 Welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace. My name is Scott Worden and I'm the Director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia Program here. I want to say a few words of introduction about USIP for those that are not familiar with it and then I'll introduce our speaker. USIP was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, peace is practical, and peace is essential for U.S. national security. USIP pursues this vision by working on the ground with local actors and local governments to identify the causes and sources of conflict and to work on understanding them better and figuring out ways to mitigate and resolve them. USIP has been involved in Afghanistan since 2002 and we have been on the ground with an office in Kabul since 2008. This is one of our largest programs. We are working with a variety of local actors and Afghan government departments in order to execute the vision of conflict prevention and conflict resolution. We do this in particular in areas including rule of law in countering violent extremism or CVE and we also work on the university level on classes for peace and conflict resolution for university graduates to take into their future leadership positions and to take home with them to resolve conflicts at the local level. For this event, we are delighted to be working with a relatively new organization, Rise to Peace, which is founded on similar goals of preventing extremism, preventing violence and resolving conflict. We look forward to hearing more details from our panel on prospects for peace in Afghanistan. This is an area that is badly needed and there are some positive signs in February. Of course, President Ghani during the Kabul conference made a forward leading offer of peace terms to the Taliban including having them eventually join as an accepted political movement within the government of Afghanistan in exchange for ending the violence and agreeing to abide by the constitution. The peace terms also called for discussion about what the constitution could hold. The Taliban have not responded to this publicly although they did unfortunately just announce the beginning of their spring offensive. So the conflict will continue but I think that there are opportunities that I look forward to hearing from our panelists about for advancing the discussion to resolving it. Let me then introduce the founder and director of Rise to Peace. Ahmad Mohib. He has been working for over 12 years with US military forces in Afghanistan as well as with the Afghan government. He's now here further studying as well as creating this organization on peace and conflict resolution. He's going to then introduce the moderator Michael Sherwin and they will introduce the rest of the panel. So please join me in welcoming Ahmad Mohib and Rise to Peace. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for taking the time to come to this important event in a critical time where peace is everything for the Afghans and peace is what they are looking for and it's been a long time they are looking for that. So before I start into the panel I would like to thank the United States Institute of Peace for sponsoring us. Thanks to Mr. Scott for the nice words and introduction. Thanks to Johnny Walsh for helping us with the panel. Thanks to the team Rise to Peace and thanks to our distinguished panelist for taking the time to come and make this panel happen. So we live in a time where Afghanistan has been going for war for almost four decades and the topic of peace has been a popular topic whether in Washington and Afghanistan and with the high levels of violence and the corruption and the elections coming up and most importantly the peace talks with the Taliban has been a major issues. The panel will talk more about that but I'd like to talk about why we're here today and how Rise to Peace came to involvement and that has to do with more our work in Afghanistan. So it all started in 2011 when me and Michael Strahwin which is here we work at the Justice Center of Parwan a special tribunal where the United States helped the Afghan government to prosecute the detainees basically the terrorists and we saw firsthand children as ages of I would say 16 and above being prosecuted at courts and one thing that we did was we basically interrogated them we went to the off and different places at background but it just made us to think about why met a child of 15-14 to join this terrorist organization and so that is the idea of Rise to Peace behind so we were just looking forward to using education as a platform and using education to as a tool to eradicate extremism and we really believe in and in empowering peace in communities if we have a stronger communities in Afghanistan in Syria and Iraq we really think peace would be possible that way so that's the organization and we have we do not have a physical office in Washington DC but we have team in Turkey team in Afghanistan we have a big team in here and we have a lot of good diverse background working and a lot of issues the our team work on two special reports and it's published online the child extremism and violent extremism in Iraq and Afghanistan it's a very detailed special report if you're interested you could go to rise to peace.org and be able to get more details about it. Without saying more I would like to introduce Michael Shrowan as I said we work in background just the center part one we came to that I came to the United States a couple years ago we started the Rise to Peace nonprofit organization and he has been helping us in this organization with ways to find and projects to implement to counter violent extremism so I here let the Michael Shrowan to take the lead and introduce the panel. Thank you again for taking the time to have ports with this panel. All right good afternoon everyone and we want to thank again the US Institute of Peace for hosting Rise to Peace at this facility which is incredible and also for inviting these incredible speakers here this afternoon and I think it's going to be very insightful for everyone and I think everyone will hopefully walk away with more knowledge than they had when they walked through the door. So I will do a brief intro with our speakers and please forgive me. These intros will be very brief and they really will not give justice to the amazing backgrounds of these speakers but nonetheless I'll do my best to try to introduce them to you. So the first person I'd like to introduce you to is well Shaw of course or Ahmad. We met in 2011 when I worked in Afghanistan I was detailed there from Department of Justice with the Department of Defense and we sat through over 300 terrorist trials at the Tribunal in Bagram and as Ahmad mentioned you know we that's when we first glimpsed the the actual victimization of how a lot of these youngsters were targeted and trained by more senior insurgents, more senior terrorists and they were essentially used as tools by these extremists in the war against the Afghan government and the US forces and coalition forces and that's where Ahmad got the idea to start this non-profit once he came to the United States. So I think he's done an amazing job it's you know I look back and he's only been here for a few years but what he's done it's pretty impressive and incredible and he's really an amazing guy and the organization is really amazing. All right I'll leave it at that. One of our other panelists is John Wood so Mr. Wood if you could please step up here on the stage. All right Mr. Wood is an associate professor of with the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies and he's currently attached to the National Defense University. John Wood is an associate professor at NISA and he also has a military background he served 28 years with the United States Army as an armor officer and he retired as a colonel and he's currently in addition to that he served on the National Security Council and served at the Pentagon with a deputy director for political military affairs and he currently does a tremendous amount of research in this area of Afghanistan, Pakistan and works with a lot of the foreign partners in bringing together politicians and military officers from everywhere from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan to bring them together to see and show people how knowledge and spreading information sharing information could diffuse very difficult situations. So it's a pleasure to have Mr. Wood here with us today. Our next speaker is Ambassador Carney so please come up here Ambassador. We're pleased to have the ambassador with us. I could probably speak for a couple hours with the ambassador's background but everywhere from South Africa to Cambodia to the Republic of Vietnam during the 10 offensive, the 10 offensive. The ambassador has seen firsthand how elections have succeeded and failed around the globe and I think it's pretty amazing that we have him here today to give us his insights historically on the elections in Afghanistan and how to view those elections and the lens of all of his experiences from Haiti, Cambodia and South Africa. So we're pleased to have you here Ambassador. The next speaker is Courtney Cooper. Thanks Courtney. Courtney is with the Council on Foreign Relations and Courtney is a career civil servant who most recently served on the National Security Council and she was on the staff of the Director for Afghanistan and she led a host of U.S. policy initiatives to include national security, terrorism and political issues. So it's a pleasure to have Courtney with us here today. And last but not least we have Johnny Walsh here from the Institute. Thanks Johnny please come up here. Johnny is currently with the Institute and Johnny Walsh is a senior expert in Afghanistan. He has traveled there extensively. He served with the State Department. He served throughout Afghanistan and Kandahar among many other places and we think he's going to give us great insight and information on not only the current political situation in Afghanistan and whether these elections are feasible but give us that opinion based upon his historical work in Afghanistan. So without much much to say that's the panel and we'll get started here. In terms of logistics what I like to do is we'll speak for roughly 45 minutes to an hour and then I would like to open up the forum to questions for a good 45 minutes because historically we've done this before we want to have interaction with the audience so please if you could just hold your questions till the end and we'll give you ample time to address any any issue or topic you want to discuss and even afterwards if you'd like to speak with us I think everyone would be amenable to speaking with anyone so so just please hold your questions for about the next 45 minutes. So I guess I'll kick it off with saying over the past few hours I believe on Reuters after I flew in this morning from Miami and I was in the airport and I was looking through Reuters news and I was surprised to see Reuters was reporting that the Taliban announced today that they're going to begin the spring offensive and I think over the past several weeks there has been a lot of silence from the Taliban on how what their position is going to be vis-a-vis Ghani announcing in February that he wants to invite the Taliban to be active participants in the elections without any preconditions so uh given that it's just come across the news headlines I want to turn my this first question to Johnny Walsh. Johnny what's our first of all are you surprised with this announcement and what impact do you think this announcement is going to have in the near term? Hi thank you very much and thank you for to rise to peace it's great to be holding this. In the first place I think that got me in mic range in the first place no I'm not surprised by this announcement this is an annual ritual it's happened the Taliban have issued essentially the same statement a very similar statement to inaugurate the spring fighting season every year I would say it is true that since President Ghani's peace offer about eight weeks ago the Taliban have been notably silent about in their response and many have seen that as best you could hope for it compares favorably to the manner in which the Taliban savage basically everything else that comes out of out of Kabul and so I think that probably really does imply that the group recognizes this was a relatively serious offer. Now at the same time I suspect that few of us up here expected the group to just publicly accept what Ghani put on the table. I have just come back from Kabul a couple weeks ago I spoke to many people who are close to the Taliban I universally heard that they're not they're not going to respond they're certainly not going to publicly accept it that's unfortunate it doesn't mean that peace is dead and we can come back to that but they're not in a position to be in their minds legitimizing the government by sitting down to negotiate. On the announcement itself the other important thing about it is that this is still a very militarily strong organization and while it is true that there's increased military pressure on them from the US and the afghan government while it is true that there's more talk of peace than there was six months months ago we should all expect another quite intensive fighting season starting with this announcement but really it's already underway where you know there are attacks every day across the country and I expect that to increase so would you over the past several months a lot of the headlines have focused on the Islamic State not only in Afghanistan but in other countries in the region so do you believe that the demise of the Taliban have been exaggerated that they still are a very powerful force and that that they still need to be reckoned with or or do you think there is some hope that they may come into the government fold so to my mind that's two different things yeah if anyone is claiming the demise of the Taliban I would I would disagree with that strongly still tens of thousands of fighters there are different views on how unified the organization is I'm broadly of the view that it's fairly unified by the standards of an insurgent group around the world they are capable of recruiting in virtually all if not all of Afghanistan's provinces they have been for a long time this is still a quite serious military force to reckon with and the you know time-honored statement remains true that there is no military solution to this conflict that is the biggest reason why barring a massive escalation of the war this is not a group that will be defeated militarily the Islamic State is a arguably more brutal but vastly smaller group in Afghanistan the Islamic State's Afghanistan chapter is a fraction the size of the Taliban and while it's willing to cross lines in the targets it selects and the kinds of attacks it carries off that the Taliban are let's say less often willing to cross the Islamic State does not pose any larger threat to the survival of the government and you know in the longer term if anyone does pose that threat it's very much still the Taliban okay I want to shift to Courtney I want to ask your opinion about Ghani and going back to February of this year when he he extended this ala branch to the Taliban what do you believe his what was his thinking in doing that and do you think he really believed that they would accept that branch or was there some other ulterior motive he perhaps had in extending that to them and thanks for having me here today I think for those of us that have worked closely with our Afghan government partners of the last couple of years there is no doubt in the Afghan government's sincerity and desire for peace I think I think what confounds us and probably all parties that have been looking at this issue is how exactly do we get to where we're all hoping to go and and start a process at some point in the near future I think if we look back to the the deal that was negotiated with Hezbi Islami I think that that was an important precursor to show the Afghan government's ability to conclude a deal to really set forth an objective to negotiate with a group that had been on the outs with Kabul and with a group that had been on the outs with those that make up the international military presence in Afghanistan I think there there's not that many more parallels that can be made between Hezbi Islami and the Taliban I think those are two very very different processes as as how they would unfold but I think recognizing that the government was able to conclude that deal and and move forward and bring in Hezbi Islami into the political fold I think that was an important first step so knowing that the Afghan government is genuine in its desire for peace I think there's also been questions raised though throughout the process by other actors in the region of how serious are they if there hasn't been an articulation of what they're willing to put on the table so I know that there have been questions when I was in the government in talking to our Afghan partners about what might a political system look like that brings the Taliban back into the fold and so the Afghan government has leveraged there has the ability to put something on the table like Ghani did and I think that it was a very generous offer I believe that it was necessary but probably insufficient in terms of setting the conditions for the Taliban ultimately to come to the table so some of those conditions would include and I think we're already seeing a mutually hurting stalemate but and so knowing now that there are political incentives from Kabul I think another key piece is a little bit more engagement by the international community and probably by other major regional actors including Pakistan to really help mobilize the conditions to move forward earnestly okay ambassador I'd like to pose this question to you we've seen historically insurgent or quote-unquote terrorist organizations evolve into political organizations the IRA in Colombia, FARC and AUC reconciliation being welcomed into the political process so my first question is do you see this possibly happening with the Taliban one and two do you think they really have the will or desire to do that or will they be forced to evolve into that type of a situation? Well that's an interesting way to look at it if you look at Cambodia for example the Khmer Rouge were ultimately forced to sign the Paris Agreement there in October of 1992 I think it was but they refused to do the next logical step which was to become a political entity there was clearly internal dissent and strife within the Khmer Rouge that of course ultimately resulted in Pol Pot being killed and the Khmer Rouge being marginalized as a political force in Cambodia altogether the question then becomes and we looked last month at the Secretary of Defense talking with MBS in Saudi Arabia about providing a refuge for moderate Taliban and their families now as I don't follow Afghanistan full time the way my colleagues do maybe I can draw both Courtney and Johnny out on whether this was a game in other words designed to sow dissension within the Taliban by asserting that there are moderate Taliban or whether it is in fact the case that there is the potential of a split that might ultimately result in the Taliban becoming the kind of political entity that Afghanistan actually needs to see happen will they be forced to become a political entity you know there's so much war wearing us in Afghanistan now that yet at the same time there is a desire to flee on the part of many Afghans who just simply don't want to put themselves and their children at risk anymore that I am reluctant to conclude that the Taliban are at this point on the cusp of being forced to become the political movement that can help resolve the issues okay speaking about being forced John would this question for you having followed the elections or the upcoming elections and historically do you think first of all is it a pipe during that there will be elections in October of this year will those elections be delayed and I guess the second question is is there based upon your view of other elections in this election as we're percolating towards it is there a will by the people to actually participate is that going to be an issue over the next several months I think one way I'll answer your question about elections but I want to get to it through tying it back to your questions about the Taliban and what struck me about the discussions and the answers in the debate so far is that it was a bit one-sided and so the other part of the equation the other part of the calculus is the strength capability and capacity the afghan government itself and so it's not just a matter of setting conditions that entice the Taliban to come to the table it's demonstrating that the government as as it exists today independent of the personalities the structure the form and and quite frankly the performance of the government since 2004 does that tip the scales in the favor of the the people of afghanistan backing this form of government and this trajectory or or not you know how does that play into the calculus about whether the Taliban stay at least as strong as they are and so one of my one of my great afghan mentors frequently you know chides me and he says look john it's not that the Taliban are so strong it's that our government is so weak and so to tie that to your question about the elections i think the elections of some sort or another will probably happen this fall my guess is and it's only a guess is that they will not include the district councils that's been advertised but will probably be parliamentary elections at best but given the short amount of time and given the current situation both security wise and broader politically we shouldn't expect this election to be any better than any of the ones in the past and and i mean that in the broadest sense both in terms of the actual physical execution of of the election as well as the political contest itself i was in Kabul about a well three weeks ago i i have pretty frequent contact with most pretty good cross-section of afghan people i think that there continues to be a great desire for a representative government and a more path towards some form of democratic republican form of government i think that there's great skepticism that the conditions currently exist that would that would put them to to the state that they'd ultimately like to be and that this election in 2018 is not the magic panacea event that's going to to suddenly get there i mean they i think that there's a recognition that there's a decade or more maybe two decades of continued struggles in many ways before they'll get to that final outcome that that everybody all of us are looking for so i'll pose this to to johnny do you think look let's look back 04 09 14 2018 do you think introducing democratic elections was that too premature do you think that it was done a rush to introduce those elections as perhaps john would mention maybe the the the the political will with the citizenship isn't ready for that or do you think no it was necessary to introduce it in those early years 04 going forward what would be what's your perspective on that did it happen too quick i think there are people on this panel who were much more present at the creation for that decision than i was i won't comment on what stage of life i was in when some of these early decisions took place i will say that you know i served in iraq for a long time to where the countries are very different but the the u.s effort there in both countries has a lot in common there's a similar question asked to this to this day did in either of these projects did we rush to elections and there's always a downside in holding elections quickly like they are much more likely to be flawed they uh often happen before the other harder institutions of democracy are truly in place at the same time there's great risk in not holding elections like the cost of inaction can be pretty serious like it is not an easy thing or it would not be an easy thing to just install someone let them rule for years on end perceived as purely the choice of a foreign power with no manifest sign of popular legitimacy and kind of hope that the country rallies around that person so i mean i i would defer to uh some of these gentlemen on the inner dynamics of for example the decision to hold an election for president carzai then interim president carzai in 2004 i would just i i think there's always the risk of the counterfactual you know you don't know the negative consequences that would have come let me throw this back then to the ambassador ambassador you were there in 09 how would you answer the question that i just asked johnny nice question uh basically that one of the in fact if not the key development the difference between 04 and 09 was that it was the afghans who conducted the 2009 election and it became abundantly clear to me and the small team i led that was supposed to help ensure a good election resulted we failed uh was that the afghan political elite that's as opposed to people in general and media really didn't see elections as the way they wanted to choose their governance that the massive fraud i mean the fraud was on a scale hard to believe was contradictory in the sense that some of the people in the electoral body were actually handing out blank ballots to people in the palace to stuff in the ballot boxes that later became known uh in the phrase of george friedrich hendel all we like sheep anyways from the 19 or the 2014 election but at the same time these very same people engaged in fraud were also constructing the mechanism which would reveal fraud when it took place and as a result president karzai had his legitimacy seriously undermined by the exposure of the extent of the fraud that took place now to answer your question the people of Afghanistan i think were perfectly ready to see elections produce a government that would be accountable to them in ways that had not yet happened it's it just resonated but the politicians weren't and they weren't well they we can argue whether in 2014 they were they weren't i would argue they aren't and i would continue that they are not ready now to see elections as the way to to choose their government amad let me turn this question to you uh going i've read some literature lately that's talked about as the ambassador talked about the endemic corruption from oh for all the way through now and how fraud is perhaps made the whole process broken and perhaps there's an alternative an afghan alternative a lawyer jerga that could select the government and perhaps it can mature to a democratic election type of a system do you think that's a good idea or bad that's the first question the second question is off based upon what the ambassador said are the people of afghanistan ready for democratic elections or is there another uh organic alternative in afghanistan thank you michael so living in afghanistan and then analyzing it or living from abroad if you look at afghanistan we all understand it's a total mess and there is a high violence and there is a lot of corruption uh but there's one thing we should understand is there's a lot of hope and the afghans are struggling for that peace and that hope is fees i would say afghanistan traditionally um did not like when the foreigners dictate or tell them what to do that's a traditional thing i want to lay it out today that it's it's an important fact if you started from the alexander de gré to the russians or to the us i would say any of them so that's what afghanistan is all about they're very hospitable people but when it comes to the leuigerga and the election leuigerga what happens with tribalism when the leaders gather and that was an old way of system of how afghans did and how afghans made peace when there was a conflict i would say in this kind of situation that we were still exist with a lot of interest and a lot of proxy wars i think leuigerga would not be a possible way because afghans are ready for democratic transition because they are working so hard if you look at the the a lot of statistics a lot of afghans are in school right now and their hope is to make businesses and and contribute to their land so leuigerga would only possible if there is if if the government ends the ethnic conflict that's going on one of the key issues in afghanistan i see is that is the ethnic was happening a lot of positions are been offered towards a spoiled system of favoritism and the same thing leuigerga who picks these people these people are picked by the by the by the presidential palace by others so if you choose your favorite people then how come you're gonna have an outcome of that leuigerga so it's it's hard if it's a transparent system where you pick the people based on the past system that leuigerga that gathering of people based on on representative truth representative of afghans will work but coming to the question whether afghans are ready for a democratic democracy or change i would say yes afghans are but the key answer to or the key obstacle that is whether the government whether the fuyen supporters are willing to help a democratic and transparent election so 2004 i would say 2009 the fraud the the last election the fraud and this coming up one there a lot of analysis are talking about a political analyst that we much more fraud as the result we get the unity government and the unity government illegitimate and a lot of high level of violence and the people the problem is there is a distrust of people from the government so if there is no trust in the government and then how are you gonna have a democratic transition so i would say yes and no yes in a way that if the government works too hard on it and give what the people are looking forward to it and no in a way that if the same thing happened right now favoritism ethnic uh favoritism and and that would be a key obstacle to democratic uh transition but the Taliban and the isis and many other 21 or 22 is surging groups has been a key obstacle to this process and as we all understand from the last event that took uh incident happened on the registration uh center about 60 people died but it's still people are going to vote and you're still people are going to register what that tells us that told us that the Afghans are tired of war and they're willing to give up everything to bring peace in their homeland but what we all could do is just advocate for policies that could really help a policy which is centric policy of people centric so i would say uh hope is the best thing and that's what Afghans ask okay Courtney there's all this obviously there's a lot of negatives attached with the elections corruption fraud violence historically even up to today 0408 14 excuse me 0409 14 2018 throughout those elections through today did you see any kernels of hope or any progress that perhaps could evolve towards the 2018 elections to give it some hope the 2018 election yes um thanks michael the so first kind of piggybacking on what Ahmed said i think the fact that elections in afghanistan are new aren't perfect yet uh the fact that insecurity is very very high that it's uh it's a challenge uh to get out and even vote because of the security conditions the fact that so many millions of afghans have done that whether it's showing up to to vote to campaign uh registering for provincial council elections i mean thousands of candidates actually participating in the system aside from just showing up to vote i mean millions of afghans showed up um not only for the April 2014 election but in the middle of the summer for the runoff the first runoff that was ever held for a presidential election held in the height of fighting season and again you have millions more demonstrating their willingness to to show up and participate so aside from like you mentioned the corruption the challenges the security environment i think the fact that there is the willingness that first and foremost is i think the the biggest kernel of hope i think uh as johnny mentioned these institutions are new and developing and take time i mean we have uh the luxury of uh you know having been in a democracy that is several hundred years old and we still have challenges with our own electoral system and ensuring credibility and legitimacy of our election outcome so recognizing that the institutions in afghanistan are developing they are they're making changes they are renewing the membership of the election commission they're trying to find better more credible more educated officials to serve in those capacities that afghans are taking greater ownership when you think about 2009 we had far more us and international troops on the ground to help with security to help with logistics of the election in 2014 i think we had just about 40 000 us troops there to help with things like moving tens of thousands of pounds of ballots out to afghanistan's 34 provinces and in this election there will be far fewer still and so the afghans are increasingly sharing a larger burden of the responsibility for holding elections and continue to move for it i think i think that's um that's very promising okay ambassador or did you want to chime in i'm sorry john uh why don't you go on okay no no please agree with all of that uh no all right well as long as this has happened already no i would just say uh in in a country that has had a lot of elections that featured a lot of fraud uh it is natural that people raise alternatives including very locally rooted traditions like the loya jerga i would say first of all that just as there are ways to manipulate an election there are absolutely ways to manipulate a loya jerga and i would not you know take too much faith in that and i've already seen many attempts to do that um second uh i would just especially footstomp that i i do think the afghan population overwhelmingly has embraced electoral processes i actually think their presidential turnout is at least as high as the united states presidential turnout um and i'm i'm always uncomfortable with the argument that a population is not ready for elections i think that people understand how these work basically everywhere in the world um there are there are countless cases in which a country called en masse for elections despite having no tradition of it and that's a very different thing from whether sort of self-interested people at different nodes in the system commit fraud to shape those elections okay ambassador and i'll we'll shift to another topic but but to just finally address this issue of corruption based upon your experiences in other areas south africa haiti experiences working in the republic of vietnam is the corruption jis is endemic here in afghanistan as those other regions of the world when when you had it had observed elections uh in former years and that's the first question the second question is is there any way to really root this out or is it just something that we have to live with yeah the answer is maybe uh on electoral corruption it is a reality of every single country on the planet people uh and that does not exclude the audience nor the panel here will often try to get an advantage to realize what they see as their interests and if you have to cheat to get a government job to become a member of parliament congress senate or what have you or to result from the loya jerger process you're probably going to do it that's just the nature of the beast the challenge is to establish the processes and the the checks and the balances to ensure that that kind of fraud is at a minimum in the effort and the problem that i saw in afghanistan in 2009 was that you had a a recognition of the need to do that and indeed the establishment of those processes to identify and and and then try to counter fraud but you did not have a buy-in of a large enough body in the political elite to minimize the extent of that fraud i think that that that's the basic issue that i see in afghanistan i completely agree with with kourtney and johnny that that afghan people there is a maturity in the electorate there i believe that there's no doubt about that and even more broadly throughout the country that democracy is seen as a pretty good idea it just isn't working and people don't quite know what to do about that okay all right now your second question was about rooting it out please a master yes uh that's got to come from within the country afghans have got to figure out how to do that it's not something we can do okay just a quick follow-up point you had asked what are do i see positive kernels when i think about the election i do however i i don't want to dismiss the fact that i do have serious concerns about preparations for the 2018 election so though i think there are kernels of hope in you know afghan's desire to move forward with election i think that we need to work in earnest to support our afghan partners because there are significant challenges to holding elections in a timely way in a credible way this october i think we're working under a condensed timeline compared to elections in the past and i think there are greater implications for the election this fall given that they are already so long overdue we are holding an election following the election crisis of 2014 where we had to negotiate political outcome rather than a strictly ballot count outcome and i think the risk of 2018 parliamentary elections for the 2019 presidential elections are also immense that if we have an election that is contested or that doesn't increase confidence in the electoral system it could gravely undermine our prospects for a sound election in the spring when presidential elections are scheduled to be held according to the constitution and i think there are greater implications for that if we don't actually have a a credible outcome from the next presidential election getting back to the topic of the conference today that will have implications on peace if you don't have a strong central government with the majority of the population believing that they they are a legitimate entity who is the negotiating partner for who's at the table so i think the implications of having a legitimate outcome from the next election are probably even more important than we saw years ago in 2014 okay and Courtney i'm glad you mentioned look the the overall theme is peace 2020 and we've looked at a lot of internal issues elections the internal machinations of the Taliban islamic state uh john wood i'd like to pivot to now international forces on whether or not those forces can foster or hinder peace in afghanistan by 2020 you often interface and work with indian and pakistani politicians and military officers in conjunction with afghan officials what is your outlook the first question is has the has the external pressures from those other countries pakistan and india have those pressures increased or decreased over the past year or two years and have those pressures work for the better or worse towards peace in 2020 interesting question um i and once again i'm going to tie back to your other things i wanted to tie up a couple of things from from some of the other comments that are made um a great discussion about elections but i just think that it's worth tossing out and reminding ourselves that elections don't equal democracy elections are elections right and so and so it's all the other aspects and all the other institutions of governance and it's the psychology of the trajectory in which the the country is perceived to be going both internally and externally which is what it's going to bring us back to you to your question so i think we have to remind ourselves of that uh that piece there and as to this the levels of fraud and corruption impacting on the elections i think is what i think maybe courtney mentioned it there's always going to be some degree even in well-formed and long-standing democracies or representational governments the question is whether or not that level of fraud rises to the point where it invalidates the legitimacy of the outcome or the institution and the systems that are there um i i think that several of the elections in the past rose to that level exceeded that level right so we were all questioning whether you know is this really a legitimate outcome and is this actually a legitimate or an appropriate form of government or process to form a government uh for afghanistan um and so i think it remains to be seen how it goes in 2018 now what does that create uh regionally and sort of globally by by the other actors um as long as this uncertainty exists this high degree of uncertainty as long as the low degree of confidence in both the electoral process but the actual capacity of the government to deliver remains where it is there will be very high incentives for spoilers to continue to act in afghanistan um i i would say most uh most specifically pakistan followed very closely by iran you didn't mention iran but iran has great interest in yes in in afghanistan and in a um in a perhaps in a in a positive way not so much a negative way most of the central asian states and i think we're going to talk a little bit later about the economics and what have you but i think that they have a role as does china and and russia um i would say that russia to some extent iran and to a very large extent pakistan um have some real motivations to to at least be spoilers if not take advantage of the uncertainty that exists there pakistan for very central uh very very pakistan centric reasons i think russia perhaps more for regional and global balance of power kinds of arguments um and iran i i don't know i think iran's kind of sitting on the fence perhaps for a little bit there's plenty of i mean as we saw with the discussions yesterday with president micron and president trump you know much to be seen there but but that also injects a certain degree of uncertainty there your question as you originally posed it was about international forces and i was thinking that you were going in terms of the military coalition and and if that's where you were headed i would say i would say no okay i'd say that both the level of force that's there the limitations and restrictions that are on that force that's there and and the primary mission actually of the u.s forces that are there continuing to be trained advised and assist not necessarily the same as enforce a peace agreement or compel the Taliban to come to the table i would say that um they foster peace but they foster peace with a with a much longer time horizon than 2018 or even 2020 because they're they're building institutions in capacity they're not there uh and certainly not there with the intention of of taking on the Taliban and compelling them to come to the table just a yeah just a point or two here iran seems to be in a very approach avoidance mode when it comes to afghanistan they've been involved in recruiting and and aiding the Taliban in the in the west at the same time iran and india have agreed to use this incredible port facility for afghan trade and they're building railways the however many hundred kilometers it is from the port of what is it chabahar uh to the the afghan border pakistan we had the the prime minister in in Kabul earlier this month did we not and we found we've got creation of uh what's it called afghan pakistan and my notes uh have failed me here as i failed at time it might be cooperation plan for peace and solidarity some sort of a framework which may or may not be real let's be honest given given the track record uh we we had hanif admar uh whom i knew as minister of interior back in 2009 and is now the national security advisor here at usip last month talking about uh pakistan's continuing support for the Taliban is one of the primary challenges in their relationship uh and the number one challenge as he as he put it at the same time the pakistani prime minister has called on the Taliban to respond to ghani's peace officer and argued that there's no military solution so we've got an incredible mix of contradictions in the way all of these regional neighbors except the indians seem to be and of course the central asian states as we'll talk about later seem to be playing their relationship with afghanistan and i think john you've hit on the the key reality here and that as long as afghanistan seems weak these players are free to play their own games but so tell me this though i'll pose this to you johnny seems weak so does your posing that question does that necessitate the need for us forces to stay there johnny or is that the counter argument is does the presence of us forces in afghanistan or increase those forces in some unusual manner actually give this perception that afghanistan is weak uh yeah i mean on some level this gets at what i consider kind of the the great unanswered question of the post-911 era which is do these groups fight because we're there or in spite of us being there in terms of how to how to play it in afghanistan you know a core pillar of the new administration strategy and and really of the the final strategy of the previous administration was that we're withdrawing based on conditions not based on a sort of arbitrary timetable and the point of that is to persuade the insurgency that they can't wait us out that we will leave when it's stable enough to leave if then uh and not not just on some date on the calendar chosen for some other reason uh you know it's it's anyone's guess how much psychological impact that is having or will have on the Taliban but it's an important point if you want to persuade them that they can't win militarily at the same time the primary source of us leverage if ever it wants to get to a political settlement in this country is its troop presence so the question is not today or tomorrow but how do you instrumentalize that still large troop presence and the prospect of withdrawing it to bring the insurgency into a political process and then ultimately to see that process through to completion that's not the only tool you would use but to me ending at least the bulk of the occupation is the is the existential reason the Taliban fights and it's very difficult to see a resolution without linking those two issues so can i do a two-finger on this yeah so we the ambassador and i used a phrase that said that that the hedging the hedging actions and and some of the interference will will occur because afghanistan is perceived as being weak neither one of us said because the afghan military capacity is weak neither one of us said because the afghan national defense and security forces are not prevailing upon the battlefield we said afghanistan is weak right so we didn't compel the afghan Taliban to come to the table when we had a hundred thousand us forces there and 160 thousand international forces and a and a nascent afghan capacity we're not compelling them to come to the table now when by most accounts in a pitched fight on their own the afghan national security forces particularly the commando kandex prevail over the taliban and they actually prevail over isis i mean they're they when they fight they fight well right so without us so um yeah they're doing it with their own air support the superticanos are now dropping precision-guided munitions despite the fact that it's a that's a propeller airplane and their capacity is growing every day um so i think we need to be really careful and very specific and precise about what we're talking about weakness and the perception of weakness and and being perceived as weak is as bad as being weak itself right is far more than just the tactical military confrontation on the ground it has to go all the way back with all the institutional issues that we've been talking about everything from corruption to the ability to actually execute programs to delivering to the people and to the economic issues which i think we're we're going to get to here in a little while so without belaboring this too much you're saying the weakness is not the same as saying tactically militarily weak and there's a big distinction there that i think is is necessary to make well Courtney let me pivot to you then based upon what uh what we've been talking about with john wood i guess given what we've discussed do you think it would be prudent for the united states to just remove forces at this time is that necessary to i guess at least administer an atmosphere of security through the the next election or is that really a non issue no i don't think anybody's advocating for the u.s to withdraw any amount of forces right now to johnny's point i think just to recognize that that's our single biggest source of leverage and i don't think there's any guarantees to be made about the future status of u.s forces but recognizing that it is a major bargaining chip to use at the table and even accepting and and conveying that it's something we're willing to discuss you know our current status is that we're there to support our afghan government partners and we have no end date in sight and that should remain but acknowledging that we're willing to concede following a political settlement there may be a new phase of u.s security cooperation with cobble and it probably or possibly won't include us combat troops that are targeting the Taliban that maybe have a much narrower or a different set of targets i think that's something that we need to put on the table as johnny mentioned the administration unveiled a strategy that is largely conditions based but the conditions haven't really been articulated or conveyed i mean what is the condition is it until we have eradicated al-qaeda or isis from afghanistan is it until the Taliban is no longer poses a military threat to the afghan government is it until the afghan government is weak enough that it can stand on its own and doesn't need u.s support for four elections for x for y i think it's vague enough that it could be anything to anybody but i think the i think the administration and departments and agencies really need to do a little bit of soul searching to think about what is our desired and state for afghanistan how do we help use our leverage to get to a peace process and and like johnny mentioned we we have one of the biggest chips to play um per your earlier earlier question about ghani's offer i mentioned it was necessary but insufficient ghani made a very generous offer but what do we hear the Taliban advocating for or asking for publicly they're not publicly every year saying we want to be a political party we want a an office in Kabul they regularly talk about things that are within u.s purview the status of international troops in afghanistan being removed from international sanctions list those are things that don't happen without u.s support um and so we have a large part to play in that vein i think a loss in a lot of these discussions looking at international players looking at ghani is really the power of the warlords amad and the power of the chief executive abdul abdul and the power that the vice presidents especially that some potentially holds do you believe that they do hold power and you believe that their power is potentially a tipping point or critical key for the upcoming elections or are they really a non-issue at this point uh thank you so before i get into that question i'd like to talk about the the uh the question about the international security forces and the strategy i think it's really really important my whole focus when undergraduate graduate and right now uh is has been this this post 9 11 and and what what needs to be done we need to be saved from this so the large presence of the united states security forces really create a lot of mess we understand that americans in washington understand that i think that has been the corruption been one of the key things i call cobble a a uh would say money a market of money if you walk on the streets you see these castles and and you see these uh i would say all these armored vehicles and there's money floating around the streets we should ask about and and where all this money came from so i think we gave that money to that country but we did not give it to the right people i lived in a street that we never had a paved road and still we do not have it so where is that construction where is that peace where is that education and where is that equality where is the justice i think we talk about a lot of military and and and intervention and security forces but the main the key issues is what really afghans want what the afghans who live outside the barbed wire and the concrete walls they are looking for what peace means to them so the security forces i think afghanistan in the past four decades i think we all understand war is not the solution and and killing and more soldiers it creates more chaos more problem look for we had the Taliban we had al-qaeda and now we have isis and according to tolu news we have about 22 insurgent groups operating in afghanistan decal as donald trump said our president left and right so i would say that security forces in afghanistan will not help to ease the situation and also will not help as my colleagues here said that to leave and just that leave afghanistan right away like this having a lu profile would be perfect but supporting more on education level community building and giving that transparent election where people need to trust the government that's the key to bring peace in afghanistan is the people they need to vote they need to trust the government and they need to love each other one of the key challenges or obstacles to peace is as i mentioned earlier it's that that ethnic conflict it's the biggest thing the government who have such as like pashtun toji khazara that's the key thing look at the civil war and that links into the rule of warlords and and the rule of the tribal leaders first we need to define because the word warlords has been linked so negatively in washington everywhere else and when you talk warlords you just link it to killing and criminals but we have to talk about it was the northern alliance helped them to fight the Taliban we helped the stone we helped jundal atama hamad noor we helped jundal moomin we helped many others to defeat the Taliban in mazari shayin and defeat the Taliban in northern afghanistan so yes they do have a very strong rule because afghanistan is known for tribalism and they are so close to their leaders believe it or not in elections and democracy first of all we have to define what's democracy to them when i was living their people thought democracy is just a western word prevailing on us so yes they have a really strong rule in bringing peace with a color warlords tribal leaders jihadi fighters commanders but they have a strong rule why they have a strong rule is because they are so close to the people and people i'm talking about those who are living in countryside those who are in contact with them think about who if you go to cobble city it's all surrounded by the barred wire and conquered wall and a day to the life is just suicide bombing you know what's gonna happen so people do not have access to cdl leaders so but they only have access to cdl tribal leaders and the commanders or the warlords yes they have a rule to bring peace in afghanistan because what right now it's it's a chaos because we have the government and we have the opposition and and they do not like the government government do not like them so it's not a democratic transition as miss curtney said johnnie walsh and john wood mr. ambassador because peace and democracy and the government and all these things it requires time and then that time will prove and that's the people so i would say that time afghanistan is not an easy fix so time education tolerance and trust not respecting cultures would definitely help in the long run okay i want to shift to another topic area uh and back to john wood on this and let's look at the economy and economic factors in fostering a democratic country and democratic institutions look if people can't feed and clothe their kids they're not going to care they could care less about corruption with their local governors so can you discuss that are there any kernels of hope in the economy of afghanistan and is this a major stumbling block on the road to democracy in afghanistan without us dollars you don't have the bombers you don't have the flight schools for the afghan air force you don't have the bombs to drop on isis are we seeing any progress on self-sustaining itself afghanistan financially i think that any discussion about being self-sufficient is um is hallucinatory in fact right so i mean that's that's some aspirational goal for 50 years or so down the run right so just set that off um but is there is there progress i i think there is some progress um i think that there first of all i think that there's a right i don't want to be perceived as just the designated pakistan anti- pakistan guy here but um but but um the recognition that more has to be done at all with using alternatives to transit trade through pakistan the final sort of the wake up to that over the course of the last 18 months i think has been has been quite good um we saw that the afghan government signed agreements with the central asian states about 20 agreements here in the last two months or so uh as the ambassador mentioned we saw the delivery of um 1,100 tons or something of metric tons of we through shabahar and iran that up into afghanistan um we see that there's an opportunity particularly with the new administration in uzbekistan for afghan uzbek trade to very quickly exceed afghan pakistan trade if it's not there already um and and i think that those are all very positive signs including some perhaps throw china in the mix some some re-looking at some of the perhaps not so wise decisions that were made with china in the past and trying to rework some of those agreements um the problem with with what afghanistan has to offer and the way it it uh turns into economic opportunity is that there's nothing fast about it right if it's an extractive industry it's going to be a long time before you have the the infrastructure mainly railroads that can facilitate that there won't be the industry industrial mechanisms inside of afghanistan to refine smelt transform it into usable products so it has to go somewhere else um and and quite frankly without the uh legal structures and without the other parts of governmental institutions that that both uh make the agreements and then enforce the agreements with without them being fully robust inside of afghanistan it's a it's an environment that doesn't invite a lot of foreign direct investment not yet but the potential is there and i think that this turn to central asia the the access there uh when you start looking at how that might dovetail with some of the east west routes the chinese are trying to exploit it's set aside cpac i mean that's completely different discussion all together um there there's a lot of good opportunity there and i think a recognition um that that alternatives to the the pakistan as the gateway to india and the broader world the air quarters to india for example is another good example so so i i think that there i think that there's hope i think that there is a recognition that they have to start approaching economics a little differently in terms of the afghan governmental approach um but i throw the caveat on there that that's a a decade long process before any real value is going to start pouring into the afghan economy johnny i don't want to make this a discussion about iraq but given your experiences in iraq how do you compare that political maturation or how that situation has matured or maybe not matured over the past decade vis-a-vis afghanistan is it better or worse off than what you witnessed or experienced in iraq uh i'm loath to say that either is better or worse uh i think afghanistan is harder um it is a much poorer country it doesn't have this massive oil windfall partially realized now one day to be massively realized mining is not that not in the same way anyway uh it has a much more capable and unified insurgency than iraq ever did that you know iraq's insurgent groups were at war with themselves um you know there are other ways in which in which iraq is worse like the the level of twisted violence that some of the uh both sunni and shia insurgent groups in iraq have perpetrated has virtually no parallel in afghanistan and that we could have a whole discussion on how that is uh there also is no syria next door to afghanistan and i mean iraq has its own problems but uh you know had the islamic state not become what it became next door you know perhaps mosul and philuja and the rest were not have fallen um i i think it ultimately means you know just as john said there's not a precedent in recent history for a truly self economically self-sufficient afghanistan and in fact a lot of afghanistan's best rulers over generations like over centuries have been those who were good at maintaining enough uh international partnerships to fund the country while still governing it independently enough to be seen as legitimate it's not a perfect model uh where we are right now i mean you know to me so much comes down to the question of whether a peace process is possible with this one insurgent group that's not the core question in iraq um in afghanistan it really is so let's go to one of the core questions ambassador that you know we really want to address here today is democracy necessary for peace in afghanistan by 2020 or is that a misnomer are those symbiotic or no let me follow up a little bit on what johnny had to say and give an illustration of the difference between afghanistan and iraq pardon when i got back to iraq in february of 2007 my job was to get the iraqis to start using their capital investment budget at that time the capital investment budget of iraq was ten billion dollars which is more than half of the entire gdp of afghanistan today that's a huge huge difference okay just to make that point is democracy necessary for peace no you can have peace any number of ways uh you could have some sort of a coalition form that is essentially uh essentially an authoritarian if not totalitarian reality afghanistan has seen that before certainly i wouldn't equate democracy and peace anywhere in the world they may be ideal to go together they are not necessary to go together unless you want a long term a very long term reality and that long term reality is something that i think everybody here on the panel has has accepted as the fate of afghanistan whether it be the economy or whether it be a a polity that does not demonstrate the kind of weakness that that various foreigners can take advantage of so court need let me turn this question to you do you agree with the ambassador can you have peace in afghanistan without democracy and then the second question would be you may or may not be a betting woman but what do you see the the security posture being and the democratic posture being in afghanistan in 2020 uh i would agree with the ambassador he has far more years in experience than i do so i would say whatever he says i'm gonna agree with i think that's a safe bet um you know i think more important than what the exact democratic framework work looks like in 2020 or what exactly our security posture is in 2020 you know following these next couple elections and and uh you know any attempts to start the process over the next couple of years more important than those questions is really thinking about what are we willing to do to help jumpstart that process um and i think that there's a lot more that the united states could do to help get us closer to a peace process in 2020 and i'll offer just a couple of ideas on that front first i think the funding and the economy issue is really important i think um you know we commit so many billions of dollars in security assistance and i would expect it could be a disincentive for some actors in cobble to think while as soon as international if we have a peace process and peace no reason for international troops to stay a long term and there's going to be a great sucking sound when all of that international funding goes out the window i think we need to think about um some of the fundraising we've done for security and for civilian assistance through warsaw, brussels, london we need to be thinking about those in a post-peace settlement era as well and thinking about how we're continuing to fundraise with the international community long-term funding to ensure peace and stability once we get to a political settlement and i think it's important that that effort be bipartisan for both sides here in the united states but just really thinking about what are the financial incentives that we can offer to get the sides that have come to the table to stay at the table to keep that together too i think we need to resource for success within our government when i was at the white house at any at any at any point in time i could look around and and um count the number of people working on this issue peace and reconciliation probably had a handful of my counterparts in other departments and agencies working on this issue a handful and this is something that we've all said is our ultimate objective is a political settlement in afghanistan how many people how many counterparts did i have working on security issues whether it be development of afghan security forces or just military readiness or political issues dozens if not hundreds uh so we really need to think about how we resource our government to be able to to best assist and put this forward i mean i think there's um some great models in the international community the norwegian government i think is a great model for how they really commit funding and personnel to the broader issue of peace and reconciliation and that's not something that we do and i think the third thing that we really need to think about is just building trust with all sides recognizing that though we say we want a political outcome in afghanistan sometimes our actions don't really support what we're saying publicly and i think there's a lot of mistrust on all sides you know we put forward a largely military strategy we essentially said we're willing to fight now we'll talk later we um though talking about our support for a peace process ultimately uh took the former leader of the Taliban off the battlefield which some would interpret as a lack of seriousness about peace so um we've talked about closing the Taliban office which was opened specifically in doha which was specifically to support the idea of pushing forward a peace process so um thinking about how what we're saying and doing are those congruent and what more can we do to build trust that we really are serious um and in our own uh ability to be a true partner for peace johnny i'll turn this back over to you given what courtney discussed and just mentioned what does the united states from your perspective need to say and do over the next two and a half years to ensure there is peace in afghanistan uh within us ip we try and be a little bit careful about what policies we are barking at the us government to be doing however um i think uh a lot of the points courtney raised are really important to be seriously considering if in fact a peace process is a priority um i already discussed taking a serious look at how does one turn a military presence into negotiating leverage um at an appropriate moment in the peace process uh there has been uh discussion over the years of uh introducing a third party mediator i don't know that we're at exactly the moment to do that but we might be in afghanistan uh the core i say that because the core reason a peace process is not broken out or gotten further until now is that the talban refused to talk to the afghan government the talban say they need to negotiate with the us and everyone else says they need to negotiate with cobble and that impasse has been impossible to bridge so far and so there's a danger that we become stuck in just sort of trying new things to get the talban to cave on this point and i will say i have been guilty of this in many years of working this issue in government uh the advantage of a third party mediator in many other conflicts uh that a lot of us have worked in different places is that you can immediately have a form of proximity talks going where a you know it's often a un-hatted mediator sometimes it's a trusted outside country like courtney mentioned norway which has done this in lots of places uh i'm not it's not to prejudge who it would be but that trusted intermediary can be having the same discussions across these stark lines with parties who won't talk to each other and you can make a huge amount of progress that way uh so in addition to the some of the resourcing issues taking a hard look at how we treat or how we approach the talban negotiators who actually are out there in doha there's a lot that can be done to sort of nudge this process forward john what is the united states doing right or wrong looking at the crystal ball towards peace in 2020 in afghanistan in 2020 well i i think i've already said that i think 2020 is too short of horizon um uh what what are we doing well i i think i think there are some things that that indicate the seriousness of the united states commitment um and and that in and of itself is is probably the biggest of the of the good things that can be done so a a demonstration that the united states is committed to afghanistan for uh for the long term to find that however you want but i think the current administrations made it pretty clear um that it's certainly through through this administration's term and i think the actions that have been taken over a republican followed by a democrat followed by a republican indicate including on the hill that there's some degree of willingness to continue to to stay engaged in the future um as an aside um that's a very uh very us-centric self-interest right because uh no politician and no military leader wants to be the person that's at the wheel when we have disengaged and when the next attack emanates from where we've left the vacuum right so there there's a real incentive for the united states both practically and politically to stay to stay engaged so i think that's what we're doing i i think the fact that if you've noticed the general nickelson will now be there for a third year right which begs me as a former military guy saying why did it take us 16 years to get the point of realizing that continuity and command is probably one of the greatest uh you know contributors to to success or at least to stave off some degree of failure so the fact that you have a person with his background uh with his multiple deployments and with his personal willingness to commit to a third year to stay there i i think is a demonstration of commitment and and uh and the united states willingness to stay the course um i think um i think that some of the more stern and um realistic talk about the actions of the neighbors and near neighbors by the current administration is a very good and important step that has been taken um but uh but but beyond that um i think when you pose the question to to Courtney you use the word to ensure ensure a piece or ensure democracy um i think that's way too strong of a word we can help facilitate we can help assist we can help underwrite um but but unfortunately they're they're continues to be throughout most of the world much of the world at least the world that we and that the neary south asia center deal with this perception that if only the united states wanted to make this happen we could just do it right and so when we say something like well what should the united states do to ensure peace by 2020 it actually in a in a sort of a perverse way continues to reinforce this idea that you know if we just took it a little bit more seriously if we just concocted a little bit better conspiracy you know we we would be able to to to compel the rest of the world to do what we what we want them to do because we're perceived as knowing all capable of doing all and and at least i think that those of us up here on the panel recognize the tent is just absolutely you know not the case so stay the course um i think that the long-term messaging that we're doing i think the things that i've already mentioned i i think are all the right things to to continue but we also need to be very clear-eyed about this being yet another generation's worth of investment before getting to the quote peace or quote democracy that that we've talked about okay i want to make sure we have a good half hour for questions so amad any closing comments based upon what mr wood mentioned oh thank you it's an excellent comments i think they just want to quickly um just because i'm an optimistic person i think peace will come to afghanistan and people are hardworking and i think organizations such as the united states instead of peace rise to peace us aid and amnesty create a money other organization working to promote the afghan woman afghan young generations that do you have born and still living in war i think that will make and bring to peace in afghanistan the afghan solution i just want to categorize in two categories domestic and foreign domestic afghan really needs to come together they put their differences away they need to put their ethnic differences away and they need to come towards making their country peaceful and the afghans needs to fight corruptions afghan needs to participate in elections and afghan needs to study we all need to understand as i said earlier it's not an easy fix it will take time i think afghans we should let afghans to figure out their own problems we could advise them we could mentor mentor them i'm sure they will run out of bullets they will run out of soldiers one day but it what what we're trying to do is you will understand it one day debentura civil war so um dear i'm sure understandable to fix their own issues i would say for inside the united state the international community needs to focus and still pressures on pakistan and iran from sponsoring the safe heavens of terrorism and we need to also work with russia other countries that if we want peace in afghanistan if the afghans are working to bring peace then they need to stop these proxy wars they need to stop supporting pollen members and other members to vote against the security agreement that us wants to have there and vote against other stuff so um if we do that you know foreign wise and domestic wise peace will definitely come to afghanistan but as i said it's not an easy fix time will fix it and thank you i think we should have q and a yes hi my name is ryan bamford i'm a student at national defense university in the college of international security affairs also an afghan hand with the department of defense so i spent a couple years in afghanistan uh here in a few months i'll be returning for another year to go back and advise my thesis work this last year has been focused on a topic that really hasn't been discussed today and that's the elicit opiate market that's that's in afghanistan accounts for a lot of the funding of uh of many of these groups and of course the taliban is a is a large player in that so i have kind of a two-part question here to pose to the the panel at large um first i've been looking at the the transformation of of the taliban over the years along the uh the terror crime nexus continuum and how that movement should um how we should respond to the the changing nature of the taliban as it has slid on this continuum and how the the organization is made up and how it operates profit v ideology and how that's that's mixed so my first question is is uh with their larger engagement in not only the protection of of drugs but the production trafficking heavy involvement in the economy what at the strategic level how should the u.s and the international community react to this second the fork in the ira are often often mentioned as examples in in that transition from from a revolutionary and insurgency group uh to to a political party um an example that uh that came to my mind while that discussion was ongoing uh is the ltt out of shrillanka whose belief system for for what they wanted led them to to not negotiate it was to fight to the last man do we see any influence of that type of of change with the taliban and the other insurgent groups in afghanistan where that changes our calculus as well thank you master let me look at uh at drugs a bit um the un says that last year there was a 63 percent increase in cultivated land and a potentially record production of 9 000 tons uh at the same time towards the end of last year the u.s began to target uh taliban narcotics labs and uh claimed in mid december to have eliminated a grand total of 25 out of the 400 to 500 uh such labs in the country at the same time you've got in the in this mix you have a major role of iran in the transit of the product uh away from the taliban zones so it seems to me if you're going to address this matter strategically it would be useful to try to engage iran uh in the first instance well probably the second instance uh the first instance um the late richard holbrook uh had a very very difficult time with the notion of uh of crop suppression basically uh putting round up on all the all the poppies because of the impact on on the civilian population that so depends uh or once they got out of growing peaches and pomegranates uh so depended on on the narcotics there are two elements there two-year strategic response one is trying to suppress the labs which strikes me as more sensible than trying to suppress the actual production of the of the product and the other is engaging iran and the rest of the neighborhood in trying to limit the the transit of those drugs yeah i i'd say that uh we have to be careful in in several ways uh when we start talking about the the opium production and and the the influence of narcotics um all all bad you know it's all bad stuff and and i admit that um but the the intersection the conflation with the Taliban or more specifically with with continued insurgency and continued conflict in the country is where we have to be careful um it was either 2006 or 2007 i don't recall but i was part of a panel that testified in a closed session at house representatives specifically about the the narcotics issue in afghanistan so i think late 2006 and and the the point where we got into a bit of a debate between myself and the congressman was um you know what was being done with the money and and finally i said to him um you know congressman you have to understand it's really cheap to run an insurgency it doesn't take you know billions and billions of dollars so let's assume for just a minute that that the narcotics issue goes away completely that does not equal the insurgency dissolving right because it's just really cheap to run an insurgency um so so i i'd i'd say that part of it um is is something that we have to be really really careful about um i want to jump quickly to your ltt e question um i think it's always attractive i i'm not an expert on shrillanka but i've spent a little bit of time looking at the the issues of shrillanka it does fall in the the remit of of the center where i work um there are a couple of things that make it i think considerably different than the situation in in afghanistan um i'm not aware of a safe haven that exists or an offshore safe haven from shrillanka that i think that's the biggest perhaps contributing difference there's very limited external support to the ltt e uh despite a pretty large diaspora and the the money flowing in in lots of ways that not the direct support that we sometimes see and have seen in in afghanistan and in in fact the ltt e were fairly geographically confined in in shrillanka uh and then i would say two more which probably gonna get me in trouble with somebody um but the the the willingness to say this is an actual war we're gonna prosecute it like a war number one on both sides both from the ltt e and and from the shrillanka army and then um by doing that um being willing to say and there's going to be some really messy allegations that we're going to need to deal with in the future when we finally went being the shrillanka army right which they did right and so i'll let you come to the questions about you know where does that become problematic for us um but it does right and and so i think that there are now in terms of examining the the negotiating positions and the way the negotiations were conducted that's a related but separate issue and i think that's probably worth looking at uh but that's somewhat distinct from the prosecution of the fight itself and the actions that were taken that compelled the ltt e to basically capitulate and then and then come to the table i suppose uh starting with the ltt e question i i would just say i think the shrillanka state was uh was quite strong uh full of flaws but quite strong during the final ultimately successful campaign that defeated the ltt e after so many years um that was based on rajapaksa being willing to essentially do a bashar alas that is doing now and and the final round of fighting in that conflict to me was one of the great human tragedies of the last decade or so in anywhere in the world i don't think even if a war were in its it were trending in that way in afghanistan i don't think a government in afghanistan that depends on the world's support very tangible support has any option to go down that road and just as a moral matter i hope they never do uh on the issue of the taliban on the continuum from ideological organization to sort of uh gangster organization i don't see anything mutually incompatible about how they make their money and what they believe in they are a very ideological organization and they are a very gangsterish organization the crux of how the taliban funds itself is really taxation and that that makes a lot of money you're right that an insurgency is not the most expensive thing to do we can sometimes air by uh overestimating how much money is necessary but when you control pretty large swaths of territory you can tax and they do tax everything in those territories so we see it on the drug issue because that's the most lucrative thing in places like helmand um but number one a lot of people who are not the taliban also profit from the drug industry again because it's the most lucrative thing around and number two every other economic sector is taxed as well sometimes in actually a pretty systematized bureaucratic way in in taliban areas um some equate that to mean that their uh call for a religious revolt against an you know an illegitimate quote unquote foreign occupation is bankrupt or is just window dressing i think that's a dangerous mistake to make because that's what allows them to recruit thousands a seemingly unlimited pool of people not enough probably to win the conflict but enough not to lose it thank you thanks for your presentation my name is li yang um we are thinking of peace we had to go back to the history you had that history tell us and we also had to compare with domestic how come domestic dealing with a peace among themselves within the country and so it just applied to the world so the basic thing is why there's no peace so there got to be some kind of conflict whether you can tell us some specific example why do we hate afghanistan people or why afghanistan hate american people but so far just like just like jews and then maybe people belong like jews but nobody tells them what happened and nobody correct the situation so like the same as the other way around so i just wonder if you can give us some example what's wrong with afghanistan so we can help them to correct it and if afghanistan don't like usa then we got to say what's wrong in the united states and we have to correct our officials or our medias or our financial institution who create the false excuses and create a wall and then create our budget more and people get into more problems they just so so they're not be able to correct the situation rather than just let the people what i call the big guy to always control the good people so we got to make this all straight up before we can talk about peace otherwise we are just in a vicious cycle we can never go do anyway i accept just listen to whoever control us with just the people become poppy string or those big guys okay i'm uh do you want to address that do the afghan people hate the americans or just the portion of them ma'am thank you for that question first of all afghans do not hate americans and americans do not hate afghans there is a lot of misperception so the misperception is terrorism uses that an excuse the war in terry happened because the 9-11 went down the sama bin elad and killed over 3 000 innocent americans so the war started to kill the sama bin elad and kill the terrorists save heavens and come back home but the problem was the huge military forces so we went there to help the afghan government to build a democratic nation get rid of terrorism but the question all these states is afghans were so happy i remember as a kid afghans were celebrating on the street when the united states went there because we were living under a dark regime of the taliban so us really helped afghanistan in peace in democracy and education but the failures of war or the air strikes or the drones and casualties every war has that no matter any war we go that also is going to be with it but the question that you ask is i just want to clarify that because terrorism the taliban and other insurgent groups isis and nor daesh al-qaeda they spread this propaganda that's our organization rights to peace is working because there are people who are willing to support with the united state and coalition forces with the afghan government but what terrorism does is they spread this propaganda that americans are here to kill the americans are here to take over your land your religion and that propaganda we need to fight it back with education with culture and understanding and tolerance so semen here in washington so we need to also have these discussions and talk to other people that afghans are likable people when i said in the earlier traditionally afghans do not like when foreigners told them what to do or roll over them but they are so hospitable with their food to their culture to their hospitality watch the movie uh the lond survivor i think that's the movie american movie so that u.s naval officer was was protected with a loss of the family that who protected him at his home so that's all about culture it's respect it's a hospitality uh so there's no hatred between the two nations it's just a war and there's a lot of uh countries involving that do not want the united state to succeed in this war iran russia pakistan china so it's a big proxy war so we're looking forward to a piece and that piece has been there the the topic for afghans if you have anything else that that's my answer to your question thanks hi my name is Cheryl garner i had a real quick question on the um peace process you've really framed it a lot as ghani's peace proposal you've talked about the hig deal a lot of these that have been worked out from the central government but with the helmand peace movement over the last two months and you're seeing kind of a grassroots movement what do you think the afghan government's response should be to that what do you think the taliban's response should be to that and as an aside note for the pakistan peace of um peace and recon what do you think of the tahafuz movement i mean what will that what kind of impact will that have i'll say in the first place i i think that the peace marches that started in helmand and have spread to something like 20 provinces now are a pretty extraordinary development and i i don't recall their equal at least on the subject of peace in you know all the years that i've worked this uh what do i think the government taliban's response should be i think it should be to embrace them wholeheartedly i actually think the government has done that and part of the reason for that is that peace is very very popular in afghanistan that should be an obvious statement but sometimes it's not there is an overwhelming desire for peace disagreements on what it looks like but cutting across demographics cutting across ethnic groups and so it's good politics to be in favor of peace if nothing else uh so you can see that reflected on the on the afghan side whether it translates into this or that policy it there's you know there's a lot to come it's also a very open question on what is the future of these marches how much do they keep up on the taliban side uh i think their response has been uh more disappointing however it's in it's significant that the taliban has been forced to respond a number of times to this because whatever else is wrong with them and there is a lot they care very deeply about maintaining what they think is their support you know really across the country but especially in heartland areas for them like helmand so in a way this kind of movement puts pressure on the group that no government is really capable of putting um at you know on the on the movement in pakistan i'll just say the timing is quite coincidental i i think that what pashtuns in pakistan have been doing is a major source of inspiration to the afghan demonstrators sometimes that's been very explicit like signs of communication between them there's a reasonable chance that the helmand thing might not have started if not for what people had seen across the border i i want to jump on that i i think it's unfortunate the timing um it's probably coincidental it's probably symbiotic in some respect but um but if you want to if you want to stomp down any hope of the the helmand movement gaining great traction um then then i think uh not having something somewhat parallel going on in pakistan would have been the right way to go or vice versa um you know i i think that there is a tremendous fear of great of the the resurgence even of the thinking about greater pashtunistan or you know pakhtunistan whatever um which will which will put the movement on both sides of the border and the crosshairs of some who would want to protect the interest in the status quo in some respects hi craig karp a former diplomat uh one of the factors that's been overlooked in the in the afghan peace in the peace perspective is the winner take all nature of afghan politics now that's partly the result of afghan history but it's also partly result of a lot of the influence that the united states had after we came in and became sort of big brother there and um one of the things that i think could be a major asset to any kind of peace effort would be decentralization devolution of power as uh i recommended to then chairman karzai back in 2001 that if you had uh relatively autonomous governorates provinces with elected governors uh there would be possibility that the taliban could take power in part of afghanistan and learn to govern and operate in a sort of normal fashion from those areas of course with the undertakings of respect for the afghan constitution that they would have to do in the in the peace offerings but this is a very necessary nature in in afghanistan politics that's why you have a unity government um because the elections uh the 2014 elections rather accurately reflected the nature of public opinion in afghanistan at the time i was there and uh but public opinion the afghan polity is very divided and therefore you have to have a unity government a negotiated government you have to you have to come together in a in a format and and that format has to conform to the realities of of the afghan political political environment unlike uh unfortunately the constitution whereas if you talk about a loya jerga under the constitution loya jerga would be made up of elected representatives and if you look at what the elected representatives represent that would not comport to a regular loya jerga anyway my my my question to the to the panel and and thank you also for highlighting the issue of pakistan because that's been a crucial one going back now more than 30 years what uh what kinds of reforms could the afghan government the afghan unity government make that would uh give the taliban some hope that they could actually exercise some influence in a future afghanistan i mean just simply i i would agree with your initial statement and the surprise didn't come up sooner but i think the winner-take-all approach does put immense pressure not only on just the electoral system but i think provides some pretty significant disincentives or challenges obstacles to overcome when thinking about a future political settlement that really accommodates all parties and i think it's also important to remember it's not just a unified afghan government versus a unified taliban coming to the table but there's really a lot of distinct and disparate afghan political actors and ethnicities that it's not just as easy as kind of the the current establishment and and who would be coming in and so i think um thinking a little bit more creatively or flexibly about what the outcome looks like i i think the hard part for those of us has been the government you know there's there's an afghan constitution that's something that we respect and support and we're we're part of its genesis but there is a legal framework for how the afghans themselves could choose to make some changes to their constitution in order to strike the right balance in a way that supports peace so far be it i think for for me to prejudge that but i i just think it is important for us um um of our administration to support the actors in the afghan afghan actors that are really the ones at the table to to to address this very issue in a way that that works best for afghan sovereignty and for a lasting peace i would say uh some version of this idea uh gets kicked around a lot in the context of a peace process you know it's decentralization sort of the answer where the Taliban kind of control their own areas at the at the back end of a process i think there are plenty of good arguments for exploring forms of decentralization they are mostly about how to improve governance generally in afghanistan better district level governance is probably an enormous part of of the governance problems that already exist as it applies to the peace process though i actually don't really detect that any of the key parties are looking for that i don't at all detect that's what the Taliban are looking for they they agree with the afghan government that that afghanistan is a single unitary state within its current borders and the dispute is over who is in charge in Kabul or in what proportion are the different factions in charge in Kabul they are very quick to say we are not trying to have the governors of kandahar helmander was gone and a few other places so i i suspect that if we are you know at a happy ending to a peace process at some point it will look much more like a a distribution of the levers of power in the capital and perhaps with some governance reforms just done because they're good sense as opposed to a deeply federalized or even partitioned state naseem stan as i i work for vice of america uh president ghani said sometime back that pakistan has launched an undeclared war against afghanistan and that's why i believe that mr hanif at marseid in march at the end of the march when he was here that first we need to make peace with pakistan so the question is that as uh professor john would say that pakistan is in has great interest in afghanistan's affairs for pakistan-centered goals or objectives i would like to know what are those objectives that are pakistan centered uh so in order to know that probably there will be a way for peace thank you i'm not gonna i'm not gonna uh just as i would say that there is no such thing as an afghan expert because the country is so complicated and complex i would certainly say the same thing is true with pakistan but but if we were to look at it fairly simplistically um this is my opinion i'm not speaking for my institution at all i'm just speaking for myself um there is no other lens for pakistan other than the lens of india period full stop right even if even if uh even if everything else was was fine um there would still be this this nagging concern about about india whether they call it the the interest in strategic depth meaning how they approach afghanistan uh whether they mean it in terms of a government in Kabul that is um not uh not hostile to pakistan and certainly not uh receptive to to india i mean there's all sorts of ways that it's that it's phrased and and so i i don't want to distill it down too much but as long as the the existential issue for pakistan is india and as long as all world relationships seem to revolve around pakistan's concerns about india um until that's resolved we either have to be very clear-eyed about what that means vis-a-vis all of our other interests in the region um uh or accept that that there is going to be some difficulty for many many years to come now whether president ghani's characterization was was an understatement or an overstatement i'll let i'll let others debate that but um uh the bottom line is that pakistan is a central factor and a central player in anything that looks like peace in afghanistan which means peace in the broader region and and it's the same in terms of economic integration it's the same in terms of physical security uh it's the same in terms of diplomatic relations and so um to discuss that any of these issues without having at least a portion of the discussion include both include and focused on pakistani concerns both legitimate and and perhaps some that that may be overstated i think is is a mistake don't leave me hanging here let me jump in a bit at the same time afghanistan has to have a relationship with pakistan that is perhaps in parallel with its relationship with india how many pushtuns are in pakistan for example what about the transit trade uh that is logically uh going through pakistan to an important degree uh aspects of culture uh religion there yes there are a lot of muslims in india there may even be more my indian friends tell me than there are in pakistan but nevertheless pakistan is a heavily muslim country and and those ties are there as well thus there needs to be a serious i'm not going to say i don't count those things those are realities they're not necessarily plus or minus they are realities that both the countries have to deal with and getting uh getting to deal with each other in a sensible way strikes me as something that may finally be underway uh with the recent visit of the pakistani leader to uh to afghanistan yeah well that's that's why i said that it was unfortunate in some respects that the that the the pushtun uprising and or movement in pakistan was coincidental with the the the helman movement because it brings in that dynamic and the concerns about greater pushtunistan it's wrapped in the as you well know it's wrapped in a long history there and you know the artificiality of many borders and you know in long histories and what have you so yeah and and i didn't want to leave the impression that that i was advocating a non-existent relationship with with pakistan look you can't be continuous neighbors and not have a relationship right um although i think that that the two big protagonists there are trying very hard to try to make that a reality indian pakistan but but but but you have to that's just the nature of it just as you know just as i used to complain when i was in our government that that that you know i was being told to basically consider or ran a big black spot on the west of afghanistan that it really didn't exist right that we didn't have to factor any of that in there which which is really not true at all you've got to you you can't change geography and therefore you have to live with it but i do think that that you've hit on one aspect and i think the comment about india is the other aspect of it and it's it's very uh it's very difficult to to uh to come to an agreement or come to a conclusion that that addresses both issues simultaneously satisfactorily um it's a dirty word in washington it's a dirty word around the world but we've got to find a way to compromise on on these issues and compromise is hard thing to do um agree with all of that i would just add quickly in mindful of the time that uh pakistan has a major domestic issue involving the rights of posh tunes and the treatment of posh tunes i i don't perceive that fear of a larger posh tune issue is animating pakistan's policy in afghanistan and if nothing else i would cite the fact that they've spent decades supporting like hardcore posh tune movements and arguing that they should have a greater share of power at many points you know so there'd be a contradiction there and second this is a much larger topic but i would just say uh who are the key belligerents here i mean for any lasting peace in afghanistan the important players who have to make peace with each other are all afghans they're not pakistan they're not the united states they're not china they're not iran uh each of those countries has us has a varying degree of influence i don't think any of them fundamentally controls any large political faction in afghanistan they just influence and so at root you have a domestic conflict in afghanistan um that that comes down to domestic solutions in my view may i ask you a question okay i'm hakim hakim and i work with the traversal center okay sorry uh as a woman who lived in afghanistan and as a woman who is from afghanistan and uh i i felt war in in my country and i see war in a different angle that is a war of business it's a big business in the in the region it's it's not related to beliefs it's not related to religion and even it's not related to us us troops in afghanistan it's a war that different different groups and countries are benefiting from the the conflict in afghanistan and unfortunately my country had the potential to be the base of this war in that region and um don't you see war as a business in the region and fes uh how it will change the agenda of peace in the region and my other question is that in this peace process very justice you talked about hezbollah me that who joined the peace process but hakim atar was the person who cared lots of people in in Kabul and uh people are not happy with this result of process of peace processing and uh being uh helping and uh inviting hakim atar in afghanistan and see him every day from the morning to afternoon a person who cared your your dad's a person who cared your family member so uh very justice are we going to uh put justice in a box and close it and throw it somewhere and talk about peace because if you want to bring peace in afghanistan most of these insurgent groups they kill people and they are not innocent they they all are criminal people what about what about people who are killed what about people who are injured what about all uh bad things happen to people by these insurgent groups that we are going to invite them to the government uh thank you it's absolutely true that afghanistan the war is happening it's more a civil war like syria it's a proxy war united states win there to help the democratic transition and fight terrorism but what is happening is it's a more of of war as you say to business and every country has an interest there and they i would say afghanistan's biggest enemy is its geography it's located in the heart of israel has control of many over countries iran and china and the two nuclear weapons pakistan and india so speaking of peace process and where is justice whether it's in a box or it's there and we all understand the term for him or his nickname is butcher of Kabul every single afghan i would say a majority of them who lived in Kabul city has been a victim of his missiles and but what needs to be done you know afghanistan if we did not he was fighting he was killing the afghan soldiers but what is the end what is the solution so that's why they said we need to have him to come towards a transition political uh to order to bring peace majority of afghans believe the Taliban are a terrorist organization because anytime a suicide bombing happened the hatred goes high and high but the president ghani offered them peace talks because there are some of them or majority that would say representative afghans soon as the gulbanin so they need to build that country i mean yes we would be very happy if gulbini hikmatiya was prosecuted like crime war you know criminals like the world war two the the holocaust and and the war i would say the bosnia criminals but that's not happening you know everyone i'm sure is looking forward to that but he is a key player he has a lot of supporters across afghanistan coming him to afghanistan there was like tons of vehicles supporting him uh so that's a sad thing i would say that justice will come justice is in the hands of the people and i think the power of the people of president dowood khan the former prisoner of afghanistan said is the power of the people is like the power of the god so i think the people will make that change happen and um i think justice will come over the time over education over the peace i think it's everyone's personal responsibility to work towards that and i think it's the young generation to come over and and replace these people and just build their nation you speaking here in washington dc i think you raising that question is in fact a key answer a key supporting towards afghanistan and many other people are hearing your voice so i think that that's in my conclusion i would just say is just young generation which is the generation of war will be able to make a difference and through education through understanding and uh so i would say that um having competing and having the peace talk with the taliban and and uh those are important because uh it's it's a fact that they have a lot of population that supports them in afghanistan so if you want an afghan base afghan peace that all these groups needs to come together to build their own country the faults of a war they destroyed a country uh but that's their job they have to fix it so i would say uh that's that that needs to be done you cannot avoid hatred by with hatred he killed people afghans do not like him afghans hate him uh but if he's willing to bring peace why not uh little little progress good speaking of now the taliban say that they are opening all the schools in kundos if they want to do that's good a lot of students will go to school but if they're not doing it then yet that time maybe the united nations united states international community nick to have another strategy one needs to be done towards afghanistan but at the end my conclusion would be is it's the afghans who will build their country thank you just one more question and then we could stick around if there's additional questions so sir in the middle yeah uh my question is in regard my name is globin by the way um with regards to the idea of this peace process bringing other groups and thinking about you know what she said on the issue of justice considering the history of especially the taliban and what they've done to the afghanistan regardless of its the us or the afghan government that's looking to make this peace process work how likely is it to be accepted by the afghan people of general population ambassador let me draw on some of my own experience and and this matter there are essentially four ways to deal with the question of justice the first akhmad noted was prosecution the nernberg war crimes trials that lord harley shawcross presided over the second is through what the south africans did when apartheid ended there through a truth and reconciliation commission where those on both sides both the african national congress and the apartheid government confessed publicly to the crimes that they had committed uh during the long fight the third is an amnesty and effectively in cambodia the authorities there gave amnesty to a major part of the khmer Rouge organization that surrendered itself and the fourth is what's happened between the two sudans north and south and that is they just ignored the fact of so many violations of human rights of every possible stripe and heinousness now how the afghans deal with that is something that's going to have to come out of their culture that the rest of the world can support but it's going to have to come out of the afghan culture not out of washington or the un in new york or any of the regional neighbors when it comes finally down to it i'll just add it so happens when it was in afghanistan a few weeks ago i was having a lot of conversations about this very issue if there ever were a peace agreement how how would justice issues and some others be handled and so it's it's a small sample size but it is we sort of did this across the political spectrum and the civil society and uh first of all it's absolutely true that it makes no difference or very little difference what i or anyone else in washington thinks about this it's a it's a fundamentally internal question that different countries handle differently how would it play out in the afghan case i'll just say i heard much more support than i was expecting to hear for something close to an amnesty and i think the reason for that it was often stated bitterly you know along the lines of what akhman said that people know what crimes have been committed both by you know everyone in Kabul knows someone who was bombarded by hekhmatyar uh and the taliban have done this all over the country many have but number one i think afghans of a huge diversity of backgrounds recognize the parallels between today's insurgents and yesterday's insurgents and that atrocities have been committed at some point everywhere by so many people that you could never possibly just single one out and still expect peace to stick second is that cases like nuremberg or the Balkans that was just as imposed on someone who'd already lost the war and i don't think there's a lot of expectation that this process would happen after the comprehensive defeat of the taliban it would be part of a settlement hopefully that includes the taliban and so it's a little hard to imagine like a major tribunal system sticking in that kind of arrangement no just to add to that i think it's it is a little necronistic looking at like the nuremberg trials or the trials against the japanese emperors and the the the imperial army because that was a win or lose situation it was a bright line there was a truce there was an actual uh a cessation of war efforts between nations there's not going to be an end to the war on terrorism there's not going to be an end to the war against insurgents there's not going to be an end to the war on drugs with columbia the drug war didn't end but columbia had to move forward there's reconciliation with the fark and the auc they admitted their crimes there were prison terms imposed but there was no international tribunal that came into that nation and and administered justice just as i don't see that happening in afghanistan it has to be an internal solution similar to cambodia similar to south africa similar to columbia because that's just the nature of how these conflicts are evolving vis a vis the anachronistic approach you know relate to world war two or those type of tribunals so look i i know there's more questions uh where i think overstaying our welcome here by several minutes so thank you for attending and uh we appreciate your time