possible degree of celebration from the taliban declaring their independence. remember this is a country where the median age is about 18 years old. so, so many afghans have never known a country without an american presence in it. and we ve seen the taliban parading, particularly well armed taliban, parading through aircraft hangars on that military side of the airport near some of the helicopters that appear to have shipped to diplomats when they were using heli hartford cover to get around their daily commute. also to a press conference on that tarmac, essentially congratulating afghanistans on their new found independence. there is an enormous task ahead of the taliban. they no longer have the americans to blame for anything going wrong in afghanistan s economy. health care system, there is a banking crisis potentially unfolding as well. and the security threat of isis-k initially focused, it seemed on americans left at the airport, but also certainly too, the terror group, i morta
ground, et cetera? well, it doesn t it obviously does not replicate the capability we had by all the on-the-ground resources we had. but hearking back to history, i was in the intelligence community after 9/11, we have we re not starting from square a here. we know a lot more about afghanistan and the players there, and we ve learned a lot about how to conduct counterterrorism operations. so while we can t replicate having on-the-ground presence, i do believe we ll have substantial capabilities to monitor, surveil over the horizon. pakistan s role in all this has not been encouraging. it harbored the taliban for the last 20 years, gave them safe bases across the border across from afghan territory, and helped them organize their quick takeover of the country. is pakistan, can it be described as a u.s. ally any more for
importantly for the millions of afghans left behind. one enormous military effort over the last 20 years. nick payton walsh, thanks very much. let s go to the white house, cnn s jeremy diamond. jeremy, the president will speak today. what kind of future will he paint for afghanistan? reporter: well, listen, president biden left it up to the head of the u.s. central command and to his secretary of state to announce the end of the america s longest war. but today he will certainly have to mark that moment as a moment in history. president biden has talked since he came into office vowing that he would not pass this war on to a fifth commander in chief after becoming the fourth commander in chief to oversee this war. so i think he will certainly talk in broad scopes about what this moment in history means, and why he decided to make that decision. we have heard him defend his decision to withdraw u.s. troops for weeks now. but some questions president biden will have to answer,
for that, and that tempers their behavior, then yes, we would have leverage. if they don t, if they revert to the way they behaved before 9/11 and then we don t have so much leverage, in my view. the truth is their behavior even post 9/11 has not been encouraging. this is a group that carried out many, many terror attacks against afghan civilians, u.s. soldiers. we know al qaeda fighters were fighting alongside taliban militants as they advanced across the country. i just wonder, based on your experience with the taliban, do we have any reason to believe they will not offer safe haven to these kinds of groups, al qaeda and others? well, we ll see. they ve got a real problem on their hands with isis, the isis franchise in afghanistan, with whom they do not have a good relationship at all. so if they are fighting among
fortunately, though, as we learned from a briefing with the commander of the regional medical center, colonel landers, that all of them, all 20 service members are now in stable condition. they have actually been transferred to the walter reed hospital. and when they flew out, they were all conscious, communicating with staff. quite a few of them speaking directly with staff about how thankful they were for the care they got here. take a listen to what colonel landers had to say. they lost their brothers and sisters in arms. so from that standpoint it s hard to say, hey, i m feeling really great when they know they re feeling the loss of a teammate. but for their own personal set, they are all extremely thankful for the care that they received. reporter: now, in addition to those 20 service members, as you mentioned, there are at least ten afghan civilians who were also brought here to the hospital. they are here receiving treatment. we understand they are in stable condition as we