Cold Open

It’s late in the evening on September 26th, 2001, in a barren stretch of the Panjshir Valley in Northern Afghanistan.

Fifty-nine-year-old CIA operative, Gary Schroen, steps off an Mi-17 helicopter. He’s the first of a seven-man unit to hit the ground.

The helicopter blades kick up dust and sand as the rest of his team follow. The last man on the aircraft throws out three large canvas bags… then leaps out himself.

The heavy-duty helicopter doesn’t wait around for long. It takes to the sky, leaving Gary and his crew alone in the desert.

Shouldering the bags, they set off across a rocky wasteland.

As the CIA’s number one expert on Afghanistan, Gary is fluent in the languages of the region. He had been about to retire, but recent events have called him back to duty.

Just over two weeks ago, terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane hit the Pentagon, while a fourth was forced down over Pennsylvania. The terror group Al-Qaeda quickly claimed responsibility for the atrocity and in the aftermath, President George W. Bush sanctioned Gary’s secret mission. The U.S. government believes that Afghanistan’s rulers, a hardline group known as the Taliban, are harboring those responsible of the attacks on 9/11. Gary’s team has been sent here to meet with the Northern Alliance, a group of fighters who are waging war against the Taliban.

And it doesn’t take long for Gary and his men to reach the rendezvous point.

Five men with rifles emerge from behind a nearby hill.

Gary nods to his team and two of them drag one of the heavy bags over to the soldiers from the Northern Alliance.

Gary’s men unzip the bag to show them what’s inside: $500,000 in cash.

The Afghan fighters quickly take the bag and carry it away while not a word is exchanged between the two groups.

Gary silently signals to his team that they too will be leaving.

His men pick up the two remaining bags and follow Gary back into the desert. It’s time for their next rendezvous.

Over the next few days, Gary Schroen and his team will deliver over $3 million to various militants and political leaders in Northern Afghanistan. This money will be payment for information on the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda operatives and an incentive to cooperate with American troops again in the future, because Gary and his team are just the first of many. Two weeks after their arrival, President George W. Bush will announce the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom - the invasion of Afghanistan. And with the combined military might of America and its allies, it won’t take long to remove the Taliban from power. But the invasion will only be the beginning of a two-decade-long conflict that will claim thousands of lives before it finally ends in chaos on August 30th, 2021.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is August 30th, 2021: The Last US Troops Leave Afghanistan.

Act One: Mission Accomplished?

It’s April 14th, 2021 at the White House in Washington D.C, nearly 20 years after the start of the war in Afghanistan.

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, steps up to a lectern and removes the face mask he’s been wearing to guard against COVID. Flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the Presidential flag, Biden looks straight down the lens of the camera in front of him and begins his address.

Biden explains how, two decades ago, then President George W. Bush spoke to the nation from this exact spot in the Treaty Room of the White House. Back then Bush told Americans that the US would be waging war on Afghanistan as part of a strategy to hunt down those who carried out the terrorist attacks on September 11th.

Biden says that the goal was achieved in May 2011 when a team of Navy SEALs killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Now, the ongoing presence in Afghanistan is harder to justify. So, Biden tells the people of the United States that the troops will be coming home. Beginning on May 1st, all 2,500 US army personnel still in Afghanistan will start leaving the country. And by the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, all American and Coalition troops will be gone. The Afghan people will then be the ones to decide the future of their country.  

President Biden puts a positive spin on this decision, but in truth, he feels he has no choice. As he sees it, his hand has been forced by his predecessor, President Donald Trump.

Trump left office in January 2021, but a few months before, his administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban. Although they had been quickly forced out of power back in 2001, the Taliban was never wiped out entirely. Instead, it kept fighting against America, its NATO allies and the new Afghan government they supported. As the years passed, its strength grew again and in 2018 talks began between the resurgent Taliban and the Trump administration. Eventually, it was agreed that all US troops in Afghanistan would withdraw in 2021.

But since that agreement was signed, the Taliban has only become more emboldened. It's stepped up its attacks and, by the spring of 2021, its forces are advancing across the country.

In the face of this growing threat, it’s up to President Biden and his team to come up with a strategy to pull American troops out safely. Most are stationed in the Afghan capital, Kabul. And despite the success of the Taliban elsewhere in the country, Biden’s military commanders believe Kabul is more secure than other outlying parts of Afghanistan. Which is important, because Kabul is the location of the one major airport in the country, and it will need to stay open and safe if the withdrawal is to go smoothly.

But it’s not just American and other NATO troops that need to get out of the country by September. Over the past two decades, many Afghans have worked for the American and Coalition forces. Should the Taliban seize power again, it’s likely these Afghanis will face violent reprisals.

The US has assured them that they will be looked after, however, and Special Immigrant Visas have been promised to any Afghan interpreters and soldiers. But budget cuts introduced by the Trump administration have led to an administrative backlog. Not enough visas have been issued, and as the days tick by and the Taliban advance closer and closer to Kabul, the desperation of those who want to escape only grows.

President Biden is unwilling to abandon those people and signs an Executive Order for more resources to work through the visa backlog. Biden and his team declare that their mission is to get every single person who has earned it out safely.

But this is not an easy goal. There are potentially tens of thousands of people to evacuate before September 11th, 2021. The Taliban is threatening to launch attacks on American troops if they miss the deadline for leaving. And making the situation even more volatile is the emergence of ISIS, a terrorist organization even more extreme than Al-Qaeda. Its suicide bomb attacks have spread fear and panic in Kabul, further complicating plans for an orderly withdrawal of Western personnel.  

So, as the end of August approaches, a simmering chaos threaten Afghanistan. The Afghan Army will collapse. The Taliban will advance into the capital. And the international airport will become the scene of violence and horror as thousands of people make one last attempt to flee for their lives.

Act Two: The Last Days

It’s the afternoon of August 26th, 2021, outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, four months after Joe Biden announced the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

20-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Noah Smith stands guard outside Abbey Gate, the main entrance to the airport. There’s no respite from the sun here, and the air is ripe from sewage leaking into the ground. Ignoring both the heat and the stink, Noah stands on the raised edge of a ditch and scans the long, narrow road ahead of him. Flanked by high walls and barbed wire, it's packed with Afghans of all ages desperately looking for a way out of their country.

There are just two weeks until President Biden’s September 11th deadline for US troops to leave the country, and by now the Taliban has taken most of Kabul and the full-scale evacuation of NATO personnel and their Afghan allies is at a critical stage.  

Corporal Smith has only been in Afghanistan for a few days, and he’s been awake most of that time, surviving on a diet of cigarettes and caffeine pills. His company was first tasked with forcing back the crowd of desperate civilians gathering around the entrance to the airport. That took eight hours of pushing and shoving, but step-by-step the Marines created a buffer zone around Abbey Gate.

Now, they must check the documents of every civilian looking to leave the country. There’s no proper system in place, though, and Corporal Smith and the other Marines haven’t been trained for this. The result is chaos. All Corporal Smith can do is try his best to inspect the documents thrust in his face by those who’ve managed to fight their way to the front. If the paperwork looks correct, he helps the civilians up out of the crowd, over the ditch wall and into the airport - their first steps toward a new life far from the dangers of Afghanistan and the retribution of Taliban.

But there are some in Afghanistan who don’t want these civilians to leave. Rumors swirl around the airport that the terrorist group ISIS is planning suicide attacks to disrupt the evacuation. So, tensions at the Abbey Gate entrance are high.

Corporal Smith scans the crowd again, looking for any sign of danger. But it’s impossible with the mass of people in front of him, clutching papers, waving their hands and yelling for attention. So, by the time Corporal Smith does notice danger, it’s too late. A young man pushes through the crowd toward the American Marines. He shouts above the noise and then detonates a vest rigged with 20 pounds of high explosives. In the narrow, densely packed road, the blast is devastating.

Two pieces of shrapnel slice into Corporal Smith’s body. But he’s lucky. He survives the attack. Over 160 civilians and 13 U.S. personnel do not, making it the largest loss of American life overseas in more than a decade.

And this shocking suicide attack puts even greater media spotlight on the evacuation. Back in the US, doubts are raised about the Biden administration’s planning for the operation. Commentators and politicians alike question how the Afghan Army could have crumbled so fast in the face of the Taliban, when the United States and its allies have spent two decades and billions of dollars training them. It seems instead of fighting, the Afghan government and its security forces have simply melted away. As a result, the Taliban have managed to take over Afghanistan and its capital city far more quickly than anyone thought possible.

Now, America and its allies seem to be struggling even to control an airport. The day after the attack at Abbey Gate, US tries to disrupt the operations of ISIS with an airstrike on a vehicle 60 miles east of Kabul. Two high-profile ISIS militants are killed. But a second operation aiming at preventing another attack on the airport is a disaster. A US drone strike kills ten innocent civilians, seven of them children. This tragedy is made worse when it’s revealed that some of the Afghans who died had documentation that would have allowed them to leave with the US evacuation.   

With the situation at the airport deteriorating quickly, the Biden Administration decides to move up its deadline. Instead of September 11th, all US personnel will withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of August. This give civilians who want to escape the country just forty-eight hours.

Panic and desperation will set in. The planes departing Kabul airport will be packed to capacity and it won't be enough. Time is running out, and it’s clear that many civilians with the right to leave Afghanistan will be left behind to face the fury of the Taliban alone.

Act Three: Going Home

It’s late on August 30th, 2021, at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, shortly before the deadline for US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.

52-year-old US Army Major General Chris Donahue walks across the tarmac toward the rear ramp of a waiting C-17 transport plane. General Donahue has served four tours in Afghanistan, but now he and his paratroopers are the last American military personnel left in the country.

It’s a short walk to the transport plane. Dressed in combat fatigues and sporting night-vision goggles on the outside of his helmet, General Donahue lets his fellow paratroopers climb aboard the plane first.

Briefly, he looks across the tarmac. And silhouetted against the lights of the terminal building are row after row of American trucks and military equipment. All of it is being left behind.

But General Donahue knows that’s not all America is abandoning here. They’ve tried to prioritize people over equipment during the evacuation and they’ve successfully airlifted thousands of civilians and military personnel to safety. But they’ve had to leave many other Afghans behind to an uncertain fate.

There’s nothing more General Donahue can do about it though. His troops are all on the plane and the time has come to leave. So, without turning back or looking over his shoulder, Major Donahue boards the transport himself. The doors of the plane shut and the C-17 takes off at one minute before the midnight deadline. 20 years after CIA operative Gary Schroen became the first American on the ground in Afghanistan, the last US military personnel has left the country.

In total, the war in Afghanistan is estimated to have cost over $2 trillion. The Al-Qaeda network that was responsible for 9/11 has been destroyed. But almost two-and-a-half thousand US military personnel have been killed in the conflict, as well as over 50,000 Afghan civilians.

Once, the United States and its allies hoped that these sacrifices would help create a stable nation, and a free democracy. But just seven days after General Donahue leaves Kabul Airport, the Taliban forms a new government in Afghanistan. And immediately, it begins to impose its extreme interpretation of Islamic law on the country once again.

In the wake of the Taliban takeover, more than a million Afghans flee their homes. But there will be no transport planes to whisk them to safety. These refugees will leave their homes behind and begin journeys into the unknown, journeys that will continue for months and even years after the last American troops left Afghanistan on August 30th, 2021.

Outro

Next on History Daily. September 2nd, 1666. A fire begins in a bakery in London, which quickly spreads and reduces a third of the city to ashes.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.