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♪ this is a special edition of "gps," the global public square. the fall of kabul, one year later. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you from new york. >> the taliban has taken over afghanistan. seizing control of kabul with hardly a shot fired. >> on the program -- >> the entire u.s. military effort is collapsing. >> the embassy has been completely evacuated. >> it has been a year since the fall of kabul. >> sheer desperation. >> afghans trying desperately to

board outgoing flights. >> a year since then-president ashraf ghani fled afghanistan. >> the president of afghanistan flees the country. >> for a year he has been virtually invisible. >> what a difference 24 hours made. >> today you will hear from him directly. why he left so hastily. >> had no plans to flee. >> whether he took tens of millions of dollars with him. >> this is part of a disinformation campaign. >> and why he wants to go back to his country. >> the place that every cell of my body belongs. >> it's an exclusive that you will not want to miss. >> but first, here's my take. on august 16th, 2021, the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction

released a report, what we need to learn, lessons from 20 years of afghanistan reconstruction. it got overtaken by the news just the day before the afghan government had collapsed and the taliban rapidly seized power. but one year later, it's a document based on 13 years of work, mountains of data, and over 170 interviews worth returning to and studying carefully. the u.s. government has now spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild afghanistan. it added up all the other costs, including $837 billion war fighting, 3,587 u.s. and allied troops dead, and no fewer than 66,000 afghan troops dead. but it notes, if the goal was to rebuild and leave behind a country that can sustain itself and pose little threat to u.s. national security interests, the

overall picture is bleak. why? what explains how so much energy, effort, blood, and treasure yielded so little? the report lists many reasons, incoherent strategy, lack of patience, unrealistic expectations, insufficient monitoring, all of which shine a light on specific failures. one of the report's conclusions for example, is that u.s. goals were on contradictory. it pumped billions of dollars into the economy while at the same time trying to end corruption. it wanted to weaken war lords and militias, yet would also rely on them when it wanted to establish security quickly. it wanted to end opium production but not take away farmers' incomes. but these do not feel like they get to the core of the problem. after the defeat in 2001, the taliban regrouped and steadily

gained ground from approximately 2005 onwards. enemy attacks rose from about 2,300 in 2005 to almost 23,000 in 2009 and never dropped below 21,000 since then despite various changes in u.s. strategies and tactics and troop levels. a civilian adviser to the military wrote a book, which i believe comes closest to providing an overarching explanation. the taliban exemplified something that inspired, something that made them powerful in battle, something closely tied to what it meant to be afghan, he wrote. in simple terms, they thought for islam and resistance to occupation, values enshrined in afghan identity aligned with foreign occupiers, the government mustered no similar

inspi inspiration. america was the outsider of a war in afghanistan, and the new afghan government was never able to gain the legitimacy as needed. both charges were true. when a government has internal legitimacy, think of ukraine today, foreigners can help it effectively. but when it lacks internal strength and support, outside help often weakens its credibility. to that, one can add all kinds of other important reasons the taliban had sanctuary in pakistan. historically it has been virtually impossible to defeat a well-armed insurgency that has a safe haven in a neighboring country. americans don't understand foreign cultures. foreign countries and cultures. the iraq war was a distraction. u.s. agencies sometimes worked at cross purposes with one other and so on. but there is another important

lesson for america, the danger of not looking at reality carefully and succumbing to group think. for a long time washington's elite saw afghanistan as the good war, morally justified, sanctioned by the united nations. people were invested in believing it was working, and many blinded themselves to evidence that it wasn't. the military is often very clear-eyed about a conflict, but once given a task, it will provide a stream of reports that will it is succeeding. in vietnam, it was body counts of the enemy dead. in afghanistan, it was the growing numbers of the afghan national army, which turned out to be massively inflated. for all the flaws in the withdrawal, joe biden was one of the people who was willing to ask uncomfortable questions and to look beyond the happy talk.

in an intelligent essay in "the atlantic, general petreas takes stock of the war and argues that afghan's mistake in afghan was a lack of commitment. there was clearly an ebb and flow in america's support, but it is worth noting that america stayed fighting in afghanistan longer than the the british did in all three afghan wars combined. it stayed twice as long as the soviet union did in the late 1970s and '80s. in elliott's new book, the fifth act, america's end in afghanistan, he notes that everything america built in afghanistan was made of plywood, a metaphor for our hesitation about the mission. contrast that with the british who would arrive in a country and quickly build stone monuments to symbolize their enduring empire. while i suspect that america

will always be ambivalent, we'll always be the plywood imperialists. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. ♪ on august 11 of last year, the pentagon was telling reporters that kabul might fall in 90 days. four days later, the city fell. the sudden collapse of the afghan capital, and thus the whole country, stunned the world. a u.s. government report tells us that as the taliban was taking control of the city on the afternoon of the 15th, helicopters prepared to carry president ashraf ghani's wife and senior staff to safety. but fearing ghani would be executed if he didn't depart with them, officials convinced

the president to get on a helicopter, too. they had no idea where they were going but ended up making an unauthorized landing in uzbekistan where security agents met them with weapons drawn and asked them to leave. the next day they took a charter flight to the united arab emirates. rumors have swirled about ghani and his escape. today we will get answers in an exclusive interview. ghani spoke to me from the uae. i was in new york. president ghani, pleasure to have you on the show. >> thank you for having me. >> people around the world are wondering why you decided to leave in may 2021. just months earlier, you gave an interview in which you said, and i'm going to quote you, no power in the world could persuade me to get on a plane and leave this country. it is a country i love, and i will die defending. but you did get on a plane and leave the country.

why? >> i did get on a plane because it became impossible to defend it. from the presidential ground, all the presidential protection force, militant and civilian, the minister of defense had left. i was ready to go to minister of defense because he had called me that kabul could not be defended, and i said, i'm going to come to the ministry. the ministry was empty. he was on a plane. i was the last to leave. and the reason i left was because i did not want to give the taliban and their supporters the pleasure of yet again humiliating an afghan president and making him sign over the legitimacy of the government. i have never been afraid. you have seen repeatedly, rockets have come, landed around me, and i have not moved. but to surrender and be

humiliated, and it was a split-second decision, because they had entered kabul and the u.s. obama had already evacuated the embassy at 9:00. >> one of the things in the report says that you and your national security adviser began to worry that the presidential guard itself would assassinate you. were you not sure of the loyalties even of your own personal presidential guard? >> there was firing in the morning when i was in a meeting. i don't know who started firing, but it was very close. so they asked me to go inside, cooks in the presidency were found with instruction. i think one was being offered $100,000 to poison me. so it is an environment that one needs to understand. >> you get into a helicopter, and when you take off, where do

you think you're going? >> i thought i was going to the airport. it took off northwards, so after 15 or 20 minutes, i realized we're not going to the airport. so i asked the national security adviser, and he said the airport was not safe. and on the plane a decision was made then on the helicopter to go to uzbekistan. no preparation had been made anywhere else as all the documentation shows because i had no plans of leaving. >> you didn't have your passport with you? >> no. >> you didn't have your personal belongings with you? >> nothing. i was wearing afghan clothes with a waist coat and a pair of shoes, and that was it. i didn't even have a book. people who know me, i practically never fly without a book because that's when i concentrate and read and nothing else. >> now, you know there are these

rumors that you left with rumors to you left with $169 million of cash. what is your response? >> well, they have categorically proven that i did not leave with any money. this is part of a disinformation campaign. you have, among others, investigated my past. and, also, if you look at ambassador bolton's memoirs, president trump used to confuse me with the other president and alleged i wanted property outside, and the investigation found nothing. i have lived an honorable life. i've been a self-made man, and i declared all my assets, and this detailed report has shown that there was no money on the helicopter. >> for viewers, let me clarify, this is the special inspector general's report. it does say it would have been physically impossible for you to

have taken the money. there were no -- all eyewitness accounts say you did not. so my question to you is the russian embassy put out this number and this allegation. why? >> you'll have to ask them. >> why do you think this rumor got going? it's been so widespread, this sense that you took this money. what do you think accounts for it? >> a blame game. a fall guy. and if you cannot kill the man, you attempt to kill his character. my integrity has been known. i lived a very simple life. money shows, leaves signs. there have been massive investigations by journalists of other countries and leaders. and they've been able to. i challenged the entire investigative journalist

community to come with any evidence of any wrongdoing or any interest on my part and accumulation of money. that is not what i went back to afghanistan for. that's not why i put 16 hour days, and that's not why i represented my country with honor and dignity. so it was enormous anger in our country. we're a traumatized people, and trauma produces fear, and fear is directed in order to prevent our national unity in coming together. next on "gps," many say president ghani of afghanistan should have been more like president zelenskyy of ukraine. they say ghani should have stayed, not fled. i ask him about that directly when we come back. finding the perfect developer isn't easy. but, at upwork, we found her. she's in prague, between the perfect cup of coffee

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and we are back here with the special edition of "gps" marking tomorrow the one year anniversary of the fall of kabul. more of my exclusive interview with afghanistan's former president ashraf ghani. you know many people make the analogy between you and president zelenskyy, and they say zelenskyy stayed and rallied his country and you left. what do you think of that comparison? >> well, the comparison should be made between 2014 when i

became president and not 2021. we have been fighting for 42 years. our trauma was deep. our people were tired of killing, and our people wanted an end to the bloodshedding. second, president zelenskyy was informed in detail by the cia of the forthcoming russian invasion. we were not offered a single piece of paper by our allies. the other comparison again is europe stood, the whole nato, united states, australia, other countries, rallied to ukraine,

but that is similar to the 1979 invasion of afghanistan by the soviet union. then again, a lot of people stood with us and appreciated and increased, but this is a time in 2021 when support for staying in afghanistan after president biden's decision had gone. it was an irreversible decision, and people fundamentally are asking if we are going to fight another round of civil war, what's the end? what's the conclusion? >> do you feel betrayed by the americans? >> i don't use those types of words. because our trauma, our pain, needs not to go to the direction of betrayal or blame. we need to focus on what is now in front of us. we need to draw lessons from the

past and deal with the present. our country is in dire condition. i do not have the luxury to engage in blaming or sense of betrayal. superpowers, big powers decide on the base of their national interest what i hope is that they've considered the implications of those. >> you think that trump accord with the taliban was a disaster? >> it was. everybody is in agreement. we had an afghan-owned and afghan-led peace process. we created the first real cease-fire, and if you look at the december evaluation of the dod report, it says in the last 18 years, there's never been as big an opportunity for a

political settlement as now. and then in turn, afghan led process was hijacked. we were excluded from the peace table, and the peace process was incredibly flawed. it's the assumption that taliban had changed. what delusion. the process violates everything from marshall to kissinger and baker regarding preparation. we never got to discussion. it was all foreplay. yet in 2017, you interviewed me right after this when president trump announced afghanistan and south asia's strategy, president announced that it be a condition-based agreement they are never going to repeat the mistakes of the taliban. yet, in 2019, secretary pompeo

was seeking a taliban agreement and had signed and the president had also signed a time bown agreement. this agreement was supposed to be conditional. but none of the core conditions was not only observed. the government, our partner, the government of the united states became the enforcer of the taliban agreement on us, threatening us with cut off aid, with every conceivable form of pressure to release 5,000 of the most hardened criminals, et cetera. next on "gps," i will ask ashraf ghani to look at the future. what does it hold for him and for his nation under the taliban. your shipping manager left to “find themself.” leaving you lost. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do.

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we are back here with a special edition of "gps. " more of my interview with ashraf ghani who left afghanistan almost exactly one year ago as the taliban took control of the capital kabul. so let's look forward. as you say, the country is in dire straights. should the biden administration provide funds to the taliban. as you know, this is a very complicated or a very fraught issue because it will be portrayed as providing money to

a taliban government, which has violated all kinds of human rights. on the other hand, the afghan people are starving. what should the united states do? >> internally, the taliban are divided. there are dual centers of power minimally. the younger generation has a lot of capability, but they have not been brought to the forefront. there has to be discussion of the direction of afghanistan. this is a serious challenge the muslim world, to the region, to the neighbors, to europe in terms of the refugee flows and others and of course to the world at large. united states needs to make a decision. i do not advocate violence, but internal legitimacy, a process, not persons, not again a collection of war lords, but a process where the afghan people

for once are empowered to chart their way to deliberation is key internationally. in terms of money, i have ideas on market-based solutions that could create jobs and opportunities for afghans in general and for afghan women and the families of martyrs. the united states does not have implementation capacity anymore. it is so taken by contractors, all the money, at least 80% or 90% of the money that came to afghanistan went to large contractors, and they take a cut from 40% to 80%. this money did not reach afghanistan, and humanitarian aid, now they want to take the money that i saved.

i lift $9 billion of reserve. i increased it almost by a third during my tenure. that's money that we had secured through incredibly hard work. with imf and others. you do it this year as humanitarian aid, where will the money come for next year or the year after that? we have to focus back on the possibilities. afghanistan is the round-about. it's the heart of asia, if the region can come. unfortunately, as you know, extraordinarily well, the competition is now between big powers, the utmost fear is so difficult that wee need to think outside to box to seeing how can we bring the region, the islamic voices and the global voices together to help the afghan people? >> and what will you do personally? what is the personal future for ashraf ghani?

>> when i'm writing, i've dived deeply into the past 20 years. i'm now assessing it and distilling it in a series of articles and books. two, i learned to deal with uncertainty. and uncertainty, i'm working on a book called "the age of global uncertainty." uncertainty surrounds us. >> do you imagine you will be back in afghanistan? >> i hope so very much. it's my home. i come -- i belong to a family that has stayed in one village between 500 and 600 years. and in the last 300 years, almost every generation, we have lost everything. so exile is not foreign to us.

but my heart beats with all afghans. there are 28 that have been really devastated by the taliban regime. the three majorities, women, youth, and the poor, are collapsing. hope is gone. a sense of belonging is not there. the world needs to think in terms of its own interest. do you want millions more of refugees to knock on your doors, or can you think about ways of stabilizing? those who are saying that the taliban have changed, the taliban needed healing. they needed the embrace of a

society to be able to integrate them. and don't forget, they are highly traumatized, and now unfortunately their sense of revenge, their sense of repression, and reciprocating some of the repression they have experienced in exclusion is being repeated on a scale. i want to be able to help my country heal. and i hope to be able to do that from the place that every cell of my body belongs. and without with, i always feel alien. >> ashraf ghani, always a pleasure to have you on. thank you, sir. >> thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for your continued focus on afghanistan. next, from the top down to the bottom up, you will hear from an american who arrived in afghanistan as a marine in 2008.

he's now a journalist and a writer with fascinating thoughts about america's war effort in afghanistan and the lessons for this nation. back in a moment. we strip in the community garden. i've been stripping here for years. i strip before take-off. breathe right strips open your nose for relief you can feel right away, helping you take in air more easily, wherever you are.

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so you come through, loud and clear. meta portal. the smart video calling device that makes work from home work for you. little over a month after september 11, 2001, u.s. special operators started arriving on the ground in afghanistan as the

american bombing campaign there continued. nearly 20 years later, this man, u.s. army major general chris donohugh was the last service member to department. so what did and didn't america accomplish in the interim? what did it get wrong and right? joining mo now is elliot ackerman who served in the marines in afghanistan and iraq and then turned to writing and journalism. his new book is "the fifth act: america's end in afghanistan." elliot, describe to me when you first got to afghanistan, what did you think as a young marine, you were doing there. what was the mission as you saw it? >> the experience i had, fareed, both in iraq and afghanistan is that every war i've ever arrived at, i assumed i was arriving at the end of the war only to later recognize i had arrived right at the beginning.

so i had arrived in afghanistan in 2008, that was seven years into this war. you would assume you were at the end. but if you look now in retrospect 2008 seems like early days particularly in the light of the resurgent taliban insurgency inside of afghanistan. so we knew that we were there both in light of the counterterrorism mission that existed in afghanistan but also to deal with this resurgent taliban insurgency. >> you talk about how you can tell america's ambivalence about being in afghanistan, about maintaining a kind of occupation there by one thing, the material we used to build everything. describe what you mean. >> well, if you ever travel to afghanistan, one of the things you would note if you went to many of the american headquarters in places like kabul and kandahar, these large

bases, was the amount of structures built in plywood, and that is the material. and you could see the leftovers of the russian occupation, and they built it in concrete and steel. we built in plywood as though at any moment we would be leaving afghanistan and heading out the door. and so that expeditionary mind-set, that mind-set of having one foot out the door extended throughout the 20 years of the war. so, yes, 20 years is a very long time to fight a war, but anywhere on that 20-year time line the united states was between 12 and 24 months from a major troop withdrawal. and so the psychology is a very short-term psychology. >> when you were in afghanistan, did you feel like you were fighting for the entire afghan nation? or did you feel like you were in the middle of a civil war? >> i felt like we were fighting for a vision of what afghanistan

could be as a more -- a modern country. you know, one that was turning away from sort of the fundamentalist tendencies of the taliban. i also felt like i was fighting for my own country. the september 11th attacks were visceral for me. i could remember them and this overarching mission that was a counterterrorism mission. one of the greatest challenges of the afghan war was the mission itself became so broad that at any moment in this 20-year conflict, it was very difficult for anyone to actually agree what the war was being fought about. and because we couldn't agree, we couldn't agree on how to end it, and we ultimately lost the war. >> what was your sense of the psychology of the taliban when you would face them? did you wonder sometimes what motivates these guys? they were not particularly well-trained, not compared to the american army, not particularly well equipped, but they seemed to fight.

>> there was a truism of the war in atches, but the taliban have the time. and what i mean by that is the taliban seemed to demonstrate a sense of not only tactical but also operational patience that worked to their advantage. and i always say it was the single greatest determinant of their ability to win this war. it was something that -- when i arrived in afghanistan, i had been in iraq before, and i immediately recognized the difference between the iraqi members of al qaeda who i fought against and the taliban. specifically if you were ambushed by the taliban, there was a discipline that they had to only stay on site for 30 minutes because they knew that our aircraft would show up after 30 minutes. this spoke to that type of operational patience, that type of prague in a sichl that was an asset for them in the war. >> you fought in afghanistan and

iraq. you met all these people. did you think you were fighting for good guys? did these people, your afghan allies, your iraqi allies, seem like people who understood the ideas, the ideals that america thought it was fighting for? >> the ideas of sort of good guys and bad guys, at least in my experience of war, they kind of vanish. wars aren't typically waged in terms of black and white, and the reality of war that i've experienced is it's in shades of gray. so i have served along people who i consider absolute heroes. and i've come across people in war who have behaved in ways that i felt were compromised. you know, war, at least for me, really kind of throttles open the and apperature of what you see as a human being. and you can see what human

beings are capable of, but you can also see the highest embodiments of human virtue on the battlefield. and i would say in my experience fighting and covering wars as a journalist since, i've certainly seen both embodied in a whole cast of characters. >> elliot ackerman, thank you so much. >> thank you. next on "gps," something completely different. i will give you a preview of my latest documentary, part of a new series called extraordinary. this one on the man who made the "godfather." legendary film director francis ford copola. lysol laundry sanr kills 99.9% of bacteria that detergents can't. clean is good, sanitized is better. finding the perfect designer isn't easy. but, at upwork, we found her. she's in austin between a fresh bowl of matcha and a fresh batch of wireframes. and you can find her, and millions of other talented pros, right now

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something i am really excited about. this coming saturday, august 20th, at 9:00 p.m., right here on cnn, you'll be able to watch the cnn cable premiere of my new special series called

"extraordinary." in it i sit down with extraordinary people to find out how they got that way, to understand their creative process. the two people i will profile next saturday are billy joel and francis ford coppola. i want you to watch a clip of my hour with the great film director. >> when you did it, you thought this is it. no sequel. >> oh, no, when i said sequel, charlie says, you have the formula, coca-cola, you're going to tell me you're not going to make more coca-cola. i said no, i don't want to make any more coca-cola. i thought it was over, i thought it was one movie. i had enough of it. when i chose to do the second film, the deal i made is i would write it, i would produce it, i would pick a director who would direct it. and when finally when i told them i'm ready i have a script, and everything, they say, who do you want to direct it. i said, very talented and can do it just as well as me.

his name is marty scorsese. they said absolutely not. they turned me down. >> so you -- >> i then got a phone call from charlie, and he said francis, this is charlie. you got the formula of coca-cola. you really are not going to do it? this is incredible. i'll give you anything you want. i said all right, charlie, i'll do it. i want a million dollars, i want total control without double checking anyone. not to show them the script, not to get their notes. and i want to call it the godfather part 2. so i get an answer, he calls me back. francis, whatever you want, you're going to get a million dollars. bob evans will have nothing to do, you'll have absolutely control. marketing does not feel the godfather part 2 makes sense because everyone is going to think it's the second half of the movie they saw. i said in that case, i guess i'm not going to do it, and i held out. it was the smoothest movie i

ever worked on. the most complicated one, but it went really well. it was all over the place, had cuba in it. i showed it to fidel. fidel said it was very accurate depiction of that night. he was a big movie fan. >> come with me. it's the only way out of here tonight. >> you must have met a number of people over the years who turned out to be great fans of the godfather. >> all the bad people on earth. saddam hussein, number one fan. gadhafi, all those kind of guys loved the godfather. >> don't miss "extraordinary" with billy joel at 9:00 p.m. and francis ford coppola at 10:00 p.m. this coming saturday, august 20th, right here on cnn. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i'll see you next week. to new pt insurance - everyday.

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. thanks for joining me today. i'm alex marquardt in today for fredricka whitfield. we begin with a surprise visit to taiwan by a u.s. congressional delegation. the group is saying the trip reaffirms america's support for taiwan on the heels of the controversial visit by nancy pelosi. a visit which sparked a furious response from beijing, which included live fire military drills off the coast of taiwan. the delegation is being led by democratic senator ed markey