John Oliver discusses what’s happened since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, how their ongoing crisis has even more to do with our decisions than you might think, and how to properly modify the verb “feel”.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ We're gonna dive straight in with our main story this week, which concerns Afghanistan, a country that's blessed the world with innumerable treasures, from embroidery, to traditional Pashto and Persian poetry, to the Afghan hound, undoubtedly the real housewife of show dogs.

She's a messy bitch and she lives for drama.

This week marked the 1 year anniversary of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, which you may remember was complete mayhem.

They were scenes marked by chaos and desperation.

Hundreds of Afghan citizens running alongside a departing USC-17.

Now, nearly a year after the US withdrawal, the indelible images remain.

A US Marine lifting a baby over a barbed wire-topped wall at Kabul's airport.

And this photo, taken by Technical Sergeant Justin Triola.

Okay, how many people do you think are on your jet?

Occupation was going to end badly, but it's still shocking just how bad it was.

In terms of things not going the way that you thought, our exit was the foreign policy equivalent of putting a cake in the oven, and then 40 minutes later, taking out a live rat dressed as Hitler.

It's not just a fuck-up, it's a mind-blowing fuck-up that'll take years to fully comprehend.

Everything happened so fast, apparently, even the Taliban were surprised at how quickly the Afghan government fell.

And a pretty decent way of knowing if the U.S.

Did a good job at something is by asking the question, was whatever we did a fun surprise for the Taliban?

Within a matter of days, the Afghan government fell and the Taliban took over.

Military officials have struggled since then to put into words just how badly they miscalculated, with General Mark Milley putting it like this.

All the intel assessments, all of us, got that wrong.

That was a swing and a miss on the intel assessment of 11 days in August.

Swing and a miss describes roughly 40% of the U.S.

The breakdown of stuff we've done goes something like this.

40% swing and a miss, 20% beefed it, 15% whoops, 15% whoops, parentheses, murders, and 10% delivered most, but not all, of the mail.

And look, there is a lot to criticize about the way we left Afghanistan, including the fact that while we managed to get roughly 80, 000 Afghans, many of whom had worked with the U.S.

To America since the withdrawal, the number who remain in danger because of their association with the U.S.

Mission can be counted in the hundreds of thousands.

So, criticism of what happened is completely justified, though Maybe not from the guy whose administration signed the deal to leave in the first place.

Bagram is this great air base that was built many years ago, and it cost billions and billions.

And we left, and 1 night, everybody was gone.

The dogs were left behind, by the way, for those people that like dogs.

Honestly, it has been a while since we've heard Trump's voice on this show, and I somehow forgot just how bizarrely incoherent he is.

It's truly extraordinary to see his brain function like a crow spotting a crumpled up can, because he's flying, he's flying, he's flying, and then, whoa, Nelly, hold on, is that what I think it is?

Also, comments about people not liking dogs are a little odd coming from a man who, every time he holds 1, seems to make the dog want to die.

But we're not actually gonna talk about the withdrawal from Afghanistan tonight.

Instead, we're gonna focus on everything that's happened since.

Because while Afghanistan has faded as a topic of discussion in this country, it really shouldn't.

But it's also an important 1, because things are going worse in Afghanistan than you may know, for reasons that have even more to do with our decisions than you might think.

So tonight, let's check in on Afghanistan.

And let's start with the fact that as I mentioned earlier, the Taliban is now in charge.

And in the early days of their takeover, They tried to convey a slightly softer image to journalists through carefree photo ops, like this 1 where Taliban members visited a fairground in Kabul.

Or this 1 where they took a trip to the zoo and really spelled out the message that they wanted the world to hear.

We want to show everyone that under Islamic rule and security, everything is enjoyable, and everyone can live in their own country the way they want.

Yeah, because that's what you associate the Taliban with.

Freedom for everyone to live their best life.

Also, for all it's worth, I don't think losing the right to drive bumper cars or go to the zoo was at the top of anyone's list of concerns when the Taliban took over.

It's akin to the Pope saying, don't worry, everyone, Catholics are still allowed to use pogo sticks.

Okay, great, But to be honest, that's not the main issue people have with the Catholic Church right now.

And while the Taliban is not actually a monolith, different regional leaders rule with different degrees of severity, I do still feel comfortable saying everything's very much not enjoyable for everyone in Afghanistan right now.

For starters, there have been brutal reprisals against U.S.

Allies and former Afghan government employees, nearly 500 of whom were killed or forcibly disappeared during the Taliban's first 6 months in power.

And on a much bigger level, the Taliban's taken an absolute sledgehammer to women's rights.

For all the many legitimate criticisms of America's occupation, women did make huge gains there.

In 2001, there were few, if any, girls in school.

And by 2020, girls made up roughly 40 percent of all students.

That same year, Afghanistan's parliament had a higher percentage of women than the U.S.

But now, they've essentially gone back to 0.

But much more than that, Taliban decrees have tried to control nearly every aspect of women's lives, ordering that they shouldn't leave their homes unless necessary, and that only women who can't be replaced by men will be allowed to keep working.

In fact, 1 of the only areas women can work is in healthcare, because there are some situations where men aren't allowed to treat women as patients.

This midwife, for example, is still working in a hospital, but she is furious about what she sees happening to her country.

The Taliban cannot ban me from working in the hospital because they know that it is needed.

I humbly request the Taliban, do not meddle in women's rights to education and employment.

Otherwise, they are amputating 1 arm from the body of society.

A pillar of men, and another pillar of women.

You can't run a society on a pillar of just men.

We have a global pandemic, the planet is on fire, the Babysitter's Club is canceled despite unparalleled critical success, and the world's richest man is a ventriloquist dummy from hell.

Let's maybe lean on that 1 pillar a little bit less." And things are getting worse, because in March, the Taliban went back on a promise that they made after they took over and announced the girls would be prevented from receiving a secondary school education in most of the country.

Now, that decision drew widespread condemnation in Afghanistan, including from many Taliban members.

But the leadership pushed back, claiming that it's just temporary and arguing among other things that they simply needed more time to decide on a school uniform for teenage girls, which is clearly total bullshit.

Besides, for an organization so concerned with virtue and purity, taking months to brainstorm a schoolgirl uniform you like is objectively the single pervious thing you can do.

So women in particular have lost a great deal in the last year.

But on top of that, the whole country is facing a cascading series of humanitarian crises.

Has estimated that as much as 97% of the population is at risk of sinking below the poverty line.

And part of that is due to a series of natural disasters, from an ongoing severe drought that's hit around 80% of the country, devastating food production, to a massive earthquake in June, and flooding just this month.

But that's been exacerbated by the fact that this is all falling on a brand-new Taliban government that is in no way equipped to take it on.

The Taliban now need to shift from being a jihadist insurgency to a ruling group.

For 20 years, you've built an organization that was designed to fight, and you motivated people to engage in suicide bombings.

They don't turn into people who are government officials overnight.

A militant insurgency group is pretty low on the list of people that you want leading a government.

Right around the Hells Angels, the Manson family, and Ron DeSantis.

-♪ ♪ -() And to be a million percent clear, I am not suggesting that the U.S.

Occupation was a perfect magic wonderland.

It was awful in its own ways, not least, having to live under the specter of hellfire being rained down from flying unmanned death machines every day.

Our continued presence there was untenable.

But the exact circumstances of our departure have, to a significant degree, made things substantially worse.

Because we've made a series of decisions, some of them understandable, that have had huge ramifications for the Afghan people.

And let's start with the Taliban government itself.

When it took over, many of its members were already sanctioned by the U.S.

Because we list the Taliban as a specially designated terrorist group.

So suddenly, those pre-existing sanctions apply to at least part of the Taliban government.

The State Department currently has a $10 million reward out for information leading to his arrest.

But you should know, he's the current acting Interior Minister there.

Can you mail me my $10 million now, please?

Don't worry, I spend my money very wisely.

So, individuals in the Taliban government are sanctioned, which effectively means the whole government is, making it nearly impossible for banks, businesses, and charities to operate there, which is a massive problem.

Especially because 75% of the former Afghan government's budget came from foreign aid and grants.

That was the money that, among other things, paid the salaries for vital government services like teachers and public sector employees.

And all that aid disappeared almost immediately.

As 1 expert has said, no country in the world could withstand a sharp cutoff of that aid, and it's affected everything in health care.

For instance, the World Bank and other organizations immediately froze $600 million in aid, which left doctors in a very difficult position.

This state hospital in the heart of Kabul has not received funding since the Taliban takeover.

We had antibiotics, painkillers and vitamins here, but it's empty now.

What's your budget now in total for the department?

For the total in department, we didn't have...

For other item, We didn't have any budget.

It is hard to imagine how a hospital can even function with a budget of 0, unless every exam room is just a paper bag and a sign that says, -"Yell what hurts into this bag, then leave." -$7.5 billion And it gets even worse because the U.S.

Also froze Afghanistan's central bank assets held in America, amounting to around $7 billion.

Now, that is money typically used to do things like keep the currency stable, finance imports, and provide money to the banking system.

Froze those assets to prevent the Taliban from accessing them, but that also kneecapped the country's entire banking system.

Especially as Afghanistan doesn't have the ability to print its own currency.

All of this led to a literal cash shortage, where even Afghans who do have money in the bank can't access it.

So there have been massive lines and waits just to get money out.

At some banks, withdrawing cash has reportedly taken 3 days or more.

And that has brought the country to an unusual state of affairs.

This is a situation where food is technically available, but there isn't enough liquidity in the economy and enough availability of paper currency to purchase food.

It's like a lyric from Alanis Morissette's Ironic, in that it's fundamentally not ironic at all, and I'm sure Dave Coulier is still somehow to blame.

-♪ Ironic music playing ♪ -♪ Laughter ♪ Things are very grim in Afghanistan.

And UNICEF has warned that over a million severely malnourished children will be at risk of death without emergency treatment this year.

And because many Afghans have nowhere to turn for food or for money, families have been forced to make some harrowing choices.

40-year-old Gulam Hazrat sold his kidney for around $2, 300.

A desperate decision that you can make precisely once.

That's actually an increasingly common decision in Afghanistan, and it's not just that.

Families are also selling some of their children so that they can feed the others, which is just unimaginably heartbreaking.

So clearly, the people of Afghanistan are in dire need of help.

And the current president has, at times, been alarmingly blithe about the situation there.

As a consequence of the incompetence of the Taliban?

But I feel badly also about the fiscalists that

I feel badly about a whole range of things around the world that we can't solve every problem.

Okay, first, I hate to be a Marion the Librarian, but you don't feel badly, you feel bad.

Feel is a linking verb, and you're modifying it incorrectly, Marion out.

But, The second, it's pretty disheartening to see our official foreign policy boiled down to, sorry champ, can't win them all.

Is so directly responsible for so many problems in Afghanistan, and in Eastern Congo, by the way, but that is a different story.

Now, the Biden administration will point out that it's begun issuing sanctions exemptions to allow the free flow of some humanitarian aid.

And it sent hundreds of millions in relief to Afghanistan, more than any other country, which is absolutely true.

And it's also true that they've done that in the face of stiff opposition from some on the right who argue in pretty strong terms against any kind of assistance and for 1 particular reason.

Obviously, humanitarian suffering all over this planet, right?

I don't, I'm not in favor of giving money that I'm pretty confident will end up in the hands of the Taliban.

We should not give them 1 red cent until such time as we can demonstrate that they have actually done what they said they would do, which is to separate themselves from terror.

Look, Mike Pompeo and deepfake Blake Shelton here are clearly assholes.

Although, I will say, for even non-assholes, it is natural to be concerned about the prospect of U.S.

For years now, charities have been able to find ways to work with, through, or around the Taliban to help ordinary Afghan citizens.

They had to do that because even when the U.S.

Was there, the Taliban effectively still controlled large parts of the country.

And for people at some of those groups, like the Afghanistan director at the International Rescue Committee, the fact that they are financially constrained from helping people now is pretty frustrating.

I think a lot of people will say, well, I don't, we don't want to see aid go to Afghanistan because we don't want to give money to the Taliban.

So you want to make 38 million people suffer because of a few thousand?

That math doesn't work for me either, and that is saying something because look at me.

I look like a Pokemon whose final evolution is a graphing calculator.

I look like an algebra textbook left me on the doorstep of an orphanage as a baby.

I look like what Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting should have looked like.

So when I say that math doesn't work, you better fucking believe me.

So there is a strong case to be made for finding ways to get humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but that is not all it needs.

In the long term, no amount of emergency relief can stand in for health care, an education system, or a functioning economy.

As 1 report said, humanitarian efforts are bandages, not cures.

You can't just keep applying them forever.

And right now, there are some worrying signs of donor fatigue, with contributions from the international community drying up, even as nearly 20 million people, that's almost half Afghanistan's population, are experiencing high and critical levels of food insecurity.

So, a more sustainable way to help them is through development aid, building long-term solutions, like investing in healthcare and education salaries, or helping build infrastructure through investments in irrigation and water management in areas affected by the drought.

But the tricky thing with that is, that really does require some form of engagement with the Taliban.

Now, there are mechanisms to try and ensure that they don't end up benefiting financially, but admittedly, none of them are perfect.

And the idea of the Taliban getting 1 red cent is obviously hard to swallow, especially because, despite the Taliban's new outward-facing live-laugh-love vibe, They've continued to remind us how terrible they are, not only with their heinous treatment of women, but also with the recent confirmation that they were harboring the leader of Al-Qaeda in a safe house.

But withholding all forms of aid until the Taliban either give in or collapse just is not a viable strategy.

Because for 1 thing, who knows how long that will take, if ever, and for another, while you're waiting, potentially millions will starve.

Just listen to that midwife from earlier, who is no fan of the Taliban.

Your sanctions on the Taliban will kill us faster than the violation of our rights by the Taliban.

A girl dies from hunger, and a mother either sells her daughter because of hunger or from pressure to marry her by force.

The issue of their education and literacy is meaningless when you're dying from hunger.

This is a crisis at the most fundamental level.

And thankfully, there have been some small steps in the right direction recently.

Is working on a proposal to release some of the billions of dollars of frozen money into a trust fund that the Taliban themselves can't access, which could still help inject some cash and stability into the country's financial system, if it happens.

Also, the UN and the World Bank both have initiatives in the works to try and bridge the gap between emergency humanitarian assistance and longer-term development aid, as long as they're able to get adequate funding.

And for the final time, I do get the broad worries about how sending money to Afghanistan might inadvertently help the Taliban.

But I'd argue the key question here isn't just, what happens if we send Afghanistan money and aid.

Millions of innocent Afghans will suffer and die under a government they did not choose.

The reality is, there is no 1 simple solution here that is without risks.

But 38 million people's lives are at stake, and doing nothing would be yet another colossal, if I may borrow a military intelligence term here, swing and a miss.

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