 Well, thank you all for coming today On behalf of Peter Bergen the director of the national security studies program and Steve Cole the president of new America I want to thank you all for coming today Very quickly not only for us here, but for those who are on our webcast We could have everyone in the audience take your cell phones now turn them fully off for the purposes of the sound system Not just put them on vibrate so that we have no interruptions during the program. I'm Doug all of it I'm a senior fellow here at New America Foundation. It's my pleasure to introduce today miss Lucy Morgan Edwards She's the author of the Afghan solution the inside story of Abdul Huck the CIA and how Western hubris lost Afghanistan Very provocative title. She's the former political advisor to the EU ambassador in Kabul with responsibility for civil military affairs narcotics and security sector reform During her seven years in the region. She worked for the UN in Kandahar at the height of the Taliban regime So she has experienced in both pre and post 2001 Afghanistan short as an election monitor at the 2002 emergency loyal jerka was an initial researcher on Transitional justice issues for the international crisis group ICG and a monitor on the currency exchange project with the Afghan central bank and A correspondent for the economics for I'm sorry for the economist and the daily telegraph So a wide range of experiences in the region her ultimate job in Afghanistan Was in 2005 as a country expert to the EU monitors of the 2005 Afghan parliamentary elections We look forward to hearing about her book today Lucy. Please come up Thank you Doug for the introduction and to the New America Foundation for letting me come here today to talk to you Let me just figure out how this slide things works. I Think it's forward like that. I'm just giving you a bit of context on the book really I This is a picture of me in Kandahar when I was first there in the year 2000 I was there working on community development and water projects When I say community development the projects were very much bottom up and involved Directing aid through community forums that the UN had been working with in urban areas, which later became known as the national solidarity program. I Thank you Doug for the introduction. I did a wide range of jobs I had to actually leave Kandahar when the USS Cole was bombed in Was it August or October? It was October 2000 and I went back to the UK and returned to the region a year later after September 11th And did those those jobs. I'm not going to list them again But basically my experience in Afghanistan changed in 2002 when I met the Arsala family Then I was given access to a very different side of Afghanistan to what most of the foreigners experienced living in compounds and being embedded with the military the Arsala family was a family of tribal elders who come from Jalalabad in the east of the country and they They were well known during the Jihad because they were a family of seven brothers Including Hajidin Muhammad, Hajid Khadir and Abdul Haq and they'd been commanders during the Soviet anti-Soviet Jihad I stayed in Afghanistan when the focus turned to Iraq working as a freelance journalist and on the currency exchange, etc etc and my book deals not only with the Abdul Haq plan, but with the first five years of the war because Just when everyone else left I felt that I witnessed quite a lot of turning points particularly in the political side of the intervention That have contributed I believe to the current situation that we face today in Afghanistan I'm just going to show you how we're going to structure the talk here So I'm just looking at where we are today in Afghanistan How we got there I've I have a piece on State building in the current international review of the Red Cross publication Conflict in Afghanistan, which is just coming out. Although it's the December 2010 edition I don't want to go into too much depth about how we got there in terms of military strategy chosen, etc, etc Because I'm sure a lot of you have Examine that or have read about that in the press But that is also in my paper in the international review of the Red Cross I'm going to talk about what was the alternative to the military campaign that we that we undertook in October 2001 which is the Abdul Haq plan I'm going to talk about why it was ignored and what what why it's important Why I believe it's important that we understand what it was and what is its relevance for today So that let's look at today in Afghanistan Security situation I think the bold attacks last week in in Kabul the suicide bombing on deriliman Avenue and last month on On the US Embassy illustrate the difficulty for the US and other NATO countries in Afghanistan today We're told that it's most likely to have been the Harkani network Generally security seems to be getting worse across the country with IED attacks, etc Up year-on-year and the government finding it very whole very difficult to hold areas outside of Kabul The cost for the US alone has exceeded five hundred billion US dollars In terms of military progress the ongoing justification is dismantling disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda But the metrics of success have been very much about numbers of al-Qaeda and Taliban killed Especially as the military has moved away from a coin approach and towards capture and kill Which has had deleterious side effects particularly a politically We've also tried to weld an Occidental style nation-state onto an essentially tribal society yet The the government has a highly centralized administration barely operating in the regions and which includes characters who perhaps have little interest in Pursuing the kind of stability and reconciliation desired by the West The last point is that the military strategy seems to have occurred entirely separately to what was going on politically In terms of the West's exit Much of this is predicated on the idea of build-up of Afghan national security forces However this lacks a clear political strategy and is very very expensive For example the Pentagon spent something like thirty nine billion US dollars over the last six years building up Afghan national security forces and though the cost is projected to reduce from 13 billion a year to six billion a year by 2014 we have to remember that the government and Kabul Raises only two billion a year in taxes So I feel that the Afghan national security force approach to exit is really a zero-sum game And it seems to be the West's main focus. We don't seem to be looking at other options And in the year 2010 US general Flynn said eight years into the war in Afghanistan Our vast intelligence apparatus is unable to ask answer Fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade Taliban reconciliation. Well, I think the events of the last couple of weeks have indicated that as well as the assassination of Rabbani last month has shown that that this is not really going to happen anytime soon The reconciliation also took off very very late because of the US desire not not to To have a reconciliation process and it's also very hard. I think to to start this type of process when you're still fighting a war It's very contradictory So why my interest in Abdul Haq? Ironically Abdul Haq is a household name in Afghanistan Yet his name remains virtually unknown in the West possibly except among a few people who were dealing with the Cold War particularly here in Washington, DC However, he says pretty unknown when I talk to most people they they're kind of like why are you writing about this guy? This seems to be a very esoteric subject But when I talk to most Afghans particularly the slightly older generation they know immediately who one's talking about Abdul Haq was from a leading family of Gulzai Pashtun He was one of seven brothers known as resistance royalty during the 1980s Jihad The family were based in the East and worked with the Hizbih islami party of Yunus Khalis During the 1980s to eject the Soviets Other commanders in the party at the time included extremist commanders Hikmatia and Jalaluddin Haqqani Abdul Haq who was a moderate Was the only Pashtun commander of any significance who eventually took the fight to the city To the to Kabul to the center of the regime Which is where he realized that he needed to attack in order to put pressure on on the Soviet regime In Kabul he was well known for his strategically excellent asymmetric operations which included blowing a seven-story underground Soviet munitions dump At Karga, which is an event that some said turned the war Despite this he was relentlessly criticized by both the ISI and the CIA who dubbed him Hollywood hack and Failed to provide him with the munitions. He needed He left Afghanistan after the fall of the communist government in 92 when different Mujahideen factions turned on one on one another I First became interested in Abdul Haqq actually after I left Afghanistan my first visit And after 9-11 when I saw you weren't able to read this but just to give you an idea I saw this article in the London evening standard and There was this commander Abdul Haqq asking for the West to not to bomb Afghanistan and he was saying I Need to Tony Blair you have to put the hand of restraint on George Bush not to bomb Afghanistan because I have a plan and If you bomb it's going to scupper that essentially So the plan Very very few people realized that that this was an alternative to what unfolded after September 11th and thereafter in the last decade Over Afghanistan in Afghanistan. This was an Abdul Haqq's plan was an internal solution It was an Afghan alternative to the Taliban and to assess this I interviewed many of Haqq's former commanders other tribal leaders Senior Taliban members of the King's group and lastly to independent and private British and US efforts Trying to get support for Abdul Haqq and the ex-king with whom he was doing the plan Via US and British government agencies particularly the intelligence agency the White House and various Agencies in Whitehall in London It's through the lens of those twin efforts that my book examines the intelligence failures of both the US and UK government Policy since 9-11 and around around the weeks of 9-11 as well So what was this plan So Abdul Haqq believed that Afghans needed to have an alternative to the Taliban He he knew that the regime was becoming unpopular and in the two years before 9-11 I would say three years actually two to three years before 9-11 He held meetings in Rome. Well, there was the Rome process with the ex-king Abdul Haqq became the commander of this group There were other meetings held in Istanbul and also in Bonn attended by tribal leaders By Haqq's former commanders during the Jihad and the Taliban The ex-king would be the rallying point around which disparate groups would coalesce The plan depended on the Taliban collapsing from within and by January 2001 Haqq believed the regime was sufficiently unpopular to implode That it was like a crystal which could be fissured and shatter at any time at the right time And he felt that by January 2001 that the time was right The idea of the plan was to call upon and work with those members of the Taliban fed up with the regime He did deals. He was meeting not just in Istanbul and Bonn, but In Dubai He was meeting with moderate Taliban many of whom had been his commanders during the Jihad during the 1980s These were men he could call upon and who had a level of trust with him They'd become many of them had become Taliban during the mid 90s When they saw the regime as a means of bringing stability and some of these guys by this stage were actually Even providing the bodyguards to Mullah Omar some of Mullah Malang's commanders who were he was one of Haqq's men Many of his allies were embedded in the Taliban in key positions of the Taliban military axis of Jalalabad Garda's Ghazni and Kabul But an essential element of the plan was that he wasn't trying to do deals with the extremists He recognized the the stratified nature of the regime and he was targeting those moderates that he that he knew people With whom he had had worked during the 1980s He was against the bombing Because he knew that that his points of reference the moderates he'd worked with or commanded would disperse Would disperse leaving the extremists manning the guns now if you bomb a country everything changes overnight Unfortunately the West Not only failed to understand the stratified Nature of the regime and it was sort of lumping everyone together the good guys and the bad guys They really failed to understand that the Arabs and the hard-liners were a slim minority and many were decent Afghan nationalists Abdul Haqq also knew that bombing Taliban front lines would enable the Northern Alliance to take Kabul Essentially alone and with no Pashtun bolster to the south and east This would make way for the lopsided political settlement that in fact has taken place and enabled the Northern Alliance to take the key power ministries back in 2001 and Has contributed to the alienation that most Pashtuns have felt from from the state Sadly as we all know Haqq's warnings about the bombing campaign were ignored John Gunston who was one of the British trying to get support for Abdul Haqq and who went to visit him in Rome immediately after 9-11 with where he met with the various commanders and then went to Peshawar before Haqq went in on his last mission said Said to me It's crazy. You have this today yet in Rome You had Pashtuns Tajik's Uzbek and Hazara leaders all ready to buy into the Haqq strategy What he was talking about he said the it's crazy. You have this Punshiri nonsense today, and you had all these other groups who were willing to buy in to provide a more equal settlement This is the Taliban deputy interior minister Who has was actually assassinated in 2006? Sadly But he was one of the people who was wanting to to bring some of his units over to to Abdul Haqq side And he told me when I interviewed him in 2004 He said a lot of people supported his plan even in Paktia host guard airs and throughout Afghanistan and When I asked him actually why the Taliban had executed Abdul Haqq so quickly because of course he had gone in on his mission in October 2001 after the bombing started and was captured very quickly in the southeast and executed and possibly tipped off by ISI to Taliban When I asked him why he was executed so quickly by by his boss actually Mullah Razak He said because if they had imprisoned him he would have provided a rallying point for a revolution And in my opinion, he'd be president of Afghanistan today But actually, I mean my you know my interest is not who's going to be president or who's not going to be president It wasn't so much about a power struggle for that It was really about the kind of structure that Abdul Haqq envisaged politically nuts my interest as I said much of my investigation was through these two groups of Westerners the the Ritchie brothers in the US Who were lobbying for Abdul Haqq and his plan way before 9-11 these two guys were signed up Republicans They were Chicago options traders who made a lot of money and they'd been partly brought up in Afghanistan And in fact, they still run in NGO projects there in Jalalabad and for for those two years prior to 9-11 They had been working hard and they wanted they had helped to finance some of the meetings in in Istanbul and in Bonn and Were wanting to provide logistical support in terms of sat phones and vehicles when Abdul Haqq started his rebellion in the east They they'd also been lobbying a lot with bud McFarlane here in Washington DC And in fact would you to have a meeting on the morning of 9-11? They thought that despite the fact they hadn't been able to rally much interest Prior to 9-11 that when 9-11 happened that this would change and people would become interested and they talk about a Well Joe Richie talks about a platter. Yeah, I couldn't imagine a platter more ideally loaded He said talking about Abdul Haqq, you know about a solution that didn't require US military involvement had already been worked out Was fairly equal? And yeah, it was there for the taking basically So why was this important This is a great photograph. I don't know if you know who this guy is with the henna colored beard That's to Lala Dean Hakanee And Abdul Haqq in 1991 When Abdul Haqq had organized the show of the commanders in Barak Shan Just before the fall of Kabul from President Najibullah's communist regime and Abdul Haqq was bringing together These various commanders of different Mujahideen factions to to discuss how they were going to have a sort of hand-over or transfer of security in in Kabul and To make an agreement between the various sides, which unfortunately Masood apparently broke because he went into Kabul Too quickly trying to to stave off Hikmatia who was coming from the other direction But Jalal Abidin Hakanee Trusted Abdul Haqq. He had trained him in guerrilla warfare techniques in the early 1980s And of course they were part of the Hizbih islami the same party and He comes from the Zadran tribe I mean obviously we're reading about these guys every day in the newspapers now But this was a tribe that was very pro the monarchy very conservative and very against any form of foreign intervention And they you know, they'd obviously they were key Commanders in the 1980s against the Soviets and they're now providing a lot of the problems That the US and NATO are facing today cross-border in the AFPAC region but I believe that That if there was any way that Hakanee was going to come in it would have been with Abdul Haqq's plan and Unfortunately when Abdul Haqq was killed Hakanee then he went he met with the ISI in Islamabad and possibly since then he has been Well as we're reading working with with the ISI working semi-independently when no one's quite sure exactly to what degree they're autonomous But the plan was the ultimate Taliban reconciliation The ex-king was needed for unity. He was needed symbolically to bring the structure He was just going to be there in a transitional phase though He wasn't it wasn't intended to restore the monarchy necessarily, but Abdul Haqq wanted him to be there At least during that transitional period to bring the groups together and even general Masood or commander Masood had agreed to this I'm just reading from my book here At a historic meeting in Hoja Bahudin du Shambay in July 2001 This Pashtun hero of the war met with commander Masood Otherwise known as the Tajik hero of the war and they came to a mutually acceptable agreement Above all else Haqq desired a united Afghanistan Okay, so this was also of course going to be an internal solution That not only would have obviated the need for a Western military adventure But actually depended on the absence of the Western bombing campaign It recognized the stratified nature and of support for the Taliban and took advantage of that It was also our best chance of bringing on board the Hakanis And it was the kind of agreement made over tea and nuts the night before the so-called battle that relied on more traditional internal legitimacy So why did the West not support this plan? As I've said, I'm not going into detail about what we did instead You can read about that in the paper in the in the December 2010 Edition of the international review of the Red Cross I can give you references later on that But basically the the West seemed to prefer the short-term policy of using the Northern Alliance as a proxy Failing to recognize it was thus taking sides in an ongoing civil war Neither than the Northern Alliance nor the US No, except for Masood possibly. I mean but elements of of the Shiran Azar after 9-11 Neither of them wanted the king back Yet he was to be there only in a transitional phase Ensuring buy-in from all groups and that the right structure could be in place The last reason was Pakistan This went back to the 1980s and the ISI Had never enjoyed Huck's criticism of their policy of favoring the most extremist of the Mujahideen leaders like Hikmati Ansyaf when it came to handing out some of the US war chest during the 1980s This is something that Abdul Huck had had been very candid in his criticism about Although ironically Huck was not a Pashtun nationalist seeking to renegotiate the Durand agreement Which is something that the ISI and Pakistan has been very nervous about since the 1970s so I mean it seemed that ISI belittled him and the CIA agents who were there during the 1980s Kind of took their cue from that Okay, I'm just gonna John, can you just go back? It's a bit hard to go back the slides So what are the ways forward? In 2001 Afghanistan was a failed state It pretty it pretty much still is today. Oh, what's going okay? He's coming there When dealing with state failure, we need to think more long-term in such instances a bombing campaign is not necessarily helpful We need to understand the divisions within Afghan society which remain as relevant today as during the communist period For example the urban modernizes versus the the more tribal elements the rural people The West needs to understand and work more with traditional legitimacy in tribal countries Not just with ideas of capacity building and the Westphalian nation-state model For example for this to work Sorry, and the other another issue to take account of is that Abdul-haq had advocated that the strongman and Taliban who had committed rights abuses during earlier phases of the conflict should be held to account The West failed to do this and instead has midwifed a culture of impunity since 9-11 in Afghanistan I mean you notice that in other interventions like in the Balkans and in Syria Sierra Leone there was always a process of call it truth and reconciliation or Justice, but we haven't we haven't had that we haven't supported that at all since 9-11 There are lots of what ifs But certainly the situation in Afghanistan today is far more complex complex than it was in 2001 I believe Abdul-haq foresaw the chaos that would unfold if the West set out on the path it has This is why he went in some say prematurely on his mission And why he was concerned with getting the right structure in place before he died IE an internal peace plan based on agreements between the various groups a Plan that would not put Afghanistan on a collision course between internal and external sources of legitimacy. I Believe what he tried to achieve would have avoided the need for a Western-style military intervention and Enabled Afghan-style governance to take root instead of the corruption. We have seen associated with military aid and spending The West also needs to understand better the context of fragile societies before engaging with them Particularly in relation to traditional forms of legitimacy and customary arrangements in expanding the reach power and effectiveness of the state Today we have just dismissed such arrangements as too complex The Taliban have understood the relevance of such arrangements and made use of them Only this type of customary governance will secure space in Afghanistan in the longer term not military occupation the buying off of regional strongmen and Bolstering these these militias that we're doing in the regions at the moment And I believe that this has Relevance for the for the Arab Spring that we need to understand our failures our mistakes in Afghanistan Before we start heading headlong and some of these other fragile societies in the Middle East So that's my little introduction. I've got any questions All right. Well, let's thank you very much for that presentation, which is very provocative Let me start by Asking you what you mean by the Western consensus as I read your writings and we've heard you today It doesn't sound to me at least like you're distinguishing. It sounds to me like you are saying the Western consensus really has two parts one a militarized approach to problem-solving, but then secondly the State-centric nature of the international development community and you almost see you seem to portray these two is kind of wetted at the hip and really Essentially working together. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, and I think one of the problems is that actually the military campaign seems to have proceeded entirely Independently of what was happening politically in Afghanistan that the two weren't really together I think that there were problems with both. I think that the in terms of our political Engagement, I mean I've discussed this in detail in my book. I start off with the emergency lawyer Jorga in 2002 where I was an election monitor and where despite Some fairly democratic processes in the district level elections before that to Grand Council of Elders We call it The actual meeting itself was ended up being a complete charade where the the US ambassador at the time Zalmai Khalidzad and the UN essentially Allowed a lot of the governors and strongmen to come into the meeting Where supported by the national security directorate? They were enabled to intimidate a lot of democratically elected candidates into Voting the way that they wanted so I feel that yes, there've been many elements of the Political process that have not been clear to people here in in the US and back in Europe who've been funding This Afghan adventure that we've we've all believed that it was for the rights of women and for democracy But there because there was no rule of law at the outset. This wasn't supported or taken seriously Democracy had no chance of taking hold, but I evolved my own Feelings on this because I was somewhat of a naive idealist perhaps at the beginning I felt that there was a really a chance for a kind of Western style democracy But the more I more time I spent and particularly as I went to Jalalabad and spent time in these tribal areas in the east I began to realize that the Western style democracy wasn't appropriate at all in a country which is largely Rural and is still predominantly rural and most people live in rural areas Although there of course is a very vocal population in the center and cities who would would would quite like this but So yeah, sorry, that's a bit of a long answer that no no long it these are these are hard questions We've read a lot about the you know the inability of the US military in particular to understand the political dynamics with which It's dealing probably more in the Iraq literature than the Afghan literature But but that's pretty well documented We haven't seen quite as much on the you know on the centralized nature of the international development community Can you expand you know why why are you know people with you know degrees in development who come from you know? These quite respectable NGOs In in your account kind of complicit in this non-political understanding of Afghanistan I think that every Intervention every every country context is different and one of the things that one of the our Celebrate others said to me is you cannot apply the lessons to Bosnia to Afghanistan you have to understand every different country in its context and my feeling and in fact Something that I explored through the book but also in this this paper that I did on state building in Afghanistan is that The West has been predominantly Concerned with building the kind of society the kind of state i.e. the sort of Westphalian nation-state model that it is familiar with that we believe works but we are kind of failing to take account of the fact that our societies have evolved over hundreds of years and We are dealing with a tribal society as I keep saying and there is definitely attention Within Afghanistan between Afghans, but also I think in the international community between those kind of modernizes and those traditionalists and I From my what I found was quite a lot of the modernizes and particularly amongst them Afghans Tended to be people who had been who were in the Afghan diaspora who had been living in the West Who had been educated in the West working in the West and were coming back to Afghanistan maybe hadn't been there during the 1980s and wanted to sort of impose their sort of ideal of this nation-state onto that society and It was just they weren't really able to take those people in these remote rural communities with them on that You talked about the ANSF strategy the Afghan National Security Force strategy and You were you were quite dismissive of it, but but move very quickly through it Could you unpack that a little bit? What's what's wrong with? ISAF approach to an SF development and why do you think that that strategy is Ultimately not going to work. I think there's so much focus on this ANSF this Afghan National Security Force is how we're going to transition out by just handing over to these guys and I feel that there's little Understanding of just how flimsy this structure is that I mean not only is it still predominantly perceived to be dominated By the Tajiks and by people from the north with not enough Pashtun representation for example in the in the National Army but that that Afghans I feel are They're very fearful about what's going to happen when the worst pulls out and That somehow that they're not going to be able to sustain this I mean we have to understand that there are forces both within the country and certainly in surrounding countries in the region that are going to predicate against this Afghan National Security forces Bolster to President Karzai and of course Pakistan Iran, you know We've got all these countries around who are who are sort of adding adding fuel to to that fire But I feel that also there's there seems to be a kind of lacking There's not enough legitimacy in the government itself I believe to to prop itself up and through through these forces And I understand that the government of President Najibullah managed to survive three years after the pullout of the Soviets And I met I've met Afghans who told me that they came back from living abroad Just to join the army in order to support President Najibullah and keep him in power And you know, I I believe that that's because they were kind of pro this idea of What some of the Soviets are done and what modernization and so on but with the Karzai government lack of corrupt with the amount of corruption The difficulties with impunity with the unpopular strongmen who have been dominating the setup since 2001 and 2002 where they were legitimized by the international community at the Loyal Jirga I believe that the government doesn't have the popularity to sort of start drawing Afghans back from the diaspora to actually Prop it up with the army Okay As we both know there's there's extensive literature both, you know popular and an academic on Issues of democracy and multi-ethnic societies how difficult that is to set up on the very real problems of a dependency Particularly in a country that doesn't have a very large GDP on the contested nature of non-state spaces, which you've referred to here Again, I mean I'm gonna I guess I'm re-asking the same question I'm gonna try to dry you out, you know the people who are working these issues are not uneducated, you know They they have public policy and and law degrees from very prestigious places Presumably they've been exposed to some of this literature. Why in your opinion? Do we have this? Theory practice gap. We know these practices aren't going to work and yet we continue to implement them I still believe that although a lot of the people are very educated who are Involved and who may be civilian advisors in these PRT's I think the model is predominantly a sort of external led state building process And it's it's predominantly the West trying to put its vision of how things can develop on to Afghanistan and recently I Was doing a presentation with another author who's just written a book on Afghanistan And she'd said that she was horrified when someone from the State Department talked about Afghanistan as being a sort of tablet He's talking about a Roman tablet of wax where you where you they used to scroll That they're kind of maths for the buying things in the market, but she she said that this State Department employee He'd actually said Afghanistan is great because we're just starting from scratch, you know as though there's nothing there for the West or for these Western intervenes these Western Kind of state builders to deal with as though Because we don't understand the nature of this complex tribal society We're assuming that it doesn't exist so we don't deal with it We don't engage with it. We come and we bring our opinions and our ideals and we implement them largely I think also through through the military or I mean Certainly, this is the perception in Afghanistan that a lot is being done through through military through armed men and That we ignore what has traditionally existed there because it's either too complex for us to understand Or because we don't understand the languages and so on and I think that's that's a huge problem Do you think that part of the problem is the people who are who are implementing this when you get? military officers who you know who live on a V-variant concept of the state and the military having a monopoly on the the legitimate use of armed force and Couple them with aid workers who largely come from Washington and Brussels, you know the center of Pulling power to the center is that part of the problem? Do they just naturally want to bring power to a capital? I think the problem is definitely the time span and the impatience particularly that Not just the US, but NATO has that they have spent so much money in Afghanistan. They've been there for a decade They want to get out And they want to see quick results, but the problem is this has been the case from the beginning They've wanted to see quick results. They haven't looked upon this in the medium to long term They've wanted to stage elections despite the fact there was no rule of law So they couldn't ever be proper elections and these elections seem to have been staged more for the appeasement of the domestic populations in the US and in Europe than Their sort of real applicability to the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and I think secondly that yes the military has definitely Predominated in this what you call a sort of 3d triangle of defense diplomacy and development the military has dominated and has Being able to gradually militarize aid and this is certainly the case Since I was first there in Kandahar during the Taliban where we could really travel in the countryside We could travel anywhere, you know in a very secure environment, but we were it was very important that we didn't travel with With guns or armed men in our vehicles because that was considered in inducing yourself to become a target that's all changed now and You know, I've had Afghans tell me well, you know the UN What do they think they're doing there or they're traveling on American helicopters and they are Becoming far too much associated with one side in the conflict So I think yes, that's definitely a militarization of the aid and development sector is a big problem and very confusing for the Afghans How much does this this theory of development that you you bring up rely on having the right local leader or to rephrase? You know once Abdul Huck was killed Did this plan effectively die with him? Was there an opportunity to? Implement this in early 2002 even after his death or was that just no longer politically practical with him? No longer there to hold it together. I think it's partly that he yes. He was definitely a very credible leader He was very well known for bringing different sides together and building consensus and having people talk But I think the other problem was definitely when the bombing campaign started and things changed and the Northern Alliance were enabled to bomb through Taliban front lines and to flow into Kabul and take the key power ministries so From that time it was quite difficult for the West to reverse The mistakes that it had made and this was definitely something he'd foreseen. I I remember people in the British Embassy in January 2002 saying that that Syaf had his His rockets aimed at cobble and you know from Pugman And how are they going to roll this back and tell him to sort of kind of back off and that this was you know basically impossible for them so these these guys these strong men have been in the driving seat since the the Western military campaign and since they were able to take those ministries take the security apparatus in Kabul and the various army units and then again this was underscored by the legitimize legitimization that they were given politically by the West at the emergency lawyer jogger, which I had attended and in fact Just to illustrate on the eve of the lawyer jogger which took place in the polytechnic in Kabul in June 2002 I remember The UN had flown in something like 1200 candidates from around the country and these warlords suddenly arrived They literally crashed through the ISAF and cordons with their with their Big cars and their bodyguards and their arms which was strictly banned on the site And I remember some of them came out of their cars and went towards a Tented area some of the women who'd been elected were Basically saying to them. What are you doing here? You know, why are you here? You're the people who destroyed our country go away? and there was a real belief that that They weren't going to be able to take part in the state building process that their time had finished they'd been in exile during the Taliban and I felt that you know Afghans really thought that the West was going to somehow support them in this transition to democracy and Women's rights, although I think the women's issue is very nuanced But unfortunately that that's not what happened You've emphasized the importance of local knowledge So if you want to defer on this next question, I'll let you but as you sit and listen to your presentation you can't help but think of Libya and You know they very similar phenomenon a use of air power lots of bombing You know that centralizing of power in Tripoli, although there's you know some some emphasis, you know the original rebels in Benghazi What are your specific thoughts on Libya given your your research for this book? I mean I was actually pro the intervention in Libya because I think it was clear that Gaddafi was threatening those people in Benghazi However, I have to to say that that every intervention is different and In Afghanistan, I mean Libya seems to be you know quite an opaque Country, I mean, I'm not I'm no expert in North Africa But there were people particularly people here in Washington DC and people in London Who really should have known who the players were on the ground in Afghanistan having had this engagement with that country during the 1980s during the war against the Soviets, so Just that point aside, I think I think We have to be careful with Libya not to again impose Our idea of the Westernized style democracy that you know We have to step back and allow them if they want Sharia law To to sort that out for themselves. I mean obviously the West has engaged and has has allowed One group to predominate there is there is a danger of a civil war there But I think we I get concerned when I hear reports on the radio of gosh You know everyone's up in arms because the Libyans are going to have Sharia law And I think you know, it's a great danger of making that mistake if we if we interfere too much in that For our last little conversation here before we go to the audience If you could just re-summarize then what you think are the key lessons going forward What do policymakers need to think about in these states that you know, whether because of external intervention or because of internal causes are Are going through some form of regime change? We'll have to go through a you know post-authoritarian rule transition What do we take forward? I? Think what we have to take forward is we have to think long term in these places Are you just can't go in and do the quick fix the quick bombing and then get out? There was a real assumption. I think when the Taliban fell that you know We let everyone could pat themselves on the back and move on to Iraq You have to think long term You have to I think we have to really Look away from the military lens we have to start looking at these societies in their whole and Look from the bottom up instead of trying to impose from top-down our vision Primarily through a bombing campaign I think in Afghanistan it would have been actually far more effective if we'd had this process of transitional justice and rounded up some of these guys or at least Not allowed them to to shape the outcome of of the state and to retreat back to their fiefdoms after being in exile during the Taliban and Allow them to then sort of reassume control in those fiefdoms and then Contribute to this crisis of impunity, which is what it's become So I think yes less less military domination much longer term and a great necessity to start understanding to look at the academics who write more about these ideas of customary governance traditional legitimacy hybridized governance mechanisms and this is more the sort of Shura the jugger process to understand how these can contribute to stability and I've this is something I've touched upon again. I've repeated again this this article I wrote for the Review of the Red Cross, which is a special edition on Afghanistan. It's called conflict in Afghanistan You can find it on the internet if you just Google ICRC and my name Because I think this is a really fascinating area that has been so ignored in the last ten years And I think this is where this is the future that we have to to really look much more deeply and Not to try to dominate but to work more with what is there Great. Thank you at this time. We'll turn to audience questions when I call on you Please state your name and your affiliation after the microphone. You have a microphone. All right wait for the microphone Please state your name and affiliation and then please ask Miss Edwards your question. I asked that it be a question You're entitled to a sentence or two of setup, but we don't have time for you know, 30 You know 30 seconds of your you know your own personal political views on something and we'll start in the backs here The blue shirt right next to where the microphone is My name is Alex Sapshenko and I'm representing here myself. My question is very simple in case we're going to withdraw from Afghanistan Would the option of dividing Afghanistan in two parts meaning northern part in Pushtunistan would it be a viable option? You take a few go ahead I think that that's a bit of a sort of this was an idea. I think it was mooted about a year ago and foreign affairs magazine I Don't think that this is a solution really I mean you've still got this problem of the Pushtunistan issue and the Duran line with with Pakistan And I think that is the real root of the problem rather than a difficulty so much between the Tajiks and the Pushtuns I think Pakistan is the more significant problem there and this the issue of the Duran line, which which hasn't been resolved Thank you very much Mr. Dwork for the lecture My question is about your name. Oh, my name is Sayid. I'm a student at Georgetown University and Also working at the embassy. My question is about Akhani I mean like since Akhani and Abdullah had such a great relationships and probably Abdullah was the one who could bring Akhani to the table of negotiations now that he's gone and Akhani is Basically taken a completely separate sides against Government and also against the foreign invasion of Afghanistan. Do you think we should kill or capture Akhani or maybe? talk to Yeah, I think I mean that this the kill and capture scheme Again focusing on numbers killed rather than bringing people to the negotiating table. It's I mean for personally, I feel that that's that there's not the way ahead and of course Akhani we're now talking about his son Sirajuddin and the younger generation who are much more extremist and Difficult to engage with and I think this is part of the problem of the last ten years Where things have become it's like entropy law things have just become way more complicated the older generation were Not brought up in refugee camps necessarily and we're not a generation who'd only known war throughout their lives and Had more of that tradition of coming together and consensus and and and talking Personally I think that You know if you even if you kill and capture Sirajuddin Akhani I would imagine that there are 50 more Akhani's out there who are going to fill his shoes So I think we I really think we have to change our approach. I don't believe that the killer capture is the way ahead I think it creates more anger And it creates more extremists I've heard from people on the ground in that area in Waziristan, particularly and paktia that The younger generation of commanders, you know when Westerners Approach them. I mean previously, of course, there was a huge amount of hospital hospitality and Some of the journalists in the 80s who who spend time with our Akhani's who have gone back now Who say that you know the younger generation just don't even want to be in the same room There's so much anger now. So I I don't agree with this sort of policy of attrition I think we have to think our way around this more intelligently Right here in the brown leather Hi, I'm Taylor Johnson from the Institute for the Study of War. You talked a little bit about Massoud today I was hoping to ask you about that So Massoud was known for holding this band of these northern commanders together a very charismatic leader Would the hawk plan have still been feasible after he was assassinated shortly before 9-11? Thanks Of course, that's the $61,000 question And also would Massoud have kept to his word that he had given in Dushan Bay in the summer of 2001 at this meeting that was recorded by Ambassador Peter Thompson one of your State Department people In his book and also by James Ritchie who was also present and I think the two of them had disappeared and left Abdul Haq and Massoud to talk together that evening and I Heard from them that Massoud had given his word that he would buy in with this plan And that he would accept the return of the king despite the fact that the king hadn't always been a popular figure with people in the northeast With things have changed. I think what made things less feasible was again the bombing campaign Which again handed those ministries to Fahim who stepped into to Massoud's boots essentially and My Fahim was a very different animal but I think possibly without that bombing campaign and if the Pashtuns had been able to to reach Kabul if Abdul Haq had been able to reach Kabul and Be able to engage those commanders that not just in the three division in Kabul But also in Hezarat, Ghazni, Gardaiz and even over in Kandahar with Mullah Malang's people That I think things this things would have been very different. So yeah again it comes back to how we just handed so much of the power to the Northern Alliance through through the bombing and that that just turned the tables and Made it difficult to to to to go back from those power seekers essentially very back My name is Sayyed. I'm an Afghan journalist from Kandahar and my English is not good. I have two questions and I hope I am able to You understand my English As you also said that you also work in Kandahar and I also work with the Western propaganda media I also work with the Yunama there you mentioned that King was not popular in or the Northern Alliance and as well as US did not want it in Pashto we have a proverb that I never saw a grand you know stepmother kinder than my real mother most of the Western Writers who write about us and they usually just take this issue of our ethnic division and usually Everywhere there are the ethnic divisions in every part of the world, but still it does not exist in the way Western exaggerate about it. My question is when the king was I was part of the Yunama in Kandahar There were surveys in all over Afghanistan. He was very popular Nobody could win from it and Ambassador Zulma Khalilzad, you know We covered this issue that he forced him not to be candidate for Loha Jarga This one question why the West in the United States did not want him to be candidate my second question is of course Do you think I mean many people think the United States will declare this war as a war because it's a shameful defeat So do you also agree that they will declare it as a victory? Thanks. I Think it's very it's going to be difficult for them to declare it as a victory I think probably they're going to shift the goalposts when when they leave and Just say that, you know, it's a stable country and that they're able to leave handing over to Afghan national security forces Why didn't they want the king? Me now I've talked to to various people about this I was also there at the Loha Jarga when when the king arrived and he Went on to the podium to give his speech after having been away several decades from Afghanistan and the Microphone was cut off and he wasn't able to speak to his people And the same thing had happened when he came off the plane From Rome the microphone mysteriously cut off and he wasn't able to speak and the way the king was treated I think was shameful by the West and I think this was largely because I mean Francesca Vendrell who I used to work for who was who had been the head of you now my own smart as it was Prior to 9-11 Who was actually I think quite keen on on the return of the king? He said that the US never wanted the king to take a role And I I would imagine that this also has to do with the the fact that those Tajik factions and Northern Alliance after the bombing campaign also didn't want the return of the king I think that there's been quite a lot of antipathy towards the king by some of those Small minorities of the Northeast and particularly the Panjshir and I would imagine that this relates to feeling threatened by his popularity because he certainly seemed to be seen as a very popular symbolic figure or someone who had presided over 40 years of peace and Relative stability in Afghanistan until he was deposed in 1973 I hope that answers the question Afghanistan several times, but I don't nearly enough of not about it a quick question is Karzai Perceived as a Western plan or agent as you may have covered this already sorry if you did And his career is the corruption level in Kabul Widely known all over the country. We all hear about it all the time Is it is it a factor in the political debate and is Karzai considered legitimate Afghan leader? I mean I've dealt in my book with Karzai and and how he came to be where he is today And at what stage there might have been some kind of agreement with with the Bush administration I mean Karzai, I think certainly does not appear from conversations. I've had with people to have Been someone of any great standing. I'm certainly not to the extent of Abdul Haq Abdul Haq, of course was a national figure who's very well known for his Bravery and his strategic Cleveness during the 1980s in his operations Karzai was basically Pretty junior at that stage. I think that certainly possibly the CIA and People here in the Bush administration. What did someone that they felt would be on message? Abdul Haq was well known to be quite outspoken quite critical During the 1980s and and even thereafter when he was writing letters to ambassadors and to leaders in Western countries warning them about the The camps that were being built along the more the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan The arrival of the Arab fighters the proliferation of fake IDs He you know he made a noise about this and he he he wasn't just prepared to do what he was told and Shut up and I do feel that that that's partly and of course the the undermining of him in terms of Guys in the CIA saying Abdul Haq has baggage Abdul Haq is not capable Abdul Haq It's just Hollywood hack because he likes speaking to the journalists You know I some of the guys that I interviewed in Britain who were trying to bring support for him for it through in our various Intelligence agencies and in Whitehall in October and September 2001 some of these guys had traveled extensively in Afghanistan during the 1980s and Including Ken guest who's a very interesting character. He was a cameraman. He's covered all these wars Throughout these several decades written books about medieval warfare and he's an ex-marine in the British Army and He was he just discussed with me quite extensively what he felt was the demeaning of Abdul Haq By characters in the CIA in the mid-80s and Ken of course was in in country he wasn't sitting in Islamabad and He talked about for example the blowing of this munitions dump in cargo a seven-story underground munitions dump of the Soviets which Abdul Haq had blown with a Single rocket apparently after six months of planning and which the CIA station chief at the time Refused to acknowledge that that this was Abdul Haq You know he was saying all these commanders were claiming that they did it that was enough for me but you know Really, I think that the CIA were had a duty to really know who were the effective guys to be working with because you know this was American money American tax dollars and Afghan blood And I think that was encumbered upon them to really know who were the the most effective players And I think they failed in that and I think after 9-11 Ken for example cited to me how he'd been behind the camera filming a meeting with Hamid Gul of the ISI former chief of the ISI and No, he was actually filming this particular CIA ex CIA station chief and he'd asked him casually if he could give him Hamid Gul's telephone number and Ten years after this guy had left the theater He was able to roll off Hamid Gul's phone number straight off his tongue After 9-11 and so Ken said this this proved to me that he was still in regular contact with the ISI And that you know basically seemed like the CIA was still basically taking their direction from the ISI and I think that That is that has really contributed to quite a large part of the problem we see today Yeah, the corruption. I mean definitely Corruption it took the West a long time to realize what was going on with the corruption I mean, it was even very evident in 2004 2005 and it was not acknowledged I remember being in a meeting with donors and That stage I was working for the European Union office and we had compiled various reports of Drug halls that were being Intercepted by NATO and when there was possibly a call from a high level And that these had to be then let go. This is just one example Then of course there's the the example of Sharpoor the land on the old British cantonment being parceled up by Faheem and sold off or given away to to a sinecures to other ministers But corruption seems to be reaching every level of society and I think this is why Somehow the Taliban Have been able to gain traction because during the Taliban it wasn't such a corrupt time at all And it was I interviewed Haji Zaire who was in jail in Kandahar for a couple of years during the Taliban period and his father Haji Qadir had sent $20,000 to him from the Panjshir Valley and this was held by his captors and I said well Okay, they looked after your money didn't they just steal it and he was like no, you know Every time I needed a packet of cigarettes They'd give me the money and I'd send out to be have the packet of cigarettes bought for me He said they were simple but honest people But I think now the corruption it's it's very much in league with sort of international mafia And it's very difficult to to to reverse now very very difficult My name is Lee young independent TV producers When what kind of policy or method of policy practice they have in order to develop a potential leaders What I mean is capable of leaders who for the best interest of public interest, you know From local to national know that's that on the top and the second is how do they improve the transparency or accountability? Again from local to a national I think well the problem of leadership it's I Mean largely, I think problem for Karzai has been that he's That he wasn't such a national figure. He didn't have a political party or much military support behind him of his own and so he's had to He's essentially almost had to barter sinecules in order to remain in power. He's had to barter Positions government positions police chief positions governor positions in the regions to these strongmen in order to buy their support in the short term and These are not the kind of people that you necessarily make the best leaders and I don't a local level or in a national level But the the West has actually contributed to that problem Because where for example, we have PRTs or military bases in the regions The primary objective of a lot of the base commanders has been force protection of their soldiers So we you know where he's put in place these these guys who are not Necessarily the best leaders. We've just in a way. We've we've solidified their power We've bolstered their power by working with them to protect roots to protect To hire land or to use their militia forces. So I think that's that's one part of the problem transparency Again, I think while you have this situation of impunity. It's it's very difficult to have any kind of decent Institutions and any sort of transparency Thank you for interesting, you know speech and my name is the Shoji Motoka from Johns Hopkins Sides And I'm former Kabul below two former Japanese public television NHK and once our coverage team visited The hospital in the Nanga area before and that hospital was you know built by the US PRT chain recently And we found a very little local people are using that hospital We ask a question why you don't use this hospital hospital One reason is you know, this is far from the residential area The other reason is you know, they are afraid of a child even because visiting such kind of a US built a facility Is regarded as a kind of a supporter for USA They don't want to be a level that's a US oriented to local people So but of course they need this kind of a facility. They need a hospital, but they don't want US built the hospital. So how can you you know solve this kind of a you know problem? I mean, yes to build this country better. Thank you very much Where was the hospital Nanga, okay, I mean, this is a very nice example exactly of the problem of the Militarization of aid and the aid industry and how this is all coalesced together over the last decade I mean, I believe We fail to understand the political consequences for local people of when we have Western military coming in and it's not just applied to hospitals, but schools and courthouses and so on that We don't we fail to understand that it's not so easy if Western troops have built one of these structures that local people can Immediately use it that there could be reprisals against them by insurgent groups Another factor of course is the cost. I mean it is far more expensive to have Western troops building these things Than for example, some of the NGOs or humanitarian agencies who were working in Afghanistan prior to 9-11 who had the expertise I mean my my husband works the ICRC and He was quite surprised when he went to her at and he was talking to the Italians PRT about the the projects that they were doing they were doing some water supply projects and they told him what their budget was and it was it was a very big budget and He was very surprised and he said, you know, he told me that they previously would have done that for a fraction of the price So, you know, it's inefficient to have the military building building hospitals and schools and doing water supply projects and so on because of course you have to pay for each soldier that does it rather than aid workers and of course I mean by comparison or by contrast with the Types of projects that I was involved with before 9-11 when I worked for UN Habitat in Kandahar At that stage the UN and UNDP had Developed this mode of delivering Development projects, which was very community-based. It was very bottom-up It was all about the community being involved in designing the projects and there was actually even a sort of formula an algebraic formula for How to select beneficiaries of the projects so at that stage there had been a three-year drought Hundreds of thousands of people have been pushed off their land or had to leave their land because their crops had failed and they had Sold all their assets and there were refugee camps or IDP camps in Kandahar and Herat and Our projects were aimed at the most vulnerable people in the community So widows and so on but the community would select who those beneficiaries were we want identifying them The community were very much engaged in that and because of this And in fact one particular project I was working on drought relief project Where we were literally having very vulnerable men shoveling shit out of the alleys between the streets Taking them to the kind of street corner and then you'd have a municipal vehicle coming and picking it up and then a dump truck These projects were so popular Even under the Taliban that People were after the UN funding ceased we're going to fund them that with their Islamic taxes And so this is you know the difference between the sort of top-down and the bottom-up development projects Which I think we need to rethink completely Blue suit here on the aisle. I'm Chris May. I'm Here is an independent figure. I'm a deeply worried grandfather about The course of so many things going on and particularly about Afghanistan if President Obama were to ask for your advice as to what to do now In terms of both the US interests and the interests of the Afghans, what would you suggest to him? That's the hundred thousand dollar question in Washington in the next year. I think as they run up to the elections as I've said Me part of the reason I wrote the book was because I felt that there was a window of opportunity after 9-11 that if we didn't recognize and grasp was going to slip away forever and Abdul Haq essentially predicted even in 1992 the The chaos that we see today in Afghanistan he he talked about if Mujahideen elements take control in Afghanistan There will be war forever and we Afghans will have to beg From the international community for the rest of our lives for support for for aid and so on There is no easy solution in Afghanistan We have got ourselves in to such a mess there. We have wasted so much money there We have ignored the advice of the people who knew The the people I'm unfortunately, I think a lot of this went back to the desire for a fireworks display after 9-11 the the appeasement of the population here in the US because of the Anger of the 9-11 attacks, but you just cannot deal with a failed state like that You just can't we have to be more intelligent about the way that we approach these countries And I think primarily that involves quitting this obsession with military action with drones with bombs with Fireworks displays. I think we have to be grown up and we have to talk to people and we have to to to know who we had to disaggregate the kind of characters that that we really need to to build these societies in the long term and one of the brothers of this family that I stayed with Abdul Haq's one of his seven brothers who is trying to resurrect to Ashura in Jalalabad after the death of Abdul Haq and then Hajji Khadir He said to me part of the problem is that the with the PRT's are Even though they're trying to work a bit more with the elders in these regions they are paying these people and This doesn't work in Afghan society that you know Traditionally people would do this on a voluntary basis and that you are going to get you're going to attract The the best types of people that those who really want to help their communities if you don't pay them If you start paying them you are immediately introducing an element of Corruption and you're going to attract more the kind of strongmen types so I think yeah long-term less military and Really understand understand who that who the players are on the ground I don't know doesn't seem like we've learned a lot In fairness, I think that was the hundred billion dollar question on the hundred thousand dollar question in the brown in the back Yeah, I get off and I'm Bob Dreyfus with the nation magazine so if Pakistan wants to impose its will on Afghanistan which seems to have been the theme of the past three decades And the United States is Basically beginning to close the door on our role there sometime in the next few years Doesn't that mean that Pakistan basically gets to do what it wants to They tried to impose their seven-party Group several times since the 1980s and in various forms the Indians I mean it may be too strong to argue that Masood was a stooge of the Indians But he was certainly an ally of theirs and armed and died in one of their hospitals So what do we do about the India Pakistan proxy war? Especially because Most of the tribal structures that existed if they ever Existed in the 70s under the king and so on have been decimated and destroyed and people have been assassinated by the The hundreds and hundreds of elders by the insurgents and others So I don't know if there's any pieces to put back together there anymore Yeah, of course, I mean this announcement a couple of weeks ago that this cooperation agreement between India and Afghanistan I think Was very provocative to Pakistan This is again a huge factor that India and Pakistan might continue to fight their proxy war Using Afghanistan as a sort of well, I mean Pakistan always talking about wanting to essentially Have more influence in Afghanistan for strategic depth reasons against India I think we yeah, we need to get back to the heart of the problem between India and and Pakistan and that might mean Resolving I mean going back to looking at the Kashmir dispute Because otherwise, I don't really see how we can this can be resolved. I think I mean obviously Pakistan is becoming a lot less stable things of You know this to me. I mean the nuclear issue there is very serious the issue of More and more extremists, but you know since 9-11 There has been investment in the military side by by the US with the Pakistani Government but not in education and I think this you know It's got to come back to education that in the we have to look long term and we have to help these people to to educate Their populations, but we also perhaps need to apply travel sanctions on on some of these figures Some of these so-called rogue ISI I don't know how rogue they are or how much they represent the Pakistani state but This is a very intractable problem that you've that you've highlighted and on the tribal issue. I think yes, it's It's very very It's very difficult now that so many of these tribal leaders have been assassinated and assassinated by all sides assassinated by Hikmati are assassinated by the communists or the Soviets by the Taliban But I still believe that Afghans in particularly in the south in that southern Pashtun belt Which is our main focus of the insurgency? I still believe that they they They like to work with these structures That they prefer this approach to this idea of this top-down approach that we seem to have of this capacity Building this extension of central government into the regions I think we do need to start from ground level up and We we do we shouldn't negate that that tribal side of the equation Just done on Pakistani education I would just point out there's a very interesting recent paper by Christine fair out of Georgetown and Jake Shapiro I think he's at Princeton now that points out that the more among more educated Educated Pakistanis there's higher support for armed insurgent groups and there is among the lower classes that So higher education it's it's more complex than just educating people I thought I saw another hand Any more questions? Going one. Yes Okay, people who are not here just a correction commander Masoud was died on the spot and he did not die in a in an Indian Hospital and he was pronounced dead on the spot and also another thing I think once we are kind of like exacerbating the The ethnic kind of like divisions and the conflicts between the targets and the push to us I think it's a little unfair because What's happening with the assassination for example this chain assassination that's happening It is even the Taliban's are right now confused who is doing it for example like I have never heard or even Read about it that a Togic group coordinated an assassination of a Pashtun leader or a Pashtun leader Coordinated an assassination of I'm just asking about the question that how we can kind of like put the pressure more into Where these kind of like the directions are coming from for example if we continue kind of like talk bring for example the Those who are kind of Associated with the ISI, but we are just trying to bring them to the table of negotiations But they are trying to not trying not to if their boss doesn't tell them to do so And how we can kind of like convince them rather than kind of saying that Rather blaming that the puncheries or the Tajiks that for example just holding all the positions as we can tell that the current administer the current government in Afghanistan is not fully basically administered and run by the Tajik People and also with the military it's 43 percent of the military is the Pashtuns. It's not the Tajik It's very mixed kind of in terms of ethnic compositions. I think that just despite his Coating of figures as to what what ethnic group is what I mean? I think the question is, you know, do we put too much stock in? He's a Tajik. He's a Hazara. He's a Pashtun. I Think I I understand where you're coming from on that but I There was definitely a civil war going on before 9-11 in Afghanistan and I was there and I remember For example the staff in my office in Kandahar celebrating when the Taliban took the city of Talakan in the northeast and You know, I said to them. I was actually pretty Shocked that my staff for I thought all these very educated people that they all supported the Taliban. I'd assumed that they wouldn't so when when I Asked them why they were so happy that they'd taken Talakan They said because we'll soon win the war and that means, you know, we'll have a hundred percent of the country and then The Taliban will have to they will have to supply us with education and health care Instead of fighting against the Tajiks Yes, I mean things are very complicated now and I mean I'm not sure that we even know who was responsible for killing Rabbani has has that been resolved that issue But you know, I would say that yes, there's there's definitely I Mean my experience of the first five years was that there was an antipathy in a feeling of alienation by the Pashtuns That they didn't feel that they'd had a fair representation in the political settlement in 2001 and 2002 that they apparently had been Quite a lot of Pashtun leaders from the south who weren't able to attend the Bond talks a feeling that Brahimi had Shot some of them out and not allowed them to participate that they were somehow too much associated with the Taliban The sort of black and white, you know, good guys and bad guys issue So I think the West was a bit too a bit too simplistic about that and there was certainly a feeling Amongst Tajiks that you know, we should be rewarded because we've got rid of the Taliban Whereas in possibly amongst some of the Pashtuns It was a little bit more nuanced that, you know, some of them had joined the Taliban as a feeling of bringing Stability or joining a movement that was bringing stability to clear out the warlords and the warlordism of the mid 1990s so and I'm not sure about the figures on the army, but you know, I You know depends on the rate of attrition and but certainly there has been a feeling for quite a long time that the army was Quite heavily touching Great if we can close then it give you a you know final few minutes here to you know Restate the thesis of your book kind of bring us all wrap this up together and you know What are you saying and why should policy makers care? Okay, so I'm saying that we need to revisit history. We need to understand The opportunities that we lost and where we went wrong in order to move on And I you know, I've had people even even someone at the White House saying to me Well, you know who cares, you know, I mean, we didn't quite say who cares, but he basically said Come on. We just want to know how to get out But it's not an easy quick fix you have to know where we went wrong in order to move ahead So my book is really a documentation of that of what I witnessed over those those years The turning points that I felt where the West had really squandered opportunities and what was the outcome of those Opportunities lost but also what I felt was an internal solution because we're now we need to look for an internal solution in Afghanistan Although I think it's going to be pretty hard to find one, but I think it was an internal solution and That it was pretty much reliant on Well, of course not on foreign intervention, which is very unpopular which brings people together against against the foreigner But one that was very much focused on this idea of legitimacy at a local level And I think that this is something that we really just completely Not looked at in the last ten years in this in this idea of this sort of very militarized and very technical approach to the war this kinetic approach and I Think that we need to understand on the psychological level of the Afghans Also how to to deal with the situation because it's a war of perception as it's not just a kinetic Situation that we're in so Yeah, I leave it there for you Thank you very much again Miss Edwards is the author of the Afghan solution the inside story of Abdul Haq the CIA and how Western hubris lost Afghanistan We encourage you all to pick up a copy which are available outside Again, thank you for coming and have a good afternoon. Thank you