 set up a flawed election process. So the notion that it was not gonna turn ugly is a bit stupid to think of it that way. In fact, we're lucky in some ways that it didn't get much uglier. So when John talks about 2019, which is an important milestone in the journey towards progress, we have to do certain things for 2019 to work. And we have to start working on that quite frankly two years ago. So, but it's not gonna be the US or our partners that are gonna say the Independent Election Commission has to come up with some positive results. I mean we can put some pressure on it, but ultimately it's the Afghan people and quite frankly the Afghan society that's gonna have to demand that from their leaders. And so that's how I view it. You mentioned roots, let's get through just a little bit of history, which is this important. The Taliban started in Kandahar. It didn't start in Wul Pindi or Islamabad or Karachi. It is an Afghan phenomenon. And in fact the Pakistanis were surprised by the emergence of the Taliban because their previous client was Gulbadan Hikmatra. And they switched horses to the Taliban as it became clear that the Taliban was going to win in terms of giving them support and advice and military help. I, Afghans often blame their problems on Pakistan and Americans and other Westerners who live in Afghanistan embrace this view. And I think it is part of the problem, but it is not the problem. And if Afghans constantly blame Pakistan for their problems they're never gonna solve them. And certainly there's a great amount of literature about insurgencies. If insurgencies do have a safe haven the insurgencies can go on for a long time. Clearly the Taliban are on both sides of the border and they've attacked Pakistan and they killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis. It is a complicated picture. And I don't think any of us on this panel are gonna be able to answer perfectly because there are aspects of this that I just don't think are very well understood or known. The extent to which ISI is, do they control the Hikhanis? I doubt it. Do they have discussions with the Hikhanis? Clearly they do. Because otherwise, how do the Hikhanis arrive at the peace process in Murray? There's clearly some discussion. But I think it is very dangerous for Afghans to blame their problems all on Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban is a largely indigenous force. It may be amplified in some way with Pakistani help, but I endorse exactly what Yana has said. John, do you have any thoughts before we move on to the next question? I mean, just quickly, I agree. I think that the struggle in Afghanistan is ultimately going to be decided not by U.S. or the regional geopolitical actions, but by the whom the Afghan people wind up supporting. And we're still not there, it's a long process. Now, I will say one thing though, because I think what the folks I talk to, and I have to kind of couch my statements. I talk to a lot of folks in Afghanistan. Most of them are in Kabul or, because quite frankly, I can't get to a lot of other parts of Afghanistan. But also what they say is that we need to decide, obviously, but then they couch it in a very Afghan way with, but you guys are always supporting somebody and they're paying attention to who we support. So it's not just they will do it. We need to make points that whoever we support needs to deliver on some of these things that we're talking about, because ultimately who we support matters. It's not just who the Afghans pick. We have to accept that our endorsement of somebody matters. I saw a hand. Can you wait for the microphone? We were talking about the roots of the issue. One of the things that was widely discussed was that after 2011, the problem was that Taliban had somewhere to go and then get the training and return back. After the second surge that happened during Obama's administration, the same mistake was repeated. So the thing was that we focused on the area but we didn't care about the men and they just fled to Pakistan and then they came with a fresh energy. And if it happens again and the focus will be on the area not the men and the support that we are trying to not take it very carelessly, I think that the same mistake will repeat again. I don't think Pakistan's role is that marginal and this issue. So my question is that we are discussing about a comprehensive strategy. What part of or how the Pakistan problem should be covered through the strategy knowing that currently the problem of Pakistan is that there are 60,000 madrasas. Each of these madrasa, for example, trains 100 of these ideological robots for us a yearly compared to our army. This is a big investment that is happening from the Pakistan side. So the role of Pakistan is not that marginal as a marginal role or a small role. It's a very dangerous role looking to the history of the three surges that has happened. Please. Let's start. First of all, very, very good question and it actually goes exactly to the audience. I think while my initial statement is that the real root of the problem may be from different things but the solution starts in Afghanistan, I think the international perspective on the regional aspects of this has to involve Pakistan and a lot of this has to be coming to terms with some things that we tend to ignore. Can I suggest one of them? Which is a huge elephant in the room. Which is Afghanistan doesn't recognize the gerand line. So I mean to me this is, and I'm a great, I love Afghanistan as people but I mean if, I mean politically in Johnson has more knowledge about this but I mean if Afghanistan won't acknowledge the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, I mean this is a rather basic kind of problem. You know, Afghanistan officially believes that Peshawar is still part of Afghanistan, right? The gerand line is the sort of fiction. And I mean if you were to be serious about a settlement it would start with acknowledging that this border exists I think, I mean and this is something that is almost never discussed by the Afghans, right? No, I mean look I think a lot of Afghans would actually have turned the page on the gerand issue. I think there is a fringe element within the Pashtun community you know that has more of an emotional reaction to this. I mean the first person you see react poorly is former president Karzai. You know I mean this is one of those things that he can leverage to get people to actually be emotional about this thing. And then we play up to it too because we put, I mean look, the senior representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. We group Afghanistan and Pakistan together, AFPAC hands. We do everything with, so because we say you know there's 20 million Pashtuns here and 40 million Pashtuns there, therefore wait a minute you just played into the hand of the greater Pashtunistan issue you played into the hand of not differentiating between the fact that Pakistani Pashtuns actually call every Afghan Afghans. You know, a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the first one, Ambassador Holbrook actually thought that it would be better to have India in his remit as well so that it would have been AFPAC India. Great point. Recognizing that I think getting back to the question somebody asked about the roots. Also they would be in charge of much more of the world. Well there's that point, yes. It's something that would have pleased him greatly. That's a great point. But if there's some, and I'm not suggesting that we should be focusing on resolving the Pakistan-India dispute to resolve Afghanistan nor do I think we should be starting with the Durand line in any resolution. I'm not suggesting that that might be the last go for the little hanging. I'm not suggesting that I can tell you I've been on 50 million of these panels and this is almost never discussed. And if you were to have a serious discussion about a settlement between Afghanistan and Pakistan this would be part of it. Yeah, but here's the point that I think sometimes we miss is that you just threw out the social hand grenade of the Durand line and it's like you on the CNN panel in 2009 you're not talking about the move, you're talking about the withdrawal. So now we're gonna start talking about the Durand line instead of the fact that President Musharraf, former President Musharraf actually said that we supported, we nurtured, we recreated the Taliban and flat out has said that we've created this problem that has been killing Americans and Afghans in Afghanistan. So I think the original part of this question of what is Pakistan doing? They have not done much that has not been damaging to Afghanistan. They have done with regards to the Taliban they have done quite a bit with regards to the refugees where they have done some quite a few things with regard to allowing and quite frankly making a lot of money out of the supplies that are going through the landlocked country of Afghanistan. They've done a lot of things but when it comes to the Taliban man they are the sponsors and to say otherwise suggest that they have to have an internal communications problem with some of their former presidents who have flat out said that they've done that. But if Pakistan views India as it's the existential threat to its existence then if there's a way to carve Afghanistan out of its overall conflict that it has on an Eastern flank then I think there are prospects for stability. It doesn't mean you have to resolve Pakistan India disputes but if you can have the Indians take steps in Afghanistan to reassure Pakistan it's not a threat on its Western border. And if there are other steps that can be taken that make Afghanistan seem more neutral and not involved in the India-Pakistan dispute at all then perhaps Pakistan is more comfortable seeing the Afghan Taliban return. And if I grab my stomach and keep saying please go away that's not gonna lose me 20 pounds because at the end of the day what you're dealing with is a situation and I'm not trying to you know sorry that you're dealing with a situation Pakistan has wanted fundamentalism to exist in Afghanistan the reason why they've supported Hekmatyar the reason why they supported the quote unquote Islamist versus nationalist during the you know the jihad time was because they had a plan a comprehensive plan about what they wanted Afghanistan to look like they're actually sticking to that plan even today albeit with different perspectives to it. What we mess up is that we don't think again of a comprehensive plan of how perhaps the counter because our view is quite different than theirs. Okay here's the question that may help sir to both of you and that we should let's do the thought experiment where Pakistan tomorrow turned off all support for the Taliban whatever level of support it gives. What would the Taliban look like? If they turned off all support. Okay I think that they would look a lot like what they look like right now. The BBC special that just happened a few days ago about them and Hillman. You're seeing them buying you know bullets at the Bazaar and quite frankly they can maintain their thing because their money mostly comes from poppies their you know money comes from other donors outside of Pakistan. Yeah of course the landlock element of Afghanistan means that they need some support from there but that's not necessarily to say that you know Baluchistan is exactly a you know secure state that has you know no trouble getting through there. I think back to something Yanni said a couple of minutes ago I mean Pakistan wants a friendly Afghanistan. They don't want extremism in Afghanistan. They've suffered more from extremism than almost any country in the world in the last few years and so they don't want fundamentalist Islam returning to Kabul that's not there. They want a friendly Afghanistan that's not going to in their view be representative of India's interests and sort of containing them and the Indians frankly have taken steps in recent years to provide military support to the Afghan National Army that frankly is probably unnecessary. I know the ANA needs support but if we're really trying to reassure Pakistan that India is not a threat then that support should be coming from elsewhere not from India that sends a direct threat and India's ties with former Northern Alliance leaders and others just certainly I think raises eyebrows in Pakistan as to what their true intentions are but I don't think that there's been concerted effort on the international community's part to try to get India to play a more constructive role in Pakistan to your question Peter on what would happen I think initially probably not much if they cut off their support there's a big question as to whether Pakistan controls the Afghan Taliban or simply has influence over them certainly it's a everyone knows that the Pakistan I mean that the Afghan Taliban enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan and not simply in the wild tribal areas but in Karachi and in Kuwait and Peshawar and elsewhere and so there are potentially things that Pakistan could be doing to go after them more. I imagine eventually that the Afghan Taliban would just reassert themselves across the border in Southern Afghanistan in Kandahar and Helmand and elsewhere and have that be their base and frankly they might like that because that to a certain degree allows them to return to their homeland and where they're able to negotiate not being seen as under Pakistan's thumb but as a nationalist movement in its own right. Any more questions? Hassan and then did you have a question? Thank you very much. I'm Hassan Abbas, I'm a professor at National Defense University here and when John mentioned AFPAC Hands it alerted me I'm a supervisor of the AFPAC Hands program and I have a comment and a question. The comment is and I'm sorry I came late so you must have mentioned this. We need to recognize that from the American side we also try to micromanage everything in Afghanistan to an extent that didn't allow the Afghan military, political, bureaucratic elite to really flower and really be decision makers in the real sense. So we must acknowledge our own, I'll even dare say incompetence. My question is about the AFPAC Hands. There is a tendency that now I think we have learned through the hard way and now the focus is that all the US officers and those I teach in Afghanistan and Pakistani officers as well but primarily my student body and that's my question is about. They are the US officers who go through one year training go back, they've already signed in Afghanistan, they go back as advisors. So there is this learning curve that we are at least from a bunch of academics are trying to teach our US military from all services who are very dedicated and I salute their dedication and their sacrifices but we want them to go back and be advisors in terms of capacity building. Do you see this change broader in the US defense infrastructure as well that we are trying to focus more on capacity building of Afghan forces, NDS, military, police, bureaucracy, or still there's a tendency that we continue to think that we will make decisions in Afghanistan. Thank you. I don't have any particular insight into that, I can speculate and I think I mean after 2014 when officially combat operations ended we moved into the Resolute Support Trained Advice Assist mission that we're currently in now and so we're basically the international forces are supporting the Afghan national security forces as they conduct operations to secure their country and their borders. That said, they clearly still need a lot of help and to professionalize these forces is gonna take a number of years and so I'm quite certain that we share intelligence when we have it with them and provide advice as part of the advising mission in terms of how the Afghan forces should go about securing key provincial capitals, key roads and arteries connecting different capitals and things like that, but in terms of moving beyond that I don't have any particular insight. My experience with the Afghan hands program and granted I got out of the military six years ago so perhaps some of this is dated and quite frankly I've dealt with some subsequently to that so it's limited though, it's not full contact. I think that different services have treated the Afghan hands program differently. Some of them have offered very good people but then the service specific career paths have made it so that good people can't really fulfill their potential because they need to fit other models in there that don't quite agree with the commitment of four or five years towards that program and then other services or even circumstances within the services that gave some good people quite frankly don't value this program and they either put rejects or folks that quite frankly are on a retirement path that or very bad sort of, so I think there's probably good circumstances and bad circumstances where the trouble with this is that we don't apply them properly whether they're good or bad in the sense that when I see you pick up a newspaper or Google something about Afghan hands and you'll see for me yesterday I see a physician talking to a doctor after the hospital attack in Kabul and the Afghan doctor is dressed in his whites dealing with the circumstances. The American one is in full battle year. They probably don't get out as much. Actually that's not probably strike that from the record. They don't get out as much. They don't have access and there's a reason. I mean there's a convoy goes out and the Taliban or whoever, the amorphous insurgency sends a suicide bomber with a vehicle and hits them near Masoud Circle. So they don't go out. They don't engage quite frankly that much with the Afghans and I don't think that they have that much of an impact. I mean in some cases I'm sure that there are exceptions to this rule but for the most part I wish it was different because this is an incredibly valuable program but I don't think it's applied properly. Cheryl Garner State Department, you all have mentioned the need to have the Afghan people kind of decide what their future will be and you've also talked about the peace process. For the Hig deal, what kind of Afghan people involvement was with that especially if you're touting it as a model for Taliban reconciliation. It seems more like an elite type of arrangement. Sure, I mean this is a problem that's not unique to the Hig deal and I think it's a problem with decisions that have been made for the country and a whole host of sectors over the last 15 years that the elites tend to gather together and make decisions on behalf of the country without proper consultations. When I was with the State Department we tried to make an effort to engage civil society pretty regularly and I know that Yunama and others conducted outreach to ensure that any sorts of deals be it on reconciliation or the future of the security forces or whether to sign the bilateral security agreement with the United States and things like that were well understood not simply by the elites in the palace but that were being debated around the country. But it was difficult not only for security reasons to get out and do that and resource reasons but also timing reasons. And I think most people will pay lip service to the fact that they want to involve Afghan civil society, women's groups, groups with different interests in the discussions like they did for example in 2003 before the constitution was adopted where there was a concerted effort to go around to all the provinces and involve different groups. With the Hig deal and others I would guess that that was not the case as much. And that's a problem and I think will continue to be a problem. Whether it's a model for a deal with the Taliban remains to be seen but whatever ultimate peace deal there is with the Taliban it has to be an Afghan owned peace deal at least those are the talking points we used to use and Afghan owned meant making sure all segments of Afghan society were represented and at the table. But putting that into practice is more difficult than just saying it. Final. Final thoughts. Yeah I mean just to piggyback on what John said and kind of offer my final thoughts to the talk today. Part of the problem is that we because we keep on taking very snapshot perspectives to Afghanistan and again I'm striking the repeat button on the comprehensive strategy that's long term because if we do that then we're gonna start assigning people to the Afghan problem for longer periods of time. I mean if we're gonna say we are gonna be there indefinitely then why would we not assign fifth special forces group. You are concentrating on Afghanistan from now until eternity. It allows them to plan for it it allows for them to have the detachments, the attachment level, language level, focus of this. We did that for Vietnam but somehow we've ignored this particular thing now. It allows for the State Department to not just keep on taking a Latin American ambassador because hey they've got throat problems hey they've got coin problems. Why don't we just assign a Latin American ambassador to Afghanistan. Maybe you'll allow a lot of people to start falling into this. DoD you don't just have people that are focused on you have longer term support and involvement into this. Once you make that leap that it is an indefinite or a longer term process it allows you to plan because quite frankly we don't do such a good job. Everything it's a patchwork. Three to five thousand troops great. You know what I would send for three to five thousand troops? I'd send an aviation brigade over there because they're hurting for aviation problems. I wouldn't sit there and say hey we need to send more advisors below the core level because so what? What is that gonna really do? I mean what they really need is the fact that we gave them a land hyper-conventionalized army that can't get from point A to point B and 80% of offensive operations are done by their special forces and we're totally burning them out. So if we're gonna look at this problem deep down in its core you've got to spend a lot of intellectual capital which has to be an intellectual investment of over time a more comprehensive strategy. Peter any time you have a thought. I want to nominate Yanni to be the next American ambassador to Afghanistan. Thank you everybody for coming out.