soviet forces and luke usually moves food to the territories in a for trusted civil with. me i see these all of the biggest moments. in the north people gathered around the northern alliance and its leader ahmed shah massoud the so-called lion of publishers. in the south and east another movement began to assert itself in ethnic pashtun areas they called themselves the taliban and was supported militarily by pakistan then in conflict with india. the pakistanis were trying to impose their will on the future of afghanistan and they wanted to ensure that afghanistan was not going to be a strong viable nation state that could in any way reconnect as they had in the past was india. taliban leader mullah mohammad omar was

a war hero from the years of insurgency against the soviet union. pakistan decided it was going to assist mullah mohammad omar and this group which had no name and what they provided was money weaponry. training ammunition trucks tactical advice and then eventually they provided they call ups the students religious students afghans and pakistanis ending what came to beans thirteen thousand. madra saas within the northwestern frontier province. joining go in and the fight. before become. bring in attorney julie some of those who worked as an intelligence

analyst at the pentagon sources in afghanistan warned against you know karl's close relationship with the taliban. worldwide there was a very bribe perception that unocal was wrecking with the us government to promote the taleban as the most likely source for a stable single group in trolling afghanistan. and there was so i think an after or hopefulness on the part of some that if this pipeline could be put through it could be a source of stability or development for afghanistan and i personally don't like the idea that that stability would mean that the taliban would be in charge. with the civil war raging mahdi militia when tony's first journey into afghanistan

. at the time there were six or seven warlords that were feuding with each other and it was you know if afghanistan was not a real safe place to be. the first thing i notice is the devastation. you counter reminded me of the pictures i'd seen of. germany post world war two. the taliban headquarters it was it was a house that was still all intact but there wasn't a stick of furniture in the house and all the we we slept on the floor and i and i had a it was kind of a little traveling road show sort of thing course you don't have slide projector and i think there were named electricity in the building but i had some diagrams and charts and showing some things and some just basically to describe the pride.

jack and and tell them what the benefits would be and then they were very interested. they were measuring always if you guys will quit fighting with each other and form a government to get you in recognition that allows us to attract world black and amy financial. then we may have a deal. but the taliban were on the offensive and drove the northern alliance concept of the cities of mazar e sharif and kabul. they then controlled most of the country. mohammad's not too long president during the soviet occupation had been spared by the northern alliance but the taliban showed no mercy not buddha was first tortured cuss treated and then hind alongside his brother. the execution was

a clear sign of what kind of regime had seized power in kabul. julie says travelled in secrecy took a bill in nine hundred ninety seven in order to learn more about the new regime. i had gone into kabul when i was held by the taleban secretly base they dressed as as an afghan woman in a burka ass. they seemed very foreign to me. certainly many conservative muslims but even among them they generally do not support the sort of extremism that the taliban stand for i see the taliban really is an alien force. their attitude toward women or

a number of human rights issues i found disturbing but i think it was that larger geopolitical issue of them being back i had pakistanis that was most disturbing to me. not. when the president came in called out did you kill your own good but you need to have a good experience with going to. the toilet on man said bitterly just today it's. still being learning in sin and it's in the mother so it's a curriculum did it was not to kill her but to truth that it was a. day to master ministry that was the problem mark.

america's concern about afghanistan had been minimal before the unocal pipeline project but on him and just negotiations spock's the clinton administration's interest in the country. i'd probably go to washington d c o once every six state weeks and i would typically meet with the state department the n.s.a. and cia. the cia was was very very well for you know they have this shadowy image i guess you call of that i found very straightforward and very professional and i think the clinton administration was really committed to helping you know american business be successful. we enjoyed and really strong support from the. unit wasn't the only oil company that wanted to build. pipeline in afghanistan

option time company breed us was also trying to do a deal with the taliban. all but he does win this fight and the meal was over and does so little stove ins of the hands of. the duties of a no is this the president had to let a. kid you know congress that a coup deal with the angels of god as. the taleban delegation arrived unocal is headquarters in december ninety ninety seven. marty came home one day and said fraught with g. thank about having a group of taliban and allegation come to our home down there. didn't know what to say at the time i had to thank it trail and i was pretty naive maybe they come in

and say how americans home and realize that we're an. average regular people maybe it would you know be good for them to to do this and agree to do it. on a multi million did their utmost to avoid offending the taliban and visitors and removed all the religious pictures and figures. but they did not remove the christmas trees the air that the taliban came to our house there was a charity fundraiser thing and we had seven christmas trees in our house and the tali bond just blew their mind they can figure out what that was all about and i think they were trying to. make a connection between a christmas tree and the birth of jesus christ and you know that new job trying to

make a religious guy can. action with what's his christmas tree all about. they never did understand that thing. as a whole there was free because that is true too different from. eastern culture but the phone to the nazis over the i want it focused society and i'm part of this told me. new outfit and custom that. dressed in their newly acquired jackets the afghans visited one of unocal the offshore platforms. and fresh and i doubt as they were amazed they were stunned to see these platforms in the gulf of mexico over seven and live three hundred feet of water i think just the magnitude in the complexity of things and they were very well blown away by.

the next leg of their journey to the visitors to omaha nebraska where they met one of america's foremost experts on afghanistan petroleum resources. the united states were trying their best to talk to the taliban or obviously beginning to take over the whole of afghanistan the state department asked me to talk to the taliban's and they brought them in here. and so this room instead of having guys in suits and ties like they always had before these were talabani and you know was co-captain turbans and long beards and i really had to say they were afghans no problem and so i told him i showed him all this neat whiz bang satellite imagery and stuff and you know if you're looking at our country we're looking at your country where you is and you can do this to show you how to do this all you need to do is come over here and get educated in this stuff.

the taliban teams journey ended in washington d.c. where they met leading officials at the state department. the state department was still hopeful that this was going to be a part of the international combined effort that would be profitable for unocal profitable for the afghans commercially and financially profitable for the afghans in terms of development and education profitable for the region. the tali bhangra interest in the project they were keen on making it happen they never did sign a cooperation agreement or anything like that because they were afraid to sign anything without knowing specifically that mullah omar was was behind it. there are hardly any pictures of the mysterious taliban leader. in these

rare footage of him. tries to hide behind a blanket. and . i was in khandahar the first time he was there and they kept saying that they were going to go talk i dast if i could go scene and they said no no no. you're not seeing shots of to see them all over your. mind you know khalid was in dialogue with the taliban about the pipelines another actor began to assert himself in afghanistan will sum up bin laden. this son of a saudi construction millionaire was a local hero because he participated in the insurgency against the soviet union.

in return to afghanistan in nine hundred ninety six after having be forced to leave the sudan. now he was preparing for a new war global jihad. we started on. the good hot in consequence a concept called believe change and see the fun it was some of them not any of these colleagues eager to sue the taliban moved in to condemn not to be protected there. is a rival back in afghanistan coincided with my own to work with the un. never met the salad that a lot of i saw months in the bazaar then as convoy car passing by but i never. made it labor anything we didn't know each other were looking at the other so. that

first year that he was in the area was the time when he's solidified his relationship with mullah mohammad omar. natoma and rid of the. there is a lot of work in those you go. where did you teach of the mood of what i say you have to do with a job to do but when i'm going to most of all when the interview took on a whole almost a cut of what. in afghanistan marty miller and unocal how did the cia did the training of local workers who would to be employed on the so-called peace pipeline. we'd like our locally so you had employment opportunities for the afghans in fact one of the things we didn't khandahar as we established a training center we found an old abandoned warehouse that we outfitted then we

brought in some equipment any a welding equipment. tools that were needed for the training. without being aware of it marty that had established his training center in the same street as a sawmill bin laden's house. and i'd never heard of the guy before i didn't know who it was looking back on it. kind of gives me the creeps this is think about i was acros to that guy. was someone bin ladin was also busy building training facilities. eighty percent of the visually impaired could be cured without access to treatment . and where there was a will there is a way from a state of the talks between the coverage over seventy seven countries how many of

these patients be seen today everybody and in pakistan one lens passionless provides free treatment for over one million patients and yet the cure revisited which is iraq and then to put it well on i j c right u.s. and british come. bodies have announced the biggest discovery of natural gas in west africa but what to do with these untapped natural resources is already a source of heated debate nothing much has changed they still spend most of their days looking forward to full drive with bands like this one five years on the syrians still feel battered or even those who managed to escape their country have been truly unable to escape the work. examining mandatory sentencing in the us if the state of florida requires the rest of my life in here as a tradeoff for my family's life to bargain i'll do it if the defendant goes to trial the judge has no option but to give the mandatory minimum they were complying

with this judge gives you five years and this judge gives you twenty years so the legislature to make a difference exploring the dark side of american justice the system with job on al-jazeera. i know i'm maryam namazie in london just a quick look at the top stories this hour donald trump has defended his tough immigration policy following criticism over the separation of thousands of families on the mexico border speaking in washington alongside members of the so-called angel families that's relatives of people affected by migrant crime trump said he was highlighting an issue which has long been ignored these are the stories that democrats and people that are weak on immigration they don't want to discuss that

don't want to hear they don't want to see they don't want to talk about. no major networks and cameras to their homes or display the images of their incredible loved ones across the nightly news they don't do that they don't talk about the death and destruction. because we're people that shouldn't be. the united nations says the rule of law is virtually absent in venezuela the un high commissioner for human rights says government forces a cracking down on protesters with almost total impunity with over five hundred killings apparently not being investigated or punished properly. u.s. officials have called on the saudi led coalition to pull back in its campaign to take control of yemen strategically important data ports they've agreed to the u.n. managing the port according to the reuters news agency the whose these may be on board with this plan as well more than thirty thousand people have fled the city and the surrounding areas to escape the violence talks between south sudan's

president salva kiir and the opposition to react which are of broken up without any agreement on wednesday the two rivals met for the first time in two years an address ababa new dates have been set for more talks but differences remain between the two sides the opec group of oil producing nations has agreed to a modest increase in production after saudi arabia persuaded its arch rival iran to cooperate it's a change from the policy of the last eighteen months which had seen the fourteen countries cap the output and u.s. president donald trump is threatening to impose a twenty percent tariff on all e.u. car imports unless it lifts its trade barriers earlier the european union imposed billions of dollars worth of juices on hundreds of u.s. gets going to bring you more on all of our top stories in the news out that's coming up in about twenty five minutes time i'll see you then.

osama bin ladin was busy building training facilities. bin laden eventually became responsible for organizing the flow of foreign fighters between chechnya bosnia and the arab world for the taliban these soldiers were useful reinforcements in the fight against the northern alliance this enabled been logging to strengthen his alliance with the taliban and to recruit soldiers for his holy war on the western world. was this your first post that idea that this is no yes but my video i think that there are. no safeguards that are left out of government or the album for that but i can vary a bit and their value in that you know if you but if you go below focusing on this

and. yet. on the seventh of august nine hundred ninety eight a bomb exploded at the u.s. embassy in nairobi. similar tenuously a bomb detonated in neighboring towns and in two hundred twenty four people died in these terrorist attacks and more than four thousand were injured. the i'll call you to trademark was established serial attacks triggered by suicide bombers. i don't think i was terribly surprised when i heard about what had happened because bin laden was there he was able to do it in a standing he was being attempted by the taliban. the young spy wanted to learn more about bin ladin and visited his enemies the northern alliance it was a perilous journey on horseback. along bad roads.

my interest in what was going on in the n.t. taliban areas because that was the area where we did not have a lot of the information in my sense from back in washington is that a lot of officials and policymakers grinches writing off the resistance to the taliban. and. she met northern alliance leader ahmad shah masood who asked for support from the west in the fight against the taliban and al qaida. during her visit says go for unique insight into what was to come. northern alliance prisons were full of foreign fighters from several countries their goal was to participate in the global jihad. she was especially shocked by

what the prisoners told her about the close relationship between pakistan the taliban and al qaida. most rude urgent he wanted to alert the west he wanted more people to know about the taliban and how they were interacting with bin ladin in to emphasize that if we were opposing bin laden that we should really realize that he and the taliban were sharing the same goals and resources in funding. but judy says report was not well received by her bosses at the pentagon. the state department was even more annoyed people were saying they were very upset about my trip and i was told i simply wasn't going to be able to stay and that they weren't going to give me my security clearance back so essentially they fired me.

the clinton administration continued in its efforts to influence the taliban regime . and we were in the middle of trying to. get them to modify their behavior and i'm a believer in you talk to your friends and your enemies talking is not acceptance of those practices. from day one the clinton administration was trying to push back in first you know control and then pressure the taliban regime into change and of course that escalated once a son of bin ladin left sudan and went to afghanistan in one thousand nine hundred six the bombings of ninety eight were conducted from there so it's very much on the forefront of. the problem of osama bin laden stood in the way of any agreement about future oil and gas pipelines. he had declared war on america and this on the taney is bombings of our embassies in tanzania and kenya really put us on

a war footing with sound and then from that point on we were actually trying to kill him. on the twentieth of august nineteenth ninety seven president clinton ordered the launch of cruise missiles against several outcall you bases in time to stop. four of the bases were destroyed in twenty five. were killed but osama bin laden himself escaped i remember when president clinton sense cruise missiles and afghanistan. i just as when i told. my boss in the board of directors that it was time that this this one got to go anywhere anytime soon. about point you know withdrew from the part blind project but the french intelligence analyst. argues that the idea of an oil and gas pipeline lived on.

my state's work was fixing. they were pressuring the taliban to release bin laden. by negotiating about the pipeline the same sign the taliban were thinking they were calling the united states is not in by discussing with them other python. a mile mark the pipeline issue was a leverage in preserving his country from u.s. strikes and avoiding to take a decision on bin laden. osama bin laden was also interested in continued pipeline negotiations. a strategy memo from bin laden's close aide to mohammed ought to have was found to join the investigation of the nine hundred ninety eight east africa embassy attacks this memo written by mohammed that says it states clearly that as far as the taliban were mentioning relationship in some way was

with american businesses over his project or u.s. diplomats. and their security a tighter security guarantee. the little. the terror attacks against the east african embassies tested the relationship between the taliban and the al qaeda leader. his presence in afghanistan. became a big part of the trip. and they did in there in the early shift between a kind of sign and a match that if you can. there

are. a lot of. as you get up to the pedestal part of those see was a victim of static surgery so you know it was sort of blood because you know it suited the low baseline near zero by the time you oh and you weigh those shooter was on thursday. the deer counted out as you know. and just sort of figured it was just as you were understand the saudis have been there many of. them and found. jones to call the for you from a hunger strike in front of another. for the. news that he. did that is. towards the end of the ninety's the pipelines were no longer on the agenda or in talks between the u.s. and the taliban. the u.s. asked thirty times for osama bin laden to be handed over but the taliban gave no

clear answer the types when essentially now where the taliban the more we would close and the more they push back the more we push them on al qaeda. expelling a salad then lot and the more they would fish back. they just got more designed. to keep. not follow. teach you talk to no man no or the honey you. tell your bottle. for them but you know really nobody. does a fish will reach one hundred not to do but do a know or tell you one of the dogs of compassion. when george w. bush came to power in two thousand and one the renewed attempts to get bin ladin extradited and get started with the construction of the oil pipeline.

by van unit. it was out of the picture but others tried to revive the plans. w. bush in this direct connection with the oil industry and he was to try to be more pissed resist word that i. made a special documentary about the prelude to september the eleventh. american born adam gadahn is the film's narrator an attack on afghanistan had been planned for a long time the americans are boiling mad about a number of things the islamic emirates domination of strategic energy reserves as

well as the route of a proposed gas pipeline from the caspian sea. and most of all its refusal to hand over osama. in berlin in july two thousand and one a final dramatic meeting about the taliban was arranged between representatives of the united states government and all the players in the region. to pongs during these talks there's a u.s. representatives that would make this a major and that will have entered the car because of holes in the carpet bomb. the americans and informed their allies during a meeting in germany of their plan to invade afghanistan in the autumn before the first snowfall of what she is what the eventually did so we knew it was coming the question was do we sit back and wait or do we surprise them

with a preemptive strike. by . i . i was there in nine and they were in new york it has already voted today and. there were a tragic and how about of the people of the united states and innocent people was working. as not all of it is but i need. not just the above of the so i am to get it the get started i would

be just a no or them but it would. by this time it's an obvious juice. bush initio was there to tell you about us so to speak to get across. the taliban offer to extradite osama bin laden to a third country but now the americans have decided to remove both him and the taliban the from the seventh of october america and britain attacked. the northern alliance exploited the resulting calles and the taliban regime unravel . on the twentieth of november two thousand and one the capital city of kabul failed. with us backing ahmed karzai was inaugurated as president his brother had been working for unocal and because i was well acquainted with the

pipeline plan it was. soon after nine eleven in a couple of months suddenly we hear that's governments from the region got together and basically decided to revive the project. that means that even without knowing the fate of guns that turns the stability all these countries i've come to the same conclusion they had reached before nine eleven the spy plane was crucial that. the interests. after years of war there is still no pipeline the taliban is back in strength and reluctant to negotiate about peace. they cost the kind of on a government brought to a new going to mean to the title of democracy and they can well i just meant dave did not bring peace to afghanistan the insurgency against people have been

installed by the international community is to go into. the war against the taliban has made the building of the pipeline impossible. the afghan north also has some oil off to the pipeline was shelved john idol who had left unocal considered investing in an oil and gas project in mazar e sharif. look at afghanistan at political risk is amazingly high there's a logic risk in the most aria is moderate but the reward part is also moderate when

you put all that together and that's why it's not an interesting investment opportunity for a large company. there are a geologist who argued that the country's petroleum resources our knowledge of them previously known. afghanistan has the best geology in that part of the world for both mineral resources and hydrocarbons that's pretty spectacular why are they so poor they have not developed those resources first they didn't know about them and then the past thirty years of war nobody has been able to do much. one afghan who tried to develop the country's oil resources and an early stage was king mohammed zahir shah and after thirty years in exile he returned a lot of afghanistan's oil history has been forgotten. mohammed zahir shah became king when he was only nineteen years old and in one hundred thirty seven he gave the u.s. firm inland exploration company exclusive rights to oil extraction in the northern

areas of the country. they were also given the rights to build a sixteen hundred kilometer pipeline. but the second world war put a stop to these plans. older afghans recalled the king's reign as a time of peace economic progress the introduction of democracy and education for women. namely a nanny nanny king shah made new attempts to restart afghan oil and gas production in the fifty's and sixty's a series of test wells were drilled and american soviet geologist mapped the country's resources. join frodo was enough gonna stand at the end of the seventy's as part of the atlas afghanistan project. he got a unique insight into the maps of mineral resources. there was

one american geologist me and two hundred fifty soviet russian geologist. so when i left afghanistan in late seventy eight i was actually be ported by the communists who had taken over the government i left having sent my maps out of the country in a diplomatic pouch came back to the united states and i worked on the mineral resources in afghanistan ever since. west of mazower and other remains of a canister finally from the soviet era. the plant is stayed in operation but no longer produces as much as when the russians were there. mouthing about on the roof on the at i don't understand kills are not that hard only sas million goes down as it passes on a thousand odds past the hour johnny surely saw that saddam mission that one.

could be sure that in asia. in two thousand and seven an experienced oil geologist rediscovered this area. he'd previously worked for unocal but he now worked as head of the norwegian aid project oil for development he wanted to help afghanistan with a new oil will. it too long to his dissuaded from traveling to the north but with an armed escort he went anyway. at one gas plant he discovered a brick don't room where documentation of soviet oil and gas production had been hidden. behind the secret wool lay old maps and seismic surveys that showed afghanistan's oil and gas resources was significantly greater

than the outside world was aware of and made his decision though there is so much all the time there this is ultimately a sister. or the mask in the eye wall built of old sheets the old fourteen years of thirtieth in all of them did in the midst of a legal slow deal with. the administration offices vote oil and gas the most i'll show relief allocated in old soviet buildings. chief engineer mohammed to john attardi has made it his life's work to preserve the dusty archives. several times he saved maps and documents from destruction. blueboy we can accurately critical cannot get on the ground and here at home i will

not undergo no why would i not hard to get it on my wall or younger ones stuff on my third cousin that i was young good i'm not i'm going to she couldn't do it any other girl didn't shut down after mother she can do it how i don't know how he ended she asked me how much the i might be in a night when the last two only one that would make me look for their guy a moment as he first american not let a young girl letter he called her knowledge no not me if madonna any girl muslim now that's a woman i don't know oh you don't know how. i felt i don't know i'm not on the whole didn't already know me and. despite too little money and poor health i toddy has systemized to finals and preserve the valuable data for the future i don't know one of the red legalities are going to target are they not wanted or india could make about it

a moment ago i thought that i'd buy the time but correct anyhow i mean there's just not a need to not call my you know or don't know or don't offer. you may have to hold on a moment mad mad cow but he'll be going to question more and more we will get those coming up he could come forth a little are worth everything that. the united states once hoped the peace pipe line would unite the warring parties in afghanistan they still do amazingly enough they still want to build it. america's arch enemy iran also wants to build an oil and gas pipeline to india to draw on is in a hurry the aim is that a new peace pipeline should be completed in twenty seventeen. but again it has to

go through taliban controlled areas peace with the taliban is more important than ever. was that risk of deja vu all over again is not impossible that the taliban would come back to power they are an element they're not going away and in order to have. i would say peace not necessarily have prosperity in afghanistan they're going to have to be a part of that fabric of society the more you can bring them into the tent and encourage moderate elements to emerge the more stable afghanistan will be. looking back i have to say i was terribly naive. henry kissinger said this project is a triumph of hope over experience and that hit me right between the eyes and through borders a lot of content and that getting a little common and i found it proved to be true.

how the quiet and rest of the cold those b. two words describe australia as well i'm sure no big surprise really is it the not a lot going on from the point of view all of this is a week old front on its way into science astride the fifteen degrees in adelaide breeze in the sas twelve koda field in melbourne twenty one in brisbane which more or less is the same in perth not very well not a spring's although not cool as pretty a wet through the middle of australia it's almost reached in the tropics so it's still thirteen darwin that's circulating out through tasmania and the tasman sea is

the system that was until recently affecting fossils east of australia so we've got clashes coming to south armagh now in the immediate future it looks pretty five forty in oakland about eighteen cries change does that cloud of rain comes in i think you're going to be a third effect warning for christ church itself fourteen surprising degrees but snow will fall in the south now since fifteen in all clinton right to bright weather rain is the story for japan and hardly surprising this time of the year but significant rain is running out for you to southern home sure. it probably won't reach tokyo and the cloud pole goes right through the korean peninsula but right itself tries to go offshore on sunday. on counting the cost of a stronger dollar spells trouble ahead for developing market economies. digital addicts will of heard how the tech industry uses human psychology plus the fight

for control of libya's oil president. counting the calls. zero. hello i maryam namazie this is the news hour live from london coming up in the next sixty minutes. mom. one migrant parent is reunited with her son in the u.s. but she had to sue the government for it to happen trump zero tolerance immigration policy continues to cause control bisi.

the u.n. accuses venezuela security forces of carrying out hundreds of unjustified killings . opposition candidates a gaining ground in turkey ahead of sunday's double election could russia wants grip on power beyond the threat. and i wish with all the sport including the latest from russia twenty eighteen where five time winners brazil keep their world cup hopes alive after scoring two goals in injury time against cost thirty. or first in the united states where the donald trump administration is continuing to come under fire for its treatment of migrant children despite saying it's ending the practice of separating them from their parents at the border it's two days since that announcement but there's still

a lot of confusion about how government agencies will get an estimated eight hundred children back with their parents. despite this president trance says he's sticking with his zero tolerance policy alan fischer of ports from washington. one mother the pain of separation over seven year old darwin was taken from beata mahama here at the border in arizona. we come from guatemala no after more than a month she could finally hold him again she sued the government for some guitar and one day. i started crying when i saw him because he's the only child i have i think god because i have him here with me he's now sad but nobody's going to separate us again. but though donald trump signed an executive order halting the separation of children from the families those ins still face the pain of separation and no one knows when they will be reunited the executive order

president trump does not solve the problem we still face the reality of at least twenty three hundred of these young children who have been separated and there's nothing they said nothing about what we're going to do to reunite them or to take care of them during this period of time they all chum started the day with a series of tweets arjan republicans to ditch plans to pass new immigration legislation saying republicans should stop wasting their time on immigration until after we elect more senators and congress men women in november this just days after he demanded congress sort the problem out. then me mostly so-called angel families people who had relatives killed by undocumented migrants these are the american citizens permanently separated from their loved ones highlighting he's not backing away from his hard line immigration stance one central square one safety in our country we want strong borders. we want people to come in but we want them to

come in the proper way. on friday protestors surrounded the home of homeland security secure christian newson and put it through a volume recording of children after they've been separated from the parents of the border to be a difficult week for donald trump but with no deal immigration in sight a new clarity of what needs to happen on the border next week isn't looking good either own fish or al-jazeera washington or gabriel as under is in brownsville texas sees outside what the government calls a center for the tender age children for infants of two years old and under and so gabe just described to us what is happening there has the administration's reversal on forced family separation done anything to help those already in custody. not doesn't appear so no miriam i mean we were i wish we could get into this center you see behind me this shelter but of course they're not letting journalists in

there giving very little information other than confirming that it is a shelter for quote unquote tender age children two years and younger we heard there's someone as young as eighteen months that is in there maybe even twelve months the bottom line is this there are more than two thousand three hundred children who were forcibly separated from their parents since april late april early may now the u.s. government official says that they think been babying that as many as five hundred of those children might have been reunited already with their parents however that's not the sense we're getting here on the ground in brownsville texas civil rights project a very well respected non-governmental organization that fights for the rights of asylum seekers in the us they have contact with three hundred eighty one families the baby made contact with usually mothers that are still being detained and out of

those three hundred eighty one not one according to them has been reunited with their children yet so a lot of conflicting information out here so what is happening to these children in these families in the meantime what is the process going forward. the process is confusing and nobody really has an answer to that there are multiple government agencies that are dealing with this primarily it's a department of health and human services that's running these shelters with all these children but then you have the border patrol you have the department of homeland security all these agencies are working somewhat with this issue but there's no apparent overarching plan on how they're going to reunite these children with their parents and there are so many challenges some of the parents have already been deported back to mostly central america the children are still here have no contact with their parents parents have no contact where their children are and you have these government officials that are just trying to figure out how to

reunite two people that they don't even know where they're at quite frankly with children are just getting essentially lost in the bureaucracy of this point and i'll tell you that if there is a plan in place it certainly hasn't reached a lot of the officials here on how they're going to actually implement it the longer this goes on it's becoming clear that there's a real possibility that there could be some children it simply are never reunited with their parents of course no one hopes that's the case but that is a real possibility according to activists that are watching this closely that there is a possibility that there could just simply be down the road orphans kids that came to the u.s. with their parents seeking asylum were separated by the government and now that same government that separated them cannot simply find a way to get them back to their parents and their orphan that would be the worst case scenario but there are people down here that really worry that could be a possibility. and thank you very much gabriel elizondo with all the latest from

brownsville texas well joining me now from rapid city in south dakota is doc's a calling kroft she is the president of the american academy of pediatrics thank you very much for speaking to us and i understand that you were at one of the shell says children who have been separated from their parents at the border can you describe to us what it was like that. certainly i was at one of these tender age shelters and visited back in april of two thousand and eighteen and was greeted by the staff who were very nice and the facility itself was kind of homey there were cribs and dads and blankets and books and toys and and it wasn't a jail like situation it was really kind of a homey situation the kids were clean and well fed but i walked into the toddler room and it was just so alarming to see what i saw in there normally when you're in

with toddlers they are allowed in rambunctious and active and this room was eerily quiet and i saw about fifteen children in there and all but one were just very quietly keeping themselves playing with toys looking up at us with big eyes and in the middle of the room was a young child no more than two years of age who was sobbing and was uncontrollable and was moving her little body and beating her little fists on the mat and she had a worker next to her who's trying to distract her with toys and with books but she couldn't she couldn't come for her she was not allowed to pick her up and hold her and we all knew in the room the problem we knew the problem was that she needed her mother and we couldn't get her mother for her. and it's so sad the way you describe this scene of the children infants toddlers that usually can be quite

loud and hear us saying that the room was very subdued what does that tell you about how they might be feeling. the brain to stress what we know is that we have increased stress hormones the fight or flight poor moans that go on in our brain and when you are looking at this with pretty verbal in many cases toddlers and you look at how they're reacting to this you have kids who have what we call externalizing behavior and that was a little girl who is crying and screaming and some kids get aggressive with this and then you have kids who are who are internalizing this behavior and in many ways they're more concerning because you're seeing in despair when you're just seeing the beginnings of detachment and we know that this separation from parents causes the stress they don't have the one foundation a buffer in their life which is their parent to help calm and console them and this

goes on to develop permanent damage to their brain and particularly in their ability to relate to other human beings is just going to ask clearly there is a long term emotional and mental effect to this trauma but is this something that they will effect toddler as of two years old or just a little bit older a little bit younger than that is this something that they will remember. so with what we call toxic stress which is this unbuffered rise in your stress hormones what we know is that the younger you are worried about this or you have this inflicted upon you the more likely you are to develop long term brain damage damage and many of these kids will remember this many other will remember it not be able to tell us about what happened or what they were thinking during that time and that makes it much more difficult when they are back with their parents and we are

looking at trauma and forms type of therapies for them because some of these kids are going to need to really pull out and some of these kids are really going to help to calm down because of externalised behavior and just one final point the u.s. now seems to think the the solution is to incarcerate the whole family together. and this is something that the american academy of pediatrics has a great issue with as well because these children have already been traumatized and we actually have a policy statement on detention of immigrant children that says that children should not be in prison like facilities that just reach trama ties is them these children and their families need to be a community based settings where they can get some of the trauma informed care that they need and where these kill kids can can act like children again well thank you so much sharing your insights.