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BACK STORY WITH DANA LEWIS
Dana Lewis is a veteran World Affairs Correspondent. He's been everywhere. From global war zones to the streets of London where he is based.
He has been based in Jerusalem, and Moscow.
And he loves talking to people about whats behind the headlines. Award winning. "A real in the trenches reporter". Great interviewing skills and easy to listen to.
BACK STORY WITH DANA LEWIS
AFGHANISTAN COLLAPSE
Afghanistan is in tatters. The Taliban have taken over and the Government and the Afghan Army is no more. They ran in the face of an America withdrawal many now say was ill timed and ill advised.
On this Back Story with Dana Lewis, Ret. Lt. General Ben Hodges who says Pakistan was pulling the Taliban strings and pretended to be an American ally.
And Pashtani Durani who ran an aid agency educating women, and has now gone into hiding fearing the Taliban.
Uh, joint staff, central command, uh, state all believed or hoped is somehow Pakistan would be that they were our ally. I mean, that word ally was used and that we believed there were gullible for a period of time that they might actually become Manila. In fact, is ISI the intelligence, service and Pakistan, uh, and the, and the Pakistani army that's who runs things in Pakistan. And, uh, they have zero interest in an Afghanistan that was stable, secure, because Afghanistan would naturally be a friend of India.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. And welcome to a new season of backstory. I'm Dana Lewis. I've been traveling from London to Florida and now to the south of France, it's been amazing to cautiously with mask board a plane and see how other people are coping in the pandemic. It's been liberating and a bit scary watching. As some people don't take COVID seriously enough and others to understand this is a new chapter, but it's not over take care of yourselves and get the vaccine. It works. Billions of now had it. I had to do a segment this week because of Afghanistan. I really wasn't going to launch a new season until September, but the events are so dramatic. If you follow me, you'll know that I was one of the first reporters into Afghanistan after nine 11. I was there many times in the years after embedded as a reporter with us troops. And I began to believe all those commanders who said the Afghan army would be strong and not let the country descend again at the chaos, when an American withdrawal inevitably occur. Now we have collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghans are exposed to years. More of the Taliban who are brutal and extreme and have not cut ties, say experts with Al Qaeda and others coming up an Afghan who was run programs, educating women in Afghanistan. Now she is on the run and in hiding and endanger, all women are, but first a former American general who served in Iraq and Afghanistan about what happened today, what led to this collapse of the Afghan army and what comes tomorrow.
Speaker 1:All right, joining me now from the United States has been Hodges, a former Lieutenant general in the U S army. He was the commander of us forces in Europe. He is currently the Pershing chair and strategic studies at the center for European policy analysis. Hi, Ben, good to talk to you again, Nana, thank you for the opportunity. Would you call this a disaster and feel free to use your own terms as to what's taking place in Afghanistan, especially today? Well, certainly it's a, a catastrophic outcome for, uh, millions of Afghans, uh, as well as for, uh, American policy. And, um, also for the entire coalition, you know, we were, it was not just the United States that were very many other countries that also threw in with us. And so, you know, there's, there's no way we can shine this up and, and, and find a, a fine to, but too many bright spots right now. Who are you blaming for this? Well, um, well let me say upfront, I support the president's decision to withdraw. I think the, uh, the speed, uh, and the execution is, uh, is, is not working out like anybody would have hoped because we didn't get policies in place first for the withdrawal specifically, how do you get, um, interpreters out, for example? So, um, getting the policy right is, is always the most important thing. And we hadn't gotten the policies right. Necessarily to implement the president's direction. Having said that now, I think to answer what your real question is, how did, how did it go so badly despite the money, the lives laws, the effort by thousands of really, really good, fun diplomats officers, soldiers, uh, and others. Um, I think number one, that we lost sight of what the strategic objective was. I mean, ultimately it's the job of the president to lay out the strategic objective and then for his team to build the plan, to carry it out. That's we lost sight of that. Uh, number two, I really, um, put the greatest amount of blame on Pakistan and the inability of successive administrations to figure out a strategy where Pakistan would not be able to give safe Haven to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda. Why are you supporting president by this decision to pull it out? Because a lot of people will say, this will be one of the worst policy, foreign policy disasters of his term. They'll say that president Trump laid the groundwork for this by directly negotiating with the Taliban and empowering the Taliban and announcing both presidents announcing that this was going to be a calendar based pull out rather than a condition pull-out. Yeah, well, um, I think certainly the administration is going to come in for some well-deserved criticism for how this has happened and, and the, the way it happens so fast without having the policies in place that I've talked about earlier, there, there's no way to put, to any find any bright spots in this. However, it's, it really is a self-serving by many people. And I'm watching everything that you're watching here over the last few weeks of, uh, people that had hands in it over the last 20 years that had a role to play, whether they were at whatever level they were in. Um, you know, the president, the administration is going to get a lot of blame, but where we are today has so much to do with where we were, uh, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, when so on. And I think that there was a reluctance for a variety of reasons to, um, do what was necessary with, um, especially Pakistan, which means you didn't have to bring in India into the equation to figure out how do we do not safe Haven there's there's no, her insurgency and history of which I'm aware where the insurgents were defeated, as long as they had a significant safe Haven across the border. And that's what the Taliban and all kind of had for the last 18 years or so in the U S confront that, I mean, you, you were the director of the Pakistan Afghanistan coordination, uh, cell at the joint staff. I mean, you know, very well, what pact is that the double game that Pakistan was playing? Yeah, we were fortunate to have somebody like Admiral Mike Mullen as the chairman at the time. This was a, I was the director of the pack from 2000, basically all of 2011. And so I was part of the problem if you will. Uh, but I remembered seeing, uh, uh, the chairman worked so hard with Pakistani leadership, the administration administrations, uh, joint staff, central command, uh, state all believed or hoped is somehow Pakistan would be that they were our ally. I mean, that word ally was used and that we believed there were global for a period of time that they might actually become Manila. In fact, is ISI the intelligence, service and Pakistan, uh, and the, and the Pakistani army that's who runs things in Pakistan. And, uh, they have zero interest in an Afghanistan that was stable, secure, because Afghanistan would naturally be a friend of India. And so for Pakistan, they did not want to the outcome that we had hoped there would be. And so that's why I think, and of course they have nuclear weapons. And so the administrations would, were understandably and correctly concerned about control of those nuclear weapons, the fissile material what's going to happen to that. And I think the big mistake when you ask who's to blame was that we tried to isolate Afghanistan is to one problem, set Pakistan as another problem set. You were there. And I was there many times listening to commanders like yourself. Um, and first of all, I, you know, maybe you, you would agree with me that in terms of the soldiers on the ground, American soldiers, underground Canadians, French, German, I can go down the whole list that they did the job. I mean, I think that they were able to do what they needed to do in Afghanistan in very difficult circumstances. Would you agree with me there before I go on? Of course, uh, I'm very proud of what, uh, the coalition accomplished, uh, over the years. I w when I was leaving in, uh, November, 2010 from AF from Kandahar, um, I like many others thought this, this might work. I mean, cause I had met so many quality, uh, Afghan officers and uh, hardworking citizens. Uh, and I saw the effort that was being put in the us army and other us and coalition forces, uh, but also by our diplomats. Yeah. But so many others have as well that like, okay, you know, it's, it's better now than it was a year ago and you saw these things. But I think in our heart of hearts, um, we, we wanted it to be successful because we saw the effort and we, the lives that were lost. Uh, but at the end of the day, it's, it's a responsibility to, uh, for all of us to say, look, the Africans, they won't do it by themselves as if we expect
Speaker 4:They went by themselves. I mean the Afghan
Speaker 1:Army in particular training equipment, um, huge efforts by everybody, uh, from, from the U S to all of the NATO allies that went in there and said, look, the only way of Dennis is going to stand up on its own. And so if it has its own army, um, they we've done everything we can to train them. Why do you have, you know, up to 300,000 Afghan soldiers, if the number was over that big, but that that's some of the official members, I mean, basically ran away with a wimp. So, uh, you know, Napoleon says the moral is the, is to the physical as three is to one. In other words, moral courage, moral power is more significant than the math of mass. And, uh, history is full of examples of where smaller, but more determined, uh, forces with greater willpower. We're able to defeat much larger forces and that's what's happening right now. Uh, Afghan security forces let's assume that those numbers are even close to correct outnumber the Taliban 41, and yet they are, um, running away, uh, surrendering or disappearing at a high rate of speed. And, um, you know, when I think about the handful of soldiers that cop Keating, for example, or other cases where American soldiers, uh, or other coalition forces were surrounded by hundreds of Taliban and they held them off and fall like crazy out the, I kept thinking, surely there will be a few cases like that, of Afghan security forces that will do that. And that would give courage to others, but I just haven't seen any of that. So this clearly the Taliban has greater willpower. They believe in their cause more than Afghan security forces. When I entered Afghanistan after nine 11 in the north, right after augment Shama a had been assassinated from the Northern Alliance, right after nine 11 occurred, there was a lot of talk that the Taliban could push right up into central Asia. These stabilize, all of central Asia along with Al Qaeda in terms of was Becca Stan to GQ, Stan, and on and on. Do you fear what comes to moral? Well, you know, um, first of all, there are, there are of course, lots of people, including me that are very concerned about what's going to happen to women. What's, you know, what's going to happen to people who were tried to make the government of Afghanistan work, um, who were out there. Of course, we worry about that. You're already hearing reports and seeing video of, of what's happening as Taliban coming back into control in certain places, this is not going to be party. Uh, but at the same time I reject when people say it's faulted the United States, and this is happening. It's, it's a hundreds of thousands of Afghan soldiers and police that are running away that are exposing these women and others to this, to what the Taliban are going to do. So this, we needed to keep it's too easy just to say, the president made a huge mistake. It's all his fault, or it's all the U S fault, uh, despite the many, many mistakes that we made as I've tried to describe here earlier, uh, in the region, um, you know, U S department of defense lines up the combatant commands to a lot of effort into try to get, you know, where is central command, whereas Indo-Pacific command, whereas your S European command, where are the boundaries? And, uh, one of the unfortunate boundaries between central command and Indo-Pacific command is the border between Pakistan and India. So India is in the Indo-Pacific region. Pakistan is, is in central command region, but yet the strategy clearly has got to encompass that whole region. If we want to make sure that I'll kind of, or Al Qaeda is not able to come back to life basically, and start expanding into central Asia, cause that's going to cut across multiple commands. Last question to you, you were in Iraq as well. Is this the end of the us army engaging on behalf of the us government in nation building and trying to stand up independent governments and in Afghanistan will be a monument, a monument to how that just has not worked despite the money, despite the effort us army can take the ground and they can fight, but to expect them to stand up an independent nation, even over a 20 year period, it's impossible. So, uh, for sure we made mistakes. Uh, I personally made huge mistakes as a brigade commander in Iraq. Uh, and as the core commander multinational core or core operations officer multinational coreq, uh, and then Afghanistan, but you could see that we were adapting our training or learning our understanding, building up depth of knowledge about the culture, but at the end of the day, you know, our civilian leadership is who has to set the priority, lay out the strategic objective. So of course it's not the end of the army being involved in nation building because at some point there will be an administration that will say in order to prevent a crisis from happening, we're going to need to do some things here, nation building, or being the world's policemen or, or any of these other sort of titles are not inherently evil. What is wrong is if the strategic objective is not clearly defined and, and properly resourced with all the elements of, of power of a nation. Uh, and if we don't keep a clear eye on that and also have built in the mechanisms that say, we got it wrong, you know, clouds would said that the first duty of the diplomat and the general is to understand the nature of the conflict. That's, that's where we keep getting it wrong. Certainly got it wrong, no argument, but, uh, not, not for a lack of effort from a lot of soldiers. So Ben Hodges, former Lieutenant general in the us army and chair of the Persian chair in strategic studies. Ben, thank you so much for taking some time. Okay. Dan, thank you for the privilege is the founder and also the executive director of learn, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating women in Afghanistan and Preston. If I can begin just with that. I mean, if the Americans had any success story during the invasion, uh, after 2001, it was that they had this ability to reopen schools and reopen society to women. And all of that seems to be in grave danger now.
Speaker 5:Yes, definitely. That was one of those things that the west or the Americans could claim or women rights, political rights, constitutional rights, human rights, although they Detroit abusing it. But yeah, apart from that, uh, the did highlight a lot of things. So including in girls' education, it was, you know, major trophy for them to like, you know, celebrate in the worst, but this is how your text money spent. But what people didn't knew was they were enabling warlords within the country. They were enabling corrupt leaders within the continuum or no checks and balances. Um, girls' education. Uh, I know fighting goose schools with my government all the time, asking them if that my district had ghost for those teachers, whose students and the west field in this sense where they were not able to like, you know, hold onto that chicken balance, you are giving them money, but where is your chicken balance? And that's where they feel immensely, especially when it comes to education. If they had insured the past 20 years, that all girls from all areas, all geographies had access to education, um, all worse would have access to education. We wouldn't be standing here.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, that's a tough verdict on American efforts, isn't it? Because, you know, in my time in Afghanistan, talking to everybody from young captains on the ground with us forces to American generals, this constant struggle and challenge to try to stop the systemic corruption, uh, was mountainous. And, you know, they did everything that they could when they were there. They tell us, uh, to try to get the money to the people who really deserved it. Uh, but it was very, very difficult to, to disperse funds, to organizations that would make sure that, you know, the, the money went to where it did the, the corruption in the Afghan government, uh, was just unbelievable.
Speaker 5:It was unbelievable. That's what I'm trying to see. I, I I'm to give you an example, the U S the west, they give funds to entities that were run by the government officials. So for example, first and works in the morning in the presidential palace in the ministry is in a high position. Then in the evening, they have a side business, which is an energy or something like that. And it's not very well received enough on the sun right now, danger business is not it's sort of business for them, right? And they used to run these NGOs or the CSS and these to get funds from their ambassador friends, or, um, all these bigger organizations as boomer organizations. So I think if they wanted to do something, they would stop there. They will stop donating funds or funding. People who are already in the government funding actually empower the civil society or the people on the ground or the ruler population.
Speaker 1:Us officials were, were us officials trying to get the money to the right place. Or they simply didn't bother
Speaker 5:Not only the us officials, the whole west, every one in world enough. It's not one, one level or another. I mean, like there are induced from even Bangladesh like rats and they are also involved in Afghanistan. So I'm not just going to highlight the side of the worst or the U S only I'm trying to say one thing that they tried, but they didn't try so much that they could get it to extra people. They tried circling back to the same elite community and giving funds to them and empowering them. I mean like how much money can one person get, uh, until they're full. And I'm not sure my leaders there, we have big bellies there. They still love money. They still want money. So, yeah,
Speaker 1:I remember being in Kabul. Um, you know, I was there in 2001 after the Taliban were forced from power and then going back, you know, every few years I would go back and do stories. And over that time, visually just driving around that main center in Kabul, where government members own homes in keenly seeing the construction of small homes, becoming bigger homes, becoming villas, and they were in many ways, monuments to how Afghan authorities were siphoning off funds that were really meant to people.
Speaker 5:Exactly. I mean like one house in[inaudible] costs around$2,000, right? For rent per month, I can literally build a school. I digital's too with that for a whole village. So can you see the difference you like one whole year and was it 100 is equal to 12 districts, schools, 12 village schools within 12 villages. So yeah, my, my, my government is set up that I could get, and that's the reason 40 countries help them stabilized. And they were still not there to fight back terrorism or like, you know, neighboring countries, what were they doing?
Speaker 1:What is happening now? The Taliban are literally washing over cities. They're taking back huge swaths of territory. You must be shocked.
Speaker 5:I'm shocked. I'm one of the fired I'm horrified. I'm hopeless. A lot of words, adjectives for you, but all of those, because I had to leave everything in the morning, I had to leave. You know, you are one person one day, uh, you are, uh, in your community, you belong there. You talk to people, you are one of them. And then the other day, you just don't have anything. All you have to be strong and you have to do is leave because that's the only option to survive. So great. Now people within the city, in the capacity, the Taliban are celebrating their fighting or celebratory fires. There's no resistance. People are scared to talk back or even say that we don't want Taliban. So things are getting back to normal, but it's Taliban. So I'm not sure what we'll expect anymore. Cities are just falling like, you know,
Speaker 1:Dominoes. Have you been on the run yourself or what are you doing to protect you?
Speaker 5:I did. I did. I had to leave my house in the morning.
Speaker 1:So you took, as of today, left your house and you've had to relocate. Yeah,
Speaker 5:Because I run an NGO. I am working with girls and these are things that people don't receive well, when it comes to the counterpart. Um, even if I'm not just gonna sit here and assume and all that, I remember a few days ago, I was talking on this news channel. I received a, in the tweet reply, the Taliban tool. He's like, you know, you, you are in some serious need of some lashing. So I'm pretty sure if the all, not all Taliban feel the same, a few of them pretty much would feel the same to lash. So yeah.
Speaker 1:Somebody said that you tweeted that an Afghan journalist had put you on an Taliban endless. Um, no, no.
Speaker 5:Uh, 400 journalists put me on Afghanistan, end game list and game. It's like, you know, this irony people use in the worst when it comes to a phenomenon, it was used during the cold war and the Soviet and all that. So it just it's, it's not right. It's not, you mean we are people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I can't imagine a foreign journalist doing that. And it's, uh, I think it's despicable, but, but, but being on that list represents what I mean that the F w what are they trying to imply that the Taliban get even revenge list would include you?
Speaker 5:Probably, probably not. I'm not sure. I don't know what to study. I'm going to be very honest. Uh, there are times where people are like, oh, you're just sticking too much pressure. But then there, I know for short, if I'm talking from your study and I haven't seen so many tests in my, my inbox is filled with that, like, okay, you receive a, you should be doing this. You should be not being this. You are in need of lashing. You are in need of hiding. You should leave your house, blah, blah, blah. So I'm not going to see, okay. And I'm going to play the victim card that majority of people have done. And it's very worn out, oh, I'm a victim here, blah, blah, blah. But I lost my political identity. Right. I lost my right to the world. Right. I lost my right as a woman in Afghanistan to education, to socialize, to mobilize that, using everything that's already demanded that they are getting, even if I live, what is my legs
Speaker 1:And all of the people that you've helped all over the country, those young women that were able to go out and actually go to school and leave the house and work, um, and have a voice what's happening to them. Some people have said the Taliban are forcing them back into marriages of Taliban fighters. And women are being told to stay in doors. What is happening?
Speaker 5:Uh, I, I remember getting in touch with this Canadian woman yesterday. And she was like, uh, I left my house, the district because I have young daughters and I was in the city, but we give them groceries last week. And she says that now I don't even know what to do, because they are literally here what to do. So women, not only that, like, you know, not only access to education, like it's a privilege for us. I'm going to be honest, going out is a privilege because we don't have that kind of social norm to go out. But apart from that, getting forcefully, married to someone that's, that's something monstrous. And that's what monsters,
Speaker 1:Of course it is. Of course it is. And the Taliban hasn't changed in 20 years. What will they do to the country? If they can control it,
Speaker 5:If they control it, our economy will go down. People will stop going to educational institutions, not only girls, but also boys. Um, people will lose jobs, contribute, go back into Gordy because Taliban are good, uh, gorilla warfare, or like, you know, an organization that fights, there is no political institution that we have built. There is no political institution that they run, and there is no consensus on how political arts, uh, governments are run. So even if they meet one, I'm not sure how they're going to run it, how they're going to not develop an economy, how they're going to compete with the regional powers, even for operate with them. I'm not sure. So the country is going to fall back in economy in 40 in everything that we right now have gained, even with the corrupt over,
Speaker 1:I mean, it's really tragically turning the clock back. And you would think that for the sake of keeping a few thousand American troops there to keep the Afghan government steady, uh, the president Biden has made a critical mistake here in foreign policy, us foreign policy, because the Taliban will also embrace groups. Like Al-Qaeda, again,
Speaker 5:I feel like, you know, even if there's been Biden wanted to withdraw to make his comeback, like, you know, very famous that he's better than Trump. He should have done this, but he shouldn't have legitimized the Taliban in the process. He shouldn't have enforced the Doha bill on us. He shouldn't have let Salazar dictate our, uh, like, you know, our lives for us. He shouldn't have let that happen. He enabled that. I'm worried about that part. I'm not worried about a few troops we're drying because if you cannot defend the whole country and what did and I'm, um, what do you call it? And sad about the fact that he led it to my everything. Um, when it came to Doha, Qatar, Taliban, what they stood for, how the is escalated, how they didn't even try stopping it
Speaker 1:Because a lot of people don't understand, but the U S entered into discussions in Doha with the Taliban so-called peace talks, which are laughable.
Speaker 5:I mean, it's a lifetime laughable,
Speaker 1:Sadly laughable label. And they didn't include the Afghan government, even in those talks. So they legitimize the Taliban as an organization. Now in Afghanistan, I know an organization, a ruling organization of power.
Speaker 5:Exactly. And you go to them, you talk to them, you want the drawbacks to the fine, it's your right, right. As a person, as a 10 feet, it's not, um, we're not supposed to be dependent on you for the next 40 years. We, I personally wouldn't want that. Right. But you legitimizing them. You letting them do what they did. I'm not asking them to stop because us is literally like, you know, asking every other country, oh, you're like, you know, abusing human rights. You're doing this. You're being bad, blah, blah, blah. Then why are you not stopping the group that you're literally in talks with? You had more leverage, you could pressurize them into doing stuff. You could even literally ask them, you know, into a D, but they did it.
Speaker 1:Where's Tony. What is the Afghan government doing? And the Afghan army doing? Why they not standing up, um, to do the Taliban? Why do they just continue to give ground?
Speaker 5:I'm not sure. I'm not sure what to, what to think of them. I think I taught myself even yesterday. I was like, they're not going to abandon us. They're not going to leave us. And now all I can think of is like, maybe they were just trying to get out of Afghanistan. Maybe they were just trying to grab all the eight months or something like that, because how could you just you up on the whole country, how is it even possible?
Speaker 1:You still hold hope that they are regrouping, that the Afghan army will regroup and then push back and try to retake those cities. Or do you feel that you don't have hope you're shaking your head?
Speaker 5:No, I don't have any hope. If they had any, uh, strategy, they would have put it in place in the last three weeks when Panda was falling district by district, when Hillman was falling district by district, when he fell, but also bounced back, what did they do? Nothing.
Speaker 1:Do you think cobble is going to fall? Some people are saying that it could fall within a matter of weeks and that the, you know, the Americans are already now preparing to do possibly evacuated their own embassy. So
Speaker 5:My staff member who's in a cupboard. She tells me, yeah, cupboard is going fall. I personally am not sure. Maybe a deal will come through. Maybe something will happen. Or if it's the means in the CPCs definitely covers.
Speaker 1:And then it's done. It's done the Taliban rule, the entire country
Speaker 5:Already over. If you think about it, the Hera come back, they are more strategic than Cabo as a central province, right? It's a, it's not a[inaudible], it's a central province. While these are like bordering fluences, they should have saved their own water. First.
Speaker 1:You know, at least 20 years ago, there were malicious. I'm not saying they were a good thing, but there were pockets of the country that the Taliban could not take over. Those malicious warlords had their own weapons, their own followers. They were able to protect their areas in the north. Um, suddenly the U S really said about telling those militia leaders that they needed to disarm turn in their weapons, join the Afghan army and the Afghan government, which to a large degree they did. So now with the situation may be worse today than it was 20 years ago.
Speaker 5:Maybe, maybe because in a sense, Taliban are more evolved. Now, when it comes to a warfare, uh, they're trying new techniques, they're inventing all these different sorts of cylinder bombs right now. Uh, they have supportive feeds, no partners in this, and they have more fiscal support, uh, while our militia, even if they were private militias, they don't have any cause to, they were already limited by our central government. And I'm not sure if I was the first person to talk anti warlords and everything. Of course they did abuse women rights. I'm always going to say it out loud. Um, but right now we don't even have that resistance. We don't have that. Nothing.
Speaker 1:The Northern Alliance has already lost. Yeah.
Speaker 5:The north is last year.
Speaker 1:So there's really nothing left. Except maybe for now. I'm not sure how comfortable it seemed that the Americans made a mistake by not confronting Pakistan because the Pakistan are supporting the Taliban. And we keep talking about the Taliban, like, yeah, but nobody talks about Pakistan. The former Canadian ambassador. Yeah. Chris Alexander, who I know, well just said, look, this is about Pakistan. We have never taken on Pakistan and Pakistan. The ISI is controlling. What's going on in Afghanistan? Why did the Americans, why does the international community not confront Pakistan?
Speaker 5:The whole point is this. We are asking them, we're literally asking them, why don't you confront them? Like, do you have the leverage? Right? You give them eat. Half of their habits are built with your eat. Why don't you confront them? But then I don't know. Maybe they're too. I don't even know what to say. Yes, of course, Taliban come across the border. That's what they have been doing. That's what they are doing right now. This is very revolt. That's very brave of him to say it out loud. And I wish other ambassadors and other countries would have followed and that they didn't. It's a very sad thing. But at the same time, Pakistan could have been like, you know, pressurized into actually working for[inaudible]. But I think the U S made a serious mistake when it came to legitimizing Taliban, but also at the same time, um, turning a blind eye toward when it comes to Blackstone.
Speaker 1:W where do you go from here? You've moved your house and you fear a knock on the door.
Speaker 5:I don't know. I don't have, I don't have a plan concrete plan. I'm just on the move. I'll keep moving until like cannot
Speaker 1:Where you try to leave the country.
Speaker 5:Not sure. I don't know. I have a lot of family here. I have my father buried here. I can't just be
Speaker 1:It. Plus most Afghans cannot pick up and go. And tomorrow, what do you think? What, what does tomorrow bring? What comes next? We, what comes next? What do you think tomorrow? We will see,
Speaker 5:We already lost. We had already lost. Now. All we have to do is wait, what happens next? We are. As a person, all I can do is ask them to stop it. Stop from, uh, stop it from happening. That's all I can do is talk and talk and talk because that's the only thing I can do as a human rights activist. That's that's the only thing I can do. I'm not sure what others, what the government, what the
Speaker 1:All right. Push Tana. Guarani um, you know, good luck to you. And, uh, no, I, I, I witnessed so much progress in Afghanistan. Not all of it. Good. And it was multi-layered problems. Um, but I'm got to stand, came a long way, 2001, and it is tragic to see it going this way. And I, I think, and you maybe want to correct me. The west will have to come back. They will have to come back again. If this doesn't go well with the Taliban, and then nobody thinks it's going to go well, I mean, that Afghanistan will once again, be used as a launchpad for terror, from some groups. Um, and that the west is, is making a big mistake by leaving,
Speaker 5:Maybe not even gender, but also at the same time with some message that kiosk right now. So it just leads to more refugees, to more people displaced. And that's also like, you know, a lot of pressure on the vest because a lot of people would want to be for the Westridge. That's also a huge catastrophe and crisis. That's already happening in Yemen and Syria. And we, if we, uh, edit to that, the world is already like, you know, full of refugees already. There are a lot of refugees in the west, right? So it's already a mess. If you, even if the west doesn't come back, it's not like all they have to do is come back and seniors, but it's like a mess that they created and they didn't clean after them. So it's that way. It's that what I'm talking about. There's done a thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 3:And that's our backstory on Afghanistan. Like I said, at the beginning, I reported from Afghanistan many times for NBC and also Fox news. I'm sad for the country. I think we abandoned them. We meaning Western nations. We did it too quickly in the end and watch the collapse happened. It's not over the west will be drawn back there because wherever there is a vacuum in power, it's a breeding ground for extremists and terror. Afghanistan, won't let go so easily. And for the people of Afghanistan now come the retributions by the Taliban, the oppression, the backward March that set the stage for the nine 11 attack on America. 20 years ago, sad days for the country and soul searching by the west. How did we let it happen? Thanks for listening to backstory. Share this podcast. Listen for more. I'm Dana Lewis and I'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 2:[inaudible][inaudible].
