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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Over the past few weeks the world has witnessed scenes of chaos and desperation in Afghanistan as people scrambled to evacuate the country as it fell to the Taliban.

Some were able to get out, but many others, including Afghans with Australian visas remain trapped.

Coalition forces had been planning their withdrawal from Afghanistan for months, but it’s now emerged that intelligence reports failed to forecast how quickly the country would fall, and the impact that would have on the evacuation.

Today, chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper Karen Middleton on what went wrong with Australia’s withdrawal plan and what it means for those trapped in Afghanistan.

It’s Thursday, September 2.

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RUBY:

Karen, last week, Kabul Airport was targeted in a suicide bombing. Can you tell me why that is why the airport was targeted in that way?

KAREN:

Well, the Taliban moved into the Afghan capital, Kabul, on the 15th of August, and that meant effectively they took control of the whole country. So the most immediate task for the US forces, Australia and other countries, was to get people out.

And that put the focus on the airport because that was the means of evacuation.

Archival tape -- Al Jazeera Reporter:

“Thousands of people at Kabul airport going nowhere. Beyond the gate are planes that US President Biden promised would take them away.”

KAREN:

That was not a simple process because the Taliban had set up checkpoints along the roads to the airport. There was obviously a huge rush of people trying to get out of the country. It was chaotic, it was dangerous.

Archival tape -- Al Jazeera Reporter:

“This is the north gate where most people are asked to enter through. But in recent days, it has been closed because of what the US says is security threats from ISIL. But for most people here, the biggest threat is a stampede, is dehydration and gunfire.”

KAREN:

There had been warnings that there was a terrorist threat to the airport. The Australian government put out a message on the Thursday warning directly of a terrorist threat.

They sent messages to visa holders in Afghanistan not to come to the airport. And they were very worried about the threat. And that, unfortunately, came to pass very late that night, Australian time.

Archival tape -- CNBC Reporter:

“We are getting an emerging picture of what happened this morning. Two separate bombing attacks, two suicide bombers at two different locations.”

Archival tape -- BBC Reporter:

“Killed as many as 90 people. Many western countries including Sweden, Spain and Canada have now ended their evacuations…”

Archival tape -- Sky Reporter:

“Australia’s evacuation programme in Afghanistan has been suspended. All Australian military personnel and other government officials have left Afghanistan and are safe, reporting no Australian casualties.”

KAREN:

So Australia was as good as gone, if not actually completely gone at the time the bomb went off.

RUBY:

Hmm, can you tell me a bit more about the decision to end our evacuation last week?

KAREN:

It was clear to me on the Thursday evening Australian time that our evacuation had finished or was about to because I had been in touch with an Australian citizen who had members of his Afghan family with him, who'd been trying to get in the gates. They finally did get in the gates that evening. And I put them in touch with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Home Affairs so that they could be assisted to get on that last plane. And it became clear very rapidly they weren't going to get on a flight. And that was because the plane was full. And if it hadn't already taken off, it was about too.

So that was when it became clear to me that our evacuation was actually over. They were worried about a terrorist attack. They had a very low appetite for risk, for anything that was going to put Australians and people that they were obliged to at risk. And they got out as quickly as they could.

It was very chaotic in those final days as people tried to help those who were desperate to get away from the country. It was a lot of miscommunication and confusion, and some people who had valid visas were actually turned away.

RUBY:

And so why were things this chaotic? Why was there this amount of miscommunication? Because it sounds like Australia was caught off guard. But we have known about the withdrawal for quite a while. So why weren't we able to predict better what might happen?

KAREN:

Well, yes, there was a withdrawal plan from the United States going back to February of 2020 when the then president, Donald Trump, set up a negotiation process with the Taliban and initially set the date of May of this year for the US withdrawal. When President Joe Biden took over in the US, that withdrawal date was shifted to September 11. So there was this timetable at least. But the forces were also caught off guard, very strangely, by the sudden march of the Taliban in the last week or two and the speed at which they managed to take Kabul.

So even though they theoretically were ready and had a plan to evacuate people, as that date got closer, everything was truncated because of the sudden march on Kabul.

But we now do know, certainly here in Australia, that there was intelligence suggesting that Kabul would fall and the government would collapse. But the timeline that was being presented was not a matter of days, but really a matter of months.

RUBY:

Right! So we had intelligence that was suggesting that it would actually take months for the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, rather than days, which is what happened. Can you tell me anything more about that?

KAREN:

Well, I had it confirmed that there was specific intelligence from the Defence Intelligence Organisation, which is the intelligence arm of the Defence Department here in Australia, that it was likely that the Afghan government would fall and this was intelligence that was received just a few days before the city of Kabul was overrun by the Taliban.

But its timeline was for the end of the year. So I guess there was a sense from intelligence like that that the allied forces had a little bit more time. And we've heard reported from the United States that that reflects the kind of messages that the US administration were getting from its intelligence as well.

The Taliban employed a ruthless strategy of picking off provinces and moving very quickly. They overran particular cities and towns. They left the soldiers vulnerable and they then surrendered and the intelligence just did not anticipate the speed of this.

And what has happened now is that it's left enormous numbers of people vulnerable as those international forces scramble to save who they can and get themselves out of the country. By a deadline of August 31, which was immoveable, the Taliban had said they would not accept an extension. And this is the result of that intelligence failure.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Karen, what could the Australian government have done differently to avoid the situation that we're seeing now in Afghanistan, where locals who worked with our government are not able to leave?

KAREN:

Well, they could have been bringing people out of Afghanistan much earlier and in greater numbers than they were in the lead up to this situation.

Archival tape -- Glenn Kolomeitz:

“Well, early on in this, when our people were getting into the airport and being told to leave by Australian civilians, we got them on US flights because at that stage we realised that they weren't going to get on Australian flights.”

KAREN:

I spoke to Glenn Kolomeitz, who's a lawyer who's been advocating for a number of interpreters and former security guards, and he's also a former ADF serviceman who has called this whole strategy a complete debacle.

Archival tape -- Glenn Kolomeitz:

“Look, I was in the ADF for 30 odd years, and I was a sergeant in the coppers. I've seen how bureaucratic machines work and this is the biggest debacle I've ever seen in my life.”

KAREN:

Glenn Kolomeitz talks about the existence of the standing kind of evacuation plan that Defence has. And others confirm that this is the way things work as well, that there's a standing plan for a non-combatant evacuation, a sort of plan that sits on the shelf, if you like, that is ready to be used in a crisis situation like this.

But he argues that the way this plan was implemented in such a rush was confused and not as effective as it should have been.

Archival tape -- Glenn Kolomeitz:

“You know, the plan, by taking a shelf plan and modified it, or even if they started from scratch, it has broken down, and a massive breakdown in command and seek. So massive breakdown in administration and logistics.”

KAREN:

Glen Kolometiz is arguing that there was a breakdown in communication, that there was confusion between the reporting lines involved in executing this plan. The different departments didn't communicate with each other well.

Archival tape -- Glenn Kolomeitz:

“This is DFAT not talking to ADF and DFAT not talking to DFAT then that's that based on this bureaucratic nonsense.”

KAREN:

And that this has resulted in a horribly inefficient evacuation compared to the way it should have been conducted and could have been conducted.

RUBY:

I think Karen, most people would have assumed that a process like this, a military withdrawal, would be handled by Defence, but it sounds like it was more complicated than that?

KAREN:

Yes, the Department of Foreign Affairs in this case was responsible for running the whole show and liaising with defence, which was dealing with the operational and logistics side.

And then on top of that, you have the Department of Home Affairs, which is managing the immigration side, the visa processing side of all of this. So those three agencies all had to work together. There was some involvement of some people from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as well.

But there were plenty of people saying that, that while they did achieve a lot and they did get people out, it could have been done much, much better. And there was too much confusion, too much interference across reporting lines. And what happened in the end was that some people who presented with visas at the final checkpoints that were being operated by US forces and other forces couldn't get through.

Archival tape -- Glenn Kolomeitz:

“Unfortunately, then the problem with these other emergency visas that the government punched through is they send them by email to our clients and our clients - and this is now hundreds of them have turned up what large groups of them have turned up to the gates, managed to get to the gates at the airport - and they were turned away and told, no you need hardcopy visas inside your passports.”

KAREN:

You know they'd got all the way to the airport through all that danger and risk, got themselves to the front of the queue, right to the perimeter of the airport. And then were being rejected, apparently due to some kind of miscommunication that was going on behind the scenes. And they couldn't figure out how or why.

Archival tape -- Glenn Kolomeitz:

“Now what's the good of having a visa if you can't use it, if you can't get in the gate?”

RUBY:

Yeah, and it sounds, Karen, like there are a few factors here. This is intelligence which failed to kind of accurately predict what was going to happen. And then there is this kind of miscommunication between different departments who are managing the withdrawal. But where does responsibility lie and where does this leave the people who are still trying to leave Afghanistan? Are we doing anything in Australia now to help those people?

KAREN:

Well, this is the big question now. I think there will be well, I know there will be an investigation into how this was all managed, at the very least by a Senate inquiry into the way that evacuation rolled out.

As to what Australia's ongoing responsibility is. The Prime Minister says that Australia still considers it has an obligation to those who hold visas and certainly towards Australian citizens and to other vulnerable people.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“We're evacuating Brits, we're evacuating New Zealanders, we've offered to evacuate nationals and including Afghan visa holders from other countries as well to get them out. And so we're all working together to get people out. That's the priority right now.”

KAREN:

But it doesn't at this stage have a plan for any further assistance to evacuate. So it looks now like it's going to be up to people to get themselves out of the country by whatever means, whether that is through civilian aircraft, if and when they resume or across land borders and those options are pretty limited still at this point. Australia's obligation would then, it seems, kick in once they were in a third country.

But the future remains very uncertain. There are challenges for our government and other governments as to whether they will agree to recognise the Taliban government officially, what relationship they will have with the Taliban government. And they will be very mindful of treading carefully in the short term while they work out how many citizens and other people, visa holders and the like are still in the country that they need to try and assist.

You know, if I was an Afghan sitting there in Afghanistan now with some kind of commitment from a foreign country that I could go there and I hadn't managed to get on one of those planes, I think I'd be very concerned about what lay ahead.

RUBY:

Karen, thank you so much for your time.

KAREN:

Thanks, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced small changes to lockdown restrictions after the state recorded 120 new local Covid-19 cases and two deaths on Wednesday.

From midnight tonight, Victorian playgrounds will be reopened, and some in-home childcare arrangements will be reinstated.

Despite the recent rise in cases, further easing of restrictions is planned to commence in late September when 70% of Victorians have received at least one vaccination dose.

And New South Wales recorded 1,116 new Covid-19 infections yesterday.

100 people have now died since the beginning of the Delta outbreak in the state, including four people on Wednesday.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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