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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Thanks for starting your week with us. We begin with a question.

Nelufar Hedayat: What would you do if you had just a few hours or even minutes to leave your home?

Speaker 3: I was told to pack my life in a backpack.

Melissa Harris-Perry: With this simple but gut-wrenching inquiry, we're forced to imagine for just a moment the terrifying choices faced by thousands of Afghan nationals one year ago as Kabul fell to the Taliban. It's a question posed in a new podcast Kabul Falling.

Nelufar Hedayat: This is the story of how it happened told by ordinary Afghans who were there.

Speaker 4: I told my family, if we make it, we make it. No other chance is waiting for us.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The two decades that the US spent in Afghanistan were expensive. 837 billion waging war in Afghanistan. Another 145 billion attempting to rebuild it. More than 2,400 American troops killed, and more than 20,000 injured. This is President Biden on August 16th of last year, the day after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.

President Biden: Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been, preventing a terrorist attack on America homeland.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The cost for Americans was high. For Afghans, it can barely be fathomed. 20 years of war and occupation, more than 48,000 Afghan civilians killed, at least 75,000 injured. Kabul Falling captures the shock and despair of ordinary Afghans as they scramble to respond to the Taliban's swift and sometimes brutal seizure of control.

Speaker 6: On the street, there was rush of people, "Oh, Taliban came, Taliban arrived to Kabul."

Speaker 7: You could see the fear on people's face, and everybody's running all over the places.

Speaker 8: People in Kabul, they are in jeans, t-shirts, and this stuff, but all of a sudden, everybody was in pure traditional clothing.

Speaker 9: The last thing you wanted to do with the Taliban fresh from the battle and fresh into power is to tell them that you were a lecturer at the American university.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I spoke with Nelufar Hedayat, Afghan British journalist, and host of the podcast, Kabul Falling.

Nelufar Hedayat: For me, the events of 2021, August 15th are burned in my mind and my emotional memory. It's very hard to talk about as the years go on. I thought it would be easier to talk to you today than it would've been a year ago, but it is in fact, still difficult to process so much of what's gone on to a country that has faced year after year of embattled hardship, and me as an Afghan refugee back in 1994 being a result of this tumult.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm wondering, as you said that, had I asked you a year ago, you might have expected that by this year it would feel different, but in some ways, it feels worse, harder. Is that the sense that we hope that meaning comes out of it? That we can look back and say, well, that was hard, but I can see this good, and that good, and this good that emerged, and that that hasn't been the case for this embattled nation?

Nelufar Hedayat: I am now a new generation of refugee that inherits what my mother and my father must have felt when they were in their 30s, running from war, from men who dressed very similar carrying guns into their homes. Now I sit here as a 30-year-old looking back at a country and look at a new wave of refugees fleeing all over the world, the lucky ones that can. It almost feels like I have leveled up, as though I didn't know this pain before, this dull ache of seeing a cycle complete itself, of knowing that sometimes some things will hurt, and then they'll hurt again.

That pain is something that I've had to come to terms with, but as a journalist and as a student of philosophy, I've learned to use that in a really focused, productive, useful way. That's where Kabul Falling comes into it. This was the right one to make because it was giving Afghan people their voice.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to take a moment and listen to just a bit of the podcast here.

Nelufar Hedayat: My mother took me and my sister out of Afghanistan in the mid-90s because of the inhumane way that they treated women. She was scared for our lives, so we fled. This new Taliban, would they change their actions towards women? [unintelligible 00:05:17] did not want to be around to find out. Zan TV was trying to arrange safe passage out of the country for its employees, but they hadn't come up with anything concrete yet.

Speaker 10: Unfortunately, some our colleagues, they lost their hopes and they said that we will not go, and maybe we will face with some problem.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I feel like that story that you feature here of this young journalist at a woman's TV station in Afghanistan is that multi-generation piece you were just telling us about. Can you tell us a little bit more about the unique circumstances that women faced trying to flee Afghanistan last year?

Nelufar Hedayat: I often like to talk about men when it comes to the issue of women's suffrage or women's rights because I feel they, in truth, hold the power and the key to changing things. Over the last year, I've spent a lot of time looking at colleagues of mine and their work and trying to understand resistance and how minority rights, the rights of LGBTQIA folk, of minorities like the Hazara people, and of women, the largest minority in most countries in the world, how they have been targeted, but it is profound to see how much has been taking from them in such a short time.

Melissa, if you can imagine a 34-year-old woman like me who was born in Kabul and a 34-year-old woman who's living in Kabul today, the privilege and the freedoms that I have and everything that's been stripped from her, including her right to be in a public space, to do her work and show her face at the same time, it's egregious. I don't want to say that women are treated worse or in different ways to other minority groups. No, all Afghan people are suffering, but it is in fact true that there are no women in the Taliban. They are an entirely sexist, brutal, authoritarian group of men who have subjugated all minority.

Afghanistan feels to me like it's turned into the stories that as children our parents would tell us. Growing up in London and the UK, you have the boogie man who might come and get you or such and so forth, but when I was a child, six, seven, eight, it was, "Be careful, the Taliban would do this if they found out that you were speaking up or if you were talking back," or whatever. It's like living in a country where the bad guys won, and for women, for anyone who's part of a minority group, it's even worse if that can be imagined.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes, I so appreciate your point, that the goal isn't a kind of Olympics of suffering where we determine who has it the worst, but as you point out, that those intersections of disprivilege of marginal identity intensify every part of what you are pulling forward for us.

Nelufar Hedayat: In Kabul Falling, you're going to hear people that I deeply disagree with, including men of privilege who, in my assessment, are doing nothing close to what they should. You're going to hear from a Taliban fighter and trying to understand how anyone could be willing to oversee exactly what you've just described in terms of disadvantage and being oppressed and still acting like there is hope. It is very easy to stand there today as a young man who either fought for the Taliban or as those who benefit from their existence and say, "Don't worry, step by step, we'll get there."

When you hear from [unintelligible 00:09:10], when you hear from other women and men who we speak to who have risked everything just for their right to stay the same, to say where they were, it's heart-wrenching. The story of Kabul Falling is the story of all of us failing. The Western world as we know it failed Afghanistan, and we don't shy away from telling that story.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to listen to another clip. This is of Abdul, a former translator for the CIA.

Nelufar Hedayat: One night, not long after the fall of Kabul, Abdul and his family were trying to sleep when the building watchmen woke them in the middle of the night. The Taliban were downstairs. Abdul gathered his wife and children. He tried to keep his voice from shaking.

Abdul: I told my family that you don't be panic, just stay over here. Let me go and talk to someone.

Nelufar Hedayat: On the outside, Abdul seemed cool and collected. He didn't have any documents that could tie him to the Americans, but his worst fear flashed through his mind. They could arrest him and separate him from his family.

Abdul: I was scared. My heart beat very fast, my mouth's dry.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tell us more about both Abdul and others like him, that fear.

Nelufar Hedayat: Stories like Abdul's rippled across the city on the 15th of August, and they are continuing to day after day. In the podcast Kabul Falling, we don't just focus on the harrowing, shocking, and brave events of that day, but also the months afterwards. It's hard to explain in words that I'm saying now what you'll hear in the podcast and to really capture the fear and the sense of foreboding. Remember, before the Taliban became the rulers of Afghanistan, they promised difference, they promised understanding, and congeniality, and a sense of togetherness with the Afghan people.

Well, they were only speaking of one type of Afghan person, which was people who believed in their militant beliefs who also happened to be men, but that doesn't mean that other men like Abdul were off scot-free. We have so many stories in the podcast of those who worked with Americans, with Europeans, with international forces, with aid organizations who were targeted, who were sent death threats. This psychological war persists to today, it's not going anywhere.

Melissa, the truth of it is the events might have happened a long time ago and we in the West will search for meaning, and I'm sure writers and thinkers far more well-versed in this and smarter than me will write books on what happened in a Afghanistan, but the people have to live with the legacy. They will be our judge, they will decide and tell us, and they will write, in my view, the correct version of history as to what happened in Afghanistan in 2021.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. More with Nelufar Hedayat on the new podcast, Kabul falling, when we come back.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: One year ago on August 15th, 2021, the US-backed Afghanistan government collapsed as the Taliban took control the capital city of Kabul. For many Afghans, the moment was met with desperation to flee the country.

Abdul: Because I worked with Americans, I worked with Afghan government, so I was basically feeling a fear of my life. I may lose my life.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We've been speaking with Nelufar Hedayat about the new podcast Kabul Falling, which brings us the voices of Afghans who lived through it.

Nelufar Hedayat: The world owes the same level of care and attention as if the Afghan people looked like them. If you're from the United States, if you just imagine that they spoke English or had the same color eyes or skin or hair as you, would you feel more compassionate towards them? If they had the same religion as you, would you try and help them more? If they supported the same sports team as you or they shared your sense of humor, would you care more? I asked the world and for anyone listen to ask themselves why they don't see Afghanistan as deserving the same level of compassion, care, diligence, and accountability as other nations in the world who are struggling at the moment.

That for me is blistering. It's difficult to reconcile why it's okay for some nations to be treated differently to others. If anything, the United States, the United Kingdom, the ISAF forces as they used to be known, and the group of foreign forces that were trying to force their foreign policy onto a land that wasn't theirs, that was sovereign, what they owe is greater than the rest of the world. What America owes is without a doubt more than anyone else because we heard when America called for democracy. When we had two difficult but well-conducted elections in Afghanistan, we listened when the United Kingdom said no more drugs, treat women better, do more.

The Afghan people rose up, "Where are we," the west, "in response to that?" I feel like they were called and they answered, and it remains to be seen in the years ahead whether we do the same. This is not just my perspective. Listen, I haven't lived in Afghanistan for decades, and I certainly do not speak for the Afghan people, but Kabul Falling allows them to speak for themselves, and it's what I would urge people to listen to really take on that challenge.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you're talking about this, imagine that they look like you, imagine that they worship the same God as you, is this in part a reflection of how differently so much of the West has responded and the US to the suffering in Ukraine?

Nelufar Hedayat: Certainly. The reason I don't like to do compare and contrast is because every Ukrainian person that is saved or helped or aided is a win for humanity. That doesn't mean that every Afghan person or Syrian or Yemenese or Nigerian or Sudanese or Colombian, I could go on, that is also saved is worth any less or should be thought of any differently. I understand when we feel more for people who look, talk, act, and worship like us, but I feel like we can do more.

Melissa Harris-Perry: 76,000 Afghan refugees is the estimate who have relocated here to the US since the fall. We've talked a little bit about what the US or the world may owe to Afghanistan, what also are owed to refugees who have taken refuge in our nations?

Nelufar Hedayat: I will just say congratulations on getting 76,000 of the brightest and the best that Afghanistan offers. Well done. These are people who have struggled and worked hard and are accomplished, and they manage to do it, the impossible, the difficult, and so one asset to a nation to have a group of people that feel saved, or certainly feel safer in the US. Earlier this year, I was in Geneva doing a conference for the UNHCR, the Refugee Department of the United Nations. We had many countries there, Melissa, all of them talking about why it's important for them to have resources and they don't have enough resources, but one thing that I noticed was the sense of partnership, kinship.

One person was teaching another about how they managed to do something well, and another was giving a tip to another about how to better connect with the refugees that they had in their country. We in the West are not the only ones that have refugees. In fact, it's well known and documented the majority of refugees that leave their homeland, the displaced persons, go to neighboring countries sooner than they are able to fly or go via boat to far-off exotic places like the United States. This is a moment of reckoning for us. When a refugee like six-year-old Nelufar arrives at your door, like I did in London in the United Kingdom in 1994, what will you do?

Will you empower her? Will you give her all the tools she needs to succeed so she can become a productive, valued member of a society and a country that she learns to love, or will you choose to separate her, tell her she's not one of you, and cast her off as unnecessary or unwanted? So many choices arise in conflict and when events like 2021 in Afghanistan happen. Kabul Falling was an eye-opener for me, Melissa, truly it was because I heard Afghans talking in their own voices, and you can only imagine the number of times I broke down in tears. My [chuckles] sound studio had to have a glass of water, a cup of tea, and some tissues every time just because I couldn't bear to hear the humanity of it all.

This is a moment for us to really consider who are we in this moment, and can we live with that version of ourselves as the international community. Those are the sorts of things that I think we need to start thinking about.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Nelufar Hedayat is an African British journalist, and you must listen to the podcast Kabul Falling. Thank you.

Nelufar Hedayat: Thanks.

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