From New York Times, I'm Michael Borrow. This is it, Ailey.

From the moment that Afghanistan fell to the Taliban,

Americans cannot and should not be fighting an war and dying in a war

that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

And in the weeks that have followed, the United States has put much of the blame

on Afghanistan's security forces. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force

with some 300,000 strong. A force that President Biden has said gave up without a fight.

We gave them every chance to determine their own future.

We could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.

But the security forces themselves have said little about what happened.

Today, a conversation with an Afghan general who worked closely with the US about why he thinks

the Taliban won and why he left in the middle of the fight.

It's Tuesday, September 28th.

Hi there. Hi, Michael. How are you? Good, good. How are you?

Very well. It's nice to meet you and nice to see you.

Thank you. I want to ask you just to introduce yourself for me.

You're your full name. You're titled the whole thing.

I'm Brigadier General Koshal Sadat. I was until three months ago, one of the deputy ministers

in Afghanistan for security. I joined the Afghan forces in 2003.

I pretty much raised through the ranks, commanding the country's special forces.

And then in 2019, I was selected by President Ghani to become one of the deputy ministers

at the Minister of Interior. Wow. So you've held some of the highest ranks within the Afghan

...