The Fall of Kabul
Americast
BBC
4.3 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Maitlis and Sopes return for an emergency episode to mark the end of America's decades long 'forever war'. We talk to US Airforce veteran Veronica Hoyer to ask if it was all for nothing? And the former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, P. Michael McKinley tells us he is being contacted by former friends and colleagues appealing for rescue as Taliban forces enter Kabul.
Studio Director: Emma Crowe Producers: Caitlin Hanrahan and Natalie Ktena Assistant Editor: Sam Bonham Editor: Dino Sofos
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:12.6 | This is the soundtrack of an image that may come to define the evacuation of Kabul. |
| 0:19.9 | In fact, I think you could probably say that in the last 24 hours, |
| 0:24.3 | it may already have done that. The sound of local Afghani people clinging to a US military plane, |
| 0:32.7 | running alongside it, running on the tarmac, trying to get on it, |
| 0:38.0 | as it flew out of Kabul, international airport yesterday, |
| 0:42.4 | leaving so many of them behind and desperate. |
| 0:46.2 | But it also left a number of people clinging hopefully, |
| 0:55.0 | but ultimately hopelessly, to the side of the aircraft, |
| 0:59.2 | as it went up into the skies. |
| 1:01.7 | And what followed was a horrifying picture of bodies falling from the aircraft, |
| 1:09.6 | because they could no longer cling on and falling to their death. |
| 1:14.9 | People watching in utter disbelief. |
| 1:24.6 | And these are going to be the abiding images from Kabul, from Afghanistan, |
| 1:30.3 | of the West's failure for 20 years. |
| 1:33.3 | They will be the images that will also haunt Joe Biden and his presidency, |
| 1:39.4 | images that evoke the fall of Saigon in 1975. |
| 1:45.5 | And just listen to this extraordinary CBS news archive from the evacuation of Denang Airfield. |
| 1:52.1 | As soon as the rear stairway was lowered, the stampede of terrorized people tried to storm the plane. |
| 1:57.9 | From the cockpit, the pilots reported by radio that the situation was out of control. |
| 2:10.4 | As men clamored over one another, pushing aside women and children in their panic-stricken fury, |
| 2:15.4 | members of the aircraft dragged them onto the plane, trying to fill it as fast as possible. |
... |
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