← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
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Welcome to the Watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Today we're going to discuss a recent event that's popped up in the news, and I've received a lot of questions on it. So I thought let's just walk through it so people understand what is actually going on and potentially ways we can maybe make this better. A report came out that a number of Afghans, and it sounded like potentially 1100 of them that have been processing in our Qatar base. You know, so we move them, the US Government, from Afghanistan to Qatar, and then we're processing them to come to the United States, have not been approved in some manner, or it's just the fact we stopped the processing and now they're kind of in limbo, you know, in US Government housing. So this recent reporting came out that even though it's not approved yet, there's a discussion to tell those 1100, you have two options. One, you can return to Afghanistan, and obviously for most of the people we moved to this base, they are under threat from the Taliban, so that might not even be an option. Or. Or number two, you can choose to go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So we're going to explain why that is not an ideal situation either, especially for this grouping of refugees. But first, I want to talk about the problems around how we did evacuations from Afghanistan. I know I've discussed this before, but because it wasn't done well, we are in the situation we are in today, and it's a very frustrating thing. Of course, first off, we have to go back to actually like 2019 under the first Trump administration. That's essentially where, at the time, Mike Pompeo, working as the Secretary of State, made a deal with the Taliban. So that was the famous Doha agreement, the Doha deal, the one that has now given billions of dollars to the Taliban, the one we're trying to stop, the money being delivered weekly because we fund the Taliban to fight isis, which is a huge scam, and who knows, all the corruption around this money. So again, it just needs to go down to zero, no money. But at the end of the day, that was kind of the momentum of where this all began. Of course, we go to 2021, and in the spring, the US government starts to do retrograde. That means they're going to leave Afghanistan because we're going to pull individuals out. Now there's an argument, well, when the Doha deal was made, we were going to maybe keep Bagram. Maybe we weren't. Regardless, 2021, the plans to leave, including Bagram, we start Pulling up most Americans in March. We also pull out all the supply lines, the signals intelligence, the air support, et cetera, for the Afghan army. So of course, the Taliban mount an offensive and as I've told you many, many times with Al Qaeda, and they start taking regions of Afghanistan. And of course, by August, Afghanistan falls. Well, in that time, the US Government never really put an evacuation plan together, not even for the Americans or the green card holders in Afghanistan. So at the last minute, it became this rushed evacuation that everyone's seen, you know, we've all seen people falling off airplanes. Obviously, I volunteered in this effort and it was a complete disaster. First off, there really was no sort of vetting. Now, luckily, some veteran groups got involved and they said, hey, I am going to put forward the person I worked with. So that at least was a layer of vetting. But there was like NGOs linked to the State Department that you literally could show up with a water bill and they let you on the plane. You had to show no evidence that you worked for the US Government. So, of course, as you can imagine, we evacuated a bunch of people we don't know. We left our allies behind, we left Americans behind, we left green card holders behind. They're never going to put out the entire exact numbers, but from what I know, we left 8,000 blue passported Americans behind and 14,000 green card holders. And a number of them had their homes in the United States. They had gone to Afghanistan to, to visit family because obviously it was summer break. So a lot of those were unfortunately, women and children. Okay. So that's kind of the numbers that got left behind. And then a majority of the special immigrant visa holders that were actually entitled potentially to come got left behind. And so we brought all these unknowns in. So let's say we brought in 45% of the Afghans we brought in are unknown. Well, that's a huge problem. So first off, we did bring in members of Al Qaeda. We definitely brought in tons of members of the Haqqani network. We even tried reporting members of the Haqqani network then to the Department of Homeland Security. And they were literally telling Americans, well, we don't know if they're now gonna change. That's not gonna prevent them from being able to come here. So they knew Haqqanis were on planes and let them come. We also brought in members of the Islamic State, Khorasan Province. There's one I'm actually looking for right now in the United States. And the crazy thing in that case is he was evacuated by The US Government from Kabul, and he wasn't Afghan. So we did not just bring in terrorists, we even brought in foreign terrorists who were not Afghan. And they're in the United States now as Afghans. So it's this huge mess. You know, since the fall of Kabul, the Taliban government has issued 40,000 passports to non Afghans. So there are 40,000 terrorists out there with a passport and a fake name. They look Afghan, they sound Afghan, but they're not, right? They're Syrian, they're Egyptian, they're Libyan, they're Saudi, et cetera. So it's a huge problem. This episode is brought to you by Pocket Hose, the world's number one expandable hose. I used to spend more time messing with the hose than actually watering. Last summer I decided to clean up the patio cause some friends were coming over and the hose kept twisting up on itself. And what should have been a five minute job turned into a 20 minute headache. That constant kinking and twisting, that's what Pocket Hose Ballistic was built to solve. It's reinforced with a liquid crystal polymer, the same used in bulletproof vests. So it makes the anti burst sleeve incredibly tough. That same fiber is actually five times stronger than steel, so it's built to last. It also features the pocket pivot that swivels 360 degrees with a steady flow, also reducing frustration. And when you're done, there's no wrestling with the hose. It literally shrinks down to pocket size for easy storage. Plus it's backed by a 10 year warranty. And now for a limited time, when you purchase a new Pocket Hose ballistic stick, you'll get a free 360 degrees pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle. Just text watch to 64,000. That's watch to 64,000 for your two free gifts at purchase. Watch to 64,000 message and data rates app. The other issue is it was pushed through and moved so quickly that even when we had these individuals. So let's say, okay, everyone went so fast in Kabul, fine, you move people to these military bases and then you had to keep moving them because you're hitting capacity. And so there wasn't even proper vetting going on at these places. There was haphazard fingerprints at some of them. The US Government lost a ton of Afghan fingerprints. I won't even say the number. I don't want the Taliban to realize the win they have here. We then just kind of kept pushing them to United States. So even when they did know, ooh, we have a lot of bad Actors here, they still kept pushing them forward. It's a very frustrating thing. So I helped a friend bring his family out, for example. So his family was like, his mom, his dad, and his brother and sister. And so they went to Rammstein. So they actually got out while the airport was still open, but just after the suicide bombing. So his sister, you know, 18, 19 years old, she's in Ramstein. She calls her brother one day, and he's like, why are you able to call me? And she said, oh, I made a deal with one of these army officers, and I'm working as his interpreter. Why are you, as a college student, working as his interpreter when the entire base should be full of interpreters? And she's like, oh, no. We're going around to all these families, and we're having a hard time finding anyone who speaks English, anyone who worked for the U.S. government. And she told him, worse. Most of them won't look me in the eyes. And they're extremists. Like, they are terrorists here. So the US Government knew this, right? They're using random people to be their interpreters because there aren't any interpreters there. So we have a big problem. So we bring them into the country. And then, of course, Afghans have committed crimes here, right? We've had rapes, rapes of children. We've, of course, now had terrorist events, et cetera. And. And so, like, these bad apples have ruined it for the good ones, right? It's just a factual thing. The other thing is when we focus on bringing people out of Afghanistan, everyone wanted to, of course, save who they worked with. I was a little more focused on. Of course, I helped my friend's family. But, like, I help kind of people in the arts, you know, that really wouldn't have careers. They're already being targeted by the Taliban. But a number of people brought out fighters, right? Military, special operations. And that's a very complicated thing, as you can imagine. First off, they're well trained. Yes, they're allies. But of course, they're targets for the terrorists, too. The terrorists want to recruit and flip these individuals that are in the United States. And if we only brought out, let's say, the male. Well, his wife and kids are still in Afghanistan. And of course, they can be used for blackmail in that situation. So we've also caused these splits in these families. And it's becoming. It was first kind of a counterintelligence issue. But now, as some of these individuals have unfortunately flipped, the Haqqani network has leaned in very Heavily to do this, we have a problem. The other problem is, even if they stay our ally the entire time, we brought in their enemies. We brought in these terrorists who were their enemies in Afghanistan and their enemies here. Now some of them are in the same communities, so. So it's a very, very difficult situation to deal with. Again, we brought in too many. We should be focused on removing the terrorists from Afghanistan we brought in. We aren't, which I find frustrating. But at the end of the day, these 1,100 now are in limbo. For whatever reason, they might not even be able to be properly vetted. They could be some of these individuals that didn't work for us. But regardless, we have a problem, and we have to at least talk through that problem because there's, of course, women and children invol. Again, a number of people, at least on that base, did serve with us. They're our allies. And someone in the US Government decided we need to put them on a plane and take them out of this country. Now, when we say something like a person's under threat from the Taliban, what does it actually look like? If you're in Afghanistan and you're hunted, Because I've spent a ton of time on this, and it's pretty horrible. So the Taliban will do a number of different things. One, they'll just forcefully remove you from your home, and you disappear, and your family doesn't really know what happens to you. Sometimes you're just killed right away. In the worst situations you actually go into, they're almost like black sites or these prisons, but they're not like polycharchy. It's not like a public prison on the map. It's like a prison inside of a terrorist camp, a military training facility, et cetera. And you're tortured. But there are individuals in some of these locations that I know have been there for two, three, four years. So they're undergoing torture daily for years. I mean, it's just this horrible thing to think about. So we've had somewhere between about 35,000 now former allies either kind of be completely disappeared, murdered, or they're in one of these weird detention facilities. It's a huge number. Now, another thing that occurs is they also target women, and it's actually a very horrible thing. So they will go take a woman out of her home. And what they do is when they bring her to prison, they rape her on camera. So when they do this and they film this, they then, of course blackmail with it and make threats and say, when you leave here, you can't say you were harmed. You can't say you were raped. You can't say we detained you. You have to say it was your fault. Or we're going to come back and we're going to do the same to your sister, to your mother, to your grandmother. Heck, we'll come back and murder your whole family. And if you even tell a Westerner this has happened, and I've seen some of this content, it's horrific. There's mass beatings of these women and then the rapes. So when we say some of these individuals are under threat, I mean really, really bad things are happening to them. So we have to just set aside the ones that for sure can't go back to Afghanistan or they'll be killed. So with those individuals now, if you only offer them the Congo, I want to walk. What that's like. For many years, I've looked into the Congo especially, of course, Wagner group was there. There's been a lot of activities against terrorist groups and armed groups and militant groups. The crazy thing is, is in the Congo, there are over 100 armed groups. I know in the US we rarely talk about the Congo, but that is an insane number. So 100 different, like radical militia, terrorist groups in one country, a country that's not even that big. So you have to understand this is a really bad place. Another thing is just inside the country of the Congo, its own people, there's 6 to 7 million of them internally displaced because of these hundred groups of armed men. So that means they are not able to live in their homes, they are not able to see their families. They are likely in some sort of refugee camp or situation. And remember, these are locals who already live there, 6 to 7 million. Then there's another 500,000 refugees in the country from neighboring countries that had to flee there from conflicts. There's a lot of conflicts in the border regions around this country, et cetera. So this is a really bad place. It has active conflict. Now, if you're a civilian and you're there, and this is just if you actually were born and raised there, there are mass killings, there are forced recruitment to join these bad groups. And then there's systematic sexual violence, right? They use violence against women more for, like, psychological. For power, right? To harm those communities in some way. And it's a real massive problem. Again, they're doing that to their own people. Now think about if you're a refugee from a country, you have no links there, you have no family there, you don't speak the language. There are really big issues now when it comes to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. For the last several years they have ranked DRC towards the top of the most dangerous humanitarian environments globally. It's really insane that our government's even considering putting anybody in this location. It's not like these people are from the Congo and they're returning them home. These are people who've never even been to the continent of Africa to begin with. Now I want to talk through a few more things. There is insanely weak governance in the Congo. So you're not really going to go to law enforcement or the military for assistance if you're not living in one of the major cities. It's a wild wild west. There is no help at all. But let's say you try to go to the police or the military, normally they get involved in extortion, they do arbitrary detentions and they abuse civilians in custody, even individuals who are innocent. Okay, so that's what they do to the locals. Can you imagine if you have no local connections, you can't speak the language, you're going to be targeted even more to be exploited. Like why wouldn't someone. Do you ever find yourself needing multiple cups of coffee or energy drinks just to stay focused or to avoid the that afternoon crash? That was me until a few weeks ago when I tried Ultra pouches. Altra are nicotine free and caffeine free pouches for that clean, steady focus. They use adaptogens and neotropics to support a calm energy without like that crash or the jitters. I like having them at my desk, especially when I'm working late. I also throw them in my bag when I'm traveling because I want to stay locked in wherever I am. And lately I've been going with the cool mint. It's the blue one. This is delicious and my favorite flavor. Altra is the ultimate guilt free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use Code watch to get 15% off at take ultra. Again, that's takealtra.com for 15 off using code watch. And after you purchase they'll ask who sent you? Let me know. The watch floor did. Now, economically we have a huge problem here. So obviously when you move refugees to a location, you want them to go somewhere where they can build a life, be economically viable. And you know, I've watched refugees over the years go certain places and some places they can do really great. In some places they can't. You send them somewhere very poor with no jobs, right? They can't get their feet under them. You send them somewhere very expensive. I know some that went to Vancouver, Canada. Boy, that's hard. It's hard to even make enough to just pay your rent, let alone to live there. So you have to put people environments where they can get a job, raise their family, and have some sort of safety and security. So 70% of the population in the Congo live on only about $2 a day. Formal employment is almost impossible. And this is if you're a local. So you have to work under the table in informal labor, like maybe building a house or something, digging a ditch. And then if you're lucky, you maybe can work for some sort of aid organization of under the table and make a little bit for your family. So you can't just go online and apply to jobs. It doesn't exactly exist. Especially if you're a refugee, it's pretty much zero. So the chance of any income generation is pretty much zero. So if you are going to survive in this environment and you're an Afghan refugee, you're going to live on aid the rest of your life. Right? We're not setting them up in an environment where they could. Now, of course, there are refugees going to Africa, and it is different in each location. So a lot go to Uganda. Uganda is a great example. So Uganda has about 1.5 million foreign refugees in this situation. Maybe people who have zero connections to the country now they have set up, like, active programs to get the refugees working. And they have a stronger economy where it's possible. They also send refugees to Kenya, for example. Much more difficult because you stay in a camp and you can't really get a lot of approvals to leave the camp. And then it's almost impossible to get an actual, like, legal work permit, so approval to leave the camp and to work. So if you go to Kenya, again, it's a similar situation. You'll probably be living in a camp under aid forever. Nobody wants that. We want people to be able to build lives. The last place a lot of people talk about is Rwanda. So a number of refugees have gone there. Now, Rwanda does have. You can apply to jobs, you can work if you're a refugee, but it's a very small economy, so there's not a lot of opportunities. And again, it doesn't matter if I'm saying the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda. We're talking in this case, refugees who have zero ethnic, tribal, in some cases religious ties to these regions. We have to be really honest about it when we're saying we're going to relocate them to Africa. I watched a number of refugees from Afghanistan go to Albania and even something like that was difficult, but at least there the government had things in place where they could help them get jobs at vacation resorts and those type of things. Luckily, it was a low cost of living and they at least could function. But now we're talking about active conflict environments. Another thing is, of course there are health risks, especially in the Congo. They have constant Ebola breakouts. Obviously cholera is very common and so is measles. So there's a very limited health infrastructure. So if you get sick, especially if you're in a conflict zone, the only way someone's going to take care of you is if you're lucky and there's an aid organization like near the village you're in and they can bring you in. Like there isn't where, oh, I'll just go pick kind of the best hospital and go there and be treated. It doesn't exist that way. And again, you don't have the connections to even get into the good location. So of course, malnutrition is just horrendous, as you can imagine, in the Congo. Now we luckily have at least a framework to go off of because I told you there's 500,000 refugees from neighboring countries in the Congo. So what's it look like for them? Because I think this is something we should be honest about. So they're living in refugee camps. So don't think these 500,000 came over and they're like living in apartments. People think of it like the United States, right. And they think of, well, refugees might be living in Houston. It's not that way out. They are living in tents, okay, 100% funded by international aid, and the funding is not even close to sufficient to even cover the ones there, let alone putting more people in. And then as you can imagine, these camps don't have any sort of proper security protections or anything like that. So you can't say anyone's going to be safe or they're going to be protected or they could be healthy or they could build a better life in this environment. These were set up almost as temporary situations. These people would come in for a year or so and then hopefully return to their country when some of this crisis has gone down. Now, if you're saying we could potentially move people there and they need to stay there, what's that look like? Because there is no long term solution for that. Now, just really quick socially, because I've talked about how there's no bloodlines. But I want to explain how that works. So if you don't have bloodlines, any kind of clan or ethnic ties to the Congo, which no Afghan's going to have, you lack any real access to housing. So you're going to be, like I said, in a camp. You're not going to have access to any job opportunities. You have no protection networks. Right? There is no entity in the government that will protect you in any way, way, shape or form. If anything, they're going to exploit you. You also have to remember, in these sort of environments, like your clan or your ethnicity determines everything for you. It's who gets help, who gets protected, and then, of course, who gets targeted. And so if you're outside of the local system or structure, you automatically come in at a disadvantage. And again, we do have this problem where I don't know what percentage is of the 1100, but if some of these are military trained, they're going to be targeted to be coerced and forced into some of these armed groups and potentially into terrorist groups. And we have to be very, very honest about it, because, trust me, the terrorist groups are going to go very strong at trained individuals who now have a chip on their shoulder because the US Government forced them to come there. So we have to be truthful about this. I'm not saying we tiptoe around and don't piss people off, but why would we even set up scenarios like this in the first place? So just big picture, Congo, active conflict, weak governance, pretty much no social services, and likely you're going to be displaced. Most likely you're going to live in a tent the rest of your life if you're not local. So sending any refugee to this location at this time is, of course, high personal risk to them. The chance of them being killed is probably equal to them being killed in retail, man. Both are very, very bad situations. There is a low economic survivability. There is no kind of trajectory where they can build a life and a future and a happy ending that doesn't exist. And then, of course, there's minimal institutional protections. So we're going to send them there and hope the aid group that runs the camp has maybe someone trained. If armed attackers come to that camp, that's pretty much all we're offering these people. So at the end of the day, once you move individuals into a U.S. pipeline and into a U.S. process, and now they are hosted and protected right now by the US Government, you do have a duty to make sure you do not put them in harm's way, right? These people aren't sitting in Afghanistan waiting to process. They are sitting on a US Military base. So we do have a duty to protect them. Now. We don't have to. They don't have some right to where they have to come to the United States. But the United States is one of the most powerful countries in the world. We give, as we all see in pretty much every country in the world, millions upon billions of dollars. We hand over all this aid, we can make a better deal with another country where these individuals could live a better life. Could it just be regional? Could they go to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan? Could it be to Europe in some way? Could they go to Eastern Europe? There are a lot of options. Could they go in some places to the Middle east and maybe we make a deal. They go in with work permits, jobs lined up, et cetera. There is a right way to do this, and I really hope the government cans this horrible idea of the Congo and just does the right thing. Because we're Americans and that's what we're supposed to do, the right thing. We made this mess, now let's deal with it the right way. We can't say, well, the last administration did this wrong, so we can do it wrong. No, Then we fix it. We're adults. Let's do it right. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor.