 My name is Peter Bergen. I'm Director of the International Security Program here at New America. It's my great pleasure to introduce Jack Fairweather, who, as you know, has just written this excellent new book, The Good War, where we couldn't win the war in peace in Afghanistan. Why we couldn't win the war or the peace in Afghanistan. Jack is presently a correspondent for Bloomberg based in Istanbul. His wife, Christina, is here today as well. He's also a journalist and writer. And previously wrote a book, A War of Choice, about Iraq, which also got very good reviews. And we look forward to hearing from you, Jack. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. Just checking everyone can hear me. Thanks very much for having me. I started writing this book long ago in some ways. In 2007, when I traveled to Afghanistan for the Washington Post for the first time and ended up living there for a year, it was quite a crucial period, as it turned out, as it was before the surge. You can really break down recent Afghan history into the pre-surge days and those that follow that take us up to the present and the current ending of combat operations next month. And it was clear to me then that the nature of the U.S. occupation and the nation-building program was going awry. And so the book sort of started as a way to sort of ask the question, how do we get to this state of affairs? We all remember back in 2001 that the primary aim of invading Afghanistan was to deal with al-Qaeda. And to a large extent, that strategic objective was achieved in the first few months. Bin Laden wasn't killed, but the organization, as Peter has written about, was largely underground and lots of hard work that followed. But it was sufficiently contained that there hasn't been a major attack on U.S. soil since. The big mistake that we made, and really I mean President Bush here, is in conflating al-Qaeda with the Taliban in that famous speech or either with us or against us. And that was to make a critical conceptual error to link the threat of global jihad represented by al-Qaeda with the sort of tribal Islam that the Taliban represented. And so we got rid of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. We were presented with the challenge of tackling tribal Islam. That's not a war that can be won in Frank, to be short. It's a generational conflict that's better waged, not with guns, but through education and soft power. And we, the U.S., created this fundamental mistake that I think we should be thinking of in terms of the areas in Iraq where the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi military and tried to, and the process of debarthification. Those are held up now as these sort of key moments in the reason why that war went so badly wrong. I think it's not necessarily understood that our failure to engage with the Taliban after 9-11 was a similar moment. We also went on to persecute the Taliban at great length and it has become sort of very fashionable to blame Pakistan for the rebirth of the Taliban. And I think we often don't look at the way in which our own actions, the U.S. Special Forces, the military contributed to re-energizing the Taliban, a movement that was discredited in Afghanistan in the early years and one which was actually actively suing for peace as I write about in the book, a completely key moment in December when the newly appointed President Karzai met a delegation from the Taliban who brought with them a letter of surrender from Mullah Omar. They sat, had tea and was always able to peace together from talking to some of those who attended. They went as far as talking about the number of cars that ex-Taliban ministers would receive and the sort of security arrangements they would have in Kabul. That deal went up to Rumsfeld and he said, no, this sort of prism of with us or against us that was confused U.S. thinking at the time and frankly we've been struggling to get back to that moment ever since over the last 13 years. We've been fighting the wrong war for the past 13 years and that's the war not to contain al-Qaeda but against tribal Islam. And there have been a number of turning points that have brought us deeper into that war. I write about the moment when Donald Rumsfeld went from being a sort of hands-off military guide to an interventionist. There was a very key intellectual transformation that took place over the course of 2003. There were other moments like the British who provided the fulcrum around which the war went rapidly deteriorated with their invasion of Helmand in 2006. That's an episode that's also not necessarily well-known and one that a lot of people always ask, why do we end up doing all that fighting in Helmand? And you can trace that back to the British attempt to try and do a bit of nation-building light at the behest of the Americans. There is a good war that we have been fighting for the 13 years and it hasn't been with troops and it hasn't been with drones. It's been these largely isolated, unreported accommodations that at different times in different places, different militaries have been striking with tribal leaders across the South and Eastern Afghanistan. These are small local deals that have bought peace and have shown a promise for the future. The last 13 years have been many missteps and we've gone in the wrong direction but there is this sort of pattern. There are glints of light at the end of the tunnel. The light is very long tunnel and the light is very distant but these deals that I write about in the book offer real promise when aligned with some of the really great work that Afghans themselves have been doing at building up civil society. Again, we completely neglected a lot of local nation-building efforts in the early years of the war. I write quite a lot about Asher Afghani who I think the current president who in the early years was the finance minister. He created a program entirely funded by Afghans, administered by Afghans, which allowed local communities to select projects that they wanted to build, gave them the money to build it and hand over to them to implement. It was probably one of the least corrupt programs there has been in Afghanistan, because the sums of money were so small and it was also one of the most effective. The program is called the National Solidarity Program. There are more schools built through that program than through the vastly more costly U.S. effort where a school through the NSP program cost $20,000. The U.S. government's contracted schools cost $200,000. So in some ways that's the story of the nation-building effort. It's perhaps not a real surprise that we struggled to get to grips with Afghanistan. We saw it entirely through our own lens. It became a reflecting hall of mirrors, mostly concerned with public opinion back home, securing more funding and continuing the bubble for as long as possible. That bubble is now deflating. The troops are coming home. I think one of the things I've been telling people is that this is an opportunity now for the programs that we've neglected, the accommodations that we haven't built upon. It's an opportunity for us to take those and with Afghan leadership build on them. I think one of my big concerns is that we're not seeing a level of interest from the Obama administration in doing that. And there's a tendency, as there was with Iraq, once the combat mission ended, to sort of head for the exits and try and forget about it. And I think that would be a tragic mistake, as great as many of those that have taken place in the last 13 years. Afghans, if you ask them, and that's something that rarely happens, if you ask them, want US engagement, they want help in these nation-building programs in some of these accommodations, but on their own terms. My hope is that we listen to them and my fear is that we will continue to ignore them just as we have done when we were surging. So we are not listening to them as we withdraw. So with that sort of bittersweet ending, I will hand it over to any questions, as I'm sure there are some here who have got intimate knowledge of Afghanistan. I'd love to hear your questions. Jack, so one of the things that I always find puzzling, and you spent a lot of time in Iraq and Christina did as well, is Americans, I think, tend to bracket Iraq and Afghanistan in the same, like, very bad place. And yet, there are big differences between the two countries. I mean, today, you're 12 times more likely to be killed in Iraq as a civilian in the war going on now, the renewed civil war, as you are to be killed in Afghanistan. So why is there this disconnect, and we're all in the UNI, in the journalism business, and have journalists sort of failed to adequately explain the differences or what? And am I wrong about that assumption that Americans tend to bracket them together? I mean, I think the fact that it is more peaceful in Afghanistan now is testimony to the surge. I mean, I disagreed with it at the time as an idea, but it has bought peace. And, you know, that's a testimony to an unbelievable amount of hard work that I saw in reporting the book in Helmand and other places. That piece is simply not one that's being built upon. It's entirely unreported, but the last two years, the U.S. military has been withdrawing from these small communities where they've fought, and that should have been the opportunity for, you know, to help the Afghans connect with the tribal folk and we haven't. We've handed over as quickly as we could to the Afghan government, and, you know, we're seeing now that they're not able to strike those deals and the Taliban are returning. The whole surge, in effect, has become, as it was in Iraq, a face-saving exercise. So, I mean, I agree that right now it is safer as it were. Well, it's always been safer. Well, you were in Iraq in what were the years where you were there? Oh, three, two, six. Yeah. So, like, you know, to go out to a restaurant in Baghdad in 2007 would be to sign your own death warrant. That is not an experience that has ever really happened in Afghanistan. It may be a little bit, having random attacks on Western areas of the lake, but it just, you know, Afghanistan is sort of doing okay, relatively speaking, right? I'm sorry, my answer was somewhat skewed towards the, you know, helmonds and these, and actually these, you know, we're very focused on the, you know, the, so we're very focused on these areas where in actual facts, not much of the population lives contrary to the great queen doctrine. Right, so this was very puzzling. So, you know, 1% of the population of Afghanistan lives in helmonds, right? And yet, you know, there was this vast American presence there and British presence, and we put in this, and it would seem to defy the basic tenets of population-centric strategy. So, and the people that you talked to, what was their defense of this, if any? They, I spoke to a guy called Mick Nicholson, who, you know, was the man who really envisioned where the surge should go. He was, you know, a very fine officer who served in the Eastern Campaign in, you know, 0607, and actually, sort of introduced before Petraeus did the idea of counterinsurgency, very much based on his, you know, on the right idea that mechanized military operations don't work in Afghanistan and there needs to be a more sensitive approach. He wanted to centre the surge in Kandahar. This is something that, you know, this is an aspect of the story that hasn't really been told before, this debate in 2008 about where the surge should go, and the Brits persuaded him that it should be in Helmand. Because they were there. Because they were there, and in desperate trouble. Is this a bit like trying to defeat Nazi Germany by attacking Austria? I mean, does that what it turned out to be? I mean, how effective was this? Is there any reasonable defence of putting all this effort into Helmand rather than Kandahar, which is the centre of Taliban, the centre of our gravity, right? I think fundamentally no, because I think, you know, the question you always have to ask yourself in Afghanistan is, you know, what is the trajectory that the country is on minus our presence there? Or rather, you know, what is the sustainable, sort of enduring vision for what the Afghan government can do in the country? And we never ask that question. We always confuse our ambitions for the country with the reality. And I think if you look at and speak to Afghans and say, you know, what's it going to be like in Helmand in ten years, they don't have, they're not talking about sort of, you know, district councils that have got line ministry members from the central government. They're, you know, they're talking about, you know, a very stripped-down administration, maybe one or two officials... And that's because it's one of the poorest places in the world, right? I mean, it has no resources other than opium. Yes, although... Well, that's a big other. A big resource, and that's actually a very interesting, sort of, hopefully, will come onto. But, I mean, the Afghan model for, you know, for several hundred years has been a very hands-off, decentralized approach. We tried to take the opposite approach, and you can, by imposing an incredibly centralized system. Actually, the envisioning of the centralized system we were creating was far more so than we actually have in the States. I mean, it's... Well, we like if President Obama could appoint every governor and also every, you know, every county commissioner almost, right? Right. And why did that happen? I mean, was that just because people weren't thinking when they went to Bonn and they didn't have a lot of time and they just sort of, they didn't think it through? No, I think it was a function of the militarization of the war. I mean, the U.S. opted for something called Provincial Reconstruction Teams as a way, as a sort of softly, softly approach to getting into nation-building. The U.S. military is very centralized, right? You can pick up a phone and issue an order. I mean, in terms of the history, I mean, it wasn't the constitutional, the way the constitution was set up, was set up at Bonn in a rather short period. There wasn't a U.S. military involvement in that, was there? That's true, but I think the Bonn agreement was loose enough. I see. I mean, it was there to be interpreted. You know, Karzai did a huge amount of, well, I think it was actually quite good work, which we didn't appreciate or really understand in terms of appointing figures across the South that were going to butcher us his rule. Well, mention of Karzai, you know, in 2002 he was the world's greatest statesman and by 2011 he was the world's worst human being, at least by his Washington was concerned. So neither of those things can be simultaneously true. I mean, he's obviously a complicated guy and he had a very complicated job. And to what extent in the book, I mean, did he change over time or was he always this kind of, I mean, what's your assessment? Well, I actually try and, one of the aims of the book was to try and bring a bit more sort of balance to how we see Karzai. We never got Karzai. Did anybody, I mean, did McChrystal get in more right than others? He seemed to have a better relationship with certain people. He did, but again, he didn't actually really listen to what Karzai was telling him, which was that he wasn't that into the search. So that's a pretty key issue. Yes, there is a famous McChrystal story where he called up Karzai to ask him permission for a certain military operation which no previous general had ever done. That's true, although as I write in the book, when he went to ask Karzai permission, it actually turned out that the general down south had already launched the operation. Because Karzai had a cold and was in bed and he'd be reached in time. It wasn't like McChrystal, anyway. The operation was already underway. Thankfully, Karzai said yes, but then that's the position we've put Karzai in, whether we ask him to or not, whether we do what we want to do. Early on, we undermined him. He wanted to sign a peace deal except the surrender of the Taliban. He had a very different vision of the Taliban than we did. He consistently said the Taliban, back then, the Taliban are our brothers, they're from the villages, they're a command as you fought against the Soviets who came who were once on our side. These guys, we can work with them. We didn't do that. His rule in the south was undermined from the start because you had soft operatives going around under the guidance of various warlords who were settling their own personal vendettas as Anand Gopel writes. I was going to mention Anand is a fellow here and of course just had a very well-reviewed book. There was a lot of, I think, the pioneering work on the issue of the opportunity that was lost in Kandahar which is people really did want to do a peace deal. I know you spoke to Robert Bob Grenier, right, for the reporting. And Bob Grenier, for those who don't know, was CIA station chief in Pakistan and actually met with the number two leader of the Taliban twice to actually talk about a deal around handing over bin Laden. And this guy was there definitely with Malar Omar, and there would seem to be some glimmer of a potential deal. In that early period there was a time when a deal might have, you know, of some kind could have been organized. In actual fact, it wasn't before we went in that was the key negotiating time we thought it was. It was actually in the aftermath, and we just, we forgot about them. I mean, it's odd that we sort of hold up debarthification and getting rid of the Iraqi military as, you know, even the sort of general public have a sort of vague idea about those key strategic mistakes. That's a very good point. I mean, I think to the extent that when you were going out talking about the book, to explain that because I think most people don't know that piece of history. Right. And the bond agreement was as, you know, as a document riven through with the same ideological mistakes. And there were no representatives of the Taliban there, obviously. Right. Which raises an interesting question about the whole, because I've always thought, I mean, as the conflict went on, I thought a peace deal with the Taliban was sort of a pipe dream for a lot of reasons. Maybe not of that window you were talking about because it seemed very promising. But as time went on, you know, we, the Pakistani government have done multiple agreements with the Taliban. They've all failed, which is, you know, and they don't see a distinction. For them, the border doesn't exist. So when we talk about the Taliban, it's on both sides of the border. So just, I mean, what was, I mean, does President Ghani have a chance now with the Taliban, for instance, or what's your view on it? I think the idea of concluding a deal with the Taliban leadership remains a pipe dream. Because? It's just not in their interest. I mean, why? I mean, from their perspective, they've just defeated another superpower and, or are about to, and they can... Do you think they really believe that, or, I mean, is that, certainly that's what they would say, you know, in their own propaganda, but they haven't really taken... I mean, they have not taken a major, even town, for any length of time, right? It's not ISIS, which is taking over 400 miles from Aleppo. And I think that speaks to your earlier point about how Afghanistan and Iraq are different. And I should, you know, the Taliban is not a monolithic entity. You know, there's the leadership that has been doing some parts of which have been doing some talks. Some of them, you know, they have operational commanders in the south, but there's still a divide between them and a lot of these tribal groups and some drug cartel-type groups. And it's always been a very murky picture and it's always been the case that the Taliban is, you know, as much seeking their support as they are... Well, I thought a very interesting point is your point about these local ceasefires, which, you know, that obviously tamped down the civil war in Iraq, and you're saying that also helped keep Afghanistan pretty stable. So do you see those... You know, obviously the United States and NATO were pulling back, but the Afghan National Army hasn't been the disaster many people prognostecized, right? I mean, it's sort of doing... In my impression, it seems to be doing okay-ish. I spoke to the deputy commander of NATO forces about six months ago, a year ago, maybe, and he, you know, his view of where Afghanistan is going to be is a slightly dim one. I mean, he sees most of Helmans being in some shape or form back in the control of the Taliban. And that's, you know, that's the Taliban with small tea. Yeah, but does that really matter? That's, yeah. I mean, that kind of goes to your point about, I mean, what the whole Helmand expeditionary force seemed to be... The whole premise didn't make any sense. Right. Right. And... I mean, so there is a fundamental issue which is how to... Is our attitude towards opium? And, you know, I'm... It's... Which is at record levels now? Which is at record levels now. I took part in anti-poppy eradication drives. So did I. God, that was a disaster in Helmand. In Orozgan. Yeah, they were not happy, the locals. Yeah, the most bizarre... Yeah. It is their cash crop. And in 2002, we had an opportunity, you know, because the year before the Taliban had had a freeze, we had an opportunity to really help the Afghan government take control of the opium crop and legalize it. And, you know, that's not some left field, crazy view. We've done it in India and we've done it in Turkey with extraordinary success. Yeah. Relative to... I think that was an ideological position of the Bush administration, not to... When you say legalize it, allow it to be used in the morphine... In the legalized morphine market. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And which, yeah, it was puzzling why that didn't happen. Well, I think in the U.S. it just didn't really cross their radar. The Brits actually were pushing eradicate... Pushing sort of anti-opium line. And there's also the case that some of the major morphine producers like Canada, like Australia, didn't want... It's a cartel. Yeah, it's their own cartel, the legal morphine business. And they didn't want... I mean, if they had sort of taken the initiative, maybe they could have, you know, incorporated them, but they didn't. In fact, the opposite, they wanted to... Are there any sort of people in the book on the U.S. or NATO side that come out of this well? Yeah, I mean, I... There are a number of wonderful diplomats, soldiers, Afghan officials whose story... I mean, partly because it's so set against the trajectory of the war, which wasn't up, it was consistently down. Their work really stands out. And so, I mean, that's why my remarks I say I'm still sort of somewhat hopeful that we... That as the military nation-building effort drains away, that we're going to turn back to these guys who are doing work. There was a great UN diplomat, a very young guy who had a grad school who was placed in the middle of one of the most congregated tribal entanglements involving Haqqani, whose network we've been variously fighting against from the start. And he quickly reached out to Haqqani. There was no particular... It didn't get any permission to do so. And within a few months he had built a sort of a settlement between the tribes. They were doing small reconstruction work along the lines of this program I mentioned by Haqqani. And this diplomat was... He knocked on the door of Haqqani's brother's house in Kabul. This guy had been detained by the Americans for a year or two, tortured by them. He had no desire to see any Westerners again. And yet this diplomat... Who's the diplomat? Tom Gregg, who works with Barney Rubin up in there with NYU and has been working with some... trying to utilize those contacts going forwards. But just a very small little window on knocking on the door, having the tea, making a deal, explaining what you're doing. That bought peace for a year or two. I mean, there are huge pressures on that deal that he struck. And ultimately, as is the way of things, as for a young man, he doesn't want to spend... He was there for two and a half years in Gades. That's a very long posting. Yeah. And he left. I noticed in Gades they had pictures of Najibullah which I thought was interesting. Yeah, it's very... I mean, it's such a complicated country. But what's the prognosis going forward at Ghani you think is doing a reasonable job and for what? I mean, I think the end state, what we're going to see emerge, is already emerging, is African government will retain control of all the major cities. And in the tribal hinterlands, there will be a mixture of different warring groups. Do you think President Hillary Clinton or President Jeb Bush are going to be okay with withdrawing all these troops at the end of 2016? I suspect they probably will because I think the focus has shifted to Iraq. But do the thought experiment that there's some kind of terrorist attack on the United States that can be traceable to the AFPAC region in 2018, the political costs... I don't think any president in his or her right mind is going to... There's nothing... We have a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan until 2024, so I think if you can change... There's nothing written in stone here. And I think as you indicated in your remarks, I think Afghans regard the United... They don't want a big U.S. military presence, they do want some kind of security guarantees. I would be surprised if Clinton or Bush were to send another 100,000 troops back in again. I think there will be an enduring commitment. My concern is that it's not going to be allied with a message of hope for the Afghan people because we're going to work with them to try and fix politically some of these problems. I think containment as a strategy does work. But it doesn't help you fix the problem, it just helps you... What do you mean what? When you say fix the problem, what would be required? Afghanistan is in the middle... In 30 years of a war, there is a fundamental process of reconciliation that needs to take place. And we've never given it serious credence. We slightly farmed it out to Karzai to manage. He was in a particular do-nothing phase of his career. But when you say... If you look at the coalitions around Ghani and Abdullah, they're actually much cross-ethnic lines and that's a form of reconciliation. At the end of the day, the Afghans are going to have to do that for themselves. Back to your question about Ghani, I'm very hopeful. He's the only man who is capable of taking Afghanistan from a $16 billion aid budget a year to three or four, maybe, that it's going to be this giant drop-off in funding. Precisely because he's had this... He can rebuild Afghanistan in a meaningful way. He's less proven in his ability to work with other tribal groups in the south. The Tajik minority will swing behind him, but I don't know whether he will be able to do half of what Karzai did in the early years of his presidency. I think he also has an ideological view of the Taliban as well, and I think as ever there's... Because in the U.S. we also have a view of the Taliban. It will be convenient to keep the bombs falling. So how do you see Pakistan... We had yesterday General Raheel Sharif, the Chief of the Army, staff come and speak at a sort of off-the-record event, but what's your assessment of how Pakistan will play with the new Afghan government? I mean, there remains, as there has been from the beginning, a sort of fundamental alignment of interests if the two sides wanted a fundamental alignment of interests. Which is like, if Afghanistan has another civil war, that's not good for Pakistan. Right, and Pakistan has also been fighting against the Taliban, and they have a shared Taliban problem, which is a bad problem to have. There are so many vested interests in the status quo continuing, as there is in Afghanistan in terms of trying to fix these tribal alliances in the south. I mean, you know, as the bombs fall, the aid money flows. I mean, there was not that I subscribed to the extreme conspiracy theory of Karzai that this is all some sort of plot to keep war going on forever, but I think the U.S. has a real role in sort of energizing peace processes, and Kerry has shown himself prepared to tackle some issues. Kerry seems to me that Kerry actually did a fairly brilliant job in Afghanistan. He didn't get a lot of public credit for. Right, and yeah, I think he's been... I think the Obama administration has created an unfortunate narrative for itself, whereby it's continuously seen as being defensive and withdrawn. I think in actual fact, their diplomacy has been working. They don't nearly do enough to talk about it. How do you treat Obama's December 1st, 2009 West Point speech, which announced a surge and simultaneously announced a withdrawal date? Yeah, well, it's the most ridiculous statement. Was it too clever by half or what? I mean, what did it... It was... I mean, it committed the U.S. military to failure, you know, essentially, by saying, you know, surge... I mean, you know, there is a model by which we surge and just keep surging and spend 20 years doing it and, you know, and make it America's sort of project. But, you know, that was never going to happen. Obama knew that. And by creating that hard deadline, he undermined their surge from the start. You spent a lot of time in two countries where the Americans launched major counterinsurgency wars. Can America... What are the big picture takeaways? I mean, America does not think of itself as an empire. I mean, the British would have stayed, did stay in Iraq. They did stay in, you know, the French stayed. But because America sort of believes that it isn't an empire, shouldn't be... Is it always doomed to fail because a successful counterinsurgency, by definition, is going to take a long time? Yeah. Well, I think there's, you know, essentially... I mean, the British example is interesting. I mean, they took 60 years to get to a containment strategy on the Northwestern frontier. So, you know, I'm not sure that there's... You know, we can't do that now. Yeah. I mean, there's no political appetite for those sort of wars. I'm not sure it sort of speaks to Americans' attitude towards imperialism so much as just the nature of modern politics now. Right, okay. Because, I mean, no country is going to be able to really sustain for a lengthy period what's required in a counterinsurgency. I guess the Russians can against the Chechens to some degree, right? Right, but that's their... Their own territory. Their next door neighbor, as the British did against Northern Ireland and against the IRA. So just final question before throwing it open. So tell us about your repertorial process. How did you go about reporting the book and all this? Did you have some sort of systemic approach or how did... Well, the approach was to speak to every senior... Every commander, U.S. commander of ground forces, every ambassador of the Brits of the Americans. And they all were cooperative. Yeah, I spoke to every U.S. commander, they were cooperative to different levels. And some of them were less cooperative when they saw the direction of the book and sort of try and stop it. But I guess being someone who wasn't very pleased with... I mean, the book seems... I haven't read the whole thing, but you seem to have a pretty balanced account. It's not... I mean, the subtitle may be a little less... Why we couldn't win the war or the peace in Afghanistan. I mean, what you've said today suggests that some things went right and some things went wrong. Right. I mean, it's not Fiasco, which Tom Rick's book, where the title tells you that things were really... So how did people know where you were going? I mean, as ever when reporting a story, you don't know where you're going in the beginning. You just sort of cast your net as widely as possible. And I think what a moment of great clarity was brought to me by a talk at Frontline Club in London when they had... Which I took part in, it was a 10-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. And the British Shadow Defense Secretary said, you know, the real shame about Iraq is that it stopped us from intervening and invading Syria. And I hadn't particularly thought of political thoughts through a line of argument, but as soon as I heard that, I was so enraged by the notion that military intervention in Syria was the answer. And the very next day, I just sort of wrote the introduction to the book by tracing through the alternative to military intervention. This surge narrative has been very strong. I mean, it took place in 2009, but this idea that if only we'd had more troops, more soldiers, more money earlier, everything would have been okay. That was a very strong message from 2003 onwards as Iraq sort of... During that surge debate in Afghanistan, it turns out, I think, that the smartest... There was various factions. I think one of them was called Go Light, but Go Long, I think was one of the... And I think that probably would have been the smartest. Right. Which you don't have a big presence, but you do say that you're going to be around for a long time. Right. And that message is the key one. Because I mean, that's always been one of the Taliban's strongest messages is we're sticking around. We don't care whether it's 10 years or 30 years. You've got the clocks, but we've got the time. Yeah. But is that a hard message to say to the American public? I mean, you're getting back to this question. Because I mean, the reason that Obama said that we're going to withdraw in 18 months was... I think he was trying to satisfy domestic constituency. If you ask Americans, do you want to intervene in Syria? The number is very, very low. Serious military advantage. Obama campaigned on more troops. There was a public opinion support for the Afghan war. His mistake was to throw the floor open to debate and allow the military to start talking. Our rages, you know, troop increases that fundamentally shifted the war. Suddenly you went from a war of 30,000, fairly light, not really that many casualties to contemplating a war of 120,000, a tripling of the war effort. And once you enter that sort of Iraq level of troops, then of course it's not sustainable. I guess the counter-argument to that is that Taliban really were getting momentum in 2009, right? And they were sort of... And then they were sort of pushed back from Panjwa and other places. But anyway, let's throw it open to questions. If you have a question, just wait for the mic and identify yourself. Elizabeth. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan Rausch of Brookings. Could you elaborate on your statement that there's a 30-year civil war in Afghanistan? Is this something that predated the invasion and continues to this day, or is this something that was set off by U.S. and foreign activity, or what? I'm referring to the, you know, starting with the Soviet invasion, the way in which that sort of in part played on some of the ethnic divides in the country that then became full-blown in the 90s. And in some ways, we inherited in 2001 and have been exacerbating since. I mean, that... Small addition. I mean, really it started in 78, if you think about it. It wasn't even because there was already this conflict. So, I mean, you were now in three and a half decades into it, really. Right, exactly. Pacified. No, I was there during the civil war. It was like Mogadishu on steroids. I mean, it was in, I mean, the Afghans destroyed Kabul. It was block-to-block fighting with ethnic and militias. It was really... That's why, you know, personally, I have some hope for the country because I think that kind of experience is in living memory. No one wants to go back to that. And a lot of the people in the government today are people who live through that. Right. They don't... They know that, you know, there's a sort of prisoner's dilemma here, which everybody can lose if they don't play nice together. Right. But that's why we saw the National Unity Government. I mean, look, there's going to be no money without the National Unity Government. The money spigots will turn off immediately. The communists lost in 1992 because the money stopped. Right. That was the definitive moment. Right. Exactly. And that experience of Najibullah, I think, should also... You know, there's another reason for hope. I mean, whilst even with the money turned off, he managed to cling on, you know, for a length of time that's a surprising length of time. So you can imagine with enough, you know, with a bit of support, he might have, you know, kept the Taliban at bay for longer. And that's sort of the scenario that Ashraf Ghani finds himself in. Thank you. My name's Nancy Carson. I'm a former congressional staff. I have sort of a question about agency. I work a lot with women's finance things. And we try to get people to do real partnership and understand what people on the ground want. It's hard. And part of what makes it hard is there's so many actors. Some bank wants to help you and then they take all the resources. There's NGOs elbowing each other for fame and glory. There's USAID. I hear you almost saying if we could leave them alone for a while, maybe they could kind of improve. But I wonder if you could talk about the diplomats and people you know. If we are going to fix this, it's not going to be the Defense Department or AID. And if it's not the White House, I don't know who the we are. Are there actors that you see out there that could come into play to try to shift this onto a more rational ground? And maybe the NSF, maybe you could have explained a bit more about it because it is a big success story. The folks to fix, to begin a sustainable nation building program is the Afghan government. That has to be the point of interaction. And there's a fundamental issue about the way in which we go about nation building through USAID and the State Department that bypasses the very government we're trying to build up, undermines it, et cetera. I mean, that's a major, I hope, take away from the book the way in which we're not really nation building. We're very successful at creating vast offices and a bubble in Kabul with much less impact on the ground. Ashraf Ghani inherited a program that had been operating during the Civil War in the 1990s which had been done with the Taliban with a little bit of UN supervision, but largely done by Afghan civil groups that, as I mentioned, were building schools and wells using the community to identify the projects that they wanted and then giving them the money to implement them. Ghani took this program and expanded it across the country in 2002. It was remarkably successful, albeit one that was underfunded and rapidly overwhelmed by the much larger nation building project that the UN and others were engaged in. I mean, that program has survived. It's still there today. There's something to work with, and I'm sure Ghani will be the principal tool because it's an incredibly effective way of building in these small villages where Westerners can't go. It's hard even for Afghan government officials to go, but you create sureers that select their projects and you slowly, bit by bit, create civil society to show that there is a way that people can come together and do good, and that hasn't happened nearly enough. I mean, Ghani, for the Tokyo donors conference in 2002, he had a request for $250 million to pay Afghan civil servants many of which were involved in this program, which he didn't get. In 2002, he was sacking government officials because he couldn't meet payroll. At that same meeting, the UN was given $1.8 billion to start its humanitarian assistance programs, which was administered through the UN and through their own systems. I mean, Ghani, at one point he tried to block the UN diplomats from coming to the country by refusing them fee-feasers. That was the level to which he was trying to, he had sunk to in an attempt to stop the nation-building model. He had seen what had happened in the 90s. As had others like Lactar Brahimi, who was the UN envoy and spoke before we went in to the UN warning of the dangers of allowing in the development consultants and others in terms of, you know, imperiling local structures rather than, you know, building them up. The other thing striking about this aid issue is that, I mean, we talked about the billions of dollars that were given, but really we're just paying ourselves because, you know, depending on the Oxfam has a number, I think 40%, kind of just goes back to the, wherever, you know, to the, yeah, and the United States is particularly, I think some countries like Sweden are very cognizant of this and, I mean, but, you know, when it's American aid, it might turn out to be 80% of the total. It's really just paying ourselves. So this aid is not, you know, it's worse than not getting to the Afghans. It's actually, you know, just cycling back into our own pockets. And so, yeah, I mean, the amount of money that we have spent on the place, it should be, yeah. Yeah, there's a hydroelectric dam that I write about quite a bit in the book. Both because it was one of the biggest nation-building projects and also one of the greatest white elephants. This was a dam that had been built by the U.S. in the early 60s and it had had two turbines built. And one was missing. And the two that were installed were somewhat, you know, were struggling. So early on, Ashraf Ghani sent a... did a study to work out how much it would cost to fix the turbines. To fix the turbines, he came back with a $100,000 cost and to install the third turbine, it turned out the Taliban had actually contracted it with a Chinese company for $4 million. And it was actually some of the parts that were already in Pakistan waiting to be driven in. We ignored all of that. First of all, because we didn't do nation-building for that very brief window of time. And then because USAID was going to do it on their own terms. And those terms now have cost almost $2 billion. One of the turbines is fixed, the other is still shaky, and the third one is still missing. And actually just reading a couple of days ago there in their 2015 budget, they're still looking for another $300 million to keep alive the dream of getting Kajaki Dam to work. And Kajaki Dam was a particularly poignant reconstruction project because it was partly the need to clear the Taliban around the area that brought the British there in 2005 and 2006 and forced the British and behest of the Americans into these small communities in northern Helmand that led ultimately to the surge because the Brits found they couldn't handle it and needed the Americans to bail themselves out. All in the name of this great white elephant project that could have been fixed for $100,000 in 2002. Gentlemen here. I agree, Andrews with the Heritage Foundation. You seem to be quite a bit more optimistic about Afghanistan rather than Iraq. And I guess my question is, what is the current state of the Afghani army and how will that play a future in stabilizing Afghanistan? In a recent press conference, General Austin seemed pretty optimistic about the Iraqi army and that if the Iraqi government could be more inclusive of Sunnis, the army at least in Iraq already has a structure to it and it could be worked with in Afghanistan. That's a lesson why you should take the generals with a pinch of salt because I'm not sure the Iraqi military is one that should inspire 100% confidence at this moment, having just surrendered half the country. They seem to have only one gear, which is reverse. You're right. Yes, well, at least you know what they're going to do. That's something. What you're trying to do is match up forces. So the Afghan military has improved a great deal. It's capable of holding cities and towns. But what, you know, the military doesn't operate in some sort of virtual battlefield. They are operating in communities and when those communities are not supportive of the Afghan government, it's very hard for the Afghan military to go against it. The reason why the Taliban won't seize and never were in real danger of seizing places like Kandahar is that there are huge vested interests in keeping Kandahar as there is in Kabul open. The Taliban themselves have got family there, they've got money there. That's where the open transactions take place. When you put the Afghan military in that context it can work well. They know the context, they know these power plays and it's, you know, the Afghan the Taliban aren't going to sort of come charging over the horizon and seizing the city. I think there are real questions about how effective they can be out in the provinces and we're seeing that in the fact that places like Sangin and Moussakali these small towns have already sort of largely largely fallen so, you know, I wouldn't you can't have 100% faith in the Afghan military just like you can't in the Iraqi. I think you can have 100% faith in when you align that military with local interests that it will stand the test of the Taliban or any force trying to change the status quo. I mean, that's, you know, the main message of the book in some ways is that you've got to go with the Afghan grain. You can seek to change it over time but it's, you know, it's a generational conflict and one that will, you know, it's going to take 30 years or more to, you know, to resolve. What does that resolution look like? Oh, in the distant future you know, I think you know, there are some gains civil society gains which you know, even if in some scenario the Taliban were to seize the country again, I think will be hard to put back in the bottle. Many of those gains the U.S. had nothing to do with other than getting rid of the Taliban and those are in you know, in terms of educational policies. I've always found it very interesting the Taliban themselves have publicly claimed that they now support girls in schools you know, that's an important shift, one which we're not going to see the benefits of for you know, for decades but it has happened just like mobile phones have transformed how Afghans communicate and how they how they get paid as well. I mean, you know, as in Africa there are a huge number of ways in which you can sort of bypass certain development hurdles you know, that's another conceptual shift that's going to be hard you know, you can't change that back again at least I would be very surprised if that were to happen and those changes we're going to take you're going to take time to play out and I think with sensitive limited development building on schools where it's wanted building on the country's health care you can you know, you can continue the some of the positive trends but it is a distance it is a distance image of you know, of a semi-functional Central Asian country that's probably the end goal that is good Christina Hi Christina ask what the journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan Peter, this is my question is for you Jack and I have talked a lot about how our takeaway from a decade of covering these wars is that you have to let the locals make the calls you have to let the locals create the solutions you have to follow their lead it has to be driven by grassroots organizations and you know, I want to ask you just if you could drill down on that elaborate on that idea a little bit more do you agree with that why do you think that doesn't happen more is it feasible for it to happen well, I think you know, Jack it's a national solidarity program which you know, Claire Lockhart who's a friend of New America and Ashraf Ghani I mean, it was kind of their brainchild and I mean, it's a rare example of something that really worked because it did, you know, as Jack outlined the Shura had to come together they had to make a political decision there wasn't a huge amount of money involved it was, you know, 50,000 bucks or whatever and so that worked I mean, I think the general principle is true I mean, the one sort of caveat would be you know, at the end of the day we're going to, the West quote on quote is going to bring better technocratic solutions to some things, you know well, you know, let's look at the you, Jack mentioned the mobile phone well, how did that start because this is one of the big successes of the Agra Khan who came in and set up the Roshan telephone network which I mean, Afghanistan it didn't have a phone system under the Taliban I mean, it didn't have a phone system you know, now there is like I don't know, 60% penetration I mean, every Afghan has a cell phone so there are some things that are naturally going to have to come from outside the Agra Khan isn't the West but he's sort of West denies, let's say but yeah, I mean I basically agree with the premise except in situations where you know if 9-11 hadn't happened the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan probably so, you know, one thing that we did do is we overthrew the Taliban that's something the Afghans couldn't do for themselves and I think there were some pretty good outcomes from that and there were some less good outcomes from that and we saw in Libya that we can do these kinds of interventions and then the outcome is completely catastrophic right, I mean we overthrew Gaddafi and it's like Libya is I'm not an expert in it but it seems to be in very deep trouble so there are some things we're going to have to I mean, I guess the lesson of all this is that it's very easy to overthrow people the question is what comes next and you know, in Iraq Tommy Franks retired what three weeks after the invasion there was no plan in Afghanistan there was no plan either but it's sort of, maybe when, I don't know why why did it get, that's a really interesting question back to you Jack, which is why did it go better in Afghanistan than in Iraq I mean you, we know all the things that we kind of screwed up in Iraq I mean Afghanistan is doing better what, was it just because it was a much simpler society and anything's better than what preceded it or what? My take is that, you know, in Iraq you had this huge bureaucracy in which pretty much everyone was plugged into in one shape or form this huge state run autocracy and what we sought to do early on was dismantle it and also persecute half of its members I mean there aren't those expectations weren't those expectations in Afghanistan there weren't the same structures to be torn down I think our mistake was that we didn't allow the existing structures that were there to we didn't help rebuild them or align them enough with the government we took the opposite approach Have we learned from our mistakes? I mean just collective mistakes because one of the things is a group like Al Qaeda doesn't seem to learn much from its mistakes or ISIS may have learned something but to what extent did you see, I mean you're covering 13 years in the book, did you see people, you know did the United States over time sort of unscrew things that had screwed up? No I think we maybe, we could be approaching a point now as you know that Israeli politicians claim to have said America always does the right thing in the end after exhausting every other I think it's a Churchill famous as you looked into it some debate I like the idea that it's Churchill I think we've tried the whole gamut of strategies in Afghanistan and they haven't really worked the last one we haven't tried is our not being there so much and I think that may if we can get back to 2002-2003 again that would be successful but that's only the first step it's like the surge in Iraq reset the clock back to 2003-2004 and then for a variety of reasons we squandered that window and we have we have a broader window in Afghanistan then there was I think you're right with these big secular trends the education, the cell phone penetration, the expectations of young people those are going to be very hard to put back and so even though we made all these mistakes we kind of did a set the stage for this thing some of these good things to happen to some degree let me ask you Peter do you see can Pakistan have a positive role I would say it's in Pakistan's interest completely to have a positive role and Ghani went to Pakistan very quickly and General Sharif was just in Afghanistan so Karzai was constantly he was saying a lot of very negative things about Pakistan he said he knows very strongly held belief in Afghanistan but everything that goes wrong can be attributed to Pakistan so I think and Ghani and General Sharif both firmly believe that the biggest problem they face is the Taliban it's not India they don't want to wake up to that so as you said it's in their interest to kind of make sure the civil war doesn't start again the Taliban isn't marching on Kabul they have shared interest the head of the Pakistani Taliban lives in Afghanistan now which is an interesting role reversal but that's a shared interest in trying to manage this well thank you Jack for a brilliant presentation