islamist group. number one, and number two, allies all over the world, japan, korea, the middle east, latin america are all asking themselves today are we going to end up like these folks in kabul? maybe highly imperfect and so forth but put their trust in the united states and at the end of the day one fine day the president said contrary to the advice of my military advisers who tell me that with just 2500 troops we can make a go of it, we are leaving. trace: mollie, you can respond to that these people, these interpreters, these people who we depended on for years need to get out, we re trying right now to get them out. it s absolutely true that the pentagon did not make good exit plans in part because they were trying to trick president biden into staying there. that s what our pentagon has done. that is how they have been able to keep people there but the fact is that rather than focusing on what s in the taliban s interest, we need to be thinking about what is in our
personnel. the state department was trying to underscore this is not an evacuation. the embassy is remaining open. this is about enduring partnership still with afghanistan, but on the ground, people see this as an evacuation and as such, it s really contributing to this growing sense of panic as the situation deteriorates. my understanding is there s about, and correct me if i m wrong, about 3 or 4,000 people who work at the american embassy in kabul. how many of those are americans? how many are afghans and would the afghans be evacuated as well? well, that s the million dollar question and it s a question that was being hedged a lot. they weren t giving any sense of the numbers and beyond the people working in the embassy, anderson, there s also the tens of thousands of people who have worked with the embassy in some capacity. who have worked with the u.s. military in some capacity. the scores of translators, logistics operators.
devastating and again, it didn t happen overnight. this demoralization process, if you will, began the first day we sat down with the taliban and excluded the afghan government. what happens to, can kabul itself just hold on as, you know, we have seen afghan fragment in the past. obviously i know the central government is reaching out to the warlords trying to get them to kind of join in this fight and if the national army itself is not doing it, are there going to be pockets like sharif in the past in kabul? i think it s an important point, anderson. the taliban has made enormous gains on the ground but how many of them are there? how far can they go? because it s one thing to take territory. it s another thing to hold it. and i would guess they re probably pretty close to being a full stretch right now in terms
american pullout appears to be accelerating from a country if not on the brink of collapse, it s certainly falling. cl clarissa ward is on the ground in kabul. what s the latest you can tell us about the plans the u.s. government has put into motion about the american embassy? the situation is really going from bad to worse. 12 provincial capitals now under the control of the taliban. among them, harat, the third largest city in the country. also, kandahar appears to be on the brink of falling. this would be a huge one. it s a strategically important city. also the birthplace of the taliban, so it has a lot of symbolism behind it. because they re seeing how quickly things are unraveling, the u.s. state department and pentagon now saying they re going to be sending 3,000 u.s. troops in the next 24 to 48 hours. their mission is to simply help the withdrawal of u.s. embassy
to be pockets like sharif in the past in kabul? i think it s an important point, anderson. the taliban has made enormous gains on the ground but how many of them are there? how far can they go? because it s one thing to take territory. it s another thing to hold it. and i would guess they re probably pretty close to being a full stretch right now in terms of their capacity. again, i don t have any insight or information on this, but taking is one thing and holding is something else. so i think with the afghans in defense of kabul, it might cause this process to bog down a bit. not sure that s a good thing because what does that mean? basically mean a civil war as does ghani s appeal to the