should I pay for their mistakes?

>> What would you like to see and what gives you hope going forward?

>> The fact that I'm willing to put up a fight, the fact that other girls want to learn, the fact that all women are coming out right now, and the fact that the Taliban, one way or the other, will have to listen to us.

And the fact that the world is standing in solidarity with us, no matter whatever the leaders do, the civilians do feel for Afghanistan.

And just for -- just by the all these messages that I get from all these people throughout the world.

It has been an amazing thing, right?

You do understand that you are not alone.

But at the same time, Afghanistan is right now a hot topic.

And you have to make sure that when this time they accept it and then they make sure that we will go back on the side of educational rights or women working, right?

And those are important things.

And for me right now, that is the whole -- that's what I'm standing by so that they can accept it.

That's my hope every day -- when I wake up making sure that they push for a statement so that they make everyone in 33 provinces other than Kabul, go to schools, go to universities, continue with their life.

Just because a few men in Kabul in presidential palaces doesn't justify the fact that we have to change our way of life for them.

>> Pashtana Durrani, I'm very sorry for what's happening in your country right now.

And I really appreciate you spending a little bit of time with us.

>> Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.

♪♪ >> And now to Ajmal Ahmady.

He is the former head of Afghanistan's Central Bank, who fled the country last month.

He argues that the Taliban lack the revenue or incoming investment to operate a functional government.

Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

>> Thank you very much for having me on the program.

It's a pleasure to be here.

>> There's obviously a much bigger story than just the Central Bank.

I want to talk about the Afghan economy going forward, but tell me a little bit about how you got out.

What was your ability to get to the airport and to get on a flight?

>> I think the previous Thursday, when a number of provincial capitals fell in the same day, Kandahar, Herat, Ghazni, Badghis, and perhaps one or two others, at that point, I thought to myself, "Well, you know, things are moving very quickly."

But then I went to work as normal on Sunday morning.

I attended some meetings, and the reports kept getting worse and worse.

By this time, Jalalabad had fell.

And so at that point, I decided to make my way to the airport.

And when I got there, I was surprised to find that a significant portion of the government had left or was in the process of leaving.

And then, of course, the news came that the president himself had already left, at which point instinctively I knew that there would be some chaos.

So we went on a plane.

Everyone attempted to board this now infamous Kam airplane that's still on the tarmac there.

>> The one that showed the people standing literally on top of the plane at the time.

Yeah.

>> And we boarded that and everyone tried to board that plane.

So it was a passenger plane for perhaps 300 people.

You know, perhaps a couple of hundred or a thousand boarded that plane.

I realized it wasn't going to take off.

They had mentioned that the plane had no pilot.

It had no fuel.

So we went down to the tarmac, and I think it was the beginning of the scenes which now you see on TV, where there's hundreds of people.

Every person is trying to find some sort of aircraft.

There were various helicopters taking off in an ad hoc manner, a small military plane taking off.

And there was one military plane, not from the U.S., that everyone was rushing towards.

I wasn't hopeful, but I think we went towards it, and it was a C-17 where the rear of the plane was going up.

And my friends, my colleagues had pushed me on the plane.

I was not supposed to be on that plane.

It wasn't a military transport where I had a ticket to get on.

It was essentially one that I forced my way on and was fortunate to get on at that point.

>> And this is part of why in those initial photos, including that one incredibly overstuffed transport, it's mostly men, right?

It's not women, it's not kids, because I mean, you know, your just physical ability to get on, get through the scrum of what is an incredibly chaotic period, that's basically the situation that the Central Bank governor finds himself in, in Kabul.

>> Yeah.

So if the Central Bank governor is in that position, you can imagine the position of everyone else.

At the end of the day, I boarded the plane.

I had one or two bags, but I left them.

And even one of my shoes came off and I was walking on the plane with with one shoe.

And that's how I left the country, which was not the way you want to leave.

>> Let me get to the area that you know the most about, which is the state of and the future of the Afghan economy.

Talk a little bit about both the timeline and the challenges economically that you expect this new government to face.

>> The economic challenges are going to be very, very large.

I think, one, the stock of international reserves has already been frozen.

So that's $9 billion which has been taken away from being utilized.

Secondly, it's not only the stop but the flow of international aid that's going to be reduced.

Thus far, I believe there have been reports that Germany has frozen $300 million in aid.

The EU has frozen $1 billion in aid.

I believe the World Bank has also frozen their portfolio.

And there was about $3 billion provided on an annual basis for salary support and equipment support for the ANSF or the military.

Of course, that's not going to be on the table.

>> How long do you think before there is, you know, let's just say a full-blown financial crisis?

>> I think there's a very short time frame.

We already are in a situation where the banks have been closed.

I believe they should open soon.

And once they open, individuals will not be able to take out all of their savings.

So there will have to be some sort of withdrawal limit placed on those persons or those withdrawals.

Inflation already is going to be rising.

There are some reports that wheat prices have already doubled in the capital, and that's the basic commodity foodstuff.

And the currency is going to depreciate.

They're going to have to cut expenses significantly.

They're going to have to cut services.

And all of this is going to impact the people of Afghanistan.

>> I'm wondering how you feel about American and European and other sanctions against this new Taliban government.

You always wonder to what extent punishment being meted against a government you disagree with ends up causing more suffering on the ground than you had intended.

>> The Afghan people are undeniably going to be hurt by... over the coming months and years.

Inflation is going to go up.

Incomes are going to go down.

Bank accounts are going to be frozen.

And I wrote this in an op-ed where I think humanitarian assistance needs to be in even immediately.

The question of whether that should be provided through government channels or through UN agencies, I think I'll leave in the hands of policymakers.

I think -- But at the end of the day, there has to be some assistance being provided for them beginning almost immediately.

Based on my understanding, I think it's going to be difficult for Western governments to recognize the Taliban and to be able to unfreeze these large foreign reserves or to begin donor programs until a few steps are taken.

I mean, first of all, you have to have formed a government, which hasn't been formed.

There has to be a review of that government, whether it is inclusive, whether they will uphold women's rights, women's education, other standards of international governance.

And then within that framework, it's still challenging to be able to convince stakeholders in each of these countries that the Taliban is reformed and that they should be provided aid.

So I think whether it happens or not, it's going to be a long time frame.

And I think it's going to be challenging.

And in the meantime, humanitarian assistance should be provided.

>> Ajmal Ahmady, thanks so much for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> Thank you very much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

♪♪ >> And now to the perspective of one U.S. veteran who served in Afghanistan and watched as the Taliban took over.

>> My name is Matt Zeller.

I am the co-founder of No One Left Behind.

I'm an Afghan war veteran.

I served also in the Central Intelligence Agency where I sat on the Afghan desk.

The tragic and cowardly suicide attack of 26 August proves the futility of trusting security of anybody, Americans, Afghans to the Taliban.

We never should have let them be responsible for the security at the airport.

We never should've let them dictate the terms of this evacuation.

And we certainly should never have let them dictate the date upon which it would end.

Because let's be clear.

By allowing them to have control of those key factors, we are ending this evacuation before we are actually taking everyone who needs to be saved.

By the estimation of the organization the Association of Wartime Allies, the U.S. is on pace to leave behind some 175,000 people.

Our coalition has been pleading with the administration since February to begin the evacuation of these people.

We argued that it should have occurred months ago when we still had U.S. troops in place in the country, when the government of Afghanistan still stood firmly and we held every single airport in the country.

If we had conducted this back then, when we first requested it, it would have been orderly.

You would not have seen the chaos that unfolded.

And I have to be honest, I don't think we would have seen that type of suicide attack.

The people who perpetrated that attack were ISIS Khorasan.

These individuals had been mostly rounded up in Afghanistan by the previous government and were actually being held in prison.

When the Taliban took Bagram and Kabul within the last two weeks, the first thing they did was release all of those prisoners.

So one has to wonder, given that the Taliban were the ones who freed ISIS prisoners within the last week, I question just how much the Taliban senior leadership actually knew about this attack before it happened and whether or not if they did know about it and they didn't do anything to stop it, you know, how complicit then, are they in the deaths of American Marines?

The only reason I'm alive talking to you today is because my Afghan interpreter, Janis, saved my life in a battle.

He killed two Taliban fighters who were about to kill me.

He'd be the first person to tell you that he wouldn't have been standing next to me that day if he thought that Americans were people who didn't honor and keep their promises.

That's my fear in all this.

We have now betrayed hundreds of thousands of Afghans publicly to a global audience.

You know, unlike Vietnam, everyone has been watching this unfold live on TV in real time.

And the videos that are being captured are going to exist forever on the Internet.

They're going to circulate forever.

They're going to follow Americans wherever we go abroad forever.

And this is the thing that most concerns me is I don't know how we are ever going to be able to look people in the eye in the future and say, "You can work with us, we'll take care of you" and have anyone believe us when the evidence is clear we seem to abandon people in their time of need.

At least our government does, not the American people.

So, for the people who are being left behind in Afghanistan, you know, try to put yourself in their shoes.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and all sports were banned.

They were illegal.

All music, all art, you know, the things that make our culture vibrant and exciting and wonderful -- banned, illegal.

That's what Afghans are waking up to.

Afghan women have no more place in public life.

They can't leave the home without the escort of a male relative.

They have been fired from all of their jobs because women can't work under the Taliban.

This is the reality that all of those Afghans that we served with, who believed in our joint mission, who worked together shoulder to shoulder for the last 20 years, trying to build a better Afghanistan, that dream is dead.

The nightmare is now their new reality.

And we have abandoned them to that.

The betrayal is absolute and fundamental, and it's going to be something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Not to say that I speak for the greater veteran community on this, but I have to tell you, every veteran I know feels the same way.

We're now going to carry a moral injury that will never abate, a scar that will never, you know, will never disappear.

We'll do everything we possibly can to get them out, which is why I keep saying that while the American government might be ending its evacuation and betraying these people, the American people, the veterans, the diplomats, the aid workers who worked with these Afghans and befriended them over the course of the last 20 years, for us, this is just the beginning of a very long process and a very long mission.

We are not going to give up on these people.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...