others, some of whom just couldn t get to kabul in time. david, going to leave it there unfortunately. david sanger, really appreciate it. great to be with you. thanks so much, michael. still to come here on the program, afghanistan s president has fled the country as the taliban took kabul. we ll take a look back at what is a complicated legacy. payday, payday
and that is the main focus of the effort today. we believe we have the troops in place, personnel in place to be able to execute that. that s moving forward in real time and has improved since some of these images aired. john, we appreciate you coming on. obviously, this say quickly moving situation with desperate folks there in kabul. thank you for joining us from the white house. thank you. i should note, as we were speaking, the u.s. has temporarily suspended all air operations at the kabul airport. we re told it s so troops can clear the air field of afghans who are swarming in, desperate to leave. next, another crisis for the biden administration. cnn with a firsthand look at the unprecedented surge of migrants at the u.s. southern border. plus on the ground in haiti after a devastating earthquake.
visas. i know potentially people who are awaiting status checks on those applications and it appeared that they would be able to get out of kabul. but now kabul has fallen. it doesn t appear that there s a plan for the u.s. government to provide safe passage for any of those people from their homes where they re holed up to the airport. can they get out without that, cl kw clarissa? reporter: there s no plan in place to evacuate these people safely. the u.s. barely able to keep a hold on the situation at the airport right now let alone try to extend some kind of corridor for people to leave through. so that is simply out of the question. the other problem you have is that there s this crush of humanity descending on the airport. vehicles clogging both lanes of traffic. scenes of people firing in the air to stop sort of stampede almost. people have been shot by stray
monitoring the situation from camp david over the weekend but has largely been absent as his administration s plan collapses for getting americans and afghans out of the country. the white house defending its decision to proceed with the withdrawal of all u.s. troops despite this clear miscalculation about the length of time they had, the strength or lack of of the afghan military and the strength of the taliban. the president expected to address the nation in the next few days, we re told, on this stunning fall of afghanistan. so let s go live to cnn s clarissa ward on the ground in kabul. i will say that response from the white house, clarissa, is sort of overshadowed by just how big a development this is in kabul, in afghanistan. tell us what you re seeing there on the ground. reporter: you know, brianna, it s pretty rare as a reporter that you feel like you re watching history in the making. but this is truly one of these
left to avoid bloodshed. kabul is a city on the move, residents desperate to escape. fear of what is to come has gripped every level of society, including former government ministers. deep down in my heart i keep telling myself i won t have to pay the price forjoining a government position. but now i might, i might face consequences that i never even dreamed of, and i guess that the price that we pay for trying to make this world a little better than when we came to it, particularly afghanistan. british troops have now arrived in kabul to evacuate uk nationals and afghans who worked with them. it s thought around 4000 in total are eligible to be airlifted out. criticism of the chaos now engulfing afghanistan is widespread. parliament will be recalled on wednesday to debate the crisis.