We Were With Afghan Soldiers as the Taliban Took Kandahar

August 26, 2021 Off By Julia Nutter

Since the Taliban took control of Kabul earlier this month, a lot of the focus has been on the failures of the U.S.-trained Afghan military—why they seemed to put up little resistance to the Islamist extremists in some of the provinces, and then, finally, in the capital.

VICE News correspondent Ben C. Solomon was in Kandahar with Afghan special-forces units as the country’s second-largest city fell to the Taliban. He spoke with Commander Mohammad Iqbal about his unit laying down arms. “We are not a big force. We are a small unit,” said Iqbal. “I wish, instead of building all these other forces, army, and others, I wish the government had just invested in units like this, that we have few in all Afghanistan. And they are defending.”

On this episode of VICE News Reports, we hear from the soldiers who faced the realities on the ground and what the end of this 20-year war feels like for them.

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CREDITS: Special thanks to Ben C. Solomon and Adam Desiderio for their reporting from Afghanistan, as well as to the entire VICE News organization for their tireless coverage.

VICE News Reports is hosted by Arielle Duhaime-Ross and produced by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, Sophie Kazis, Jen Kinney, Janice Llamoca, Julia Nutter, and Sayre Quevedo. Our senior producers are Ashley Cleek and Adizah Eghan. Our associate producers are Steph Brown, Sam Eagan, and Adreanna Rodriguez. Sound design and music composition by Steve Bone, Pran Bandi and Kyle Murdock. Our intern is Leily Rezvani.