CARL AZUZ: Our second show of the season starts right now.
I'm Carl Azuz, and we begin with a down the middle
explanation of what's been going on in Afghanistan.
The Asian country is in chaos.
In mid-April, US President Joe Biden
made the controversial announcement
that American combat troops would leave
Afghanistan by September 11.
That will be the 20th anniversary
of the terrorist attacks on America, which were carried out
by a terrorist group that had been allowed to live
and train in Afghanistan.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001,
the United States led a group of countries
to kick Afghanistan's rulers, the Taliban, out of power,
and international military forces, including
thousands of American troops, have
been in Afghanistan ever since.
Even with a democratically elected government that
was established in 2004, the Taliban
remained a powerful force in the Asian country,
and Afghanistan has never been considered
stable enough for the US led military forces to leave.
But earlier this year, President Biden
said, in terms of manpower and cost,
it no longer made sense for US troops
to stay concentrated in Afghanistan.
He believed they could be there indefinitely based on
the instability of the country.
Critics of his decision to withdraw US troops
were concerned the Afghan government
would collapse, leading to another Taliban takeover.
And that's exactly what happened in a matter of weeks
in early August.
So, now what?
Well, the US is one of several countries
trying to get its citizens and allies out of Afghanistan.
And the airport in the Afghan capital of Kabul
has become a symbol of the chaos,
confusion, and complexities of doing that.
NICK PATON WALSH: It's America's final act in Afghanistan
and its longest war.
And it involves getting many Americans, many Afghans
loyal to America to run a kind of gauntlet
from the center of Kabul up to the main airport, where they
hope to get flights to the United States, maybe elsewhere,
and start a new life in safety.
But for that, they must go through
an extraordinary challenge.
- What should be the easiest drive in Kabul
is the reason the city is on edge,
and up the main Airport Road since Monday when I drove it,
then you run into the Taliban.
Then they were beating people back, perhaps,
to clear the civilian runway crowded with desperate people
then.
By Wednesday, it had gotten worse when they were clearly
stopping people from using their escape to America
and accosting CNN.
The Taliban controlled that road,
the entrance at the end of it, and the road to the left.
Now, many are trying to get in from the North road,
but that's led to devastating scenes at the North gate.
When I was there, the crush was dangerous,
but the numbers have just grown further still.
At night, stun grenades are being thrown when huge crowds,
still, brave, roaming Taliban in the dark
in the hope the numbers at the gate have dropped.
And in the day, it got nasty still.
There were moments of hope, but they carry risk.
When people see one success, they might want
to try the same thing en masse.
Later in the day, US troops had to repel the crowd.
At other gates, what seemed to be British soldiers struggle
to push back crowds, and huge queues have
formed, blocking the streets.
America has a numbers problem, getting enough people
on, but also, claiming huge progress,
while not really knowing how many priority cases
they're really seeking.
- How many American citizens remain in Afghanistan?
- I don't know.
- Inside, it is messy, but there are flights.
Often, many of them, where lives are walked on to C17s
and changed forever when the doors closed.
The story of the airport, the last place America
controls in Afghanistan, where the chaos outside the wire
means the promise is inside for perilously short.
CARL AZUZ: President Biden has said that the Taliban takeover
happened more quickly than his administration had expected,
but that he stood by his decision
to get American troops out.
Because, "there was never a good time to withdraw US forces."
Critics have described the rapid Taliban takeover as a calamity
for Afghanistan, and though several polls have shown
that many Americans support the decision to pull the US
military out of Afghanistan, a CNN reporter says,
the way the American withdrawal was carried out
was catastrophic.
On Monday, a US State Department official said,
there are still several thousand Americans
and their family members who we are trying
to get out of Afghanistan.
10 Second Trivia.
What is one of the two countries that share
the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Barbados,
Dominican Republic, or Bahamas?
The Dominican Republic covers the East side of Hispaniola.
Haiti is the nation you'll find on the West side
of that island.
The US Central Intelligence Agency
lists it as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
What's made things worse are political corruption
and frequent natural disasters.
The most recent of those include a catastrophic, 7.2 magnitude
earthquake that struck on August 14
and a tropical storm that followed.
On Sunday, there was a bit of good news.
Haitian rescuers said they found 24
people trapped, but alive, a week after the earthquake hit.
The government says more than 2,200 others lost their lives
in Southern Haiti, and as far as relief goes,
just getting to the affected areas is a challenge.
- Our chopper takes off with no clear destination in mind,
flying with charity group, World Central Kitchen, or WCK.
We want to find remote villages in Haiti that still need help
a week after this earthquake.
Just finding out where the needs are remains a challenge.
A tip led us to Grande Cayemite, an island off Haiti's coast.
On the ground, we're told the damage
is actually a bit further West, which it is, seen from above.
Dozens of structures were damaged, and a contact in town
told us no one has come to help them yet.
But we can't either.
So there was damage in that town,
and the people there clearly wanted us to land.
But the problem was that no safe area for us to touch down,
and that gives you an idea of how difficult
it is to access these places.
Just because you want to go somewhere
doesn't mean that you can, at least, right away.
Another tip leads us back into Haiti's mountains
and the remote of Manish.
Destruction greets us as we land,
and the charity starts to assess the damage.
In terms of figuring out exactly what needs what,
you really need to go to the ground.
JEAN MARC DEMATTEIS: Correct, and a lot of these areas
are remote.
Or the cell service has been knocked out due to damage
from the earthquake, so there's no substitute for just getting
out there and on the ground.
- Their team fans out, and so do we.
The damage is as bad as anything we've seen.
Entire blocks, destroyed.
Amidst all the rubble, there is grief.
Rose Mika Fontus' mom died when her home collapsed.
ROSE MIKA FONTUS: [non-english]
My mom was everything to us, she says, and now, she's gone.
We're just waiting for help.
Rose is now homeless, saying the government
has yet to visit her town.
They've had to make do with what they have.
Not easy in such a remote place.
That's where charities, like WCK, are
trying to help fill the gap.
People crowd around as the team drops off a few sandwiches.
Now that they know where to go, aid workers say,
thousands more meals will likely follow soon.
And, of course, it is a good thing
that organizations, like the World Central Kitchen,
have identified this town is in dire need of assistance,
that they're starting to figure out
exactly what those needs are.
But those are just first steps, unfortunately.
Getting those substantive resources actually moved
into that area is a different challenge altogether,
and this is not the only town affected by this earthquake.
They are scattered throughout the region
affected by all of this.
Many of which haven't gotten any help so far.
Matt Rivers, CNN, Port Au Prince, Haiti.
CARL AZUZ: 77 years ago, Tom Rice
parachuted into German occupied France as part of America's
D-day invasion in World War II.
Well, the US Army veteran just jumped again.
Mr. Rice performed a tandem jump from a vintage plane
over California to celebrate his 100th birthday.
Scores of people were there to cheer him on.
After serving in the Second World War,
Rice became an educator and taught for 40 years.
He says, the secret to a long life is to "keep moving."
Jumping into thin air is one way to do that.
It's a pretty fly way to propel yourself forward, experience
the ups and downs of gravity, find yourself free falling,
and make a two point landing on your own two feet.
Hey, we love to recognize the schools that use our show.
Today's is Corona Del Sol High School.
It is located in Tempe, Arizona.
The one place we look for your shout out requests is
youtube.com/cnn10, so we hope to see
your school left as a comment on our most
recent show right there.
I'm Carl Azuz.