>> We needed to believe that things would hold together in Afghanistan.

That was central to our strategy of withdrawal.

And I think that in many respects, our need to have them hold together clouded our judgment as we were looking at the intelligence.

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

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today it's been one year since the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

And while this anniversary marks the end of America's longest war in history, it also represents what many see as a staggering American defeat and a victory for a longtime adversary -- the Taliban, who remain in control as the country faces a humanitarian crisis and a crippled economy.

This week, I speak with former Marine and author Elliot Ackerman about his view of the war and his new book, "The Fifth Act."

Then a look at what life is like for women and girls living under Taliban rule.

Don't worry.

I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Spirit of Mr. Zelensky?

>> I am the flesh.

>> The flesh?

>> In flesh.

>> 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... >> The Taliban are back.

>> Afghans are thronging to Kabul's airport.

[ Gunfire ] >> Celebratory gunfire into the night sky as the last U.S. plane pulled up and away.

>> On August 15, 2021, the Taliban seized Kabul.

It was a remarkably easy operation.

The speed with which the Taliban were able to take the city and place themselves at the seat of power surprised even the Taliban themselves.

By the end of the month, the United States was finally out of Afghanistan after two decades of war.

President Joe Biden had pledged to have American troops out of the country before the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

While he made good on that promise, the withdrawal itself was violent.

It was chaotic.

For starters, after spending more than $2 trillion on the war, $88 billion of which went to train and fund the Afghan military, many hoped Afghan institutions would be more resilient following the U.S. pullout.

In fact, American intelligence suggested that it would be months or even years before the Afghan military lost its fight to the Taliban.

It took 11 days.

One year later, Afghanistan remains in shambles.

For the Taliban, it turns out governing has been rather hard compared to conquering.

The government faces sanctions and has yet to make any friends on the international stage.

Food shortages abound.

The economy is near collapse.

Foreign assistance has been all but cut off.

The country's GDP is expected to decline by 34% in 2022.

The lives of women and girls have also been destroyed since the Taliban took charge according to a report by Amnesty International.

The group has documented instances of torture, disappearances and mass arrests.

And they found that the Taliban has systematically violated women and girls' right to education, work and free movement.

Thousands of Afghans who helped the American war effort and qualify for what's called a special immigrant visa remain stranded in the country today and fear for their lives and the safety of their families.

And those Afghans lucky enough to flee the country amidst the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal, many still remain in legal limbo, unable to work, unsure whether they will actually be permanently settled in the United States.

But with more than 2,300 American military lives lost in Afghanistan and roughly 46,000 Afghan civilians killed during the war, most Americans do believe that withdrawal was the right decision.

And despite the widening humanitarian crisis in the country, the administration still counts it as a win as well, with national security adviser Jake Sullivan telling ABC earlier this month that the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri from a balcony in Kabul vindicated the president's decision to leave.

So was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan worth it in the end?

This week I'm asking Elliott Ackerman.

He's a well-decorated Marine who served four combat tours in Afghanistan.

He also just wrote the book "The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan."

Here's our conversation.

Elliot Ackerman, thanks so much for joining me.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Been about a year since the handover in Afghanistan.

Talk to me a little bit about what you see happening in the country over that period.

>> I think over the last year, probably the headline is the Taliban have discovered it's more difficult to govern Afghanistan than it necessarily is to conquer Afghanistan.

But as we're sitting here one year later, I think it's important to also zoom out past Afghanistan and see how the withdrawal has also been in conversation with other global events, and I would say probably most specifically the war in Ukraine.

I don't think it's any coincidence that within six months of a really disastrous NATO-led withdrawal from Afghanistan that we see a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Those two events are definitely tied.

Certainly Vladimir Putin was watching as we were leaving, the last planes were leaving the airport in Kabul.

And I think what's been interesting, as much as that was probably one of the darkest chapters in NATO's history, one of the brightest has been its response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

>> I was going to ask you about that later, but since you started with it, I'll jump right in.

I mean, in Afghanistan, of course, legion amounts of U.S. intelligence failures.

And yet on Russia, Ukraine, I mean, the United States seemed to have it wired.

Right?

I mean, like literally no one believed that the Americans were saying, "Look, these guys are gonna invade.

Here's how they're gonna do it.

This is the intel we're getting.

They're trying to convince the Europeans" -- is this because of lessons that were learned?

What happened that the Americans actually got that so right?

>> I can only sort of presume why we got it right in Ukraine and wrong in Afghanistan.

And perhaps I would say it was because there was an ability for us vis-à-vis Ukraine to have a certain type of objectivity that we couldn't have after 20 years of investment and war.

I mean, the war in Afghanistan, just given its duration in so many ways, defined modern U.S. military thinking and our intelligence capabilities.

So it's sort of, "Can you see the forest through the trees?"

You know, in Ukraine, we seemed able to do that.

In Afghanistan, we were unable because we were just so deeply involved there for so long.

>> So what I hear you saying is that you believe that the Americans actually do/did have the intelligence capabilities in principle to get it right in Afghanistan and just didn't deploy them, didn't filter them, didn't pay attention to them?

>> Well, I think there's also the mismatch of, you know, what you need to believe too.

We needed to believe that things would hold together in Afghanistan.

That was central to our strategy of withdrawal.

I mean, if we look at the strategy of withdrawal in Afghanistan, you know, people have sometimes asked me, "Well, what do you think we could have done differently?"

I would say once we had a strategy where we bet everything on this idea that there would be, you know, what Nixon called the decent interval from our withdrawal to the time of an Afghan collapse, you know, the government collapsing, if that did happen, that, you know, it would be two years, a year, six months, something, some type of decent interval.

Once we didn't have that decent interval, it was a fait accompli that it would be a debacle.

So we needed that decent interval.

In order to have that decent interval, we needed the Afghan military to hold together.

And I think that in many respects, our need to have them hold together, clouded our judgment as we were looking at the intelligence.

>> And did that start -- that reality and that understanding because of, as a result of the Trump agreement with the Taliban or because of, as a result of the Biden withdrawal?

>> I think both.

I think the -- it's this continual sort of erosion of credibility with the Afghan government.

So the Trump agreement with the Taliban certainly undercuts the Afghan government and their legitimacy.

I mean, it's not the only thing, but it's a significant variable.

They were not a party to those negotiations.

And then we get to the Biden withdraw and we have a date certain that's set.

So we're telegraphing our withdrawal.

We are, unlike the Soviets before us, we're engaging in what's called a fighting withdrawal in so much as we are still in contact and we're trying to get all of our troops out and we're getting them out of a landlocked country.

So unlike, for instance, in the Iraq war, or unlike when the Soviets left Afghanistan and they back then shared a border with the Afghans, you know, we have to get everybody out via air, and that's incredibly difficult to do.

And, you know, we saw the results last summer.

>> And this clearly has been the biggest debacle of the Biden administration.

And when it was happening, I mean, so many people had so much second guessing that they were doing.

Once the decision was made to get out-out, what could have been done differently that would have made a real difference?

>> I think, you know, once the decision was made to get out, there were a number of lawmakers who were sending letters to the White House basically saying, you know, "We need an evacuation plan similar to what occurred in Vietnam with Guam or even in Kurdistan with Guam," where we would evacuate people, house them in Guam, and then handle their forward processing from there.

Those requests were -- basically fell on deaf ears.

Now, you know, I don't want to be unfair.

I can understand why they fell on deaf ears in some respects, because the Biden administration is making this calculation that if we start in April of 2021 evacuating key people out of Afghanistan... >> You're sending a message.

>> That's a very strong message, It's a vote of no confidence in the Afghan government.

But because you don't make that decision, you are betting the farm again on this idea that there's going to be some type of an interval before the collapse.

And they bet wrong and they bet wrong in a big way.

And the thing that probably could have been done better would have been a realization within the administration of, "Okay, if we do bet wrong, you know, if we don't get our decent interval, what's our contingency plan?"

>> And it doesn't seem like they had one.

>> There was no contingency plan and there was no contingency plan by how we would process Afghans who needed to go out, those who would work with us.

There was no acceleration of the SIV program.

You know, in June of 2021, the SIV program basically ground to a halt because of a high number of COVID cases at the embassy.

So when there was no decent interval, when we were evacuating everybody out, there was basically no process.

And what you started to see happen was because we live in the world we live in today, you know, many veterans, journalists, all of the Americans who have 20 years' worth of connections in Afghanistan are now being reached out to by their Afghan friends saying, you know, "Please, you have to help us."

And you kind of wound up with this massive what's been called the digital Dunkirk happening over the final weeks of August.

>> Now, the president flees.

The government collapses.

The Taliban take over.

At that point, what can, should the Americans have been doing, should we be doing now that we're not?

Given that there are still a lot of people in Afghanistan that are desperate, desperate, desperate to get out, many of whom helped the United States, worked with the United States, some of whom even fought with the United States.

>> Well, I think the reality is our ability now, because we have no networks, no presence in Afghanistan, is somewhat limited what we can do to get Afghans out of Afghanistan.

But we aren't doing enough for the Afghans who we got out of Afghanistan.

You know, many of the Afghans who've come to the United States through this special immigrant visa program are still sitting in limbo with regards to their immigration status.

They're not able to work.

You know, Congress is trying to put forward legislation that will more quickly assimilate them into the workforce in the United States.

And, oh, by the way, at a time when we have very low unemployment.

We actually need these people to come here and work.

You know, so that is an area where we can actually make real progress.

You know, yes, there should still be efforts to get people out of Afghanistan.

But again, it becomes very problematic because when we left, I mean, we didn't leave any residual anything behind in Afghanistan.

And so that becomes challenging.

But, you know -- >> No, we left a lot of Jeeps.

>> We lost plenty of equipment.

>> Yeah.

>> But, you know, absolutely.

I mean, you know, we should still stay engaged and do the best we can help -- either helping people get out of Afghanistan who have been approved for the special immigrant visa program if they can't, and also facilitating their onward migration into the United States.

>> One thing that seems pretty critical to the moral code of the military is leave no man behind.

What did it do to the morale of the American men and women that were serving in Afghanistan, that we ended the war the way we did?

>> I think this idea of, you know, leave no man behind, I mean, this is not an idea that is only unique to the United States military, although it is foundational to the code of honor that exists in the U.S. military.

I mean, this is an idea that is as old as warfare.

It's an idea that goes back to the Iliad when Achilles kills Hector.

You know, Hector's father shows up in Achilles' camp, begging for the body of his son.

So when we left Afghanistan, effectively what the U.S. government was doing because there was no visa system in place, there was no process to get our allies out, we were basically saying as a country that we're going to leave all these Afghans behind and asking the people who had personal relationships with the Afghans who we had cultivated over 20 years, in many respects at the behest of our government, to just turn our backs on these people who are asking for help.

And it shouldn't come as a surprise that many people, veterans, journalists, activists who've been involved over 20 years, you know, weren't willing to do that.

>> Do you feel that the military is adequately understood/ appreciated for everything that you have done, do in the United States?

>> I think a concerning trend that we've seen in American life, if you look back at the history of our country almost since its inception, we've had a very long tradition of a military that was comprised of citizen soldiers.

And in recent years, we've seen the all-volunteer military really become the norm.

I served in the all-volunteer military.

There are certain benefits of having an all-volunteer military, namely the, you know, the professionalism.

You don't have anyone there who doesn't want to be there.

But it does come with a cost.

And one of those costs is an ever widening civil military divide where fewer and few people know anyone who has served in the military.

And the military really becomes a caste of its own in the United States, sort of this hived-off 1% of America.

And that is particularly dangerous in a society that has very dysfunctional domestic politics.

You know, if you look back in history from Caesar's Rome to Napoleon's France, when you couple a large-standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesn't last long.

And that's something I think about and that certainly concerns me.

That's not the American people not paying enough deference to the military.

In many respects, my concern is that there's too much difference is paid and that deference is paid in lieu of understanding, in lieu of experience with the military.

And that's something I think about and concerns me.

>> Intelligence collection is becoming very different.

It used to focus a lot on humans.

Right?

Human intelligence now increasingly is intermediated by technology.

How do you see the Americans doing -- faring in the future of intelligence gathering, collection and processing?

>> I think it's sort of interesting because it goes into -- we are in a transition stage in so much as the last 20 years in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were wars of counterterrorism.

So they're much more tactile in terms of the human networks you're dealing with.

Now, we're sort of in a back-to-the-future moment where we're re-entering this era of great state competition.

And so suddenly the intelligence failures are, for instance, yes, the failure to see the collapse in Afghanistan, but the success in seeing the intention of Russia to invade Ukraine and, you know, places that we're obviously watching very, very closely -- for instance, what is China's intention in Taiwan?

And so those were the types of intelligence questions that, once upon a time, featured very prominently in American life and had sort of in the last 20 years, there's been this aberration where the intelligence community hasn't been as focused on the intentions of states, but more as sort of the intentions of terrorist networks or even individuals.

And now we're kind of getting back to that great power competition.

>> So before we close, your book, "The Fifth Act," kind of follows this classic arc of a Greek tragedy.

I'm wondering if you had a sixth act, especially because you've spent a lot of time recently thinking about the future of military warfare, and you had to look a couple decades ahead at Afghanistan.

What do you think that chapter would look like in your book?

>> Well, I think the sixth act is really the rise of authoritarian alliances in the world and how we, you know, the West or the free nations of the world are going to once again rally ourselves to stand up against this type of authoritarianism.

I think in Afghanistan, we saw what seemed like a very dark and dysfunctional chapter with regards to the resolve of international alliances like NATO.

I think in Ukraine we've seen that there still exists an ability to muster that resolve and to stand against an authoritarian.

But the question in the sixth act, as you put it, is who is going to wind up on top in that contest between the old nations of the free world and these newer authoritarian states.

>> Elliot Ackerman, thank you for your service.

>> Thanks for having me.

♪♪ >> After the takeover, the Taliban said that women would have an inclusive role in Afghan society.

Nobody really believed them.

And one year later, they've yet to deliver on that promise.

"GZERO World's" Sarah Kneezle reports.

>> On August 15, 2021, Kabul fell to the Taliban.

A return to power for a group known for its strict interpretation of Islam.

Connections to al-Qaeda, the brutal use of capital punishment.

For Afghan women, it's marked what Amnesty International has called death in slow motion.

Fawzia Koofi served in the Afghan parliament from 2005 until last year.

On the anniversary, She wears black and calls it a national day of mourning.

>> When I think that my country is no longer a place where I can go or I can exercise my rights, it is extremely emotional and disappointing.

>> During the negotiations between the Taliban and the United States, Koofi was often the only woman in the room sitting at the table with men from a group that had once tried to kill her.

There, the Taliban worked hard to convince the world that they had reformed, a Taliban 2.0.

One negotiator even promised Koofi an inclusive government.

>> He said, from their perspective, and I'm quoting, women can be ministers, can be business people, can be teachers, can be doctors.

There is no problem and even can be prime minister.

But women cannot be head of state.

It was a room full of people, full of men, obviously.

Everybody looked at me and said, "Well, Ms. Koofi, congratulations.

It's a good thing you are hearing."

>> As the talks progressed, Koofi was targeted once more.

>> A prominent politician and women's rights advocate in Afghanistan has been wounded in a gun attack.

Afghan officials say Fawzia Koofi was returning from a meeting in the eastern province of Parwan when she was attacked.

>> After investing her time and her blood in the peace process, she says Kabul's quick fall was shocking.

And a few weeks later, she fled.

The last American forces withdrew from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021.

And life for women and girls left behind changed immediately.

>> I think you don't live your own life.

That's how it is for them.

You can't move outside.

You can't dress up the way you would like to.

You can't walk around.

You are not even allowed to speak loud.

>> Under Taliban rule, girls must now end their education by grade six.

Female university students must learn separately from their male counterparts.

Some have even been sent home for wearing colorful head scarves.

Despite the risks, women continue to protest on the streets of Kabul.

Their words often met with violence and gunfire.

Still, Koofi sees a bright future for her country, one that could even include a female head of state, perhaps Koofi herself.

>> We have traditionally been hopeful people in Afghanistan, so hope is the only thing that keeps me moving.

And this is my political mission.

I will strive for it.

If not for me, Afghanistan deserve a better leadership.

>> For "GZERO World," I'm Sarah Kneezle.

♪♪ >> And now I've got your "Puppet Regime."

>> It seems like just yesterday that Americans were making a big show about supporting Ukraine and war dominated the news.

But after a few short months, attention seems to be waning.

So I, Volodymyr Zelensky, have come back to New York City to find out why.

Can I talk to you for a second?

Purple shirt.

I love your shirt.

Come talk to me.

Come, come, come, come.

Do you know who I am?

>> No.

>> You're from, uh... A show.

>> I was on a show once, but now I have a more intense job.

Look at this little flag on my shirt.

>> Is that like a country?

>> You are the spirit of Mr. Zelensky?

>> I am the flesh.

>> The flesh?

>> In flesh.

Did you know I was in Vogue magazine last week?

>> Vogue?

>> Did you see the way her eyes lit up?

It was precious.

>> Zelensky seems lit.

You seem lit.

>> I mean, being president of country that's being invaded is kind of a vibe.

>> Yeah, it's a vibe.

>> It's not a great vibe, but it's one.

Couple of months ago, there was a lot of focus on Ukraine.

Now not so much.

Why?

>> Because people get bored after a while, unfortunately.

>> I think a lot of times people like to put it on their Instagram story for about 5 minutes to make it seem like they care.

>> It was a trend technically on social media, and then trends go fast.

>> Ah, trends go fast, but wars go slow is the problem.

What can we do that people will care about Ukraine more again?

>> If there's more invasion, I guess people will care more.

>> So I have to get invaded again.

>> Maybe reach out more on social media?

>> Like a cat video or like what kind of stuff?

>> Maybe can have like more information or videos that are like kind of funny, like this one right now.

>> Okay, now we're talking.

>> It should be on the front news of every paper every day, of course.

>> Right.

>> It's a media problem.

They go on to the next big story and that's not your fault.

You're doing the best you can.

>> And so it looks like Americans have not completely forgotten our struggle, at least not as long as we continue to give them good content for their feeds.

I might be here still for a while.

[ Sniffs ] Ahh.

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you see or you just want to get back into Afghanistan -- no, you don't, I know you don't, don't say that, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> 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...