It was an extraordinary week for NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward. Both journalists are at the top of their profession right now, and delivered riveting, in-depth reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan on the crisis that emerged last week when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. This seizure of power transpired just two weeks before the U.S. was set to complete its troop withdrawal after a 20-year war.
The Taliban forces have moved across the country, capturing all major cities rather easily, while the Afghan security forces that have been trained and equipped by the U.S. and its allies seemed to struggle under pressure.
Engel, who has been reporting on the Afghanistan crisis across NBC News platforms, left Kabul on Thursday before landing in Doha, Qatar to continue his reporting from there. And if you’ve watched CNN at any point over the past week, you’ve most certainly seen Ward on your screen. She left Kabul on Friday and landed in Doha that night with her team and nearly 300 Afghan evacuees.
For the latest edition of #AskNewser, we recently caught up with Engel and Ward, and each told us the most indelible moment of their on-the-ground Afghanistan coverage over the past week, as well as products (or in Ward’s case, people) that got them through this one-of-a-kind experience.
TVNewser: What has been the most indelible moment of your Afghanistan coverage so far, and how does it compare to previous times you have covered major civil unrest?
Engel: It’s hard to choose one. There were dozens of moments. Here’s two.
I remember seeing the Taliban roll into Kabul. It is a city of six million, modern and ancient. Cell phone shops next to open sewers. It is ringed by mountains. A crumbling stone wall traces along the ridges until it reaches a castle. Suddenly, the police had disappeared. There were no soldiers either. The Taliban had already taken the rest of the country. Negotiations were underway to form an interim government, combining the old US-backed Afghan government and the Taliban. The talks broke down. The Taliban announced they were moving in to maintain order. We were out filming and there they were. Taliban fighters. Unmistakable. Long thick black hair. Brimless caps, the front cut out so they could touch their foreheads to the ground as required for Muslim prayer. Flowing robes. Guns easy in their hands. No one fired on them. The Taliban took the city just by showing up. The capital fell to a few hundred fighters. Their presence was all it took. We watched a man tear up a poster in the front window of a beauty salon. The poster showed a heavily made-up woman with a hairstyle that would have taken hours to do. The salon specialized in styling hair and make-up for weddings. I had filmed there before. I’m not sure if the man tearing up the poster was Taliban. I don’t think so. He was unarmed and dressed like most Kabulis in a mix of traditional and western clothing. Taliban fighters were walking by. I think the man was showing them that he was on their side, that he understood the new rules, and supported them. He was appeasing the new overlords, blowing with the political wind.
Another moment was on the military side of Kabul airport. It was full of American troops that had recently arrived. There were so many they were sleeping on the ground against their packs. Eating MREs [Meals Ready-to-Eat]. The portable toilets were overloaded. Afghans were coming in by the thousands. There was no time to check who was who, and no way to do it. There weren’t enough linguists to interview people. Most of the Afghans didn’t have any documents. The Americans were trying to get the Afghans into groups so they could be processed, brought to the flight line, and loaded on planes.
The Afghans mistook the Americans’ attempt at crowd control for an attempt to stop them from leaving the country. They started to rush the marines. The marines sprang into action and started shouting: GET BACK, NOW! The marines were armed but had not shouldered their weapons or fired. But it could have gotten to that and may have been heading that way. The Afghans got even more panicked that they were being stopped. They started handing babies from the back of the crowd to the front, closer to the flight line so that at least their children would make it out of Afghanistan. The babies were crowd-surfed from hand to hand. “Take my baby. Just take my baby,” they screamed in English, and in Dari and Pashto and other languages the marines could not understand. Some of the marines turned their backs, spread their arms, and pushed backwards into the crowds, becoming human barricades, the Afghans pressing up against them. The babies floating in hands above were crying. The screams of the red-faced toddlers were louder and more penetrating. I was next to a woman from the U.S. consulate. Her job was to help process the Afghan evacuees. Her mouth was open. Eyes wide and soft, nearly in tears. Her face was pained. She held her hands in front of her and apart like she was holding a baby. I asked her who all these people were. It took her a minute, but she looked at me with a 1000-yard stare and said, “I don’t know.”
Ward: I think there’s been a couple of moments that I will never forget where I really felt like “wow, I’m actually witnessing history in the making in real time.”
Waking up on the first day of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – with the Taliban in control of Kabul – and driving out into the streets and coming across this truck full of Taliban fighters right outside the US embassy compound and they’re chanting ‘Death to America’ amongst other things. But they’re also wanting to chat and in a good mood and feeling victorious, so it was just the most surreal mixture of completely unexpected and unexpectable. Nobody could have ever anticipated this happening in quite this way at quite this speed.
I think the other moment that really stands out is when we were at the airport and we were trying to do our live shot. The minute we set up our live shot people just started crowding around us – everyone had a story: They worked for the Americans, they had been a translator, whatever it might be. And they’re desperate to get out and their paperwork is ready or it’s not ready, they’re trying to get through the Taliban checkpoint to get into the airport but they can’t and they’re afraid. It was just so overwhelming to see this deluge of desperation and despite the fact the Taliban were beating people back with whips and improvised truncheons and shooting into the crowd, they’re still just standing there for days hoping against hope that they can find some way. When they saw the camera, everybody just wanted to say “please, help us get out.”
What item has been most useful to you during your Afghanistan coverage so far?
Engel: A battery back phone charger. Extra socks. Folded up toilet paper. Light weight boots.
Ward: I can’t say there’s one item specifically that’s been indispensable to me. The most indispensable thing to me by far and away is the incredible team that we have: Brent Swails, William Bonnett, Najibullah Quraishi. You can’t do this kind of work without working with incredible people – really brave and hard-working people. It’s been an incredible privilege to report on this story, but it’s also been really grueling and really tough and pretty scary a few times. What’s gotten me through it 100 percent are these absolutely wonderful colleagues of mine.
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