hamid karzai was supposed to fly out of kabul down to cutter to talk about this.n appointed to do so along with 12 other people, by president bonnie. he never got off the ground because the taliban essentially swept into the capital and took over before those talks could even begin. some a confused situation. i do think that president karzai today, former president karzai is in a complicated position, which is hard to evaluate from the outside. nermeen: steve, you mentioned earlier the many points during these negotiations at which the taliban seemed to prevail when it was not a good idea to allow them to prevail. one of those points come as you write about time is their insistence on the release of 5000 political prisoners. could you explain when that happened, how the ashraf ghani government was forced to concede this, and what its effects were? immediate effects? >> in my experience on the work of this history, was perhaps the most dispiriting of this series of dispiriting episodes. it is very hard to look back on it with anything other than a sense of being ap

aghanistan�*s former president hamid karzai speaks exclusively to the bbc�*s yalda hakim.arzai's ill—year presidency of afghanistan was dominated by fighting with the taliban. when i sat down with him at his fortified home in central kabul, it was clear he was trying to make the best of a situation he spent years trying to avoid. we spoke at length about relations with united states, the role of women in government and access to education. hamid karzai describes his former foes as his brothers and is calling on the international community to continue to engage with the new taliban government. he fears, he tells me, the country becoming the world's worst humanitarian crisis. mr president, it has been over 100 days now that the taliban have swept to power across this country. your assessment. well, our country has gone through a lot, sudden and massive changes, the country still needs to be sure of permanent peace and we are busy working in that direction. when you say busy working in that direction, what do you mean? meaning that the afghan people need to unite, need to wor

hamid karzai, the former afghan president. now it's time for across the uk.rwen. residents in the north entering a seventh day without electricity following storm arwen say they feel "abandoned and forgotten". almost “1,000 homes are still off in the north—east and cumbria. electricity companies say engineers are continuing to work around the clock to reconnect customers. andrew hartley reports from north northumberland. life in the dark. no power, water, phone or internet. joanne, a nurse who lives in the remote cottage is struggling to cope. i am sleeping in here which isn't ideal. eating what i can in here, boiling pans of water on the log burner. you know, you can only take so much. do you know what, i burst into tears, i am not afraid to say. i haven't slept well because of the cold and because i am on the sofa. we metjoanne earlier in rothbury, a community centre where volunteers are laying on food. it is her first hot meal for a week and she is angry with her local mp, anne—marie trevelyan. you know, it is awful. she should be here. she should be sitti

number two, the way they went about it in withdrawing from hamid karzai international airport insteade professional military judgment of the leaders that said you need to leave a residual force of 2500 troops in afghanistan. they completely disregarded what the military was telling them to do. instead, they made this a completely political decision, a political decision that led to the loss of the lives of those 13 americans. molly: i would imagine a congressional commission might dig into all of that, and i want to get to that in a moment. but first, jake sullivan talked about leaving america in a better position to address terrorism around the world. your thoughts on that. are we in a better position after the withdrawal in -- withdrawal? >> molly, absolutely not. we abandoned what we had on the ground with human intelligence and people that would give us information. we abandoned signal intelligence. we've seen that we couldn't even successfully prosecute an over the horizon drone strike when we tragically killed an afghan humanitarian worker and his family. at everyone turn we hav

afghanistan's former president, hamid karzai, has called on the international community to continue toet's unite. do you think the taliban are _ together, let's unite. do you think the taliban are capable _ together, let's unite. do you think the taliban are capable of- together, let's unite. do you think the taliban are capable of this? i l the taliban are capable of this? i have had meetings with them. the exchanges were very good or lots of issues, the return of women to work, the schools, the need for ecological progress, that all afghans css. so progress, that all afghans c55. 50 you were having frank progress, that all afghans css. so you were having frank conversations about the role of women in the society? so far, the majority of teenage girls in this country have been stopped from going to school. we very much want them to go back not only to school but to universities, back to work places. yes, we have had talks about with the taliban. they understand it. they say that it will happen. we say that it should happen now. immediately.— that it should happen now. immediately. tha

continue to plot terrorist attacks, including the deadly attacks killing 13 american soldiers at hamid karzai international airport earlier this year. we now our enemies continue to target us. we know that the war on terror continues. the question is what we do about these detainees? we know these detainees , some of them represent the most hard-core terrorists we captured. these individuals have aged, they've been other the fight, some for two decades. that doesn't change the fact they represent the most committed terrorists. this on the basis that we know the individual terrorists and their release, and the return to the bike could have a huge impact on the operations of terrorist networks. one need only look al qaeda, which began as a ragtag group of small groups that came under leadership of two americans who took them to yemen, they remain one of the most dangerous terrorist groups. the number of attacks they carried out in yemen and the united states was significant. when we consider what to do with these detainees, continue detainment, transfer them, the question must come what happens