00:00Freddie, first to you on this, 800 lives lost, and that's just at first count.
00:05Entire villages have been wiped out in Afghanistan.
00:07Are they even equipped to handle a disaster of this scale, especially under Taliban rule?
00:12Well, it feels a little bit cheap to kind of try and score points against the Taliban in the wake of a tragedy.
00:18But, I mean, it is undeniable that Afghanistan's government lacks the kind of essential infrastructure
00:25that you need to respond to an emergency like this.
00:30And I think the Taliban are trying to be as open as they can about this particular tragedy.
00:35However, questions will be raised in future weeks about the response and so on.
00:41And I think it's interesting. We've just been talking about multilateralism and so on.
00:45And, you know, five, ten years ago, it would have fallen to the West, to America and to Western powers,
00:52to launch a response about this.
00:55In Afghanistan, it would have been ever more present because we would have been involved
00:59in that endless and ultimately pointless war that we conducted in Afghanistan for a long time.
01:04But today what we're seeing is a far more multilateral aid response.
01:09America's soft power with aid has diminished somewhat.
01:12You're seeing the UAE offering aid.
01:14You're seeing other countries come forward and offer aid.
01:17So it's more of a multilateral humanitarian response that we're seeing now as the West,
01:23as the preeminent superpower does seem to be somewhat in retreat.
01:26America's soft power with aid.
01:27America's soft power with aid.
01:28America's soft power with aid.
01:29America's soft power with aid.
01:30America's soft power with aid.
01:31America's soft power with aid.
01:32America's soft power with aid.
01:33America's soft power with aid.
01:34America's soft power with aid.
01:35America's soft power with aid.
01:36America's soft power with aid.
01:37America's soft power with aid.
01:38America's soft power with aid.
01:39America's soft power with aid.
01:40America's soft power with aid.
01:41America's soft power with aid.
01:42America's soft power with aid.
01:43America's soft power with aid.
01:44America's soft power with aid.
01:45America's soft power with aid.
01:46America's soft power with aid.
01:47America's soft power with aid.
01:48America's soft power with aid.
01:49America's soft power with aid.
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