UK Scrambling to Get Out of Afghanistan

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You saw your very own defense secretary breakdown there. His voice cracking with the weight of responsibility that, clearly, he feels towards those who have put their lives at risk in Afghanistan to help you all. Tell me how you feel about that and whether you think that you will manage to get everybody out. He says clearly many will fall between the cracks.

TOM TUGENDHAT, BRITISH CONSERVATIVE MP: Look, Ben has been working this now for many days and weeks, and I’m sure, sadly, what he says is correct. He knows exactly what he’s doing and has been working 24/7 for the last, God knows, many days, many weeks, to try and get a decent resolution. Not a great resolution but a decent resolution that gets as many people out as possible. I spent the last week, maybe two weeks responding, trying to get interpreters I worked with in Helmand, in Kandahar, Kabul, people who served alongside us, the special forces we trained, anybody who I think we owe a duty to. I’ve been trying to get them into the airport, into the process and out of the country. But I have to say, I got a heartbreaking voicemail yesterday from a very dear friend who described how he was now waiting in his home, as he knew the Taliban were knocking on doors as they went down the road and looking for him and his comrades. And well, he hasn’t texted anymore. So, I don’t know what’s happened.

AMANPOUR: Oh, God. Tom Tugendhat, that is just too chilling to even hear you recount. And you heard what the Taliban spokesman said to me, that they will not be conducting revenge raids or going house to house. You have seen the pictures, which are horrific of Afghans trying to literally clamber aboard a moving U.S. military transport plane on the tarmac there. Do you believe what the Taliban say about giving amnesty and protecting all Afghans no matter what they did in the last 20 years?

TUGENDHAT: I don’t believe them for a second. I can tell you why I don’t believe them because I’ve seen in the photos that have been sent to me by friends in Lashkargah and in Kandahar, the reality of the Taliban reoccupation. I’ve seen the photographs people we trained, people we served with, people of integrity who did their best for the Afghan people, and their bodies are lying in a gutter. You know, this is the reality of Taliban rule. We shouldn’t have any illusion as to what’s going on.