This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world.

I'm Fareed Zakaria. I will be back later with my take and the rest of the show.

But first, let me bring in Jim Sudo, who's here to tackle the latest news.

Thank you, Fareed. And here's what is happening right now inside Afghanistan.

The Taliban takeover has reached the one-week mark and multitudes of Afghans are still trying desperately

to flee their country. Almost 20,000 are now at the airport in Kabul waiting in the brutal sun, hoping they get that golden ticket out.

Secretary Blinken says 8,000 people were evacuated yesterday alone. All countries combined have now evacuated some 26,500 people.

At the Pentagon announced this morning, it had invoked something called the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which compels US commercial airlines to assist with the evacuation.

Meanwhile, President Biden is expected to talk to the American public again this afternoon about those efforts in Afghanistan,

to see an added 4pm eastern time to see exactly what he has to say.

Let's begin with my first two guests. Sami Madi is a top Afghan journalist who just flew out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

And Rita Amiri was born in Afghanistan, but has spent most of her life here in the US. She is a foreign policy professional who has worked to help her native country from abroad.

Among other roles, she was an advisor to Richard Holbrook when he was US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Thanks so much to both of you. It's good to have you here. Sami, I wonder if I could begin with you.

Is it as simple as this? That for people like you, journalists as well as for Afghans who worked with the American military and the American government,

that it is a question of life and death to leave to country, to live, you must go. Is that true?

Well, I think it's not just for me and other journalists, civil society activists or the people who work with the US military.

It's a question for over 30 million Afghans on the country.

The panic that you see around the Kabul airport, it shows the fact that people do not see any future under Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

It's just a reminder of 1990s for people. That's why people have panic and try to get out of the country as soon as possible in whatever way possible.

That says a lot about the Taliban and the picture they have been portraying about themselves that they have changed.

So, Rina, if that is true, and it is a consistent message, and I'm hearing it, as many of my colleagues and others are, from Afghans still inside the country about their loss of hope, about their fears for their own safety and their family safety.

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