Content warning: this episode describes torture, civilian deaths and the 2021 Kabul airport attack.
Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is shattered, and there was never another 9/11 — so who won?
What does a war cost once you count the hospitals that closed and the food that never arrived?
And what does it mean that the United States signed an agreement with the people it went to war to destroy?
Twenty-five years on, Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan add up the bill — and find that bin Laden had written the strategy down in advance.
February 2020: the United States signs a deal with the Taliban in Doha. The government of Afghanistan is not in the room. Eighteen months later the Afghan state collapses in a matter of days, Kabul airport fills with people willing to cling to the undercarriage of a departing aircraft, and America's longest war ends almost exactly twenty years after it began. Then comes the audit. Brown University puts the direct death toll at more than 940,000, and the total — once you count the collapsed health systems, economies and food supplies — at somewhere near 4.7 million. The attack that started it cost around half a million dollars. The response cost eight trillion. Bin Laden had a phrase for that: he called it bleeding America. The final part of three.
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[0:00] The uncomfortable question: how much of what he wanted did bin Laden actually get?
[4:25] Doha, February 2020: the deal, and the government that wasn't invited to sign it
[6:39] Not a gradual collapse — provincial capitals fall in a matter of days
[11:53] The audit: $8 trillion, 940,000 killed directly, and 3.6 million more
[14:56] "Bleeding America" — bin Laden wrote the plan down and said it out loud
[19:29] Afghan women, and the argument nobody makes any more
[30:23] What the rest of the world was doing while America looked the other way
[36:09] The question neither of them wants to answer: whose fault is Afghanistan now?
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm
Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions
Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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