 Welcome to the new America Foundation. Thank you for coming this afternoon. I'm Peter Bergen. I run the international security program here It's a lot of pleasure that I get to introduce a friend and a longtime friend of New America and Bob Green is I'm sure you know was station chief in Pakistan at the time of the 9-11 attacks he oversaw the CIA special forces operations that were that went on in Afghanistan during the overthrow of the Taliban he Negotiated with the senior leadership of the Taliban, which I'm sure he'll explain You know history could have been very different We wouldn't be sitting in this room and we wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan or we wouldn't have invaded Iraq if Bob Grenier hadn't had succeeded I mean I mean you made a very good effort to talk to the senior leadership of the Taliban if they had handed over bin Laden a few weeks after 9-11 American history would have been different and to some degree world history would have been different So it's a very interesting what if after he was station chief Bob Grenier became Iraq mission manager So I think this was the first time in CIA history where correct me if I'm wrong where somebody been tasked to sort of In this way and now I think it's pretty routine But yeah, that was they made it up for me. So basically tennis that you're the Iraq guy We're about to invite Iraq you're the Iraq guy There's one of one person and that was right. He also and this is something I just found out today He headed the farm, which is of course CIA's training facility And he's had a 27 year career in the CIA very distinguished career He went on to work in global risk management Including a crawl. He's currently chairman of ERG partners And he's just come out with this new book 88 days to Kandahar a CIA CIA diary Which was just published by Simon and Shuster. So mr. Grenier is going to give us 20 minutes or so about some of the big stories and big themes the book and then we'll open up to Q&A So thank you very much Peter. Thank you appreciate the introduction our story begins Early on a Sunday morning was the 23rd of September 2001. I Was sound asleep in My bedroom, which was actually a safe haven steel doors bars the whole works in Islamabad Pakistan. I was absolutely exhausted. I'd only been asleep for about three hours and The phone rang Again, so there was probably more than a hint of petulance in my voice when I picked up the phone and I said hello And I was sure it was some GS 12 back in Langley. He was going to harass me about something or other And instead there was a pause at the other end of the line And a voice said did I wake you son? Good God. It's the director. I Was not on the habit of being phoned up by George Tenet And so I did the only thing I could do I I lied I said no no mr. Director. I was just getting up. He said look We're gonna be meeting in just a few hours at Camp David The principal's committee the war cabinet And we're gonna be considering the war plan for Afghanistan So the Pentagon is telling us that there are very few military targets in all of Afghanistan They're gonna run out of targets really quickly We know we're all the terrorist training camps are but they're all empty the terrorists have all run away and he literally said Do we bomb empty camps? Now think about this This is 12 days after 9-eleven the first the worst one-day disaster in American history since Pearl Harbor and George Tenet at the Center of American Power in Washington DC is bypassing the entire chain of command To call me on the phone and say what do we do? If you didn't know we were in trouble before you knew we were in trouble now So I gathered my thoughts together. I said, well, you know, mr. Director I'm not sure we're thinking about this the right way that this isn't primarily a Military problem that this this is actually a political problem. And yeah, we're probably gonna have to use military means But they're gonna have to be calibrated in such a way as to achieve a political end What we need at the end of the day is for some responsible Political element in Afghanistan to be able to control its territory and deny it as a safe haven for international terrorists We can probably chase bin Laden and I'll cut it out of the country But only Afghans can keep them out Unless we're gonna colonize Afghanistan and that was inconceivable So he started to walk through it and he was taking notes and asking me questions and I said look mr. Director This isn't this isn't gonna work. This is taking too much time. Let me just write this all down So he said good idea was after 11 o'clock on Saturday night his time early Sunday morning my time He said the helicopter comes for me at 5 o'clock in the morning to take me to Camp David. Can you get something to me by then? I said yes, sir. I can't So I drove to the office banged out an eight-page message in about three hours by this time I seen you lieutenants were in the office. I I shared it with them. They gave me some Some very good advice made some changes and sent it off with instructions to Director tenets security team that was to be given to him as soon as he woke up So he did he took a look at it. He sent copies to the other members of the war cabinet to rice and to Cheney and to Rumsfeld Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and I had no idea what was going on, but they discussed it That Sunday up at Camp David in the following morning. They met with the president in the situation room and briefed him and he said done This is the template Going for it And then it said okay. Well, I'll put Grenier in touch with Tommy Franks commander of CentCon senior military commander For the war that was to come And make sure that his battle plan is In line with what we've just agreed So what was it that we said was I said before we said look this isn't primarily a military problem This is a political problem at the end of the day. We have to have some Political dispensation in Afghanistan that will deny the country as a safe haven for international terrorists And if the Taliban will be that power Then so much the better if some other faction within the Taliban is willing to push Mullah Omar aside and change policy And so much the better But if that doesn't work and if as is likely we have to turn to somebody else There we have to be very very careful because if we just enter this war as a Party with the Northern Alliance, which as we all know had been locked in a civil war with the Taliban for years If we simply come in as a party to a civil war the customs Many of whom are now opposed to the Taliban will recoalesce most likely around the Taliban It will make the situation worse rather than better So Pristunes have to be a part of the solution and at the time I said that with a lot of confidence because we had been working We the CIA had been working for months Meeting with dissident Pashtun tribal leaders in the south and east of Afghanistan These were people who had been pushed aside by the Taliban in most cases many of them that were highly disaffected Some of them were fighting on behalf of the Taliban against the Northern Alliance But they were looking for an opportunity to come back into power. They'd been eclipsed and so after the negotiation That that Peter spoke of I spent about eight hours in total two different meetings with Mullah Osmani to try to get him to break with With Mullah Omar and to change policy. I briefly succeeded, but not well enough His agreement to do so didn't didn't survive his return to Kandahar And so we turned to all these tribal leaders and we said this is your opportunity You've been looking for an opportunity to rise up against the Taliban Well now when you do it, you'll have the full weight of American military power behind you But my optimism was misplaced almost to a person They demerged you survive in Afghanistan by making sure that you come in on the right side of the fight They wanted to make sure that the Americans were serious They wanted to see which way this war was going to go before they stuck up their heads Possibly had them cut off by the Taliban There were only two tribal leaders of any note Who were willing to go in on their own and try to foment a rebellion in the Pashtun areas of the country against it the Taliban One was Hamid Karzai Came up really well. Thank you very much And the other was Gulagashirzai former governor of Kandahar And so much of this book is taken up with the story of those two tribal leaders and the improbable effort which ultimately culminated in What we thought was the defeat of the Taliban the dispersal of al-Qaeda When Kandahar fell 88 days after 9-11 We can talk about that in a whole lot more detail if anyone is inclined It's a great great story particularly Hamid Karzai. I would not have given I wouldn't have given a dime for Hamid Karzai's life for on many occasions Shorten my own life expectancy by at least ten years. I'm absolutely certain of that But there was another parallel war that we were fighting at the same time as al-Qaeda was fleeing from Afghanistan They were fleeing in the first instance into Pakistan. And so we American intelligence the FBI were working hand-in-glove with the infamous Pakistani intelligence service the ISI to arrest these people and ultimately they made up a fair proportion of the population of Guantanamo But with regard to the Taliban The situation was always a lot more complicated and we can talk about that as well There were other adventures along the way these 88 days were a very very improbable Time and more than anything more than anything else. I think we were we were just lucky There was a group of Pakistani scientists nuclear scientists associated with an organization called Umat Ameri now the head of which Nuclear scientists himself of considerable renown was in touch with bin Laden and with al-Qaeda And there was a distinct fear a palpable fear in Washington that he may have provided nuclear materials and possibly God forbid even a nuclear weapon to al-Qaeda That got people's attention We also had a near brush with war between India and Pakistan in the spring of 2005 And I need to remind you that these are two nuclear armed states It was also a very improbable story about the rescue of a group of missionaries mostly Germans and Americans Who had been arrested by the Taliban before 9-11 and who again improbably made good their escape and CIA With JSOC managed to rescue them in the end But the victory itself that came on December 7th, 2001 frankly came too easily. I Never ever thought it would be that easy I I greatly feared at the outset that we would end up like the Soviets and the British before us and In retrospect, I can say that we didn't fully understand how or why we had supposedly won this war And therefore we didn't understand just how fragile this supposed victory was and how easily it could be reversed I think there were catalog of errors that we as an agency we as a government made in those early months and ultimately years after our supposed victory in 2001 and our days Traveled elsewhere. We went off to Iraq. I myself as Peter mentioned went off to it to become the CIA mission manager for Iraq Spent two and a half years of my life focused on Iraq and by the time I came back focusing once again on Afghanistan and Pakistan among other things this time as the head of counterterrorism for the CIA I went off To Pakistan into Afghanistan made an extensive trip in the spring of 2005 And I didn't fully understand it at the time But already you could begin to see that the situation was starting to slip away The Taliban was beginning to reassert itself in the postion areas some postion areas of the country And then I would argue that in response we as a country made a huge strategic error Back in the beginning when I wrote that paper for George Tennant and the principles committee what we said was Look, we will be making a huge mistake if we appear like invaders And even more so if we appear like occupiers of Afghanistan If we are to prevail here, Afghans must be in front. We have to support the right parties But at the end of the day, it's Afghans that have to achieve this victory. It's Afghans who have to lead this victory We mustn't Give any indication that we're looking for permanent basis Afghans in front Americans behind and in 2005 we forgot those principles. This became an American war We decided in effect that Afghanistan was too important to be left to Afghans We had a hundred thousand American troops at the height additional forty thousand troops from NATO We were spending a hundred billion dollars a year. We completely overwhelmed this small primitive agrarian countries NASA national institutions and now we can see the result with the US withdrawal Substantial US withdrawal from Afghanistan and I fear Then in the not too distant future although the front lines of the global jihad have shifted Right now. We're all focused on the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria We're concerned about al-Qaeda in Yemen al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and elsewhere So the front line and the focus has shifted And it may take a very long time to roll the Islamic State back. I'm I feel fairly certain about that But ultimately they will be These are people who at the end of the day will not have the support of the majority of Muslims And the day may well come in the foreseeable future when they will be looking for another safe haven I greatly fear that they will find it In Afghanistan and the mistakes of the recent past will come back once again to haunt us Peter was very kind a few minutes ago. He didn't mention just how long it took me to write this book I started I think you were the first person I ever talked about I think writing this book with it Just after I left CIA in 2006 and you know, I'm glad that I didn't write it then Because if I'd written it then it just would have been an adventure story and Frankly that is the heart of the book I still kind of see it as an adventure story, but it's an adventure story that's bracketed in a much larger story the story of how we Won the first American Afghan war how we lost or at least certainly didn't win the second American Afghan war and How the heiress of the past may yet be revisited when once again We may be called upon to fight a third American Afghan war. Thank you very much That was that was great and a very sobering kind of conclusion, and I guess you know just going to the conclusion. I mean It seems to me that the 2016 deadline is very caught up with President Obama's You know basically promises to himself and the American people about ending America's wars And it you know not coincidentally the withdrawal coincides almost exactly with his departure from office So I think is it conceivable? You know that Hillary Clinton or whoever wins a Democratic nomination or Jeb Bush or whoever wins the Republican nomination Maybe even on their platforms would say actually You know, it's not such a good idea that we've already run this movie before in Iraq Look what happened. Why would we take the risk of this happening again in Afghanistan when we know What you know what one possible outcome could be from this which doesn't look that great? I mean, I mean to me it seems fundamentally irresponsible to be talking about this December 2016 will turn the lights out and go because most Afghans want us to stay as far as I can tell I think our Pakistani friends don't want Afghanistan to just collapse into some sort of civil war They don't want the Taliban to come back and rule in Kabul So do you anticipate that there will be you know I mean we have a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan going till 2024 we have the so it's already in place You know, this is just a so do you anticipate that there will be changes in this policy? Well, the concern that I have is already I mean you can talk about 2016 I'm concerned right now with with the absence of US combat troops That having made what I regard as a grievous mistake and having tried to do too much 2005 onward now. We are compounding that error by trying to do too little yeah, and I think part of the difficulty for us and Domestic politics with other people in this room understand a whole lot better than I do plays into this in a way because Americans are not used to fighting partial wars They're very unsatisfying Americans if they're gonna fight a war they want to go in they want to win and then they want to get out They don't want to do long wars. That's for sure. They don't want to do long wars so they're not open-ended wars and and President Obama when he made you know that famous, you know second rollout of American policy in Afghanistan on December 1st of 2009 up at West Point. He made it very clear. He said we we will not engage in an open-ended struggle an open-ended nation-building operation of ten years or more By the way, was that kind of I mean there was a huge mixed message if you go back to that Huge oh, yes because I remember being a CNN You know the crawl the CNN even before the speech because we have the speech was you know We're gonna pull out in 18 months. So, you know, he announced the surge and the withdrawal at the same time Yes, was that too clever by heart? I That's the way I looked at it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think and I'm quite I'm not opposed to this administration. I'm not politically motivated here, but I I'm quite I've been quite harsh in fact in the book I'm quite harsh about that decision and the way that he did it and I describe it there and Believe that this was essentially an exercise in misdirection that he didn't want to say no to the military He didn't want to be seen in the context of domestic politics to be saying no to the military And so basically he said go ahead knock your socks off, but you get in 18 months and They knew that this was not enough time to do what they were setting out to do now Mind you, I would not have launched that surge in the first place I right I thought it was it was the wrong way to go about it did blunt the Taliban momentum It did but they were making gains which were foreseeable But it was also just as foreseeable that those were gains that could not be sustained by the Afghans You know at that time before the surge announcement. There was a kind of a debate within the Pentagon and there was one Kind of group who said go long go light and you know looking back at it that might have been the smartest So I think one of our problems has always been telling the outcasts. Hey, we're gonna we're gonna be here But actually we're only for nine months or you know, whatever I mean, right they want to everybody sort of wants us to kind of establish what it's that it's a long-term thing They were not gonna turn off the lights, but they don't want this heavy footprint, right? So to get back to answer your question Could there be a change in policy? Absolutely there could particularly, you know if Islamic State gets a foothold in Afghanistan we begin to see this in a whole different light Depending on what happens elsewhere in the in the global jihad But again, I'm not we may be a see a change in policy We may see a larger American footprint, but I'm still not at all comfort that we're gonna do it, right and If you had to sum it up in a phrase I think the phrase that Peter uses just right go go long and go light I think that we need to be focused on a sustainable effort in Afghanistan the United States It's a large and powerful country. I mean if if we We can do things for a long period of time Provided that what we're doing is actually sustainable that the surge the the surge in Afghanistan was simply never sustainable So I think that we need we ought to have two objectives One is to make sure that the government and Kabul cannot be overthrown And I think a major component of that is training and equipping a small Sustainable but effective Afghan army But not pretending that we're ever going to be able to create an Afghan army that that's going to be able to occupy The country and actually control it militarily no conceivable Afghan government will ever have the resources To do that so I think that we need to be helping Kabul to engage in counterinsurgency within the ambit that it can properly control and aid other elements in insurgency against the Taliban in Areas that are beyond the eminence of Kabul now you're not going to have as many allies as you want You're not going to have them where you want them. You're not going to have them when you want them so the effort has to be Opportunistic and I think it has to be open-ended but nothing is static in Afghanistan and Eventually the Taliban is going to understand that you know what we're not going to prevail in this war now Do I think that that's ever going to be a peace agreement? Do I do I think we're ever going to see a coalition government including the Taliban? No, I don't I don't think that they are capable of it Frankly, I don't think that's their mindset these are absolutists they're fundamentalists and My thinking has been influenced by Mullah Zayif of Islam Zayif who was the Taliban one of the founders of the Taliban Taliban ambassador in Pakistan when I was there I had opportunities to speak with him since that's a very interesting conversations and he says you know We shouldn't be doing what we're doing It's not because he's a he's opposed to the Taliban far from it, but he says we should not be engaging in politics We are a social force We should be there to make sure that whoever is in power is appropriately adhering to Islamic precepts That I think is ultimately that's interesting because that's right I really where they were coming from when they took when they sort of that's right And I think that was really a genuine impulse at the beginning that that was an impulse and like a lot of people They fell victim to mission creep and power right I mean going back to the Taliban because I mean one of the you know I've talked to Bob extensively about this and it's really I think I really and it's obviously a very important part of your book But this negotiation with Mullah Usmani is really critical because I think history could have turned out very differently I mean Mullah Usmani I tell us about who he was he obviously came with Mullah Omar's blessing He you had a real serious conversation with him about having over bin Laden He didn't say that's a ridiculous idea. So tell us about that Yeah, I'm shortly after 9-11 I had I'd been in regular touch with the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban Mullah Jalil and He was not a CIA source. I can tell you that but we were we were talking back and forth via satellite phone And I think he was he was very very clever fellow still is I guess I don't know whatever happened that to Mullah Jalil disappeared from view but He's a very clever fellow and he wanted to see if he could find some formula that would get Afghanistan out from under UN sanctions that would somehow square that this circle and Shortly after 9-11. I got a phone call from him and he said would you would you meet with us and I said absolutely I would and I was very encouraged by the fact that the person who was going to be accompanying him was Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Asmani who was the southern zone commander for the Taliban He was the day fact. He wasn't he didn't have the title of being the number two within the Taliban but de facto he was the number two figure in the Taliban very very powerful figure and And somebody who we knew from our intelligence was which was actually quite good That he personally did not like bin Laden didn't personally like al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda had actually a lot of enemies within the Taliban itself and There were a lot of reasons for that that that we could catalog and we knew that that Mullah Asmani Didn't like them. So I I was tremendously encouraged by this. I said aha. Ha. He's the one person I really want to talk to a he can actually do something and be he doesn't like them so we met in a hotel in Quetta and He explained to me at the outset that Mullah Omar knows that we are here He is he has sanctioned this meeting and he has asked us to see if we can if we can come to an arrangement with you and He made it very clear that he could agree to nothing I made it clear that I could agree to nothing But at least we could come up with perhaps some way of solving this problem that we could then go and Present to our elders and betters and Mullah Jaleel was just was the note-taker and the witness from all my and we had a very interesting Conversation and at the outset You should read it At the outset He said look he said we don't like this man bin Laden He's a problem for us as we know he's a problem for you. We need to find a way that we can solve this Now we're talking So I said okay. How do you propose to do it? He said well? What do you think? so I laid out a Range of different options that I thought might satisfy Washington and solve this problem for us and all the way down the list Catalog of me said no that won't work that won't work that won't work So finally in frustration that I said well, okay, what do you propose? He said well? We'll take your ideas to Mullah Omar and we'll see what he decides a couple of weeks later We met again this time is on the 2nd of October and by this time Mullah Omar had come out and and made it very very clear He was not going to turn his back on bin Laden despite the fact that he had an excuse to do so that the Ulama But 7,000 religious scholars had met at his invitation in Kabul and They came out with a rather sly response because he said tell us what is the Islamically correct thing that we should do About about this lad bin Laden and they they said well, we shouldn't expel him But he should leave So he at least had the thin edge of a wedge there I thought if you wanted to turn that to his advantage She could if he was looking for an excuse to turn bin Laden absolutely refuse So when I met again with Mullah Osmani again in Quetta on the 2nd of October, I said look Why sorry I said look Mullah Omar has in effect declared himself a permanent enemy of America will arrest of the Taliban joining and We went off to it on a long conversation and like most of our conversations. It was very circular and in the end He was in despair. It was it was amazing. He's physically imposing man huge man Tough gruff obviously that the full Taliban beard. This is a warrior Didn't you offer him the some advice about how to do a coup? I did And so and and he's he was like he was corn. I could I could see him shrinking in front of me He realized that his leader was not gonna back down. He realized the Americans were we're gonna were undeterred that we were gonna be coming And he had a very bad feeling about the future you could tell and He took off his turban. I'd never seen a pristine do that outside of a family So he took his his turban off laid it aside And he said what should I do? So I said look you've just said Mullah Omar is bound by a Promise to bin Laden you are bound by no such promise You are the one person within the Taliban movement who can push Mullah Omar aside. Nobody's saying that he should be hurt But you need to push him aside you need to hold him in commuter kaito And you must do to save your movement to save your country what he himself cannot and I years before I had read You know Coup d'etat by Edward look but I could just see all the different elements He laid out, you know, what do you do? You know traditionally if you have a cruise I just went down the list take the radio station take the radio state critical You know sees all of the ministry make sure you have your soldiers in all in all the major intersections Make sure that they are there if they're if there are any Forces that are not under your command you must neutralize them But critical take over the radio station and denounce and announce what you're doing say you're following that the dictates of the Ulama After all they were the ones who empowered Mullah Omar and now you are fault you are carrying out their orders where Mullah Omar Will not and then you have to go off and see has been lot and you have to catch the 14 other people We said you must catch him etc. Etc and he said I'll do it But first I will bring your proposals to Mullah Omar. I'm oh my god. Here we go again Okay, okay fine, but Mullah Omar is gonna say no And then you have to seize power He said I'll do it and it was it was like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders I mean in that it was kind of like Bill Clinton when he said it I think he meant it and he he jumped up out of his seat and he wrapped me in a hug and Then we went off and we had lunch and and he was he was buoyed by this So there was something else though that I knew and that I couldn't tell him and that is that the bombing was gonna start in five days Time you're gonna start in the 7th of October all I could say was hurry And so we had a series of conversations before the the bombing started and I said, you know Are you gonna go ahead? He said I'm thinking about it Have you spoken to anybody else? Are you are you talking to anybody else in the within the the shirt to help? You said no, I have to do this on my own if I'm gonna do it and We arranged a call for the 7th of October and The day came and went No phone call the bombs fell that night. We spoke the following day He was not in a good mood Okay, I remember he started shouting at me really really soon after the the conversation started and Couple of days later. We spoke again. He said I can do nothing until the bombing stops And that was that was the last time that we spoke so I mean at the end of the day And some of you may have seen an article an excerpt from the book that appeared in that in the Atlantic online and You're sort of suggesting that if only we'd given this a little bit more time that maybe it would have worked I like to think so but in fact if I had to bet my federal pension I would say no and in fact in the In the the cable that I wrote right after my meeting with with Usmani on the 2nd of October I said, you know, he he had conviction when he said that he would do it But in the end I don't think he will and the reason that I gave so I thought he lacked imagination I didn't think at the end of the day. He could see himself in this kind of a role What about the sort of a Related question, which is you know, there were a lot of Taliban who seemed to want to surrender in The early December period to Hamid Karzai and they were excluded from the bomb Discussion, I mean, yes, my How history might have been different if I think history might very well have been different if you know, not only we the US government and that the international community had had a Different and more realistic attitudes. I think like the Brahimi who played a key role For the UN and all of this since has said, you know, we we should have taken account of the fact that the Taliban was not going to completely Go away. They were a social movement They had a certain sway, but there were two major factors One was that you know, we were fighting a global war on terrorism and these people had allied themselves with the terrorists How were we going to make them a part of the of the solution and secondly? I think our victory was deceptively easy and Having been terrified at the outset that we were gonna end up in a very very bad place that we're gonna be fighting in an open-ended Gorilla war in Afghanistan. No clear objectives. No clear enemy That ultimately we would end up like this like the Soviets when it turned out quite differently I thought well, you know, maybe maybe I shouldn't have worried Maybe they really are a spent force and in fact I do think that they would have been a spent force that had you know, I've had Afghans been wiser had we been wiser that A new political dispensation could have arisen in Afghanistan Which would obviate the need for a Taliban or at least for a Obviate the need of a political role for for the Taliban. By the way, I've spoken to Dr. Abdullah And I've in the past and I've asked him what could you live with and this was a conversation many years ago in terms of a Taliban And he's you know, perfectly happy with Taliban district governorships even provincial governorships. I mean, I agree with you I for them to be like playing a big role in the coalition government. I don't see that But does I mean in parts of the country? There's no reason why they shouldn't engage in conventional politics, but they don't seem to want to do it No, no, I mean that their their sights are far higher right now And I think it's gonna take some time to to lower their side You spend a lot of time with Hamid Karzai when he came into office, you know after the bond agreement He was the world's greatest human being. Yes, he leaves office as the world's worst human being Neither of these things can be simultaneously true, right? So tell us about the Hamid Karzai that you knew did he change over time? Could we you know too many rose colored spectacles initially? He doesn't really deserve the blame that he's been heaped on now What what's your view? Yeah, and and Mind you, I wasn't able to watch the evolution of Hamid Karzai firsthand So I I met with him again on that trip that I mentioned in the 2005 I left CIA in early 2006 and you know since then all I know is what I read in the papers, but Yeah, I have a lot of sympathy for Hamid Karzai, I think that he is he is a fundamentally well-intentioned Individual even in the days when I was dealing with him. He was he was Jarringly mercurial. I mean he tended to follow the advice of the last person to whisper in his ear So the trick was to be the last person to whisper in his ear And and legitimately he was in a very difficult place Yeah, and as he was going through his negotiating process, you know with with the Taliban He was he was talking on the phone with with all of the leading members of the Shura And but he's got the Americans over his shoulder and and the Americans are implacable, you know, no negotiation with with international terrorists and so that You know de facto excluded the whole leadership of the Taliban with whom he was negotiating And so he had to be very very careful that he wouldn't lose the support of the Americans and of the International community, but he also understood Afghan politics And I think he also understood instinctively that we do not want it be engaging in urban warfare in Kandahar We didn't have the forces for it for one thing And Hamid Karzai himself probably only had I don't think he had any more than 350 Fighters with him at any given time. Can you imagine? So essentially he was a lightning rod for the USA Air Force Gula Gashirzai actually had a while he now already survived been killed by the US I force and then yes, his friends very nearly killed him at the battle of Shawali code just north of Of Kandahar and in fact on the very day that he negotiated the quote-unquote surrender of Of the Taliban Gula Gashirzai on the other hand did have a substantial force. He had about 1500 fighters Although he's sort of a footnote to history. So I Think Karzai was the right figure to turn to I think he was a unifying figure He legitimately was somebody who wanted to unify the country. He was able to build bridges Always had tried to build bridges to to other elements in in Afghan society I think that it was important that you had a push tune in that position. Yeah, but Over time Living with the United States could not have been easy. I mean essentially and this this is no reflection on Karzai, this is more of a reflection. I see he essentially became a puppet and The fact that the Taliban would not talk to him In fact that the Taliban was willing to talk to the Americans about the conditions under which they would withdraw from Afghanistan But they wouldn't talk to Humid Karzai that must have been excruciating for him We don't want to talk to the puppet. We want to talk to the puppet master So he was essentially powerless in his own country and I think that that was very very difficult for him And I can understand why he developed the the animosity tortoise that he had by the one quick final question before We were aware that bin Laden was at the battle of Torah bar in real time No, I I was not I I could see the I was sitting in Islamabad and Gary Bernstein who was the the head of Team Juliet that was up in the the Torah Bora area around around Jalalabad. They were Working with with Afghan militias to try to hem in these al-Qaeda fighters that were up there in In those mountains on the the Afghan side of the Safed co and I could see some of the message traffic that was coming through I knew that they were convinced that bin Laden was there precisely what that was based on at the time I didn't know I read what you all have read and of course I've read about you know the the intercepted radio transmissions Etc. Etc. I think that this whole period is still wrapped in a lot of Mystery and I know that area. I've seen it I'm not sure that a battalion of us troops would have helped you to catch bin Laden You can lose a whole battalion agree But it was a tribe in one of those in one of those ravines and no was not tried What I think might have been effective would have been if you could have airlifted Significant number of us Rangers up into the the high passes and they were there were five passes that we identified that we thought that the Taliban rather the al-Qaeda was most likely to flee through You mentioned working with the ISI. That was a pretty close relationship at the time It was it was a very close relationship at the time and it was through my cooperation with the ISI that that the Pakistani army set up tripwires on On their side of the of the mountain passes turned out. They weren't all that effective It was a tribal lush cars on you know further much further down in the valley below Who actually captured a lot of these of these al-Qaeda fighters, but they captured about 130 of them And so I think that that is an effort Was was a relative success, but of course that they didn't capture bin Laden into this day I don't think we really know exactly how how he made his I think we wiki leaks is useful on this He went into Kunar So he did something very unexpected he didn't go to Pakistan. He went to Kunar that may that was a very smart way to do Okay, ladies and gentlemen questions if you can wait for the mic identify yourself Yes, my name is Joel Hedger. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran made two trips overland Afghanistan and 71 and 72 It's a long time ago now. I have a couple questions. I could have done what you did Question one in in the 1950s there was talk about a Pashtunistan to be carved out of Afghanistan and Pakistan It didn't go anywhere for whatever reasons and The second position had a lot to do with it. I suspect second question would be the shinwari in Jalalabad I thought we signed a treaty with them. Do we did did we do anything with a mangala is another tribe? I'm sorry that we signed a treaty with the shinwari in Jalalabad. We signed a separate treaty with them. Is that true? I'm I'm but maybe somebody else can help me on your wilder. I'm not I'm not aware I mean, I think I think the the the concept of dealing with legitimate tribal forces in different parts of Afghanistan who are Loosely at best affiliated with with Kabul is probably a wise one yet. One has to be very very careful about it But so I'm not opposed to that sort of thing in in principle But and I'm sorry the first part of your question was Oh Well, you know, it's really interesting You see in the book I had this when I had a long conversation with with Hamid Karzai in the spring of 2005 I It was not a very focused conversation Hamid was being Hamid frankly and and You know, he spent a lot of time talking about just that And you almost if you hadn't known better You would have thought that you know at any given time if if only he he desired to do so That he could have taken all these areas and moved to move the drain line to the to the Indus River So Andrew Wilder of that and yeah, the pastuna size Mike Andrew correct me if I'm wrong Also was more of a sort of secular even Marxist kind of idea. There was a red Gandhi Yes, who was leading it and it wasn't a Taliban like idea at all That's that's absolutely right. And of course, you know true Islamic fundamentalists don't believe in dividing Muslims They want to they want to unify Muslims. And so they're not they're not interested in a push through this down Thank you very much Andrew Wilder US Institute of Peace I wanted to come back to one of your earlier remarks about Your first memo and trying to highlight the fact that this is primarily a political issue and just sort of trying to find hard military targets to bomb was really not the Solution but I was wondering if you could build on that a little bit more So I think what it's always struck me is I mean, I've never did figure out what our political strategy was in Afghanistan And we always had a military strategy or there were a coin strategy or CT strategy, and then we had lots of development money But to what political end and it seemed to me Including with a lot of the agency work bags of cash that became the strategy Short-term buying off allegiances, maybe buying some intel a very tactical level But was clearly undermining the longer-term objective of trying to build a more credible legitimate government And ultimately it was this corrupt and predatory government, which is probably the biggest driver of the insurgency And yet a lot of our own policies including the Rearming of the largely discredited jihadi leaders in the very early days which seemed to me again tactically would make sense To defeat the Taliban in those first two months But then okay you've used them to achieve that objective then let's discard them because that was one of the few Popular things the Taliban did do is actually get rid of all those jihadi leaders and disarm most of them And we very effectively Rearmed them and made very unpopular people powerful again, and they then took over and captured the government Which then is I think one of the big factors delegitimizing it So I think this lack of a political strategy if you could say a bit more about that. Yeah, what it's It's a I think it's easy to be critical and God knows that I've been critical mostly of others Somewhat less of But it's this is hard solution is really really hard and you know you talked about The first proposal I made I said well look You know we need to start with that with Malomar at that time Malomar hadn't Indicated that he refused to break with bin Laden And so we make the the offer to him if he refuses then then we smash him We we hope to kill him we came within 30 minutes of killing him in the first elbow in the war And things might have been quite different And I think I might have had a very different conversation with Malose money had Malomar actually been killed on the first night of the war as we hoped We said okay Well if he won't we hit him hard as as an object lesson to the others then we we tried to to reach out to other factions We're within the Shura if they refuse we hit them as well We have to smash that the Taliban then God knows how do we put this whole thing back together again? And so we were absolutely in a tactical mode. It was really wasn't much of a strategy We were making this up as we went along. Yeah, I was Military and we were all just making this up as we as we went along and Absolutely, we were trying to empower warlords How many cars I really wasn't much of a warlord Gulag Ashurzai was a was it was very definitely a warlord from his day And actually I wish we'd been able to make more deals with more warlords in the early on You know how many cars I was very nearly killed What would we have done then if we'd had no push to an allies at all in the south Made sense and I'm pathetic you're just well, you know, I would I would 13 years. I think is what yeah, well, I I would argue that yeah, we did actually have a Strategic US government ever strategic conception. It wasn't it wasn't really articulated in the Bush administration it was articulated pretty clearly by Obama at the start of his administration when they first rolled out their plan for Afghanistan in in March of 2009 and the the idea was that we were going to reinforce a highly centralized Afghan state with a centralized army and police force and that they were then going to Establish rule of law. They were going to establish gender equality. They were going to do development They were going to control their own territory, etc. Etc. Etc. And it You you simply couldn't do it certainly not on the kind of a timeline that we were willing to to to sustain and and so You know, I Later on you started here in the US military talking about you know Afghan good enough When you know the good has become the enemy of the perfect the perfect has become the enemy of the good We just need to kind of focus on what's good enough And I think that's really what we ought to have been doing from the outset and what I was saying at the time Was and from early on I actually wrote another paper when I came back from from Pakistan in the summer of 2002 Where essentially I didn't use the phrase but essentially what I was saying is we need to help Warlords Away from the center of power a to have a link with the center of power and B to be the best warlords they can be To try to make them as accountable as we can possibly Make them and you know, it's very interesting. You know, I just said one thing. I don't know if any of you have seen that a book by by Mullah Zaid my life in the Taliban and early on in that book He talks about Gulagashurzai during the time that he was governor in Kandahar and And he actually praises Shurzai. He was one of the two principal Pashtun opponents of the Taliban who threw him out and helped it to get him five years in In Guantanamo and he came back and he said, you know, this was a man who really did many good things for the people So was he gonna be, you know, your your poster boy for good governance in Afghanistan? Not likely But with a certain amount of guidance and the right sort of people on the ground willing to engage I think that we actually could have made a difference and one of the things that I do describe in the book that we as a government You know people people naturally Devolved to their comfort zone see I want to go back to doing what it does is which is collect intelligence and And chase terrorists, you know, AID wanted to do what they did military wanted to do what they did DEA wanted to do what they did and nobody was bringing this all together in a coherent Policy and I could see it speaking to my friends in dinner parties in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 Where they were all wrapped up in and what their respective agencies plans were none of it came together and Afghans themselves were always an afterthought Lady in front wait for the I'm a question because what you're just talking about About the agencies and the different groups not getting along in the 80s. I did research for CIA operatives. I come to CIA family I was 84. I kind of got stuck in my family lunch in Monterey Peninsula Country Club Got stuck into the I actually told mr. North when I was still 19 I don't think that ran things quite the best thing and but I was like you what you were talking about and then in the 93 I dated my Doris the FBI agent What's the question? But my question is is I noticed my friends CIA friends are very angry when I dated an FBI person And my issue is Do you see that still a problem today and also I'm not going to go into facts about 9-11 Did you see it a problem back then? Thank you. Okay, right Yeah short answer To your question is you know is the problem of interagency rivalry solved the answer is no and Obviously that the relationship between CIA and FBI is one that that particularly resonates with me because you know That's that's where that's where we all live and I remember you know doing a lot Peter mentioned I was I was head of training at CIA for three years And one of the things that I was trying to do was to you know create among you know these these young saplings They had not yet become twisted oaks To imprint in their brains that you know, we must cooperate with the FBI that they have their functions a distinct function We have our function and what we need to cooperate together You don't have to worry about your turf they do what they do we do we do it But we have to we have to come together to do it and what I what I just and I thought naively at the time that This was sort of a generational thing that you know if we solve this with the young people then they will pass it on to you There's and that you know the Millennium will come and everything what will be great. Well, guess what you know It's just something I don't it's original sin I tell you Freud Freud says the the narcissist the narcissist has been reminded differences. Mm-hmm. Yes the way he describes it I think explains a lot of human activity it It really does and and the thing is you could see young people coming up in the two organizations making exactly the same mistakes That that that their elders did so it's a long way of saying that this isn't something you can solve all much It's like gardening you got to keep at it all the time gentlemen with the glasses here on this computer Fascinating book dandelus Agence France press just if I could ask you to elaborate on two things that you already Referred to at least one of which one of one of the first thing is the book ends with you talking about the need for Western international US financial support for the government you just talk a little bit about that and then You also talked about your fears about the country becoming a haven again for Jihadists and possibly even Islamic State group if you could just talk about how real a threat that that is or could be Well I'm sorry the first part of your question was a bit money. Yeah, well absolutely. I mean I we should not forget that Najibullah who was the last communist ruler of Afghanistan didn't fall in 1989 the way a lot of people thought he would when the Soviet military left He only fell when the Soviets cut off the money and In fact, he was doing quite well during during the interim and he was using money very effectively I think the gentleman just asked you about this whole idea about about, you know money in Obviously, it's not a permanent solution. I mean we always just say you can't buy an afghan, but you can't rent him and obviously that That's not very sustainable over time But but it certainly worked for a certain length of time with Najibullah until until that the largesse Stop flowing and the concern that I have one of the main reasons I'm concerned about about the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan is not so much, you know Their role in fighting, but frankly their role is hostages that at the end of the day their governments are not going to follow through on their on their Promises for financial support of the government unless they have troops on the ground that they have to protect and So I'm very concerned about the international community particularly with our gaze shifting elsewhere essentially abandoning this regime and I think that that could have Disasters consequences and that that is linked to the second part of your question and that is, you know Well, could Afghanistan again become a safe haven well I would I would say if anything that the future threat of Afghan safe haven is maybe even greater than it was back before 9-11 we've got the issue with with Pakistan right now. There are groups within Pakistan that are dedicated to Attacking the the regime in Islamabad and they're they're not going to go away and At the end of the day if the Afghan Taliban is asked Whether they should be allowed to stay and to and to to benefit From from there at least passive support. They won't say no These people tend to see things in a very binary way. Is this is a certain course Is it dictated by Islam or is it not and they won't turn their their back on on the people who are Ideologically allied with them across the border nor I believe in the future will they turn their backs on international terrorists if If once again that they come back to the region in any significant numbers as I fear they will if their fortunes Take a bad turn elsewhere Supposedly killed this this recruiter for for Islamic State in Helmand province. Yeah, it's interesting I think that this is this is really sort of a branding issue Yeah, we had this proliferation of al-Qaeda chapters that were really not organic I don't to al-Qaeda itself But these were people who are trying to brand themselves in a way that would resonate with the populations to whom they were trying to Appeal and I think that we're seeing that flowing back in the other direction now with Islamic State gentlemen here next Thanks, my name is Amin. I'm a master student at SICE and my question is you mentioned you studied with John McLaughlin I haven't had the privilege taking his class yet You mentioned your last conversations with Malose money being in the towards the beginning of our bombing campaign and my question is What have been the obstacles or the reasons why we haven't tried to? Reestablish those contacts with their senior leadership perhaps 2007 onwards till today to maybe help Bring about a better end to this maybe a negotiated settlement or maybe See what the options are and as far as I know these efforts haven't been made, but perhaps they're just not publicly Known well this is a lot that that I don't know frankly about what has gone on in in recent years between the US and The Taliban leadership and we all know about you know these these sort of nascent deals that were made and the Taliban was going to Be allowed to establish an office and gutter and we were having discussions with with the Taliban Which never seemed to get very much traction and frankly. I never thought that they would I Felt that the Taliban was was enjoying enough success in its resurgence particularly in the in the Pushtun areas that They they were Quite they were happy to talk to the Americans again to negotiate the terms under which the Americans would leave But I don't think that they were ever serious about making peace and to me that the most clear evidence of that was that they Didn't want to talk to the Afghans. They didn't want to talk to the to the Karzai government And and I don't think that things are much improved At this point again because they they are in the in the resurgence right now I think that their aspirations will have to be blunted for some period of time Before they're going to begin to start to think seriously about other all by the way every time they've done an agreement with the Pakistani government They've reneged on it. We had it right multiple agreements with the Pakistani government So to talk about the Pakistani Taliban the Afghan Taliban is too very distinct. I don't I don't really buy that I mean this is a group that doesn't recognize the border They acknowledge mother Omar as their overall leader and there are more similarities and differences So, you know, I agree completely with Bob. Unfortunately It was always a pipe dream. We had you know one negotiation that worked about a very specific issue Which is both burgdoll, but the Taliban the big and Andrew Wilders is one of the world's leading experts on this issue here You know the big thing the Taliban never did is and they never explained what the vision of Afghanistan You know what they wanted, but you know, I wouldn't be getting the Americans out They didn't they never said look hey We're willing to have x y and z and the Constitution or anything I don't think it was possible to have a real negotiation. They weren't sort of you know Henry Kissinger is in waiting Who are willing to do a deal? In the front here Thank you. I'm interested in your thoughts on Mullah Omar continuing to be a lynchpin for the Taliban I mean, is that what here he still maintains that Mullah Omar is the call if Multiple groups in the region still maintain that. What do you think his removal would mean specifically to the Taliban? What kind of impact that would have? Yeah It's hard to say just how important Mullah Omar Still is my my suspicion is that he's still quite Important indeed. I think he's he's very respected and obviously no organization ever remains You know locked in time and there's been an obvious evolution with the Afghan Taliban in virtue of the fact that they have so many commanders now and they've been engaged in battle with the Americans NATO and with With the Afghan forces for so long and of course You always have to look at Afghanistan district by district to really kind of understand what the what the dynamics are But still at the end of the day, I think that that the authority of key figures Still is still important and I think that just that the respect that Mullah Omar would have with it In different circumstances where he was able to raise his his head up and to operate more openly I think that you would see I think you would see a lot of support for him now I just may be wrong and and frankly it's dangerous to talk sometimes with people like me Who's experience is is in the past because we tended to think of the world as sort of being being frozen from the other time That we were engaged Now this may not be your father's Taliban, but but I still think that that Mullah Omar is a significant figure Do you think to the movement of the Taliban? My suspicion is that it would be and the reason I say that is because I learned a lot of lessons about The way that the Taliban worked you know during these these 88 days and one of my principal teachers was a member of the ISI who'd worked with the Taliban for many many years and and and I could see The fact that other members of the Afghan Shura seemed to hold Mullah Omar in a tremendous Reverence as part of the reason why I was never able to really get traction at the end of the day with Mullah Osmani But and he explained to me something that I really didn't understand until he explained it to me And that was that Mullah Omar was yes. He was a very respected figure And he was he was admired. I think for his piety and and for For I guess that the strength of his leadership not a great thinker, but but a very strong Leader but also somebody who is very very clever at manipulating people in the context of Pashtun culture and All of the other key members of the Shura the the senior commanders that the governors Ministers There was a tremendous amount of distrust among them in dealing with one another and so Mullah Omar was at the center He was and they all sort of had individual spokes that that related back to him and what I found It was really interesting during the negotiations and and we had We were talking to various people and I was dealing with with Mullah Jaleel throughout the war And he was trying to get people together and you would maybe do talk to me and try to find a way out of this thing They could never come to an agreement amongst themselves with Mullah Omar not at the center of it And it was it was a it was an amazing thing And so I suspect at least among you know the leaders of that generation if you will the same is probably true now It would be very very difficult if not impossible for them to replace Well, Omar if you were to disappear I think that that that the power equation within that organization would change considerably Hi Arturo Jimenez you see her vine you talked about that at the beginning that one of the you you think that one of the key Strategic mistakes that the United States made was in 2005 the US just started doing too much and became perceived as an occupier and I'm wondering that once that Threshold has been reached is it possible to research reverse it? And if so how you know you talked about a little bit about that Changing the strategy to light and long and I'm wondering you know if you could talk a little bit more about that with you know This change of perception and focus on how do you make sure that the Afghani government is not perceived as a puppet of the United States? Or more broadly that the United States is not an obstacle to a political solution Yeah, I think that there were certain watersheds And the one that comes immediately to mind for me was December of 2009 President Obama was sort of a captive of His own rhetoric during the campaign We need to reinforce Afghanistan the good war instead of Iraq the bad war And if you looked at the plan that he rolled out in March of 2009, it was very ambitious to say the very least We were going to We was that the 3d's we were going to defeat the grade destroy destroy do bad things to all title dismantle right And and we were going to defeat the Taliban and then we're going to do all these all of these other wonderful things For Afghanistan and Afghanistan at the end of the day would look more like a look more like Ohio well, I thought at the time that that was unrealizable and He too concluded that it was unrealizable when he named a new commander in Afghanistan Stan McChrystal who went out and did his commander's review and said oh my god This is a whole lot worse than I ever thought and was thinking that he was going to need 60,000 additional US troops We are told in order to to make sure that we're not defeated by the Taliban at that point The president said wait a minute. This is not what I signed up for so great We have all of these very ambitious aspirations for Afghanistan, but when you saw the price tag Hang on a minute. We need to reconsider this whole thing and I think that if in December of 2009 when he rolled out the new plan if he had launched something if you said in effect go light go long and It focused on sustainability rather than this this ill-fated surge I think history might have been might have been quite different. I don't know if that helps answer your question Thank you. I'm Charles Hornbostel office of Afghanistan affairs US Department of State So we've talked a lot about What didn't necessarily go right and where we are now, but we are in the world that we're in so what? Looking at how things are now. We have a government of national unity in Kabul now We have president ghani. We have a chief executive Abdullah what what needs to happen What does the international community in the United States need to do to help this be a going concern? What would be your your considered advice based on your experience of what we need to do going forward to ensure that this Government continues talked about throwing money at the problem. Okay, we talked about doesn't need to change a timetable But I mean on the political front we talked about the political side. So on the political side, but what do you think needs to happen? Yeah, I think you know, obviously I think I think US needs to be engaged and I don't know I don't have insight into the relationship Princess between the current US and US ambassador and president ghani I think that that we we need I Think when Zal was the ambassador to Afghanistan, I think that he had it very right He wasn't at all shy about about getting actively involved using American influence You know trying to get Afghans in different places different times different roles to answer the better angels of their nature I don't think we should be shy about that But at the end of the day, it's Afghans who are actually gonna gonna make this happen or not And as I mentioned before I think that the critical thing is that we We continued to support the government in Kabul in in a sustainable way I think that you know, frankly much into others in this room can speak to this far better than I can in terms of US reconstruction that we've thrown away huge amounts of money. We have however seen Small-scale locally led projects that have actually worked extremely well. They take a lot Long they're slow that they require patience, but I think that they are effective over time Obviously, they can only be done in places where where there's a relative security But in those places where it can be done I think that it needs it needs to continue with regard to the military I think again, we need to be focusing on sustainability for the Afghan army You have to be in this for the for the long term and we need to help them to To control that the territory that they can literally can legitimately aspire to control Unfortunately, that leaves out Many areas in Pestunistan And I think in those areas again, we need to be willing in conjunction with with the Afghan government To to help those who are willing to oppose Taliban domination in their in their small areas To engage in insurgency against against the Taliban. It's not going to lead to a quick victory Americans don't like playing for a tie But over time things evolve. I think if we are if we are there we are engaged We have an open-ended structure. We are sustainable and we are opportunistic that we can make a difference over time and that Eventually politics will find its own level in Afghanistan will be in a better place and less likely and and and if and at least Areas that would otherwise be uncontested Terrorist safe havens will be contested. Terrorists may be the best that we can hope for My name is a Mikael Ben-Angi-Carran from the University of Montreal I was wondering if you know, you were talking about how it was important to vet a Pashtun before the start of the war You weren't mentioning many names like Karzai Oswanyi I was wondering if vetting Masoud was ever an option either for the CIA or he was dead Not really. He was already dead before the bombing started before the yeah And my other question is for do you consider drone drone strikes a force me to apply or for the counter-terrorist missions that you are implementing or more of a Strategic liability the question. Yeah, I think I think drone strikes are both And it gets back to this whole issue of you know, sort of the long-term strategic changes and short-term Tactical issues and I and it's very easy, you know, particularly from me from an armchair to say well, you know These using drones in the way that they have been used in the Pakistani tribal areas to create more enemies than Then have been removed from the battlefield and we need to be judicious but at the same time I can fully understand that you know from the perspective of The US government particularly the US military when these militants are crossing the border and they're killing your people You have to do something about it. You can't just sit on your hands and say well, you know, we don't you know First you know do no harm. You got to do something about it That said and again, this is so much easier to describe than it is actually to do in practice That said I think we we need to be judicious and I think where we took potentially a wrong term turn was in rather than Using drone strikes as a counter-terrorism tool properly so-called. It was a long time where where you know, you didn't want to be the number three person in in al-Qaeda you didn't want to be that the The operational coordinator because your your life expectancy was very very short and there were series of them that they were killed Captured initially and then and then later killed in them in drone strikes but we then transitioned as as the number of Cross-border militants proliferated. We started using drone strikes more as a counter-insurgency tool Rather than a counter-terrorism tool as narrowly defined and I think it was when we started using Drone strikes in the in so-called signature strikes You know striking against large groups of people who seem to to fit a certain pattern of activity that you know, we the number of Civilian casualties went up markedly. I think that's when that's when we really began to turn the local population Against us and again while I can understand the reasons for it I think that we we may just have gone too far, but again, that's easy for me to say from My arm chair. I'm going to group two questions together because we're running out of time. I'm the first of all, thanks for your service Clint cap on grad student at American University and a service member Really just wanted to ask you over your experience the relationship between a civilian agency and a military agency within the Department of Defense Kind of using your eight eight page memo as a launch point you alluded that you had recommendations for General Frank's to to take an execution of the early onset of the mission Using that maybe a little bit more on the strategic side How do you see the gap between civilian and military? Organizations, do you see it widening remaining the same or Maybe those agencies are getting a little bit closer on recommendations and work practices. Okay, I have this gentleman here Mike Doffman with the State Department. I know you've made the point that you no longer work for the agency But based on your experience working in Islamabad has anything changed with Pakistan in terms of What they do and don't do in Afghanistan Yeah, well to get to the the first question first Yeah At the time that I wrote the piece that I described We were very much focused on the start of the air campaign and how should we marshal this and the idea was that you know We wanted to to use air power in a very targeted way so that we would hopefully first motivate Distant elements within the Taliban leadership to break with with Mullah Omar and and not to So not to attack them right at the outset and then ultimately try to empower pushed in tribal elements to turn against the Taliban if in fact We had to go that far as as obviously very quickly. We did in terms of how we would conduct the war Tactically You know, we were sort of making that up as we went along I was very much focused on as I would be the CIA relationship with these pushed in tribal leaders and You know, I sort of had this vague notion that we would have small numbers of US military that would be it would be with them and Their CIA political handlers if you will And particularly to to marshal US air power, but I didn't have a I didn't know frankly But then about the special forces and how they operated everything so it was a huge Very rapid education for me as well And I think that that we very we the civilian CIA and the military fell into our work Co-operative role very easily and very naturally And you know, it's interesting. It's been my experience that when you look at different agencies coming together on the ground Things often work Quite well if they if they have a common notion of the objective And they're serious about achieving that objective The pretending stops CIA can't do what the US military can do the military can't do what the CIA's Institution has been able to do with it with the with the institutional relationships that we had with Afghan Walters, etc So everybody kind of understands what their lane is and how they need to to to bring their respective talents and abilities together to To achieve a result on the ground the problem is always back in Washington So I think that there was it was a lot of restiveness on the part of secretary runs felt in the time You know why the hell we depending on the CIA do these things? Why don't we have these capabilities? Ourselves, why do we have to wait for these guys to go in and link up with that with Afghan warlords? You know we why can't you so and and it continued on when I was director of counterterrorism? Oh my god, you know all the time that we spent you know coming coming together with you know National war plans for the for the war on terror and and people arguing about well Who should take the lead on what objective went on what role it went? It was very clear who had the comparative advantage in the in these different in these different aspects of the war So it's usually that the folks back in Washington who muck all of this stuff up but but my experience it has been that the folks on the on the Working at the tactical level, you know are usually able again when they have a common conception of the objective to work very effectively together, so I don't know if that helps to answer your answer your question and Pakistan well, yeah, yeah things change well Yeah You know it was interesting in the first two years that I was in Pakistan We had we US government would launch had a very very bad relationship with with the Pakistanis we had we had sanctioned them very heavily for for ten years and And of course they had tremendous resentment toward the United States You know we were we were willing to deal with them and support them when it was convenient to us And then when it no longer was convenient to us We would we would turn our backs on them and obviously there's a great deal of truth in that narrative And I think that you know the one of the things that I could see very clearly even the time that I was there when things When relations after 9-11 were actually quite good it was still a tremendous amount of mutual incomprehension between the US and and Pakistan and Given the circumstances the fact that you had militants within Pakistan were playing an active role in Afghanistan that the fact that the Pakistani government was Was perceived as not doing enough About that problem The Pakistanis you know feeling that we were pushing them to do things and we did manage to push them to do things That that had very negative unintended consequences for them and for for which the US had very little appreciation so you can understand how you know during the The decade plus since 9-11. There's a tremendous amount of mutual resentment that would build up over time and And unfortunately a number of instances we've we've seen that We've seen that spill over and we've never really been able to speak honestly with one another about what our real Objectives are and what actually drives our respective Policies and unfortunately it has been ever thus, you know, they lie to us. We lie to them You know we want in some way we want them to lie to us, you know I mean the back when during the the anti-soviet jihad when when it was it was clear that the Pakistanis were developing nuclear weapons We didn't want to hear it So if we asked you the question you need to lie to us so that we can continue on doing what it is that we Need to do together that unfortunately that dynamic has characterized us relations with With Pakistan for a very long time, and I don't think at all that we have we've outgrown We recently had general Sharif on the stage here sitting in that chair and you know seems to me I mean the low point was 2011 for Raymond Davis the bin Laden raid. Yes, things seem to have normalized Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's much more normal things things that are certainly better And then and then the US cross-border attack in the moment which came up roughly around the 10 members I think you were 24 Pakistanis and you know We are Pakistani military killed Adnan Chukra Juma familiar to you because he was the American who was leading al Qaeda They just just recently. So I think things are on it upward The lady over here has been very patient. She's our final question. We've almost run out of time in the back Did you still have a question? Oh? I'm an independent consultant and I did want to congratulate Bob on a stellar effort But I realize having read the book that there is a sort of there are Rashomon type choices in the way you tell the story and One that really was striking to me was in fact the absence of the Pakistani Context the US Pakistani context which at the time seemed to inform both this US sense of regional options and US the US approach to Afghanistan so I wanted I realized you already commented briefly on how our relationship with Pakistan has changed But what are some of the elements that if you were telling the story from a US Afghan Pakistani perspective you might have added to your account Yeah, first of all, I should say I want to recognize you know Paulie for for her leadership And that particularly in the two years before 9-11 when she was the mission manager at CIA for for South Asia She was the one who was giving my my report card and and she was very tough and And I'm far more grateful for your toughness now than I was at the time But you did an absolutely brilliant job Yeah, what one of the things that I think I allude to in the book and probably don't Elaborate on enough and tell me Paulie if this is kind of getting it at your question That the extent to which our obsession with Afghanistan understandable as it has been Has sort of blinded us to the unintended consequences for a much more significant country in the grand scheme of things which is which is Pakistan and Things that we have done in Afghanistan have further radicalized A country across that the border where where radicalism was already a very very serious problem had it not been for For what we demanded of the Pakistanis and their at least limited Willingness to exceed to our demands. We would probably not have had a Pakistani Taliban So yeah, it's I'm not sure that that we have had you know a a holistic conception of our Regional priorities as we've gone through this this whole process and one of the things that I Highlighted was a conversation that I had early on this would have been early spring of 2002 Where they then relatively little-known major general by the name of Kayani Who who knew he had great things in his in his future? Where I was pushing him to send Pakistani troops into areas of the Parts of the tribal areas where we had consistent reporting indicating that Al Qaeda had taken Safe haven and at this time remember that the Indian and Pakistani armies were literally toe-to-toe at the border I I thought and and both myself and my counterpart and in New Delhi predicted that Pakistan and India would would actually go to war and I think they would have if it hadn't been for for rich armitage, but I would never forget their conversation general can he said to me he said look we could do what you're suggesting And if we continue to do it over time it's very likely that will trigger a tribal war and we've done that before and We could fight a tribal war and we will prevail, but I'm going to have to take three Brigades off the line in order to go and do that I said I don't dare do this unless I'm prepared to deal with the consequences the consequences Right likely will be will be tribal war. I can't spare those three brigades from the Indian border and You know and and his his fears were were Well-founded in fact they did end up triggering a tribal war in South Waziristan They had to occupy South Waziristan and we know the rest of the of the story They didn't want to reprise that same experience in North Waziristan, which has led to no end of trouble Between our country so Yeah, I think that in in pursuing this Understandable obsession with Afghanistan achieving our goals in Afghanistan. We we have removed our gaze from the the the Anticipated and but still unintended consequences of our actions in Pakistan. Does that get anywhere close to answering your question That's very helpful Well, thank you everybody we all want to thank Bob granny and also he's gonna sign books. So thank you, sir