17 days. A volunteer’s view at the end of Afghanistan.
Aired live on August 22, 2026.
John Moses walked day by day through the August 2021 Kabul evacuation using his own records, 7,200 messages across 19 family threads. He covered the fall of Kabul, Ashraf Ghani fleeing, paperwork that stranded families, the Abbey Gate bombing that killed 13 US service members and roughly 170 Afghans, and the 68 Afghans his volunteer group got out. Kate Kovarovic of AfghanEvac closed on moral injury and volunteer suicide.
Show notes
Five years ago this month, the last American aircraft lifted off from Kabul. In the seventeen days before it did, roughly 124,000 people moved through Hamid Karzai International Airport in one of the largest airlift operations in history. On August 26, 2021, thirteen American service members were killed at Abbey Gate, along with an estimated 170 Afghan civilians.
Five years on, the questions have not closed. Where are the Afghan allies who did not make a flight. What happened to the ones who did. What does this country still owe the interpreters, drivers, fixers, and soldiers who stood alongside American forces for twenty years, and what happens to the veterans who carry the weight of a promise they could not keep.
Coming up on The Smoke Pit, we take the full broadcast on Afghanistan.
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