 Welcome, welcome to Global Connections here on Things That Hawaii. I'm your host, Carlos Juarez, and delighted to welcome a very special guest today, a dear friend from many years now who, years ago sat with me here. I wanna say 20 years ago we received her here in Hawaii, but before I give you more details, let me first just say a big warm welcome to Anne Wright. Anne, thank you for joining us today on Global Connections. It's great to have you back, welcome. Thank you, Carlos, it's great to be back and welcome back to you too. Yes, well, again, full circle all of us as we move around, but I wanna maybe just, some of our viewers, of course, are familiar with you, work you've been doing for many years, but I wanna take us back, again, about 20 years ago when you found yourself as a, at that time, a member of the Foreign Service, a diplomat, and you had an opportunity, which I imagine at the time sounded like, oh my gosh, this is wonderful, like a nice lead to get away from the nitty-gritty details of working in embassies. Suddenly, you were here in Honolulu, Hawaii, as I recall, maybe you can clarify, but it's some kind of fellowship or an opportunity to be connected here with the Office of the Governor at that time, Ben Payetano. So you're like an international affairs fellow of some kind. All this to say that suddenly we had dramatic events of 9-11, the terror attack, and within a short time after that, suddenly you, as a diplomat, were called back into a very interesting task to help us reopen the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. It had been closed for many years after the Soviet invasion. And there, I can remember you came back later to characterize from that what it must have been like. So I wanted to revisit that in a while, but maybe more importantly for our guests, so just to make sure we know of your own background to me has always been fascinating. I think of you, Anne, as one of these polymaths, persons who have some ways, many different things in your life because you've had a long career with the government itself, and now many years as a peace activist, engaged in civil society, very much as a pressure on government, very important. But your career, of course, includes a long service with the US military, the US army, a retirement terminal, and maybe just give us a quick snapshot of a couple of the areas because you were involved in some important international humanitarian issues, but eventually you would come into the foreign service as a diplomat, also serving in some, well, some hot spots around the world. Like I mentioned earlier, landing yourself in Honolulu here, working with the governor's office, suddenly back into service, opening that embassy in Kabul later than, it will continue talking very much, one of the very high-profile state department officials who would resign after the war in Iraq and as a voice of conscience, as a protest, as we call a number of others, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but all that to bring us to where we are today. Here we are in 2021, suddenly revisiting Afghanistan. It's been with us for 20 years. Rather than reopening that embassy, now we've seen this very frantic, getting out of town and closing that embassy. So really strange how the world comes in circles. So let me just, on that topic, because I could go on forever, but Ann, I'm just grateful for your ability to share some insights, some perspectives, some reflections from your long career. So maybe just kind of taking us back a little bit from that early, because in your involvement with Afghanistan, very specifically reopening an embassy that has been closed, so it was a little bit of that background, that story that happened. Well, as you mentioned, I had been in the government service, essentially all my adult life. I joined the army right after college. I was in for 29 years, 13 on active duty, 16 in the reserves, retired as a colonel, and then went on to the state department as a U.S. diplomat and served in embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, and then I came to the office of the governor, as you mentioned, on a special program the state department has to work in state level government. Then 9-11 happened and I was selected to be on the very small team of five people who were sent to Afghanistan to reopen that embassy in December of 2001. We stayed there for, or I stayed there for about six months before the first permanent party, so to speak, the first assignments of foreign service officers began. I was there when Colin Powell arrived for the first time as secretary of state, Zalmai Khalazad, who is now known for being the negotiator with Taliban. At first he was the special envoy from the president of the United States to Afghanistan. Then he became the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and then the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. So I got to know a lot of senior level people in the state department that I had not been around before and also the senior members of the Afghan interim administration. At that time, interim president, Haman Karzai, was the head of the government. The man who later became president, Ashraf Ghani, arrived in Afghanistan in January of 2002, coming from employment at the World Bank, and he as an Afghan said, I have to come back to my home now that the Taliban's out and it's time for me to help with the country. And he became the finance minister and did a lot of economic things first and then later on became part of the political process and became the second president of the country. So I look back on 20 years ago when I was in Kabul and with reopening the embassy that had been closed for 12 years that had no telephones that worked, had no computers, had no running water, no sewage, no net. And then trying to race around Kabul in a little car that had been pieced together from other embassy cars in the 12 years that we'd been gone and trying to track down the new ministers and the government and arrange appointments for our never ending flow of US senior officials from both the State Department of Defense, from every agency that wanted information about Afghanistan, they found their way there and I was the first political officer was the person in charge of getting all the appointments with the government and then writing cables back to Washington about what all happened. So it was a very, very busy time and thinking back on it and going back through diaries about the numbers of people that were arriving and what was going on and the hope of course that things could settle down in Afghanistan after first an eight year war with the Soviets then a four year war among the Mujahideen, the freedom fighters, the warlords that then led to the rise of this group that call themselves the Taliban and the remarkable quickness actually in which they took over the country back in 1996 and then they left as the US came in in October of 2001 and then by November of 2001, they had pretty well cleared out of Afghanistan and were over in the sanctuary areas in Pakistan. Well, I mean, as you've described, it's just like a complex web of different things that were happening and I'm fascinated that you're describing the scenario of reopening this embassy and just a very basic, literally bare phone. I can remember some pictures you shared of the dust that had settled for years and years and it just must be, I can only imagine from your perspective now watching these events in the last few months with the closing of it. Now at the end of the day, of course, we know we stayed there too long, we were not able to do maybe what we idealistically thought could happen and in retrospect, some important lessons to be learned. I myself, as you were describing, because I'm finishing a book, I wanna just mention into it, I'll show you a picture of it here, it's called How to Hide an Empire. That's one of these stories about what we don't learn in school here. The United States obviously has global interest and by the mid to late 19th century, I mean, we had expanded, but it wasn't somehow built into our, I don't know, mindset and even today, Americans don't see that we are empire. It's a loaded word, of course. So what we mean is that of course, the US had colonies around the world, but remarkably in this book's main point is that we kind of tried to hide it, we didn't kind of act like we owned up to it. And you look at the engagement in this part of the world, and of course, going back, we have to remember the attacks who were one thing and then of course what began to happen and part of, you can continue the story. I mean, you thought yourself suddenly seeing US foreign policy shifting from this focus on Afghanistan and dealing with the individual, Kamal Bin Laden, who was seen as the mastermind of these terror attacks, suddenly within a short time, we're putting all our energy and focus on Iraq and this massive invasion that was very controversial and contentious at the time and obviously ever since. But that would of course create a lot of turmoil within our diplomatic service. You yourself found yourself with this very difficult decision to effectively resign. A post in the senior level of diplomacy and maybe we can share a copy of this book that you will go on to co-author in entitled Descent of where you're looking at, again, a range of high profile officials. So tell us a little bit about that story because that again is some of the context of what would shift your own life out of so many years of government service, suddenly just take a look at policy and say, wait a minute, what's going on? You've now become a voice of conscious, very much an important dissenting voice about our foreign policy. So that was a little bit more about what would follow after your experience there. Yes, well, after I left Afghanistan, after six months in Afghanistan and after observing that Afghanistan was not really getting the full attention of Washington, that we were asking for things. We were wondering when programs such as road building, school building, things like that were going to start and we were getting not much information out of Washington. And when I would call friends that were back in Washington and say, what's going on? We're not getting any feedback from this. They said, well, there are other things going on. Well, what it was was the buildup in the Middle East of US forces that later on became in March of 2003, the invasion forces. And by that time, I had moved on to my permanent assignment which was the deputy ambassador in Mongolia. And it was from there, observing what was happening and being asked from Washington to go to the Mongolian government as all diplomats were asked to go to their host country government to ask for people military to join the coalition of the willing. Well, I was having a very difficult time of rationalizing what the US was doing and talking about having military operations in Iraq. By that time, there was 10 years past the Gulf War I, the United States had all sorts of inspectors in Iraq. They had the majority of the weapons of mass destruction inspectors from the AEI were actually CIA intelligence people. So the US government knew exactly what was in Iraq, what wasn't there. And there were people in those intelligence positions telling the Bush administration there are no weapons of mass destruction. But as we now later know, the decision was being made just that the project for the new American century was to go into as many countries like seven of them were identified that the United States needed to overthrow. And that's what happened. And the lead up to that, I was saying, we know what happens with these wars. I mean, tens of thousands of people get killed in them. Of course, American soldiers get killed but the civilians that get killed, the numbers. And I finally just said, I cannot be a part of this. And I became one of three US diplomats that resigned before the war started. Mine was right on the tusk of the war. I kept hoping that, please let's not do this. Maybe the political pressure was going to be sufficient for whatever it was that Washington wanted, the Saddam Hussein regime to leave whatever, but it wasn't. And so I resigned. And since then I've been challenging US policies no matter what parties in power. I'm an equal opportunity critic. And the whole issue of what was going on in Afghanistan. And I went back to Afghanistan several times as a private citizen and talked with lots of people all over the country. I was also in Pakistan several different times talking with families whose loved ones had been killed by US drones as we call them, assassin drones. These drones that are now located in Hawaii. Just two weeks ago, the very first two out of six have arrived and it's as a citizen I'm questioning what in the world are these types of drones doing in Hawaii. We're 2,640 miles from the nearest land mass. So what are those drones doing here? But the bottom line was that there were lots and lots of critics of what the US was doing in Afghanistan, the whole issue of nation building which the Bush administration said in the beginning of course we're not going to do that. But that's a part of whenever a military goes in they try to do some good works for the people as they unfortunately are killing some of them. So there's always a nation building part of any military operation. And it became bigger and bigger and bigger. And that says the contracts, the amount of money that started flowing from the Congress meant that there were huge, huge contracts, multi-million dollar contracts. There was a lot of money that went into Afghanistan and a lot of the Afghans say where did it go? The percentage that US contractors take off the top is anywhere from 40 to 60%. So there's not a whole lot of it that actually gets to the country itself. But then once that part, where did it go? And of course there are allegations that there was corruption within the Afghanistan government. I'm sure there was. And in fact, the special inspector general for reconstruction for Afghanistan who does a quarterly report and he did his last one in August which was yet one more scathing report on accountability of funds that were used there and also accountability on the whole strategy that the US government had used through 20 years, three different presidents of strategy to what end? No, again, and I mean, you touch on the reality is that it's almost like it takes on a life of itself. We go in with certain intentions and then some of them very valuable noble. But gradually it becomes this reinforcing and you mentioned like the military contract. Pretty soon you've got so many vested interests that they almost have an interest in keeping it going over the years. And oh, just a little more training, a little more, but just, oh, and even in the past, let's say a couple of years, we need to leave. Well, if we can just leave a small footprint and then when do we now just a mess? But of course I recall too, at the time as a professor then teaching about these issues, the tensions with the international community because it was one thing way back and I'm talking what now 30 years ago, I'm guessing it was the invasion of Kuwait that Saddam Hussein had done. It was a groundswell of international support then President Bush senior got basically the world community behind him and he led this effort. Not quite the same with his son. There was a lot of pushback from the Europeans I remember on the security council, there were, I think Chile and Mexico from Latin America and I remember some of my students saying, well, why aren't they supporting us? We do so much for them. And then of course any Latin American will know the history of US intervention and a lot of skepticism about US intervention, et cetera. But the world was obviously skeptical because wait a minute, let's give a chance to the dialogue and diplomacy. Well, it didn't go over too well with the then administration in the US. So we found ourselves suddenly boom, going into a very unpopular war without the support of the world community. Now, Afghanistan again, we set aside Iraq for now because that's of course Afghanistan is this other challenge because while we had a large international community there engaged as well and maybe just continue a lot of love, here we are 20 years hence from that other period that you've described reopening, here we are now and of course on one hand, a lot of things don't change. But on the other hand, Afghanistan has experienced suddenly a relative openness and even the role of women in particular and from our own East West center, we have a lot of engagement with the programs and citizens as well must need different things like that. It's difficult for me to imagine how this same group that suddenly is back in power are they gonna take it back to 1996, 98 when they first rule? Cause clearly we have new technologies now. We have people who've grown up in a different world. And so it's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out. I wonder if you could just reflect on that. I mean, where do you see Afghanistan now and then in the coming years given some of these more recent changes, is there likely to be an imposing within even this thing we call the Taliban, their fact, but it seems like doesn't look like they brought a whole new agenda. It looks like they're back in power because they were able to outlast us in some way. What do you see in the current dynamics and maybe what we can anticipate in the coming years ahead of what we've said? Well, I think there are two parts to it. One is the urban part, one is the rural part. And it was the same for 20 years when the US sponsored government was in power. Things happen in the urban areas. That's where the education took place. A lot of businesses grew up. It became a much more westernized society. Yet when you went out in the rural areas, it hadn't really changed much. Even though the US said, we have so many millions of young girls and young boys in school. Well, when you really looked at the statistics, there were big gaps in that. And that in many of the outlying areas where the conservative, I wouldn't even call them Taliban, it just the conservative nature of rural Afghanistan was ruling and they were not having their young girls go to school. The women still wore burqas, which to us, it's like, oh my God, why would you wear that? But he talked to a lot of Afghan women. They say, we wear it a lot for protection. It's a protection. And well, I don't like it, but a lot of Afghan women in the rural area say, we will continue to wear this. That's part of our culture. So to get into our minds that there are differences still, even after 20 years of the United States really pushing its agenda. And I think a very good agenda in many ways that certainly the opportunity for education, for better health, all these sorts of things, one would certainly hope that the Taliban government will continue on. The senior leadership of the Taliban government, which really hasn't spent much time in Afghanistan in the last 20 years, they've been either in Pakistan or in the last five years, once talks started with the United States, they've been living a pretty good life in Doha, Qatar. And in fact, one of the questions I always have is, how about the kids of those senior Afghan Taliban while they were in Doha, were those kids going to school? And I bet you they were. I bet you they were going to some type of international school. It may have been an international religious school, but it may not. So on one level, there is the thought that maybe at the senior level in Kabul and at the major cities, hopefully these folks who have seen a different way of living and it's a Middle Eastern way of living, it's not the totally Western way of living that indeed they may bring some of these ideas back to open up the society a little more than what probably will happen out in the rural areas where the same people are still in charge and the conservative people are in charge and they're not going to be changing things. So trying to get in our minds that there is this dichotomy within the country and we keep our fingers crossed that human rights violations won't occur and that the brutality that we'd seen 20 years ago, 25 years ago and in 1996 to 2001 won't occur. The Taliban is kind of over a financial barrel right now because the finances that are needed to actually run the country are being frozen. I don't agree with that quite honestly. I think whoever is in charge has to have some money to run the country, to keep the lights on, to keep the water going and things like that. So I have been, in my writings, I encourage the US government to release the funds that are Afghanistan's funds. They're not ours, they just happen to be in a US bank. They should be released and the United Nations should start releasing funds so that they can pay the electric bill. They owe over $90 million to the Central Asian countries around them that normally furnish electricity and once the lights go off and it's starting to, the fall is getting there, the winters are very brutal in Afghanistan and they need to pay the teachers, they need to pay the medical people, they need electricity. The government has to continue its functions and the Taliban was in charge of the government for five years and kept things going. Of course, I will say that when they left in 2001, they took the bank with them and when the new administration came in, I can remember the discussions with the Hamid Karzai, all of them like, and they said, we don't have any money. There is no money left in the national bank. Well, in a way that's what the Taliban are facing except there is money. There is money that is Afghanistan's money but it's being held by both the United States and by some international organizations. Well, it's fascinating and as you're describing, of course, let's say the Taliban who were there before, they've come back now. The political scientists in me are just saying at the end of the day, all political leaders in many ways are about the same thing. It's about survival, staying in office so you can do what you want. And of course, these leaders today, I mean, we can demonize them and yes, they have a horrible track record from the past and dealing with so many issues. But at the end of the day, guess what, they are the sheriff in town and we probably can do more by either trying to engage them or more importantly understanding that some of those neighbors are gonna obviously need to engage in and work with them. Whether it's Pakistan, which of course had a key role and even having housing, many of them in some of those territories. But many of the other Central Asian countries, there's a lot of stake, it's a very complex political area, but let me shift for a moment and maybe in our final discussion here, one of the core issues of guess government and accountability is this question and it goes back to the title of your own book, Descent. Because here in the US, we purport to be a democratic system of government with the checks and balances and Descent is so fundamental. I mean, it's the core of the whole revolution that created the country and it is understood well, in different ways we can define it but I see it as the expression or holding opinions that are at variance with those that are either both common or maybe even officially held. And of course, in a democracy, we have opposition parties, we have opposition, I guess outlets, even within the State Department, our diplomatic service, there are systems set up and post-911, I think some of those were refined that allow those who may have a criticism or a critique of the government to do that without getting their careers in jeopardy. Because of course, that's the real challenge. Why would you speak out if you're, so maybe say a few words about that, Descent, as you understand it, as you see it in government and then I'm really worried about today because we see this rise of authoritarianism everywhere, including the US, and that means less Descent, that means like pushing it away. So we're working- Well, Descent in Afghanistan under the Taliban is gonna be tough. There's no doubt about that. Just as it's tough in Saudi Arabia, as it's tough in Qatar, as it's tough in Bahrain, as it's tough in Kuwait. I mean, it's not like this is going to be different from a lot of the other countries in the region where Descent is not brooked at all. One would hope that women can continue employment and government and as teachers and in the medical field and things like that. And that's where I think with the international community has to continue putting pressure on. And that there are elements within the Taliban, I think, and there are some members of the previous government that are still in Afghanistan to include Hamid Karzai, the former president, the former co-executive president, Abdullah Abdullah, who was the foreign minister when I was there. There are some Afghan, senior Afghans that did not leave and we hope that their influence on the senior leadership of the Taliban works. Well, absolutely. And again, these are things that are gonna play out in their own way. And at the end of the day, Afghanistan has to figure out Afghanistan. We can only do so much. And so far, we've helped to do things up quite a bit. And obviously the solution is not pouring more money because that can just create different problems. I think I've been very grateful to hear your insights because, again, having been there and an experience of reopening, I can only imagine it's just the folks on one hand, maybe the distress of being suddenly pleased to see this country close the embassy, rushing out of a violent security uncertainty. It's just, the world is a strange place. And yet, look, it's not gonna go away. We're gonna still need to be there, aware of what's going on with our eyes and ears open. And there is today a very different reality. Many of those putting in Afghanistan, you mentioned, whether Hamid Karzai or the former former, let's hope that they might be able to be part of the future of Afghanistan in some way, even as perhaps opposition or partners. But at the end of the day, I think for the US, we need to step back to the real humility and understand that our big bully way of coming in with force, it's not the solution. It's created its own different problems. And we're coming to the end of this. And I know as we continue, we'll have other opportunities to continue our dialogue. I'm really grateful for your insights here. And as someone who's done so much in the way of service to the country, but even now as a very important vocal activist, you're involved with groups like Veterans for Peace, the Hawaii Peace and Justice Organization, these continue to kind of push back and help both dissent as you need to, but also create awareness of these issues, how we need to think broadly and in a more human way. It's not all about just the guns and bombs, but really at the end of the day, people and what it takes to move us forward. So I really am grateful. It's been a wonderful chance to reconnect and to hear your insights. And for those of us who've got a website, I think that you've got perhaps to share with us here on Voices of Conscious from your website, where any of you who wanna see some of the recent articles you've shared information on this book that we've talked about briefly, the dissent piece. And again, I'm so grateful to reconnect. And thank you for all your service and looking forward to keeping in touch and having you back on again on the next show. It's a real pleasure, Carlos. Thank you so much. Yes, so thank you for our listeners and stay tuned as we continue with our global connection. Thank you for joining us today and thank you again, Anne. Aloha.