 Hi and welcome. Thanks for joining us for this conversation, Leaving Afghanistan with New America's Afghanistan Observatory Scholars, Mir Abdulla-Miri, Kamiro Rabin, and Vanessa Ghazari from our partner, The Intercept. I'm Candice Rondo. I'm the Director of Future Frontlines at New America and a professor of practice at the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University in the School of Politics and Global Studies. A few months ago, really a year ago, when the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan, there was a major shockwave that sent around the world. Many of you will remember this in August 2021 when the last troops left Afghanistan and the entire country fell into chaos. At that time, I was at home in Washington, D.C. And thinking about all the people I had met and lived with and worked with over the years in Afghanistan, wondering what was happening to them. And I think, like many who spent time in Afghanistan, either as civilians or as members of the military or diplomatic corps, I wasn't as much a panic as anybody else. And I think it goes without saying that the people who are on this call today and in this conversation today also had a very similar experience. And in part because of that experience, New America came together in partnership with the Intercept last year to make sure that the voices of Afghan journalists and researchers and educators and human rights defenders were not silenced and that the country's most steadfast defenders of democracy, of peace, of a more stable Afghan future could still be heard. We launched this only weeks after the fall of the US-backed government in Kabul. And the Afghanistan Observatory really sought to cultivate a network of exceptional scholars who are today remaking their lives and making sure that no one at home is forgotten. We worked closely with seven scholars over the last year to help them tell their stories and the stories of their families and friends and the many, many Afghans who made so many sacrifices over the last 20 years under US-backed support for the Afghan government. The result of their work is a four-part podcast called No Way Home and a series of hard-hitting articles that went about what went wrong with Afghanistan security forces in the final days of the former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani's government. And what the fallout from that collapse has meant for thousands of Afghan soldiers and their families over the last year. Today, we're gonna be talking with two of our Afghan colleagues from the Afghanistan Observatory and a key collaborator on the project from the Intercept who worked in partnership with us this year. And we're gonna learn more about how all of this came together but also what we learned along the way about the reasons for the collapse and the impact on people, real people who live this experience and what it might mean for the future of the country and for the region and for the future of US foreign policy given the long legacy of the war there. So we have a brief clip from the podcast to kick us off that we'd like to play for you to get the mood going. Hamid and his family pushed through the crowd in a sewage canal until they were 100 meters from Abbey Gate. Hamid had the congressional letter we'd help him get. He was trying to show it to the soldiers outside the airport. It seemed like they had a chance. They were only 30 meters away from the gate now and closer to reaching an American soldier who according to our military contacts could get them inside the airport. That's when we lost them. It's such a great clip. I'm just so proud to hear that and to be part of that. So before we start, I just wanna give a few housekeeping notes for our audience. We wanna make sure that we hear from you and let you know that you do have the ability to submit questions to us. If you have questions, please submit them through the Q&A function in the Slido box that was noted before and we'll get to them in the second half of the event. Most importantly, you can access the podcast series and stories published by the Intercept and New America by clicking on the link provided by our events team below and you'll get a chance also to sort of take a look at it either by following us via future frontlines or following the Intercept at Intercepted or going to the Intercept website. You can find all of the series outputs there, including the podcast, No Way Home and we hope you will visit that site. So let me quickly also turn to the speakers and introduce you to them. Some really don't need introduction. I will say that my good friend Vanessa Ghizari doesn't need much introduction but if you don't know her, she is the national security editor at the Intercept. She has reported from four continents, nine countries and many corners of the United States for outlets such as the Washington Post, Slate and the New Republic. She's an adjunct professor at Columbia University at the journalism school and the author of The Tender Soldier an excellent book I must recommend about an experimental US military program that sent social scientists to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan with disastrous results and she is one of my oldest and dearest field friends. We have reported together in many places around the world including in Afghanistan and I'm really proud to be working with her on this project and to have her on this panel today. I am equally proud and very honored to introduce Humaira Abin. Humaira is an Afghanistan Observatory Scholar at New America. She is currently based in the UK and she works as a researcher at the Center for Information Resilience. Back in Afghanistan, she worked with USAID as well as the Dutch diplomatic mission in Afghanistan. Humaira's main area of expertise is focused on women's studies and migration and over the last seven months she has investigated the collapse of the Afghan Air Force. Mir Abdullah Miri, another colleague of ours from the Afghanistan Observatory at New America. He is of course Afghan born and raised and he served as a faculty member at Herat University. So that's in Western Afghanistan. And in the fall of 2021, Mir was evacuated from Kabul to the UK and during the past seven months he has studied the issues related to irregular migration following the fall of the former republic, the Afghan Republic. So I'm really pleased to have you all on this conversation today. I wanted to sort of start to help people kind of situate themselves. You know, a year has passed and many people might not remember exactly what it was like to live through the experience of watching Afghanistan in free fall as the Taliban swept into Kabul. But let me start with Humaira and ask this question I'll go around the horn. So where were you when you heard the news about the Taliban sweeping into Kabul and what was your first thought about what comes next? Thank you Candace. I first want to say that it's a great pleasure to be here along with Mir, my colleague and also with Candace, you Candace and Vanessa two of the people who would not just have worked in Afghanistan and been there but really deeply care about Afghanistan. Well, my story and my situation when the fall happened is was different from most of the scholars in the program because I lived Afghanistan months before the collapse and at the peak of target killings of activists, journalists, scholars and also women who work with international organizations and due to my work in my background, I feel threatened and not just me but also my colleagues and some of my friends and my networks, we lived and we didn't know whether we will be back or not on what will happen next. So during the fall, I was in the UK with my son but my husband was in Afghanistan and my whole family members, my parents, my siblings, I mean, everyone else was in Afghanistan and I mean, the fall itself and the days proceeding to the fall would give, I think it's common to everyone, to all Afghans, I think, was it a feeling of shock, a feeling of fear and a feeling of hopelessness but when the shock happened, I mean, I had the same feelings and fear from my family that what would happen to them and what will happen to my husband because he was there and I think that was the situation overall I would like to depict but still when I was talking to the people on the ground I could feel and I could hear that there was tiny rays of hope, like some people would say no, nothing would happen or the fall would be this fast but unfortunately it happened and today we're all here scattered in different parts of the world. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it was really hard to understand. I mean, it was very chaotic and there was a sense that like maybe it would be okay maybe it wouldn't be as disastrous as it actually turned out to be and I think just for a brief moment I don't think it lasted, at least for me it didn't last more than a couple of hours before I started to realize this is not gonna go well but Mia, where were you and what were your thoughts? Thank you so much, Candice. Yes, Homero, you wanted to add something? I'm sorry, just. Okay, sure. Yes, I was in Herat. It was July, 2021, I was in Herat. It was the time that before the collapse of the government the Taliban were intensifying their attacks in Herat. So the situation was chaotic. I escaped, I went to Iran. Then I was in Iran that the government collapsed and it was the time because I was working as a British as a trainer with British council. I received a call forward that I'm eligible to get relocated to the UK. So I received an email asking me to go to the airport. So the next day I went to Herat. I received a lot of calls from authorities at the airport. They were calling me, come to the airport, come from this way. I went to Kabul after the collapse. So it was very chaotic and Ashraf Ghani escaped from the country added to that chaos. So because the president escaped I felt everyone wanted to leave the country, everyone wanted to escape. So I was in Kabul. I couldn't enter the airport and that time because it was chaos outside the airport and until the suicide bombing happened and foreigners left and I was stuck in Kabul for 75 days after the collapse of the government. So that's a pretty, that's a, I think everybody had a pretty horrifying experience but being stuck there and not knowing could you get out? What's coming next? That had to be pretty terrifying. And I think that when for the people who were on the outside, especially folks, especially foreign journalists and human rights folks I think we were all kind of thinking the worst. And we somewhat understood that it was a little bit abstract, I think, in terms of how that was unfolding for a lot of our friends and people that really are practically our family. Vanessa, you reported in Afghanistan for years when we first met back in Florida in, gosh, 2004 you'd just come back from Afghanistan. I hadn't been yet. I had no idea. I'd been to other places that were not so great like the caucuses but that was no comparison to kind of experience you'd had. And so what were you thinking? Where were you at the time when the collapse happened? Thanks, Candice. I just want to thank you for that really gracious introduction. And I'm so honored to be here with you and Mia and Hamira and looking forward to talking about the work that they've done and that we've been doing over the last few months. So when I don't think of it as one day but when this kind of thing started happening in July that led into August where it was clear that the Taliban were advancing much more quickly than any of the officials at least had thought that they would or said that they would. You know, I was actually on the 15th of August I was heading up to a place in Maine where my family has gone for years and it's the one week out of the year where I try to totally unplug. Needless to say, I did not unplug at all. I was totally glued to my phone like everybody I know who had worked there trying to figure out where people were who I hadn't talked to or seen in years and whether they were okay and if there was anything I could do. And I remember swimming in a lake up there and feeling as I always had in Afghanistan the dissonance between my situation and the situation of the Afghans I was getting to know and just the dissonance in the level of risk and the level of autonomy that I always had as a reporter in Afghanistan to leave anytime I wanted that Afghans didn't have. And I remember just looking up at the sky and thinking at least they're under the same sky and feeling that in some way I could connect to them by some supernatural method. And that was sort of how I comforted myself. But I also do wanna just say one thing because my experience of that event was very much sort of funneled through my experience as an American having come of age as an American journalist in that war and having learned basically all I know about my country and its operations and its diplomacy and the way it handles itself in the world from watching that war. And so it's just important to mention that I felt completely unnerved and really nauseated for weeks about having in any way been part of what the Americans tried to do in Afghanistan of which there were many good outcomes but also some just absolutely disastrous and terrible ones. And so I've spent a lot of time thinking about that since that day. Yeah, I think that's experience that a lot of us had. I certainly had that experience. I was at home in DC myself, you know and yeah, August is typically a time that's pretty quiet in DC. People go away to vacation and I was kind of looking forward to getting started on some new work. I was watching what was happening, you know throughout the year really anticipating that something like this might happen but maybe not the way exactly it came down. And, you know, my first thought it was certainly like a flashback scenario because I myself had to flee the country very quickly because I had written something that I guess the Afghan government and maybe the US government didn't like particularly way back in 2012. And you know, I left the country within six hours because my life was under threat. And my first thought was about all the people that I had left behind and whether or not actually in the intervening, you know, decades since I left or so, you know, had the organization that I worked for done anything to make sure that, you know they were ready for this moment. And I wasn't that confident not because there was something wrong with the organization but simply because the speed of it probably I think really surprised a lot of NGOs that were working on the ground and perhaps they just didn't have a contingency plan. And, you know, of course that turned out to be the case I think for a lot of organizations, you know and it was immediately this kind of frenzied, you know, sleepless period of trying to figure out how to get people out and where they are. And, you know, are there their buses? Can we get them to abigay? Who has the list? Does anybody have the list? And at the same time, the thing that was calling for me was you know, I got calls from my friends in the State Department saying, do you know anything or anybody on the ground or anybody in the Pentagon who can help us get this organized to get these folks evacuated from some of these journalistic outfits and human rights organizations? And I was like, you know I haven't been in the country in 10 years almost nine years and sure, I know lots of things. And then you find yourself, you know dialing up old friends in Australia and in the UK, you know, trying to pull levers here and there. Can we get, you know, can we raise enough money to get a charter plane? And then the charter planes are leaving empty. So it was really, and then when the news came out that Ashraf Ghani had fled the country, I think like everybody who'd ever lived in Afghanistan for like 10 minutes, you know I'll just say it, I was pissed. I was so angry. I just couldn't believe that after all those years and all the kind of posturing around the need for stability and stable governance and, you know strong leadership, not just from him but from so many others that the Americans champion this was the final outcome was, you know the president of the country, the commander in chief of the Afghan forces left the country with his tail between his legs and barely, you know and then the rumors about the cash, you know the bails of cash that went with him and where was the money? And it was just the most ignoble and you could possibly imagine it, you know and the ridiculous images of young Afghan boys and men trying to tuck themselves into the wheel of a C-130 lifting off from the tarmac. Well again, it's just one of those images that has burned in your mind permanently now that falling off in the middle of mid-flight a terrifying, terrifying situation. So it seemed only right that, you know we try and do what we can to make sure that those who are responsible are not allowed to forget and I think that that was a big motivation for me once we got through that initial period of trying to get people out and there's still people there that, you know, I think probably should get out but still that initial period, you know sometimes a couple of months later started to kind of wane it became very obvious that something needed to be done and, you know, you're the first person I thought of obviously and I think it was just natural that in some ways that we ended up collaborating together but tell me, you know I know this is gonna sound a little bit weird but like what was appealing about this project not just for you but for the intercept staff because you had to convince people, you know that this is worthwhile I'm just curious about how you did that. Yeah, I mean it was a pretty easy sell for me at the intercept. I mean the intercept is a very unusual news organization it's certainly the only in my entire life I've never done anything professionally except journalism really and this is the only place I've ever worked that, you know, works in the way that the intercept does and really, you know gives so much backing to people like me and others who are lucky enough to work there to do the projects that we really feel have like a strong justice component and really to raise the voices of people who are not heard in the mainstream media I knew there would be a lot of coverage of, you know the evacuation and the fallout from it but I also know that Afghanistan always gets forgotten and so it bounces into the news and everybody's talking about it as what was happening last year for actually a couple months and then something else happens like Russia's invasion of Ukraine or any one of a number of other things and it's like Afghanistan just doesn't exist and nobody really understands why we should be talking about it. So, you know, one motivator for all of us at the intercept was to keep on this story and it's something that we think about and talk about a lot and we've stayed on stories like this in Yemen and other places that a lot of other news organizations have not continued to cover and so, you know, to get our folks involved was relatively easy. I mean, I really just wanna say that this project epitomizes a kind of journalism that I've been, you know, trying to do since I was living in Afghanistan about that country which is that it tries to really, you know, let me just say it like this. From observing the American government and military in Afghanistan, one of the things that was most clear to me was that those entities believed totally that every problem had a solution and that Americans could find it. And that to me was one of the key difficulties, maybe the key difficulty with the entire experiment and project that the United States had in Afghanistan. And so, you know, it became very important to me from not long after I started going there and reporting there to not think that way and actually to try to figure out what I could about, you know, how Afghans could use the resilience that all of us have seen in them to address the issues in their country and in their culture themselves and with their own, you know, and with their own thinking, their own backgrounds, their own traditions and their own ideas. And in journalism, especially because that's what I do, that was something I spent a lot of time thinking about and working with Afghans on. So I spent a lot of time with Afghan journalists, both when they were working to help me do my stories, but also trying to help them, you know, set up news organizations and do things like, you know, learn how to take some lessons from international or Western journalism. So, you know, I just think, I think this project has been really amazing in that most of the folks who are in the Scholars program have not actually been trained as journalists. But, you know, Candice, I think you know this very well and you, you know, this was, I think, part of what you were thinking about when you developed the program is that being able to tell your own story in your own way and being able to ask for and seek and get accountability from people in power who let down 30 plus million Afghans by evaporating or whatever, you know, this can be sort of important to healing and rebuilding your identity and your life in a new place. And so, you know, all those things were at work for me as well. Yeah, I think, you know, I spent a lot of time, I went, certainly after I fled, you know, I went kind of into a deep little cave for a number of years there. Didn't want my voice out there, I didn't want my violin out there. And I, you know, had I been given this opportunity, I think I would have been in a different place, you know? And I felt like that was a big motivation for me. I cannot only imagine. And when Meir and Humaira and, you know, the other scholars, you know, put their applications in, first of all, let me just say, we received 400 applications, you know, for seven slots. And so it was, and there were some really outstanding people that we interviewed and talked to. So Humaira and Meir are kind of like, you know, the shiny example of kind of rising above or kind of cream of the cream. And I think that's something that, you know, I'd love to hear from you, Humaira, you know, first of all, you know, why did you even bother? You know, what made you think you had to do this? And tell us, you know, like why was you decided to pursue the story that you did? And tell us a little bit about that story and the Afghan Air Force, if you can. Thank you, Candace. So my situation at the time in the UK was all about grappling with immigration processes, as you know, how difficult it is. And so many countries, unfortunately. So it was a sense of, it's grappling. And at the same time, I was separated from my husband, from my family, no one, not a relative, even in the UK. And it was like my life from a person who had invested in her career for years back in Afghanistan, it was just came down to just survival, just looking for somewhere to call it home. Because for first months, and a refugee cannot have a place of her own or his own. So that was like the first phase of my struggle with all this sense of, you know, hopelessness and so many struggles. But then slowly after, slowly going on, I was looking for opportunities to kind of just take my power back and just kind of collect all the shattered piece of me. And then came the Afghanistan Observatory opportunity. And the thing that I really liked about it was the fact that it really focused on storytelling. Because personally, I believe in power of storytelling and how it connects people and how it creates, ignites compassion. And I was like, no, no, I was like, it was like zero confidence that I would go further and even be able to be shortlisted or interviewed. But luckily I got the opportunity and I'm so grateful for that. And when it comes to the story I worked on, so it's a wider perspective. It was the importance of Afghan Air Force, like for security forces like Afghanistan, how important this air force has been and the collapse of the air force meant the collapse of everything. And that was the thing that happened actually. So for me it was like, just let's investigate and see what went wrong and how things ended up in a mess and things kind of collapsed. And yet first in the Afghan Air Force. And the second thing about the story that really was intriguing and touched me was the fact that a number of people, a number of pilots, they made a decision that was just not a personal decision but it was like had bigger impacts, not just for them, for the country, for the people, even for the region and why the region like countries in the West like the US. And coming to a personal level, I mean, that was like a wider perspective. But personally, I think commanders, ministers, deputy ministers, all these people, they always had platforms, they always had, they still do have. I mean, today if you see the panelists, most of the panel discussions, most of the programs, they are given back to those people who have been always there. I mean, they always have platforms to say why everything? And they kind of continue blaming each other for the collapse. But for me, it was like important to see like a person who made a decision and he was not a leader, he was not a decision maker but he made a decision at the personal level. And he has no voice, nobody listens to him. Like the pilot who's featured in our story. He went through a lot of stress, a lot of confusion at the time the collapse happened and he had to take a decision and leave the country. So for that thing to give another person the chance to have a voice, to share what they want to say. I think these pilots and other people featured in other stories, they made history but they never had the chance to write the history. So I think this platform was an opportunity for them to just be there and share what they felt and how things went wrong from their perspective. And another thing would be was the sense of hesitation between leaving or remaining. I think it's something that has been always in lives of Afghans over the four decades of war. Like, should I leave, should I remain in this country? What if I leave, would I remain? So this part also was really near to my heart because when I left Afghanistan, my family, my husband behind, this was the thing I was feeling, whether if I stay, what if somebody kills me, if I leave, what will happen? And of course the sense of separation that Ahmadiyy featured in the story has of being away from his family, I had the same experience and many millions of Afghans have this experience, like families are separated, scattered and their chances of getting together is not easy or takes time. So I think it was like wider security perspective and also some personal feelings and attachments of the story that kind of led me to work on this. And I'm grateful that I had your guidance on this and we worked together on it. Well, the pleasure was mine for sure. I mean, I learned, I spent a lot of time thinking about the Afghan security forces over the years, but I learned more than I thought there was to know about kind of the mechanics, just the basics of like, what does it mean to exfiltrate hundreds of helicopters and biplanes and like, did anybody think about that? And it was what was clear, I mean, from our reporting that for me anyway, was there wasn't a plan or if there was a plan, it's somehow disintegrated or people kind of lost connection with it, that there was just so much chaos. And then, Amadi, who you found, of course, which was a remarkable find as a character, as a person that he was willing to talk to you, first of all, and just tell his entire story. When you did that first interview and it became clear that he'd been sort of given this order, but like by whom to fly out of the country with the plane, the PC-12 that was used on all of these different US-backed operations, right? Then I was sort of like, well, who the hell gave that order? And so it was kind of like also unraveling a mystery. So it was a really, it was an interesting story to pursue, but I think to the point that you just made, Myra, earlier about the choice that we had with this program and this project, there was no amount of cajoling. It was unending from Afghan elites who were knocking on the door saying, give us a birth, give us a place, give us a fellowship, give us a platform, even from some of my very dear friends whom I still respect for pressuring us to kind of give the mic yet again to the same people who of course had been through something, but the reality was like, we've been hearing from those same people for 20 years and the outcome was the same. It seemed like we just, we really needed to hear different stories from different voices this time around. And that's why, Myra, when you applied, and first of all, your writing was so beautiful. It came through so beautifully in your application, but also just the warmth of your personality came through so quickly. Everything that we've done here is by Zoom, for the most part, with a few meetings here and there. So tell us a little bit, Myra, about why you decided to pursue the story that you picked up, which was, of course, the story of your cousin who was featured in your podcast episode and his journey, his attempt to leave the country. Tell us a little bit about that. Thank you so much, Candace. So a quick self-promotion. I did episode two. It's called The Desert of Death. I really encourage everyone to listen and share their feedback with us. And that story, as all of the topics we explored were related to Afghanistan. Of course, the concept of ownership was there, but my story was one step further. It was a family story. It was the story of my cousin during the time I was struggling to leave Afghanistan. I was stuck in Kabul. I was in a hotel when I received a call that my cousin has passed away while crossing the border to Iran. So then the time I was searching, looking for ways to get out, I had to find ways to find his body. And it was a difficult journey. As Vanessa mentioned, as you mentioned, my background was not in journalism, but I was interested in issues related to access and equity. Even as an educational researcher, I looked at that identity in teachers and learners. So for me, the story was very important because it was a family story. And of course, when I became a refugee, something I'd never taught about, I wanted to explore some of the struggles, some of the experiences these refugees and migrants have been experiencing. And I hope the podcast, the episode, provides some small comfort for them, that their story is being heard and the prayers of others are for them. And yeah, this is at least a small thing I could do related to this family story. But he really, I mean, he had a really interesting background to you. I thought, you know, what was interesting is that, you know, your cousin, he was kind of like computers. He was like sort of this very self-taught, very driven guy who, you know, just against all odds, he kind of made something out of himself and was, I think, what comes through in the episode and the reporting for me anyway, is this is a guy who was not gonna allow his family, his wife and his children to just kind of wither away under Taliban rule. And, you know, he wasn't gonna have his chance taken away from him when he wasn't gonna let the Taliban take his family's chance away from them. And he made this kind of fateful decision, unlike you, like you did have somebody to help you at least support you through the process, even though I'm sure that didn't really feel like that at the time, your cousin just made this big leap. Tell us a little bit about the leap that he made and paint the picture for us. So I would describe the situation as a chaotic thing happens that everyone feels scared and everyone wants to leave. So my cousin wasn't like someone who had connections or relationship with foreigners, with Americans or with other foreigners. He was a low-class or middle-class person in Afghanistan. It was only a couple of years until he found, he could find, he could, let's say, have a normal life in Afghanistan that the insecurity happened. So when the Taliban came, he had struggles with economics as well, financial support, even he started looking for other jobs. Then when he saw that everyone is leaving, he decided to leave. I had even had a short conversation with him in July before I escaped to Iran. He told me about his plan to go to Germany, but I didn't know that he wanted to choose the illegal route to go with the smugglers because when the collapse happened, so the passport offices were closed, then people couldn't obtain the proper travel documents to leave the country. So I would describe the situation as everyone wanted to leave and I would say even most of those who didn't want to leave at the beginning and would claim that the Taliban are different this time, they have changed their mind and they are leaving. You know, I was also struck by the story of his wife who had to, I mean, I'm not gonna give a spoiler away, I think I won't do that, but I mean, you unravel the mystery of kind of what happened in a way that I think also gets at the other thing that Afghans experience, or I'm sure millions, especially those who left, which is this kind of like unresolved set of questions about people that were left behind or that were killed or that, you know, and so, I mean, I wonder like now, a year on, what questions you still have about either what happened or what questions are kind of lingering for you and I would put that question also to Meirah as well. So of course, in terms of Aziz's story, the character I explored, my cousin, it was a mystery what happened to him, why he wanted to cross the border. The major problem was that he chose a spagging route and the name is on it, there's no truth, everyone would lie. So they have to lie to help you cross the border. So the stories we were collecting from the smugglers, we couldn't trust, we couldn't find the correct story in terms of what happened. It's as if they cheated on him and they killed him and the problem is we don't have clear policies in terms of smuggling in Afghanistan. That's why we cannot chase and through the government and see like who was guilty in the process. That was a problem there. Yeah, there's no resolution, right? I mean, that's the whole thing. What about you, Meirah? Do you still have questions that are unresolved for you either about what happened with the Air Force or just the experience yourself of leaving? There's still some unresolved questions, I think. Yet, to an extent, yes. There are so many things that should be asked from people, especially those in power, like the commander of chief of the country, President Ghani, he fled the country when everybody was, everybody's eyes, like all people were eyes to him and he would look up to him that what he was gonna do. I mean, I remember when I was talking to my sister a day before the collapse and she was like, oh, I really hope that there comes an entwined government or something or resolution or something that suddenly everything doesn't fall to the Taliban because we know the Taliban. And despite all of the rhetorics and everything that Taliban do or they have changed or things like that, people really didn't trust and they knew what was coming. So I think for this part that what will happen next wasn't really a surprise, wasn't very, very questioned for me for my family and overall people on Afghanistan because we have been through what the Taliban have, what kind of people they are, what they have done to this country. But in terms when it comes to looking to future and how, especially the pilots and Ahmadi featured in our story of how it's all about for him is now his present and his future. Why the questions like why those who sacrificed their families left them behind to save a number of aircraft. There's nothing, they should be at least a special support for them to at least somebody should have talked to them like guys, you helped us, you did something really great and we should be helped. I mean, this is a big question for me. I mean, why those guys, like I talked to Ahmadi, I talked to several other pilots, they were literally crying for their families left behind. I talked to another pilot who's basically and he cried to me and said like, we went, I mean the final days and weeks preceding to the collapse the war was like so heavy and the rest of their lives were fought to the end but there's nothing for them. They are considered as an usual or everybody else who has migrated or who have been refugees. So this remains still a question for me and the reason I, another reason I chose the piece was like to put it out there, like, are you aware that somebody or a group of people who sacrificed like everything, they cannot sleep, they're kids and I've understand they no more recognize their fathers because it's been a year more than that, they haven't seen their family members and there's nothing for them. I mean, this would be a question that I wanna really want to hear from authorities, like why nothing is happening. And I mean, the migration process shouldn't be shouldn't be like killing people and there and like victimizing people with all the bureaucratic stuff. Yeah, and I think this is what I kind of tip I'm thinking about and so does Mahmadi. Yeah, that's, I think that's right. And I think that, you know, it's interesting to think that in a couple of months time, you know there's a congressional commission that was recently established. It's called the Afghanistan War Commission and they'll be this kind of massive review led by appointed folks who are gonna be looking into what happened, but I think, you know I hate to say this, but the cynic in me believes that ultimately like these kinds of questions are not gonna be either asked or answered and yet they should be, right? And I think if I had a few questions it would be why aren't you asking? Why is it that you find it uninteresting that millions of people who fought for something that the United States said it championed for 20 plus years you've just sort of said, yeah the rest of their story doesn't particularly matter. You know, we're not gonna highlight that. I mean, today or I think it was yesterday there was an announcement that the Biden administration has now decided to release, create a special fund for humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. We hope that will work out well, but you know, there's always been this debate whose money is it actually, you know US taxpayers and it's an Afghan money because since it belonged to the central bank. But it's remarkable to me that, you know while this administration wants to sort of tout these moments, you know of kind of lending a helping hand there's still a lot of pushback about an evaluation of what it did wrong. No admission there, you know not even a sense of, not even a shred of humility around the incredible sacrifices made by so many even their own people, frankly who are also reliving the trauma most likely of what it's like to have left people behind. You know, lots of American veterans are involved still in fighting to get their friends out or get them resettled. And they're doing that on their own personal time own personal dime often times. So I do think there's still a lot of questions. I'm curious Vanessa, we only have a few minutes here I guess, and so I'll go around the corner on this last piece. So, you know, you've reported on Afghanistan for a long time, I have two I think I had a few surprises but I wonder what, you know in the process of doing this working with Humaira, with Mir, with Samaya, you know with Faheem, Abdul Qayyum, Elias all of our fellows, Ali Adili in the process of doing this and of course your amazing team who are just unbelievable in terms of their energy and talent what surprised you along the way, you know either in the reporting or in the production or even getting to know people Yeah, well, I mean, I agree first of all I mean that the team at the intercept that has worked on these projects I just can't say enough good things about them Laura Flynn, who basically made this podcast happen with, you know just has been working night and day for weeks to make this a reality and my colleagues, Ali Jasperi and Martaza Hussain who just, you know also have given a ton of time and heart to these folks to help them so I'm really, I'm glad I get a chance to just recognize them a little bit I guess, you know one of the things I really like about this project selfishly is that now that I'm an editor I don't get to report anymore and it's a big bummer because reporting is the best and it's where you learn everything about the world and I miss it so much and so, I mean getting to go on a reporting trip with Fahima Bed, one of our fellows for a story that's coming on this project to meet up with members of the zero units who have been resettled at this Afghan elite team that was trained and backed by the CIA you know, going to talk to folks from those teams who are being resettled here in the United States and just getting to sit with Afghans and talk to them in their living rooms over tea it was just great and I mean it's a sad, scary story but it's for me selfishly like that is where I live and that's very rewarding and I've gotten little bits of that with Humaira and being able to kind of talk to her about her sourcing and her character and with Mir and I just wanna say, you know they've described their projects I think really well and what drove those projects but these are remarkable pieces of journalism particularly from people who are not journalists and I just can't say enough about Mir and Humaira's meticulousness, dedication and just complete willingness to be open to learning like how this is done but also to push back to sort of take very clear positions on what was important to tell in these stories and why we should, you know do them this way rather than another way that's just been so rewarding and I really hope that people at this event will go to our site, theintercept.com and also the Intercepted podcast where the No Way Home podcast that Mir did an episode of is embedded inside as a mini series but go to our site please to read the stories and listen to these podcasts because I really think that's the best thing I can say about why this is rewarding I think it's really, you know I'm not just saying this it's really worth listening to and reading these accounts from people who have lived this. Absolutely. Well, let me give the mic and we only have really couple of minutes guys here so let me pass the mic to you because this is your story, this has been your journey what did you learn along the way while working with others on this about yourself or about the process of journalism if you could sum it up in one or two sentences what would you say, Mir? Yes, I'm grateful to the support we received from the teams at New America and the Intercept I personally improved a lot in terms of personal and professional development for me the process was totally new especially podcasting a totally new genre and to some extent it was a bit difficult for me because I was looking at a family story and it required a lot of emotional energy and that was the toughest part but the support we received a lot of collaboration, reflections, feedback from the support we received made it possible and especially the training we had at the beginning the open source investigation training helped us a lot and we made it, thank you so much I'm so glad, what about you, Mara? Yeah, thank you Candace, I'm the same like Mir I haven't had any background in journalism so it's been a whole new experience and to learn how to do robust and investigative journalism and I'm so grateful to New America and Intercept to you Candace and Vanessa for that and along with that I think there wasn't an acknowledgement in the team of our personal circumstances as well and that was the thing that really touched me because every time we spoke you guys were like we're aware of your circumstances we know how you're dealing with so many stuff in life and there was a kind of understanding that that really helped us to do our work but also I mean do other stuff that we have in life in terms of migration processes and shifting homes and all this stuff and of course it was an amazing experience to work with my fellow scholars who for whom I've learned a lot we have now become a family and hopefully we have the chance to work together and future as well. Thank you, well with that we are ending right on time I just wanna say thank you all I wanna say thanks to our partners at the Intercept please do go see the site intercept.com listen to the podcast at the Intercepted no way home it's out and about and it's worth listening to and check out our articles and hope to see you again soon, thanks.