sort of tactics, the ball is in their court. you mean the taliban? pardon, yes, in the taliban s court. other than small part of the airport we control, they control the land mass of afghanistan right now. and they control the people in afghanistan right now. and they re the ones that decide who comes in and who doesn t. who gets to the airport and other airports and land borders. minutes ago the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, says we can t trust the taliban with american security. with the deadline five days away, at this point does the u.s. really have a choice? it seems like any of the options whether it s as you called snatch and grab or going out with the cooperation of the taliban or even ultimately commercial airlines reopening the airport, reopening americans being allowed to leave, it all
or are accessible, but how will americans be able to get out? well, again, i think that as indicated by secretary blinken that those that we know of we were able to get in contact with them. so, therefore, there will be information just as the information that took place to say that to stay away from the airport, stay away from the gates, don t go there because security was in jeopardy, there s mechanisms to stay in contact with them so that they can when it is time to get them out, they can get out safely and not just coming to the gate and waiting. by and large a lot of individuals that were at the gate, and unfortunately, they rushed the gate. some of the images, the terrible images that we ve seen, they ve rushed the gate and americans, if you look at the intelligence, they ve been asking folks and saying to many of them, don t
communicating, looking down from that blast wall with people on the ground desperate to get out. that is how people have been able to get in. in ones and twos. these very difficult choices being made by servicemen and women whose main role is securing the perimeter of the airport. these are usually paratroopers or marines. these are frontline combat troops having to make life and death decisions effectively for the afghan population that very soon in their minds, they knew america was going to effectively leave behind. so already tense moments, and now we know that four soldiers or service people have been killed as a consequence of this blast. now, the blast walls should or would have protected many more from getting more casualties, assuming this blast went off at ground level. the blast was also drive the force of the explosions upwards
in all probability, locations around the airport. so that s the one point. the second point is prior to that there was a sniper attack on one of the southern gates. again, likely to be an effort to not only kill an afghan soldier which is what they did, but also see how the different military organizations that are guarding the perimeter react. there s probing attacks delivered back to the attacker. important intelligence. potentially important intelligence as to how they might go about carrying out attacks. particularly if it s more than one suicide bombing. if they had plans to follow it up with had they been able to penetrate the perimeter, how would they have rushed the gate. that s something they did frequently in kabul itself, send in a suicide bomber or vehicle, smash through a gate, usually of a government institution, and then send fighters in. and, indeed, the network of the taliban have done that in the days they were fighting. the government not trying to be
the white house. we ll wait to see if we hear from president biden. one of the things that stands out in my mind is something that our clarissa ward said the day she was leaving afghanistan. she spoke to i believe it was a member of the british military forces who had served in a province. when she was at the airport he said to her he had done i think two hours in heldman province. but that what he had seen at the airport in the last in the last week, was harder than anything else he had seen in his time in afghanistan. what these troops, american and british, and others are having to witness just on a hour by hour basis, the desperation, the horrible choices that are made from the top of a wall about who gets in and who doesn t, babies being handed over, i mean, it is obviously that plus the constant