The State of the Kabul Airlift
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2021
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The city of Kabul’s international airport has become the unlikely focal point of an unprecedented humanitarian effort as U.S. soldiers and diplomats seek to maintain control of their airport facility while facilitating the evacuation of thousands of Americans and foreign nationals, as well as at least some vulnerable Afghans. Meanwhile, on the outside, an improvised network of veterans, former diplomats, humanitarian workers and civil society groups has been desperately working to help vulnerable Afghans evade the Taliban, get into the airport and onto a flight to safety before it is too late.
Scott R. Anderson sat down with three people who have been closely involved in this latter effort: Susannah Cunningham of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Camille Mackler of the Truman Center for National Policy and the Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative, and Chris Purdy of Human Rights First. They discussed what's happening on the ground at Kabul airport, what’s likely to come next for those who make it through and what the Biden administration needs to do to save more lives while there's still time.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | You don't check their papers. |
| 0:36.6 | You don't act as CBP officers. |
| 0:38.6 | You get vulnerable people who are at threat of death onto planes to a third country where |
| 0:43.6 | you then evaluate, you know, which process, which particular avenue they're going to come |
| 0:47.9 | through. |
| 0:49.1 | After leaving Vietnam in 1975, we had got 130,000 Vietnamese evacuaries to Guam and then |
| 0:55.4 | we process and then that state before they moved on. |
| 0:58.5 | This needs to be considered at that level if not more problematic because there's no water |
| 1:02.8 | option to get people out. |
| 1:04.2 | There's only flights so that airport is the way out because most borders are closed. |
| 1:09.8 | So this is what we mean. |
| 1:11.5 | You think of Saigon, think of this as a moment that will look back and there will be a new |
| 1:16.0 | name for evacuations when the US withdraws from a country. |
| 1:20.4 | I'm Scott Ar Anderson and this is the LawFair podcast for August 20th, 2021. |
| 1:26.5 | The City of Cobbles International Airport has become the unlikely focal point of an unprecedented |
| 1:30.8 | humanitarian effort. |
| 1:32.3 | As US soldiers and diplomats seek to maintain control of their poor facility while facilitating |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.