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(upbeat music)
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- This is Undaunted Life, a Man's Podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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All right guys, we're gonna do something a little bit
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different here over the next several episodes.
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I'm not even sure how many it's gonna be
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'cause we've had a lot of response to this,
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but the situation going on in Afghanistan
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is obviously insane.
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It should be dominating the news.
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It is dominating the news
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until you get little pockets of COVID news here or there,
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but this is a start of a series
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called Botching Afghanistan,
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where we've invited a lot of alums of the podcast
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that have at least a tangential relationship
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to the situation going on in Afghanistan
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to come on and give their very, very short thoughts on this.
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So guys, these interviews are gonna be like,
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I don't know, 10, 15 minutes.
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Maybe some will be a little bit longer,
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but these are just quick hitters from people
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and there's no better place to start this
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than with Holly McKay.
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So Holly McKay is an alum of this podcast.
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She was on episode 188,
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but she is an author, a journalist,
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a war correspondent, a humanitarian.
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Then she's the best-selling author
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of Only Cry for the Living Memos
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from Inside the Isis Battlefield,
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but she was on the ground
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and has been on the ground in Afghanistan
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for the last several weeks.
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She actually got to watch this situation deteriorate
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on the ground in real time.
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So she's in a bit of a precarious situation right now
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in that she's an American citizen,
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an Australian native, but an American citizen
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and she can't get out of Afghanistan.
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I just spoke with her last night,
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can't really talk about where she was
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or any of the other stuff that we talked about,
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but I just wanna go ahead and get into these comments
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and guys, we're not gonna do our normal outro
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with this series.
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So we're not gonna do the quick resilience boost.
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I will have the show notes there.
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You've got to follow Holly on sub-stack.
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You've got to follow her on Instagram
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and I've also got links to her website
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and her books and all that kind of stuff.
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So you will have those links available to you,
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but we're just gonna get right into this content.
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I'm not even gonna be doing this long of an intro
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on the subsequent episodes with our guests
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that we have coming up, but without further ado,
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let's get into it.
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Holly McKay, thank you for coming back
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on Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
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I know that's been a crazy week for you,
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crazy several weeks for you.
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So I just wanted to kind of give you a little bit of space here
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to talk to our viewers and give us a little bit of an update
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as to kind of what you've been seeing on the ground there
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in Afghanistan because you've been experiencing it,
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whereas we're all just looking at it on Twitter.
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So what's going on in Afghanistan?
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What have you been saying?
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- Well, as we can see, Afghanistan's been, you know,
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all for 20 years, but what we've really seen
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since President Biden announced
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that the US troops were going to be leaving earlier this year
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is just an incredible escalation of violence.
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And just the amount of territory
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that the Taliban was able to quickly seize,
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it was just very dizzying and mind-blowing.
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And then when I got into country,
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I could not have imagined that really just within a week
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they would be in power.
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I just, if someone had told me that a couple of weeks ago,
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I would have thought they were absolutely crazy.
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And especially when I came in, things were really normal.
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And Afghanistan is really one of my favorite places
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in the world and in Kabul, everybody was out
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and just living their life and working.
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And obviously the situation was very tense
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and people had big concerns about what was going to happen
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when the US withdrawal was complete
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at the end of the month.
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But other than that, life went on
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and you couldn't have imagined that
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that this would crumble this way.
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And it was really just this massive domino effect
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as soon as they started to take
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some of the provincial capitals,
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that's when we really needed, saw everything just fall.
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And I think it really just shows you
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how quickly life can go from normal.
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And then, you know, within 30, you know,
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literally it can be 30 minutes
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and you've been plunged back into the dark ages
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and all the rights that you fought for
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and the education that you acquired
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and, you know, the person that you were
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for the past two decades, that person no longer exists.
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And it's just been a really heartbreaking thing
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to wrap my head around.
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- So I was obviously following you on Instagram
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for the last several weeks, everything looked great,
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looked like you were having a good time.
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Was there a flashpoint?
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Was there an exact moment in time where you could sense,
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you know, everybody was tense and on edge
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and at least being aware of their situation,
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but where it's like, oh no, things are out of control?
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- Yeah, I think for me, and I was working in the north
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of the country with my photographer, Jake,
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and we'd spend a lot of time here
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in any different conflict zones.
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And one thing I always stress is you develop
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a certain intuition about things and things happen
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and you can't always put your finger on it.
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And there's sometimes no real root that you can see
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at the time to why you feel the way that you feel.
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But we were in the north and we had a great time
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and just really lapping up, you know,
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straight photography and talking to different people
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that had fled Taliban zones and everything was sort of great.
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And then really within 24 hours, things started to shift.
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You could see people lining up at the banks,
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trying to get money out.
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And yeah, at the same time, I was also talking
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to a lot of sources that I had within government,
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military on all sides of the spectrum.
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And basically they were sort of assuring me
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that everything was fine and that, you know,
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the places were going to hold and everybody was fighting
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to the teeth.
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So I guess maybe a little bit naively really, you know,
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believed that they must have solid information on this.
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And you felt that shift, I think,
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really it came down to that the afternoon
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or a few hours before the takeover happened.
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And there'd sort of been a rumor about the group
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reaching one of the three sort of front lines.
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And then we had a taxi driver that we were trying
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to get to sort of take us to see some displaced people.
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And he basically said, no, he was too scared.
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And we were thinking, you know, why is this guy scared?
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You know, what are we missing?
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And we went out to get some dinner
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and the streets were just dead.
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And you know, we were at a place that we always go to
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and suddenly the television,
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which normally plays all these crazy funny soap operas
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that was turned off and it was just dead quiet.
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And we sort of looked at each other and were like,
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something's not right.
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And yeah, we both agreed to quickly leave.
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And we left and, you know, that was fortunate timing
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'cause had we stayed any longer,
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it could have been a precarious situation
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because, you know, immediately some men
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and motorcycles came in and that was the Taliban
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and that was their very smooth takeover of the area.
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- So here stateside, obviously the narrative is king.
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So you have one side of the narrative saying,
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you know, everything is Joe Biden's fault
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and, you know, the current administration.
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Then you have the other side that's trying to put blame
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all the way back on Bush, but at least Trump.
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There's a lot of blame to go around right now,
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people blaming the Afghan army.
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It's like, hey, at some point you got to fight for yourself.
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But from what you're seeing on the ground,
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what are the people saying?
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Are they disappointed in their own countrymen
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and the young men that are supposed to be protecting them?
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Are they disappointed in America?
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Is it a hodgepodge of both?
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- I think it's a hodgepodge.
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I think most people recognize that there isn't one person
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to blame in this, that there are multiple factors
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that contributed to this and you can't,
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you can't really peg the blame on one particular person.
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But yeah, I do feel very strongly at the end of the day
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that the sort of the final announcement for that withdrawal,
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it did lie without command or teeth,
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which is President Biden.
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And I feel very strongly that that wasn't a decision
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that we, you know, was sort of a time-based decision
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rather than a condition-based decision.
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And I just felt, I feel very confused
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why the lack of preparation,
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I mean, clearly the United States has not been prepared
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for this onslaught.
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If you've seen the footage of these poor Afghans,
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you know, falling from planes and flooding the airport
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and my heart breaks for them
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because they do have genuine reason to be concerned.
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But why this wasn't sort of taken into account
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and how the U.S. missed the ball so much
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in being prepared for this,
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but really the doubling down of this being the right decision,
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I'm not sure.
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Yeah, I'm not sure why that, you know,
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the president is sticking to that narrative,
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but I think we can all see that this is an absolute
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colossal failure, far worse than anything, you know,
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even second-style and just my heart breaks
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with the Afghan people because, you know,
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it's always the ordinary people that suffer.
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And what we've seen is a lot of the leadership
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and the warlords and everybody else, you know,
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cut deals and ran before they were made public
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and are living safely in other countries,
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real acts of cowardice, if you ask me.
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And meanwhile, it's the Afghan people who were left to suffer
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and the Afghan people who supported the United States
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and supported our allies and really believed
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in this dream of freedom and democracy
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and how quickly that was stripped from them.
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And as much as I can really recognize that we can't,
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you know, the war had gone on for long enough
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and the U.S. had paid a lot of blood
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and treasure in this war.
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I don't think it was the right decision
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to have made right now and if we look at the history,
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it was, wasn't the U.S. troops that were out there
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in the combat, it was the Afghans that were fighting
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and there was a huge amount of problems
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that needed to be restructured.
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And I don't know really that they could have been,
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the government, the centralized system
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could have been changed, but I think any sort of effort
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and outcome could have been better than, you know,
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what we've seen now, which is that the Taliban controls more
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of the country, pretty much all of it,
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then they did a 9/11.
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So 9/11 is going to be a celebration for them
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and I think that should be a really sad moment
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for Americans and for Americans.
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- It's sad, yeah, it's sad, it's frustrating,
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it's unbelievable even here as a civilian,
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but I know you gotta go here in just a few minutes.
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So just, I guess the last question,
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because a lot of your followers and a lot of my followers
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that know I know you were like, hey, what's going on?
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So for you as an American citizen,
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are you in a place where you're safe now?
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What is happening with Americans that are on the ground?
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That have basically been told, hey, shelter in place,
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there's nothing we can do for you.
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- That's pretty much the situation right now.
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I think, especially after Kabul fell,
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it's been pandemonium, absolute dizzying pandemonium.
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So the best thing we can do now is just kind of stay put
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as the US government formulates its plans
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and tries to work things out a little bit,
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but I feel quite safe and in a good place.
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And yeah, this is an unfortunate part of the work
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that we do, but I feel very strongly about meeting
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to have been here and to tell the stories
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of the Afghan people, because that is
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a semblance of justice to them.
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And we should have put into words to you
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how wonderful the Afghan people are
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and that there's so much more to this country
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and these people, they're more in conflict.
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They're sort of people that will give you
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the food off their back and give the clothes of their back
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and give you the last piece of bread
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that will take care of you and even in the lead up to this,
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it was, I saw very anti-American sentiment.
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It was more just, how do I get to America, please help me?
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And what we're abandoning these people too
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is a really sad day for me.
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- Yeah, I think it's absolutely incredible to hear
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these people that still wanna come to the land of opportunity,
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even though there's really no way for them to.
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So last question here, what if anything can we do to help?
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Because there are go fundmies that are popping up
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and I'm always a little bit skittish about those,
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but for you on the ground, what can people do to help?
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- Well, right now, there are a lot of great organizations
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that I put a lot of weight into it.
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The ICSC is always doing great things and then local ones.
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And I'm going to, if you subscribe to my sub-stack as well,
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that I will do a post kind of showing you
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which organizations have the least overhead
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and the best ones to support.
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So check that out and I'm working on that now.
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And yeah, just keep the Afghans in your thoughts
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and we could just hope for the best.
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- Absolutely, we'll certainly be praying for you
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and we'll get those links and make sure
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that they're in the show notes.
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Holly, thank you so much for coming back on.
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- Thank you for having me.