 Thank you John. Thank you all for coming. It's indeed an honor to be here today in a renowned location. I'll give you 25 years of Afghanistan's history in about 27 minutes. So it's going to be a lot of shoveling of data your way and then I hope to open it up for questions. But a bit of context is important at least on how I got to the region. I moved to New Delhi, India in 1988 with Time Magazine and the Bureau covers six countries of South Asia and at the time India was essentially asleep economically and financially. It wasn't much of a story for journalists. So most of our time was spent in Pakistan and Afghanistan learning the ins and outs of that place. And again one thing to remember this is pre-computer. We did everything by telex. The beauty of this location and there are many is that 8,000 miles away New York couldn't find you most of the time and that's where the offices were and nine hours time difference. So we use that to the best advantage and since the region was changing at the time Cold War was still alive and well and the Soviets had agreed under Gorbachev to remove their army from Afghanistan. This was the time that we could now change from backpacking in as journalists through Pakistan across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan with the Mujahideen. They were now going to give visas for journalists and that was essential for me to sort of turn the page of the previous eight years of coverage. The Soviet Army as many of you remember went in in 1979 and with the Saudi, Egyptian and a score of other allies the United States decided to stick it to the Soviet Union for lack of a better expression for the war in Vietnam which that whole tit for tat mentality still was playing itself out. As photographers you had to work with a writer in a collective fashion and the learning curve was quite steep. So we had in 1984 remember the Golden Temple was attacked in the Sikh area. Kashmir was beginning to fester as a low intensity conflict. The Civil War in Sri Lanka was on our heads. Bangladesh and Pakistan had martial law which provided a different environment to work in particularly with censorship and restrictions on the media and then of course you had the Soviet Army that was planted in Afghanistan. So at this point in time in 1988 the Russians for rather than call them Soviets had killed a million Afghans in nine years. That's a lot of killing, carpet bombing and execution. There was no love lost between the two and most Afghans no matter who they were with were very happy to see the Russians leave but what happened in this interim between 1988 and 1992 when the Mujahdeen took power is that the United States took its eyes once off the ball and we closed our embassy in 1989 and didn't reopen until December 17th 2001. So with all of the help that the Muslim countries provided for Jihad a lot of the Jihadis stayed in Afghanistan and outcomes al-Qaeda. So with that I bookend this series of photographs with 2013 the US military starts their withdrawal and it starts with the Soviet withdrawal in 1988. This is a picture of an Afghan soldier handing a flag of friendship to the retreating or leaving departing Soviet officer and again it's rather ambiguous here after a million people have been killed how can a flag of friendship be handed off. So in 1989 in the battle of Jalalabad in the eastern part of the country the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence agency tried to establish a foothold in Nangahar province and this is the battle of Jalalabad in 1989 of March and one thing to keep in mind again are the Arab fighters bin Laden is about two miles from this picture we didn't want to have much to do as journalists with the Arab fighters they didn't take kindly to the camera nor did they want to be interviewed but this gives you an idea of the ragtag nature of the Jihadi groups that the United States Pakistan and all of the Arab countries were funding and this is an example of carpet bombing you can see the civilians leaving the battle of Jalalabad and you can see the string of smoke as a plane dives overhead and just drops indiscriminately they were obviously using the road as a guide and thankfully missed I was cooling my feet literally in this mountain stream boots off when this happened so it doesn't leave you much time put your socks on so this gives you an idea of the military academy in Kabul which is the equivalent of their West Point you can see the discipline the esprit de corps and the serious training that went on in Kabul in 1989 with the Afghan Communist Party being a very forced to reckon with you can see the ragtag nature of the Jihadis and then back contrast that with the military academy in Kabul eventually all of these students either defected to the Mujahideen or left the country because they were targets once the Mujahideen came into power this is from 1990 so in 1991 the battle of Jalalabad had been a failure in 89 this is the battle of host province and off here on the right is Pakistan so geography plays a big big role this is the border area that was the main funneling area for the CIA and the ISI Pakistan's intelligence agency to support the group of Jalalah Dean Hakani and he was successful in taking host province in 1991 and this you can see how easily country boys what do they do with an airplane they basically play with it but these are the people that control the training camps that Jalalah Dean Hakani this is the father of global Jihad and he was from this area the Zadran tribe is quite prominent along the border it straddles Pakistan and Afghanistan and in tribal territory so he was not only a very good smuggler but he was also a very convincing jihadi fighter and his family is still around today his sons have been killed as well as two of them are still alive but he agreed to see me at among a few other journalists because in 1990 when this picture was taken word started to come out that Pakistan was training Indian Kashmiri militants in camps in Afghanistan and he was the host he was also the host for bin Laden bin Laden had tried to set up camps in different parts of Afghanistan but he and Hakani got along famously and he was the first person really to go to the Arab during Hajj and raise money from rich wealthy princes and Arabs during his trips to Mecca and this is what he was concerned with is spreading jihad he didn't care that I was an American he had no problem with that at all in fact he offered us lunch tea as a good host but he's still alive and he's rumored to be in a nursing home in Karachi but you can see that the CIA has had trouble dealing with this because he's an asset for Pakistan this is the backside of a Hakani camp built by construction equipment brought in by Osama bin Laden you can see captured Russian tanks here on the left and in the center and this is also one of the camps along the Pakistani border that Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles into to try to when the first embassy was attacked in actually in Sudan when the rockets went into that as well but this is a picture from 1990 not really offered to us but if you're quick and pre-focused your camera you could take these pictures but this you can see how well concealed it is and these are two al-Qaeda instructors in the front training for Afghans in the back in the same area done during the same or second trip that I made two trips into these camps looking for different fighters but this is the area that's still active today for training and the Pakistanis refused to dismantle it and this is the area where drones are coming in so one of the more interesting ethnic groups that was involved in these training camps are the Chinese Muslims the Uighurs they're still active today in these camps being trained and the beauty of having a reporter along who spoke fluent Mandarin was that he totally freaked them out and went up to them and said watch what happens when I speak Mandarin to them and their excuse they're a little embarrassed here if you can judge body language but they couldn't escape they said well we're only here for the weekend because our parents have a Chinese restaurant in Lahore well they must still be functioning with a restaurant in Lahore because the Uighurs are still there being trained along the Afghan Pakistan border and it's a big bone of contention with the Chinese obviously so back to daily life in downtown Kabul which was what I tried to capture on numerous trips obviously this picture didn't require a visa we could just walk across the border but here we had to fly in and we had a foreign ministry guide with us at all times obviously watching us but this is a picnic on Friday their holy day in the mogul gardens a 16th century beauty gem of their sort of similar to a central park and this is a traditional folk dance the women are not there they're off to the side and there's a harmonium and a tabla player off on the right but this is a dance called the Atan and these are almond trees in a beautiful garden so in 1992 this was 1991 1992 in March it became pretty evident that the government would soon fall the jihad groups were coming closer and closer to Kabul they were shelling the city every day and here is a essentially a young newspaper hawker as they're called trying to sell the one government newspaper there was one radio station and one television station there was no free press this was all done by the Afghan Communist Party and you can see the person in the background it's important to quickly get the content of this he's the only literate person in the group reading the daily paper and that's often how word was spread from the paper most people couldn't read in Afghanistan and there's still an issue about literacy but this is a great daily scene and people were obviously curious because they knew the Mujahdeen were getting closer and closer in April 18th 1992 we could sense and I had the license by time and the support to stay on for a month or two in Afghanistan and this is how you got to the very crucial meetings of all the jihadi leaders minus the Pashtuns of the main ethnic group but here this is a good glimpse of inside Afghanistan Afghanistan is essentially ethnic groups it's not one country it's four to five ethnic groups and here you have and you have to learn how to profile quickly from faces and beards and mustaches and eyes noses it's all very important the person on the left is an Ismaili they they pay homage to the Aga Khan next to him is an Uzbek general dust him and he had just defected as the Minister of Defense from the Kabul government to join the jihadi leaders and in the middle you have Ahmad Shah Masood who's a Tajik Farsi speaking so you have more Persian in the middle and more Central Asian look to that left and then you have the Uzbek very much the bloodlines of Genghis Khan and then you have the Persian because it was once part of the Persian Empire Afghanistan so all of these faces and looks without being able to speak the language you had to be able to figure out who's who and these were essentially the group that decided which intersections they were going to take in downtown Kabul which ministries they were going to divide up amongst each other and how they were going to go about it and the people that were not there were the CIA's and the Pakistan's intelligence agency warlord Gulbadeen Hekmatyar he refused to join this and that was the battle that soon led to the civil war which lasted for four years but this is essentially Ahmad Shah Masood who was later assassinated in 2001 the very charismatic leader telling the journalists what they were going to do in one week's time and on April 23rd these are Uzbek fighters taking control of a very important intersection keeping the Pashtuns out backed by the Pakistanis and the CIA why the CIA continued to do this back a group that was no longer liked or appreciated but they pretty much gave the control to Pakistan and underneath Pakistan behind them of course were the Saudis so victory lasted very short this is April 23 5 6 days after this meeting north of the capital and it's rare that you get to be informed so well in advance but there are no newspapers and no radio and they're no cell phones so you pretty much have to go on your hunches interesting you can see the no boots on that fell on the left these are fearless fighters and their main rival are ethnic Pashtuns the Uzbeks and Pashtuns despise each other it's a perfect matchup in a battle believe me they use militias smartly so 1993 this begins the internecine battles within the city and within the country in different provinces this is civilian cotton crossfire downtown Kabul the lines are about 800 to a thousand yards apart and a stray bullet he was obviously out to pick up vegetables or milk at the market since they don't have electricity or refrigeration and this gives you a an average daily scene in downtown Kabul in 1993 basically stoned chaotic tank drivers on a joyride you can see what they did with one of their landmark it's used for tank shells and they were continually rocketing the city Gulbadeen Hekmatyar was ruthless and not taking power it had been divided up between he and Ahmad Shah Massoud he refused to come into power in 1992 and he continued to rock at the city killing about 30,000 civilians which is a lot similar to what's going on in Ukraine this gives you an idea of what it's like as a from the civilian side again in urban warfare civilians have to flee quickly if the artillery battle which was right down in their neighborhood in downtown Kabul but what's interesting is when I scanned this picture in as a slide I didn't notice it until we scanned it properly on a high def scanner what do you take if you have to flee within 30 seconds you take a chicken a teacup and a bicycle there's all one family this is the mother daughter-in-law and a bag of food so there's no men here fighting age they're off fighting in the different ethnic factions but in a few days they were able to return home but this the civilians again are the meat in the sandwich and the ones who suffer the most so Gulbadeen Hekmatyar controlled the route in from Pakistan for fuel and food and this is what happens when he decided to cut the road across the Khyber Pass there was no gasoline so there's no way for people to get to work and you can count I've stopped at 23 24 people in this car it's a Russian Volga as a taxi but there were no buses running and the gasoline was often watered down and to be bought on the black market including the gasoline we used as journalists a family here whose main breadwinner the husband had been killed during the Mujahideen days squatting in an apartment downtown Kabul the it's very rare for women to agree to have their pictures taken in the Islamic world but she was strong enough and felt confident enough to state her case you can see she's got six kids and has a ration ticket worth about $15 a month downtown Kabul this is the main frontline it's been completely rebuilt now in 1994 there's a lull in the fighting and al-Qaeda the Pashtuns and the Afghan opposition are down at the other end of this street out of the effective range of rifle fire and these are boys working for the government army there's a truce and it was the only time for us to get down to the main frontline but things turn very quickly this is a group of four carrying away their fifth comrade an argument had ensued during one of these lulls we went downtown a reporter a British reporter and I to talk to the frontline what what was going on these are kandaharis by the way from southern Afghanistan very much at battle on the frontline in downtown Kabul but another group came around the corner and started arguing with these four or five guys because this they claim this group had stolen their television set now there's no power why argue over a television set but the way they decide arguments there is right in front of us they lowered the rifle and shot the guy in the stomach so we took off upstairs to get out of the way and you can see this blurred taxi in the lower left hand the yellow they wanted the taxi to take their colleague away to the hospital the fellow was had three or four bullets and amuse basically dead but smartly and this is one of the things you have to do as as a journalist in a conflict zone is find a driver who's very smart he had a kill switch underneath his dashboard so he went down and they demanded you can see the fellow up in the upper left there saying where is the driver so he went down said he tried to turn the car over and of course it would wine and wine but it would never spark he had flipped the switch so off they threw this guy into a wheelbarrow and took him away but we saved our car important person so the Sunni Shia thing now comes into the picture and it's still alive and well with us today in Iraq and Syria I came across this I I still haven't found the journalist I was walking around with this day in Western Kabul I came across a clinic went out back to a cemetery and found all these bodies of Shia militants or a militia unit of one of the controllers of Western Kabul had been either executed there or executed somewhere else and dumped here behind a clinic and their shoes are still there this body I think had been turned over it was in March he'd been on his stomach obviously somebody had flipped him over very well preserved the dogs hadn't gotten there yet which is allows the photographer to take a civilized picture but today this area is completely rebuilt and I tried to find it in 2013 I couldn't find this spot and it would take it probably a military base right now but eight eight or nine Shia were killed and over 800 have been killed in the upper left neighborhood in February of 1993 and it was done by Sunni Sunni government for for control over Western Kabul so this whole ethnic battle continues on but it was rare to get evidence of it so we move from 1993 to 1996 this is the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in September of 1996 you can see the rudimentary equipment they they have this is a Chinese Jeep firing a hundred and seven millimeter rocket at the retreating forces of Ahmad Shah Masood as they're forced out of Kabul in September of 1996 the Taliban came up from the southwest of Afghanistan and gradually got their control of the capital and this is part of it so in October of 1996 with no radio no television no broadcast possibility no newspapers this is a mullah from Kandahar reading the citizens of Kabul basically the riot act now that they have a hundred percent control of Afghanistan they say this is what he was telling them that they had to do they had to pray five times a day shops will be closed no movie theaters no music no loud weddings women must be covered and accompanied when they leave the house schools will be closed women will no longer be educated and this is where it was read out very rudimentary but extremely interesting part of Afghan history to be there because the civil war was technically over except this wasn't going to last bin Laden had already left for Sudan and I believe he was on his way back to Afghanistan this is what the Taliban did to a science lab at a university basically destroyed it and it set the country back years so in 1997 up in the northeastern part of the country sorry northwestern part of Missouri Sharif which is a very famous silk road capital of bulk province there's a big shrine there the Taliban had cut a deal with the Uzbeks again their primary enemies ethnic enemy this is the Taliban minister of the interior cutting a deal with a general who had defected from the air force to take control of Missouri Sharif now this was a truce which was very tenuous and I was part of a group of journalists that got in there before they closed the airport in Missouri Sharif took a flight in from Pakistan but it's near the Iranian Uzbek border so it's a very interesting part of the history here and you can see the different facial features the Taliban have thick beards and the Uzbeks have no facial hair so they're easily spotted and they the people on the left the Uzbeks are very curious about Pashtuns because they're bitter enemies this is the first time that they had really come together and you can see the look of confusion and wonderment on the faces of the people on the on the left but it lasted for 36 hours this truce and by some grace of God I happened to be there when everything fell apart and you watch this fellow they the locals lured in the Taliban about 30 of them with two tanks behind me and somebody walked across the street went into this where the spark is an open fire on the Taliban and this poor sap walked up there with his machine gun and thought that he could take them out you can see the brass casings in the middle of the picture but look at this pile of dung you'll see the power of being hit he's thrown all the way back this is the same pile of dung thrown back about 10 12 feet so they were all on the rooftops firing down at them you can see how their trucks were doors open everybody is standing here in shock and in about 18 hours 800 people were killed they were all the whole entire contingency of the Taliban coming in were killed except for the minister he got out this began the battle about six o'clock in the afternoon we had to take refuge in a clinic couldn't get out but everyone is there goes down this fellow walks away not happy his friend fired an RPG into that doorway and then picked up his buddy and took him away and this is what it looked like the day after all dead they don't speak a common language in that area nobody speaks Pashto they all speak Uzbek so they were targets they had nowhere to run this is the Red Cross taking their bodies away so in 1997 the Taliban were very angry and they went back the next year and killed 2,000 locals so revenge is a very important word in this area throughout the Middle East for that matter so we moved to 1991 sorry 2001 this is 1997 at this point the Taliban and al-Qaeda have 90% control of Afghanistan and this is a refugee camp up in near Mazar-e-Sharif between Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat on the Iranian border the Taliban refused to let UN aid in food shelter materials and medicine this is a baby that died in February of 2001 from exposure and it's being prepared for burial so we're nine nine months into 2001 is September 11th this is the second month so September 11th is seven months away the Taliban are not happy they'd already they were about to blow up the Buddhas but this is the funeral procession taking that little child to the grave the father is on the left and it's traditional for the men to carry for about 200 yards or however they have to walk and then pass the body along so in May of 2001 with the same Mandarin speaking journalist I went up to see Amachama Masoud who had the last 10% of Afghanistan in Badakhshan province this is Masoud coming out to speak to some of the elders he was also the leader of that area but he was the last remaining force to keep al-Qaeda and the Taliban from taking over the last 10% of the country and the journalist I was with had known Amachama Masoud for about 10 years so it was a very interesting and familiar easy interview to go through but he had mentioned to us now this is four months away from 9-11 that something was going on in Kandahar his spies told him that bin Laden was up to something whatever new information he had he didn't reveal to us but sure enough four months later on September 9th two Arab journalists well they were al-Qaeda posing as journalists interviewed him and one of the two cameras that was aimed at him was packed full of explosives and they killed him on September 9th this was all part of the plan and he was killed in that building right behind him so at that point in time on September 9th al-Qaeda and Taliban had 100% control of Afghanistan interesting point quickly forgotten by September 11th but had September 11th been foiled who knows what the Americans would have done about al-Qaeda and Taliban having 100% control of Afghanistan you can debate this is the right environment for debates of that nature or discussion but who knows what people would say about whether or not we were determined enough to go into Afghanistan to take them out probably not my opinion so we moved to November of 2001 and the Taliban were still in control of this city their main capital they didn't recognize Kabul as their capital we were given 22 of us were given visas to come in and this is Kandahar city after about 10 days of aerial bombardment in October the United States Air Force the French and the British started bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda targets and this is the expression of disbelief of seeing Western journalists and Pakistanis here in downtown Kandahar these are all Taliban some of them are more academic rather than fighters more spiritual but they didn't really like us being there they had already been suffering from a lot of degradation from a very effective bombing so this is the cover of the book this is a shepherd you can see it's a very interesting photograph one that I found quite timeless judging not only from his dress but of the terrain this is a shepherd calling in his children to bring in the goats and the sheep after this village had been leveled by French and American Air Force because they believed Taliban and al-Qaeda had taken refuge outside of Kandahar city we've got there a few days later it was interesting to be given permission by the Taliban to see this that what they called a human rights violation Lord knows who was there but if you're taking refuge from Kandahar city it would be the right place to go to but the thing is there normally isn't any lighting there they found lanterns and some kind of generators from the from the sky so they bombed the place 17 people were known to have been buried possibly more but this gives you an indication of what both sides can offer journalists and you have to take these opportunities to go out and visit so this is December of 2001 these are for Pakistani Taliban who were captured outside of Kabul they were trained in a madrasa in Punjab province they admitted to being part of a very Sunni chauvinist group and they are captured by the Tajiks inside Kabul and eventually traded back to Pakistan this is December of 2001 so in Torah Bora some of you may remember this location in eastern Afghanistan when bin Laden left and went over the mountains into into Afghanistan he left behind 12 to 15 Arabs and Taliban to protect his rear his withdrawal and after they surrendered they were brought out for the media this is a Yemeni or a Saudi and probably one of the first visitors to Guantanamo but eventually they were all traded to the Americans for cash that's what you do with prisoners in that part of the world so in 2002 this is the 10th Mountain Division in a big battle in central Afghanistan to chase al Qaeda and the Taliban away from Kabul in a battle called Anaconda there's a very interesting book called not a good day to die but it describes the difficulty that Americans and Canadian soldiers had at 5500 feet carrying 80 90 100 pound packs at this altitude and the dehydration and the difficulty they had just in trying to chase out the enemy this is a dead Taliban underneath a blanket and when I scanned the picture in this is a digital now we go from film to digital I noticed there were two sets of rubber gloves and what the heck were those doing there and I noticed that the left hand had been fingerprinted strange so a forensic team had already been through March one of the things I wanted to do in the book was to bring in the countries that surround Afghanistan and these are Afghan Taliban in in Balochistan Pakistan where they would take refuge during the winter and then once the snows would thaw they would cross the border and go back into Afghanistan Pakistan continues to deny this that they were giving refuge to the Taliban but here it even though I'm dressed in the Shah War Kamis they knew who I was and I knew where to stand when they came out of the mosque on a Friday 2008 again back to very interesting geography and Nearestan province in the Hindu Kush you can see why on earth the Americans would have a base at the bottom of this valley sitting ducks if you know of any of the pictures from the British occupation of Afghanistan in the 19th century there were always down at the bottom of the valley and these turban fighters with their long muskets were shooting down at the British yet we didn't learn from the past this is these are three 10th Mountain Division fellows who were on a mission to resupply a base way up at the top here this is the Black Hawk rescue helicopter they were ambushed and caught some shrapnel and rock in their faces this base was overrun two years later eight Americans were killed 23 wounded and basically gave it back to the Taliban so some of the personalities were very interesting in Afghanistan this is all may Khalil Zod an Afghan American he's the ambassador to the unit to Afghanistan he left the country when is 15 very smart was an acolyte of the Kissinger neocons in Washington went to Georgetown extremely smart very manipulative a clever politician and he was also the US ambassador in Baghdad this is gives you an indication of the security he has Dinecore which is number two to Blackwater protects the embassy people this is in an airport Kandahar Airport that was built in the early 50s by the Americans competing with the Russians at the Russians build the roads we build the airports and the fellow on the right has a very interesting profile if many have if you've seen American sniper you can see how their typecast they're called trigger pullers and they make a lot of money every day so again back to the terrain geographies incredibly important in Afghanistan this is in Kunar province a marine coming up a hill at about six seven thousand feet it's the Kunar River in the Hindu Kush again huffing and puffing carrying 50 60 pounds and he's just to come up to the top of the outpost not in any combat danger this is one of the few posts that's still remaining in Afghanistan president Karzai at a press conference in 2009 very interesting fellow there's two Afghan national policemen inviting me in to breakfast in the middle of nowhere and in Ghazni province but what I found interesting here while I was waiting for a reporter to come out he was talking to the district governor this here is our legacy and in my view you can see the brand-new Ford pickup truck on the left the British Hesco walls up here on the top an Afghan flag the top of a Chinese or a Russian Jeep a broken chair dirty socks an unused traffic cone more Hesco walls and two fellows hapless there the targets of the Taliban inviting me in for breakfast very genuine but the thing about the Ford pickup truck on the left that we gave them 11 brand new Ford pickup trucks but all the fuel is stolen by the time it leaves Kabul and goes out to the countryside the fuel never arrives the trucks are never used the area is 80% control by the Taliban so nobody goes out it's it's a real problem and who they turn the country back to it's an item for discussion still today again the whole cross and clash of cultures here 10th Mountain soldier 10th Mountain Division meeting a village boy in Wardak province Lord knows what's going on in their minds obviously some mistrust but they do Afghans essentially like the Americans when we first arrived there was great appreciation for the Americans coming in and kicking out al-Qaeda and the Taliban but things went south soon after when promises weren't met or projects delivered and a lot of people get very emotional and wonder really what side to play and they're obviously now thinking about or the Taliban coming back and it gets very complicated but this is an image from 2009 about two hours outside of Kabul so in 2009 I did a lot of embeds which is one one way to get around the country you need the security in the transportation system of the military these are Marines in southern Helmand province it's 125 degrees not great for patrolling which also means that your plates on the back in the front are also 125 degrees so this picture was in the New York Times and I sent a quick thumbnail picture of it to the battalion commander and the first sergeant got the email and said thank you very much very nice to see our men in the New York Times but there's a bit of a backstory here a word came out of the Pentagon from a regimental sergeant major that these men should be punished because they're out of uniform in the Pentagon a sergeant major I don't I don't have his name but you do rags they're not supposed to be wearing do rags which is the only way you can keep sweat from pouring out because you go as soon as you take a quart of water you sweat it out so he said don't worry nothing happened to them but this gives you the idea of disconnect 8500 miles apart somebody sitting in an air conditioned office telling Marines what to do about how to dress just a small little inside no one would have known that in the caption because I didn't put that in but back to this is sea level in southern Helmand big opium growing area Marines only showed up with half a battalion not a full battalion couldn't do much this was part of the surge in 2009 how effective it was is still under discussion back to 7000 8000 9000 feet of the Hindu Kush in Kunar which is where I went right after the desert it just flattened me on an aerial assault but this gives you an idea of the terrain there's only one road leading into this region and if you think you're going to get in there without being ambushed you have another story but Petraeus at General Petraeus and General McChrystal agreed to give up most of these small bases in this region they just couldn't resupply on a regular basis back to sea level again where the Marines were in Helmand province a 16th century fort a bomb disposal unit checking a farmer's fertilizer supply to make sure he's not making IEDs the active ingredients being ammonium nitrate ball bearings diesel and mix it in a big five gallon container and then bury it in the ground it was determined that he was just a regular farmer but there were a lot of irregular farmers out in southern Afghanistan so in 2013 I was very surprised to get access to this drone taking off but it's actually a very old technology so there's not an armed drone it's for reconnaissance and you can see the ramp that it's sent off right here it reaches 80 miles an hour by the time it leaves the ramp and it stays up for six hours and has incredible optics different a very safe unit if you're launching drones you're not really in harm's way it's very much part of the technology our drones liked no they're not at least by the civilian side so there's a big discussion on how effective they really are you bomb one village you lose 10 is one theory and McCree general McChrystal was not happy with that but anyway this is one way that technology works its way into conflict resolution so the retrograde this is what withdrawal is called by the logisticians you can see this at Bagram airbase all of these m-rap vehicles mine resistant ambush protected 15 ton vehicles very nice very useful in the countryside well air conditioned very protecting for the soldiers and marines but now they're being sent out some of them have shown up in police departments in california much to the chagrin of the civilians but what are you going to do with all these vehicles there are three quarters of a million dollars each and here you can see the one army soldier looking for stray bullets that they haven't fallen down into any crevasse it could possibly explode on on the flight out most of them were taken to the Middle East Germany or sent back to the states a very expensive operation but this is Bagram airbase in central afghanistan an interesting place to be in one of the only places you could see equipment being collected downtown Kabul a wedding hall this is the new Kabul you just remember the downtown Kabul of the rubble that I showed you earlier this is a view of western Kabul where the civilians that are the militants that I showed you that were killed somewhere out in this area this is Kabul University this is the Kabul River this is a big road leading out west to the Darulaman Palace where the Soviets had their Ministry of Defense so these are all important landmarks to learn and that civilian that was wounded this was the front line at one point it's all been reconstructed and on my last day in Kabul two suburban SUVs were blown up in a suicide attack killing six Americans and ten Afghans not a very happy situation this is the actual withdrawal this is about as close as you're going to see to soldiers actually leaving Bagram airbase you can get an idea of how big it is now in 2001 al-Qaeda had all of this area under control they knew the opposition Ahmad Shah Masud's forces had the other side of the airport but in the 12 years 13 years distance between that period all this was this is a brand-new airstrip you can see the C-130s it would take a C-5a all kinds of airplanes can come in here these are soldiers leaving these are soldiers coming in in May of 2013 to finish their deployment essentially these guys are going home no no weapons they're coming in with weapons but one thing I noticed is this nice little middle finger for my benefit something you don't see in a viewfinder but he wanted it to be seen I don't think so little does he know how famous he is at this point not that I would have done anything anyway but so there have been a lot of benefits for our presence NATO the humanitarian efforts particularly girl schools literacy is up girl schools are open and functioning but primarily in urban centers where there is some security so you never know where the pictures are going to happen I just happened to lean out it would have taken me about a week to get permission to go into a girl school through the Ministry of Education but this is one of the ways you have to work quickly and this is what Kabul and what Afghans really want is open markets chaos noise dust shops open and to be left alone it's a little bit more complicated than that obviously but this I think is a good closing picture to give you an idea of what present day Kabul is like and what they hope to hold on to whether or not we have an influence in that they certainly hope that the Americans stay there's obviously an argument within the region of South Asia the Iranians don't want us there the Russians don't want us there the Pakistanis are ambivalent about it but would like us to stay the Indians want us to stay so it gets into a lot of areas that I'm going to turn it over to you if you have any questions but this is present day Kabul and if you remember numerous slides backwards what it did look like it was rubble and again sorry the vehicles in the building and so on and we see nothing of industry or commerce other than people struggling to get through the day how do you support all this how this happening is this all because of the countries that have come in essentially yes you're asking for traffic control who owns them who owns what their owned by individuals yes there is an economy it's opium dependent but well it's partially partially the truth but good idea is to try to get rid of the opium you're most welcome to take the podium it's a $200 million a year business for the Taliban yes sir at the end of your discussion you're talking now a little about education and the result of it and and as I look at this to the people there relate this shift from rubble to this build-up area in any way to the presence of the Americans yes I do and then early on I've got a bunch of questions here you talk about the Wiggers their Turks well they're speak a Turkic language yes so they're basically another tribe of which they're Chinese though they're from China China Turkey and Afghanistan as well well Uzbek speak a Turkish based language the Turks have a big role in Central Asia they're part of the discussion really yes I mean they they do have an influence there the Ottoman Empire was enormous at one point so today a relationship with Turkey is even more vital vital and complex but they also know how things move around this is three-dimensional chess you're getting into and they're a player they have a seat and it's important to understand that I mean there was a period of I don't care but you know I'm better than that let's put it that way yes yes absolutely you'd be very naive if you if you thought otherwise but so are people who visit this country what about your information that you send back home to your boss is all of that been perused and all that by somebody maybe yep but it's accurate that's the best I can do make it accurate any other questions sir the news we get today about from this area is very very sparse now is that because we don't have people over there who can provide it or it's because nobody cares to read it news gathering is expensive but to maintain a bureau now with a full-time staff person you have to pay for life insurance so when Katie Couric or Diane sorry used to go over to these places the insurance kicked in as soon as they closed the airplane door and and she also had a makeup person or you know handlers and all that stuff as the logistics on the ground is very expensive even for me so it's expensive and is there concern that we're not getting the right information definitely but throughout Kabul and Baghdad periods of news gathering it takes a toll and you have to bring in new people willing to go over there and commit journalism is not great for domestic tranquility so and now we have Brian Williams who's got his own issue but it's there certainly the demand is there the supply is not always so forthcoming it's difficult to find a volunteer to go to these places willing to stay for 12 months and pay be paid regularly is it sustainable as a profession that's in flux right now and what worked for me may not work for for the Columbia J. School graduate right now I don't know what the answer is but the advertisers are essentially the ones who underwrite it and there's no more advertising in newspapers or there's less so how do you monetize the web it's affected journalism definitely and now people have shifted to video there's a chance they could work in a studio as opposed to going over to Kabul and having that romantic life of Hemingway from the Spanish Civil War or whatever but a lot of the shine has gone because of lack of support please downstairs the book is for sale and it is an amazingly well done book not but the publisher took that on and they came out with beautifully printed well-bound and it's a gem not just because it's mine but it's hard to get publishers and how to press tell they're a German from Munich thank you could I ask you a one question one president of Roger Williams College wife set up where they would bring Afghan women to this country and they all executed when they go back no I think Babson College also did that the president of Babson in outside of Boston they're trained for a year and generally go back they start out really as kids learning about security certainly it's tenuous particularly if they have a high profile they have to moderate that in their appearance and and how they project themselves it's difficult but it's improving slowly well they're 50% of the population well you have traditions of arranged marriages it's a little bit more complicated than the freedoms we take for granted here they are still very respectful of family traditions but generally if a woman is able to go and get her master somewhere the father has signed off and for the betterment of the family they hope because the past they don't want to remember they live for the present and hopes that their future will be better but without security it's difficult but read whatever you can there's a very interesting website called the Long War Journal it monitors the whole thing with al-Qaeda and ISIS now in the Middle East and Afghanistan you have to go on the web it's not reported by anybody coming from Kabul necessarily of known stature there won't be many Pulitzer prizes as before for foreign reporting the emphasis is now on doing things from a distance long war journal just want to many public bill regio writes it every day but it gives you a more precise insight into what's going on out there and it's just information that you don't get now in newspapers and that's how the web has taken over they said about the actual journalists it's sort of they're doing it from a distance I mean people shoot video yes it gets online but how do you get the day-to-day shots if you don't have you have to train local AP Reuters photographers yes yes but it's rare that a foreigner goes in kidnapping is security is an issue right now and in corporate security they're risk averse it's another issue that we could spend time on are we risk averse as a country or that that's one other topic that you can get from this but you have to be willing to gamble and if you gamble you should be educated about the place you're going into not in two years it takes five years six years seven years posting in these places to figure it out yes and look what happened right anybody have any last minute question what where where did you grow up and at what age did you seem to get a wonderful us to live in places that don't want to live in 30 seconds sounds like something my father would ask me what did we do I started out in Latin America I was very interested in the early late 70s 1980s in Central America is where I first I went to El Salvador and started working I was very curious about the 1954 coup in Guatemala that's what got me intrigued and I just started reading more and it's very accessible from Miami Airport for instance but I grew up in New Jersey went to school in Vermont and decided to live overseas for 25 years and with Time Magazine as as institutional support it was really quite amazing what they did for journalism India was an interesting place still is absolutely I still go back it's just harder now to live there on a daily basis it's about three times more expensive and hustle and chaos and traffic compared to the hustle chaos and traffic from before that's correct yes she is indeed I applauded all the time other than yourself going to go back we find it that hard for more and more people to do the jobs that you've been doing to go over there under this because of the issues that are going on and what you it's a catch-22 thing how do you become experienced when you can't actually commit to an experience and you learn through your mistakes but Sotloff and other people that have been caught on the Turkish border one mistake is fatal and that cuts off a profession pretty quickly and whether or not schools are going to be able to provide that kind of practical experience no the thing and the beauty of journalism is that you're just thrown out you throw yourself out there and you have to figure it out because your boss will say well I did therefore you can so that one of the main editors at the New York Times says if you can make it in India as a writer or photographer you can make it anywhere no he didn't but somebody underneath him and it's true English language is there Indians in that whole region love to hear stories and relate stories so as a writer and photographer it was an amazing place it still is but who's going to underwrite this now for journalists that want to travel and as well as the military we need language experts cultural immersion bring people here send people over but two years is not enough time at least on a deployment because you spend six months three month first three months you spend orientating yourself in the last three months you're worried about where you're going to go at the end so you're really not a hundred percent focused only for 18 months and in that it goes by so fast you barely have time to figure out what just happened there's some who are good at it but to bring in people with a master's degree from Princeton to the State Department to determine policy without ever having set foot out there it's an issue that I because I have to I spend all my time in the field I need to go consult or listen to people like that with that expertise but the subtleties that's devil's in the details there particularly with these big cultural shifts now for Americans to go over to a new place not just Latin America Asia thank you for coming