TV-MA | Documentary | 1hr 18min | 2022
Anyone one still believes there was any degree of planning ahead of the American military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan will be disillusioned by this documentary. There are indeed those stomach-churning images of desperate Afghans falling from planes as they lifted-off from Kabul airport, but viewers will also get a sense of the sheer chaos on the ground in Jamie Roberts’s “Escape from Kabul.”
Poster for the documentary of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan “Escape From Kabul.” (HBO Max)
Admittedly, nobody expected Kabul to fall so quickly, but it did and there was no contingency plan in place. Only a small, recently-arrived deployment of American troops were charged with holding Kabul airport. They were not anticipating the volume of asylum-seekers who streamed across the airfield’s porous fences and they were not equipped for potential fire-fights, with either the Taliban or Daesh (ISIS) terrorists….