Taliban Gains, U.S. Evacuates: What's The Endgame In Afghanistan?

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🗓️ 13 August 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

In the last week, the Taliban have gained control of large sections of Afghanistan faster than most people expected. The Pentagon is dispatching troops to assist in evacuating staff from the American embassy in Kabul, where refugee camps are growing more crowded. The U.N. says the country may be on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price told Audie Cornish the 300,000-member Afghan military needs "the willpower" to stand up to the Taliban.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The situation in Afghanistan has gone from bad to worse.
0:04.3	It is an incredibly painful and difficult situation for the Afghan civilians, for women
0:10.8	and children.
0:11.8	We're talking about more than a million of ones being displaced.
0:15.2	We're talking about millions more who simply can't leave their homes.
0:19.4	They're stuck.
0:20.4	Belal Sirwari is a freelance journalist based in Kabul, the capital, which is still under
0:25.5	control of the Afghan government.
0:28.1	And elsewhere, the Taliban now control two-thirds of the country.
0:31.2	We have seen executions.
0:32.6	We have seen Taliban taking people captive who have disappeared.
0:38.7	Snepid suffered, has appeared on videos that we have seen.
0:42.1	As Sirwari spoke to NPR Friday morning, the Taliban were continuing their rapid takeover
0:47.3	of the country, following the withdrawal of U.S. troops this month.
0:51.3	On Thursday, after the Taliban captured the third largest city near Kabul, Pentagon
0:56.8	spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. would send several thousand troops back into the
1:02.2	country to help evacuate people in the U.S. embassy there.
1:06.7	We believe this is the prudent thing to do, given the rapidly deteriorating security situation
1:12.8	in and around Kabul.
1:14.3	So I think on Friday, NPR learned that embassy staff in Kabul had been instructed to destroy
1:19.0	documents, computers, and other sensitive equipment.
1:22.3	Meanwhile, refugee camps in the city are crowded with people who have fled from other
	...

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