 Hello and welcome to this event by Sowas is influencing the corridors of power project, also known as I cop. Our guest speaker is someone who's profoundly impacted my understanding of the world. And I'm sure many of you would say the same thing too. He's of course, the one only professor known Chomsky. Before we hear from him, I do need to tell you just a little bit about I cop. My name's Nina are if and I'm part of the I cop team. We're a group of students and academics led by Professor Allison Scott Bowman, and backed by so as the University of London. I mean, connects expert academics with members of Parliament, and we know some are among the audience today. So without further ado, I'm going to hand you over now to a remarkable philosopher, linguist, cognitive scientist and political activist among other things, Professor known Chomsky, and our host this evening, Joe Glenton. Joe is a bestselling author, journalist and filmmaker who once served with the British Armed Forces in Afghanistan, which is the topic of today's event. Just to let you know we've closed the live chat, but we do have our audience questions which were submitted prior to the event. So Joe, I'm going to hand it over to you now. Thank you Nina for that introduction. Thank you for joining us, Professor Chomsky. I'm very conscious that people are here for you, not me and I'll get, I'll get a chance to speak a little bit later on about my ideas. I just want to, just to frame this discussion, just go back about two decades and start with some of them, some of your analysis at the time when the, when the war in Afghanistan was about to begin. And I was going over some of your, some of your work from the time and wanted to revisit it and see, see how you looked at that work now and if it's still reflected your views. And so to ask, do you still stand by the comments immediately post 911. And you spoke in very strong terms you're an ardent opponent of the, of the wars. And you said that you had the USA had no legitimate grounds for going into Afghanistan, no matter how bad the Taliban were paraphrasing there. Obviously. And but can you just, can you just reflect for us on those views now and how they may have shifted, or how they may have become stronger in the 20 years which have passed. Yes. Good deal has been learned since, for example at the time of those comments. There's not no things that have been revealed later. So for example, turns out that eight months after the invasion of the, that's long after the comments you quoted, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, gave his first extensive press conference. He explained to the press that after the most intensive investigation in human history, the FBI suspected that al Qaeda and bin Laden were involved in 911, but they were not able to establish it. That's eight months after the invasion. And at the time of the remarks, we now know more. So it now turns out it's now being revealed that when the Taliban, a couple of weeks after the invasion, the Taliban, pretty much retreated to their villages. And they offered a full surrender, which of course would have meant handing over bin Laden and al Qaeda. They responded by saying, we do not negotiate surrenders. In other words, we're going to use force and violence. We don't care whether you surrender or not. And we don't care about bin Laden and al Qaeda. And that was actually followed up. That was Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense. It was immediately followed up by the president, George Bush, reiterated it when he was asked later, a couple months later, what do you know about the whereabouts of bin Laden? He said, we don't really care. We're not paying much attention to him. We have other things in mind. The other things that they had in mind later came out. We've known it now for about 17 or 18 years. The plans were, of course, to attack Iraq as soon as they had a chance. That was the real concern. But then to move on throughout the region, overthrow governments, install pro-U.S. governments, Afghanistan was just a side view. And in fact, the best reasons I've seen presented for the invasion were actually published in Britain and the Guardian, an interview with Abdul Haq, the leading, most respected, leading resistance, anti-Taliban resistance leader. He had an interview with a well-established Central Asia specialist in which he was asked, why do you think the Americans invaded? He said, they don't care about the Afghan people. They know they're going to kill a lot of Afghans. And they will undermine our efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within, which he thought were fairly promising. But they don't care. They just want to show their muscle and intimidate everyone. In other words, we don't negotiate surrenders. We just want to show our muscle, intimidate everyone, go on to carry out a broader interventions in the region. That was the goal. Was there any legitimacy? And I should say this invasion was undertaken on the assumption that they might be starving millions of people to death. A few days after the, when the invasion was announced before it had taken place, the U.S. cut off all food supplies from Pakistan to Afghanistan. This was with the understanding that millions of people, millions, U.N. estimated maybe up to 7 million people would be facing starvation. The bombing disrupted the, was right at the time which disrupted the planting. The provides about 80% of grain supplies. U.N. agencies predicted that would put millions of people at risk. But none of this was of any concern. Just as Al-Qaeda was of no concern, it was just as Al-Qaq, as Al-Qaq pointed out, show our muscle, intimidate everyone. We don't negotiate surrenders. Move on to the next much important, more important tasks of invading Iraq and extending our power in the region. Well, actually there's by now, you were there, you can talk from first hand experience, but there's been extensive reporting by the few reporters and human and aid activists who stayed on the ground all the time. People like Anand Gopal wrote extensively about this. I said at the very beginning, when the U.S. invaded, the people were hoping creep in the rural areas. Maybe there'll be peace. Maybe they'll be able to do something to help us. Within a couple of weeks that was gone, the U.S. invaders turned to people who could manage the local affairs for them, who were the warlords. The warlords who'd been ravaging the place were the people that the U.S. Army turned to. So they continued their activities. The U.S. reinstalled some of the worst and most brutal of the warlords who had their own local fiefdoms. And they, as Gopal describes, they realized they could use the American Army for their own purposes. They could inform U.S. intelligence, as it's called, that over in some other village somewhere, which happened to be their enemy, there were Taliban supporters. So the U.N. would move in, special forces would start smashing up people's houses, start bombing. Pretty soon you have more Taliban recruits. In fact, what happened was pretty well described by Roderick Braithwaite, he was the leading Afghan specialist. It was the British ambassador to Afghanistan during the, to Russia, sorry, during the last years of the Russian invasion and their withdrawal. The author of the major book on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, he returned to Afghanistan in 2006. He wrote an interesting article in the Financial Times worth reading. He spoke to a wide range of people, former Mujahideen, government people, women's groups, others. He said they were nostalgic about the period when the Russians were there and when the Taliban were in. He said it's much better than now. And they described Najib was the last figure that the Russians had installed as they were leaving. He said he seemed to be the most popular person in Afghanistan. And he ends up saying he doesn't know how much of this is myth, how much is reality. But at least it reflects what Afghans are thinking now after a few years of the invasion. This was in Kabul, not in the rural areas where it was much worse, of course. So I think that's the general picture. If you ask what I think about what I wrote then wasn't anywhere near strong enough. There was no justification whatsoever for the invasion. If the Americans had been interested in al-Qaeda and bin Laden, very likely that a small police operation would have sufficed, probably with the cooperation of the Taliban, who didn't want to have bin Laden around. They couldn't expel him because of the tribal culture, which doesn't permit him, but he was just a nuisance to them. They didn't want the Americans attacking them. So we don't know for sure, but they probably would have agreed. And we know that they did offer a couple of months later total surrender, meaning which alike, but we don't negotiate surrenders. Well, thank you Professor Chomsky for that answer. I just want to kind of, because there are some echoes of obviously aid agencies and certain Western governments are refusing to cooperate now. And there's talk of famine again in Afghanistan. So there are echoes of that period once again. And I suppose this is a nuanced question. The balance of power, the balance of forces in Afghanistan now. Who do we think are the legitimate? And I understand we might want to problematize the term legitimate, but the legitimate, if you like, players in Afghanistan, but also around Afghanistan, interested in Afghanistan. And I'm talking particularly of course about Russia, about China, and of course Pakistan who have been, who have been centrally involved deeply, deeply intelligent with Taliban for the whole of the occupation. Could you just speak to that balance of forces in Afghanistan a little bit? Well, there are two positions crystallizing now about how to deal with the current situation. One of them is the regional powers, China, Central Asian powers, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Pakistan, India. And that's basically the group that comes out of the China-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization. They have taken a definite position. Their position is, they've stated it clearly, is the Taliban are the governing authorities like it or not. And the question of legitimacy, they are there, they're running the country. We should deal with them. We should try to get them to moderate their positions, to be more inclusive, to shift their economy from the opium-based economy under the U.S. And to using their mineral resources and turning their economy in a different direction. And crucially, we should alleviate the very serious humanitarian crisis. That's the China-based regional position. One opponent in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization discussions, India, India posed this. India chose to align with the United States, which has a different position. The United States position is we must punish the Taliban. We're withholding the Taliban, the government finances, which happen to be in New York banks, withhold them, don't deal with them, pressure the international financial institutions not to give them loans, punish them as much as possible, because they're not doing what we want. Those are the two positions that are crystallizing. Europe is mostly going along with the United States, as it usually does. Europe is much too cowardly to act on its own. So when the U.S. imposes sanctions on Iran, which the European Union opposes strongly, it nevertheless obeys them, because you have to obey the master. It's basically the European position. So they're pretty much going along with the United States on this, though I don't think they like the policy. Well, that's the way things are shaping up. As you can tell from my own comments, I think the regional powers, the China-based regional system is following the correct position. So like it or not, the Taliban are running the place for the local population. They either accept it or support it, but it's a mixture of that. Actually, the one surprise, at least to me, and the Taliban victory, the sudden Taliban victory, was how multiethnic it became. The fact that the government immediately collapsed and ran away was no surprise. It was just a morass of corruption. The fact that the Afghan army pretty much dissolved was no great surprise either. For one thing, a lot of it is ghost soldiers just there for corruption. Many of them saw no reason to fight for a foreign power. But what was surprising, I think, maybe not to you, was surprised to me, was the way the warlords of the Tajik and Uzbek sectors quickly capitulated to the Taliban. They had resisted them before strongly. The Taliban had been a custom-based movement. Now it seems to be multiethnic, even the Northern Alliance pretty much capitulated. That's new. And what it indicates, whether we like it or not, is that they happen to be the governing authorities. And in that situation, my feeling is we should adopt pretty much the kinds of policies that China and the regional powers are advocating. We should deal with them, try to moderate their behavior to the extent possible, try to get them to shift away from the opium-based economy for which Europe is largely responsible. I should say that they're the recipients of the heroin, but move towards a viable economy and crucially deal with the extraordinary humanitarian crisis. You can't just let millions of people starve to death because we don't like their government. So I think that's the policy that Europe, UK, should shift to. Thank you, Professor Chomsky. I'm going to roll some questions, two questions into one here. Obviously, for those of us who have been involved in Afghanistan as I have, who have been concerned with Afghanistan over the years, who have observed Afghanistan, there is a temptation I think in some quarters to look at it as a kind of lost cause. And so part of that question is, is Afghanistan a lost cause? And if it is not a lost cause, whatever we make of that question, do you see solutions in the future? Do you see hope for the Afghan people coming from somewhere? Well, first of all, we should recognize that there were Afghan peace forces. How substantial they were, it's very hard to say in the circumstances of war and violence, but they were there. In fact, I was in contact with them for years, it was possible to contact with. They were scattered through rural Afghanistan. I think where they are now, I don't know, but I think those forces can be resurrected. When we ask whether Afghanistan is a lost cause, lost for whom? And for the Afghans, well, we should help them the best we can to reconstruct from the wreckage of 40 years of violence and war. From the reports on the ground, it seems that there is general relief that maybe finally, after all this time, we'll be freed from violence, from soldiers smashing into our house at midnight and arresting my husband and my son and throwing them into torture chambers from drones constantly overhead. We never know when they're going to suddenly get rid of a couple of people talking across the street. If we can get free from that, that's at least the beginning, then let us reconstruct their society. However, we do it. Okay, I don't think it's going to be pretty, not at all. It's going to be ugly from our point of view, but it's for the Afghans to figure out how to determine whether it's a lost cause or a saved cause. And we should be as supportive as we can in their efforts. That means working with the governing authorities, doing what we can to moderate their behavior, but our prime concern for the first time should be the Afghans, the Afghan people. That's never been a concern. You look at the so-called aid flow. I mean, most of it just went to corrupt officials. Sometimes school was built in a village, but in a way that it would be destroyed by the warlords two months later, almost nothing went to local people of any lasting character. Huge amounts of corruption, robbery. We saw that very clearly when it all quickly collapsed, but it was pretty obvious before, I'm sure it was obvious to you when you were there on the ground. So for the first time, we should care, and this is the first time in 40 years, I should say, we should care for the Afghans. There was strong Western US-based support for the Mujahideen who struggled against the Russian invasion, but the purpose was not to aid Afghans. Purpose was made very clear by the CIA station chief in Islamabad who was running the show. He said, we're there, he said, to kill Russians. That's our goal. We don't care about the Afghans. What happens to them is not our business. We're there to kill Russians. Okay, that was, you go all the way up to the top. First of all, Brzezinski under the corridor, administration, national security advisor, then under the Reagan administration, same thing. But towards the end of the Russian invasion, which was pretty horrible, they have killed about a million people. But in the last couple of years, they had established in Kabul pretty much what the Americans did. It had turned into a pretty liberated city. They were free to do what they want. They could wear whatever clothes they wanted. They could, the literacy for women shot way up. Women were having jobs all over. They did have problems. The problems were the US-backed Mujahideen. The worst of them were the US favorites, the most brutal of them, the Hekmajar group. These are people who would be throwing acid in the phrases of young women college students if they weren't wearing the right clothes. There was a lot of important reporting about that. It could not appear in the US media. This was coming from people like Russell Bossu, the UN, the UN rapporteur for women's rights living in Afghanistan, who was writing highly regarded international feminist figure. There was a woman who organized the International Year of Women. How the respected figure was writing articles about the status of women in Kabul in the last years of the Russian invasion, sent them to US journals, refused to publish them. Even feminist journals like Ms. Magazine refused to publish them. You could read them in the Asian press, but that was the situation in the last years of the Russian invasion. Roger Brathwaite's comments tell you what it was like a couple years later. There was no concern for women's rights or anything else in the years of the Russian invasion. But now there's been over 40 years, 45 years where Afghans have been suffering a constant violent attack. Maybe they can have a few moments of peace. Maybe they can resurrect something out of the wreckage of this. We should be helping them. Thank you Professor. I'm going to move on to some audience questions now. We've got quite a few to get through, so we'll get as far as we can. So the first audience question is, and I can remember this comment being made by Julian Assange a number of years ago. And the question is, was Assange correct when he said that the American goal in Afghanistan was not successful war, but endless war? Well, the phrase endless war is being very commonly used. We have to end these forever wars. That's the slogan, bipartisan slogan in the United States. Very strange slogan. You take a look at American history. When did the forever wars begin? Well, they began in 1783. That's when the forever wars began. The United States is an unusual country. It's been a war almost every year since its founding. The main reasons for the American Revolution was a British royal proclamation of 1763, which banned the colonists from invading the Indian nations. Britain at the time didn't want, had plenty of problems on its hands. It didn't want more problems in the colonies. So the settlers were banned from invading the Indian nations. They were not allowed to move past the eastern mountain range, the Appalachian mountains. They weren't having any of this. They wanted to move west, invade the Indian nations, expel them, exterminate them, take the territory. Certainly people like George Washington, major land speculator, wanted to move to the west. As soon as the British were kicked out, settlers started expanding into the west. Those were wars of aggression, violent, aggressive wars. The founders knew what they were doing. They talked about exterminating the nations, imposing treaties which you then overthrow. This went on right through the 19th century, also picking up half of Mexico in the course of it. Then we get into the 20th century, constant interventions on and on after the Second World War, though not enough to talk about it. You can hardly find a year of peace. So the US has been involved in wars, almost always aggressive wars, since its founding. Those are the forever wars. Well, the forever wars that are talked about now are the ones that began in the year 2000, 2001, but that's a small piece of it. I don't have to talk about the wreckage that was left in the region from the US, UK wars in the last 20 years. It's a horror story. So yes, something should be done to try to compensate for that and to turn to policies that would actually help people instead of destroy them. And we can point to plenty of places. Yemen, Gaza, West Bank, Iran, lots of places where Afghanistan, where the US and Britain could for the first time take constructive actions that would help instead of destroy. Thanks, Professor. I want to move on to a question that concerns me as a journalist and you as a scholar of the media. And someone asks, is it possible today to have a career in mainstream media while still being able to tell the hard truths about Western intervention? If you look closely, you do find truths. So I quoted an interview in The Guardian, that's mainstream media, must have been about mid September 2001, which gave the answer to why the US is invading by a very respected authority. The leader of the anti-Afghan Taliban resistance. If you looked further, searched, you could find an article in actually a very good local newspaper in the United States that since virtually disappeared, but the Boston Globe, which used to be a serious newspaper. They had an article by a reporter who took the trouble to go to a meeting of a thousand Afghan elders, first held across the border in Pakistan. September 2001, thousand elders got together, bitterly condemned the American invasion, effectively reiterated what Abdul Haq had said, and we can continue. If you look at the press now, mainstream New York Times, you can read now what Rumsfeld said when the Taliban surrendered, said we don't negotiate surrenders. If you were looking carefully all these years, you could find things like you could find a report in AFP. So Jean-François Press, you know, International Press Agency, a reporting in September 2001, the UN estimates that there could very well be mass starvation in Afghanistan if the US started bombing. Mass starvation, you could read in the New York Times, might have meant seven million people, you could read it. And that's the way the mainstream media are. If you read carefully, you look closely at a variety of sources, pick things out, you can find out what's going on in the world. You stick to the headlines and the thing that's focused on, you won't understand. Thank you, Professor. So, the next question. What consequences would arise if the international community diplomatically legitimized the Taliban regime? Legitimize the Taliban. I guess they mean recognized it. Yeah. Well, we recognize governments that are so hideous that it's almost impossible to describe them. Saudi Arabia, for example, one almost harsh, brutal governments in the world. Take Al-Sisi's Egypt, brutal dictatorship, 60,000 political prisoners, torture, probably the worst dictatorship in Egypt's pretty ugly history. We recognize it. Recognition has nothing to do with, you're a nice guy. That's not what recognition is. The Taliban happened to be governing Afghanistan. We may not like it. I don't like the governments of most, maybe all countries. I can't think of one I like, but we recognize them. Things that the United States does that are hideous, shocking, disgraceful, but countries recognize it. Okay, Taliban are there. They're in charge. If you care about the Afghan people, which is who we should be caring about, then we have to recognize their government and deal with it. That's the only way of helping the people of Afghanistan. If you can think of another way, I'd be happy to hear it. I can't think of one professor. I'm racking my brain. Maybe we'll have something good will come out of this meeting. We spoke a little bit about poppy cultivation. There was a question about that, but you kind of spoke to it before. So I'm going to move on to question five. And this is an important one. I think what are the key differences between the Taliban of the 1990s and of and of now, how have they changed as a movement and organization as a political grouping. Well, I first should comment that I claim no expertise in this. So I'm just using secondary sources. The, it looks as if the older elements of the Taliban have moderated their positions. Whether the younger ones have the ones have been fighting on the ground, not just sitting in Qatar and Pakistan with how they were reacting. I don't know. They're years, 20 years of fighting a brutal war on the ground. You don't know how people feel. These are people who have lived in the villages where wedding parties were attacked by drones, killing a couple dozen people were men and boys were dragged out of their homes and thrown in torture chambers. I feel, I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if they're brutal, if they've been brutalized and are angry, and they're going to be the ones are going to take over. So I think we're probably seeing internal conflicts within the Taliban along the more basically the older group who seem more willing to be accommodating and moderate and younger elements who probably have been really brutalized by this experience. Furthermore, remember that the Taliban are still fighting a war against ISIS. They're still reconstituting ISIS, which is carrying out bombings atrocities has plainly has a base. I don't know who's supporting them. Maybe Pakistan, maybe the West, but they're there, and there's a major conflict between them and the Taliban at this point. I don't have an easy time of it. The main support they're getting as far as I can see is from the China based regional organizations, apart from India, which has its own game of the play. Thank you Professor I'm conscious we've reached the end of our 20 minutes. So I'm going to hand back over to Nina now Nina now but thank you very much is an honor and a privilege, Professor. Thank you. Hello, and a massive thank you to you, Professor Chomsky. I know that you may have to leave us soon but of course you're welcome to stay if you can. We're going to continue the discussion now, and maybe expand on some of the things we just heard. So for part two of this event, we're joined by two guests. This is Nargis Nihan. She's Afghanistan's former Minister of Mines and Petroleum and a women's rights activist. We also have Dr Althea Maria Rivas, who's a senior lecturer at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. She lectures on gender and peace and conflict. Joe, I'm going to hand things back to you now. But before you talk to our panelists, I think we'd like to hear a little bit about your own experience. For anyone who doesn't know, Joe was part of the British forces who went to Afghanistan and later refused to fight and was sent to a military jail because of that. Since then Joe, you've been on a bit of a mission to destroy what you call the military fantasy. I know you've recently written a book on this subject too, so please tell us a little bit more. The book is called Veteran Hood, and it came out this week. I wanted to try and puncture the myths about veterans. There are lots of assumptions about veterans that they're all right-wing, that they're unreachable, that they're irredeemable. And I wanted to try and talk about some of the history of that, the history of radical veterans movements, the war, the experience of war in the military can sometimes send you spinning off in a progressive direction, as well as a kind of far-right direction. And various other issues about veterans today, focused on British veterans, but it touches on American veterans a little bit as well. But yeah, it's been an interesting journey. I joined the ranks. I was in an officer, I was a soldier in the ranks from a very poor work-class background that I would judge, and went to Afghanistan. I mostly joined for economic reasons, but I certainly, some of the ideological stuff is there. The idea that the British military is a force for good turns out I probably wouldn't make that case today. And yeah, I refused a second tour, served one tour in 2006, refused a second tour, found my way to military prison, the UK's military prison in Colchester, and was discharged, went to uni, read a lot of Chomsky, studied politics, became a journalist, and then my second trip to Afghanistan was last year. I'm going to be documentary looking at the so-called zero units, which are CIA run death squads, in effect, and lots of innocent people have been caught up in their house raids, and other military actions related to them. So it's been an interesting ride, and I started somewhere very different to where I am now politically, I think. And is there anything that Professor Chomsky said that particularly resonates with you? Yeah, I followed Professor Chomsky for years, so all of it resonates with me, to be honest. But I think he's particularly interested in, he spoke about the peace forces which want peace in Afghanistan. So during my visit there, I met a group of a very young, very enthusiastic Afghan people in their teens and early 20s, the Afghan peace volunteers. And we interviewed them and I spent a couple of days with them, and they spoke about the conditions of their lives and what they wanted, how they saw the future. And this was before the occupation collapsed. So things probably look slightly rosier then, but it's a tragedy, I think that a lot of those people, I've tried to stay in touch, but they've been much more difficult to contact. And as Professor Chomsky says, those people are there. It's not necessarily the Taliban or Washington or Taliban in London. There are other kinds of people who are involved in that and have their own ambitions for a better future in Afghanistan. Thanks, Joe, and just you can feel free to start the conversation with Nargis and Althea. Thank you. Thank you both for joining us. And thanks for staying with us, Professor Chomsky. I'm going to come to you first, Nargis, if I can. And I suppose there are questions here, this topic of legitimacy keeps coming up and it's probably a good thing for what we're talking about, but what does the fact that the Afghan government fell as soon as the Americans left, about the legitimacy of that government, a government of which, as I understand it, you're a part. And did that government have widespread support among people in Afghanistan? Thank you very much, Joe. First of all, I have a thank Nina for arranging today's discussion, which I find very informative. But speaking of state legitimacy, as we all know Afghanistan challenges and conflict have, which eventually led to fall of the state have three dimensions of issues that we cannot affect them, the domestic dimension, the regional dimension and international dimension. So about the domestic dimension of Afghanistan conflict, Afghanistan was never in peace, even during the last 20 years, we were constantly in war and violence was increasing on daily basis. The question was something that even Professor Chomsky and everybody talked about it and it was very common and it was quite high in Afghanistan. Impunity and misuse of power unfortunately was there. Dover centralization of power and decision making in Kabul, mainly in the palace, made responsive governance rule of law and service delivery, very difficult, especially to the people who are living in the cities where there were some people central population, capture and monopoly of all power and resources by one group, mainly diaspora, made it very difficult for people to feel that you're included in the government. And the kind of political order that we had in Afghanistan, which was highly centralized, and it was very much on technical division. It was an imposed structure by the West on our concert was it was not a true structure by the West. We had three disputed in the election in 2009 2014 and 2018. And of course we had finally the power vacuum so the Taliban didn't take by victory basically it was kind of handed over by them. So this was all the domestic issues that we had inside the country and unfortunately it was not something that happened below us one or two years. This was something that started in the beginning but it began to get worse and worse from 2010 onward until it started to collapse of state. With regard to regional dimension of Afghanistan conflict, I think, Professor, Professor Trump explained it very well that now we have the China based position that the regional countries are having. And these countries before collapse of one state and the capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban, they were basically supporting their own warlords, and they were supporting proxy war in Afghanistan so we have Taliban fighting the government but you also had the warlords challenging the government. We also had people inside the system that unfortunately very much connected with the system and regional countries mostly our neighboring countries had very destructive role that they played and constantly they came with different ideas and different strategies to defame the government and to basically do not let Afghanistan develop on its own. And with regard to international community once again it was spoken very well but I'll give one very simple example and that is the issue of women's rights, civil society and media that all the time the international community and especially the US is talking about. While they are talking, they were talking about all these important elements to be taken into account and should be included in our discussions, but whenever they were discussing important issues are making the decisions, they were working really with two groups of either they were talking with a group of diaspora, that they were speaking English and it was easy for them to communicate with them, drink with them, party with them and then make important decisions with them or make them happy. Or it was a group of politicians and warlords that somehow they were thinking that if they keep them happy, they can just keep the country moving. But to be very honest to you both of these groups have no intention of serving or even understanding that one people, the best example that we can look is then mismanagement of the peace process. It was led by the US and it was badly mismanaged. The withdrawal was impossible. It was very irresponsible. And on top of that on the iPhone side, we couldn't have the unity among the political elites and especially for President Ghani, he had no desire for real peace with the Taliban and concept he was trying to come with the Taliban themselves also had no desire while they were sitting in Doha, they were talking about the peace process, but literally in action they had no intention for peace. They call us then to put military pressure until we go to the point that everything collapsed. So these were the regional dimension, international dimensions and as well as the missing dimension that all of them together eventually in the last 10 years led to the collapse of state. And I think putting all the blame on your like Afghans or anyone or only 140 would not be fair because everybody based on the role and that they had, they played their own role in terms of failure of everything that we have on stone. Thank you very much for that answer. Oh, it's very comprehensive and a really good overview. If I could come to you out here. I know you spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, working on projects out there could you tell us a little bit about those projects and tell us where they are now what's what does it look like for those projects now the Taliban back in charge effectively. Thanks, Joe. And I also wanted to say thanks for iCops and SOS for organizing this really interesting events. No lot of work went into it. So yeah, I've been working on Afghanistan living and working on Afghanistan and different iterations for the last 15 years. I think more recently I'll just talk quite briefly about the, the recent projects that I've been working on I've been looking at working with local research organizations and think tanks mainly on the thing that just forced displacement and insecurity amongst local communities. So in the last study we did we looked at displaced communities or internally displaced communities in 10 different provinces. And we looked at kind of situation or try to understand the situation of families in these communities but also the journey that the families were going through and what this meant at each step of the way. I think people often think about displacement as something that just occurs once you're displaced from your home and you go to, you know, the specific area and then we're there, maybe you go back home but actually, because of the conflict dynamics and insecurity food insecurity poverty lack of employment and livelihoods. You know what we found, and what is quite common is that you know people are displaced several times right so it's secondary and then third displacement and sometimes they never returned. So that study was completed earlier this year and then a few months ago we also started a different study on the peace dialogue and excluded voices which focused on women in the provinces. And there we specifically were trying to kind of generate more voices or include more voices on specific issues so like the ceasefire for example, you know what was going on in areas where the Taliban and already set up. And also, you know what women thought about the Taliban coming back like the peace process itself. So this last project on the peace process obviously was halted. The organization I was working with had to stop operations in August obviously we started the project in May and then we had to put it on hold indefinitely. And the organization is currently kind of figuring out if they'll be able to begin their work again and in what iteration their office was shut down and some of the staff is still in Afghanistan but several have left or in different countries at the moment. So, I think, you know, the movement to migration of people right now has impacted on, you know, many things and also the chaos of the situation so people are reorganizing themselves and their families their lives. You know, waiting to leave have left trying to figure out next steps. And really that has to take precedence over everything right now really focusing on the population. I think Professor Trump's the energy said it's you know, looking at really humanizing the African population not just talking about geopolitics but looking at like the the means of the people. So obviously remained in contact with my research partners because we've been working together for over a decade and the conversations now less about work and much more about well being. Thank you very much out there. I hope you're your partners in the region. Okay. If I come back to you Nargis. And this sounds like a simple question but I'm expecting a very complex answer. And it kind of speaks to our theater said, what do Afghans want, who do Afghans want to run their country. What was a better future look like from through their eyes. For example, I'm also one of those Afghans that I was a refugee in Pakistan. And when I came back in 2001 I was open to anyone going in the country, as long as they were serving the people. So after people were open in the beginning to have on diaspora that they came from abroad and most of them were not even speaking the one of the local languages. They were not even open to warlords that they have committed war crimes they said as long as you serve us. It's okay we can accept you to, to, to run the country, but just respect the human rights of the citizens. So, and then later on we even saw that people were open to talk about to come and govern the country and take part in the government, as long as someone also make the promise that they're not going to repeat and their aggressive form of the violence that they had before. So Afghan people, all they are asking is a fair politics. But then later on what we saw that the diaspora will not, a group will not serving Afghans and we saw finally diaspora what they did, that when things got hot they just packed and leave the country, leaving the war vacuum, and letting everything collapse. We saw what warlords did, that constantly they negotiated and they constantly got positions and resources and they compromised and then you got to this position. That one people won the representative government. Look, in 2009 people took very high risk they went and to election. We had very good turnout of people in 2014 and as well as in 2019. But every time it was not the votes of the people that made the form the decision. It was actually end of the day the embassies that they decided who will run the country will perform the government. So people wanted people with a national vision who do not divide people stay in Afghanistan understand upon people and the misery of our people and just come with different strategy to serve to develop the country. Yes, one thing that people are becoming more clear that whoever will come in power after this didn't want to want them to focus on the power in the palace because they have seen that that has become a big bottleneck the bureaucracy that we have. So they want to have some level of decentralization that will let the country and give the space for the different regions and province of Afghanistan where you have the diversity that based on their own aspirations they can move forward the country. So people people's expectations are very simple in a fair politics fair people who are actually having the vision national vision of serving the country, but but finding it has been very hard in the last 20 years. Thank you very much for that great answer if I come back to you out there. The field or one of the fields that you work in is post conflict reconstruction, as I understand it. There's a question here is, is post conflict reconstruction applicable to Afghanistan, given that many people view and I think there's probably something to be said that the conflict is still ongoing. Yeah, this issue of labeling it's a big issue for the international community and the labeling of Afghanistan is post conflict or otherwise. It's always been kind of contentious amongst the community. So the post conflict banner was given in to Afghanistan even in the midst of increasing insecurity and ongoing conflict right. So for example, there were a lot of time in the past 10 years and I can think of two specifically in 2008 and 2010 where the NGO community the NGO and community and the civil society community Afghanistan requested the setting up of an official UN humanitarian mission which would have meant the establishing a boat show which is the office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs to coordinate humanitarian assistance. And the requests were denied several times by by the UN senior management say, even in spite of the fact that there was significant evidence of humanitarian needs drought chronic food insecurity growing displacement, increasing and general insecurity and conflict so while the label of post conflict has implications for I guess the type of aid that's given and the setup and organization of international organizations in the country. The decision about what that label will be has often been a matter of politics. You know it's been down to the story that global north actors are wanting to craft around what is happening in Afghanistan in terms of success or failure and who's responsible for that. And a desire to kind of define conflict in very specific ways rather than speaking to the realities on the ground. But practically, you know the line between post conflict and conflict or between war and peace. In most instances, most conflict affected areas in the world is really blurry. So it's often more a case of, you know, war, and then, you know, for lack of a better term I guess less war, right, or a switch to different types of violence or, you know, the movements of the conflict into different places or different areas. Right. So, I would say Afghanistan is not post conflict. Right now I would call it maybe post occupation, right, and that shift has exacerbated already existing dire circumstances across the country that you know international actors themselves and NATO and the US were also quite very responsible for right and so it's created now new obstacles for the country in addition to the crisis that was already there. So it's a burgeoning and growing humanitarian crisis. And then also we now have things like the lack of access to banks and money for you know people in their families the breakdown of civil society in the aid sector where many people for example were employed so a huge increase in unemployment and brain drain as well for you know so many people leaving the country. The reality now in Afghanistan is that it is post occupation and there is a huge humanitarian crisis that needs immediate and focused attention. Right. And what we need to focus on now is the needs of the people. And what those needs are, and you know this has often not been the case. It actually hasn't been the case for the past few decades in Afghanistan. So I think addressing those needs whether you want to call it post conflict conflict whatever the case may be is has to be priority and addressing those. Sorry, and addressing those needs in terms of health education poverty, you know displaced communities like. And then of course the question of governance will be an ongoing issue as well. So for me the label is less important. So conflict not supporting to international standards doesn't matter. And I would say, you know the reality is that the population is caught in what is, you know a seemingly never ending cycle of violence, whether you want to call it conflict or not it is violence. The gaps that this has created over decades is what we need to address and what you know Western actors also need to acknowledge. We have great responsibility for in terms of military political action but also a lot of the mistakes that have been made by the aid community. Thank you very much. Thank you very much out here. And sassy if we could come back to you, Nargis. You also you had a ministerial brief when you're in government and a very interesting one. You were the minister for mines of petroleum in the in the last government in Afghanistan. I think there's a tendency some people kind of roller rock and Afghanistan very easily into one and say it's all about oil and all this stuff and of course it's not true Afghanistan not in the same way Afghanistan does have resources, which are it's rich in certain resources and this was your brief. So the question that comes from that is, do the resources in Afghanistan belong to its people I hope you'd say yes. And then have they benefited from the country's resources and beyond the people of Afghanistan, who else has benefited from those resources. Yes, the resources do belong to have on people but right now except the challenges and headache people are not benefiting anything from them natural resources that they are having. And that is mainly first of all because of the conflict and insecurity that we have in the country. Secondly, because of the very complicated bureaucracy and corruption and politics that we have around the mining sector. As acting Minister of mines and petroleum from beginning of 2017 until end of 2019. So when I went and I assist the sector I focus on the development of the legal framework for the sector the minerals at all mining regulation and the development of the roadmap for the development of the sector, and bringing a technical team and collaborating very closely with the USGS and several other technical organizations to make sure that we have all those building blocks that require for development of the sector. But by the time that we go to the point where we have to go for actual development of the sector and giving concessions to the company to start the process. I realize that what we have on the paper, there is no political will for implementing that in reality. So mining law was saying one thing, but the pressure politically was to do another thing, and it was very difficult for me. So that was a time that I decided it's much better for me that I step away and I do not get engaged in the sector in terms of giving concessions because I could not resist the level of pressure that I had and the politics that was going on it was too much difficult, and it was beyond my control. And because of the politics and bureaucracy that we have, and literally we made sure that we have those kind of policies in place that will not let the sector develop itself. So what happened that the warlords were constantly benefiting from the mines of Afghanistan, the local commanders were benefiting from the mines of Afghanistan, and the Taliban when they had not taken cover the provinces in Kabul, they were benefiting from the minerals of Afghanistan. So one of these groups who else was benefiting. It was many of our neighboring countries, Iran, Pakistan, and also China, how illegal mining was happening of different commodities inside Afghanistan, and all these raw material were being mostly illegally exported to Iran and Pakistan, where they were processing them and after that they were exporting them with the brand name of their countries. So the marbles, the talc, the chromite, any commodity that you talk about, that was the situation. But the real mines which are bringing real resources and employment such as copper, gold, lithium and others, we never get the opportunity for development of those commodities simply because there was no political rule for that. So that's why I serve for like less than two years, and then after that I designed because I knew that no matter how hard I work, end of the day when it comes to decision making, I have no political backing, no political support, unfortunately. Thank you very much, Nargis. We'll come back to you now, Althea. There is an argument that development agencies, development agencies can prevent countries from being self sufficient in the long run. I wondered if you could speak to that. I'm going to frame it as a question. Is it possible for the country to develop and see progress? Is it possible for a country to develop and see progress without the involvement of outside agencies? Is it a matter of negotiating the terms in which they're engaged that they have to be involved? Yeah, I think it's definitely a matter of trying to negotiate the terms where we can't ignore the fact that there are global power relations that limit the negotiating ability of certain countries and populations. But also I think, you know, we live in an interconnected world, so all countries are dependent on foreign organizations in some way or the relationships of other countries for the development on some level, right? So Afghanistan has been a dependent for a long time, but just as Nargis said, you know, it's not that it's without resources, right? And I think that we can't deny the fact that there were gains made from the international aid that's gone to Afghanistan over the past 20 years, right? So for example, there have been gains made in infrastructure, health, education, improvements in women's rights, rights of ethnic minorities. However, a lot, like a lot of mistakes have been made as well. You know, there's been a lot of waste, there's been a lot of corruption amongst, you know, international aid agencies as well. And the tendency also to listen to external voices and implement standardized aid packages and programs rather than listening to local voices and developing context specific programs. And also the myth of capacity building that is so, that resonates so much within the international aid architecture in some cases has really hindered rather than supported local development. And so I think, you know, realistically, it's difficult to develop a country, or to develop industries and social and political systems, when you're given a template that doesn't fit with your culture or societal values or history, right? And when you're in the midst of a growing conflict, that those same that the countries who are funding those agencies are also involved in exacerbating, right? And increasing humanitarian needs for displacement and even winter in Afghanistan sometimes is a humanitarian crisis, you know, often it is. So really what's needed is to create the facilitating conditions for countries to develop and chart their own path of development. And to identify what processes of change and transformation because that's what development is processes of change and transformation, right? You know what that actually looks like for them. So the question facing Afghanistan now is humanitarian. It's also definitely about the future of the government and political and economic systems, but it is the humanitarian needs that really need to kind of address right away. Thank you very much. Let me go back to you, Nargis. It's from when I was a young soldier parental go to Afghanistan, the most ventriloquist but least heard voice in this whole thing is the voice of the Afghan woman. We're very lucky to have one with us tonight. And so I'm going to address this, this question to you. What can you just speak to the plight of women in Afghanistan? And to be completely frank, did things improve under the Americans? Was it better under occupation? Can you talk about that? What you know as a former minister and ask this, but also your experience as a woman in Afghanistan during that period? Well, I mean, with regard to women's situation flight that we have right now in the country, I'm sure that everybody's following the media that women are very badly suppressed. Right now they require even a four years old boy to accompany woman as a mahram if she's going out of her house. Woman segregated education is already introduced in the country. Women are not allowed to go to work and civic activities of all stop. We're talking about a huge number of women that they were working and they were responsible as breadwinners of their family, because we have many families that they have lost their male members. They are working in the national security forces. They're working as civilians. We have very high, we have very high casualty, more than 76,000 of civilian casualty we had in the last 20 years, and more than 74,000 of national security force casualty that we have. So all these men that they were killed, they have left the family behind that literally women are looking after them. So all these women that they have served as teachers as several servants in the intersector in the private sector in the media sector, any sector that you're working, they were responsible for feeding at least five to seven family members. And even these since the capture of Taliban, these people are at home. They don't have any source of income. They are not clear about your future, and they're facing a very dark time. And I keep on giving the example of a woman nowadays I say a woman's situation is less than those that they are in prison, at least when you're in prison, the as a prisoner, you're provided with three times food. You put your in prison you, but right now the Afghan women are in being in prison at their homes, but nobody takes responsibility for their food for their shelter and for the basic needs of life that they have. So this is the situation that we have. Now, some people are thinking that all situation was the same, and Afghan women had never had the desire of development, it was an imposed agenda by the US. And we take you through very few examples that could demonstrate very well, I've honest I've on women's progress in the last 20 years that we had, because what happens that we keep on always focusing on failures what happened upon the stone, and for which, interestingly, it looks like nobody's taking a seeming seems to take responsibility, but we often forget to take stock of achievements that we have. So the example that I've gave you upon society has drastically changed. We had 70% of our population being young as young as below 13, despite all the efficiency that we have the three fronts of the government was working and providing services to the people. It was connected with the region rest of the world politically and economically countries GDP per capita increase from 130 that we have in the year 2000 to 540 in 2012. Girls enrollment increase naturally from zero to more than 40% in schools and 5% universities to 22% of women had jobs in the public private and non governmental sectors. Women found around 30% of several servants 50% of teachers and 38% of provincial council and 37% of parliamentarians, more than 3500 women all small to medium business skills that they were providing employment opportunities for thousands of people. Women served as ministers, ambassadors, advisors and so many other positions. And then all the legislation laws and legislation that we had adopted in the last 20 years and upon some treated all at once as equal citizens, regardless of their gender, their language, their religion, religion and the ethnicity that they were holding. And Afghanistan had one of the most vibrant and vocal media and civil society in the region, 20 people had access to mobile phones and most of these phones were smart phone which allowed social media to become the very interactive and engaging pattern for people to express themselves to talk about issues to expose the populations and government officials and always hold government and politicians to account. So despite all challenges that we are talking about, the reality of the fact was that Afghanistan was progressing on daily basis. And with the irresponsible withdrawal that the US and the international community had, they took us back to dark ages, and they took all these achievements for us. So it's very irresponsible that they keep on saying that now we have to deal with the situation. Taliban became empowered because they were promoted by US. And the time that they were ready to negotiate, they said we are not going to accept surrender from you, but the time that they became very powerful, they went and they surrendered themselves to the Taliban. So they would like the 35 million people of Afghanistan to surrender to the Taliban. If Taliban did not surrender to you, why do you think that 35 million people will surrender to the Taliban? You can surrender, but we are not going to surrender. The women are resisting all around the country. I'm sure you're seeing the videos, although they are being beaten, they are being shot and some of them are being killed, still they are constantly arranging their persistence, they are coming out in demonstration, they are asking for their basic rights. But unfortunately, there is no one to listen to them because the world is in the mood of wait and watch when it comes to Afghanistan. And you're going to have these resistance expanding around the country, you're going to have pockets of resistance that's going to be arranged. Exactly the model that we had with the Taliban, they had a retreat where everybody thought that they have fought the Taliban. Right now, people, those that they have a vision and expression for Afghanistan, they are in retreat, do not mistake the retreat of the people with their failure. Because at one point, people are going to fight back the way the Taliban came back and leave out. If the Taliban could beat with small numbers, then why majority of the people that they are not happy with the government of the Taliban, they would do it. So that is the situation. And of course as Alfon, although I'm very devastated with everything that's going on in my country, but one thing that keeps me going is the expression of my people, their resilience. And I know that either today or tomorrow, they are going to be resistance and people are going to stand up for their rights. Actually, follow up on what Nages was saying, because I think that was that's really important, because one of the things that we've seen in the media in particular. And in politicians speeches is this replay of the stereotype of Afghan women as being victims. Right and we saw that just after 911 as well right so you know we need to kind of invest or engage in Afghanistan to save these like poor women. And I think it's really important to recognize how resilience Afghan women are right and their agency and the way that things have changed in the last 20 years. And to kind of displace that like victim narrative that you know Western media seems to still be holding on to so strongly. Despite, you know, glaring evidence like Nargis is just presented and really understand that this is a situation again that we have responsibility for and these are people that have, you know, surmounted incredible kind of obstacles over the last 20 years. And that's really where we are, as opposed to just, you know, these women being poor victims because that is I think the message that overwhelmingly I see, you know, in August they came out again and again and I thought wow it's really like replaying history but you know that narrative has to be kind of shifted for you know what some the images and realities that Nargis has just talked about. Definitely yeah I mean I mean I certainly asked that my first time in Afghanistan, we weren't in it we were armed and very distant, there was a distance from the Afghan population. The same time I went I actually met Afghan women who were hilarious, full of life and took the mech out of me constantly, when many of it and we're brilliant and so definitely that. That was one of the mythologies of the Afghan women that fell away during my, during my second week or so making a documentary and actually interacting with people that are very tough, robust and fascinating group of people that we met out there. Let's go to some of the audience questions which we didn't get to with Professor Chomsky and maybe because we're going to go to about 20 past. And I wonder if I can come to you out there. Which core lessons and there are probably a few, which core lessons to Western nations need to learn through self reflection about Afghanistan 20 years on from the from the initial invasion. I don't have too long left so I'm going to make going to make my responses quick so you can get through a couple of different questions, but I would say one is that you know, occupation is violence right and violence usually leads to more violence. So I think Afghanistan is a glaring example of that that you actually cannot engage in a violent intervention and then expect to craft a piece narrative from it right. And I think that is for the international aid community, you know, there, there have been tremendous gains in Afghanistan but the aid community has made a lot of mistakes, and they tend to have real short term kind of memory or like, you know, amnesia about these things. And there are, I think the international community, the aid community in particular needs to take a step back just for a second and look at the lessons learned. Because there's a lot of information that has, you know, that has come out reports there's a lot of like local reports and NGO reports, a lot of academic literature policy reports that have highlighted, you know, a lot of these gaps and mistakes. And, you know, now they need to engage in Afghanistan in terms of the humanitarian crisis and, you know, other AIDS programs as well. But they also need to recognize the mistakes that they made otherwise you're going to see the same thing kind of happen again. And I think it's easy to pinpoint those things so there has to be a different way and I think that is the big message right and we know there are pathways to to doing things differently so let's hopefully not make exactly the same mistakes. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I guess if I could come back to you, this is maybe a very pertinent question to you. And just more broadly, I'm not sure where Afghanistan was on the corruption list. It was it was fairly high the last time I checked corruption is it is it hasn't, you know, it's been an issue and ongoing issue throughout the time I was there, both times I was there and throughout the 20 years and before that, and an animating issue. So what do you think, Ashraf Ghani, Hamid Karzai should be held accountable for two decades of failure corruption and betrayal, but also to be fair I'll have my own question, obviously the US, the US and the UK is involved in corruption in Afghanistan as well. Can they be these these actors be held to account. And what would that look like should should is that something that can be pursued even I definitely think that the former presidents, both Ghani and Karzai should be held accountable. But beside that, there are also many politicians that they should be held to account upon storm. For example, the speaker of the parliament, the parliamentarians, the members of the cabinet. And as well as a provincial council, I have been an ex minister myself, and I am ready to go publicly and we give accountability for each and every act and decision that I've made for each and everything that I've done. And I would really appreciate that so that these people could see that was who tried to serve the country, and who was just like keeping these positions into a business and money making machine for themselves. Because it's not only especially, yeah do anything that I would, I would personally, although I was supported and I contacted by, by Dr. Ghani, but still I would hold him more responsible than anyone, because by the time that he came into power, we had the three branches of the government, the state institutions were functional. The warlords were a bit, at least they were defamed, they didn't have, they were enjoying, they were not enjoying the same level of support that they were enjoying by, they were enjoying by the community and upon people in early governments that, that, that President Karzatek responsibility, and he proved that he could beat the Taliban, we saw that he managed to remove Atam-e-Madi Noor from Mazar. And we saw that he managed to take those terms out of the country and send them to exile, because of whatever he has done. So he had that power and he has support of the people, the media, the civil society, the women, and as well as the international community. And what happened that he misused as this whole notion of fighting corruption as a tool for beating his political opponents and by allowing his allies to continue their corruption. So at some point everybody realized that okay, if you want to continue corruption, misuse of power, all you have to do is to be a politically aligned with the president. If you're politically aligned with them, whatever you do, no problem, nobody's going to hold you to account. But if you're not politically aligned with him, even if you try to do a good thing, you'll try to find something against you and try to send you to jail. So that is actually where the whole notion of corruption started in peace and everybody got involved in corruption. So the US had their own role to play, the UK and European countries had their role to play, President Kharzai had his role to play, the politicians had their role to play. But I would say that more than all of them, the President should be held to account because he had all the support, especially public support, the social media, everyone around him to fight the corruption. But he just didn't do it. Thank you very much. I am going to hand over to Nina. But thank you both. It's been fascinating to speak to you and Professor Chomsky, I believe it's gone now fair play to him. But thank you very much for coming on and talk to us. Thank you. And thank you very much to our panelists, Nargis Nihan and Dr Althea Maria Rivas. And of course to Professor Noam Chomsky. It's definitely been thought provoking and very insightful listening to all the speakers today. We'd also like to hear your thoughts and to know what you felt about today's event. So to our audience, please complete the questionnaire which will be sending you shortly. If you'd like to know more about future ICOP events, you can also follow us on Twitter at Sew Us ICOP. Thank you again to everyone who joined us this evening and we hope you'll join us again very soon.