Pictures of “judgment day”: the Arte documentary “Kabul Airport”

Nfter twenty years of war and occupation, the US and its NATO allies pledge to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. America’s longest stint, President Biden proclaims, will end with the “Agreement to Bring Our People Home.” The deadline for the withdrawal ends in August 2021. Just under two weeks before the expiration, two units of the US Marines receive the order to carry out the evacuation of US citizens and “vulnerable” Afghans, who the Americans supported during the war, from Kabul Airport . A kind of suicide mission, in retrospect. The withdrawal, an involved and surviving Marines soldier recounts in the HBO/BBC/Arte France documentary Kabul Airport, “was supposed to be a simple, quick thing, but it wasn’t.” Later in the film, as she recounts how a few days later, in the chaos and panic of thousands of people pushing towards the “Abbey Gate”, amidst corpses and screaming injured people, babies, also deceased ones, were handed over the heads to the soldiers so that at least they could escape hell, is she crying. No woman among the soldiers, she says, will ever be able to forget these pictures. Men probably don’t either. Even mere viewers of this documentary, which operates very closely, as if on the open optic nerve, could be deprived of sleep. From direct reception experience, but also from the insight conveyed here, how amateurish the insight of the planning military into the – real and psychological – situation in Kabul was.

The film tells the eighteen days of the evacuation airlift strictly chronologically. The rescue operation, which ended in a humanitarian catastrophe, is conveyed in the documentary, produced by Emmy winner Dan Reed (“Leaving Neverland”, “Frontline”), with a wide variety of visual material (cell phone videos, archive images, specially filmed material) and through numerous witness interviews. Shortly after the arrival of the marines, the security preparations for the flights have not yet been completed, and the Taliban surprisingly take Kabul. Thousands of people flee in panic on the streets, tens of thousands make their way to the airport. Like a newsreader portrayed, they are concerned with saving their bare lives. It’s August 15, 2021. The pictures of the day are horrible, but they’re far from the most gruesome. They keep the events of the next few days ready. Some things look almost unbelievable, for example the landing of the first C-17 transport aircraft on the runway that has just been laboriously and violently cleared by US soldiers. Young men in particular storm the plane, sit on the outside of the wheel housing, film themselves laughing in the wind as the C-17 goes around, apparently believing they have been saved. A short time later, their fallen bodies lie motionless on the runway.

One of the most important documents of failure

Unbearable, of course selected pictures follow. Tens of thousands of people crowd the narrow security corridor against the airport gates, small children are pressed against barbed wire, people climb over the ones below. Meet a few hundred soldiers who are supposed to get the situation under control. Days later, when a bomb attack at Abbey Gate, which IS claims, hits both US soldiers and Afghan citizens, injured people wander around, leaving behind pieces of clothing and luggage, and after the last plane took off on August 31 , a deserted nocturnal silence. Even the sound track of the film alone, sometimes played with a black screen, leads to a frightening experience in the mind of the listener. Screaming US soldiers, panicked people who want to flee, repeated shots, the audible fiasco of a misplanned, harmless mission – “Kabul Airport” will remain one of the most important documents of the failure of the US and its allies in Afghanistan. “Judgement Day” is how several of the witnesses describe the course of the mission.

The choice of protagonists is remarkable. Interviews with US soldiers and their immediate superiors are about the same in number and length as interviews with Taliban leaders who were on the ground. Individual escape stories are interspersed, such as that of the Afghan women’s minister in office at the time, Hasina Safi, who finally managed to escape. In the end, almost 124,000 people were flown out by the USA, the UK and the other allies. Almost 200 people are killed, including 13 US soldiers and more than 170 Afghan civilians in the Abbey Gate bombing. Before the final departure, the soldiers destroy their own vehicles, other equipment and their furniture, filming themselves in the process. In February 2022, “Kabul Airport” returns to Afghanistan in the last few minutes, for a brief political inventory and a few pictures of the current living conditions. The very last shot shows running children, apparently only boys. The future of the country in the Taliban state.

Kabul Airport – Escape from Afghanistan runs from 8.15 p.m. on Arte.