evacuated by august 31st, that deadline, the president has indicated the u.s. will still continue those efforts. how big of a deal would that be? i m sorry. i lost you for a moment there. i had a technical issue. well, it would be huge, because first, they have to start by essentially getting the taliban permission to do it. and they don t know how many americans are still there because not everybody registers with the embassy and people leave the country and don t tell the embassy they ve left. so working through that list of exactly who is there and where they are. if there are people outside of kabul, that is extremely problematic. even to go help people in kabul get to the airport, you have to have vehicles. you have to have security. how long do you wait for all of that? how long will the taliban have
kaitlyn collins live at the white house. let s get to nick paton walsh who is in qatar for us. nick, you left afghanistan. one of the big questions is what is the state of play as we are days into this. we see the pictures, chaos there. you hear gunfire and afghans saying that many of them are hassled at the taliban check points on the way to the airport. in the pictures from around afghanistan, occasional protests. people marching with the afghan flag, the old one, protesting against the taliban, and some reports of recriminations by the taliban even though they promised there would be no such thing. yeah. certainly the situation in central kabul is worsening. we ve seen the crackdown against protests of people carrying the old afghan national flag, still the afghan national flag. we ve also heard that the family member of somebody working for the german news agency was, in fact, killed by the taliban. that news agency themselves
reported. isolated ens dense. possibly the initial weeks worth, we saw from the taliban, they re desire to look like they were calm and control and not vengeful may be fraying. obviously the focus at the airport. we have an extraordinary situation. there s a log jam outside of the airport from videos we ve seen from tonight. hundreds of people cramming these gates. a log jam inside the airport grounds itself. i ve spoken to afghans who were supposed to be going through but are being held on the outer ridges of the airport in secure areas but not being brought in because the inside of the airport was referred to as a dumpster full of trash. so obviously they have a problem with the number of people on the airport. and clarissa has been saying they can t get planes off the airport to reduce that backlog as they begin to have success. that isn t going to do anything to slow down the number of people trying to get on the airport. they are essentially in a lose/lose.
to a u.s. military. there was a backup and the commander on the ground has just issued the order to recommence. outside the airport taliban fighters rule the streets. it s not known how many americans and afghans are correspondents are covering all angles of the developing story. i want to start with jeff zeleny who got reporting about flights about to resume. what can you tell us? we re learning from the white house that the flights are going to resume shortly. at least that is the plan at the kabul airport. white house official telling me that there was, indeed, a backup in processing all the people
you may dislike it, it s a recognition of the reality. i hope there will be some kind of continued diplomatic presence even going forward. again, it s not approval. it s simply recognition of reality. but there s some things that can still be accomplished. promotion. some effort to push the taliban to do more on the rights of women and girls to protect the ha zar, the ethnic minority, that fate, that risk a faced a potential genocide the last time they were in power. and in the short term, we can help get people out. if we leave, then the possibility of getting people out disappears. you hear that running commentary that this is a giant stain on america s image in the world. do you agree? well, it certainly doesn t it isn t a plus. but it is the whole afghanistan episode, and even more than that, the iraq war that has diminished america s leadership in the world, it isn t how it