Female Afghan Reporter Gets Emotional Confronting Pentagon Spox on Taliban Takeover: The People ‘Don’t Know What to Do’

 A female reporter from Afghanistan emotionally questioned Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Monday about the situation in her country, openly expressing how “upset” she and many other Afghanis were to see their government fall to the Taliban.

Kirby gave brief remarks after President Joe Biden’s speech earlier in the day, and then took questions. He called on several reporters before turning to the Afghani reporter.

“As you know, I’m from Afghanistan,” she said. “I’m very upset today because… overnight all the Taliban came.”

The Taliban, she said “took off my flag,” as she gestured to her face mask showing the Afghan flag, and put up the Taliban regime’s flag.

“Everybody’s upset, especially women,” she said, momentarily overcome and admitting she forgot her question.

She quickly composed herself and continued, asking about President Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country as the Taliban took over: “Where is my president, former President Ghani?”

“We don’t have any president, we don’t have anything. The Afghan people, they don’t know what to do.”

She addressed the plight of women in Afghanistan, an issue that has been one of grave concern, considering the Taliban’s oppressive policies and news reports about unmarried women and girls being seized and forced to marry Taliban fighters.

Women, she said, had “a lot of achievement in Afghanistan. I had a lot of achievement. I left from the Taliban, like 20 years ago. Now we go back to the first step again.”

“Do you have any comment?” she asked Kirby.

Kirby replied that he couldn’t speak for Ghani or where he might be, “but let me say with all respect that I understand, and we all understand the anxiety and the fear and the pain that you’re feeling. It’s clear, and it’s evident.”

“Nobody here at the Pentagon is happy about the images that we’ve seen coming out in the last few days,” Kirby added, and they were “mindful” of what the Taliban was capable of.

Kirby described his colleagues at the Pentagon as “invested greatly” in Afghanistan, as well as in “the progress that women and girls have made politically, economically, socially.”

‘We certainly do understand and we do feel the pain that you’re feeling, probably not to the same extent,” he said, pledging that they did take it “very, very seriously” to “honor that obligation” to help the Afghans who aided America.