harsh weather conditions are around the corner so that is a key concern as well for these agencies. i lljust share some startling statistics that we got from the un, from antonio gutierrez, just a couple of weeks ago. he said one third of afghans don t know where their next meal will come from and a half of children under five are expected to be malnourished in the next year. now, the thing that is interesting is it s notjust about money. it s also about manpower. you may recall that many, many aid workers left the country after the taliban took control of afghanistan and haven t been able to return back. now, the un is one agency that has always said it is committed to staying and delivering. and it was interesting because the un emergency relief coordinator was in the country last week and he had talks with the taliban and he has asked for written assurances from the taliban that they will be able to continue with their humanitarian programmes and hindered, in particular ensuring
know, tens of thousands of afghan lives and had a profound impact on the afghan people. so i think there will be a little disappointment that there wasn t more in the way of reassurance and recognition. but i also think people understand that the americans are really drawing a line under this and that this speech was intended, wolf, for domestic consumption, not for international consumption. yeah. we re showing our viewers some video of afghans who were so desperate for food. the country is in horrible shape right now. president biden urged safe passage. you were at the border between afghanistan and pakistan earlier today. do afghans have any real hope to get out safely either via the air or on ground? well, all the afghans have to go on right now is the taliban s word. and no one knows what that really means or what that counts for.
it, defiant tone. that s a good point. general marks, the president called this evacuation mission an extraordinary success. this was, in fact, the largest noncombatant evacuation in u.s. military history. more than 120,000 individuals mostly afghans were evacuated. the u.s. nato allies are doing the evacuation. but how do you think all of this will be judged. well, what we have seen over the past couple of weeks is the sausage being made, right? the way it s going to be judged is at the tactical level. we have had this conversation before. the tactical level, our service members always just do wonderful in terms of the tasks that they have to take on and the execution of those tasks. and they make their bosses look good. at the strategic level, it will be criticized, and it should be. there were other things that this administration could have done to get out of afghanistan. and i think the president continues to beat the drum on
at the university of afghanistan, 3,900 of whom did not get out and only about 100 did. yeah. that s so sad, indeed. you know, you spent a lot of time over there. the president may be ready to put this behind him. but clearly afghans don t have a lot of answers on what their future will look like, do they? no, they don t have a lot of answers at all. i mean, and you only need to look at the minds outside the banks in kabul to see what that fear looks like. people are lining up for hours and hours trying to take their entire life savings out of their bank accounts because they are so uncertain. this isn t just a question of people who might on a personal level fear reprisal attacks or fear that women s education is going to be stunted. this is about the very real fear, can the taliban effectively govern a country? they have been an insurgency for 20 years. before that when they were
america s leaders are literally saying they don t have the political will to fight the taliban, to use the power they have, to use the capability they have. the will to stand up. they have no honor at this point, no dignity, betrayed our allies, you talk a lot about who should be coming to back and all that but no one is talking about the fact we created this problem and we can fix it and we shouldn t be putting afghans don t want to offload to america. many do but what they really want is to have their country back and that is the heart of the problem and we have a lot of options we are not exercising right now. laura: this is a big schism in the gop, trump won this battle a long time ago, the public was already with trump in pulling out of afghanistan, they wanted to pull out of afghanistan ten years ago. obama understood that. can we do anything now to go back in after 20 years and fix this?