 My name is Yanni Koskiness. I'm a senior fellow here at New America and I've been focusing on Afghanistan for quite some time and it's a distinct honor and pleasure sure to to welcome Ambassador Hamdula Mohib. He's the Afghan ambassador to the United States and today is a special day. Happy New Year to you, sir. Thank you. And just a brief introduction to him. I think most most people here have probably been introduced to the ambassador at one point or another, but he was the deputy chief of staff to his excellency the president of Afghanistan before his posting in 2015. A lot of people may not know, however, that Ambassador Mohib was born outside of Jalalabad in the heart of the jihad back against the the Russians and as a refugee left at one point achieved his undergraduate degree in London and then later his PhD and so he's not only a diplomat, but also an accomplished scholar and again honor to have you here. Before we get started on the questions just to give you a couple of administrative notes. First of all, if you can please use your telephone to text a at the future of war 2017 no space to number 22333. If you've already done it, you don't need to do it again, but the question that we're going to put up here it's a poll question. Will the Trump administration deploy a significant number of new troops to Afghanistan in 2017? And obviously a if you think it's yes and no if you do not. And we'll see how it starts panning out. We'll give it a little bit of time and it looks right now off the top that this this distinguished August group thinks no and you're wrong. No, just kidding. Anyway, let's get started. My game plan tonight today is to give you a couple of questions to get us started because we have very short amount of time with His Excellency, but I really want to get some questions from the floor. So we'll go one question quickly to His Excellency and then we'll go to the floor and then I'll keep asking some in between. So without further ado obviously this is a conference on the future of war. We've talked about earlier about how protracted conflicts, even His Excellency the Ambassador of Columbia was here. He talked a little bit about the conflict in that country. These are complex stubborn insurgencies that take a long time and but there is some end in sight for most of them, but there is it just takes a long time. So my first question to you, sir, as somebody who has been affected by war, who has seen it up close with you and your family, where do you see the future of war in Afghanistan? And we'll start from there. Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to be here amongst so many experts and especially on such an important topic. My entire life has been spent in a war. I grew up in a war and it continues to dominate our discussion in our country. And so we think a lot about it. And we think that while there is a lot of predictions about what a future world war may look like, if we don't end the state's Ponzer terrorism, that is what the future world war would look like. The rules of the game have been thrown out of the window. The United Nations built after World War II to be able to bring some kind of consensus where states agree on a rule of the game, their cooperation. That has gone out of the window and whether it's the prisoners of war or any kind of rules that we had established when it comes to state's Ponzer terrorism doesn't exist. You can target a mosque too or you can target a school, children. You can hang prisoners, chop their heads off. None of that is off the table. And that is why I think if we let this war be won by one state for its own foreign policy, you will start to get other countries in courage to start using it for their own reasons, for their foreign policy gains. And that will be very difficult to end. And that's a really dangerous world to look out to. But we see it going in that direction. We already see other countries in addition to Pakistan who started in Afghanistan are already using state sponsor of terrorism in other countries. And while it cost a very small amount of resources to start an insurgency in another country, it takes a tremendous amount to fight it as we know in Afghanistan. So my plea here to the future of the war would be to do anything we can to be able to bring back the old consensus. And that was states dealing with states directly without sponsoring elements, non-government elements for their foreign policy influence over other countries. Just to follow that stream for a second, obviously we saw that there are other people that doubt perhaps that there's going to be a plus-up of troops in Afghanistan soon. But certainly the discussion is underway. The debate is happening right now in terms of policy, whether we're going to increase the number of troops. But President Trump is a businessman. Okay. He has put senior executives, some generals, but also a lot of CEOs and former businessmen. So there is that sort of mentality of return on investment. And how do we translate that return of investment where we actually make that value proposition to him to say Afghanistan is still worth this enormous investment that continues to go in there. I know that we've discussed this in previous forums, but for the benefit here, what about that return on investment? What would you tell him? And I'm sure you probably have told him. Well, there are two ways to look at this. One is the literal return on investment, and that would be in business sense, economic sense. The other is you are getting a return on investment. What you take for granted is what we want in Afghanistan, what people at war want. And I'll only give you two examples. The ability to be able to plan one's children's future, to save for their education, is not a luxury we have in Afghanistan. And in any countries that go to war, your return on investment is that you have that luxury. And if you fail at this, what I can guarantee here is that our present is going to be your future. And that is the return on investment. Do not underestimate this war and what it's doing, not just to Afghanistan, to the region, but to the world. And while it's easy to scan people, you can put as many scanners as you want on airports and any kind of travel restrictions. You can scan metal. You cannot scan people's brains for ideology. And if one insurgent ideological group wins, it's very easy for other ideological groups to be emboldened and begin that process elsewhere. It doesn't have to be the same ideology. Now, if we connect and look at these ideological groups, or at least these terrorist groups that are fighting in different regions, their source and their ideology is pretty much the same. It may have different contexts, but it stems from the same thing. And the fact that its success in Afghanistan would mean all the other insurgents suddenly get the hope that they will also be able to win. And it doesn't have to be in that context. It is a return on investment that America continues to be safe. Yeah. And I think it's fairly fair to assume that or actually make it clear that we're dealing with a return on investment that's disproportional. I mean, we're investing some, but Afghanistan is investing everything on this. Well, last year we had 10,000 Afghans killed, 25% of them were civilians. By contrast, America lost close to 50,000 people in Vietnam War and the entire war. We're making a huge sacrifice on behalf of the world. And we know what its cost is to us, but America should know what its cost is on the cost that we pay on your behalf, too. No, absolutely, absolutely. In blood. I live it. I witness it, unfortunately, live with the recent abysmally, just the trochus attack that we had against the hospital not two weeks ago. Why don't we take some questions from the audience if anybody has some questions and then I'll continue with some more questions to the ambassador. Okay. I answered all the questions. Yeah, when I give you one or I give you another, oh, here we go. We have somebody there. What can we just use that? Thank you. Andrew Fallon, I'm from the Military Officers Association of America. One of the things that, you know, recent news says that, you know, China has been standing in the background. They've opened up the new CPAC, China, Pakistan, Economic Corridor. What do you see in giving Pakistan's role in essentially in the insurgency or supporting the insurgents? How do you see that playing out and the impact on bringing the conflict to closure in Afghanistan? Just to be clear, you were asking what China's role is in, in, in prevent. Well, I think China, from our understanding, China realizes what danger this instability causes to its own future and is doing everything or at least trying to end that end, to convince Pakistan to end their support for insurgency in Afghanistan. I think their CPAC is just one way to encourage that stability in the region. And that's our take. One interesting thing about CPAC, and I was talking with some colleagues recently, CPAC is one of the top priorities in Pakistan right now. It seems like it's actually receiving any sort of support that needs to come from the Pakistani government the moment you use the acronym CPAC, you tend to receive it. So if stability on the Western side of Pakistan for CPAC's purposes is, is, is accurate, last couple of years that has meant the bulldozing of some insurgents into, into Afghanistan. So it could have a negative impact. How do you turn CPAC or access to the sea, which is basically that corridor to your benefit in Afghanistan? Well, let me answer two things. One in your remarks, you mentioned that there is, there is a lot of demand for CPAC in Pakistan. And that's because Pakistan has, has been starved of resources by itself, by its own policy. And, and I doubt it will be able to sustain itself for the next, if it continues down this path in the next two years. And the Pakistani people have been the, the victim of, of this vicious policy inside. So there is, yes, a big demand in Pakistan. And as a good neighbor, we would like to see stability in Pakistan for that reason. Anything that would also bring stability to the country, we would, we would support. The other aspect here is that I can mention earlier insurgencies are, are getting emboldened by the fact that there is continued tolerance of Pakistan support to Taliban and the safe heavens. It also has, has been a threat to, to China through its own ATIM, the threat that is to China. So for China, it's important and it does take it seriously because it sees what it would do to, to their own security. We just hope that our immediate neighbor to the, to the east realizes that too. Yeah. And, and one, any, another question right there? Go ahead, sir. Just wait for the microphone. Lieutenant Colonel Leonard, the United States Army. Just a couple of quick, two related questions. Mr. Ambassador, from your point of view, what's the greatest obstacle to success or winning in Afghanistan right now? And what's the greatest future threat that we are not paying enough attention to? Well, it's, it's a great question in one way have been grappled with on defining what winning looks like, because much of the discourse in the United States has always been on troop numbers, which is a tactical detail. What we need to be discussing is what do we want to achieve and then what would be the responsibilities of the United States of Afghanistan and other coalition partners to achieve that, that goal or whatever that winning may, may be. To our end, the winning would be, we don't want a war, but we have to for peace sake. We want peace in Afghanistan and for that, whatever gets us to that, to that goal. The current plan in place now over the next four years that has been agreed with resolute support is, is what will take us there. It would require support from the coalition troops, but in four years' time, we will be able to have what we need to be able to continue the, the, the, the, the combat role on our own. And then the, the future threat as we see is these, these groups that are crimped to reiterate what I earlier said was the, the number of these terrorist groups are increasing. Now there are 20 that are recognized by the United States that operate in our region, but there are more than that, that are not perhaps a direct threat to the United States, but these groups are actual criminals and they are expanding their criminal network. The drug trade alone is worth over 120 billion dollars a year. Now, the United States spent about 117 billion dollars in the last 10 years in Afghanistan. Comparing that to the yearly income that the drug trade brings in that network that has been connected that, that it's not just the insurgency itself, not the insurgents, it's, it's the arms traders, it's, it's what the intelligence agencies in other countries make out of to be able to initially, perhaps the initial plan was to sponsor or to provide support to the insurgency, but now has become an ingrained part of it. Now that is becoming a bigger threat to global security. This, this network of, of column smugglers, human traffickers, but traffickers of a sort that, that is becoming wealthy enough to be able to challenge states, not just one state at a time. And we are very concerned about that network. One thing, because we're coming up on, on our time to close, let me, let me actually dig a little deeper to the question, sir. Last time President Obama actually sent forces into Afghanistan, perhaps one of the obstacles was the fact that we telegraphed the withdrawal. Right now we're sending, or at least we're hinting that we're going to send some forces and we've given some commitment for equipment going to Afghanistan over the next three, four years. Do you see obstacles in the approach? Is it going too slow? Is it going, are we telegraphing certain things and, and are you, are you hoping to not see necessarily a telegraphed withdrawal at the end of that? I mean, what are some of the obstacles with the, the way that we're approaching this, not just what, you know, generically may be an obstacle? Well, I, what we need is benchmarks, and not just one benchmark, which would be the withdrawal. What we need is the, a number of benchmarks that, that create the, the, that would lead to the success. So the benchmark could be the Afghan security forces having what it needs in terms of air power, in terms of surveillance equipment and others, that would be necessary for it to, to, to contain the war on their own. It would also be the trainings that are necessary for them to be able to do so. It will also be the economy, the Afghan economy being on, getting to a point where it'd be able to pay, where Afghanistan would be able to pay for itself. Then if we have a number, a series of benchmarks, we will be able to evaluate the progress that we make easier than if the only benchmark was withdrawn. Yeah. I think that that's a perfect way of ending it. It's actually an academic and a realistic answer to, to the way forward. We have to stop right there and give it back, give the floor back to, to New America. But thank you, sir, for, for your comments. We really appreciate it. We can have it. Thank you, Yeni, for having us.