 billion dollars and as you mentioned Sarah Jacobson she did a terrific press release she's from San Diego and a video about war and how war is not the answer. The others who voted against the increase the other Democrats included Adam Smith who's the chair of the House Armed Services Committee Rick Larson, John Yermendi, Jackie Spear, Donald Norcross, Ruben Gallego, Ro Khanna as you mentioned William Keating, Andy Kim, Chrissy Hulahan, Jason Crowe, Veronica Escobar, Joseph Morrell, Sarah Jacobs, Marilyn Strickland and Jimmy Panetta those were the no votes and we can thank them for that. All right now Medea, honey if there's nothing else to add we can go right into our program. Yeah we're delighted to introduce Sonali I think you've covered it all then for those of you who know. Wait I'm sorry honey one second can we have Carly just say something about the campaign we're launching on September 12th? Sure I'm happy to do that so you know September 11th as everyone knows it's coming up this Saturday the 20th anniversary of September 11th could think is hosting an excellent webinar which will include many great voices co-hosting that with Massachusetts peace action and that's on our calendar and I'll make sure people have access to that so they can sign up it's going to be via zoom but the day after September 11th to 20th anniversary we're going to be launching a new and very important very exciting campaign to do what we needed to do since the beginning now that we've seen the failed strategy of the US War on Terror when we've spent over 21 trillion dollars a new study out from the National Priorities Project showed us that. It's now time to do what we needed to do along and cut the Pentagon budget right so we're launching a new campaign on September 12th called Cut the Pentagon and there's a we're launching a new website that goes along with it and we're going to be every day for the next 100 days from September 12th onward hosting events in Washington DC and around the country to call on members of Congress to create to cut the Pentagon budget and really create the intersectional movement that we need to cut the Pentagon budget for people peace and planet so we'll make sure that's in the chat and everyone will have access to that. Excellent great thank you so much Carly. All right Hania would you like to introduce the absolutely um well I mean I'm just I remember Marcy once uh when Sonali was on one of our code pink calls you got so emotional reading her bio and that's because she has accomplished so much in her life as as a you know a young woman and I'm you know I feel the same very overwhelmed right now so I hope I do it justice um Sonali called Hot Car is a journalist activist and artist she is the author of Bleeding Afghanistan Washington warlords and the propaganda of silence Sonali is the founding co-director of Afghan women's mission a U.S based on profit solidarity organization that funds the work Rawa which stands for a revolutionary association of the woman of Afghanistan Sonali is also the executive producer of daily drive time television and radio new show called The Rising Up with Sonali. Sonali called Hot Car was born and raised in Dubai United Arab Emirates to Indian parents she is the granddaughter of the famed Indian independence leader and freedom fighter spy called Hot Car who founded the communist party of India in 1991 at the age of 16 Sonali left her family and moved to United States for higher education in 1996 she obtained a bachelor's of science in physics and bachelor's of arts in astronomy with special honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996 she obtained a master's of science in astrophysics from the University of Hawaii and Manoa in March 22 um Sonali left astronomy to pursue radio welcome Sonali Sonali thank you so much honey I really appreciate it um and a tiny little update to the bio the show is now a weekly program from a daily show and I also started a job as a new racial justice editor yes magazine transitioning into print journalism um I'm always honored to be part of Code Pink's work um been a long time admirer I remember when Code Pink first started I can't believe it's been 20 years since the September 11th attacks um and I've seen folks like Medea like Phyllis who are you know leaders in the anti-war movement talk about the futility of war for so long and I myself having been involved with doing solidarity work with Afghan women I know Phyllis, Medea and so many others feel really kind of sad at how vindicated we have been in sounding the alarm for 20 years I would have loved to have been wrong about the Afghan war but right from 2001 October 7 2001 um I was trying to tell anybody would listen what Rahwa the women's group that I worked with was saying which is you can't bomb your way to peace you can't bomb your way to women's rights and you certainly can't do it while at the same time embracing Taliban like fundamentalists you know you can't pick and choose which fundamentalists you're going to decide are your enemy while embracing others that have very similar ideologies and the US did that so here we are 20 years later and 20 years of futility of trillions of dollars spent of countless lives lost and the situation somewhat back where we started with the Taliban back in power and in other ways much worse because of course of the lives lost and the chaos and the trauma for a 20 year old who has known nothing but war maybe born to a 40 year old who has known nothing but war either so um I was asked to talk a little bit about Afghan women because everyone's always interested in what what is happening with Afghan women and part of that desire to know what's going on with Afghan women is our conditioning by the mainstream media who right from the start from 2001 focused on Afghan women's rights as a marker for what the US should be doing as a as a as a sort of palatable way to justify the war we were not only going to defeat the host of al-qaeda in Afghanistan linked to the September 11 attacks we were by the same token going to bring freedom to Afghan women so from the start of this 20 year old war the mainstream media and the administrations that have been in power have linked freeing Afghan women and liberating Afghan women to the attacks on the Taliban to the war itself it's true that women's well-being health education mortality maternal mortality rates child mortality mortality rates all these indicators are very much measures of a society's progress when women are free when they have access to education employment when they are safe when they feel safe when they have good health indicators generally it's a measure of societal well-being of democratic rights of human rights so in some ways it is important of course for us to focus on Afghan women's rights divorcing that from the fact that the US thought it could bring freedom via war afghan women's maternal mortality rates and afghan children's child mortality rates more among the highest in the world in 2001 that has not changed very much at all afghan women in the starting in the mid 1990s till 2001 2002 have no access to education because the Taliban shut down schools over the past 20 years although US tax dollars were used to build schools in afghanistan many were burnt down after they were built women weren't allowed to go to school or if they were they were threatened they had acid thrown on their faces um education has largely remained out of reach for afghan women the situation in afghanistan for afghan women has been so bad that a few years ago and we're not hearing very much about this in the media coverage today there was a terrifying new trend seen in afghanistan of self-immolation afghan women were literally burning themselves to death so much so that they had burn units that were started in uh hirat and other parts of afghanistan and rural areas where women were so depressed were so suicidal that they were setting themselves on fire and in a dramatic way of leaving this world and many you know survived with horrific burns that happened during the US occupation right and yet it was touted by our mainstream media as here's what could happen if the US were to leave afghanistan under the Taliban with no sense of irony but this was actually happening under the US occupation uh to afghan women and so none of this was surprising to to me to others who pay close attention to the afghanistan war to of course the afghan women that i work with brahava the revolutionary association of the women of afghanistan to afghanistan's former parliamentarian malala joya author of a woman among warlords considered one of the bravest women in afghanistan they kept warning us and if you serve by and large you can see the US occupation being um slip into two halves this is very a little bit reductive but it helps to understand it the first half of the occupation the US embraced the mujahedin the northern alliance the jihadi warlords whatever you want to call them they've gone by different names these militia leaders that can be traced back to the cia's funding um and an arming against the soviet occupation the US embraced them in the first half of the occupation invited them into the government so these men armed men who were misogynist were embraced second half of the occupation the US for secretly and then openly basically began working with the taliban as a prerequisite for an exit from the us war and of course we all want the exit from the us war we have wanted it but in doing so the US made very clear that it was perfectly happy to partner with misogynists so laying bare this hypocrisy of uh liberating afghan women so you've had an occupation marked by the embrace of one kind of warlord or another or both throughout it is no wonder that at the end of this occupation afghan women remain not just unliberated but remain deeply traumatized and in either the same or worse condition than before the great journalist anand go paul who's been covering afghanistan from the insect women years had a wonderful piece in the new yorker recently a highly recommend you read it it just came out a couple of days ago and it's a linky piece it's called the other afghan women and i just want to quote from maybe end of his article he basically spoke to afghan women in rural afghanistan remember like 70 percent of afghanistan's population lives outside the cities right they live outside Kabul they live outside kandahar are these big cities where there are there were some measures of some freedoms for women 70 percent of population lives in rural afghanistan the women that live in those areas were the women that anand go paul been statingly worked to speak with and what he found was that these women had a very different view of the u.s. occupation than say women in Kabul one woman said to him is this justice this is not women's rights when you are killing us killing our brothers killing our fathers one woman named hallida said the americans did not bring us any rights they just came fought killed and left and that sort of sums it up recently we saw a protest by afghan women in Kabul who were holding up signs the Taliban tolerated them for a few hours as they marched and then of course eventually cracked down on them the Taliban knows that western media are paying attention to what's happening to women in Kabul so they are they are pandering to u.s. media coverage they know that they're not taken and haven't been taken seriously because by the world stage because of their misogynist views and so they've sort of tolerated a little bit you know some ostensible women's agitation as an effort to show that they're pro-women but that protest in Kabul was shut down protesters were beaten up and the women's group that i work with rawa had many photographs from that protest i suspect they might have organized the protest they're an underground women's organization so they cannot openly take credit for any organized action because their members are underground and they live in fear have lived in fear for 20 years and even before that of openly identifying themselves as activists and organizers but these women in Kabul basically said you can't turn back the clock on women's rights women's rights are human rights and there is a deep democratic indigenous desire in Afghanistan for women's rights that has little if anything to do with western notions of women's rights there have been afghan women inside afghanistan that like women everywhere want freedom want liberation want education want access to full rights um they want to be able to participate in society they were predating they were bit predating both the u.s occupation the taliban rule the mujahedin civil war and the soviet occupation the soviets came and wanting the same thing saying they were coming to liberate afghan women and they killed you know there were a million and a half afghans killed over 10 years um and and the soviets left uh doing very little to advance women's rights beyond some cosmetic issues so regime after regime has come in saying that they want to bring freedom to afghan women at the barrel of a gun afghan women have said over and over again they want freedom on their own terms and i leave you with just one quote from um rava which is the organization again that i work with who i i um spoke to them very recently about what they wanted and how they responded to the end of the occupation and you know they just said uh that we want our fear now is that the world will forget afghanistan and afghan women just like they did under the taliban's rule in the late 1990s therefore the u.s progressive people and institutions should not forget afghan women and rava says we will raise our voice louder and continue our resistance and fight for secular democracy and women's rights they want to struggle themselves without western intervention without western government intervention for women's rights for human rights and i think it's incumbent on progressives here in the u.s to support them because ultimately it's about human rights it's about people it's about the what we want to envision as a world for ourselves and for people everywhere and if we simply want an end to the us war so that we can walk away going all right our tax dollars aren't going directly towards hurting people anymore we're going to wash our hands off of this that unfortunately is a slap in the face of afghan women who have had to live with the consequences of our very very destructive wars for so many years the least that we as progressive activists can do is keep supporting afghan women individually through institutional helps through any kind of solidarity that we can do while keeping our government off of their backs thank you very much thank you so much senali that was beautiful and thank you for your years and years of clarity and working directly with afghan women i know there's been a lot of division among women's groups because some of them had supported the invasion and are now wondering what their positions should be and i always think if they would listen to you um they would have a much clearer position for the last 20 years there was a bit of a static when you talk senali and maybe we could try to fix that before we get to the q and a and i want to make sure that's not on our end so uh do you hear any static when i'm speaking no okay so hopefully we won't hear it with phyllis when we get you on um and uh so phyllis is our next speaker she is uh with the institute for policy studies based in washington dc and also on the amsterdam based transnational institute she writes and speaks widely across the united states and throughout the world on issues of the middle east ranging from israel palestine syria iraq and on the issue of afghanistan she's been writing for many years including her book ending the us war in afghanistan a primer she also has the book before and after us foreign policy and the war on terrorism if you listen to democracy now you would have heard her recently several times there if you read the nation you would have read her wonderful pieces so we are really delighted to all to get the clarity a vision that we always get from phyllis thank you so much for joining us well thank you medea and thanks to nally for an amazing presentation that was really really useful and thanks to code pink for organizing tonight and to all of you who have come to talk about this uh this crucial question of what happens now i want to talk mostly about what i think we should be demanding of our government but before i get there i there's a couple of other things i did want to say one is that this is a hard time i think for those of us who have fought against this war this 20 year war for 20 years it's very hard because while we have fought to end the us war in afghanistan knowing that that was not going to end war in afghanistan but it would take out the direct us engagement that this is not really a moment of celebration the us pullout did not bring the liberation of afghanistan this is much harder than for example in vietnam when the us defeat was a real mark of liberation for the people of vietnam it's not quite the same in afghanistan and i think that something that uh our our mutual friend malala joya who many of us have known over the years has said over and over again that i've always sort of carried with me when i think about what we should be saying and thinking and doing about the us war in afghanistan malala had a very pragmatic approach she was the youngest member of the us imposed parliament that was created after the overthrow of the taliban led government in in 2001 she was one of very few women and the youngest person and was immediately under great attack from other members of the parliament she was under facing death threats for many years and when asked well what do you think you know you as a woman you as part of civil society what do you think about the us pulling out what what do you think that would mean for you and her answer was very clear she said we in afghanistan we women we in civil society we have three enemies the taliban is certainly our enemy the warlords disguised as a parliament are our enemy and the us occupation is our enemy and then she said if you in the west can get rid of one of them we'd only have two and i thought that's a very pragmatic practical way to think about this it's not going to end the challenges facing afghan women but as sonali so powerfully reminds us afghan women have had to fight for every one of their rights for generations way before the soviet intervention way before the us interventions there are several uh so you know we're we're looking at a long history of struggle that's not going to be over with the us troops out so that's what we have to sort of keep in mind this is a long a long struggle and it's not going to be over for a long time the the issue of this war a war that was waged for vengeance and not for justice that was waged for ideological reasons not even for clear political or strategic gain from the us where the leader of the us side the the the george bush administration and bush himself remains a war criminal you know there's a there's an effort underway to kind of rehabilitate george bush and say well he's now painting pictures of puppies after four years of trump really can we complain about george bush and the answer is yes we can and we must he remains a war criminal and when we talk about obligations one of them is accountability that's one of the things that we have to fight for but i would say one other thing which is that our movement of 20 years has had extraordinary successes at changing public opinion that made possible and indeed made necessary the biden administration's decision finally to pull out the troops and end the us involvement directly in the war in afghanistan and i say that because when we all remember many of us remember that when the war began in 2001 within three weeks of the 9-11 attacks 88 percent of the population of this country thought it was a great thing they thought it was about justice that that that was going to bring justice for this horrific crime that had been carried out on september 11 and what we see now is that as of may of this year 62 percent of the population of this country approved fully of a full us withdrawal that's a huge shift and it didn't just happen because the us was losing because as we remember most of that we didn't know i mean many of us sort of knew it we assumed it but we didn't have the evidence of it we didn't have it in the in the the mainstream press that the us was losing military knew it and they lied they lied to the american people they lied to the president they lied to congress they lied to the press they lied to each other they pretty much lied across the board a lot of people ended up believing that not surprisingly not everybody did thankfully but the transition from 80 percent 88 percent supporting the war to 62 percent saying we support full withdrawal that happened partly because our movement succeeded at convincing people at educating people at showing people what this war meant that the us had abandoned the women of afghanistan long before one of the points that senali raised that is so important that when the taliban were in power afghanistan was number one in infant mortality in the whole world today after 20 years of us occupation and war a war that was supposedly waged at least partly to defend the rights of women afghanistan is still number one in infant mortality it's the worst place in the world for a child to be born and survive to her first birthday the worst place in the world it would still be number one in maternal mortality if not for the fact that three incredibly impoverished sub-saharan african countries health care systems pretty much collapsed in the last two years so it's now number four instead of number one but it is still one of the worst places in the world for a woman to give birth and survive so that's what abandonment of the women of afghanistan looks like so when we talk about we should not abandon the women of afghanistan it's like yeah damn straight we should not we should not have over 20 years because as we know you don't bring liberation to women at the at the barrel of a gun liberation looks like health care it looks like enough to feed your child and those are the things that we have continued to deny the women of afghanistan in the speech that he gave justifying the the u.s. pullout from afghanistan there was a couple of things that bush sorry that biden said that were right they were accurate and it was important one was that it was right to get out despite the horrific lack of clarity lack of strategy lack of planning in how they got out it was right to get out it was also right to talk about the the economic cost the cost of two trillion dollars and we're just talking here about afghanistan the war in iraq was even more but just for the war in afghanistan two trillion dollars one of those numbers that is so enormous that it you might as well say a gazillion dollars for all that it means anything but he broke it down biden broke it down he he said that it translates to 300 million dollars a day put that up against what the costs are that we are told we can't afford for a green new deal we can't afford medicare for all we can't afford a real jobs program we can't afford to deal with the climate crisis we can't afford we can't afford we can't afford but somehow when the war comes around we can afford it all we can afford it all and we pay it all so that's one of the two reasons we have to cut the military budget the other is and it's just as important is so we stop killing people around the world the economic part of it is really important it's a it's a crucial starting point for people who are suffering themselves the 140 million people in this country who are poor or low wealth one kid falling out of a tree accident that will destroy their economic life they may lose their house their job their car their ability to provide for their family for all those people hearing the costs of these wars is a huge component of what it means to pay attention to these wars when you're struggling every day just to survive in this country the wealthiest country in the history of the world but the other side of it is just as important the moral argument that says we have to cut the military budget so we don't go around the world killing people and thinking we can get away with it it doesn't cost anything we can always afford it both those reasons have to be at the core of how we do our organizing so when we talk about a new set of relations with Afghanistan a new era new kinds of relations with Afghanistan we need to keep in mind all of those problems with the old era that yes there were pains for women in Kabul and in kandahar but the vast majority of women in the rural areas the 75% who don't live in those big cities they never got those advantages they remained impoverished they remained without rights some of them did get a chance to go to some school there were negotiations that went on quietly between Taliban forces warlords the afghan government informally small-scale schools were part of that girls education was part of that sometimes in some places but never enough never guaranteed never a right rights have to be fought for or else they're not rights at all they're just privileges for the few so that's what we're dealing with here we don't know if the Taliban has changed at all in the 25 years since they came to power and we won't know that for a while my guess is they haven't changed very much but what has changed is the world in which they are taking power it's a different world Afghanistan is a different country yes it's still impoverished yes it's still isolated in some ways but i don't know how many of you saw the photograph of the Taliban officials fighters who with their weapons were in the presidential palace in Kabul the day they marched into Kabul they were in in the office of the president surrounding his desk and half a dozen of them had their cell phones out they were taking selfies that's a huge sign of the difference where people in afghanistan it's not only the Taliban it's not only the people in the in the major cities although it's mainly but even in smaller towns people have access to cell phones for the first time there's a little bit of access to the entry people are in touch with the rest of the world in ways that they were not 25 years ago that's a huge distinction that is going to make it a very different country for the Taliban to think they can rule Kabul was not a modern city of six million people as it is today they're going to need that technological work of women that only women know how to do in the banking system in the healthcare system it's they're going to be forced into making some changes that are not going to reflect it all what they want what they believe so i think that we have to wait a while to see what changes there may or may not have been on that scale but the changes that are going on right now are the changes that are going to force some kinds of change that includes for example the fact that covid is rampant in the country and the united states right now has put a halt on the imf allowing afghanistan to get access to 450 million dollars worth of covid vaccines under a special the special drawing rights of the imf for poor countries 450 million dollars which is chump change that's a day and a half of the war cost of the us war remember we said it was 300 million dollars a day a day and a half of that is 450 million dollars that's exactly what the us is now preventing the imf from allowing afghanistan to draw to get its vaccines for covid that's not going to be acceptable when more people know about so that's got to be one of our demands on our government stop preventing afghans from getting access to vaccines that goes for the refugees who are coming here the humanitarian parolees who come without any guarantees of government support that has to change our obligations now are to the people of afghanistan to the women to the children to the men and that means to the refugees the people who are afraid for their lives they should have the right to get out and those that are coming here should come without caps on the refugee numbers without restrictions about what it takes a year and a half to file the paperwork for the the special immigrant visas that has to end and we have to take responsibility for the people that remain in afghanistan the tens of millions of people for whom afghanistan is still home and who still need massive levels of international support one of the things the us did when it invaded and occupied the country was to impose a western based economy that is based thoroughly on us and international assistance which has now stopped some of you may have heard the regional director of the the world health organization the other day on npr when they were asked what's the main problem what's the biggest challenge you face right now in afghanistan he said the biggest problem we face is that in three days 2200 clinics and hospitals across the country are going to close because the west is refusing to send the money that has kept those hospitals alive 2000 hospitals on one day this week are going to close that's the kind of humanitarian crisis that is facing the people of afghanistan and that's what we now need to focus on in terms of our obligations getting people at risk out supporting the refugees supporting the asylum seekers expanding those cat those categories of people who can come in that's number one number two it means permanently ending the bombing raids the the drone strikes the cia and special forces raids throughout the country that could begin again i don't think there's too much intention right now in the white house to begin that again but we can never assume that it will not start again so we have to keep up the pressure on now we have to keep up the pressure on the us to push for all the international efforts to create humanitarian categories and humanitarian sorry humanitarian corridors and humanitarian access for aid workers and for the aid itself for food aid for water for seeds for farmers all of these things to get into the country right now all those things that are so desperately needed we have to make sure we are funding not just stop prohibiting the imf from allowing afghanistan to get its 450 million dollars worth of covid vaccines we have to be funding millions and millions and tens of millions more for covid vaccines and covid treatment in afghanistan we have to press for open borders for anybody who wants to to leave to be allowed to exit and welcome them to the united states without limits and when we talk about aid that means money that means dealing with this government that's going to be in power it doesn't mean necessarily full diplomatic relations but it does mean not imposing sanctions it does mean being willing to deal with this administration as they have been as we know we heard this from senali a minute ago you all have seen it on tv the us is negotiating consistently on a daily basis with the taliban government as it's coming together on issues like which planes will be allowed out how to open the airport all of those questions if they can do that they can deal with the question of how do we get money in to support the hospitals being able to be reopened how do we make sure that the local clinics in tiny villages the only medical care that people have access to are not shut down for the lack of funds coming in internationally because we know from the example of iraq if we ever needed another one what economic sanctions mean for a country we can say we're sanctioning saddam hussein we're sanctioning the taliban and who suffers it's the people it's not the government no matter who the government is we know that when madeline albright said we think the price is worth it that 500 000 children in iraq have been killed by sanctions that's not an acceptable price anywhere including in afghanistan so we have to fight against the imposition of economic sanctions we have to stop the the inability of afghans to to access their own funds that are frozen in various accounts in the us and europe and elsewhere and we have to stop the cycle of violence that the us is threatening to begin again at any given moment this notion of over the horizon drone strikes as a continuing threat to the people of afghanistan we have to be the ones that will fight against that we owe an enormous debt to the people of afghanistan we owe compensation for the destruction massive destruction we've brought to their country and to their people we owe reparations humanitarian aid development aid and payment for all that we have destroyed in that country that means cutting the military budget so we can never go to war again you know the 10 percent that barbalee is calling for now a 10 cut in the military budget that means about 74 billion dollars that's almost twice the amount that the us pays every year for the state department and usa id combined for diplomacy and development combined that's 80 billion dollars 74 billion dollars that's only 10 percent of the military budget that shows the priorities of our country and that's what has to change we have an enormous amount of work to do to make that possible thank you thank you so much phyllis great honor to have you with us and you have such a wealth of information your recommendations make so much sense have you written them down on an article or anything or are you well they're in various articles some of them are in the nation piece i think not the last nation piece but a couple of a few weeks ago okay well at any point if you want to post whatever you've written that you want to share with us and same for you senali head in the chat i do want to urge people to stay for the end of the call when we'll be writing to president biden about these these pressing demands that phyllis raised on freezing the funds and contributing to uh un efforts and international agency efforts to address the humanitarian crisis cease the drone strikes and so forth so do stay with us please so right now we're going to have a q&a uh we're taking questions from the chat medea would you like to start yes i wonder if senali we can test your audio first can you sure testing one two how's that it's still the static oh man i'm sorry well we'll carry on uh yes um so let's see i'll start out with a um a question for phyllis um if the uh how big a threat is isis in afghanistan and would you um how would you feel about any cooperation between the united states and the taliban to fight isis very good questions medea thanks i think that isis k which is a small um militant uh extremist organization is a threat to people in afghanistan it is certainly not a threat to the united states it is a threat to afghans because it can carry out with very little funding very little small weapons small numbers of people that can carry out attacks on ordinary people so is it a threat yes what does it mean that the us is in fact already whether we like it or not is already collaborating with the taliban against uh isis k i think what it means is that whenever they manage to uh claim that they've had victory against isis k we're going to see the rise of isis l next and we'll see the collaboration of the us with isis k against isis l because the lesson here is there is no military response to terrorism it doesn't work it kills more people than the terrorists ever can so what we're dealing with is a situation where when we talk about what would it mean for the us to collaborate with uh with with the taliban against isis it means that we're assuming that there's somehow a military solution and if we just get the right collaborations we can take them out we can't we won't we don't this is not whack-a-mole you know this is the game that they like to play the the carnival game where you know a a head pops up and you pound it down and it pops up somewhere else when you pound it down there pops up somewhere else and you keep pounding it down and pounding it down and pretty much you've killed everybody around them but those people still keep popping up the only way to deal with terrorism is long term there's no short term fix there's no military solution that you can if you send b 52s instead of f 16s oh well that'll do it that just kills more people creates more martyrs creates more hatred and it creates another cycle of violence but mostly it kills people if we look at what happened after that horrific attack at the airport for instance which was claimed by ices k the us responded with a drone strike this one wasn't over the horizon soon it will be presumably and they immediately said well we killed two leading members of ices k and we stopped an imminent attack and others said yeah well maybe let's just check that out and as we know now we don't know whether anybody from ices k was killed the pentagon has kind of backed off from that claim they haven't said it's not true but they haven't been mentioning it for a while what we do know is that at least one family of 10 people seven of whom were children four of them under five years old were killed in that strike who benefits who benefits from that who is hurt by that if there were two people from ices k killed okay what do they get they get two new martyrs it doesn't stop acts of individual terror like this there are solutions but they are long term they're not easy they don't take effect right away and they need issues of social and economic and all kinds of changes in the society the kinds of things that lead people to turn to extremism to end as long as those things continue terrorism will remain a significant threat in lots of parts of the world it is not a threat to the united states it is not something that can be solved by bombing by special forces by cia they can kill a lot of those people for sure and more will come to replace that's the problem that we face thank you phyllis i have a question from the chat for senali and this is a broadly speaking to what degree is there a feminist movement in afghanistan are there any prominent male allies of feminist organizations within afghanistan what is the prognosis for women right now in afghanistan um there would be a better stronger can you hear me yeah there would be a stronger movement of afghan women had the us and other countries not spent so many decades interfering in afghanistan i think the movement has generally been underground it has been localized it has been in the refugee camps in pakistan and iran when it has been able to be active it's been inside afghanistan when i traveled to afghanistan many years ago to research my book this was early on in the u.s. occupation we met many men who were allies of women they weren't prominent you know to be a prominent ally of women just is as just as dangerous as being a prominent women's rights activist as malala joya knows um when you speak out publicly about women's rights you become a marked person so a lot of the activism a lot of the organizing is underground there's definitely been a lot of activity at cobble university among students um but from what i experienced in traveling to afghanistan ordinary people ordinary afghans you know men want their wives to be able to work fathers want their daughters to have an education it's um you know it's it's not that different from from other countries so but yeah it's tough to organize when you are constant war and grinding poverty you know so it's not as not as strong as it could be it should be and if it were then the right rights would have been more advanced so nally can i just add on to that question that there seems to be a debate among some women groups now saying that the u.s. should not recognize the taliban and how do you respond to that i mean i think we should always be really careful about requiring anything off of off the u.s. government because the u.s. governments never really done anything constructive in not recognizing the taliban we should ask ourselves what effect would that have in afghanistan might it push the taliban to be more hardline it might we would like the us to not befriend and empower and reward the taliban but do we necessarily want the us to make enemies of the taliban uh you know i i don't know and i don't think so instead the us government could do so many other things we could engage with the international community on disarmament efforts we could work with the international criminal court on war crimes tribunals has been an effort the afghanistan independent human rights commission a council which was part of the us backed afghan government had a full report some years back a detailed report about the importance the need for international war crimes tribunals and accountability for war criminals that includes the taliban that includes the us back in jahideen the us could support that so if we are asking for the us to take action now it should be in ways that are constructive and it should be as phyllis was saying on things like reparations direct assistance to the afghan people um there's some question that the sanctions the financial sanctions that are frozen the assets of the taliban are actually not constructive the us could sanction individual taliban members rather than blanket sanctions the blanket sanctions will only hurt uh ordinary people um and so yeah every everything that we ask the us government to do we have to be asking ourselves will that have a positive or negative reaction on the people alienating the taliban right now is not going to have a positive um or a constructive result for afghan people embracing them isn't either thank you senali phyllis uh let's talk about the economics for a minute you know it seems so contradictory on the one hand biden stands almost alone you know at some at some point uh calling for uh the withdrawal from afghanistan and broadly criticized not from the left but uh from mainstream corporate media but then at the same time you have him saying that he's he's not going to backtrack on these uh sanctions and he's going to continue freezing uh the assets and the banks the 14 half million dollars or billion rather uh do you think there's any division within the biden administration is is a anthony blinkin is he behind these sanctions what's going on here but we can't hear you sorry i i don't think we we know at least i don't know exactly who are the forces that are dividing within the within the white house i think part of the problem is that there is a broadly held view in washington between parties in the media in the white house in the congress in the main people believe a fiction they believe that sanctions are an alternative to war we don't want to go to war let's impose sanctions instead they don't understand that sanctions are not an alternative to war sanctions are an active war very different kind of weapon there are weapons without guns and bombs but they kill people just as seriously in the case of iraq of course they killed far more people and all the guns and bombs combined so sanctions are an active war and the notion that this is somehow what we do when we don't want to go to war because we promise to get out of war we promise to end the war so we're going to end the war we're going to pull out all the troops sometimes this time it doesn't seem to have been the case this time they seem to be including in ending the war pulling out the troops they do seem to be they've pulled out the air force they've pulled out most of the contractors there's only a few left all of that could change but for the moment it's been a far more total withdrawal than we've seen in other withdrawals in other countries but we have not yet seen a shift in the understanding of what sanctions represent that they are an active war so i think we have to start from that vantage point and even talk about it using their language if biden is serious about ending the us war it means he has to end the sanctions because sanctions are an active war period full stop and then we talk about it what does that mean why do you say that how can you make that claim sanctions don't kill people it's like well actually yes they do and here's an example of it so i think that that's what we need to be focused on the the it's good to have the specifics in mind the 450 million at the imf the nine billion in that are frozen assets in in uh uh in us accounts the problem is when we get to sort of the alternative of saying well what if we had individual sanctions against individual leaders the problem is what are we talking about there in principle i have no problem with that in principle there's plenty of people around the world i'd love to see sanctioned as individuals but let's be clear when we're talking about for example Taliban leaders they don't exactly have an account at chase bank right so what what are we talking about here what what are we going to do to sanction them if we sanction them and say well we're not going to allow them to travel well that's going to be very useful at this at the point where we decide we actually want to talk about how do we ensure that there are open borders so that more afghans who have whatever european visas us passports whatever it might be want to get out can get out we need to talk to them so if we say they can't travel maybe we also can't talk to them so all of these things as sonali just said so brilliantly all of these things have a downside nothing just happens in a vacuum nothing happens that just affects the Taliban and doesn't affect people so we have to look at what's the impact on the people so we have a i think we're getting close to when we have to wrap up i just wanted to throw out a couple of questions that people have asked if you want to answer any of them and then we'll move on to the action portion so one question is about what's happening in the panchera valley the resistance there is that something that is uh that should be supported by progressives uh or not um then another is to ask a question is about the role of pakistan and another question is about the opium production and when we talk about afghanistan moving into a more sustainable economic model that isn't dependent on foreign aid certainly we don't want to see opium production being the source of revenue um what might you say about that oh those are a lot of questions many i can take just take what you want yeah i can take the panchera valley question real quick and then i have to jump off i'm so sorry um right no we should not support the panchera valley resistance this is the northern alliance um it's being led by Ahmad masood the son of Ahmad Shah masood one of the top most you know very notorious mujahedin warlords that the u.s had supported and the cia had supported and this is basically like a redox of what happened in 2001 when the northern alliance was they sort of the mujahedin rebranded themselves as the northern alliance moved to the top part of the country the northern part of the country and the u.s saw them as allies in the fight against the taliban and then in exchange for their help against the taliban rewarded them with weaponry political power etc. Ahmad masood you know was given an op-ed in the new york times about why everybody should now support the afghan resistance um and they're very good at romanticizing these sorts of armed militias um the progressive movement in the u.s should absolutely not fall for it these are the ideological brethren of the taliban they are the enemy of afghan women they cannot fuel more war because that's all that's going to happen all that will happen if the u.s or anyone supports that armed resistance is yet another civil war and yet more cycles of violence and definitely not a good situation for afghan people or afghan women it was the civil war that groups like those that formed the northern alliance were fighting with one another that devastated afghanistan that resulted in tens of thousands of people killed that then paved the way for the taliban to come in and say we will bring peace to afghanistan and end this bloody civil war so no i um i do need to leave my kids are hungry and i have to make dinner your children thank you so much you know you're brilliant thank you thank you maybe a few last words from phyllis on any one of those questions or whatever i would just repeat this question of not supporting one of the other questions in the chat was who were the good guys among the armed actors in my view there are no good guys among the armed actors and no escalation in fighting is going to be useful for the people of afghanistan nobody's going to win just like in this war the u.s lost but the people of afghanistan didn't exactly win from this war so we need an end to the full war not just to the u.s war that was step one but it's not step last so we still have a lot a lot a lot of work to do and the bottom line is to step one step back and say what do we owe to the people of afghanistan who is whose country whose people we have destroyed so thoroughly over these 20 years and that means we do not owe occupation and war we do owe reparations and end to sanctions humanitarian support development support all the things that were in fact denied in the 20 years that we were being told they were being brought and they were not so we have 20 years of lies to make up for with some truth with some money with some solidarity that's what has to come next thank you so much phyllis i'm going to ask everybody to please unmute uh shea if you can help us unmute and uh our participants can thank for thank you phyllis that was great thank you