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The National Security Council released an assessment of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on Thursday that attempted to explain why the withdrawal unfolded so chaotically. The report mainly places the responsibility on former President Donald Trump. Some of its gripes are justified. Yet overall the document deflects blame from President Joe Biden and obscures bigger, structural problems at the root of American failings. After all, the U.S. was withdrawing from a two-decade war that it had lost and an attempt at nation-building that had gone poorly a legacy of failure that long predated Trump.

The general tone of the paper is defensive rather than evaluative.

Experts say that the NSC document reads more like a set of talking points than a sober, independent-minded assessment of what went wrong. It isnt an objective attempt to identify or summarize lessons learned, tweeted Jonathan Schroden, who directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses. It is a political document designed to deflect blame in advance of a gathering storm of House GOP hearings. Indeed, the general tone of the paper is defensive rather than evaluative and an attempt to save face for an administration seeking re-election.

The NSC review does make some fair points about how the administration was dealt a difficult hand. Trump left Biden without adequate strategic plans on how to conduct the withdrawal originally scheduled to take place in May 2021, a few months after Biden took office.

And the documents complaints that the terms of Trumps withdrawal deal with the Taliban put the Biden administration in a difficult position are also fair. As Anand Gopal, the author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, told me in 2021, the fact that the U.S. struck a deal directly with the Taliban and left the fragile Afghan government to sort out a peace process with the Taliban on its own was disastrous. What the U.S. did is kind of buy into its own fiction that the Afghan government was somehow a sovereign actor, Gopal said at the time. In reality, the Afghan government was propped up financially, logistically, militarily and reputationally by outside forces and was primed to be overrun by the Taliban. Moreover, in his zeal to get a deal done quickly, Trump made concessions like the freeing of thousands of Taliban prisoners that mightve been avoidable.

But analysts of the war caution that its unclear whether the U.S. wouldve been able to secure a better agreement with the Taliban or forced the Taliban to come to a meaningful, even if short-lived, peace agreement with the Western-backed Afghan government. The U.S. had lost the war and was withdrawing, leaving the Taliban with no incentive to make major concessions.

I think there are certain things that the Trump administration couldve done that might have made a marginal difference, but at the end of the day wed probably be in the same position because the Taliban had the upper hand, Adam Weinstein, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute who focuses on security, trade and rule of law in Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me.

The Taliban had a cohesive fighting force with strong esprit de corps, willingness to fight, and commanders dedicated to the cause of winning above their personal enrichment, Weinstein said. By contrast, the Afghan security forces lacked the will to fight and were demoralized by a corrupt and disorganized government and officer corps. When the Taliban began to sweep the country ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, many Afghans surrendered en masse.

The Afghan government and security forces fragility was not just a product of Trump, but ofa failed bipartisan effort over the course of decades to build durable state infrastructure and military power in Afghanistan. That project replicated a classic rentier state problem, where money from outside countries flowed to corrupt local elites, instead of toward trusted institutions with mass buy-in from the native population. The entire enterprise of remaking Afghanistan was a failure, and that was a product of the entire U.S. foreign policy apparatus ideological and strategic errors.

Theres no pretty way to end something as ugly as war particularly if youve lost.

The Biden administration also deserves blame for trying to maintain the illusion that this project was working. The NSC review argues that the administration failed to make evacuations of vulnerable Afghan partners such as interpreters more of an urgent priority only because it wanted to avoid signaling a lack of confidence in the ANDSF [Afghan security forces] or the Afghan governments position. But the game of trying to maintain the appearance of the governments legitimacy ultimately led to many Afghan translators being left behind an unconscionable outcome.

There were of course high-profile tragedies in the final days of the withdrawal the Islamic State suicide bombing that killed scores of Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. service members, as well as a retaliatory drone strike that accidentally targeted civilians. But in the scheme of a war that killed thousands upon thousands of Afghan civilians, its hard to look at those horrible events as a problem of withdrawal. Had the U.S. stayed longer, many more innocent people wouldve died for a pointless war. Theres no pretty way to end something as ugly as war particularly if youve lost.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily.

Originally posted here:
Biden shouldn't just blame Trump for the Afghanistan withdrawal mess - MSNBC

Updated April 13, 2023 at 9:05 a.m. EDT|Published April 13, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

At night, as his wife and seven children sleep in their Baltimore apartment, the former Afghan warrior lies awake in pain, worried and angry.

His prosthetic left leg the one he needs after losing the real one in a 2017 firefight leans against a wall, the dull metal catching the moonlight.

In the next room sits the accordion file folder where A. Tabesh, 39, keeps the commendation he received for rescuing a wounded American CIA officer during the same battle.

He was a member of a clandestine U.S.-trained counterterrorism force known as the Zero Units, drawing backslapping praise from American handlers who called him brother and hatred from Taliban leaders who accused the group of war crimes.

When he got to the United States, Tabesh expected a heros welcome. Instead, his immigration status is in limbo, unpaid bills are piling up, and his familys new home is in a neighborhood plagued by violent crime.

Its been four days that I have been unable to sleep because of this hurt, this pain I feel, Tabesh, whose full name is not being used because he has relatives still in Afghanistan, said through a Dari interpreter. I lost my leg because of them.

Many of the 85,500 Afghan nationals who arrived in the United States as part of the massive U.S. evacuation in August 2021 are also struggling for stability. But the hardships are even more acute among the former Afghan special operations forces who fought alongside Americans and now suffer from battle trauma, according to nonprofit groups seeking to help those fighters.

As they wait on visa applications or U.S. asylum petitions bogged down in government bureaucracy, many struggle with depression or suicidal thoughts. Others say they would rather return to Afghanistan or even neighboring Iran, where they could at least understand the language.

With a proposed Afghan Adjustment Act which would give most Afghan refugees permanent legal status unlikely to pass Congress any time soon, former American counterparts worry about the fate of the Zero Units, arguing that the Biden administration is neglecting what was a key asset during the war.

The moral injury is pretty immense, said Daniel Elkins, a U.S. Army Green Beret who co-founded the Special Operations Association of America advocacy group. We know that there would be more of our community buried in Arlington National Cemetery today if it were not for our Afghan allies who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with us.

A. Tabesh and his family relocated to the United States in 2021, after troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Since then, he has struggled for stability. (Video: Joy Yi, Antonio Olivo/The Washington Post)

The CIA created the Zero Units early in the Afghan war, initially recruiting from among anti-Taliban militias for help with gathering intelligence and carrying out covert missions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Over time, the units evolved into an elite strike force whose members hailed from various branches of the Afghan military. Not even family members knew what they did or who employed them.

The units were officially incorporated into the Afghan governments National Directorate of Security intelligence agency in 2009, though the CIA still advised the fighters on thousands of missions carried out with U.S. military logistical support.

They killed or captured enemy targets in nightly raids while protecting government-held areas against incursions an unyielding storm of firefights, bomb blasts and sniper attacks, with little sleep in between, that frequently left their members dying in the dark.

When the Afghan government collapsed in August 2021, Zero Unit soldiers collected U.S. civilian personnel and members of the NATO coalition from their homes, shepherding them through the chaos and crowds outside the Kabul airport while also guarding its perimeter. Some of them were shot during the confusion, by the Taliban or someone else.

The reason Americans got out of that country, the reason coalition personnel got out of that country, was because of the Zero guys, said a former U.S. government official with knowledge of the units, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to discuss the group. There are dozens of instances where they put themselves in the line of fire to save Americans.

With those missions, though, came reports of human rights abuses and potential war crimes by the Zero Units. In 2019, Human Rights Watch documented 14 cases in which Zero Unit soldiers allegedly tortured or killed civilians during attacks in Taliban-controlled areas that were based on faulty intelligence.

A CIA spokesperson said such reports do not reflect the realities of a war where the Taliban often placed innocent people in harms way and distorted the details of events. The operations included U.S. government oversight when executed to ensure that no abuses occurred, a policy that was strictly enforced, the agency said.

Whether the allegations were true, the groups image was tarnished among Afghans including in the United States and the stigma has followed the several thousand former Zero Unit fighters now in this country.

We are losing our minds, one former unit commander said, adding that the hardships he and his colleagues endured during the war are being ignored. People have used bombs and all kinds of things on us. Were mentally and physically tired.

Calling on Blackbird

Sameer, a former captain in the Zero Units, was living at a temporary refugee site at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Northern Virginia four months after the fall of the Afghan government. Injured, lost and in despair over what to do next after being stuck in the resettlement camp while a wounded brother was hospitalized in Bethesda, he considered ending his life, asking himself: How am I here now?

Then he thought of the former CIA counterterrorism expert he met weeks earlier when she visited the camp, whom he knew only as Blackbird.

Blackbird, whose real name is Geeta Bakshi, convinced Sameer to remain strong, saying anything that came to mind during a late-night phone call to help him feel he wasnt alone.

Bakshi, who helped train Zero Unit fighters in Afghanistan, was fielding dozens of such frantic phone calls from former members. She said one confided: There are times when I just think to myself, Just drive your truck into a wall.

After leaving the CIA that April, Bakshi founded a nonprofit organization aimed at helping former Afghan military personnel, calling it FAMIL family in Dari.

There are times when I just think to myself, Just drive your truck into a wall.

She said she saw the need for FAMIL during her October visit to Quanticos tent city, which housed former Zero Unit members along with Afghan civilians. The fighters told her their families were going hungry, while overworked resettlement agency caseworkers didnt return phone calls.

There were children running around without clothes on, she said.

With several former CIA leaders serving as board members or advisers, FAMILs staff of three and a network of volunteers work to help the former Afghan soldiers many of them seriously wounded navigate the U.S. benefits system, find English classes and develop new job skills.

Often, they serve as go-betweens with resettlement agencies working toward the same goals. But it hasnt been easy.

The Zero Unit fighters are eligible for special immigrant visas, or SIVs, that are reserved for Afghans and Iraqis who helped the United States during the wars in their countries; the visas grant them legal permanent residency and a pathway to U.S. citizenship. Yet many of the fighters still have not received letters from the U.S. government confirming their work essential for advancing their applications. The wait is a source of worry as the two-year clock on their status as individuals granted humanitarian parole winds down toward expiration this summer.

Still more fighters are stuck in a federal government backlog of visa applications and U.S. asylum petitions numbering in the tens of thousands caused in part by a staff shortage at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency processing those applications, immigration attorneys say. That leaves them ineligible for federal disability payments, other government services and jobs that require a green card.

The State Department said it is working to expedite the SIV application process for all applicants after adding staff to its SIV program. The CIA said it is assisting in that effort with respect to the Zero Units and others who have helped the agency.

Since January 2021, nearly 21,000 such visas have been issued, the State Department said. Still waiting for approval are 14,000 principal applicants and their family members.

Its frustrating, Bakshi said, about the wait. There is a lot of vetting on these individuals. For them to be in a waiting period for an indefinite period of time is very difficult. Its emotionally difficult, and its pragmatically difficult.

In Kabul, Tabesh would often sleep with a pistol under his pillow, in case someone learned where he and his family lived. It was part of a life undercover after the former Afghan government intelligence officer joined the Zero Units in 2007.

The fighters blended into Afghan society, to more easily tap into enemy intelligence and to know if something amiss pointed to a security risk for Afghan or U.S. officials in the area. But they were occasionally discovered.

That happened to Tabesh shortly after he was first shot in a battle in 2009, receiving a bullet through the chest. During a family visit to his home village, where the Taliban had a large presence, a resident asked about Tabeshs still-noticeable wounds. Tabesh said they were from a car accident, but the villager loudly accused him of working with the Americans. He stopped going back, skipping his mothers funeral when she died in 2019.

His fellow fighters, including the American advisers, became his extended family. They watched over one another on and off the battlefield, including the night in 2017 that led to Tabesh losing his leg.

His unit was seeking a top-level commander with the Islamic State-Khorasan terrorist group in Parwan province. As the fighters headed toward the mans compound at about 1 a.m., a sniper fired, wounding one of Tabeshs men.

Tabesh and an American adviser on the mission known to the group only as White, his radio call sign began pulling their colleague out of the line of fire, and the sniper struck again, this time wounding the American.

Within seconds, four more Zero Unit fighters were hit. But White was now lying directly in the snipers line of sight.

Tabesh and two colleagues raced toward the American but when those two were also shot, Tabesh continued on his own, crouching, and dragged White to a land barrier about 30 feet away.

He noticed while doing so that some radio equipment had fallen. Knowing that would be a valuable intelligence prize for the enemy, Tabesh ran back from the land barrier to retrieve it.

Thats when a snipers bullets blew holes through his leg and groin. Lying there bleeding, unsure whether hed live, he heard excited ISIS-K radio chatter over his earpiece and more gunfire. Then he saw a spotlight from an American helicopter overhead, which unleashed a storm of artillery rounds toward the compound. Tabesh destroyed the phones and equipment he had on him, then dragged himself down a small hill, where he was rescued. White and the wounded fighters were also saved.

Years later, Tabesh beamed with pride in recounting the incident, initially leaving out the fact that American military surgeons twice amputated parts of his leg in agonizing attempts to save it before ultimately cutting it off at the hip.

Asked why he risked his life for White, Tabesh said: Because we are a whole family when we go into a mission. It requires us to be like a family, to rescue our family members.

A letter written in Dari and English under an Afghan government seal commended Tabesh for his prideful bravery and wished him success and good luck in the future. Tabesh said that at the time he considered that gesture of appreciation his familys ticket to a good life in America.

I did a big thing, he told his wife and their children as they were anxiously preparing to flee Kabul four years later, reminding them of the incident. Theyre going to support us. We wont have to struggle with life.

We are going to deal with it

Tabesh buckled on his prosthetic leg and, thrusting his pelvis forward in a rotating motion, awkwardly stepped along a set of parallel bars.

One step at a time, Bakshi told him through an interpreter that late November morning inside a prosthetics and orthotics facility in Linthicum Heights, Md. She meant it two ways: the walking practice he would have to put in, and the new life he was living.

Tabesh had waited nearly a year for his new leg, using forearm crutches to get around, just as he had in Afghanistan after ditching a wooden leg that was too painful to use.

Often, he simply sat inside his familys apartment.

Im ashamed of the life I have, Tabesh said.

FAMIL made arrangements for the prosthetics facility, Dankmeyer, to manufacture a titanium leg for Tabesh after nothing had come from resettlement agency caseworkers assurances that theyd get that done. Bakshi learned that the $25,000 expense could be covered by Medicaid benefits available to some refugees.

I am ashamed of the life I have.

Because his SIV application is still pending after three years, Tabesh does not qualify for federal disability payments. His 34-year-old wife is busy caring for the children 9 months to 15 years in age but has been taking English courses in hopes of eventually finding work.

The resettlement agency assisting his family of nine had placed them in a three-bedroom apartment in Baltimores Druid Hill Park neighborhood, where aggravated assaults and armed robberies are frequent. After a neighbor was held up at gunpoint inside the building, Tabesh considered getting a gun to protect his family.

But they couldnt afford the $1,300 monthly rent. The $11,000 in State Department welcome money allocated to the family when they arrived meant to cover basic expenses for about three months was long gone. The resettlement agency had stopped paying rent to their landlord, leading to an eviction notice that Tabeshs two eldest sons had discovered taped to their door when returning from school.

With their still wobbly English, they pieced together that the family had 10 days to clear out their belongings if the $4,302 they owed wasnt paid. The agency has since arranged for the rent to be paid through state of Maryland funds but that program expires in June.

One day, Tabeshs 7-year-old daughter, Frida, came home from school crying after some Afghan schoolmates, apparently overhearing their parents gossip about the familys troubles, told her she would soon be homeless.

We are going to deal with it, Tabesh promised his child, feigning confidence.

See the original post here:
They helped the CIA in Afghanistan. Now they're suffering in America. - The Washington Post

On the morning of August 26, 2021, a sweaty young American diplomat named Sam Aronson stood in body armor near the end of a dusty service road outside the Kabul airport, contemplating the end of his life or his career.

Thirty-one and recently married, 5 foot 10 without his combat helmet, Sam surveyed the scene at the intersection near the airports northwest corner, where the unnamed service road met a busy thoroughfare called Tajikan Road. Infected blisters oozed in his socks. He winced at gunfire from Afghan Army soldiers who fired over the heads of pedestrians in a crude form of crowd control. He breathed exhaust from trucks that jittered past market stalls shaded by tattered rugs and faded canvas. The withdrawal of American forces after two decades of war, the sudden fall of Kabul to the Taliban, and the mad rush to the airport by tens of thousands of desperate Afghans couldnt stop street vendors from hawking cotton candy, vegetables, and on-the-spot tailoring.

Eleven days earlier, Sam had been home in Washington, D.C. He possessed only a laymans knowledge of Central Asia; hed spent the previous two years at the American embassy in Nigeria, and had been a State Department bodyguard before that, for Ambassador Samantha Power and others. But, ambitious and allergic to inactivity, hed volunteered to join the skeleton staff in Kabul overseeing the frenzied evacuation.

Now, as a U.S. Foreign Service officer and vice consul, Sam had the power to grant U.S. entry to people with American passports, visas, and green cards, as well as to the nuclear families of qualified Afghans who had helped the United States and might face Taliban reprisals. Once approved, evacuees were assigned seats aboard military cargo planes whose takeoffs and landings created a white noise that hummed in Sams ears. By the morning of the 26th, the emergency airlift had already evacuated more than 100,000 people. In two more days, the operation would end.

Sam felt like a lifeguard in a tsunami. He and a few colleagues could review the documents of only a tiny fraction of the thousands of people pressed against the airport walls. State Department rules handed down from Washington required him to deny entry to extended familiesmen, women, and children who clutched at him and begged for their lives. The improvised, chaotic screening process forced Sam to make quick decisions that might be reversed at subsequent checkpoints.

Then Sam discovered a loophole: a secret airport entrance, nicknamed Glory Gate, that had been created by CIA paramilitary operatives, the U.S. Armys elite Delta Force, and Afghan Army soldiers. The service road where he stood was a hidden-in-plain-sight path that led from Tajikan Road to a gap in the airport wall. If he could bring people in through that back door, Sam realized, he could approve them himself in freelance rescues that skirted the bureaucratic process entirely. That is, if he could avoid getting himself or anyone else killed.

Sam faced a terrible choice: follow the State Departments shifting, confusing, infuriating policies about whom he could save, or follow his conscience and risk his life and career to rescue as many imperiled people as he could.

As the morning heat rose toward 90 degrees, Sam concluded that he had no choice after all.

To surreptitiously bring in evacuees on foot, someone would need to go beyond the end of the service road, cross Tajikan Road, walk more than 100 meters through the bustling street market, and collect at-risk Afghans at the Panjshir Pump, a 24-hour gas station used by the CIA and others as a transit point for evacuees. Then theyd need to retrace their steps without drawing hostile attention from the street crowds or the Taliban fighters who regularly cruised past in pickup trucks.

Unarmed, Sam was not allowed to step beyond the end of the Glory Gate service road. Even being that far outside the airport walls exposed him to danger of kidnapping or death. He needed an accomplice.

Upon his arrival in Kabul, Sam had befriended a 20-year-old Afghan man with a California-surfer vibe who could have passed for his younger brother. Asadullah Asad Dorrani had spent two years working as a translator for the U.S. Special Forces. Asad had been offered seats on multiple flights, but he refused to leave without his sister, her husband, and their two young children.

Unlike Sam, Asad wasnt bound by U.S.-government limits on where he could travel. Then again, involving Asad in Sams Glory Gate plan would put the young mans life at risk.

They connected over WhatsApp and made a deal: Sam would help Asad save his sisters family, and Asad would escort Sams rescue targets from the Panjshir Pump to the service road.

Sam and Asads test case was an Afghan teenager. His older brother and guardian, Ebad, had worked for the U.S. embassy in Kabul, which qualified Ebad, his wife, and their children for evacuationbut not his brother. I take care of him, Ebad pleaded. He doesnt have anyone else. Hes all alone. It pained Sam to imagine the fate of a 17-year-old on the cusp of manhood in a city under Taliban control.

With Asad translating, Sam spoke by phone with Ebads brother and directed him to the Panjshir Pump. Sam told Ebads brother to whisper devils when approached by a young Afghan man in body armor. Asad had chosen the password because he thought it sounded like something from a movie.

Sam needed the cooperation of the covert American operator who ran Glory Gate, a combat-hardened, thick-bearded man in his 40s whose call sign was Omar. He explained the plan, and Omar agreed to help. On Omars signal, Afghan paramilitary guards under his command created a distraction by firing their weapons over the heads of passersby. At a break in traffic, Asad sprinted from the service-road entrance into Tajikan Road. He cut through an opening in a median strip, crossed to the far side, and wove through the restless crowd east toward the gas station.

Days earlier, Asad had seen Afghan soldiers fired on by a sniper at the North Gate, an incident that left one dead. But risking his life for Ebads brother might enable Asad to do the same for his sisters family. He told himself, If there is a chance, Im going to take it.

Sam waited anxiously at the edge of Tajikan Road. He knew that Asad could find himself with a bulls-eye on his back, if for no other reason than his American-issued body armor.

Sam also worried about his career. No one in the State Department knew that hed recruited a young Afghan interpreter. For all practical purposes, Asad was this random Afghan guy I met in the passenger terminal. Now Sam had sent him outside the wire to grab some other random Afghan guy who didnt qualify as a nuclear-family member of an embassy staffer.

What if he gets taken by the Taliban? Sam thought. Ultimately, the State Department, the White House, is responsible, but I will have caused that disaster. If anything goes wrong, Asad is fucked. Im fucked. My career is over.

After long minutes of waiting, Sam saw Asad sprinting toward him with a wide-eyed young man in tow. Sam and a security contractor pulled them behind Hesco bastions, dirt-filled barriers that looked like huge hay bales.

The security contractor searched Ebads brother for weapons or explosives. Finding none, the next challenge was getting the teenager past diplomatic and military security, then reconnecting him with Ebad. First, Sam realized he needed to do one more thing.

Hold up, lets take a picture, Sam said. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., Sam texted it to Ebad with a two-word caption: Got him.

Ebad replied: I will remember your kindness for ever.

Goosebumps rose on Sams sunburned forearms. He recognized that hed crossed a line.

Once inside the passenger terminal, Sam faked his confidence, adopting a dont-bother-me demeanor. He didnt want to explain what hed done, and he didnt want anyone to learn that the young man wasnt part of an embassy staffers nuclear family. If that happened, Ebads brother would be thrown back into the crowds, and Sam might be relieved of duty and ordered onto the next plane.

Sam rushed Ebads brother past the State Department screening officials stationed outside the terminal. He muttered special-interest case, to falsely suggest that he was acting under a higher government authority. It worked.

So Sam began plotting to bring others through Glory Gate.

A diplomatic-security officer whod been in the military gave Sam a ride back toward Tajikan Road. Having seen what Sam had accomplished, the officer turned to him with a question: Can you help me with my old interpreter? He worked with me up in Mazar-i-Sharifthe scene of fierce battlesand Ive been trying to figure out a way to get his family in this whole time.

Sam thought, Why are you asking me for permission? If the officer wanted to pull in his onetime interpreter, Sam thought he could simply do it himself. Then it dawned on Sam: The security officer understood the system. Only a State Department consular official like Sam had the authority to designate someone as an at-risk Afghan eligible to enter the airport. Sam nodded. He told the officer to give his interpreter directions to the Panjshir Pump.

When Sam returned to the edge of Tajikan Road, he learned that Asads sister, Taiba Noori, was too afraid to make a run for the airport. On a teary phone call, Taiba had told Asad: Im sorry, I cant do it My children might get hurt.

Call her again, Sam insisted. Tell her we just made this work. We did the proof of concept. Shes not going to be the first one. This will work!

Asad called back. Worn down, Taiba and her husband, Noorahmad Noori, agreed to go to the Panjshir Pump with their 5-year-old son, Sohail, and 3-year-old daughter, Nisa.

The Noori family reached the Panjshir Pump at about the same time as the security officers former interpreter, his wife, and their two young children. Sam decided that on this second run, they should attempt to bring in both families at once, a total of eight people, an exponential leap from the single target of Ebads brother. Sam filled in Omar, who again signaled Afghan paramilitary guards to scatter the crowd with gunfire. Asad ran into Tajikan Road.

Sam paced with anxiety. As the minutes passed, he noticed several Afghan men edging toward a cement wall 150 meters to the west, apparently intending to climb over and sprint toward the airport, even if it meant risking gunfire. Two of Omars Afghan soldiers opened fire low above the mens heads. The would-be wall jumpers retreated.

Amid the gunfire, Sam spotted Asad running toward him, breathing heavily, carrying Sohail. Taiba ran toward Sam, screaming as she dragged Nisa by the hand. Noorahmad carried their bags. As bullets from the Afghan guards buzzed low over their heads, Sam put himself between danger and the people he needed to protect.

He yelled at Taiba to pick up Nisa, thenspun the mother and daughter around and placed himself squarely behind them. He hoped the steel plates in his body armor would shield them if anyone shot in their direction from the street. Explosions of gunfire and stun grenades mixed with Taibas cries.

Okay, Sam shouted, lets move!

Sam led them down the service road into a protective alcove within an alley of cement blast walls.

Sit down, sit down, he told them.

Sam grabbed water bottles that felt as warm as toast and gave them to Asad and his sisters family. The interpreter and his family took cover nearby. Sam exchanged fist bumps with Sohail and Nisa, which made the children smile. Asad radiated relief. Still Taiba wept.

Youre safe now, Sam said.

Back inside the airport, Sams off-book evacuation initiative came under sudden threat from his bosses, who still didnt know what hed been doing.

His supervisor cornered Sam as he entered the barn-shaped building that the State Department and the U.S. military used as a command center. Good, there you are, she said. I need you for a special project. Ive got to run out for 10 minutes. Sit tight. Ill be right back.

She disappeared, and Sam tried not to lose what remained of his cool. Earlier that day, the last official gate to the airport had been closed for security reasons. Im just getting this thing going, he thought. Now shes going to pull me for something else? If Im not out there doing this, nobody will be.

He thought about disobeying her order to wait, but that didnt seem wise. He could tell her what hed been doing and ask permission to continue, but she might order him to stop. Shit, Sam thought. How am I going to get out of this?

He texted a colleague on the small State Department team and asked for help. He explained his unsanctioned evacuations at Glory Gate. Shes trying to pull me for some bullshit project, but Im getting people off the road right now. If she pulls me, were not getting anybody else in.

Sams colleague, older and more experienced in the art of bureaucratic avoidance, calmed him down. He also recognized a way he could capitalize on Sams enterprise.

Dude, youre getting people in? Ive got a family Ive been trying to get in this whole time.

Sams colleague wanted to help a former interpreter from his Army days, to repay the man for saving his life more than a decade earlier. Sam told him: If you can do damage control to distract her or something so she doesnt realize Im gone, Ill go get your interpreters family in, plus others.

The colleague agreed to provide cover.

As more people learned what he was doing, Sams list of target names grew longer.

To keep track, he used a Sharpie to write descriptions and coded names on his left forearm and the back of his left hand. For instance, the security officers former interpreter and his three family members from Mazar-i-Sharif became 4 Mazar. Each time Sam and Asad brought in another group, Sam drew a line through the code. The skin on his arm soon looked like the work of an amateur tattoo artist, covered with crossed-out names of ex-lovers.

During one van ride back to Tajikan Road around 2:30 p.m., Sam realized that he hadnt eaten anything all day except two Nutri-Grain bars. He found a brown plastic bag of military rations on the van floor marked Menu 4: Spaghetti With Beef and Sauce and shoveled the cold gruel into his mouth.

Sams frenetic pace put him in conflict with an embassy email sent that day to all the State Department team members in Kabul. With the tone of a wellness letter, it told them to stay hydrated, fed, and rested, and noted that the team was already short-staffed because of illness and fatigue. The email sounded an ominous note as well, instructing them to keep their bags packed and to be ready to leave within 30 minutes in case of emergency.

Back at Tajikan Road, Sam learned that Glory Gates intelligence operators had received a warning of a terrorist car bomb heading their way. If it wasnt intercepted, they expected it to arrive sometime in the next two hours.

Ignoring an impulse to run as far and as fast as he could, Sam sent a voice message to the colleague who was helping him, cautioning that a car bomb might complicate plans to rescue his old interpreter. Im going to try to get your guys, Sam said, shouting over low-flying planes, but things are really fucking fluid, and weve got to move fast because theyre probably going to shut this gate and boot us pretty soon.

Sam and Asad brought in two more families, again using his special-interest case swagger in the terminal. Next, eight Afghan women who were American citizens or green-card holders. The women were members of Afghanistans Hazara population, a persecuted ethnic and religious minority who feared genocide under the Taliban.

Meanwhile, Sam watched American covert operatives take defensive action to prevent any terrorist vehicles from entering Glory Gate. They moved blast walls with a forklift and positioned an armored personnel carrier sideways across the service road. When Sam asked one of the gatekeepers for details, he said: Be ready to pull back. If we say run, run.

Sam could only hope that if he got that message, he would have time to call Asad and bring him in. Sam told himself this mission would be Asads last, no matter what. Asad would be on a plane with his sisters family by nightfall, even if Sam had to drag him on personally.

When they reached the passenger terminal on the days final trip, Sam handed off the Hazara women and the interpreter and his family to another State Department colleague. Sam noted the time: 5:08 p.m. As he looked at his watch, he could see that hed crossed out every Glory Gate target name on his left forearm.

On that one day, August 26, Sam, Asad, and a pair of State Department security officerswith help from American intelligence operatives, Special Operations Forces, and Afghan paramilitary troopspersonally brought 52 people, from 13 families, through Glory Gate. (Several hundred Afghans whod worked at the U.S. embassy also passed through the gate on buses.)

But there were others Sam had turned down. A United Nations program officer whose family theyd rescued texted him in the afternoon: My sister and family 4 people are also waiting if possible can you plz help them. She has two kids. His sister worked at the Afghan presidential palace, and her husband was a contractor for the Americans and the British.

Sorry, Sam replied. Im on the last group Im allowed to grab. Theyre shutting down this gate.

This refusal, among others, would haunt Sam: For every at-risk Afghan theyd helped, countless others remained in peril.

Outside the Americans command center, Sam stopped in a courtyard to smoke a cigarette, a new habit hed picked up to calm his nerves. He crushed the butt under his heel and went in. Dehydrated, limping from his blisters, caked in sweat and dust, Sam peeled off his helmet and body armor and sank onto a couch.

At that moment, less than a mile away, a former engineering student named Abdul Rahman Al-Logari walked among several hundred fellow Afghans waiting to be searched by Marines outside the Abbey Gate. Under his clothing, he wore a 25-pound explosive vest. While U.S. officials searched on the ground and from the air for a car bomb, Logari arrived on foot. He drew close to American servicemen and -women clustered near other Afghans.

At 5:36 p.m., he detonated his suicide bomb.

Ball bearings the size of peas tore through the crowd, killing 13 U.S. troops and at least 170 Afghans. The bomb seriously wounded dozens of other U.S. military personnel and many more Afghans seeking evacuation. Bodies filled the open sewage canal that divided the roadway leading to the Abbey Gate. Screams of pain and grief filled the air. Survivors raced to rescue others. Some tried to climb the airport walls. Believing they were under attack by ISIS-K gunmen, Marines opened fire.

Word of the terrorist attack spread instantly through the command center. A voice boomed: Attention. Unconfirmed report of a blast at the Abbey Gate. Stand by for more information.

Sam jolted from the couch to full alert. Warnings sounded about follow-up attacks. One report, which turned out to be mistaken, claimed that a second bomb had exploded at the Baron Hotel, across from the Abbey Gate. Sam heard a report of a grenade tossed over the airport wall. Another alert said terrorists had breached the airport, but soon that report was withdrawn.

Oh my God, Sam thought. This just keeps going on and on.

The alert system resumed, with a blaring siren warning of an imminent rocket attack. A robotic female voice repeated: Incoming, incoming, incoming. Take cover.

As he huddled in a corner, Sam remembered a lesson hed learned days earlier: If he heard the whirring engine of an incoming rocket, he needed to sing, to save his lungs from the blast pressure.

While he waited for an explosion or an all-clear signal, Sam texted his wife: Youre going to see something on the news shortly. Im okay.

If they offer you a plane out, she replied, do not be the hero who stays.

But he did stay, until the very end, and saved more people, in even more harrowing nighttime rescues that took him beyond Glory Gate into the chaos of Tajikan Road.

He left Kabul late on August 28, on one of the last planes out.

To Sams relief, when his bosses in Kabul and back in D.C. learned about his unauthorized actions at Glory Gate, they werent angry. Hed helped vulnerable people without triggering a catastrophe, so Sam was hailed for his initiative rather than punished for his defiance. A commendation letter described Sam as a hero amid the apocalyptic scene in Kabul.

A separate letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Sam for his commitment, bravery, and humanity. It concluded: I am honored to be part of your team.

And yet, Sam says his supervisor denied his request for a couple of days off to recover. Despite a pledge from Blinken that no one returning from Kabul would be penalized for seeking therapy, Sam was told to inform the medical office that hed seen a State Department psychologist, which Sam believed could have triggered a career-threatening mental-health review. Sam pushed back and the request was dropped. Eventually, feeling that he needed a bigger change, he resigned from the State Department and took a job on the global-policy team of a tech company.

Sam remained in regular contact with Asad, who settled in Michigan near his family. When Asad visited Washington, Sam took him to an Afghan restaurant to catch up.

For several months after his return, Sam had nightmares. He drank bourbon or wine to help him sleep. A woman in a headscarf with two young children begging for money outside a Target sparked flashbacks. He felt the dry air, heard the gunshots, and began to tremble. He broke out in tears on the ride home.

Sam felt proud of what hed accomplished in Kabul. During the last days of a lost war, in a hostile place where he didnt belong and shouldnt have been, hed put the lives of others above his own. But he also carried guilt for all those he couldnt help, and for all the people hed turned away before discovering Glory Gate.

I followed those orders, he says. If I could do it all over again, Id say screw the rules and let them in.

This article was adapted from the forthcoming book The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan.

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Afghanistan's Evacuation: The Heroes of Glory Gate - The Atlantic

One night in October 2009, Mohammad Aalem was at home in Afghanistans Wardak province with his children and two brothers.

What Aalem says happened next is burned into his memory: U.S. forces blew up the gate to his home and began firing. It was one of the controversial night raids that would become a hallmark of Americas counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan.

My brother was sleeping in his bed with his children, Aalem, a taxi driver, tells correspondent Martin Smith about his brother, a police officer, in the above excerpt from Part Two of America and the Taliban. When he opened the [bedroom] door, they instantly killed him.

Pointing to his cheek, one shoulder, his chest and then the other shoulder, Aalem says of his brothers death, They shot him here and over here and here. They shot him in all these places.

Wardak province was a hotbed of Taliban activity at the time.That night, in his guest house, there were guests, Aalem says: I dont know if they were [Taliban]. We are people from rural Afghanistan. If anyone comes, we give them food.

But neither he nor his brothers were Taliban, Aalem says.

Aalems story unfolds in Part Two of America and the Taliban, which premiered Tuesday, April 11, 2023, on PBS and online. Over the course of the series, award-winning producers Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith chronicle how what began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as an effort to eliminate Al Qaeda and eliminate its ruling ally, the Taliban, became Americas longest war, with nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians, almost 70,000 members of the Afghan national military and police forces, and approximately 2,400 American service members killed and how it ended in defeat in August 2021 with U.S. troops withdrawing, the Western-backed government collapsing, and the Taliban once again in control.

Part Two of America and the Taliban focuses on how the war effort, which started under George W. Bush, played out during Barack Obamas presidency. In reporting the documentary, Smith found that Aalem was not alone in his experience and that a pattern of Afghan civilian casualties incurred during raids and other errant attacks severely undercut the U.S. militarys effort to win hearts and minds in the country, including that of Afghan leadership.

President Karzai increasingly became bitter, Omar Zakhikwal, a former minister in then-Afghan President Hamid Karzais government, tells Smith. The raiding of houses and night raids he was strictly opposed to. But the thing that particularly annoyed President Karzai was the killing of civilians. And it repeatedly happened.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command from 2008-10 and of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan in 2010-11, apologized directly to Karzai after an airstrike killed nine children. In the above excerpt, Smith presses Petraeus on Afghan civilians killed or injured during raids and other operations by U.S. and coalition forces.

The accumulation of civilian casualties mistakes, all mistakes, to be clear I mean, we were very, very tough, says Petraeus, who made efforts to reduce civilian casualties. War is full of mistakes. Full of incredible loss, tragedy, heartbreak, hardship and casualties.

Retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a deputy national security advisor from 2007-13, tells Smith the U.S. response to Afghan civilian casualties was lacking.

We virtually never held anyone accountable for civilian casualties, Lute says in the above excerpt. I mean, we paid condolences and sometimes we said, It wasnt us. Or, Sorry, its a mistake. But we never held anybody accountable.

We virtually never held anyone accountable for civilian casualties. I mean, we paid condolences and sometimes we said, It wasnt us. Or, Sorry, its a mistake. But we never held anybody accountable.

- former deputy national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute

In the documentary, retired Army Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey, who served two rotations in Afghanistan, tells FRONTLINE the peace offerings the U.S. often made to Afghans whose family members were killed in errant strikes werent enough to stem the badwill.

They held those grudges and they did accumulate over time, not only in an individual action, but in the narratives our enemies were building about us being indiscriminate killers, Dempsey says. You know, our failure rate, if its 1, 2% out of hundreds and thousands of strikes per year, you can build a hell of a lot of stories about the evil Americans if youre screwing up 2%, and I guarantee we were screwing up more than that.

As for Aalem, he says that after his brother was killed, their house was then set on fire and he was taken to Bagram prison with another brother. He spent four years there and, he says, was never charged with any crime.

The experience turned him against the Americans. He says that after his release, he contemplated carrying out a suicide attack, but chose not to because I have young children. I didnt do it because I had to support my family.

As seen in the excerpt, to this day, Aalem gets choked up when talking about his brothers death at one point pausing the interview and leaving the room.

He wants to keep his brothers memory alive.They killed my brother, Aalem says. He was a police officer, a good one. He was on active duty, and on that night he had come home.

For the full story on how the U.S. lost the 20-year war in Afghanistan, watch America and the Taliban. Parts One and Two of the three-part series are available to stream now on FRONTLINEs YouTube channel, at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS Video App:

Part Three airs Tuesday, April 25 at 10/9c on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINEs YouTube channel, and will also be available to stream starting at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS Video App. America and the Taliban is a FRONTLINE production with RAIN Media, Inc. The producers are Brian Funck, Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith. The writers and directors are Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith. The correspondent is Martin Smith. The co-producer is Scott Anger. The executive producer and editor-in-chief for FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

This story has been updated.

Read more from the original source:
U.S. 'Virtually Never Held Anyone Accountable' for Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan War, Former White House Official Says - PBS

Queen Elizabeth II wanted both William and Harry to see active service fighting alongside other British soldiers in Afghanistan, but it was decided that it was too risky to send the second-in-line to the throne, a former head of the Army has said.

Although Harry and William both wanted to fight, the revelation that William was kept safe seems likely to fuel the sense that William was consistently given preferential treatment to Harry by the institution due to his position in the hierarchy, a key claim of Harrys book, Spare, which described William having a bigger bedroom and better furniture than him when they were children.

The revelation of the queens thoughts on the matter was made by the former head of the British army, General Sir Mike Jackson, in a new TV documentary.

Jackson said Elizabeth expressed her view that both her grandsons should fight, saying that she told him at a meeting: My grandsons have taken my shilling, therefore they must do their duty.

But, Jackson said, It was decided that William as heir to the heir, the risk is too great. But for his younger brother, the risk was acceptable.

Jackson made the comments in a new ITV documentary entitled The Real Crown, according to reports in British media including the Daily Mail and the Telegraph.

What goes on in those audiences and who says what to whom remains for the two people involved, and I will break the rule about not divulging what goes on on this one occasion, Jackson is quoted saying in the documentary.

Jackson said: William was very keen to go. Unequivocally. But it was complex, and some very great minds and experienced people took a view on it.

Harry undertook two tours of Afghanistan. William put his military training to use flying rescue helicopters.

In Spare, Harry said he killed 25 Taliban fighters, and that he was dehumanized by his training to see them as chess pieces removed from the board.

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Queen Elizabeth Wanted Prince William to Fight in Afghanistan Like Harry - The Daily Beast