 Good afternoon. Welcome to New America. I'm Peter Bergen. I run the international security program here. So we have a timely discussion about Afghanistan. We're also going to open the aperture also to Pakistan. We have two of the world's leading experts on the subject to make some opening remarks. Immediately to my right, Shamaila Choudhury, who is not only a fellow at New America. She's also chief of staff at Seis at Johns Hopkins for Valley NASA, who's the dean of the school. She's the former director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council. She also worked for the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrook, when the SRAP was held by him. She was just in Pakistan, and so she reflected a little bit about the view from Islamabad and also kind of the view from the United States. And then we have Yanni Koskinas, who's a former colonel in special operations, who worked for Stanley McChrystal when he was the commanding general in Afghanistan in 2010, 2011. When Yanni retired, he set up a business in Afghanistan, which focused initially on mining, but has also moved more to a focus on security issues. He is also doing his PhD at King's College in the war studies department about the Afghan civil war, which in the real civil war, the one that was so violent in the early and mid-90s, which in many ways continues to inform the politics of Afghanistan today. So we're going to start with Yanni and sort of the view from Kabul, where he's been living since 2011, and then we'll hear from Shamila and Yanni over to you. I think the general consensus in Kabul, and this is not just from one particular group, it's actually pretty widespread to include some friends in the Afghan government, some civil society, and for sure the security apparatus. They just can't make sense of this rush to withdrawal. Everybody obviously wants peace. If anybody wants peace in Afghanistan, I think it's particularly the Afghans. But I think one of the things that they cannot comprehend is this sense of abandonment that's coming into it, in part because it just doesn't make sense to deal with the Taliban the way we are doing unilaterally. It doesn't make any sense to engage with them in the way that we have been and with the Afghan government, quite frankly, not being involved and being back briefed in many regards post facto. And also, quite frankly, they've seen this movie before. They've seen the notion that withdrawal of troops occurs along an arbitrary timeline for reasons other than conditions that have been met in some way in order to achieve the notion of peace. So my initial statement, I think, quite frankly, is that the Afghans recognize that, and again, I don't want to just say the Afghans in terms of the Afghan government or the polity. I think anybody who's been looking at this for a long time recognize that the idea of this perpetual presence is probably not the right thing for the Afghans or for the United States. However, the idea of withdrawal, which by the way the term withdrawal that's being used particularly to cater to the Taliban and the negotiations is actually a very damaging concept. The Afghan president, President Ghani, has talked previously and he's been on record about the notion of at some point having a drawdown of forces. In fact, when President Trump actually announces South Asia strategy, one of the things that people that have been focused on the region appreciated was the fact that instead of doing what his predecessor did, which was announce a huge surge that's going into Afghanistan at the same time as the departure within a couple of years, President Trump actually said it's going to be condition-based. Well, those conditions need to be considered in the context of what we're achieving in Afghanistan, not what we're achieving in Doha. And in my opinion, I think the drawdown quite frankly, and I hope that we get to this during the talk, the drawdown should happen. We have achieved quite a bit in the last couple of years. We've doubled the Afghan special operations units. We've tripled the Afghan Air Force. There's a lot to be done, but there have been some achievements that actually suggest that maybe we could afford to send some troops home, particularly troops that are staying on bases and they're not leaving those bases. So could we afford to send a significant number of them? Yes, I think we should. And that reasoning is because we've achieved certain things. The idea of tying that drawdown, however, to a Taliban discussion and setting those parameters only within the context of a withdrawal associated with some deal with a Taliban I think is a terrible, terrible mistake. The last thing I'll say is that with these talks, anybody on the audience and quite frankly in life realizes that a negotiation is an agreement. It's an agreement that is between parties that actually have to, in order to honor the agreement, they have to maybe give up some things, but it's not fundamental issues. So if I want to get married and the person that I'm with actually doesn't want kids and I want kids, that notion of, well, we'll work it out is not actually probably going to turn out okay. So the idea that you have the Taliban who want a withdrawal and then they're going to talk to somebody and they consider themselves a government in waiting and the U.S. notion that perhaps the Taliban are going to be okay enough with a withdrawal to not invite an al-Qaeda-like enterprise, I think those two are just not congruent. So with that, I'll turn it over. But again, the so what out of this is that this, although a welcome conclusion is a peaceful Afghanistan, I think the way that we're approaching it, we're looking to achieve the exact opposite. We're looking for a massive civil war, quite frankly, that's not going to turn out well. So what I appreciate most about what Yanni said was this idea of withdrawal and what it means and the message that it sends and I want to piggyback on that because I think there's so much fog, there's a fog of war associated just with the talks themselves. Let's not even look at the war, the longest war in U.S. history. Let's look at the talks. So much of the analysis outside of Afghanistan is actually focusing on the talks as a way to reach a conclusive peace. I think that's our first mistake. That is not what this is about. The U.S. has already been very clear in saying we're not trying to negotiate a long-lasting peace between the Taliban and the Afghan government. That's not our job. We want to, one, get our troops home and two, facilitate some kind of long-term presence for the U.S. that protects our C.T. interests. That's it. And so we may think it's 2019, but it's actually 2009 when the same deal was on the table for the Obama administration before the surge. And it took us this long to come back to, at that time, what we were calling the Biden plan. Right? So Biden's going to run for president. He's going to look pretty good with his strategy being promoted by the Trump administration. Can you explain that to the audience to make it clear exactly what you mean? So the Biden plan was something we internally, we called C.T., C.T. Plus. So it wouldn't include a massive increase of troops. Instead, it would focus solely on the C.T. mission, special operations, focusing on the partnership with Pakistan, how we could get more out of the Pakistanis, but it didn't involve increasing the troops by any kind of significant amount. And that was primarily because there was really no appetite in the U.S. government or amongst American people for any kind of enduring presence. And by that time, we had already seen the writing on the wall, I would argue. So we're back to the point that the Obama administration actually started from. Now, I want to just make a quick point about politics because I do think that it plays a role. The Afghan, the resolution to the Afghan war isn't going to help Donald Trump win any extra votes in 2020. However, it is, it could be in his mind, I think, an easy foreign policy win because it's something Obama couldn't do. And he could easily say, I did this and Obama couldn't do it. And it seems to be in his mind kind of easy hanging fruit, which is ironic. This is the most difficult war the United States has ever participated in. And he's treating it this way. And I think that's also causing a lot of confusion in the region. Why is he behaving this way? If we were to take a big picture view of it outside of politics and looking at where the U.S. has come from this CT only to counterinsurgency where we want to focus on the people, I think that those days of peace building are over for the United States. There is no Republican or Democratic view of this. Everyone wants to actually leave Afghanistan in terms of having this military presence. It's too costly for us. And we don't see a way out. So in that way, Trump is actually making it a lot easier for whoever comes next because he's already kind of said the thing that is inevitable and is still unpopular in the region. And we're washing our hands of the country. So it's an extension of what Obama was doing. It was this is the eventual reality that was going to happen anyway. So in a way, I'm actually recommending that we take the politics out of it because I don't think that there's anything really specific to Republicans or Democrats on this. Now I see three big challenges moving forward. One is this issue of can the Taliban guarantee that Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven? No, the Taliban absolutely cannot do that. And in some cases, they may not want to. They have allies that they need to consider. They have relationships with groups like the Pakistani Taliban who actually have a vendetta against the United States. We killed some of their leaders. And the Taliban focusing on the Islamic State has proven challenging for them. So there's a capability issue and also a will issue that we have to think about because of that. And I think the writing is very clear on the wall. Because of that, the US is going to push very hard to have some kind of CT presence. And you'll note if you're following the talks, the Taliban are not comfortable with that. So this means this is going to be a long conversation, despite what everyone wants us to believe that something is going to be wrapped up pretty soon. Two is the issue of economic collapse of the Afghan government and society. That's a view from Afghanistan, from Pakistan, from the United States. Now one thing I haven't heard said, which I think is a really interesting challenge as a foreign policy analyst is, if the Taliban returns to the Afghan government, they're not in charge, they're not running the whole thing. They're part of it. And the US actually feels an obligation to continue to support that government. Does the US Congress support US money going to a government with the Taliban in it, given the way that the Congress has approached Taliban reconciliation and Taliban talks in the past 10 years? That's going to be a really hard conversation to have. And as far as I know, there's no congressional engagement on this topic right now. So we can expect a lot more resistance, even if Ambassador Khalilzad does the job he said he is going to do for Donald Trump. So just think about that one. It took us this long to socialize just the concept of talking to the Taliban. How hard do you think it's going to be to socialize the concept that we're now going to give them money to guarantee our CT interests in the region? It makes no sense, actually, if you work through the logic. And so finally, I'll give a brief overview on my visit to Pakistan. It was fascinating. I was there about a month ago. And the mood was very positive. The security establishment, as well as the political establishment, felt vindicated that now the Pakistanis were part of the talks. And it was all because Trump wants to leave. And he finally came to his senses. This is what we've been telling the Americans all along, that we know the region. You're never going to stay here forever. We're going to be here. We know the Afghans. So it's actually this recycling of a very old narrative, which suggested to me that there hasn't been any shift or transformation of the Pakistani security establishment strategy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. It's only actually hardened. And it's become much more entrenched. At the same time, there are, and I thought this was genuine. I think there are a lot of concerns about the instability of Afghanistan, once again, trickling over into Pakistan, reshaping the mission of the Pakistani Taliban. Right now, there aren't a lot of terrorist attacks happening that are domestic in nature. The Iran Khan government is trying to increase tourism. I mean, there's a lot actually at stake, if you think about it domestically. And so I wouldn't say that it's back to the future 100%, because there are different stakes right now, but I really haven't seen any shift in their strategy. And then there was the general talk of economic collapse, as well as the exodus of Afghan civil society, which I think is something that we're all very much concerned with. So final point. One thing that the Pakistani government really wants us to know is that it's reaching out to all kinds of Afghan groups. This is something they've been saying for at least, I think, five or six years. They've probably been doing it for a little bit longer. It is happening to a certain extent. But I think we need to be very clear on this issue, that while the Pakistanis do have relationships with the Taliban, it really wasn't successful in persuading them to do much before 9-11. We asked them to talk to the Taliban, to not demolish the Buddhas. They demolished the Buddhas. I mean, they have a lot of limitations when it goes beyond their own particular security interests. I'm talking about the Pakistanis. We just have to really put that into context. We know that the Pakistanis can be unhelpful and helpful. Tactically, I would say. In terms of the larger strategy with the Taliban, I don't expect there to be a shift. What will be interesting to watch is how the new relationships that the intelligence and military are developing with non-Pashtian groups, how those will kind of come to life in this future government that we're all envisioning. Again, I wouldn't expect much, because I don't think that the Pakistanis are focusing on it in that sense. Somebody in Pakistan said something really interesting to me when I said, do you really want to focus on India-Pakistan war right now? You have talks with the Taliban. You don't want to jeopardize those. And he said, look, the problems in Afghanistan have been going on forever. They can go on a little bit longer. We need to deal with this. So it just gives you a sense of their time frame on the Afghan issue vis-à-vis the United States. So not only is Trump kind of handing over the situation to the Taliban, as Yanni mentioned, he's also sort of doing it the same thing with the Pakistanis, at least in the short run. So Shamila, how does the... George Mohammed killed 37 Pakistani Indian soldiers. And then the Indians responded with his attack, which wasn't just in Kashmir. It was actually in what we used to call the Northwest Frontier Province, which is now Kaiba-Pakhtunwa, which is really part of Pakistan proper. And then this pilot was caught and then he's now been released, the Indian pilot. And of course, the reason Pakistan cares about Afghanistan mostly is because of the doctrine of strategic depth, which has been around for a long time, which is the notion that we've lost three and a half wars to India, that if it comes to another big round war, we need this sort of non-Indian-aligned Afghanistan behind us. So how does the recent crisis, which seems to be the worst crisis since Kargil in 1999, how does this play into what we've just been discussing, if at all? I think it plays in very much so. First and foremost, I think it shows that Pakistan has not abandoned its policy of using proxies in the region and it has no plans to. If its relationship with India becomes much more complicated and the whole concept of nuclear deterrence doesn't exist actually because then Modi wouldn't have done this strike, right? They both have nuclear weapons, that the whole point is to actually prevent Modi from or any Indian government from taking any kind of surgical strike. So it's happened. And so that will affect Afghanistan in a very specific way. The use of proxies will become more entrenched everywhere. But in a sense, Modi, so after the Mumbai attacks where I've been 100 and was 130 people killed in about a decade ago, by a similar proxy group, Lashkarotiba, which was partly guided by the Pakistani intelligence. I think it would be politically suicidal for an Indian prime minister not to respond to a large-scale attack, particularly since he faces an election. What in May is it? I agree, I agree. I think that policy of strategic restraint that the Indians have been employing for several attacks now that are linked to Pakistan has reached its limitations because of politics. I mean, this is, you can game it out and it's, you know, politics is definitely the deciding factor this time around. Also, I mean, it's justified to a certain extent. I mean, the Indians have not retaliated after much worse, actually, right? And I think the difference, though, this time is actually, what I've been following is the difference in the U.S. behavior. Bolton, National Security Advisor Bolton actually made a public comment saying it's India's right to self-defense. They should be able to do something. We the United States have never publicly said that before. We may have said it privately, but we've never publicly said it. I went back to look through all the statements. I used to write these statements. That's not something you say because that suggests the U.S. is giving the Indians a green light. Now, India should act in its own interest, but when the U.S. actually makes that kind of statement, it sends a signal, it's a green light to India, but it's a signal to Pakistan, too, that we have decided that we are moving one step closer to India, which means Pakistan is going to look at Afghanistan completely differently. So now with a Modi government, which is a right-wing government, and an Imran Khan, which is basically a military-backed government, I mean, you have two of the most right-wing governments simultaneously, I think, since partition, perhaps. So how does that affect, with the release of the pilot, is the kind of crisis diffused, or is there more to go, or is it hard to predict? I think that the ball is in Modi's court now. It is hard to predict over the long run, I think in, you know, well, let me rephrase that. It would be more beneficial to Modi if this was drawn out, because the elections aren't for several weeks now. So we can anticipate that there might be an attempt to draw things out, you know, but there aren't that many confidence-building measures between the countries. I mean, you can give a pilot back, but there's not really any business going on, so you can't, and this is the whole point of having confidence-building measures so that when something bad happens, you can put something on pause. Can I ask you one final question on this? It seems, in the 1950s, the United States had a rather immature nuclear doctrine. I mean, basically, it's all survivable. You know, how would you characterize the Indian-Pakistani nuclear doctrines in terms of the possibility of either side deploying tactical nuclear weapons in certain circumstances? I mean, this is a tough issue to talk about, and I remember when we worked on it in the US government, and we would game it out, and we would always end up at a point where neither country can use them because they have too much to lose, both physically. I mean, they're just too close to each other, so the collateral damage is just far too significant for them to actually do it. Do they have doctrines that would encourage them to use them, or is it hard to ascertain? I think that would be a hard one for me to ascertain. I don't feel comfortable making a judgment on that, but I do know that the development of the more tactical nukes on the Pakistani side was part of a strategy to balance out the inequality with India because India had, not only does India have nuclear weapons, it also has much more, a stronger conventional military capabilities. In the past 10 years, they've increased their arms sales significantly, they're the largest purchaser of arms in the world, so I feel like all of those things are feeding into their strategy, but I actually don't think they ever intend to use them. I think that from, at least from the Pakistani side, they had to do it because they're just not as powerful as India, so it's just a balancing strategy. It's actually not a nuclear doctrine. I'm sure there are people out there who would disagree with me on that, but... And so, Yanni, the lead negotiator of the Taliban, Stan Xai, who's been replaced by Mullah Baradar, gave a, I thought, a pretty instructive interview earlier this month or last month, saying essentially, this is, our view of the talks are, the Afghan army has to disarm. We're gonna rewrite the Afghan constitution. And basically, he's saying, I mean, it's amazing to me that he made these statements publicly. There's an old Washington joke that the definition of a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth in public. And so this seemed to be the Taliban really telling the truth in public, which is we want the Afghan army to unilaterally disarm. We want, we're gonna rewrite the constitution. I mean, he was very clear. So what is, I mean, and you live in Afghanistan, you employ 60 Afghans in your company. You know, what is the general mood of Afghans about this? Particularly women, minorities like Ozara's, the new urban generation of millennials who were kids when the Taliban were around. You don't really wanna go back to that. What is their mood? Well, if I can't say something about the Pakistan India piece, I find it fascinating that the mood has always been that Pakistan can't really afford to get in a conventional fight with the Indians because the Indians are so far superior in a conventional kind of fight. And to see the narrative go from the Indians successfully targeted camps inside KPK to they actually lost airplanes. And the narrative has changed from the positive sort of pro India. See, they did something to how could they possibly use MiG-21s for this super important strike and in fact lose two airplanes in the process. So I think from focusing on Pakistan, obviously not to the degree that you do, it's sort of like this, I just see that border posts where the Indian guards and the Pakistani guards are just bowing up and just almost peacocking. But in this one, I think even though the original sin was perhaps the proxy engagement and the death of the Indian soldiers and paramilitary troops, fast forward a couple of weeks and Pakistan is actually looking pretty good. And you're for the Air Force Colonel. So why was the MiG-21 a bad choice? I mean, if you were running this operation, why would you have done? I mean, a MiG-21 is not exactly a sophisticated jet to, I mean, it's used for air to ground, I suppose, but MiG-21s were dropping bombs on Afghan villagers in the early 80s. And now we're talking about MiG-21s doing something that is quite frankly the most significant engagement that the Indian military has had since 1971. So it's just, if you're gonna go down that path, I think that there's probably some after-action reports that are being generated inside the Indian Air Force about perhaps what they should have done different. And now having said all that, I think that Pakistan again is starting to look positive in this regard, but also in the regard that the Pakistani government's, in theory, engagement with the Taliban, again, if you've seen this movie before, you know, this is temporary, this is for tactical reasons. They're due to get an IMF bailout, they're hurting for cash, there are a lot of reasons why they need to be that person right now that's plain ball, and thus the reason of Imran Khan's engagement with the Gulf States and even Turkey, but then you mingle in the Afghan piece because to us it's important. We're seeing Pakistan in some ways through the lens of an Afghan reconciliation rather than what we should be looking at them as a significant regional power with real interest and perhaps some alignment in those interests. Now to get back to what you were saying with the statements coming out of the Taliban, the fact is, is very simple, and I cannot stress how simplistic and how accurate consistently they are. They tell that truth all the time. They mention it in every one of their annual messages, they mention it every single time they engage with anybody, and if anybody would have had any sort of clue that they're not gonna change their message, it should be Ambassador Halizad. He's been looking at this since the 80s when he was involved in bringing some of the Mujahideen groups back to the States or engaging in the National Security Council. So the notion that somehow this is a surprise that they are asking that. I mean think about how we're presenting this too. We're saying that the Taliban are gonna guarantee that another group is not gonna enter. Now a government guarantees something, not some segment of a government, okay? And also if you think about it in that regard, you're actually playing down the Afghan government's importance and you're playing up the Taliban's importance. They're gonna be part of the Afghan government when they've clearly told you there is no government. We are gonna take over and we're gonna have a regime that's based on Sharia law and all the other things. We're gonna change the constitution. Of course they're gonna change the constitution. So this notion, this romantic almost notion that somehow they're gonna be part of when in fact they're saying maybe we won't hang you from a lamppost like we did with Najibullah if you play nice. I mean this is as bad as it could possibly get when you look at what the narrative is. And the narrative is rather clear, okay? And if I can, I'll put it in the context of, in the audience usually there's plenty of people that have seen this play out over decades, okay? This is the benefit of hindsight as the fact that there's plenty of record out there about what's happened. Hek Matyar and his bislami would send somebody who's actually pro reconciliation if you will in the early 90s to Peshawar to agree to this interim government, okay? He didn't necessarily want that. He thought he was the strongest guy out of the seven groups that we were supporting at the time and he thought that he rightfully should be the one ruling after the collapse of the Soviet-backed government. So he would send guys over there and the names are public record that would actually sort of buy into it, of course, okay? But in reality what he wanted was he wanted to be in charge, okay? So to him all along he had the goal we're gonna take Kabul. There was no second sort of reconciliation issue. It was, yeah we'll talk about it here but in reality what we're gonna do is we're gonna take Kabul, I'm in charge. So what we're seeing is this romantic notion that some people even in the Afghan government or certainly the US negotiators that there's but they're talking to us, that's good, right? But maybe we can get them to do something beyond what they're saying right now. They're not, they're clear. They have a very clear message. So if you think that they're gonna change it then they're gonna go back and say, go back and read what we told you before. This is not something that we've changed at all. And then in Moscow you saw reconciliation talks prior to this. I mean it's fascinating to see General Miller across the table from the Taliban peace negotiation team in Doha but in Moscow the one that was just before this last you saw a whole bunch of people from the Afghan opposition groups talking to the Taliban as if literally they're saying you guys are coming back. It's inevitable you're coming back. We just wanna be part of whatever ends up being accurate. It's embarrassing, it's embarrassing. We've worked 17 years to create something, whatever that is, as imperfect as it is. The notion that we're gonna just turn it over to the Taliban to me is un-American. Thank you for that point. I mean you work for Dick Holbrook. And Dick Holbrook, I mean as George Packer who's writing this big biography as a fellow here, I think the book is coming out in May. But Holbrook certainly thought that this negotiation with the Taliban was a way out of the war, right? Is that true? I mean I think he thought that it had to be done to eventually get out of the war. Would he have, I mean it's hard to know, but would he have purposefully excluded the Afghan government? You know that was always the sticking point for us actually when, and there were a lot of other people were closer to the talks than I was, but the role that the Afghan government was going to play was always a sticking point. So it seems like that as well as the Pakistani role, but I think more of the Afghan government role Karzai was a very, it's so ironic to see Karzai sitting across from the Taliban now. I mean he's the last man standing, you know? Ambassador Holbrook is rolling over in his grave, but it was always an issue and the fact that it's not an issue right now for the U.S. government means to me that, or it shows me that they are even more serious about just getting out because they really don't care what, I mean the signal that they're sending at least is we don't, that's your domestic issue, which by the way is what the conversations were like when the Biden CT-only strategy was being talked about. We would ask ourselves questions like, well what if when Al-Qaeda goes away, what do we do? What's the whole point of us being there? How do we characterize these groups and these conflicts? Oh they're just domestic, they have to sort it out amongst themselves. That's a convenient point of departure for the United States and I think that that's, they may not be articulating it that way, but that's sort of what they're saying. And if there are to a certain extent these groups that threaten the U.S., then we're gonna be laser focused on them. But how? That's my question, is how? And then how do you do that with a government that's going to be as unstable as what Yanni is saying? When you have a CT presence in any country, you need the cooperation of your foreign counterparts, of the intel, the military, the diplomats. That's not going to be the case if you have the Taliban running the show, right? And one thing we're not talking about, and I think we should presume that's on the table, is some kind of the agreement on who is, who's this intermediary, or who's in charge in between? Basically, right? Like that's something that they are not wanting to talk about publicly clearly. That's not being discussed. But I don't see it in such stark terms in that the U.S. has these talks and then the Taliban just takes over. There's going to be some other role that has to be filled by something like the U.N. Or, you know, and Khalil Zad knows this because he had these same thoughts that he was sharing with us when we were, you know, the Obama administration was there. So that is not going to fix the problem that Yanni's talking about. It actually complicates it. But that's where all these other countries, I think, it's going to be really interesting what role they play, the Chinese, the Russians. There was talk in Pakistan of the Chinese playing a stronger role after the Americans leave, which I thought was hilarious, by the way. Like if anyone studies China's foreign policy and the way it treats its foreign partners would know that it's not going to be directly engaging in some kind of post-conflict government in Afghanistan. Now, will they play a role? Sure, they have certain interests. But I think the new kind of the Russian involvement, the Chinese, the Iranians, like they also don't want the Taliban to do what you're saying. They will not want that. And the Taliban, somewhere in that organization, they know that they will need some kind of international legitimacy beyond the Trump administration saying welcome back, right? Let's open it up for questions. If you have a question, raise your hand and identify yourself and wait for the mic. Thank you very much. What can we take you over, since Peter asked to leave? So where do we have questions? I think there's a couple here. Yeah, let's do here. And just wait for the mic coming to you. Well, thanks for the presentation. I'll keep it really simple. I just want to get your opinions on it. If you've got a bargaining space and there's no common ground, what the US is willing to accept and what the Taliban is willing to accept are too far away from each other, it seems to me that there's either two courses that the US could accept, something that it's not willing to accept, which isn't going to happen, or the US could threaten the Taliban with more force to hurt it if it doesn't accept what's in the bargaining space. Is there the credible threat of ratcheting up force or is that completely off the table? I think so some of these arguments that have been made to kind of describe one of the course of action that you said, somebody may say, look, 160,000 troops didn't do the trick. How is seven or eight or 14,000 going to do it? I think that's a bit of a false argument because 160,000 troops back in the day didn't have 345,000 Afghan troops in the mix, didn't have about 30,000 Afghan commandos in the mix, didn't have, there's a lot of things that are different in that. So look, I don't think anybody that is involved in any of this sort of concept argues that reconciliation is not a good idea. I just don't think it's a good idea right now. We have limited bandwidth. I mean, you look at what the National Security Council has to worry about, the limited time that Vice President Pence or President Trump has on Afghanistan or the region for that matter. And we should spend that bandwidth on some things that are actually achievable. Like, for example, we have Afghan elections coming up. Instead of postponing the elections, I mean, the temporary postponement from April to mid-summer was smart because there's this thing called the Hindu Kush, and it has this white stuff on it in April. So it's probably a bad idea to hold elections in April. But in the grand scheme of things, postponing it much beyond that in order to achieve something, whatever that is, an interim government or something to that effect, is dumb, in my opinion. And I don't mean it in the sense that the US government is probably the most well-intentioned enterprise out there. I just don't think that that is the best approach because what you should be doing, if the interest is reconciliation, is actually strengthening the state to a degree that it actually represents the Afghan people. So if we went in 2014 and created a framework agreement that brought two different groups together, and then after that framework agreement, we just sort of let those two figure it out by themselves. That's what's gonna happen later if we have another framework agreement. We're just gonna let it happen. So instead of having framework agreements that we're involved in, we should actually push for a president in Afghanistan that actually represents the Afghan people. So work on reforms, on electoral reforms. Work on some kind of a credible election. If I could put Ambassador Khalidzat to work, I'd put him to work in Kabul, not in Doha. So if you have that, then later on, with a new president, with a new government, or a current president, but with more of a mandate, then go ahead and start talking about reconciliation because now they represent the nation. Right now, we have no standing parliament in Afghanistan. They're almost two and a half years behind. We have a government that's about to hit a mark where they can't even produce actual written orders because the constitution requires that once you get as close a point to the election, the president can't even issue decrees. So instead of actually letting the course run to the point where we have a new government that can actually hold these conversations, we're weakening the thing that we've been working on to strengthen for so long. So this is the piece that I don't understand. I hope I answered your question. Very legitimate strategy, which doesn't exist. The Trump administration doesn't have this strategy. I mean, this is something we tried in the Obama administration. We had people working on agriculture and economics. And I mean, we covered every topic you could possibly imagine, but I mean, for the US, the time has passed for that. I mean, there's not even an opportunity to increase pressure, I would say, because the physical presence that the Americans have on the ground wouldn't allow for that. I mean, you could probably tell me more on that, but I don't think that we are in a position to even increase the pressure on the Taliban should we want to. The actual numbers and the capabilities and the resources. I actually think that we could increase pressure on the Taliban. And you start off first by not giving them a platform that they look and appear as if they're a government in the waiting. But I mean, militarily, I think diplomatically, you're right, absolutely. But militarily, we're not in that position anymore. And it's train and assist, right? And so we are done with that part of our history with the country. So what then becomes the bargaining power that we have? I think it's, we just stay there. We don't move. I mean, that's really what, and again, I'm not a military strategist, but if this doesn't work out, I just wouldn't leave. And then the Taliban are stuck with us again. Then they have to reevaluate. And right now, they're the strongest they've ever been actually, right? And so I actually, when I look at the terms of the conversations and the deal, the US is getting nothing out of this actually, except that we can say, this is not our problem anymore. This is somebody else's problem. But you can just stay there. You can keep those 7,000 troops or whatever there until you have another round of conversations which may fail eventually as well. Should we get it? Next question, let's do up here. Thank you. It's been a while since I've been back in the States. My name's Dr. Rakad Malik. I'm a Fulbright scholar at the Elliott School now. Not working on this, but I have a lot of experience in Afghanistan. PhD and things like that. I'm gonna follow on from you, if that's okay and ask a question regarding that. Giving the rise of China, changing global order, et cetera. Afghanistan being fundamentally in an exceptionally good position to maintain presence for a long future rather than just looking at this side issue at the moment. Would that be a possibility for the US as well? Looking at the long game, maintain a presence not just for CT reasons, but for countering China or other such elements in the future as well. Because when you've got something in your hand, you can contain it, maintain it, but once you've left, that's it. It's gone and it'll be taken over by other measures and other opportunities. I don't think that the geopolitical situation in the region allows for a natural long-term fit for the United States in that we don't have a lot of good partners in the region to have what you might be thinking of like a base, for example. The basing strategy requires kind of strong partnerships on the ground, allies, not a lot of hostile enemies. And that I don't think was ever on the table for the Americans. I mean, everyone's small, we used to talk about this, like well, the reason we're in this situation is that we actually don't have a long-term presence in South Asia, right? And it's true. I mean, theoretically it's absolutely true. I cannot imagine a future where the US, given its engagement and its relationship with Pakistan and the India-Pakistan dynamic vis-a-vis the US, that we could have a presence that would be welcome and that would enable us to pursue and protect our interests, right? And that is, therein lies the danger because China's getting involved, Russia's getting involved in different ways and they have different terms of the deal when they're pursuing their interests. They're very different than the United States. And well, I actually think it's great that the Chinese are investing in Pakistan, Afghanistan. I don't think it hurts US interests in the short run. In the long run, we might be surprised and in that sense we do wanna develop some kind of permanent focus. I'll just say this and you'll probably disagree with me, Yanni, is I am not in favor of Afghanistan becoming a ward of the international community. I am not in favor of that. And I think that what the US has done up until now has in some ways enabled that and our intentions were good, but if you read the reports coming from SIGAR and all of the internal documents that we were, analyses that we're doing, it's not our place to be in that sense. Like we don't actually, we didn't know what we were doing there and this is what the Pakistanis would always say to us, that you don't know and they think they know better which they don't but it wasn't our place to understand in that sense and there's been far too much US taxpayer money going to a conflict that we are now actively part of instead of just trying to fix and it would be very hard for me if I were back in the policy making role to justify it, regardless of my your or my political persuasion, it doesn't justify, the end doesn't justify the means, what is the interest there to protect terrorists from attacking us? Okay, that doesn't mean that we give X billions of dollars for the next 20 years to prop up a government that might protect us or might not. Well, I look at it a slightly different way. First of all, when we characterize, we don't have any allies in South Asia and I would say, well, we have who don't want us and all that, that may be true of Iran and Russia or the Russian states and Pakistan but there's this thing called Afghanistan that actually does want us there and there is an ally that we, by far, if you look at any sort of surveys, the Afghans actually do not want us to leave. So the notion that we should, I think we should have a base there long term because we have interest in the region and quite frankly that is an ally country that kind of wants us there but there are a bunch of other things that you mentioned and also I'm in the interest of getting somebody else to maybe in the final statements, I'll make a comment about that. Thank you. In the back. Thanks so much. I have actually two questions. One is for Shamila. You just said that on your visit to Pakistan, the security establishment somehow totally that they have not changed the policy that they had for Afghanistan. So with the Taliban coming back to the power or not coming to the power, what kind of government Pakistan would like to see in Afghanistan so that they would feel comfortable with? Is it a combination of the Taliban with the current Afghan government and what they would call earlier the Northern Alliance in power so a kind of power sharing government like that that they will feel comfortable with and they would not interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan as they are blamed for. And the second question was for Anand. You said that the Taliban should not be treated the way they are given kind of special protocol like the US is talking to the Taliban. So if you don't talk to them, what else you can do? You wanna fight them because fighting has not worked for the last 17 years. As a matter of fact, just as we speak, it was an attack on the Afghan base in Helmand, 20 Taliban, most of them suicide attackers attacked and they were all killed of course. So we are talking to a group that is attacking us at the same time. And what else you can do? I mean, do you talk to them or do you fight them? Thank you. Do you wanna take the first one or you want me to go first? No, no, I can go first. This will be quick. So when I said that the strategy hasn't changed, I meant that when Pakistan looks at Afghanistan, they're looking at the Taliban as an entity that will guarantee their interests more than other entities like the Northern Alliance. And so to answer that question, you have to ask, well, what are those interests? And one of the biggest interests is to make sure that India doesn't pressure Pakistan from all sides. This is this whole strategic depth argument which has been challenged and I don't think that this is the overarching strategy, but India has four consulates in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis will always tell you about this and they'll say that they're doing all kinds of nefarious activities and it really troubles them. It makes them feel very insecure and it reinforces this kind of proxy policy or this policy they have of using militant proxies. So I think when they look at Afghanistan, take the Pashtun ethnic equation out of it, you just want a government there that doesn't enable the Indians in their mind. I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying this is how the logic works. They want a government that will understand or be sympathetic to their specific security interests vis-a-vis India. Then I think the thing that gets less talked about and I'm sure this has changed a little bit, Yanni, you might have some views on this. The Pakistanis are also very concerned about specific provincial leadership on its border with the Afghan provinces. They've always been really interested in that and that was part of their rationale for actually supporting the Taliban in the early days of its creation that these groups would facilitate access into Central Asia. There are economic transit routes as well as illicit trade routes, that sort of thing. Now a lot has changed since that original idea but I do think that that's still very much in the mindset of the security establishment but the difference now is that they know they have to talk to these other groups. What they do with those relationships and how they use their influence is a big question which is why nobody trusts them because they haven't used them in a way that has stabilized Afghanistan. They've used that influence in a way that destabilized the country and it's without question. I just don't think there's any debate on this one, right? And so it's now, and this is what I said when I met with Pakistanis and Islamabad, I said you have to tell the international community what your interests are in Afghanistan. You can't just say you talk to all sides and you can't say it's just about India. It has to be about you. It can't just be in opposition to you and I think that's always been their fundamental challenge is that they can't communicate that interest because it's been so narrow. That's a really good point. Be very specific to your question. You shouldn't talk to them. And in fact, we should make a point of now, particularly with the example that you mentioned, not talking to him. So we have the groups that are talking in Doha. They took a Friday break and they're supposed to restart the conversations tomorrow. Quite frankly, they shouldn't. If they breached the 215th Corps in Shorabuk and they attacked the engagement. Prior to the last Doha six day marathon meetings, they attack an NDS facility in Wardak and killed dozens upon dozens of people. So do you actually walk in to a group that's claimed responsibility for these things and just go have a peace talk with them the next day? I mean, that to me is part of this, does not compute sort of concept. But I think the fundamental issue that you brought up, I think is real key and I'm glad that you brought it up. We, the Americans, are talking to the Taliban, okay? The Afghans are not talking to the Taliban. The Afghan government is not talking to the Taliban. So what would the Afghan government say after such an attack in terms of do you actually have a conversation? We've taken the vote out of them in some ways because we are proceeding full speed on a particular direction, regardless of what happens in Afghanistan. Which I think is part of this, we're about to hand them an unworkable solution and say here work it out when in fact that is again, not the best way forward. And to your point, actually I'll say it now because I think you brought up something that really piggybacks on what you were saying. President Trump's initial instinct to walk out was tempered in some ways by his advisors that actually had a rather nuanced perspective about what's at stake. I don't advocate that we should stay in Afghanistan for Afghanistan's sake. I'll be very honest with you. As much as I have great friends and I actually love the country, it is not because it's Afghanistan. It's because it's in our national interest. So the way that we should have played to this and quite frankly I think the Afghan government has missed an opportunity is return on investment. President Trump is a businessman at first and foremost. He understands return on investment. What he's not seeing is that return and therefore in its former business dealings when he doesn't see a return on investment he gets out of the business deal. So I think that that's an important sort of characterization of this that we should look at it and what lens is he seeing this through? Because I don't think it's as emotional as it is here. It's actually more of a business issue, you know? So I think, ma'am, you had a point. Hi, I'm Nazrin Gross. I'm a woman's rights activist in Afghanistan. Don't worry about the emotional part of it. I'm also an advisor with Dr. Abdullah. One thing I'm a little bit confused. You keep saying the Taliban I think are a proxy force of the Pakistanis or the Pakistanis are using them as a proxy and yet you're talking about a government of Afghanistan that is run by Taliban. Are we giving the government of Afghanistan to a proxy of Pakistan? Is that what's going to happen? Because President Trump is kind of not getting his return. They return on his investment from Afghans. I was, I did not intend to. No, I was talking about the anti-India. In the context of India Pakistan I was talking about Jaish-e-Mohamed. Now those, I would definitely call them proxies. The Taliban is not a proxy because the Pakistanis are not, there's no command and control communication structure. It's similar to the anti-India groups. I know there's debate on that but my view is that the relationship is not as seamless as people think. The, you know, one of the first things that the first round of talks with the Taliban, one of the first things that Tayyab Baga said to the Americans was we don't want the Pakistanis involved. And to me that was really fascinating because that's not what we expected. A lot of the intelligence community in the United States believed that there was, you know, the Pakistanis and the Taliban are like this. And they were like that at some point because it was Pakistan saw that there was interest in promoting this group. They would protect certain interests of there's no violence. And which, you know, again, there's debate on that. And we could argue that that was not a good strategy. But the Afghan Taliban is an independent organization. I mean, the Pakistanis really, like they may have relationships through their intelligence services and they may even give money to them. They may give supplies. They may facilitate certain things. There's been a lot of reporting that documents that calling it a proxy. I don't, if I said that I misspoke but I would never say that they were an actual proxy. Some people do think that but I would never say that. And I think that especially now if the Taliban were to go back and have a role in the Afghan government, the Pakistanis will be very worried about that because they have very strong links with the Pakistani Taliban groups, which have, like as I mentioned, they have a very definite vendetta against the Americans who had been doing drone strikes against their leaders. They have helped the Afghan Taliban many times, conduct attacks on Pakistani interests. So I don't think that there's any love lost there but there's always an opportunity for a kind of tactical alliance. Of course, of course, I would say that. I actually think, look, I'm fascinated by, you know, what is literally in the public domain about the Taliban that we don't pay attention to. And I'll give you a couple of examples. In my opinion, first of all, the Taliban were supported by Pakistan early on but it was more like an initial investment in the Taliban. And over time, they kept on investing in the Taliban in order to gain some influence but over time that influence waned in terms of the Taliban became more independent in their approach with the vast supplies of drugs, illicit mining and the money making operations. In fact, I think the Afghan Taliban were probably a money making enterprise for the Pakistanis rather than a money spending enterprise. But I think their independence is also demonstrated in the context of Pakistan is very close with Saudi Arabia, obviously. And yet the Taliban are preferring to stay with Doha in their approach and they're playing off the Saudi UAE and, you know, a relationship versus the Turkey and Qatar relationship. I mean, they're playing a rather interesting and nuanced perspective. So I think they continue to demonstrate their independence rather their dependence on Pakistan. So, but again, I'm not the Pakistan expert here but it's just certainly as an observer. I think that's probably accurate. Yeah, I don't think that that's... Now, yeah, that's a great question. It's not, I don't think that, I think you're missing a point here. There was a time when the camps were in Pakistan and the training was taking place in Pakistan and the recruitment was perhaps suicide bombers from the camps in Pakistan and even the refugee camps at that. But I think a lot of the training right now occurs in Afghanistan. The safe havens are not necessarily in Pakistan because they have plenty of safe havens inside Afghanistan. And so you mentioned before we move to other questions, you had talked a bit about the existence or not existence of the proxy dynamic and the Taliban, Afghan Taliban, playing this international game. To what extent has sort of elicit transportation networks and so on and US military pressure challenged the concept of that and also for you of the Afghan Taliban as a singular actor. Are we still dealing with a clear singular actor? Are we dealing with networks that are in conflict with themselves? Has it changed over time? It seems to be, I mean, there's a long history of negotiations with the Taliban and one of the questions I think that often doesn't get raised there is, can the Taliban actually, even if they wanted to deliver or is the conflict taken on a life of itself? So, you know, here's, I think a great characterization that of how the Taliban have proven over and over again that they're actually far more cohesive of an entity than we give them credit is the fact that during the Eid ceasefire that people are sort of embracing as something that, you know, see it happen, the ceasefire happen. Yeah, it did happen. You're right, there were Taliban and soldiers embracing and taking selfies. But the Taliban went on and put the switch on and said, okay, nobody fights. And then three days later they put the switch back on and said, everybody fights. And people obeyed. It wasn't a, you know, well, it's not a cohesive group and they don't have any command and control. And you know, it's not that nobody's gonna adhere to it. That's one example. There's more. But I think another thing that we're playing into their hand is there's some Taliban out there that quite frankly are not as enthusiastic about meeting their maker or maybe that they're more localized but they're not as willing to really push the fight. Well, when you give them a hint that they're winning, when you actually give them the appreciation that, hey, it is possible that we're gonna actually whoop another superpower. Okay, when you're giving them that sort of hint, that emboldens them to take on even more of an aggressive posture. So if I was gonna give you a sort of an assessment where as 2019 versus 2018, it get ready, rig for heavy weather because it's gonna get even worse because we are emboldening this enterprise to take an even more aggressive posture. Yeah, that's a good point. And it's something I heard over and over again in Pakistan where people were saying that if you thought they changed at all, them being able to kick the Americans out is going to just make them much stronger in whatever their objectives are. So I think that's fair. I like your point about the EED ceasefire. It's noted, I will say that in the Obama administration when we were focusing on getting the Taliban to show us that there was a command and control structure, there was some disparity between kind of the very senior leadership and then the commanders on the ground, the folks who were not really even living in the country anymore and then the ones who were fighting and enduring some different challenges. And there was some difficulty there we observed. And I think that that may have subsided now because the leadership involved in the talks is different, right? And so there's much more kind of unified approach coming from the Afghan Taliban than in, you know, five years ago we saw. But you see who's talking. I mean, Stanakzai and Mullah Baradar have been pro reconciliation. But last time Mullah Baradar talked about pro reconciliation, he got locked up in jail in Pakistan because it wasn't the time for reconciliation. So, I mean, again, this is like, we're playing little games over here. And by the way, last time the ceasefire, whether you believe what I just said in terms of the switch or not switch, at the last ceasefire was actually an Afghan on Afghan event. President Ghani offered it and the Taliban accepted. And the Taliban had different conditions and they had different intentions and they had different messages and different narrative, different reasons. But at the end, they're the ones engaged. We had no part in that. And yet, near immediately after, we energize, you know, Task Force Khalilzad to get involved, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, this is the next step. Which again, look, I applaud, I think that the team that's going there has good intentions. I just don't think it's, you know, it's not the right thing for us right now. Let's take some more. Let's do the back on those sides, there's a few. Hi, thanks for giving this talk today. I'm Mason Pajwek, I'm an analyst. So it looks like for most indicators, the Taliban have a really good ground game right now in Afghanistan. You know, about 50% of the country is being contested. And so the solution that you proposed is the Yani that we essentially invest in the Afghan government and then, you know, wait for reconciliation down the road. And Shamil, you proposed that, you know, we can just wait and hopefully the Taliban will go back and reevaluate their strategy. So my question is, do we have any indicators as to what popular support for the Taliban looks like outside of urban areas? Because, you know, urban Afghanistan, rural Afghanistan, there's been the classic divide there. And clearly, if they're able to contest as much of the country, they must have a strong base support. So I'm wondering, are there any good indicators? And is there any kind of intelligence being gathered to see what our bargaining position looks like based on those? Yeah, that's real good. First of all, I think that, you know, studying the enemies is obviously a significant issue that any analyst should look at. So your question is exactly right in the context of, you know, they're not just winning because they're just winning militarily. They're able to deliver some, you know, disputes, resolution, their taxation even occurs on the highway. When you pay the Taliban, you pay them once. When you pay, you know, bribes to other entities, you may have to pay them multiple times. So there's a lot of things that are going on that, you know, we have to combat those issues. You know, the things that are, they're not an attractive option, it's just that they are presenting an option. So I think that that's part of the problem that's happening in the rural areas that, look, I think we get caught up with these percentages, to be honest. I mean, if you're on one side, you say no, it's, you know, only 10% that they can test and, you know, or they control and 50 has contested. Well, you know, when you're looking at, you know, big mountain peaks in the Wacom, or I'm not sure who's contesting what on there, you know, so terrain is this really weird. And then when you play populations, well, now you're excluding the rural areas because obviously you're putting such a huge emphasis on cities. I think that you have to take into account that the Taliban have certain things that they are able to deliver to the areas that they're controlling, and they are smart enough to not rely on just might. I mean, they are delivering certain things. The odd thing is when you look at a clinic, for example, in some of the areas that the Taliban are controlling, the Taliban may in fact be administering or anything else to the clinic, but the Afghan government is paying the wages, you know? So it's this weird dynamic that's taken out in the provinces that we really need to take into account. The one thing I will tell you about this, you know, my embrace of a drawdown for a reason is that when we've trained, you know, the Afghan Special Forces, I think an Afghan Special Forces team can train an Afghan battalion, Kandak, a lot better about how to be more effective than perhaps an SFAB artillery man that came out from some other place and joined an army conventional unit, and they're supposed to be training the Afghan security forces. I think that we have to be innovative in the way that we approach things because quite frankly, you know, we have invested in some of these solutions. We're just not using them. We're using the Afghan commandos and the Special Forces as light infantry. You know, we're not using them in some ways as a special operations force that could be doing a lot more different things. When we use them as a special operations force, for example, you see a huge difference in Nangahar, for example, in terms of where we were with ISIS last year and where we are with ISIS this year. I mean, the levels of attacks in Nangahar have gone down significantly in the last six months. So we have seen some successes when we actually apply these sort of models. But again, all in all, there are different approaches. We're just sort of jumping to a bookend answer of let's just figure out a withdrawal based on some reconciliation of unicorn that we're chasing. I think there was one also on that side. How did that happen? Yeah, let's just say her name. Thank you. My name is Maryam Atash. I'm an Afghan-American attorney and I've been involved in this US Afghan policy before 9-11. I think if we just take out the fancy terms of what we've been doing and just look at what we've gone through, it's quite honestly very embarrassing. We have gone through so many policy changes and I think the problem is inconsistency. We started out, we're going to Afghanistan to get rid of these foreign terrorists who attacked us on 9-11. Then realizing that when we left Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion and the civil war happened that now we had to do this nation building that needed to be done then. Then we went to Iraq and said, that's the bigger problem. Let's reduce our involvement in Afghanistan. Then we had a surge and then we had a civilian surge and then we were doing counter-terrorism and then counter-insurgency and not staying consistent the whole time. So do you not, Yanni, I'd like to ask you, you made a good point that doesn't this now, it doesn't just look like a defeat. It is a defeat and it looks from the outside like the US is just trying to save face. To say, well, we actually wanted to leave but in reality these problems are still happening on the ground. I think the issue now is gonna be what kind of Afghanistan are we gonna quote unquote leave behind? Is it then gonna cost us more in the future? Just like learning from history what happened after the Soviet withdrawal? Because I think the Afghan government, there is a bilateral security agreement in place. So they don't feel this is a foreign occupation but these Taliban groups, whether they're supported from Pakistan and other foreign countries, feel that they can bleed the US slowly over time. So is that, yes. So do you think that this is an actual defeat that the US is facing and we're just calling it a peace talk? Yeah, well, I'll tell you one thing because I tend to be sort of the pessimist about certain things, you know, I'll bring down a room. I actually have to be paired up with somebody that actually is a bit more uplifting because I tend to be a bit of a downer. But I think that this is still salvageable. I wouldn't even be here if I didn't think this is salvageable. I think that there are ways and moves that we can make right now to put this in some kind of positive track. But what you mentioned is indisputable. I mean, from the abandonment in post-89 when the Soviets went across Friendship Bridge and our interest waned. I mean, that was pretty much, you know, we kicked the Russians out, we made them bleed, you know, and really the interest, I mean, took a nosedive. In terms of, you know, maybe at the time they had a sort of aversion towards nation-building just as we possibly have now. But, you know, just before the wall fell down and, you know, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, I interviewed somebody that was talking President Bush at the time and, you know, he was heavily involved with the Afghan campaign and he asked them in 1991, is this thing with Afghanistan still going on? You know, so unfortunately we, you know, it repeats itself after a while and, you know, the term history doesn't repeat. I think we're seeing a lot of rhymes here. The defeat that you're talking about, I mean, honestly, I don't see us as defeated so it's hard for me to actually argue or accept that we're somehow defeated or that the Afghan government has defeated is that we're given away the farm. This is like, you know, filing for bankruptcy in business terms, you know? I mean, it's just, but when you file for bankruptcy, the company may actually be more secure as a lawyer, you would understand that. But, you know, there are people that are going out of business, you know, or people that are losing their jobs. I mean, it affects a lot more people than just a drop of how many billions we're spending over there. And by the way, I meant to say it before, we're still spending billions in Egypt, we're still spending billions in Israel, we're continuing to spend billions all over the planet, you know, but, you know, this is, as far as I'm concerned, a very low investment for what is going to happen if we abandon it. So, short story long here, I don't think that we're being defeated. I think that you're absolutely right. I don't even think that we could call this a strategy. I mean, it's more of like a wishful thinking. But at the same time, I think that we go from one silver bullet approach to another silver bullet approach to another, you know, lotto ticket for your pension plan planning, you know. I mean, it's just, it's silly. I think we have time for one more. Just real quick, I think the term face saving is one that, you know, it's being thrown around a lot now in the region and here. And I don't know if there's any way for the US to save face. I think what has happened is out there for the world to see, it speaks for itself. So, the challenge is actually how to extract the United States from a situation that it knows it can't solve immediately. That we know. And that has always been the reason for the back and forth, I would argue, just from my perspective of being on the inside, that there's no real reason for Trump to actually take out these troops so urgently because no Americans are pushing for it. There's no emotional connection to the war that you might think there should be for such an urgent departure or withdrawal. But there is an urgency to stay actually because of the security situation, because of the threat to human rights, women's rights. And that was always the reason there was this back and forth with the Obama administration. That, you know, the second Obama said that you wanted to bring the troops home, there would be some report on the security situation, there would be some attack somewhere, and all of us who are analyzing the situation would believe that this is on us if we leave, that it's going to get far worse. And in fact, it has gotten far worse in terms of the security environment. So, that was the reason for the inconsistency, but there's a bigger issue that we don't like to talk about, which is you have a defeat when you know what you've lost. What were you trying to gain in the first place? I think that's always been the challenge for the U.S. with this war is that it was open-ended. Preventing terrorist groups from having safe haven in a country that's halfway around the world and that we have very difficult terrain to engage with and we don't understand it the way that we need to, that's not really a achievable goal. There could have been a better way to identify what the U.S. interest and intention was. But I think that was hard and complicated by the fact that everything after 9-11 was, had put us into some kind of haze or fog of war that we really didn't understand what was happening and the introduction of a new kind of asymmetrical warfare for the United States where we had an enemy that was not a state and how do you actually, we weren't equipped to deal with that kind of threat. That damaged any good that we would have been able to do kind of on the battlefield in Afghanistan, I think, and that's still not finished. Yeah, and then very quickly, I think there was the question in the back. That will be our last one. Hi, my name's Tanvi. I'm one of the India U.S. fellows here at New America and I'm actually someone who's worked in the security establishment as well as on elections in India and my question is really on this Indo-Pac angle, right? If you look at it from maybe a realism lens, right? It is very much in also the USA's interest to, there is now a lot of momentum in India from some camps to really go for a final strike, right? To sort of nip this whole terrorist base issue in the bud, you know, send in another attack and take a bunch of these bases out and just rid India of this problem. And I mean, if you think about it, this would actually maybe help, you know, the Afghans or the Americans and all these people who are struggling with this conundrum of like there, we have to work with Pakistan, but also there's that issue of them spawning terrorism on. So is there any thinking on this in the U.S. establishment? And just in quick response to the MIG point that was brought up. So I think there's the right interceptors for the F-16s or the Sukhoi's in India and there's only like 240 of them or so. And our LOC is like 700 kilometers long, right? So it is also said that Pakistan also deliberately picked the sector that's mapped to a MIG squadron. And MIGs also are sort of like lighter than the Sukhoi's. So their operational readiness is very fast. And I think this whole skirmish only lasted like two or three minutes. So we can talk about that later, but yeah. How much time do we? That was the most challenging question for the last one minute of the event. I think in the case of the final strike scenario that you outlined that the current administration would probably view that as something that was within India's right to do. And I think that has been made very clear by John Bolton's remarks. I think that there would be hesitation amongst the careerist bureaucrats for supporting such a policy that would probably be like a political policy that would have to then be implemented or supported I guess or not by the bureaucracy. The U.S. tends to always end up urging restraint between any India-Pakistan conflict. So even with what happened this month, we eventually saw Pompeo come around to say, okay, enough is enough actually. But I think it's a good example of that shows us what happens when the U.S. in the first place says, well, you gotta do what you gotta do, very publicly. This is what happens. I don't feel comfortable commenting any further on that. That's a really, that's an interesting and tough question. Yeah. No comment. Yeah. You're lucky. Speakers, it's always good to see so many people turn out for this issue on such short notice. Is there rarity these days? Let's give our speakers a hand.