 Hello, and thank you for joining the New America Fellows program for this discussion of the naked don't fear the water a new book by our fellow and colleague, Matthew Akins. I'm Candice Rondo I'm director of the future frontlines program at New America. Before we get started, I thought we could go through a little bit of housekeeping. If you guys have questions about the book, or about Matthew's work. Please do go ahead and submit them in the q amp a function, and we'll get them covered in the second half of the program today. Most importantly, you can get copies of the naked don't fear the water at our partner solid state books you can find a link to buy the book on this page, click just buy the book. And then we'll get started here. So before we do get started before I introduce the author of our book that we're covering today. I think it's important to kind of give some context here to really understand the beauty of Matthew's work. You have to appreciate the context of the naked don't fear the water, and the writing and where it came from. And why today it's so important to talk about displacement and all the disruption that has taken place over the last 20 years and more from the conflict not only in Afghanistan, but in places around the world. And really this book is about that but it is also a story about longing. It's about loss friendship family. And above all, it's about the unprecedented waves of humans scattered grinding scattered across the world by grinding wars across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. And this makes up a huge slice of those displaced by those wars, UN estimates that there are about 2.6 million Afghans registered around the world as refugees and that's just the registered numbers. The unofficial count must number much, much more than that. The story that Matthew has documented here tells part of that explains exactly how that all has come together but also chronicles the state of the world at war with itself over the meaning of identity and sovereignty and borders. And also very much a love story. Yeah, as I think some of you may know, there was a review today in the New York Times of Matthews book. And I think it really very aptly captured the kind of the love story element of the book. Let me introduce Matthew of course, for many he needs no introduction, but for some who are less familiar with his work. It's really important to know that he is a native of Nova Scotia. He cut his teeth as a reporter in Canada and like me. He did a stint at New York University where he earned a master's degree in Near Eastern studies. He's a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He has earned him numerous awards quite rightly so, including the George Polk Award and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Matthew was also a New America Fellow and a longtime colleague and a well known fixture amongst the foreign correspondent corps, who has been focusing on Afghanistan for many years. The Naked Don't Fear the Water is his first book. We hope it is not his last. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing this story, which I think is so powerful. First of all, want to congratulate you. I know that this has been an arduous journey. And I was thinking as I was paging through the narrative and preparing for our discussion today. The last time I saw you was probably at my place in DC. You were just coming back from the tail end of your journey with your colleague across Afghanistan, Turkey, Greece, and you weren't really sure what story you were going to tell but you knew you were going to tell a story. It seemed like you had been really changed by that year that you spent with your friends on the road, living undercover, living underground, essentially merging with this great flow from Afghanistan over to Europe. And I remember thinking that you seem so changed. And yet, there was, there was something else there that was interesting to me, because you know you've reported on so much. The civilian casualties and Kunduz, the, you know, the interactions between US forces in Kandahar and so forth but this was different. This was a story about people that were just sort of every day in many ways. Can you tell me why, why then why did you decide, you know, 2014 2015 that it was time to tell this story what compelled you to decide. Yeah, we got to tell the story about refugees. And first of all, just wanted to say thank you, Candice for for hosting this Candice is an old friend of mine, speaking of fixtures of the Kabul journalist scene I used to as a young what behind the ears freelancer, go and seek guidance at her place in and spend many a nice evening there. And of course I also want to thank New America and its fellows program, which provided a wonderful home for a couple of years for me and my fellow fellows met a wonderful group. I also want to thank Peter Bergen and Avista, I you who who heard about this project before I started on the journey, it was kind of a secret and we're very supportive and encouraging at a critical stage. And so, so that you know get back to your question I mean, I remember coming out of that year. Different for a lot of reasons I think you know what we had seen the scale of suffering and violence and brutality, you know, a young counter moving through these borders was was affecting, but that in a sense wasn't so different from covering during wars in Syria and Afghanistan. I think what what really did did feel different was a degree of personal involvement that I had in this story. And I think you know when you are working as a reporter you can shield yourself with a distance of objectivity. And you kind of, you know ought to in a sense, in order to report on something in a detached way. But I didn't really have the option in this story, as much as I might have thought I would or kidded myself that I would from beginning because once I entered into the migrant underground with my friend Omar as I call him in the book. So it was a matter of survival and it was also a matter of his journey, you know, reaching Europe successfully. I was real, you know really going to do anything I could to help him. There was no question. So the line got crossed, and it affected me more as a result and by the end, you know, we ended up in this squat in Athens that was run by radical Greek no borders activists and volunteers was a mix of families of refugee families and activists and all sorts of people from all living together in an illegal squat. And they were totally committed to the cause they didn't see a, you know, any kind of reason why they shouldn't choose their ethics over the law or what was you know, what was considered to be conventional right. And they believed in, you know, a more just world they believed in a revolutionary change. And I don't know if I was able to share those beliefs but the feeling of common struggle, and just seeing people act in a way that was ethical. Like that that was in accordance with these deeply held beliefs I think that shook me to the core and made me really wonder you know what it was that I was doing in this world. Yeah, so that's, I think that's one of the most striking parts as somebody who also came up in the squatters movement myself, many, many years ago. I thought it was really striking that you connected with that community which has been, you know, in existence for well over a century to be honest. The Black Black community, the anarchist community and supporting, you know, the idea of, of community and family beyond borders has been a concept, you know, ideologically politically that has been around for a very long time but to see it at work is something different I do think it is quite transformative but I think what's interesting about the book and so many things that we could just one for hours that's interesting about the book. But I mean, as you point out, you took a departure, although this is kind of this has been your method for a while is this sort of Gonzo journalism. You know, but I think without the wildness and kind of anger and profligacy of Hunter s Thompson it's a little bit more studied and considered. That's always been kind of your motives but this is different. This story is different in fact because you do cross a line. And the biggest line that you cross is the decision to go undercover as as an Afghan to become Habib to inhabit the life of an Afghan refugee. And so by that time, obviously your diary was quite good. And so you have kind of the look in the field but you have something else that I thought was really interesting. It's just this. This ability to reflect on your experience as part of the Asian diaspora, right, your own family comes from an immigrant background, is that right. Yeah, my mother's grandparents emigrated from Japan at the beginning of the 20th century to California. Her grandfather's work in the Sacramento Valley is farm laborers and her grandmother's were picture brides came over and then of course they were all incarcerated, you know, during the war and internment camps. And this migrant experience is something that it's not unique but there's something qualitatively different. I think today's conversation one, as you point out in the book, the rising tide of anti immigrant populism that seems to sweep over Europe as these kind of progressive waves of Syrians and Afghans start pushing, you know, toward Europe, as well as Libyans and other parts of the fourth, but it creates this kind of upswell in reactionary forces, which is also something that you have to contend with on the road. I want to talk about that a little bit and kind of how it fits into the structure of the book which I thought was very elegant for simple parts, the war, the road, the camp and the city. The war is where the story really begins, but it also begins with this intriguing love story between Omar and Leila. Can you talk about that? Well, Omar was an old friend of mine in Kabul, someone I'd known almost since I got there in the end of 2008. And he was searching for love. He was often entangled in one romance or another which is not easy in a city like Kabul. He didn't want an arranged marriage. He didn't want a traditional marriage. He had this idea of his idols like Amitabh Bachchan or Leonardo DiCaprio. He's very inspired by films. And so one day his family moves to this new house, a rental house, and they're not a well-off family at all, though he's worked hard in the new aid economy to make something. And then he meets the neighbor girl, the daughter of his landlord actually, his Shia landlord, his family's Sunni. He's quite a bit younger. So for a number of years it's just a casual flirtation. He can tell that she's interested, but it eventually becomes more serious. And they were kind of falling in love as things were falling apart as the Americans were leaving and violence was getting much worse in Afghanistan. And so right at the moment when this migration crisis happens and it kind of seems like the door opens in Europe for migrants, also Omar's application because he was a former interpreter with the U.S. military. So he had applied for one of these SIV immigration visas but was denied because he didn't have the paperwork. So at that moment when everything's falling apart and he and I are like, well, we're going to go, he's falling in love and now he realizes that maybe he doesn't want to leave without Leila because her father might marry her off to someone else. But in the end he decides that the only way he's going to convince the family to give their daughter to him is if he can go to Europe and like get immigration status there and be able to bring her legally. So it's a love story between them, but there's also this other rich feature that I thought was fascinating. It's also your love story with Afghanistan in some ways. It's got a very kind of roomy kind of, you know, distant beloved framing that is always kind of interwoven throughout and I think it's very subtly so. I don't, I don't think you're beating us over the head, which I think is very nice. But it's there it's it's present it's obvious that, you know, when you begin this journey and you begin trying to talk to Omar about accompanying him on his journey. You're now I guess at that point in your seventh eighth year covering the war in Afghanistan, and then transiting to Yemen to Libya to Syria, I mean you're really in the thick of it. And there does come a time, I think, for all of us when that love of living inside of conflict and trying to convey it to the rest of the world. The natural rhythms of calling upon your spirit of empathy that come from covering war. There's a time when that love seems unrequited. And it's not giving it back to you. Yes. Yeah, I think I think that's true I mean I think it's also kind of star crossed love, because the very fact that allows you to go to this country that brought you there. And the power to work and report on it which is my country's military occupation of this other poor country is also what destroys ultimately the possibility of a lasting community there because the war, you know and so disastrously and everyone has to kind of flee for their lives they're not killed or they end up living in a failed state. So there's a fatal flaw in the structure of that love. It's a destined a love destined for doom in some ways. But also, interestingly, capable of, I think, being transformative for for all who come into contact with it in the sense that it can revive your sense that humans are resilient, and that they can persevere even through the greatest trials. And I think that you know going now back to the structure books again so elegant. The road is kind of that beginning first step, I think for you on that on that journey, which is moving now away from the Matthew, who reported as a sort of young cub reporter and an adventurer really. This is something deeper. Literally code switching and dropping your identity. Tell us about the choice you made there, and why you decided that you needed to adopt that identity in order to really tell this story. Well it was the only way that I could do it you know there was no other way that I could travel with Omar along the smugglers road to Europe. It would have been kidnapped or arrested and separated. So, there was only one way to do it. And I thought that it was an important story to tell, which is I guess the justification traditionally for undercover reporting which involves, you know, a level of deceit. And that's that's so that's why I did it and I was very conscious of the ethical terrain the difficult ethical terrain that we were setting out into. Though I didn't quite realize how, how far in how, how much I would get sucked in and how much I would have to kind of leave behind the objectivity of it being a journalist. Yeah, I mean it seems like there are a lot of great tests I mean chief among them. The allowing Omar to make his own decisions. Yet wanting him to make a decision. Because it's a great deal of indecision, especially at the beginning. Sure. And fear. I mean you talk about how there's always a smugglers road. Right, there's always a way forward. But there's always with that well justified terror that goes with it. A little bit about the experience of of encountering that terror as you enter the Maria camp. It was, it was something I was always conscious of, let's say the difference between my own fear and that of other people around me because it's scary as a lot of the moments were for example crossing the sea, a little rubber boat. You have a lot more power and agency as a western journalist even undercover one. So I was, I was, I was trying to observe what people around me were feeling and it's really helplessness and that's kind of the root of various forms of terror and degradation that they suffer. I mean, it's a lot of these places. I mean, Moria was a humanitarian disaster was, you know, can't bill for a thousand people with 5000 in the in the mud burned down the week before we got there. There were fights, you know, because people had to line up for hours for food or medical supplies. It was completely dehumanizing. And, you know, in a sense deliberately so because this was a deterrent meant as a deterrent to keep other migrants from wanting to come to Europe. Right. And that deterrent element, I think is the one thing that's, you know, you, you can watch news clips about, you know, the burning of this camp on BBC or CNN. And it's, you know, you maybe get a minute if you get that much time in terms of coverage, right. But I thought it was fascinating is that what really was behind that event and the burning down camp was these international wars that are sparked by the inhumanity of the Europeans who are kind of creating this sort of fenced reality. The Americans put it against Afghans and Syrians put it against Iranians and then, you know, and then there's this sort of interesting ranked order of like, you know, who floats to the top talk a little bit about that. Well, you know, there's a wonderful book by a Kurdish Iranian author Behrouz Bacchani, which I quote in my book. He talks about he's on a manas prison in the South Pacific, which is an Australian detention camp for asylum seekers. And he talks about how, you know, one of the achievements of this place is to pit ordinary human beings against each other, you know, make enemies of each other. That was definitely something that that we witnessed in a variety of ways. And one of those ways is the kind of hierarchy of real refugees versus economic migrants. So the Syrians, of course, were the most, you know, welcome of any of the migrants they got preferential treatment from the asylum authorities but also, you know, what the NGOs and stuff like that. There's a sense that if anyone ought to be here, it's maybe the Syrians. And then, you know, you had the Iraqis, the Afghans at the time, you know, Afghans were seen kind of as second rate refugees, right, because they had a democratic government that was supported by the West. So why should they be fleeing. And then, further on yet, people who were considered economic migrants, people like Pakistanis and Moroccans who could be deported. And they had very little hope of getting asylum of moving onward, though we'd all arrived in the same boats. And that created divisions between the inmates, they began to internalize these hierarchies and you often saw them using, you know, having contempt for maybe the Syrians would have contempt for Moroccans or the why you hear and clogging up the system. So they're replicating in many ways the hierarchy of white Europe, you know, for categorizing these migrants. And that also seems to play out. I mean what's interesting also is that that hierarchy of white Europe seems to also just trickle down right down to the ground level where you have Turkish policemen, you know, whipping people who you know know Pakistan and you know Pakistan is quite remarkable like the kind of the kind of osmosis that seems to occur in terms of like that implication around that white European hierarchy, and how pervasive it is and it turns Turkey into this very strange kind of middle passage state. It almost reminds me of, you know, the slave trade, you know, back in the early 1700s, early 1800s before of course the abolition in the UK and then ultimately our civil war in the United States over slavery, but there, you know, there's a lot of work done around the language, the landings and in the Caribbean, and kind of this strange kind of scenario in which there's this recreation of the hierarchies. And those those states take on this kind of almost police like role. Yeah. You know, it seems like also there's no effectively there's no real internal critique in Turkey, whereas in Greece, you I felt a sense of sort of contrast in terms of the reaction from the public I mean on the one hand you have the anti immigrant but on the other, you had a sort of mobilization because actually Greece had gone through a lot economically itself, right and it was already in the throes of a pretty serious economic downturn. That solidarity, I think is an interesting piece that bubbles up in the third section right where you move from the camp, and then finally to the city which is the final section of the book. There's a little bit about the decision that you made to allow again once again Omar found himself banging his head against the wall. I mean there's so many moments of defeat, right. And he's not the only one everybody is just, you know, playing the game as you say, right and everybody's watching the game unfold talk about the game what is the game. The game is a term that Afghans use these the English world word, and but it refers to the whole, let's say, strategizing and the various, you know, routes or ways that you might use to get through the border. So, you know, like if you got a game if you're thinking about game it's it's maybe you're trying the trucks maybe you're going to sneak on board the ferry maybe you got a fake passport, you know it's it's it's the focus basically of their of their days because you're just trying to move on word until you do your life is on hold right. So that's the game and we learned that there's a million ways the game can be played the human ingenuity is remarkable they're always circumventing new border strategies and new border strategies are being implemented this is kind of dialectic, but but on the micro level it's very interesting how that becomes part of people's culture part of people's language, part of people's day to day consciousness. Yeah. And the smugglers are such a huge part of the game. I wonder, you know, if there were things that in your year long journey that surprised you about the interaction with the smugglers and their role in the entire game. I think that you know the smugglers are demonized as being responsible for the migrant crisis as being I think me and Mateo Renzi the Italian Prime Minister called in the slave traders of the 21st century. And that's nonsense I mean borders and smugglers exist in a kind of a dialectic again you know that you would without border measures you wouldn't have smugglers the more border policies you have more cops you have on the border. And in terms of the incentive there is for migrants to pay smugglers the more a smuggling economy creates the more concentrated these smuggling groups get this is all very well documented. So it's it's it's a form of hypocrisy to just try to paint the problem as being these criminals these smugglers and but nevertheless you begin to think that they must be monstrous people perhaps if you if you read about these instances where they're brought into containers and suffocate. When the truth is smugglers are a part of society, especially in a place like Afghanistan or for 40 years now people have been having to flee across borders because of war. And while a lot of them are very unsavory characters. They're also, you know, acting their own interests their businessmen, some case women. And if you can find a good one. That's great but every migrant every refugee who escapes basically needs a smuggler because their movement is criminalized you know Afghans aren't allowed to cross any borders basically there without without visas and visas are almost impossible to get. Smugglers are are very much part of the system and there's someone that you have to deal with and we dealt with them we had mixed experiences, but, but these journeys aren't possible without smugglers. We had very mixed experiences and and so did so many others and I was very striking how the kind of the economies, the little mini economies that are built up around small transactions like, you know, getting fake IDs and entering into a hotel without ID, so that you can register right and stay in a hotel and hot shower, clean bed etc etc. Our audience is going to have a lot of questions so I just want to remind you all folks to, if you do have questions, drop it into the Q&A we're going to get to those in the next few minutes here but I do want to turn to that that piece about the economy, the political economy of this of this massive trends in what you call the border industrial complex that supplies ships and surveillance drones and biometrics to Middle Eastern and African migrants who are fleeing to Europe. I was reading this that this was kind of a discovery for you that perhaps the dimensions of that, that the massive sort of oppressiveness the sprawl of that border industrial complex was something that actually had maybe been an abstraction until you started out on the road. Can you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I think we're in danger of replicating the same mistake that we've made with the war and drugs you know creating this violent repressive apparatus that actually encourages the very you know illegal economy it's meant to combat so this just like all the drug anti narcotics efforts in Latin America for example just let the larger and more complex and violent cartel economies. So to are we going to see the same thing with smugglers in the borders of Europe and of course people are profiting off this arms companies the same companies that have, you know been involved in the war and terror selling drones and biometric surveillance tools to border guards. And people really suffer are migrants who are forced to cross increasingly violent borders. So it's it's it's a little horrifying what's happening, the way that that Europe's and many other borders in the world are becoming militarized. And that that and the way that invasive forms of surveillance are that begin at the border creeping into our societies as a whole just to stop people, you know who are fleeing poverty and war. Yeah, I mean I think what's fascinating is, I mean that's a great comparison with the war and drugs actually because we now see. Let's just take the United States right like the kind of the move from these very harsh criminal justice punishments around you know possession, or, or even distribution of drugs for small time. You know offenses, and how there's been a reassessment of the criminalization of the human being who is kind of forced into these political economies that are really rooted in white supremacy and really rooted in this idea of you know a human very similarly right with this idea that you know they're the Syrians somehow versus Afghans or Pakistanis somehow have more right to ask the world for help, depending on what Western European capital say. I mean, one could argue that if Angela Merkel hadn't, you know, very openly stated that she was pressing for Germany to welcome Syrian refugees in particular that we would have a completely different set of hierarchies today. As she pointed out, Washington never did that for Afghans, despite the fact, you know, it kind of Washington persisted with this fiction that its actions in Afghanistan were not harmful that in fact that you know that there was a stabilizing force, and to some extent there was and there wasn't right I mean clearly not stabilizing enough to prevent the migration of millions of Afghans from the country. So those dichotomies that I think also are poorly addressed in the policy community today. You know we don't we while we have this constituency around correcting the errors of the war on the war on drugs. What would be that constituency when it comes to the war on on human beings who are migrants because of conflict because of economic displacement that grows directly out of policies adopted by Western capitals. What would be the way I mean from from your perspective now that you've kind of been through this. If you talk to, you know, the policy making community or the advocacy community. What would you tell them would be important for them to focus on to change the frame. Well I think in the case of Afghanistan, we, in a sense, oh reparations to the Afghan people for the disaster that we've caused there and what's happening now in the country. So for helping Afghans inside the country are a bit constrained because of the Taliban government that's in place but you know we seem to be failing even limited things that we could do in terms of, you know, helping the financial system but Afghans outside the country certainly we have a better ability to help and so we don't forget most of them are in Iran and Pakistan so they those governments should be encouraged to give them, you know, economic rights and they should be funded to help, you know, alleviate the burden of these refugee flows and Afghans should be allowed to move allowed to settle we should, we should allow Afghans to help themselves because don't forget remittances contribute three times as much to developing world. As foreign aid you know remittances or money that people send home to their families. So just allow Afghans to move freely you know stop stop criminalizing their movement give them visas. As a form of reparation for the harm that we've caused our country. That will be good for them and it'll be good for us as well I mean I think there's a lot of evidence that immigrants and refugees contribute to the societies that they settle in particularly when they're given economic rights and mobility to allow them to rebuild their lives. Yeah, in a way it's almost more costly to throw up these senses and I think that that's actually a very apt way of framing. You know the challenge, particularly with Afghanistan reparations is of course such a sensitive word in the United States as you know very loaded phrase. And a lot of folks don't like that idea, because what they hear is money and dollars right and they hear, you know, money coming out of taxpayer accounts and you know misdirection of the state resources and so forth. But, you know, reparations can have all kinds of shapes and I do think, you know, access to, you know, simply get across a border without being molested without having to sell your body. As in the case of some of the people that you document without having to sell your soul along the way. I think that is a key part of reparations that we kind of underestimate the value of it. And actually maybe relatively a discount cost. When you really think about it, just the simple right of movement and how much that would change for people if they didn't have to negotiate those borders and those dangers in the way that they are forced to do so today. So I want to get to some questions here we have a few. And some of them are ones that I would actually asked. I mean you talk a little bit about your process in the book in terms of taking notes and documenting everything you're documenting documenting and also sort of giving anonymity to some of the people that you encounter but I know for me probably for other readers and folks who are interested in your process. How did you get all this down. I mean, without people kind of like going crazy looking at what you were doing. It was actually easier than I thought it would be I had a burner smartphone that I brought on the trip with me, and everyone was had their own smartphones and they were busy tapping away on Facebook or what's up. So it wasn't very remarkable for me to be sitting in a corner writing down my notes so take down the notes whenever I could. Certainly every day. And then when I accumulated them I would and got access to the internet I would email them to kind of relay account and then delete them from the phone. And in that manner I accumulated 60,000 words of notes over the course of you know a few months. So now I can imagine. I mean that part I kind of understood but I can imagine you get 60,000 words of notes and then you come back at some point, and you've got to make sense of it. Was that difficult. Did you find did you have a system for that. I think what helped a lot was that you had a journey with the beginning middle and end so that was that was a godsend for the structure of the your first book. So in that sense the action itself. It was more a matter of, you know, deciding what to include what not to include. What was harder for me to make sense of I think are the bigger questions, both about the systems that were moving through like the border industrial complex that just required a lot of research because it was a fairly new area for me. And also trying to, you know as you touched on earlier structure kind of moral narrative, you know, create, create a poetic language that could express certain things that I was a very difficult to express. Love is probably one of the hardest things to talk about right. So, all that took a lot of time and took me four years of writing. I don't know more about that actually. I mean for me, you know, I'm kind of a notorious information journalist right. I don't always write with the greatest feeling but I love to pursue, you know the dark hidden corners. But it takes a lot of courage to embrace the emotion, I think, and let it out on the page. I haven't read it for a while. What, what books or what things have inspired you as you were kind of pacing through that process that made you kind of more able or sort of strengthen your ability to, to let your heart out on the page. Well, I read a lot of, I read a lot of kind of classic stuff like, you know, Emile Zola, Jeremy Nell, for example, or Steinbeck is in there. I read Orwell and you know that was, I think that was kind of more on the register of trying to capture these great social forces that were in play. In terms of personal writing, I mean that was, I was reading a lot of poetry, I was reading a lot of Persian poetry, classic stuff like Rumi, Faiz, Amad Faiz, you know, that was ultimately what made it easier for me to try to express emotion was poetry. Yeah, that really comes through. I mean, also the kind of the passionate love affair with Kabul itself certainly comes through. And Kalaifatullah and, you know, the kind of the corners of Shari now are now so distant and so I think transformed by many years of war but also the exit of so many, not just Americans not just Europeans but obviously the exit of so many Africans. Do you reflect on that now? What Kabul might look like maybe five years from now as this exodus continues? Definitely, you know, when this, I finished the book more or less at the beginning of last summer and I went back to Kabul and I was there throughout the summer and stayed throughout the evacuation in fall to report and witnessed a new wave of Afghans escaping, a new wave of displaced. I was in Nimroz actually in the fall and went down there with some times colleagues and we went to some of the same places that I'd been with Omar, you know, five years earlier. And it really has created another layer I think of poignancy for me. I was rereading the book and there's this, there's a scene where Omar goes, he's been living, you know, growing up and exiles a kid in Iran and Pakistan, and his family, and, you know, it's October 2001 or sorry it's beginning of 2002. But it's after, you know, the US invasion and this bright new era, Hamid Karzai was on the radio promising, you know, peace and democracy. And they're among the millions of Afghans who decided to go home, you know, they want to rebuild their country. And he gets to the border and he sees that the white flag of the Taliban has been replaced by the tricolor, you know, of the king's time. And he feels, you know, this pride and hope. And so now obviously thinking about this summer when I saw that white banner flying again above Kabul. It just, it just feels like this cycle has come around. It's so tragic. What are those cycles I mean I also think that what's interesting is that you, every single family member that Omar has has had has been part of that cycle, his parents were part of the cycle. He's part of the cycle, his siblings are part of the cycle, and every in all the Afghans he encounters. And there's kind of this ebb and flow that you know now we're entering year 42 of this war, roughly. People don't think of it that way they kind of tend to think of it as the American war, or the Soviet war but it actually is the Afghan war. So many cycles embedded in it. What hope can we have then given given that cycle that we can break from it. What was the path to breaking from that cycle. Yeah, I mean I wish I knew I think the hope that we can have is in the resilience of Afghans over that 40 year cycle, you know of of of displacement exile return. They've created a transnational community really you know it's not just people are moving back and forth. The first thing Afghans want to do once they get settled and you know as refugees or immigrants in the West is go back to Afghanistan and see their family for a wedding or whatever. And in a sense that's that is the that is a solution for you know to some aspect to alleviate some aspects of the conflict is to have to allow people to move and again that's why I think it's really important that we not, you know, criminalize the movement across borders. They have the worst passport in the world when it comes to visa free travel. You know these the visa system, the sanction system against airlines to prevent them from, you know, bringing anyone without a visa proper visa. That's designed to explicitly keep out refugees that has its historical antecedent in measures designed to keep Jews out, you know, during the Nazi period. So we should, we should see how Afghans have built a transnational community in the last 40 years and we should support that and see that as an inspiration to an impartial solution to intractable conflict. Right so this brings us to a question that's coming from one of our audience members which is sort of, you know, we've touched on this a little bit already. So what changes or, you know, political policy changes do you hope the book prompts and at what level I mean I that's a very broad question I would just say also, you know, think about some of these lily pad countries. So to speak, right Rwanda, Uganda, where Afghans now who recently been exiled. Maybe is there a message for those governments is there a message for the United States government, where the lily pad countries are concerned. I hope that you know people will have a better sense of the integrated transnational systems that exist both in terms of how people migrate and also how the West is trying to keep migrants out by encouraging the lily pad states the countries like Turkey to incarcerate migrants to deport them to build walls. So if we can stop doing that if we can if we can stop hindering, you know, if migrants instead encourage countries to treat Afghan refugees with dignity. One way to do that is to do more resettlement so that you know, people are more likely to accept refugee flows if they think, you know, countries that are less able to host them because they're not rich countries are more likely to host them temporarily if they think that these people that people are going to get a chance to move on and be resettled in the West. So I would say that those are, but it wasn't really a book that was written with a lot of policy in mind and I think one of the things that you know the book comes up against is just how big these problems are like mass migration is not going to stop as long as we have a world that's divided between rich and poor in such a brutal way, right. And I don't think our governments are interested in solving those problems and in some sense maybe the solution has to lie outside of them. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I mean, that's right. I mean, I think the beauty of the book is that it's not a policy book. I mean it's a critique, clearly of the policies that have been adopted the, you know, border industrial complex, but there's there's much more to it and I think that's right it's sometimes when writing about Afghanistan or writing about kind of the challenges that come from conflict in general, there's a great temptation to say I have the solution or there is, you know, there is a path forward but there oftentimes isn't. And it kind of can offer, I think a false sense of hope that, you know, there's a turnkey solution and a linear set of steps that you can take to providing some sort of solution to the problem. But I want to go back to your point about dignity. So one of the things that's underappreciated about what it is, what it means to report from a conflict zone is the question of dignity, and how actually the core of war is really very much about squeezing dignity out of people, and from even thinking that they should entertain the idea that they deserve dignity. And I wonder, let this be sort of one of the last questions that we kind of entertain. If you could talk a little bit about the little tiny humiliations I think you sort of reference. And how you saw people trying to recover their dignity, even at times, when it just seemed impossible on the road or in the camps. Yeah, I think that the asylum process, the, the is very dehumanizing, and probably people of dignity the way they have to kind of present their suffering and their, their worth, their moral worth as a real refugee and not an economic that creates an incentive for people to lie, frankly, because only the most, you know, and especially when it comes to resettlement where people are kind of competing for a limited number of slots to take to get resettled from Turkey to the West, for example, and write about this in the chapter of the book. So the worst cases and then the people who suffer the most will get considered. So it is, it is, it is dehumanizing the language of around asylum. Another interesting shift is it's shifted from a kind of right which is it is under the 1951 Geneva Convention for people signed it into a kind of privilege and just a kind of humanitarian gift that is given to people who we've, we've kept. We've walled them away in places like Turkey, prevent them from reaching the West, and then they get to apply and you know hopefully be resettled. And I think one of the things you know the practical steps that can be done. We actually saw it happen with with the evacuation, you know, we just brought people over humanitarian parole like, you know, get them into the country. And here we you know we both have colleagues who in those in those first few days, instead of being stranded in Mexico or Uganda or whatever, got to come to the US, because there was so much political pressure, and they're now living lives with much more dignity because they've arrived here and they can begin to start, but that that tap has already been turned off the administration's already, you know, put a stranglehold on on on those kinds of exceptional immigration procedures. And people are once again in limbo, which is a situation that would rob anyone of dignity. Yeah, that powerlessness, and that being robbed of dignity piece is so pervasive, but I just want to say, you know, I read a lot of books. Okay, but, but very very rarely do I get through a book and have to like mark up every single page just for the just the pure beauty of it. And I think one of the things that struck me, you know, everybody who writes about Afghanistan knows that it's a place of poetry and proverbs. And a big question I'm sure a lot of readers have is, what is this proverb the naked don't fear the water, what is that referring to and why did you pick that title. It's a, it's a Persian proverb or diary proverb actually luch as all of them it has said which means a naked don't fear the water and it's essentially if you have nothing to lose, then you have nothing to fear. And yet. And yet there is so much fear, so much fear on the road. Matthew, let's, you know, before we close out here. I know a lot of people are going to wonder, what's your next, what's your next thing. And I think it's probably a pretty hard question to answer. I mean I know your next thing is getting out there and talking about the book. And, and hopefully, you know, meeting with some of the folks that are taking an interest in some of the policy things that that you, you raise in the book but for you now I mean, you've been reporting for almost 15 years on the war. It's around the world, right. And I wonder, you know, what your next act will be what, what you're thinking about I know that's a hard question but maybe you can give a reader to a hint on chapter, the next chapter in your journey. I don't know. I actually I feel very much like I could be anything like I'm uncertain about what to do next, where to go, except that you know I think right now there is a very urgent task which is keeping the focus on Afghanistan and the next thing I'm going to do is go back to Afghanistan to see to see people there to, to write about it to do what I can to help because I think there's going to be a very strong temptation to turn our backs on the country that there's no American soldiers there, and we can allow that to happen. No, we certainly can't. I don't want to give a spoiler but I'll just ask you. How are things with the, with the many folks that you know now who have been forced into exile. What are you hearing. Well I think that the lucky ones who have made it to the West it's actually a much more welcoming climate than than it has been in the past because of what happened with the Taliban take over. As for for Omar and his family, I can say that they're they're doing well and I'm in contact with them all the time. It's a big deal. Well listen I think we are coming to a point where we have covered so much ground, and there's so much more to say about this book but I'd rather have people just go out there and get it and read it. I'm just holding it up one more time and I swear to God I'm not as chill. It is one of the best books I've read this year, I would be shocked if it didn't win numerous awards in the coming year. Matthew, I want to wish you the best on your journey, wherever it takes you next in terms of what you want to explore but more importantly just kind of finding your way back to yourself, and, and your continued coverage of this most important topic, this most important issue of the so many who are displayed displaced around the world by by conflict I want to thank you for your contribution to that history, and most importantly, thank you for your courage, as well. Thank you and thank you to New America, wonderful community that I'm glad to be a part of. Excellent.