back to indexRobert Crews: Afghanistan, Taliban, Bin Laden, and War in the Middle East | Lex Fridman Podcast #244
link |
The following is a conversation with Robert Cruz,
link |
a historian at Stanford, specializing in the history
link |
of Afghanistan, Russia, and Islam.
link |
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
link |
To support it, please check out our sponsors
link |
in the description.
link |
And now, here's my conversation with Robert Cruz.
link |
Was it a mistake for the United States
link |
to invade Afghanistan in 2001, 20 years ago?
link |
As simple as yes, why was it a mistake?
link |
I'm a historian, so I say this with some humility
link |
about what we can know.
link |
I think I'd still like to know much more
link |
about what was going on in the White House
link |
in the hours, days, weeks after 9 11.
link |
But I think the George W. Bush administration
link |
acted in a state of panic.
link |
And I think they wanted to show a kind of toughness.
link |
They wanted to show some kind of resolve.
link |
This was a horrific act that played out
link |
on everyone's television screens.
link |
And I think it was really fundamentally
link |
a crisis of legitimacy within the White House,
link |
within the Oval Office.
link |
And I think they felt like they had to do something
link |
and something dramatic.
link |
I think they didn't really think through
link |
who they were fighting, who the enemy was,
link |
what this geography had to do with 9 11.
link |
I think looking back at it, I mean, some of us,
link |
not to say I was clairvoyant or could see into the future,
link |
but I think many of us were, from that morning,
link |
skeptical about the connections that people were drawing
link |
between Afghanistan as a state, as a place,
link |
and the actions of Al Qaeda in Washington
link |
and New York and Pennsylvania.
link |
So as you watch the events of 9 11,
link |
the things that our leaders were saying
link |
in the minutes, hours, days, weeks that followed,
link |
maybe you can give a little bit of a timeline
link |
of what was being said.
link |
One was the actual invasion of Afghanistan.
link |
And also, what were your feelings
link |
in the minutes, weeks after 9 11?
link |
I was on the way to American University
link |
hearing on NPR what had happened.
link |
And I thought of the American University logo,
link |
which is red, white, and blue.
link |
And I thought Washington is under attack
link |
and symbols of American power are under attack.
link |
And so I was quite concerned and at the time lived
link |
just a few miles from the capital.
link |
And so I felt that it was real.
link |
So I appreciate the sense of anxiety and fear and panic.
link |
And four, two, three years later in DC,
link |
we were constantly getting reports,
link |
mostly rumors and unconfirmed about all kinds of attacks
link |
that befall the city.
link |
So I definitely appreciate the sense of being under assault.
link |
But in watching television,
link |
including Russian television that day,
link |
because I just installed a satellite thing.
link |
So I was trying to watch world news
link |
and get different points of view.
link |
And that was quite useful
link |
to have an alternative set of eyes.
link |
Yeah, in Russian, yeah.
link |
Okay, so your Russians is good enough
link |
to understand Russian television.
link |
The news, yeah, the news and the visuals that were coming
link |
that were not shown on American television.
link |
I don't know how they had it, but they had,
link |
they were not filtering anything
link |
in the way that the major networks
link |
and cable televisions were doing here.
link |
So it was a very unvarnished view of the violence
link |
of the moment in New York City
link |
of people diving from the towers or being,
link |
and it was really, they didn't hold back on that,
link |
which was quite fascinating.
link |
I think much of the world saw much more
link |
than actually the American public saw.
link |
But to your question, amid that feeling of imminent doom,
link |
I watched commentators start to talk about Al Qaeda
link |
and then talk about Afghanistan.
link |
And one of the experts was Barnett Rubin,
link |
who's at NYU, who's a kind of long,
link |
very learned Afghanistan hand.
link |
And he's brought on Peter Jennings on ABC News
link |
to kind of lay this out for everyone.
link |
And I thought, you know, he did a fine job,
link |
but I think it was formative in submitting the view
link |
that somehow Al Qaeda was synonymous
link |
with this space, Afghanistan.
link |
And I think, again, I was no Al Qaeda expert then,
link |
and I'm not now, but I think my immediate thought
link |
went to war and because my background had been with,
link |
at that point, mostly Afghans who had been displaced
link |
from decades of war,
link |
whom I encountered in Uzbekistan,
link |
who were refugees and so on.
link |
I thought immediately, my mind went to the suffering
link |
of Afghan people, that this war was going to sweep up,
link |
of course, the defenseless people
link |
who have nothing to do with these politics.
link |
So we should give maybe a little bit of context
link |
that you could speak to.
link |
So assume nobody's an expert at anything.
link |
So let's just say you and I are not experts at anything.
link |
What, as a historian, were you studying at the time
link |
and thinking about, is it the full global history
link |
Were you thinking about the Mujahideen
link |
and Al Qaeda and Taliban?
link |
Were you thinking about the Soviet Union,
link |
the proxy war through Afghanistan?
link |
Were you thinking about Iraq and oil?
link |
What's the full space of things in your heart,
link |
in your mind at the time?
link |
I mean, just at the moment, of course, it was just the sense
link |
of the suffering and the tragedy
link |
of the moment of the deaths.
link |
And that was, I think, I was preoccupied
link |
by the violence of the moment.
link |
But as the conversation turned to Afghanistan,
link |
as a kind of theater, to somehow respond to this moment,
link |
I think immediately what came to mind
link |
was that little I knew about Al Qaeda at the time
link |
suggested that the geography was inaccurate,
link |
that this was a global network, a global threat,
link |
that this was a movement that went beyond borders.
link |
And I think that it felt early on
link |
that Afghanistan was gonna be used as a scapegoat.
link |
And intellectually at the time,
link |
I was teaching at American University.
link |
My courses touched on a range of subjects,
link |
but I was trying to complete a book
link |
on Islam and the Russian Empire, actually.
link |
But in doing that research, which took me across Russia
link |
and Central Asia, purely by accident,
link |
I had developed an interest in Afghanistan
link |
because just, again, a series of coincidences.
link |
I found myself in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan,
link |
without housing, through an American friend
link |
who was like the king of the market in Tashkent.
link |
He ran into some Afghan merchants there.
link |
They found out I didn't have a place to live.
link |
I didn't know where Afghanistan was, honestly.
link |
I had a vague idea it was next door.
link |
Well, you lived in Uzbekistan?
link |
Yeah, in Tashkent, doing dissertation research, yeah.
link |
Because it was hub of the Russian Empire in Central Asia.
link |
So just by accident, I met with these young Afghans
link |
who took me in as roommates.
link |
And that, I think, the sense of that community
link |
shaped my idea of what Afghanistan is.
link |
It was my first exposure to them.
link |
They were part of a trading diaspora.
link |
They had brought matches from Riga, Latvia.
link |
They had somehow brought flour
link |
and some agricultural products from Egypt.
link |
And they were sitting in closed containers in Tashkent
link |
waiting for the Uzbekistan state to permit them to trade.
link |
So these guys are mostly hanging out during the day.
link |
They'll get dressed up.
link |
They put on suits and ties like you're wearing.
link |
They'd polish their shoes.
link |
And they would sit around offices, drink tea, pistachios.
link |
Then they'd feast at lunch.
link |
And then at night, we would go out.
link |
So part of my research,
link |
because I also had a bottleneck in my research,
link |
I was going to the state archives in Tashkent.
link |
And because of the state of Uzbekistan,
link |
that was a very kind of suspicious thing to do.
link |
So it took a while to get in.
link |
So I had downtime in Tashkent, just like these guys.
link |
So I got to know them pretty well.
link |
And it was really just an accidental kind of thing,
link |
but grew quite close to them.
link |
And I developed an appreciation of,
link |
which now I think, again, thinking of the seeds of all this,
link |
these people had already lived,
link |
young guys in their 20s,
link |
they'd already lived in six or seven countries.
link |
They all spoke half a dozen languages.
link |
One of my best friends there had been a kickboxer
link |
and break dancer, trained in Tehran.
link |
His father was a theater person in Afghanistan.
link |
He told stories of escaping death in Afghanistan
link |
during the civil war, going to Uzbekistan,
link |
escaping death there.
link |
And these were very real stories.
link |
Can you also just briefly mention,
link |
geographically speaking,
link |
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, you mentioned Iran.
link |
Who are the neighbors of all of this?
link |
What are we supposed to be thinking about for people?
link |
I was always terrible at geography and spatial information.
link |
So can you lay it out?
link |
So Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan.
link |
It was a hub of Russian imperial power in the 19th century.
link |
The Russians take the city from a local kind of Muslim
link |
It becomes the city, the kind of hub of Soviet power
link |
in Central Asia after 1917.
link |
It becomes the center of the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan,
link |
which becomes independent finally in 1991
link |
when the Soviet Union collapses.
link |
So these are all like these republics
link |
are the fingertips of Soviet power in Central Asia.
link |
And they've been independent since 1991,
link |
but they have struggled to disentangle themselves
link |
from Moscow, from one another.
link |
And now they face very serious pressure from China
link |
to form a kind of periphery of the great machine
link |
that is the Chinese economy and its ambitions
link |
to stretch across Asia.
link |
For Afghanistan, where my roommates, my friends
link |
hailed from, Afghanistan had fallen into civil war
link |
in the late 1970s when leftists tried
link |
to seize power there in 1978.
link |
The Soviet Union then extended from Uzbekistan,
link |
crossing the border with its forces in 1979
link |
to try to shore up this leftist government
link |
that had seized power in 1978.
link |
And so for Central Asians in the wider region,
link |
their fate had for some decades been tied to Afghanistan
link |
in a variety of ways, but it became much more connected
link |
in the 1980s when the Soviet Red Army occupied Afghanistan
link |
And here, I refer your listeners and viewers
link |
to Rainbow Three as the guide to.
link |
The historically accurate guide.
link |
The historically accurate, the Bible.
link |
The Bible of Afghan history in Rainbow Three, yeah.
link |
As a fantastic window onto the American view of the war.
link |
But for us Afghans, there are people who fought
link |
against the Soviet army, but of a certain generation,
link |
the guys I knew, their mission was to survive.
link |
And so they fled in waves by the millions
link |
to Pakistan, to Iran.
link |
Some went north into Soviet Central Asia later in the 1990s.
link |
And some were displaced across the planet.
link |
So California, where we're sitting today,
link |
has a large community that came in the 80s and 90s
link |
Can I ask a quick question that's a little bit of a tangent?
link |
What is the correct or the respectful way
link |
to pronounce Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iran?
link |
So as a Russian speaker, Afghanistan.
link |
The an versus the an.
link |
Is it a different country by country?
link |
As an English speaker in America,
link |
is it pretentious and disrespectful to say Afghanistan?
link |
Or is it the opposite, respectful to say it that way?
link |
What are your thoughts on this?
link |
That's a fascinating question.
link |
I defer to the people from those countries
link |
to, of course, sort out those politics.
link |
I think one of the fascinating things about the region
link |
broadly is that it is a place of so many cultures
link |
and it's really quite cosmopolitan.
link |
So I think people are mostly quite forgiving
link |
about how you say Afghanistan, Afghanistan.
link |
It's not like Paris.
link |
Yeah, right, right.
link |
The French are not forgiving.
link |
I think people are very, very forgiving.
link |
And I think that Iranians are a bit more instructive
link |
in suggesting Iran rather than Iran, Iraq, Iraq.
link |
I think there's going to be a fit
link |
between certain ways of pronouncing these places
link |
and the position that Americans take about them.
link |
So it's more jarring when people say Iraq
link |
and it comes with a claim that a certain kind of person
link |
should be the victim of violence or.
link |
Yeah, that's fascinating.
link |
It's kind of like talking about the Democratic Party
link |
or the Democrat Party.
link |
It's sometimes using certain kind of terminology
link |
to make a little bit of a sort of implied statement
link |
about your beliefs.
link |
That's fascinating.
link |
Yeah, I mean, I think when I hear Iraq and Iran,
link |
I mean, I think it, yeah, is it intentional
link |
in the case of a Democrat or is it just a,
link |
you know, and it's a whatever.
link |
Again, I think most Iranians and Afghans people I know
link |
have been very cool about that.
link |
What annoys Afghans now, I can say,
link |
I think it's fair to say,
link |
I don't mean to speak for many people,
link |
for the entire group of people,
link |
but I can just share with our non Afghan friends.
link |
The term Afghani is a kind of term of offense
link |
because that's the name of the currency.
link |
And so lots of people ask, you know, why having,
link |
especially again, it's more directed at Americans
link |
because, you know, we've been so deeply involved
link |
in that country obviously for the last 20 years, right?
link |
So Afghans ask why after 20 years,
link |
are you still calling us the wrong name?
link |
What is the right name of somebody?
link |
They prefer Afghans.
link |
Yeah, and Afghani is the name of the currency.
link |
I just dodged a bullet
link |
because I was gonna say Afghans.
link |
That's cool, no, no, no, yeah, I hear you.
link |
That's really great to know.
link |
Yeah, and it's, again, I think,
link |
but I would emphasize that people are quite open
link |
and, you know, it's a whole region of incredible diversity
link |
and respect for linguistic pluralism actually.
link |
So I think that, you know,
link |
but I also appreciate that in this context,
link |
when there's a lot of pain, you know,
link |
in the Afghan diaspora community in particular,
link |
you know, being called the wrong name after 20 years
link |
when they already feel so betrayed at this moment,
link |
you know, just kind of,
link |
if one follows this on social media,
link |
that is one kind of hot wire, right?
link |
Yeah, so the reason I ask about pronunciation
link |
is because, yes, it is true
link |
that there are certain things when mispronounced
link |
kind of reveal that you don't care enough
link |
to pronounce correctly.
link |
So I don't know enough to pronounce correctly
link |
and you dismiss the culture and the people,
link |
which I think as per your writing is something that,
link |
if it's okay, I'll go with Afghanistan
link |
just because I'm used to it.
link |
I say Iraq, Iran, but I say Afghanistan.
link |
Yeah, that's great.
link |
As you do in your writing,
link |
Afghanistan suffers from much misunderstanding
link |
from the rest of the world.
link |
But back to our discussion of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
link |
the whole region that gives us context
link |
for the events of 9 11.
link |
So yeah, if we go back to that day
link |
and the weeks that followed,
link |
in my mind went to the community I knew in Tashkent,
link |
which was interesting.
link |
I mean, they were,
link |
so Islam was the focal point of our conversation in the US
link |
about 9 11, right?
link |
Everyone to know what was the relationship
link |
between the civic violence and that religious tradition
link |
with its 1 billion plus followers across the globe, right?
link |
That became the issue, of course,
link |
for American security institutions,
link |
for local state and police institutions, right?
link |
I mean, it became the,
link |
I think it was the question
link |
that most Americans had on their mind.
link |
So again, I didn't imagine myself as someone
link |
who had all the answers, of course,
link |
but given my background
link |
and coming at this from Russian history,
link |
coming at this from studying empire
link |
and trying to think about the region broadly,
link |
I was very alarmed at the way that the conversation went.
link |
Can I ask you a question?
link |
What was your feeling on that morning of 9 11?
link |
Isn't that a natural feeling?
link |
It's coupled with fear of what's next,
link |
especially when you're in DC,
link |
but also who is this?
link |
Is this an accident?
link |
Is this a deliberate terrorist attack?
link |
What were your thoughts of the options
link |
and the internal ranking given your expertise?
link |
I suppose I was taken by the narrative
link |
that this was international.
link |
I mean, I'd also lived in New York
link |
during one of the first bombings in 94
link |
of the World Trade Center.
link |
So it was clear to me that a radical community
link |
had really fixed New York as part of their imagination of,
link |
and I immediately thought it was a kind of blow
link |
to American power.
link |
And I was drawn by the symbolism of it.
link |
If you think of it as an act,
link |
it was a kind of an act of speech, if you will,
link |
a kind of a way of speaking to,
link |
from a position of relative weakness,
link |
speaking to an imperial power.
link |
And I saw it as a kind of symbolic speech act of that
link |
with horrific real world consequences
link |
for all those innocent victims,
link |
for the firemen, for the police,
link |
and just the horror of the moment.
link |
So I did see it as transcending the United States,
link |
but I did not see it as really having anything necessarily
link |
to do fundamentally about Afghanistan
link |
and the history of the region that I'd been studying
link |
and the community people that I knew
link |
who were not particularly religious.
link |
The guys I hung out with actually wore me out
link |
because they wanted to go out every night.
link |
They wanted to party every night.
link |
We had discussions about alcohol.
link |
I mean, Uzbekistan is famous for its, you know.
link |
That's something to look forward to.
link |
So I do want to travel to that part of the world.
link |
When was the last time you were in that part of the world?
link |
Well, in the mid 2000s, 2010s.
link |
So wait, so by the way, what drinking?
link |
What's the, what's the weapon of choice?
link |
Uzbekistan has incorporated vodka as the choice.
link |
And that, and it informs, you know, and it's,
link |
but the fascinating thing, you know, as a student,
link |
is what you're observing as a non Muslim.
link |
You know, I'm a non Russian.
link |
I'm, this is all, you know, culturally new to me.
link |
And I'm, you know, a student of all that, right?
link |
As a grad student doing my work there.
link |
So you're like Jane Goodall of vodka and Russia.
link |
You're just observing.
link |
You get the Samogon, the grass vodka.
link |
You get, you know, I have,
link |
I've had some long nights on the Kazakhstan frontier
link |
that I'm not proud of, you know.
link |
But you got to know the people
link |
and some of them from, from, from.
link |
But intellectually, so the thing, I mean,
link |
the fascinating thing there was that, and just as a,
link |
I mean, there's a whole, you know, I'm a historian, right?
link |
But there, there are great contributions by, you know,
link |
anthropologists and ethnographers who,
link |
who've gone across the planet
link |
and try to understand how Muslims understand the tradition
link |
at different contexts.
link |
So many Uzbeks will say, you know,
link |
this is part of our national culture
link |
to drink and eat as we please, right?
link |
And yet I'm a very devout Muslim.
link |
And so of course you can encounter
link |
other Muslim communities who won't touch alcohol, right?
link |
But it's become kind of, I think it's very much,
link |
you know, Soviet culture left a deep impression
link |
in each of these places.
link |
And so there are ways of thinking,
link |
ways of performing, ways of, you know, enjoying oneself
link |
that are shared across Soviet and former Soviet space
link |
to this day, right?
link |
And you've written also about Muslims in the Soviet Union.
link |
There's an article that, there was a paywall,
link |
so I couldn't read it and I really want to read it.
link |
It's a Moscow in the mosque or something like that.
link |
By the way, just another tangent on a tangent.
link |
So I bought all your books.
link |
I love them very much.
link |
One of the reasons I bought them and read many parts
link |
is because they're easy to buy.
link |
Unlike articles, every single website has a paywall.
link |
So it's very frustrating to read brilliant scholars
link |
I wish there was one fee I could pay everywhere.
link |
I don't care what that fee is,
link |
where it gives, allows me to read
link |
some of your brilliant writing.
link |
No, no, thank you, I hear you.
link |
I think moving toward more kind of open source
link |
formatting stuff I think is what a lot of journals
link |
are thinking about now and I think it's definitely
link |
for the kind of democratization of knowledge and scholarship
link |
that's definitely an important thing
link |
that we should all think about.
link |
And I think we need to exert pressure on these publishers
link |
to do that, so I appreciate that.
link |
This is what I'm doing here.
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good, I appreciate it.
link |
So your thought was Afghanistan is not going to be
link |
to be the center, the source of where.
link |
It's not the center of this and invading that country
link |
isn't gonna fix the toxic milestone of politics
link |
that produced 9 11, right?
link |
I'm just thinking of some of the personalities,
link |
just thinking about going back to the Tashkent story
link |
which I'll end with.
link |
I mean, just observing real Muslims doing things
link |
and then asking questions about it
link |
and trying to understand through their eyes
link |
what the tradition means to them.
link |
And then we had a very narrow conversation
link |
about what Islam is that generated, immediately exploded
link |
on the day of 9 11, right?
link |
And then of course, I think the antipathy toward Islam
link |
and Muslims was informed by racism, informed by xenophobia.
link |
So it became a perfect storm I think of demonization
link |
that didn't sit with what I knew about the tradition
link |
and with actual people that I had known
link |
because then going back to, I mean, there were other friends
link |
and encounters and so on, but just thinking about Afghanistan
link |
and Tashkent for a moment, I mean,
link |
just thought about my friends who had been,
link |
who had suffered a great deal in their short lives,
link |
who had been cast aside from country to country,
link |
but had found a place in Tashkent
link |
with some relative stability.
link |
And they wanted to go out every night
link |
and they explained, one friend,
link |
we talked about it with the alcohol and all that
link |
and he didn't get crazy, but he was like,
link |
you can drink, but just don't get drunk.
link |
That's permissible within Islam, right?
link |
And he was an ethnic Pashtun.
link |
I think Uzbeks had a different view,
link |
often the more vodka the better,
link |
and it doesn't violate, as I understand Islam.
link |
So even, it's kind of a silly example,
link |
but it's just an illustration of the ways in which
link |
different communities, different generations,
link |
different people can come at this very complex rich tradition
link |
in so many different ways.
link |
So obviously, whatever kind of scholar you are,
link |
or any kind of expert, whatever,
link |
it's always disconcerting to see
link |
your field of specialization be flattened, right?
link |
And then be flattened and then be turned
link |
to arguments for violence, right?
link |
Mixed up with the natural human feelings of hate.
link |
Yeah, that's right.
link |
And depression. And hurt at that moment, and pain.
link |
So, I mean, that day I vividly remember,
link |
I sat with other PhD historians in different fields.
link |
We, oddly enough, had lunch that day
link |
and it kind of deserted Washington.
link |
Some place was open when we went.
link |
And we just thought, you know,
link |
this is going to kind of open up
link |
like a great mall of destruction.
link |
And, you know, the American state is going to destroy
link |
and it's going to destroy in this geography.
link |
And I thought that was misplaced for lots of reasons.
link |
And then I think if one, you know,
link |
I'd been doing some research on Afghanistan then,
link |
I was kind of shifting to the South
link |
and I'd been looking at the Taliban from afar
link |
And, you know, I think it's clear now
link |
that in retrospect there were opportunities
link |
for alternative policies at that moment.
link |
So what should the conversation have been like?
link |
What should we have done differently?
link |
Because, you know, from a perspective of the time,
link |
the United States was invaded by a foreign force.
link |
What is the proper response
link |
or what is the proper conversation
link |
about the proper response at the time, you think?
link |
You know, I know my colleague at Stanford,
link |
Condoleezza Rice would tell me this is above my pay grade.
link |
And, you know, she makes a point in her classes
link |
to talk about how difficult decision making is
link |
under such intense pressure.
link |
And I appreciate that.
link |
You know, I am a historian who sits safely in my office.
link |
I don't like battlefields.
link |
I don't like taking risks.
link |
So I can see all those limits.
link |
You know, I'm not a military expert.
link |
I've been accused of being a spy wherever I've gone
link |
because of the way I look
link |
and because of my nationality and so on, but I'm not a spy.
link |
So I defer, you know, I respect the expertise
link |
of all those communities.
link |
But I think they acted out of ignorance.
link |
They acted, I think, because, I mean, you think of the,
link |
in a way there was a compensatory aspect
link |
of this decision making.
link |
I mean, the Bush administration failed.
link |
This was an extraordinary failure, right?
link |
Can we break down the nation?
link |
I mean, if they, you know,
link |
if you follow the story of Richard Clarke.
link |
Who's Richard Clarke?
link |
He was a national security expert
link |
who was tasked with following Al Qaeda,
link |
who had produced a dossier under the Clinton administration
link |
that he passed on to the George W. Bush administration.
link |
And if you look at the work of Condoleezza Rice,
link |
she wrote a very famous, I think, unpaywalled
link |
foreign affairs article that you can read,
link |
announcing the George W. Bush foreign policy kind of outlook.
link |
And it was all about great powers.
link |
It was about the rise of China.
link |
It was about Russia.
link |
I mean, there's definitely a kind of hangover
link |
of those who missed having Russia as the boogeyman.
link |
Who spoke, you know, the Clinton administration
link |
repeated again and again the idea of making sure
link |
the bear stayed in his cage.
link |
Which is why the United States threw a lifeline
link |
to the Central Asian states, hoping to have pipelines,
link |
hoping to shore up their national sovereignty
link |
as a way of containing Russia initially, but also Iran,
link |
you know, which sits to the south and west.
link |
And then peripherally looking down the road
link |
to China to the east.
link |
So the bear is what, like Russia?
link |
Or is it kind of like some weird combination
link |
of Russia, Iran, and China?
link |
The bear is Russia and Russia is this thing.
link |
I'm trying to characterize the imagination
link |
of some of these national security figures.
link |
This is an image formed in the Cold War.
link |
I mean, it has deeper seeds in European
link |
and Western intellectual thought that go back
link |
at least to the 1850s and the reign of Tsar Nicholas I.
link |
When we first get this language about the Russian Empire
link |
as this kind of evil polity.
link |
Obviously this was a kind of pillar of Reaganism.
link |
But the Clinton folks kept that alive.
link |
They wanted to make sure that American power
link |
would be unmatched.
link |
And they, being creatures of the Cold War themselves,
link |
they looked to Russia as a recession power
link |
well before Putin was even thought of.
link |
Yeah, I mean, this is, you mentioned one deep,
link |
profound historical piece in Rambo.
link |
It's probably, this conflict has to do
link |
with another Sylvester Stallone movie,
link |
a Rocky IV, which is also historically accurate
link |
and based on, it's basically a documentary.
link |
So there is something about the American power,
link |
even at the level of Condoleezza Rice,
link |
these respected deep kind of leaders and thinkers
link |
about history and the future,
link |
where they like to have competition
link |
with other superpowers and almost conjure up superpowers,
link |
even when those countries don't maybe at the time
link |
at least deserve the label of superpower.
link |
That's right, great point.
link |
Yeah, they're all some points.
link |
So yeah, I mean, Russia was, I think many, many exports.
link |
I mean, my mentor at Princeton, Stephen Cotkin,
link |
was then writing great things about how,
link |
if you look at Russia's economy, the scale of its GDP,
link |
its capacity to actually act globally,
link |
it's all quite limited.
link |
But Condoleezza Rice and the people around her
link |
came into power with George W. Bush,
link |
thinking that the foreign policy challenges of her era
link |
would be those of the past, right?
link |
Richard Clark and others within the administration
link |
warned that, in fact, there is this group
link |
that has declared war against the United States
link |
and they are coming for us.
link |
The FBI had been following these people around
link |
So by the time George W. Bush comes to power,
link |
lots of Al Qaeda activists are, well, not lots,
link |
but perhaps a dozen or so,
link |
are already training in the United States, right?
link |
And what we knew immediately from the biographies
link |
of some of the characters of the attackers of 9.11,
link |
it was a hodgepodge of people from across the planet,
link |
but most of them were Saudi, right?
link |
And that was known very early on
link |
or presumed very early on.
link |
So again, if we go back to your big question
link |
about the geography, why Afghanistan?
link |
It didn't add up, right?
link |
It seemed to me that Afghanistan was a kind of soft target.
link |
It was a place to have explosions,
link |
to seemingly recapture American supremacy.
link |
And also, I think, you know, there was,
link |
in many quarters, there was a deep urge for revenge.
link |
And this was a place to have some casualties,
link |
have some explosions.
link |
And then I think, you know, restore the legitimacy
link |
of the Bush administration
link |
by showing that we are in charge, we will pay.
link |
And I think that was a very old fashioned punitive dimension,
link |
which rests upon the presumption
link |
that if we intimidate these people,
link |
they'll know not to try us again, right?
link |
All these, I would suggest, are all misreadings
link |
of an organization that was always global.
link |
It had no real center.
link |
I mean, it called itself the center.
link |
That's one way to translate Al Qaeda.
link |
But that center was really in the imagination.
link |
Bin Laden bounced around from country to country.
link |
And crucially, I think a dimension
link |
that I don't claim to know anything new about,
link |
but has endured as a kind of doubt,
link |
is the role of Saudi Arabia and the fact that, you know,
link |
the muscle in that operation of 9 11 was Saudi, right?
link |
I mean, this was a Saudi operation with,
link |
if one thinks, again, just on the basis of nationalities,
link |
Saudis, you know, an Egyptian or two, a Lebanese guy.
link |
And the Egyptian guy, you know,
link |
had been studying in Germany.
link |
He was an urban planner, right?
link |
So if one thinks of the imagination of this,
link |
I mean, in fact, if you look at the kind of typology
link |
of the figures who have led this radical movement,
link |
I mean, if you think of the global jihadists,
link |
they are mostly not religious scholars, right?
link |
Bin Laden was not a religious scholar.
link |
His training was an engineer.
link |
You know, some biographers claim
link |
that he was a playboy for much of his youth.
link |
But really, these ideas,
link |
I think that's probably why they chose the Twin Towers.
link |
I mean, this is an imagination fueled
link |
by training and engineering.
link |
I mean, a lot of the, you know, the sociology,
link |
if you do a kind of post biography
link |
of a lot of these leading jihadists,
link |
their backgrounds are not in Islamic scholarship,
link |
but actually in engineering
link |
and kind of practical sciences and professions.
link |
Medical doctors are among their ranks.
link |
And so there's long been a tension between Islamic scholars
link |
who devote their whole lives to study of texts
link |
and commentary and interpretation.
link |
And then what some scholars call kind of new intellectuals,
link |
new Muslim authorities,
link |
who actually have secular university educations,
link |
often in the natural sciences
link |
or engineering and technical fields,
link |
who then bring that kind of mindset, if you will,
link |
to what Muslim scholars called the religious sciences,
link |
which are, you know, a field of kind of ambiguity
link |
and of gradation and of subtlety and nuance,
link |
and really of decades of training
link |
before one becomes authoritative to speak about issues
link |
like whether or not it's legitimate
link |
to take someone else's life.
link |
With the relation to Afghanistan, who was bin Laden?
link |
Bin Laden was a visitor.
link |
If you look at his whole life course,
link |
part of it is an enigma still.
link |
You know, he is from a Saudi elite family,
link |
but a family that kind of has a Yemeni Arabian sea
link |
kind of genealogy.
link |
So the family has no relationship to Afghanistan,
link |
past or present, except at some point in 1980s,
link |
when he went like thousands of other young Saudis,
link |
first to Pakistan, to places like Bashour on the border,
link |
where they wanted to aid the jihad in some capacity.
link |
And for the most part, the Arabs who went
link |
opened up hospitals, some opened up schools.
link |
The bin Laden family had long been
link |
based in engineering construction.
link |
So it's thought that he used some of those skills
link |
and resources and connections to build things.
link |
We have images of him firing a gun for show, right?
link |
It's not clear that he ever actually fired a gun
link |
in what we would call combat.
link |
Again, I could be corrected by this.
link |
And I think there are competing accounts of who he was.
link |
So he's kind of a, I mean, many of these figures
link |
who sit at the pinnacle of this world are fictive heroes
link |
that people map their aspirations onto, right?
link |
And so people like Mullah Omar,
link |
who was then head of the Taliban,
link |
was rarely seen in public.
link |
The current head of the Taliban
link |
is almost never seen in public.
link |
I mean, there's a kind of studied era of mystery
link |
that they've cultivated to make themselves available
link |
for all kinds of fantasies, right?
link |
Do you think he believed, so his religious beliefs,
link |
do you think he believed some of the more extreme things
link |
that enable him to commit terrorist acts?
link |
Maybe put another way,
link |
what makes a man want to become a terrorist?
link |
And what aspect of bin Laden made him want to be a terrorist?
link |
I mean, let me offer some observations.
link |
I think there are others who know more about bin Laden
link |
and have far more expertise in Al Qaeda.
link |
So I'm coming at this in an adjacent way,
link |
kind of from Afghanistan and from my historical training.
link |
So this is my two cents, so bear with me.
link |
I don't have the authoritative account for this.
link |
Which in itself is fascinating
link |
because you're a historian of Afghanistan,
link |
and the fact that bin Laden isn't a huge part
link |
of your focus of study just means
link |
that bin Laden is not a key part of the history of Afghanistan
link |
except that America made him a key part
link |
of the history of Afghanistan.
link |
I would endorse that.
link |
Definitely, that's it.
link |
I mean, you've put it in a very pithy, pithy way.
link |
Yeah, so listen, so he was an engineer.
link |
He was said to be a playboy
link |
who spent a lot of cash from his family.
link |
Like many young Saudis and from some other countries,
link |
he was inspired by this idea
link |
that there was jihad in Afghanistan.
link |
It was gonna take down one of the two superpowers,
link |
who the Red Army did murder hundreds of thousands,
link |
perhaps as many as 2 million Afghan civilians
link |
during that conflict.
link |
It's very plausible and very completely understandable
link |
that many young people would see that cause
link |
as the righteous, pious fighters for jihad
link |
who call themselves mujahideen
link |
are ready against this evil empire
link |
of a godless Soviet empire that,
link |
I mean, there's even confusion
link |
about what the Soviets wanted.
link |
Now we know much more about what the Kremlin wanted,
link |
what Brezhnev wanted,
link |
and how the Soviet elite thought about it
link |
because we have many more of their records.
link |
But from the outside, for Jimmy Carter and then for Reagan,
link |
it looked like the Soviets were making a move on South Asia
link |
because they wanted to get to the warm water ports,
link |
which Russians always want supposedly, right?
link |
And it was kind of a move to take over our oil
link |
and to assert world domination, right?
link |
So there are lots of ways in which this looked like
link |
good versus evil in Congress.
link |
It looked like kind of Vietnam again,
link |
but this time this is our chance to get them.
link |
And there are lots of great quotes,
link |
I mean, disturbing, but really revealing quotes
link |
that American policymakers made about
link |
wanting to give the Soviets their Vietnam.
link |
So the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars
link |
into this project to back the Mujahideen,
link |
who Reagan called freedom fighters.
link |
And so Bin Laden was part of that universe,
link |
he's part of that,
link |
he's swimming in the ocean of these Afghan Mujahideen
link |
who out of size did 95% of the fighting,
link |
they're the ones who died,
link |
they're the ones who defeated the Red Army, right?
link |
The Arabs who were there did a little fighting,
link |
but a lot of it was for their purposes.
link |
It was to get experience,
link |
it was to kind of create their reputations
link |
like Bin Laden began to force for himself
link |
of being spoken for a global project.
link |
Because by the late 80s,
link |
when Bin Laden I think was more active
link |
and began conspiring with people from other Arab countries,
link |
the idea that Gorbachev came to power in 85,
link |
he's like, let's get out of here,
link |
this is draining the Soviet budget,
link |
it's an embarrassment,
link |
we didn't think about this properly,
link |
let's focus on restoring the party
link |
and strengthening the Soviet Union,
link |
let's get out of this costly war,
link |
it's a waste, it's not worth it,
link |
where you don't lose anything
link |
by getting out of Afghanistan.
link |
And so their retreat was quite effective and successful
link |
from the Soviet point of view, right?
link |
It's not what we're seeing now.
link |
What year was the retreat?
link |
so Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985,
link |
he was a generation younger than the other guys,
link |
he was a critic of the system,
link |
he didn't want to abolish it,
link |
he wanted to reform it,
link |
he was a true believer in Soviet socialism
link |
and in the party as a monopolist, right?
link |
But he was critical of the old guard
link |
and recognized that the party had to change
link |
and the whole system had to change to continue to compete.
link |
And so Afghanistan was one element of this.
link |
And so he pushed the Afghan elites
link |
that Moscow was backing to basically say,
link |
listen, we're gonna share power.
link |
And so a figure named Najibullah,
link |
who was a Soviet trained intelligence specialist
link |
sitting in Kabul agreed.
link |
And he said, we need to have a more kind of
link |
pluralistic accommodations approach to our enemies
link |
who are backed by the US mainly,
link |
sitting in Pakistan, sitting in Iran,
link |
backed by these Arabs to a degree,
link |
getting money from Saudi.
link |
And he said, let's draw some of them into the government
link |
and basically have a kind of unity government
link |
that would make some space to the opposition.
link |
And for the most part, with US backing,
link |
with Pakistani backing, with Iranian backing
link |
and with Saudi backing, the opposition said, no,
link |
we're not going to reconcile,
link |
we're gonna push you off the cliff.
link |
And so that story goes on from at least 1987,
link |
the last Soviet Red Army troops leave early 1989,
link |
but the Najibullah government holds on for three more years.
link |
It is the, I mean, they're still getting some help
link |
from the Soviet Union,
link |
its enemies are still getting help from the US mainly.
link |
And it's not till 1992 that they lose.
link |
And then Mujahideen come to power,
link |
they immediately, they're deeply fractured.
link |
And that's where bin Laden is watching all of this unroll.
link |
And he's part of the mix, but he's also mobile.
link |
So he at one point goes, is in Sudan.
link |
He's moving from place to place.
link |
His people are all over the world.
link |
In fact, they, I mean, if you think of the,
link |
once the Mujahideen take power,
link |
they have difficulties with Arab fighters too.
link |
And they don't want them coming in and messing
link |
with Mujahideen regarding this as like,
link |
this is an Afghan national state that we're gonna build.
link |
It's gonna be Islamic, it's gonna be an Islamic state,
link |
but you can't interfere with us.
link |
And so there are always tensions.
link |
And so the Arabs are always kind of,
link |
I would say they were Arab fighters were always interlopers.
link |
Yes, the Afghans are happy to take their money,
link |
send patients to their hospitals, take their weapons,
link |
but they were never gonna let this be like a Saudi
link |
or Egyptian or whatever project.
link |
But then many of those fighters went home,
link |
they went back to Syria, they went back to Egypt.
link |
Some wanted to go back to the Saudi Arabia,
link |
but the Saudis were very careful.
link |
I mean, the Saudis always used Afghanistan
link |
as a kind of safety valve.
link |
In fact, they had fundraisers on television,
link |
they chartered jets.
link |
They filled them with people to fly to Pakistan,
link |
get out in the shower and say, go fight.
link |
And it was one way that the monarchy, the Saudi monarchy,
link |
very cleverly I think, created a kind of escape valve
link |
for would be dissidents in Saudi Arabia, right?
link |
Just send them abroad.
link |
You wanna fight Jihad, go do that somewhere else.
link |
Don't bother the kingdom.
link |
But all this became dicier in the early 90s
link |
when some of these guys came back home
link |
and some of the scholars around them said,
link |
we've defeated the Soviet Union, which is a huge, huge boost.
link |
And I think part of the dynamic we see today
link |
is that the Taliban victory is a renewed inspiration
link |
for people who think, look, we beat the Soviets,
link |
now we beat the Americans.
link |
And so already watching the Soviet retreat
link |
across this bridge, back into Uzbekistan,
link |
if you see these dramatic images of the tanks moving,
link |
a lot of people interpreted this as like,
link |
we are going to change the world
link |
and now we're training to the Americans.
link |
And our local national governments
link |
are backed by the Americans.
link |
So let's start with those places
link |
and then let's go strike the belly of the beast,
link |
which is America, which is New York.
link |
And going back to Bin Laden,
link |
your question about what motivates him,
link |
what motivated him, again,
link |
he was not a rigorously trained Islamic scholar.
link |
And that I think, when this comes up in our classes,
link |
I think especially young people,
link |
I mean, people who weren't even born on 9 11,
link |
I mean, they're shocked, they see his appearance,
link |
they see him pictured in front of a giant bookshelf
link |
of Arabic books, he's got the Kalashnikov,
link |
he's got what looks like
link |
a religious scholars library behind him, right?
link |
But if you look at his words,
link |
I mean, one fascinating thing about just our politics
link |
and just one thing that kind of sums all this up,
link |
I mean, the fact that on 9 11,
link |
we had to have a few people, a few experts,
link |
people like Burnett Rubin, who was an Afghanistan expert.
link |
So that was one way in which I think,
link |
I'm not faulting him personally,
link |
but it's just one way in which that relationship
link |
appeared to be formed, right?
link |
Of linking Afghanistan to that moment.
link |
If one looks actually at what Bin Laden was saying and doing,
link |
people like Richard Clarke were studying this,
link |
there were Arab leaders, the Arab press was watching this
link |
because he gave some of his first interviews
link |
to a few Arab newspaper outlets.
link |
But speaking of our American kind of monolingualism,
link |
a lot of what he was saying wasn't known.
link |
And so I think for several years,
link |
people weren't reading what Bin Laden said.
link |
I mean, experts are reading it in Arabic,
link |
but there was great anxiety around translating his works.
link |
So we have Mon conf, we have all this other stuff,
link |
you can buy the collected works of Lenin, Stalin, Mao,
link |
whatever you want in whatever language you want.
link |
But Bin Laden was taboo for American publishing.
link |
So it was only a Verso in the UK
link |
that published a famous volume called
link |
Messages to the World,
link |
which was the first compendium of Bin Laden's writings.
link |
So he has a Mein Kampf.
link |
He has a type, does he have a thing?
link |
I mean, it's a kind of collected works.
link |
It's a collected works of his, yeah.
link |
Well, like a blog, like a collection of articles versus.
link |
Yeah, these are interviews, these are his missives,
link |
his declarations, his decrees, right?
link |
But I think just in terms of if we zoom out for a second
link |
about American policy choices and so on,
link |
the powers that be didn't trust us
link |
to know what he was really about.
link |
I put it that way.
link |
And I don't say that in a conspiratorial sense.
link |
I just think that it was a taboo.
link |
I think people, there was a kind of consensus
link |
that trust us, we know how to fight Al Qaeda
link |
and you don't need to know what they're about
link |
because they're crazy.
link |
They're fanatics, they're fundamentalists.
link |
They hate us, remember that language, us versus them.
link |
But if you read Bin Laden, that's when it gets messy.
link |
That's where the Bin Laden's argumentation
link |
is not fundamentally about Islam.
link |
And if you were sitting here with an Islamic scholar,
link |
he would say, depending on which Islamic scholar,
link |
they would tend to go through and dissect
link |
and negate 99% of the arguments
link |
that Bin Laden claimed was in Islam, right?
link |
But what strikes me as an historian who's again,
link |
looking at this adjacently, if you read Bin Laden,
link |
I mean, the arguments that he make are,
link |
first of all, they're sophisticated.
link |
They reflect a mind that is about geopolitics.
link |
He uses terms like imperialism.
link |
He knows something about world history.
link |
He knows something about geography.
link |
So imperialism is the enemy for him
link |
or what's the nature of the enemy?
link |
It's an amalgam and like a good politician,
link |
which is what I would call him,
link |
he is adept at speaking in different ways
link |
to different audiences.
link |
So if you look at the context in which he speaks,
link |
if you look at messages to the world,
link |
if you look at his writings and you can zoom out now
link |
and we now have compendia of the writings
link |
of Al Qaeda more broadly, you can purchase these,
link |
they're basically primary source collections.
link |
We now have that for the Taliban.
link |
I mean, what's fascinating about,
link |
I think if you'd like this culture,
link |
acknowledging it's very diverse internally
link |
is that these people are representatives
link |
of political movements who seek followers.
link |
They speak, they often are very,
link |
I'd say skilled at visual imagery.
link |
And especially now, I mean, what's fascinating is that,
link |
I mean, the Taliban used to shoot televisions.
link |
They used to blow up VCR, videotapes.
link |
They used to string audio and video cassettes
link |
from trees and kind of ceremonial hangings, right?
link |
That we're killing this nefarious, infidel technology
link |
that is doing the work of Satan.
link |
And yet today, and plus, I mean,
link |
one of the keys to the Taliban success
link |
is that they got really good at using media.
link |
I mean, brilliant at using the written word,
link |
the spoken word, music, actually.
link |
And Hollywood, Hollywood is the gold standard.
link |
And these guys have studied how to create drama,
link |
how to speak to modern users.
link |
I mean, Islamic State did this.
link |
I mean, the role of media, new media.
link |
I mean, I follow and I am followed by
link |
senior Taliban leaders, which is bizarre on Twitter.
link |
I don't know why they care about me.
link |
They follow you on Twitter.
link |
So they're part of our modern world
link |
and it's how they talk and it's how they recruit.
link |
And this is part of the, this is why they are.
link |
So Ben Laden, if you read Ben Laden,
link |
he speaks multiple languages, I would say.
link |
It's environmentalism.
link |
The West is bad because we destroyed the planet.
link |
The West is bad because we abuse women.
link |
So in class, especially female students
link |
are very surprised to learn
link |
and actually say this feminist argument is not,
link |
we start with, this is a murder.
link |
This is a person who has taken human life,
link |
innocent life over and over again.
link |
And he is aspirationally genocidal,
link |
but let's try to understand what he's about.
link |
So we walk through the texts, read them
link |
and people are shocked to learn that
link |
it's not just about quotations in the Quran
link |
strung together in some irrational fashion.
link |
He knows, I mean, at the core,
link |
I'd say is the problem of human suffering.
link |
And he has a geography of that, that is mostly Muslim,
link |
but he talked about the suffering of Kashmir, right?
link |
So if you have a student in your class,
link |
who's from South Asia, who knows about Kashmir,
link |
he or she will say, that's not entirely inaccurate.
link |
The Indian state commits atrocities in Kashmir.
link |
Pakistan is doing that too.
link |
Palestine is an issue, right?
link |
So you have in the American university setting,
link |
people across the spectrum who get that,
link |
Palestinians have had a raw deal.
link |
And so it's a, victimhood is central
link |
and it's Muslim victimhood, which is primary,
link |
but as a number of scholars have written,
link |
and I definitely think this is a framework
link |
for what this is useful.
link |
I mean, in this kind of vocabulary,
link |
in this framing, this narrative,
link |
today, in today's world,
link |
if we think of today's world being post Cold War,
link |
91 to the present, looking at the series of Gulf Wars
link |
and seeing the visuals of that,
link |
I think that the American public
link |
has been shielded from some of this,
link |
but if you look at just the carnage of the Iraqi army
link |
that George H.W. Bush produced, right?
link |
Or you think of the images of the suffering
link |
of Iraqi children under George H.W. Bush's sanctions,
link |
US British airstrikes,
link |
then you have Madeleine Albright answer a question
link |
on 16 Minutes saying,
link |
do you think the deaths of half a million Iraqi kids
link |
Is that justified to contain Saddam Hussein?
link |
And she says on camera, yes, it's worth it to me.
link |
If you put that all together,
link |
I mean, American kids, and of course the American public,
link |
they're not always aware of those facts of global history,
link |
but these guys are,
link |
and they very capably use these images, use these tropes,
link |
I mean, some of these things are not deniable.
link |
I mean, these estimates about the number
link |
of Iraqi civilian children dead,
link |
that came from, I think, the Lancet,
link |
and it came from, those are estimates,
link |
but looking at this from the point of view of Amman,
link |
of Jaffa, of Nairobi,
link |
you can just think around the planet,
link |
and if you see yourself as the victim
link |
of this great imperial power,
link |
you can see why especially young men
link |
would be drawn to a road of self sacrifice.
link |
And the idea is that in killing others,
link |
you are making them feel how you feel,
link |
because they won't listen to your arguments reasonably,
link |
because they won't recognize Palestinian suffering,
link |
Bosnian suffering, right?
link |
Chechen suffering.
link |
You go across the planet, right?
link |
Because they won't recognize our suffering,
link |
we're gonna speak to you in the only language
link |
that you understand, and that's violence.
link |
And look at the violence of the post 1991 world, right?
link |
In which American air power really becomes a global,
link |
you know, kind of fact in the lives of so many people.
link |
And then the big mistake after 9 11 among many,
link |
I mean, fundamentally was taking the war on terror
link |
to some 30 or 40 countries, right?
link |
So that you have more and more of the globe
link |
feel like they're under attack, right?
link |
And the logic is essentially, it's really bin Laden,
link |
it's not we're going to convert you
link |
and turn you into Muslims and that's why we're doing this.
link |
That appears, that claim does appear at times.
link |
But if you look at any given bin Laden text,
link |
I mean, there are 40 claims in each text.
link |
I mean, it's kind of, it's dizzying,
link |
but he's a modern politician,
link |
he knows the language of social equality,
link |
you know, there's a class dimension to it,
link |
there is an environmental dimension to it,
link |
there's a gender dimension to it.
link |
And yes, there are chronic quotes sprinkled in.
link |
And when he wants to speak that language,
link |
he knew that, you know, he's not a scholar.
link |
So he would often get a few recognized scholars to sign on.
link |
So some of his decorations of Jihad
link |
had his signature kind of sprinkled in
link |
with like a dozen other signatures
link |
from people who are somewhat known
link |
or at least with titles, right?
link |
So as a kind of intellectual exercise,
link |
it's fascinating to see
link |
that he is throwing everything at the wall in one level.
link |
That's one way to see that it's a,
link |
these are kind of testaments toward recruitment
link |
of people who, yes, they're angry, yes, they're unhappy.
link |
And this is what, you know,
link |
I think for a broader public, it's hard to get,
link |
you're like, well, bin Laden didn't suffer, he wasn't poor.
link |
Like, yeah, I mean, Lenin, Pol Pot, I mean.
link |
They're speaking to, they're empathetic
link |
to the suffering, the landscape,
link |
the full landscape of suffering.
link |
It's interesting to think about suffering,
link |
you know, America, the American public,
link |
American politicians and leaders,
link |
when they see what is good and evil,
link |
they're often not empathetic to the suffering of others.
link |
And what you're saying is bin Laden perhaps accurately
link |
could speak to the ignorance of America,
link |
maybe the Soviet Union, to the suffering of their people.
link |
And I mean, if you look at the speeches
link |
and the ideas that are public of Hitler in the 1930s,
link |
he spoke quite accurately to the injustice
link |
and maybe the suffering of the German people.
link |
I mean, charismatic politicians
link |
are good at telling accurate stories.
link |
It's not all fabricated,
link |
but they emphasize certain aspects.
link |
And then the problem part is the actions
link |
you should take based on that.
link |
So the narratives and the stories
link |
may be grounded in historical accuracy.
link |
The actions then cross the line, the ethical line.
link |
I found that too, I mean, it's a,
link |
again, if you pick up just one of these texts,
link |
I mean, it's a kaleidoscope.
link |
So the Hitler analogy is interesting
link |
because it's Hitler spoke to,
link |
he could speak to things like inflation, right?
link |
Which really existed.
link |
But he also appealed to the irrational emotions of Germans.
link |
He sought out scapegoats, Jews, Roma, disabled people,
link |
homosexuals and so on, right?
link |
That's also there in bin Laden too.
link |
I mean, the idea of an anti semitism,
link |
the constant flagging of Zionists and crusaders,
link |
it's a kind of shotgun approach to a search for followers.
link |
But I also hasten to add that it's,
link |
for all of the things that we could take off saying,
link |
well, yes, Kashmiris have suffered,
link |
Chechens have suffered and so on.
link |
Bin Ladenism never became a mass movement.
link |
I mean, it never really, I think the,
link |
I mean, this is the encouraging thing, right?
link |
I mean, I think the blood on his hands
link |
always limited his appeal among Muslims and others.
link |
But Bin Laden did have, I mean, he had a,
link |
there's a great book by a great scholar
link |
at UC San Diego, Jeremy Prestholt,
link |
who read a great book about global icons
link |
in which he has Bin Laden, he has Bob Marley,
link |
he has Tupac, you know, he asked why,
link |
you know, he's doing research in East Africa,
link |
why did he see young kids wearing Bin Laden shirts?
link |
They're also wearing like Tupac shirts.
link |
They're wearing Bob Marley shirts.
link |
And it's a way of looking at a kind of partial embrace
link |
of some aspects of the rebelliousness
link |
of some of these figures, some of the time,
link |
by some people under certain conditions.
link |
Well, the terrifying thing to me,
link |
so yeah, there is a longing in the human heart
link |
to belong to a group and a charismatic leader somehow,
link |
especially when you're young,
link |
just a catalyst for all of that.
link |
I tend to think that perhaps it's actually hard
link |
to be Hitler, so a leader so charismatic
link |
that he can rally a nation to war.
link |
And Bin Laden, perhaps we're lucky,
link |
was not sufficiently charismatic.
link |
I feel like if his writing was better,
link |
if his speeches were better,
link |
if his ideas were stronger,
link |
better, it's like more viral,
link |
and then there would be more people,
link |
kind of young people uniting around him.
link |
So in some sense, it's almost like accidents of history
link |
of just how much charisma,
link |
how much charisma a particular evil person has,
link |
a person like Bin Laden.
link |
I think it's fair, evil works, I think.
link |
So you think Bin Laden is evil?
link |
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
link |
I mean, he was a mass murderer.
link |
I'm just saying that his ideas were,
link |
they're more complex than we've tended to acknowledge.
link |
They have a wider potential resonance
link |
than we would acknowledge.
link |
I mean, and also, I guess what I'm,
link |
just one fundamental point is that
link |
thinking about the complexity of Bin Laden
link |
is also a way of removing him from Islam.
link |
He is not an Islamic thinker.
link |
He is a cosmopolitan thinker
link |
who plays in all kinds of modern ideologies,
link |
which have proven to mobilize people in the past, right?
link |
So antisemitism, populism, environmentalism,
link |
and the urging to do something about humanity,
link |
do something about suffering.
link |
That's why I think the actual,
link |
you asked about what motivates people
link |
to do this kind of stuff.
link |
I think that's why if one goes below the level of leadership,
link |
and this is being reported,
link |
if you look at the trial ongoing now in Paris
link |
of the Bataclan murders, I think,
link |
the court allowed some discussion
link |
of the backgrounds of the accused,
link |
and they come from different backgrounds,
link |
but if there's any common bond,
link |
it's kind of that they had some background in petty crime.
link |
Famously, in the 7.7 bombings in London,
link |
the Metropolitan Police, UK authorities
link |
looked at all those guys,
link |
and what people want is this idea
link |
that they must be very pious.
link |
They must be super Islamic to do this kind of stuff.
link |
They must be fanatical true believers,
link |
but what they found with those guys
link |
was that some were nominally Muslim,
link |
some went to mosques, some didn't.
link |
Some were single, young guys with criminal backgrounds.
link |
Some were like, sorry, they were kind of misfits
link |
who never succeeded in anything.
link |
But others had at least one thing,
link |
had a wife and family who he widowed and orphaned.
link |
And so there's no, I mean, for policing,
link |
I mean, if you're looking at it through that lens,
link |
there is no kind of typology
link |
that will predict who will become violent.
link |
And that's why I think we have to move beyond
link |
thinking about religious augmentation narrowly or by itself
link |
and think about things like geopolitics,
link |
think about how people respond to inequality,
link |
the existential threat of climate crisis,
link |
of a whole host of matters,
link |
and think about this is a mode of political contestation.
link |
I mean, it's a violent one, it's one I condemn.
link |
It is evil, right?
link |
But these are people that are trying to be political.
link |
They're trying to change things in some way.
link |
It's not narrowly about like,
link |
I don't know, impose Sharia law on you.
link |
You must wear a veil.
link |
You must eat this kind of food.
link |
It's not that parochial.
link |
But another quick thought
link |
about your interesting claim about charisma in this,
link |
I think that the one self limiting feature
link |
of this subculture is that definitely,
link |
I mentioned the enigma of not wanting to be seen
link |
and that the kind of invisibility
link |
is a productive force of a power,
link |
which a colleague of mine
link |
who knows ancient history far better than I,
link |
said that this is, when she looked at Milo Omar initially,
link |
or we talk about Bin Laden,
link |
I mean, this kind of studied posture
link |
of staying in the shadows
link |
is also a source of authority potentially,
link |
because it invites the idea,
link |
and it's partly dictatorships do as well.
link |
I mean, it invites the idea that someone's working,
link |
and maybe it's the basis for a lot of QAnon
link |
or other conspiracy today,
link |
that someone's working behind the scenes
link |
and things are gonna go the right way.
link |
That's almost preferable because you can kind of feel it.
link |
And so not having someone out front
link |
can be maybe more effective
link |
than having someone out in front constantly.
link |
And then the whole Bin Laden,
link |
you know, Milo Omar thing, like you can't see me,
link |
or if you look at Bin Laden's photographs
link |
and his video stuff, I mean, he's coy.
link |
Some observers have noted that he's kind of effeminate.
link |
He doesn't strike this kind of masculine,
link |
he's not a Mussolini, he's not a Hitler,
link |
macho, upstanding, thumping my chest.
link |
He's not doing the theatrical chin, you know?
link |
The theater people tell us he's so aggressive, you know?
link |
What, bringing your chin up?
link |
I saw a great BBC theater person.
link |
It was kind of a...
link |
It was a makeover show about how to become a better...
link |
Just a powerful, yeah, leader, authoritarian figure.
link |
No, just how to get ahead in life.
link |
And just about acting, how you can act differently, right?
link |
So it was a BBC thing.
link |
And this woman claimed that, you know,
link |
sticking your chin out, like a wrestler does, right,
link |
is the most, like, male to male.
link |
I love this kind of hilarious analysis
link |
that people have about power.
link |
But watch the chin, watch the chin.
link |
It's the same as analyzing, like,
link |
in wrestling styles that win or fighting or so on.
link |
There's so many ways to do it.
link |
Well, the chin, I mean, the chin is a...
link |
Could be interesting verbal gesture.
link |
And I've watched enough Mussolini footage from my classes
link |
to try to pick the right moment.
link |
And the chin is...
link |
Mussolini is all about the chin, so...
link |
And I have watched human beings and human nature enough
link |
to know that there's more to a man,
link |
a powerful man, than a chin.
link |
I'm saying it's an act of aggression.
link |
I'm not saying it's...
link |
It's one of the many tools in the toolkit.
link |
So she definitely...
link |
It's not all about the chin, but it's a...
link |
But that's what I'm trying to tell you about Ben Laden.
link |
I don't think he was deliberate enough
link |
with the way he presents himself.
link |
What I'm saying about Ben Laden
link |
that makes him different from these other characters is that
link |
because he played at being the scholar,
link |
he played at being a figure of modesty and humility.
link |
And that meant that he was often...
link |
Again, if you watch his visuals,
link |
I mean, yes, there's one video of him firing a gun,
link |
but if you watch how he moved,
link |
how he wouldn't look at people directly,
link |
how his face was almost...
link |
I mean, he appears to be incredibly shy.
link |
His voice was low.
link |
He attempted to be poetic, right?
link |
So it wasn't a warrior kind of image
link |
that he tried to project of like a tough guy.
link |
It was, I'm demure, I'm humble.
link |
I'm offering you this message.
link |
And the appeal that he was going for was to see...
link |
To project himself as a scholar,
link |
his knowledge and humility, the whole package,
link |
carried with it an authenticity and a valor
link |
that would animate, inspire people
link |
to commit acts of violence, right?
link |
So there's a different kind of logic of like go and kill.
link |
So he presented himself in contrast
link |
to the imperialist kind of macho power, superpowers.
link |
So that's just yet another way of...
link |
And you have to have facial hair or hair
link |
of different kinds that's recognized.
link |
We had a very recognizable look too,
link |
or at least later in life.
link |
Yeah, no, he tried to look the part.
link |
But I'm saying we're fortunate
link |
that whatever calculation that he was making,
link |
he was not more effective.
link |
I mean, the world is full of terrorist organizations
link |
and we're fortunate to the degree any one of them
link |
does not have an incredibly charismatic leader
link |
that attains the kind of power that's very difficult
link |
to manage at the geopolitical level.
link |
Yeah, and we credit the publics,
link |
who don't buy into that, right?
link |
Who see through this.
link |
We credit the critics, you know?
link |
Early on, Kermadev 9.11 itself,
link |
one of the problems was that US government officials
link |
kept kind of leaning on Muslims to condemn this
link |
as if all Muslims shared some collective responsibility
link |
dozens of scholars and organizations,
link |
hundreds condemned this,
link |
but their condemnations never quite made it out.
link |
But it created a tension where, you know,
link |
if you wore a veil, you must've been one of them
link |
and you must be on Team Bin Laden.
link |
And so a lot of the, you know,
link |
I think a lot of the popular violence and discrimination
link |
and profiling came out of that urge
link |
to see a oneness, which, you know,
link |
Bin Laden projected, right?
link |
He wanted to say, we are one community.
link |
You know, if you are a Muslim, you must be with me, right?
link |
But I think that's where the diversity
link |
of Muslim communities became important
link |
because outside of small pockets,
link |
I mean, they didn't accept his leadership, right?
link |
People wore T shirts in some countries.
link |
I mean, non Muslims wore T shirts
link |
because he was like, he stuck it to the Americans.
link |
So in Latin America, people are like,
link |
yeah, that was sad, but, you know, finally,
link |
I mean, there was a kind of schadenfreude
link |
in that moment internationally.
link |
It's like Che Guevara or somebody like that.
link |
Yeah, Che's the other character in Prasad's book.
link |
Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.
link |
It's just a symbol.
link |
It's not exactly what he believed
link |
or the cruelty of actions he took.
link |
It's more like he stood for an idea
link |
of revolution versus authority.
link |
And that's a great way to understand Bin Ladenism
link |
and the whole phenomenon,
link |
but I think looking at the big picture,
link |
it's also, you wonder, will that ever end, right?
link |
I mean, is that, I mean, that's the risk
link |
of being a kind of hyper power like the U.S.
link |
where you, in assisting on a kind of unipolar world
link |
in 2001, 2002, 2003, I think that created
link |
an almost irresistible target, you know,
link |
wherever the U.S. wanted to exert itself militarily.
link |
Before we go to the history of Afghanistan,
link |
the people, and I just want to talk to you
link |
about just some fascinating aspect of the culture.
link |
Let's go to the end.
link |
Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
link |
What are your thoughts on how that was executed?
link |
How could it have been done better?
link |
Yeah, an important question.
link |
I mean, I would preface all this by saying,
link |
you know, as I noted, I think the war was a mistake.
link |
I had hoped the war would end sooner.
link |
I think there were different exit routes all along the way.
link |
Again, I think there were lots of policy choices
link |
in September and October when the war began.
link |
There were choices in December 2001.
link |
So we could look at almost every six month stopping point
link |
and say, we could have done differently.
link |
As it turns out though, I mean, the way it played out,
link |
you know, it's been catastrophic.
link |
And I think the Biden administration
link |
has remained unaccountable for the scale
link |
of the strategic and humanitarian and ethical failure
link |
that they're responsible for.
link |
Well, okay, let's lay out the full,
link |
there's George W. Bush, there's Barack Obama,
link |
there's Donald Trump, there's Biden.
link |
So they're all driving this van and there's these exits
link |
and they keep not taking the exits
link |
and they're running out of gas.
link |
I do this all the time thinking, where am I gonna pull off?
link |
I'll go till it's empty.
link |
How could it have been done better?
link |
And what exactly, how much suffering
link |
have all the decisions along the way caused?
link |
What are the longterm consequences?
link |
What are the biggest things that concern you
link |
about the decisions we've made in both invading Afghanistan
link |
and staying in Afghanistan as long as we have?
link |
I mean, if we start at the end, as you proposed,
link |
you know, the horrific scenes of the airport,
link |
you know, that was just one dimension.
link |
I think in the weeks to come,
link |
I mean, we're gonna see Afghanistan implode.
link |
There are lots of signs that malnutrition,
link |
hunger, starvation are going to claim tens of thousands,
link |
maybe hundreds of thousands of lives this winter.
link |
And I think there is really nothing,
link |
there's no framework in place to forestall that.
link |
What is the government, what is currently the system there?
link |
What's the role of the Taliban?
link |
So there could be tens of thousands,
link |
hundreds of thousands that starve,
link |
either just almost to famine or starve to death.
link |
So this is economic implosion, this is political implosion.
link |
What's the system there like
link |
and what could be the one, you know, some inkling of hope?
link |
The Taliban sit in control, that's unique.
link |
When they were in power in the 1990s from 1996, 2001,
link |
they controlled some 85 to 90% of the country.
link |
Now they own it all, but they have no budget.
link |
The Afghan banking system is frozen.
link |
So the financial system is a mess.
link |
And it's frozen by the U.S.
link |
because the U.S. is trying to use that lever
link |
to exert pressure on the Taliban.
link |
And so the ethical quandaries are of course legion, right?
link |
Do you release that money to allow the Taliban
link |
to shore up their rule, right?
link |
The Biden administration has said no,
link |
but the banks aren't working.
link |
If you're in California, you wanna send $100 to your cousin
link |
so she can buy bread, you can't do that now.
link |
It's almost impossible.
link |
There are some informal networks,
link |
they're removing some stuff, but there are bread lines.
link |
The Taliban government is incapable,
link |
fundamentally just of ruling.
link |
I mean, they can discipline people on the street,
link |
they can force people into the mosque,
link |
they can shoot people, they can beat protesters,
link |
they can put out a newspaper,
link |
they can have, they're great at diplomacy it turns out,
link |
they can't rule this country.
link |
So essentially the hospitals
link |
and the kind of healthcare infrastructure
link |
is being managed by NGOs that are international.
link |
But most people had to leave
link |
and the Taliban have impeded some of that work.
link |
They've told adult women essentially to stay home, right?
link |
So a big part of the workforce isn't there.
link |
So the supply chain is kind of crawling to a halt.
link |
Trade with Pakistan and its neighbors,
link |
I mean, it's kind of a transit trade economy.
link |
It exports fruits.
link |
Pakistan has been closing the border
link |
because they're anxious about refugees.
link |
They want to exert pressure on the international community
link |
to recognize the Taliban
link |
because the Pakistan want the Taliban to succeed in power
link |
because they see that in Pakistan's national interest,
link |
especially through the lens of its rivalry with India.
link |
So the Pakistani security institutions
link |
are playing a double game.
link |
Essentially Afghan people are being held hostage.
link |
And so the Taliban are also saying,
link |
if you don't recognize us,
link |
you're gonna let tens of millions of Afghans starve.
link |
So to which degree is Taliban,
link |
like who are the Taliban?
link |
What do they stand for?
link |
What do they want?
link |
Obviously year by year, this changes.
link |
So what is the nature of this organization?
link |
Can they be a legitimate, peaceful, kind, respectful
link |
government sort of holder of power
link |
or are they fundamentally not capable of doing so?
link |
I mean, the briefest answer would be
link |
that they are a clerical slash military organization.
link |
They have, this is kind of a imperfect metaphor,
link |
but years ago, a German scholar used the term caravan
link |
And that has some attractive elements
link |
because different people have joined the Taliban
link |
for different purposes at different times,
link |
but today, and people tell us,
link |
scholars who know more about the women than I have said,
link |
listen, the Taliban is this kind of hodgepodge
link |
of different actors and people and competing interests.
link |
And I think, so we have a lot of scholars who said,
link |
listen, it's polycentric.
link |
It's got people in this city and that city and so on.
link |
I think actually, I was always very skeptical.
link |
How do they know this?
link |
I mean, this is an organization that doesn't want you
link |
to know where that money comes from and so on.
link |
But I would say now that we have a clear picture
link |
of what has happened,
link |
I'd say they are a astoundingly well organized
link |
clerical military organization that has a very cohesive
link |
and enduring ideology, which is quite idiosyncratic.
link |
If we zoom out and continue the conversation
link |
we're having about Islam and how we think about radicalism
link |
and who's drawn to what,
link |
people throw different terms around to describe the Taliban.
link |
Some use a term that links it to a kind of school of thought
link |
born in the 19th century in India, the Doabandi school.
link |
But if you look at their teachings,
link |
it's very clear now I think that these labels,
link |
it's like saying, you're an MIT guy.
link |
Well, what does that mean?
link |
I mean, MIT is home to dozens of different potentially
link |
kinds of intellectual orientations, right?
link |
I mean, attaching the name of the school
link |
doesn't quite capture, I mean, university.
link |
I mean, actually MIT is interesting
link |
because I would say MIT is different
link |
than Stanford, for example.
link |
I think MIT has a more kind of narrow.
link |
Bad analogy on my part, maybe.
link |
Well, no, it's interesting because I would argue
link |
that there's some aspect of a brand like Taliban or MIT,
link |
no relation, that has a kind of interact,
link |
like the brand results in the behavior of the,
link |
like enforces a kind of behavior on the people
link |
and the people feed the brand and like there's a loop.
link |
I think Stanford is a good example
link |
of something that's more distributed.
link |
There's sufficient amount of diversity
link |
in like all kinds of like centers
link |
and all that kind of stuff that the brand
link |
doesn't become one thing.
link |
MIT is so engineering.
link |
It's so different than that.
link |
Okay, scratch MIT, scratch Stanford too
link |
because I think Stanford's more like MIT
link |
than you might imagine, but isn't Taliban,
link |
isn't it pretty, I don't think there's a diversity.
link |
So yeah, sorry, so just to rephrase.
link |
So people say, oh, the Deobandi school.
link |
I'm like, what is that?
link |
I mean, but the Taliban are, they're an ethnic movement.
link |
They represent a vision of Pashtun power, right?
link |
Pashtuns are people who are quite internally diverse,
link |
who actually speak multiple dialects of Pashto,
link |
who reside across the frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
link |
There are Pashtuns who live all over the planet, right?
link |
There's a community in Moscow, California, everywhere,
link |
right, so it's a global diaspora of sorts.
link |
Pashtuns have a kind of genealogical imagination
link |
so that lots of Pashtuns can tell you
link |
the names of their grandparents, great grandparents
link |
and so on, and that's kind of a,
link |
there's a sense of pride in that.
link |
Pashto language is a kind of core element of that identity,
link |
but it's not universal.
link |
So for example, you can meet people who say,
link |
I am Pashtun, but I don't know Pashto.
link |
So as you claw away at this idea, it's amorphous.
link |
It also means different things,
link |
different people at different times.
link |
So saying the Taliban are Pashtun
link |
requires lots of qualifiers
link |
because lots of Pashtuns will say,
link |
no, no, I have nothing to the Taliban.
link |
I hate those people.
link |
So the Taliban tried to mobilize other Pashtuns
link |
with limited success,
link |
but their core membership is almost exclusively Pashtun.
link |
And they say, no, no, we represent Afghans.
link |
We represent pious Muslims.
link |
And so in recent two, three years,
link |
they've gone further to say, no, we have other groups.
link |
We have Uzbeks, we have Tajiks, we have Hazaras.
link |
And in the North of Afghanistan, in recent years,
link |
they did do a bit better at drawing in people
link |
who were very disaffected because of the government.
link |
And they were able to diversify their ranks somewhat.
link |
But if you want to say August 15 and who they've appointed,
link |
what language they've used,
link |
how they've presented themselves,
link |
it's clear that they are Pashtun, they are male,
link |
and they are extremely ideologically cohesive
link |
and disciplined, I'd say, right?
link |
So I think that a lot of the polycentrism, blah, blah,
link |
some of that stuff was a way to fight a war.
link |
They are fundamentally a guerrilla movement.
link |
They see themselves as kind of pious Robin Hoods.
link |
The rhetoric is very much about taking from the rich,
link |
taking from the privileged, giving to the poor,
link |
being on the side of the underdog, fighting against evil.
link |
And so, I mean, their bag, if you like, their thing,
link |
their central theme, their brand is about public morality.
link |
And so their origin story, going back to 1994,
link |
is that they interceded, they broke up a gang of criminals
link |
who were trying to rape people.
link |
And so there's a very interesting emphasis on sexuality
link |
and on public morality and really being the core
link |
of we're gonna restore order and public morality.
link |
And how that translates into governance
link |
is something they've never sorted out.
link |
I mean, how do you run a banking system
link |
if your intellectual priorities are really about
link |
the length of a beard?
link |
And then their path to power in a kind of abstract sense,
link |
I mean, a lot of that was very much driven by,
link |
if you like, propagating the promise of martyrdom.
link |
And that sounds, I don't mean to say that in a way
link |
that, to make it sound ridiculous,
link |
to make it sound like it's a moral judgment,
link |
it's simply, I think, a fact, it's a fact of their appeal
link |
that they promised young men who have known nothing else
link |
but studying in certain schools, if at all,
link |
but they've known fighting
link |
and they've known victimization.
link |
And this isn't, I'm not asking for sympathy for them,
link |
but I think the reality is that a lot of the,
link |
we know about the kind of foot soldiers
link |
is that they lost families in bombings,
link |
in airstrikes, in night raids.
link |
I mean, orphans have always been a stream,
link |
living in all male society, not knowing girls,
link |
not knowing women, hearing things from outside
link |
about places like Kabul.
link |
And so there's always been this kind of urban rural
link |
dimension, it's not just that,
link |
but I think there's a whole imagination
link |
that being Taliban captures.
link |
And the whole margin of thing is really it's,
link |
you know, I think to any religious person,
link |
I mean, it's not a bizarre idea.
link |
I mean, it animates, I mean, so many global traditions,
link |
you know, but I think the,
link |
but you try to tell like an army colonel,
link |
if you were to have a conversation with,
link |
you know, a US Marine about this,
link |
I mean, some would get it
link |
from their own religious backgrounds,
link |
but I think it's an alien idea,
link |
but I think it's essential to kind of stretch out
link |
my imagination to understand that's attractive.
link |
And now one of the dilemmas going forward
link |
is that they've got to pivot from martyrdom.
link |
And some have been, some have told foreign journalists,
link |
I mean, it's good that we're in charge now,
link |
we're gonna build a proper state,
link |
but it's kind of boring.
link |
I wanna keep fighting, maybe I'll do that in Pakistan.
link |
Yeah, I mean, it's nice that they are expressing
link |
that thought, some are not even honest sufficiently
link |
with themselves to express that kind of thought.
link |
If you're a fighter,
link |
you see that with a bunch of fighters
link |
or professional athletes, once they retire,
link |
they don't know, it's very, it's boring.
link |
And so like if the spirit of the Taliban,
link |
even the best version of the Taliban is to fight,
link |
is to be martyrs, is to paint the world as good and evil
link |
and you're fighting evil and all that kind of stuff,
link |
that's difficult to imagine how they can run
link |
an education system, a banking system,
link |
respect all kinds of citizens with different backgrounds
link |
and religious beliefs and women and all that kind of stuff.
link |
Yeah, and they've walked into Kabul
link |
and other major cities, some of them are young,
link |
they didn't know those places,
link |
but also the very important obstacle for them
link |
is that Afghan society has changed.
link |
I mean, it's not what, even for the older guys,
link |
it's not what they knew in the 1990s.
link |
Some always had some ambivalence about the capital,
link |
but now it's totally different.
link |
I mean, they've been shocked to see, I think to me,
link |
one of the most striking features of the last few weeks
link |
has been that women have come out on the streets
link |
and have stood in their faces and said,
link |
we demand rights, we demand education,
link |
we demand employment.
link |
And these foot soldiers are paralyzed, they're not sure.
link |
They don't know what to do with women, period.
link |
And they don't know what to do with being yelled at
link |
and having someone stick their fingers in their faces.
link |
I mean, this is not what they've imagined.
link |
And so I think, and at this juncture,
link |
there are still foreign cameras around.
link |
So they have committed acts of violence against women,
link |
against journalists, they've beaten people,
link |
they've disappeared people.
link |
Even with cameras around, even in this tense period.
link |
Yeah, but I think that when the cameras retreat
link |
and that's not gonna happen,
link |
it's gonna get much worse, I think.
link |
So the challenge now is can the Taliban rule?
link |
And then this is where the diplomacy is so important
link |
because the Taliban can't rule in isolation
link |
and they know that.
link |
And part of the success is due to the fact
link |
that they became very good at talking to other people
link |
in the last, I mean, it's been building for the last decade,
link |
but I'd say the last five years,
link |
they always had Pakistan's backing.
link |
And so the Taliban are, we noted they're a military force,
link |
very effective guerrilla force.
link |
They beat NATO, I mean, this is, still hasn't sunk in.
link |
I mean, the fact that they, with light arms,
link |
using suicide attacks, using mines,
link |
improvised explosive devices, machine guns.
link |
In some, in recent years, they got sniper rifles
link |
and from the summer, they got American equipment
link |
on a broad scale, right?
link |
They have airplanes, they have a lot
link |
that they will be able to use eventually.
link |
So, but still, basically it's a story of AK47s,
link |
some American small arms and mines.
link |
So it's very Ho Chi Minh,
link |
very old school guerrilla fighting, right?
link |
And they defeated the most powerful military alliance
link |
in world history probably.
link |
So that has not yet sunk in and what that means
link |
for American and global politics.
link |
And now they're trying to rule, right?
link |
They know they need international support
link |
and their most consistent backer has been Pakistan
link |
who sees them as an extension of Pakistani power.
link |
And this is very important for a Pakistani elite
link |
that of course is looking toward India.
link |
They wanna have their rear covered, right?
link |
They wanna make sure that these Pashtuns
link |
don't cause trouble for Pakistan.
link |
And they like, I mean, for some of the security forces,
link |
they like this vision of the Islamic state
link |
that the Taliban are building there
link |
because those are not so distant from their views
link |
of what Pakistan should be.
link |
But the Taliban have been smart enough
link |
to kind of diversify their potential international allies.
link |
So everyone in the neighborhood
link |
has wanted the US to leave, right?
link |
If we go back to 2001,
link |
there were Iranian and American special forces in the North
link |
working together against the Taliban to displace them
link |
using Iranian, American, and then Afghan resistance forces
link |
against the Taliban.
link |
And that was a real moment of rapprochement
link |
if we go back to the missed exits.
link |
The relationship with Iran
link |
could have been different at that moment,
link |
but the US under George W. Bush, you know,
link |
devised this axis of evil language,
link |
put them together with their enemy,
link |
Iraq and the North Korea, all that went south.
link |
That was the most opportunity.
link |
But in recent years, the Taliban and Iran
link |
have kind of papered over the differences.
link |
They allowed the Taliban to open small offices
link |
on Iranian territory,
link |
likely shared some resources, some intelligence,
link |
some sophisticated weaponry.
link |
And then the Taliban went to Moscow.
link |
And for the Putin administration,
link |
you know, they've long been worried that,
link |
you know, they see the Taliban as a kind of,
link |
you know, disease that will potentially move North,
link |
infect Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,
link |
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan,
link |
and maybe creep into Russia's sphere of influence.
link |
Maybe that's why they have, you know,
link |
a bunch of troops sitting in Tajikistan.
link |
I mean, the one, you know,
link |
Ford base that Russia as well has in Central Asia
link |
And so the Taliban were always, you know,
link |
a worrying point, but also useful because
link |
they could say, well, you know,
link |
in case the Taliban get out of control,
link |
we need to be here.
link |
And so Tajikistan said, okay, you know,
link |
you're helping secure us.
link |
And yes, it impinges upon our sovereignty,
link |
but it's okay, you know?
link |
So Putin said, you know, let's, you know,
link |
give another black eye to the Americans
link |
and let's, you know, treat the Taliban
link |
as if they're the kind of government in waiting.
link |
Let's have them come to Moscow multiple times.
link |
This summer, you know, for the last year or two,
link |
they've been talking to China, right?
link |
So the photographs of senior Taliban figures
link |
going from their office in Qatar,
link |
which was a major blow to the U.S. back government,
link |
the fact that they were able to open up
link |
an office in Qatar that at one point
link |
began to fly a flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,
link |
that basically said, we're a state in the waiting.
link |
And as the U.S.-backed Afghan government failed
link |
and failed and failed at ruling too, right?
link |
As they showed how corrupt they were.
link |
And as they really alienated more and more Afghans
link |
by committing acts of violence against them,
link |
by stealing from them, by, you know,
link |
basically creating a kind of kleptocracy, right?
link |
The Taliban said, we are pure, we are not corrupt.
link |
And look at us, we're winning on the battlefield.
link |
And internationally, look, we're talking to China.
link |
We're talking to Putin, we're talking to China.
link |
We're a legitimate, powerful center of Central Asia.
link |
And also kind of, you know, hinting that, you know,
link |
oh, we have a website.
link |
I mean, the whole digital angle is amazing
link |
because they began to, and this is important, actually.
link |
They had a website which grew more and more sophisticated.
link |
Again, after having, you know, shot televisions
link |
and these kind of ceremonial killings
link |
of these infidel devices, right?
link |
They said, we have a government, we have commissions,
link |
we have a complaint line.
link |
They lifted all this technocratic language
link |
that you would get from any UN document,
link |
you know, about good governance
link |
and all the kind of, you know, generic language
link |
that the NGO world has produced for us, right, in English.
link |
They reproduced that in five languages
link |
on their Taiwan website.
link |
And of course, I'm not saying even believe this,
link |
but it was like, you know, just put me in coach.
link |
You know, I know the playbook.
link |
I know how to run a government.
link |
And look, we have an agricultural commission.
link |
We have, you know, a taxation system.
link |
And again, this idea, and then on the ground,
link |
they had their own law courts.
link |
And they would creep into a district,
link |
assassinate some people, the local authority figures,
link |
men of influence, talk to local clerics,
link |
either get them on board or kill them and say, you know,
link |
this state is corrupt, but we're bringing you justice.
link |
This is our calling card.
link |
We're bringing public reality and justice.
link |
And then to a broader world, they said, you know,
link |
yeah, things didn't go perfectly, the whole Al Qaeda thing,
link |
you know, you know, wish we could have a do over on that.
link |
We're not gonna let anyone hurt you from our territory.
link |
We just wanna rule and people like us and look.
link |
And so if you look at the neighborhood,
link |
Iran, even the Central Asian states after a while,
link |
recognizing they could make some money.
link |
I mean, one of the, one thing that Uzbekistan likes
link |
about the current arrangement, or they're not,
link |
they're not hostile to is that they have all these contracts.
link |
They can potentially make some money from, you know,
link |
the pipeline dream remains alive, running natural gas, oil,
link |
to, you know, which is the Indian ocean,
link |
to markets, you know, beyond Central Asia.
link |
It's sitting on a couple of trillion dollars,
link |
probably in mineral resources
link |
that China would love to have, of course.
link |
And so people are looking at Afghanistan now,
link |
after 20 years saying, you know, under American rule,
link |
it was a basket case, right?
link |
There was immense human suffering, incredibly violent.
link |
The world did not start counting civilian casualties
link |
in Afghanistan until 2009.
link |
I mean, think about that.
link |
The war went on for eight years.
link |
The Taliban were never really defeated.
link |
They just went to Pakistan.
link |
They went to the mountains, they went to the woods.
link |
And so all of these different American operations,
link |
as you noted, under Bush, Obama, Trump, and so on,
link |
killed countless civilians.
link |
The US never accounted for that.
link |
We never even counted.
link |
Trump escalated civilian casualties
link |
by escalating the air war.
link |
But a lot of this was like very ugly, on the ground,
link |
you know, night raid stuff,
link |
where you drop into a Hamlet and massacre people,
link |
and then you're not honest about what happened, right?
link |
So that dynamic continued to fuel the growth of the Taliban
link |
So the foot soldiers, they never ran out of foot soldiers.
link |
I mean, the US and its allies killed tens of thousands,
link |
maybe hundreds of thousands of Taliban fighters
link |
over the last 20 years.
link |
But they just sprouted up again.
link |
And part of that was the kind of solidarity culture,
link |
the male bonding of martyrology, of martyrdom,
link |
and of revenge, and a sense of the foreign invader.
link |
And I've heard, I mean, I haven't taught a ton
link |
of US military people, but through the Hoover,
link |
they put officers in our classes sometimes,
link |
and met a few wonderful army and marine officers
link |
who I really enjoyed.
link |
You know, we came from the South like me,
link |
always had great rapport with them,
link |
and they expressed a range of opinions about this.
link |
I think that I learned a lot from someone who said,
link |
yeah, I mean, I get why they hate us.
link |
I get why they're still fighting,
link |
because last week, we were in the middle of a war,
link |
we just killed 14 of their fellow villagers.
link |
So the officers, the guys on the ground,
link |
fighting this war, we're not stupid about that.
link |
I mean, they got the human dimension of that,
link |
and yet no one got off the exit,
link |
as you said, people kept driving.
link |
But going forward now, internationally,
link |
it's critical that they have,
link |
and they've had meetings.
link |
I mean, what the Taliban have done since August 15th
link |
is a lot of diplomacy.
link |
They've had meetings, they've had people,
link |
they've had Tashkent come, they've had Beijing come,
link |
they've had Moscow come.
link |
I mean, they've had major visits from Islamabad,
link |
from security people, from diplomatic circles.
link |
And they're counting on things being different this time.
link |
I mean, the first time around,
link |
the only people who backed the Taliban by recognition,
link |
giving them diplomatic recognition,
link |
were the Saudis, Pakistanis, and the UAE.
link |
And because of Al Qaeda, because of opium,
link |
because of some of the human rights stuff,
link |
the US pushed everyone to like,
link |
let's not recognize the state,
link |
even though the US did.
link |
I mean, Colin Powell famously,
link |
summer of 2001, we did give a few grants and aid
link |
to the Taliban as kind of like massaging negotiations.
link |
They kept talking about bin Laden,
link |
but they also wanted them to stop opium production.
link |
I mean, Afghanistan, throughout all this period
link |
we've talked about, is the global center
link |
of opium production.
link |
I mean, over the years, more and more of the Afghan economy
link |
continued to today is devoted to the opium trade.
link |
Opium, which is the thing that leads to heroin,
link |
some of the painkillers.
link |
And even if Afghan poppies don't make it to Hoboken,
link |
they are not the source of American deaths.
link |
They are part of a universal market, a global market,
link |
which I think any economist would tell you
link |
is part of the story of our opium problem.
link |
Something I read maybe a decade ago now,
link |
and I just kind of looked it up again
link |
to bring it up to see your opinion on this,
link |
is a 2010 report by the International Council
link |
on Security and Development that showed
link |
that 92% of Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar province
link |
know nothing of the 9 11 attacks on US in 2001.
link |
Is this at all representative of what you know?
link |
So basically, put another way,
link |
is it possible that a lot of Afghans don't even know
link |
the reason why there may be troops
link |
or the sort of American provided narrative
link |
for why there's troops, American soldiers,
link |
and American drones overhead in Afghanistan?
link |
I mean, my gut response,
link |
not knowing the details of this actual poll is
link |
that that's a very unhelpful way to think about
link |
how Afghans relate to the world.
link |
And I think it could be, if you go to my hometown,
link |
in North Carolina, if you knock on some doors,
link |
you may meet people who don't know all kinds of things.
link |
I could probably walk around this neighborhood
link |
here in California and there'd be all kinds of people
link |
who don't know all kinds of things.
link |
Kyrie Irving apparently thinks the earth is flat.
link |
I mean, so we could make a lot of certain kinds
link |
of ignorance, I think.
link |
But I think what I would say,
link |
and there's also, I mean, a companion point maybe
link |
that in thinking about the withdrawal, the collapse,
link |
the return of the Taliban,
link |
there has been a big conversation
link |
about what Afghans think of us really.
link |
And this famous piece in the New Yorker
link |
was about how many people liked the Taliban,
link |
that many women interviewed supposedly in this piece,
link |
were sympathetic because they had lost family members
link |
and all the violence.
link |
And the idea kind of was that,
link |
we haven't thought about that at all.
link |
When in fact, of course we have and lots of people have,
link |
but I think if you're just dropping into the conversation,
link |
if you look at like an immediate arc of coverage
link |
of Afghanistan and the United States,
link |
I mean, the arc went from lots of coverage during,
link |
of course, 9.11 and its aftermath,
link |
lots of coverage during Obama's surge,
link |
and then quickly dropped down the last decade,
link |
it's been almost nothing.
link |
So if you ask the same question about Americans
link |
or of Americans, I'm not sure what they would say to you,
link |
what percentage would actually know
link |
why the US is in X, Y, or Z either, right?
link |
But on the Afghan side, just to return to that for a moment,
link |
I think that we can fetishize these provinces.
link |
They are kind of a place
link |
where Taliban support has been greatest.
link |
Also where there's been the most violence,
link |
where the Americans have been most committed
link |
to trying to root out the Taliban movement.
link |
Where exactly in the South.
link |
What are the other parts in the South of Afghanistan?
link |
Yeah, it's mostly Pashtun, not exclusively,
link |
but mostly Pashtun, mostly rural.
link |
That's the other group
link |
that the Taliban claim to represent, right?
link |
So they are this group.
link |
What other groups are there?
link |
Okay, sorry, yeah, sorry.
link |
So in cities, you'll find everything, right?
link |
That is in Afghanistan.
link |
You'll find Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras.
link |
These are people who, Uzbek is a Turkic language, right?
link |
Most Uzbeks live in what is now Uzbekistan,
link |
but they form majorities in some Northern parts of the city.
link |
I'm sorry, of the country of Afghanistan.
link |
But what I emphasize is that,
link |
and you can find online an ethnographic map of Afghanistan
link |
and you'll see green where Pashtuns live,
link |
red where Hazaras live, orange where Uzbeks live,
link |
purple where Tajiks live.
link |
Then there are a bunch of other smaller groups
link |
of different kinds.
link |
There are Noristanis, there are Baluch,
link |
there are, in different religious communities,
link |
there are Sunni, Shia, different kinds of Shia.
link |
What are the key differences between them?
link |
Is it religious basis from the origins
link |
of where they immigrated from and how different are they?
link |
So they're all, I mean, they're all indigenous, I think.
link |
I mean, there's a kind of mythology
link |
that some groups have been there longer, right?
link |
So they have a greater claim to power.
link |
But historically, I mean, it's like, you know,
link |
ethnic groups anywhere,
link |
people have different narratives about themselves,
link |
but many Pashtuns would tell you, not all,
link |
but many would say,
link |
we are the kind of state builders of Afghanistan.
link |
The dynasty that ruled much of the space,
link |
that was born in the mid 18th century,
link |
that ruled until 1973, more or less,
link |
generalizing, you know, it was a Pashtun dynasty.
link |
The Taliban have definitely said to some audiences,
link |
we are the rightful rulers because we are Pashtun.
link |
The trick though is, I don't mean to be evasive,
link |
but just to convey some of the complexity,
link |
one quick answer as well,
link |
they're majorities and minorities.
link |
I mean, one finds that a lot along with those maps,
link |
but I would say suspend any firm belief in that
link |
because that could be entirely wrong.
link |
In fact, there's never been a modern census of Afghanistan.
link |
So when journalists say Pashtuns are the majority,
link |
or they're the biggest group, I would say not so fast.
link |
I would say not so fast
link |
because of migration is one major issue.
link |
No major modern census.
link |
Actually, the Soviets got pretty close,
link |
but didn't quite, you know, find something comprehensive
link |
and didn't publicize it knowing that it was,
link |
you know, in modern times,
link |
ethnicity can be the source of political mobilization.
link |
It's not innately so, but it's been part of the story.
link |
But then you have mixed families, right?
link |
So a lot of people you'll meet,
link |
you'll encounter in the diaspora and around,
link |
I mean, well, I am, you know,
link |
my one parent is Tajik, one is Pashtun, right?
link |
Or I'm Pashtun, as I mentioned before,
link |
but I don't speak Pashto, right?
link |
Or I am Hazara, but you read about us as Shiite Hazara,
link |
in fact, I'm a Sunni Hazara,
link |
or I'm a secular Hazara, or I'm an atheist Hazara.
link |
I mean, everything's possible, right?
link |
One of my friends, if he were here,
link |
he'd say, I'm Kabuli, you know, I'm from Kabul.
link |
So if you think about it in Russian terms,
link |
you know, it means a lot if you're a Muscovitch,
link |
you know, if you're from Pisa or Moscow, I mean, you know.
link |
Yeah, well, even here is Pashtunians, Texans, Californians.
link |
Yeah, East Coast, West Coast, all that stuff.
link |
Those are all part of the mix here.
link |
So you asked about Kandahar and Helmand,
link |
then I would say, yeah, if you go out to, you know,
link |
a pomegranate field, you'll meet a guy
link |
who may reckon time differently from you and me,
link |
who may not be literate,
link |
you may not have ever had a geography lesson,
link |
but if you go one door over, you may meet a guy
link |
who, you know, his life path has taken him
link |
to live in, you know, six countries.
link |
He may speak five languages.
link |
And these are all things I'm not saying they're all,
link |
these are just because people have money
link |
can go fly around.
link |
I mean, there are people who are displaced by war
link |
from late 1970s, right?
link |
Even already in the early 70s,
link |
people were traveling by the tens of thousands to Iran,
link |
you know, as labor migrants.
link |
And once you get to Iran, once you get to Pakistan,
link |
once you get to Uzbekistan,
link |
you then connect to all kinds of cosmopolitan cultures.
link |
And in fact, I think one of the themes of the book,
link |
you know, that you may or may not have read,
link |
it may put you to sleep.
link |
You know, Afghan Modern was about, you know,
link |
conceptualizing Afghanistan as a cosmopolitan place
link |
where for centuries people put on the move
link |
and trade in this area.
link |
You think of, you know, I think this mischaracterization
link |
of places like Helmand and Kandahar,
link |
you know, you fly in or you're part of a Marine battalion
link |
and you see people there and they look different.
link |
And I think in our imagination, if I can generalize,
link |
you know, they look like they've been there
link |
for millennia, right?
link |
The dress, the whatever, right?
link |
You think of technology,
link |
you think of the mud compounds and so on.
link |
You think of, you know, animal drawn transportation,
link |
that kind of stuff, right?
link |
Or the motorbike, right, at most is what they have.
link |
But in fact, if you follow those families,
link |
their trade has taken them to Northern India
link |
for centuries, right?
link |
Their trade has connected them to cosmopolitan centers.
link |
You know, say they have a scholar in the family,
link |
that scholar may have studied
link |
all of the Middle East, South Asia, right?
link |
You know, their ancestors may have been horse traders
link |
who went all the way to Moscow, right?
link |
I mean, we have a sort of records of all these people
link |
traveling across Eurasia,
link |
pursuing all kinds of livelihoods.
link |
And so Afghanistan is this paradox
link |
of visually looking remote
link |
and looking like it's kind of stuck in time,
link |
but the family trajectories
link |
and the current trajectories
link |
are astoundingly cosmopolitan and mobile.
link |
And so, and a conception of being a world center
link |
is also quite strong.
link |
So, you know, another way to frame that question about like,
link |
do they know about 9.11 would be like,
link |
why should we know about 9.11?
link |
Because we are at the center of something important, right?
link |
We are the center of Asia.
link |
We are the heart of Asia.
link |
We have a kind of historic greatness.
link |
We are a proud culture of our own achievements, right?
link |
So we're not worried about that, right?
link |
That said, I mean, sure,
link |
there are different narratives about
link |
why Americans are there,
link |
why people are being killed.
link |
You know, of course you'd find,
link |
they want to convert us,
link |
they want our gold,
link |
they want our opium,
link |
they want X, Y, and Z, right?
link |
There was a recent story about a Taliban official
link |
sitting in an office in Kabul
link |
and a journalist asked him,
link |
what can you find in this rotating globe?
link |
Find your country,
link |
find where are we sitting right now?
link |
And he was filmed not being able to do it.
link |
And so a lot of, you know,
link |
race sophisticated Afghans in the diaspora
link |
were saying, you know, ha ha, look at this.
link |
I mean, I think I could go to my Stanford classroom
link |
and there'd be a lot of kids
link |
who wouldn't know where Afghanistan is too, right?
link |
But I guess I wouldn't use those metrics
link |
to suggest that this is a place
link |
that doesn't have a sense of its place in the world
link |
and of geopolitics.
link |
I think if anything,
link |
being a relatively small country
link |
in a very complicated neighborhood,
link |
I mean, everybody, every cab driver,
link |
I mean, people have, I mean,
link |
you know, this is where America is different
link |
because I don't think Americans have this sense.
link |
You know, we're talking about Moscow and stuff.
link |
I think, you know, Moscow cab drivers,
link |
I think a lot of them are gonna tell you,
link |
like what's happening in the world and why, right?
link |
And it's just part of their thing, right?
link |
You can find that in Ghana,
link |
you can find that in Mexico city, right?
link |
You find that lots of places.
link |
So I think Afghans are part of a very sophisticated
link |
kind of mapping of the world and where they fit in.
link |
And a lot of them remarkably had done it firsthand,
link |
which is what struck me so much.
link |
And, you know, really my experiences
link |
from the 1990s and Tashkent places
link |
that these guys had already lived
link |
in more countries than I'd ever been.
link |
They already knew half those languages.
link |
I mean, this one friend's Russian was impeccable.
link |
And of course it helped, they had Russian girlfriends,
link |
they had, you know, they mixed with the police,
link |
they had run ins, I mean,
link |
this wasn't something you got from a book, right?
link |
This was like hard knock life.
link |
I mean, one friend was from a wealthy family
link |
in this trading diaspora and he was imprisoned.
link |
I mean, they sent him to prison in Pakistan
link |
and he talks about how he could start like running,
link |
running in the jail, you know,
link |
taking cigarettes to people, doing little things
link |
and kind of, you know, these are not stories of like,
link |
oh, I went to Harvard and so I'm so learned
link |
I mean, it's a whole range of experiences.
link |
The interesting thing is the survey is a survey
link |
and it doesn't reflect ignorance,
link |
as you're saying, perhaps,
link |
but it may reflect a different geopolitical view
link |
of the world than the West has.
link |
So if, you know, for a lot of the world,
link |
9 11 was one of the most important moments
link |
of recent human history.
link |
And for Afghanistan to not to know that,
link |
especially when they're part of that story,
link |
means they have a very different,
link |
like there could be a lot of things said.
link |
One is the spread of information is different.
link |
The channels of the way information is spread.
link |
And two of the things they care about,
link |
maybe they see themselves as part of a longer arc
link |
of history where the bickering of these superpowers
link |
that seem to want to go to the moon
link |
are not as important as the big sort of arc
link |
that's been the story of Afghanistan.
link |
You know, that's an interesting idea,
link |
but it's still a bit, if at all,
link |
representative of the truth.
link |
It's heartbreaking that they're not,
link |
do not see themselves as active player
link |
in this game between the United States
link |
and Central Asia, because they're such a critical player.
link |
And I feel, and obviously, in many ways,
link |
get the short end of the stick in this whole interaction
link |
with the invasion of Afghanistan for many years,
link |
and then this rushed withdrawal of troops,
link |
and now the economic collapse, and it's sad in some ways.
link |
I mean, you know, another way to put it is this.
link |
I mean, yeah, there's a range of knowledge,
link |
and you're right, the information flows
link |
are peculiar to particular geographies
link |
and histories and stuff.
link |
I think that, you know, plucking out one sample
link |
from some fairly remote area,
link |
from one like follow the agricultural products.
link |
I mean, and this is where, you know,
link |
I think urban rural divides used to mean a lot more
link |
in the 19th century, right?
link |
So a lot of like the nuts and bolts of history
link |
is about conceiving of these kinds of distinctions,
link |
but I think that if one has the privilege
link |
of traveling a bit, you see that like urban areas
link |
are fed by rural hinterlands.
link |
And if you think of who actually brings the bread,
link |
the milk, the pomegranates and so on,
link |
it creates these networks.
link |
And then, you know, mobility channels,
link |
information and so on.
link |
But yeah, but your broader point
link |
about like the tragedy of this,
link |
I mean, I guess if I can quote a brilliant student of mine,
link |
an Afghan American woman who just received her PhD,
link |
who's now, you know, a doctor, he's a great scholar.
link |
You know, we've done several events now
link |
trying to just think through what's happened.
link |
And of course, she's very emotionally affected by it.
link |
And she continues to ask a really great question.
link |
If I can get her phrasing right, you know,
link |
if you think of the cycle of like the Taliban
link |
being in power in 2001 and the way in which
link |
that affected women in particular,
link |
you know, half Afghan, half of the society, right?
link |
Then you think of this 20 year period of violence
link |
and, you know, missed exits, right?
link |
And repeated tragedy that also it created a space.
link |
I mean, it created a space for a whole generation.
link |
I'd say generationally, it created a sense,
link |
a space for people to realize something new.
link |
And I think, so we have to attend to the dynamism
link |
of the society, right?
link |
So yeah, this happened mostly in Kabul,
link |
other big cities, Mazar Sharif, Herat, and Kandahar.
link |
But you can't limit your analysis to that
link |
because things like radio, television,
link |
everyone got a TV channel.
link |
There's a wonderful documentary called Afghan Star
link |
that I recommend to your listeners and viewers
link |
that it's about a singing show, a singing contest show.
link |
But you see just for some of these things
link |
about like connections, I mean,
link |
it's a show by an independent television network
link |
that did drama, it did kind of infomercials
link |
for the government and huge American investment in it.
link |
So it wasn't politically neutral,
link |
but it did talk shows, did all this kind of stuff.
link |
But it did a singing show that became incredibly popular,
link |
modeled upon the British American,
link |
you know, American Idol kind of stuff, you know,
link |
and you could vote.
link |
So it had a kind of democratic practice element.
link |
But it's fascinating to see that, you know,
link |
people hooked up generators to televisions and watch this,
link |
you know, you think of like literacy rates,
link |
literacy rates are imperfect.
link |
And, you know, people who study, you know,
link |
medieval or modern Europe talk about how,
link |
yeah, no one could read and there weren't many books,
link |
but if someone had a book, it'd be read aloud
link |
to a whole village potentially or gathering.
link |
So there isn't much, you know,
link |
some of these metrics don't get what people actually
link |
receive as information or exposure
link |
because there's the magnifying power of open spaces
link |
and hearing radio in group settings,
link |
seeing television group settings, having telephone,
link |
you know, cheap telephones, which then become an access
link |
point to the world and social media, right?
link |
So all the stuff swept across Afghan society
link |
as it did elsewhere, you know, in the last decade or more.
link |
So Afghan society became, you know, in important ways,
link |
really connected to everything going on.
link |
And so you see that reflected politically
link |
and what people wanted.
link |
So you had some people obviously
link |
back to return to the Taliban,
link |
some people wanted the status quo,
link |
but increasingly many more people wanted something else.
link |
And one of the great failures was
link |
to expose people to democracy,
link |
but only give them the rigged version.
link |
And so the US State Department in particular
link |
continued to double down on faked elections
link |
for the parliament and for the presidency in Afghanistan.
link |
What kind of elections?
link |
Faked, fraudulent elections for parliament
link |
and for president in Afghanistan again and again
link |
from the very beginning.
link |
And those elections were partly theater for the US,
link |
like for remaining on the road that you're describing,
link |
right, for not deviating, for not exiting
link |
because we were building democracy there.
link |
In reality, the US government knew
link |
it was never really building democracy there.
link |
It was establishing control
link |
and elections were one of the means to gather control,
link |
But then you had on the ground,
link |
especially among young people going to university,
link |
you know, having experiences
link |
that were denied to them before,
link |
you know, they took these problems so seriously.
link |
So part of the disillusionment that we see today
link |
is that, you know, they believe what the US told them
link |
that they're constructing democracy.
link |
And of course, you know, cynics like us may be thinking,
link |
well, you know, you're not really doing that.
link |
You're backing fraud.
link |
They believed it when they were younger
link |
and now they're actually smart enough
link |
to understand that it's a farce.
link |
But in so indirectly had the consequence
link |
of actually working and that it taught the young
link |
over a period of 20 years, young folks to believe
link |
that democracy is possible
link |
and then to realize what democracy is not.
link |
It's just the current system.
link |
That's beautifully said, beautifully said.
link |
And so, but now look at us, now it's, you know,
link |
it's now November.
link |
And so this whole period,
link |
and I wouldn't say like, you know,
link |
I wouldn't cast the last 20 years
link |
if we're looking at all the achievements, you know,
link |
I wouldn't put them in an American tally sheet,
link |
like, oh, this is something
link |
we should pat ourselves on the back for.
link |
I think that much of this happened actually
link |
against what the Americans wanted.
link |
I mean, that the kind of free thinking,
link |
democracy wanting, I mean, even like, you know,
link |
we could point out on the religious,
link |
go back to the religious sphere.
link |
I mean, the African religious landscape
link |
became very pluralistic.
link |
Lots of young people wanted a different kind
link |
of secular politics, but the old guard
link |
who wanted the status quo and wanted something
link |
that they'd fought for in 1980s tended
link |
to still get American backing as the political leads,
link |
who still tended to monopolize political power.
link |
So all this stuff was happening in different ways.
link |
I mean, the Americans established
link |
this American University of Afghanistan,
link |
which was, I think, one of the best things
link |
the U.S. did there.
link |
And I regret that the U.S. didn't fund 20 more,
link |
you know, sprinkling them across the country,
link |
making them accessible to people,
link |
because it was, you know, again,
link |
it wasn't an engine of Americanization.
link |
It was just opportunity.
link |
And so the thirst for higher education
link |
was really extraordinary there.
link |
It was never really met.
link |
The U.S. tended to put money in primary education,
link |
which much of that too was fraudulent.
link |
But so you have all this interesting dynamism.
link |
You have, you know, the arts, you have a critical space.
link |
I mean, I call it a public sphere
link |
in the classic European sense.
link |
You know, the Afghans made of their own.
link |
And again, it wasn't Americanization.
link |
It wasn't imposed.
link |
It was something that Afghans built across generations,
link |
but really with a firm foundation among youth,
link |
who wanted, importantly, a multiethnic Afghan society.
link |
You asked about Pashtuns and that kind of stuff.
link |
And a lot of that language in recent years was,
link |
they were aware that the U.S.-backed government
link |
was playing ethnic politics
link |
and trying to kind of put people on the blocks
link |
and mobilize people based on their ethnic identity.
link |
And there was a younger cohort of people who said,
link |
you know, we are Afghan.
link |
And then there was interesting social media stuff
link |
where people would say, I am Hazara,
link |
but I'm also Tajik, I'm also Uzbek.
link |
I mean, it was a way of creating
link |
a multiethnic Afghan national identity
link |
that embraced everything.
link |
I mean, very utopian, you know, super utopian, right?
link |
But symbolically, it was very important
link |
that they rejected being mobilized politically,
link |
you know, voting as a Hazara or voting as whatever.
link |
And of course, there were communities who wanted to,
link |
you know, vote as that ethnic community.
link |
But there are also people who said, you know,
link |
let's put a kind of civic nationalism first,
link |
one that accommodates, I think, pluralism
link |
in a way that rejected the kind of majoritarian politics
link |
of one ethnic group dominating the thing.
link |
So all this stuff was quite interesting.
link |
I mean, women were asserting themselves
link |
across multiple spheres.
link |
Of course, it remained patriarchal.
link |
Of course, there were struggles.
link |
Of course, there was violence.
link |
Of course, you know, there's no utopia.
link |
But the door on all that shut on August 15.
link |
So to go back to the quote that I wanted to offer
link |
from the student, now professor,
link |
was it, you know, in trying to make sense of this,
link |
and you mentioned the tragic arc here,
link |
if you think of the 20 years, like, she asked, you know,
link |
why did you go to war in our country?
link |
Basically, why did you do this to us for 20 years
link |
when this was never about us?
link |
You know, you never asked us if you wanted to come.
link |
You never asked us what you wanted to build here.
link |
You didn't ask us when you were coming
link |
and you didn't ask us when you were leaving.
link |
You just did this all on your own.
link |
And we tried to make the most of it.
link |
And then you pulled the rug out from under us,
link |
you know, at the 11th hour,
link |
and returned to power, probably by diplomacy.
link |
It wasn't, at the end, just a military loss.
link |
I mean, it was a series of diplomatic decisions.
link |
I mean, the idea, you asked about alternatives.
link |
I mean, give me a Bagram.
link |
I mean, holding to the timeline.
link |
I mean, the Biden people did not need to hold
link |
to the Doha Agreement that Trump had signed.
link |
I mean, every American president
link |
writes his or her own foreign policy, right?
link |
So the Biden administration acted as if,
link |
and they tried to convince us that their hands were tied,
link |
and that it was either this or 20 more years of war
link |
or some absurd kind of, you know, false alternative.
link |
And so, but I think that's important
link |
for American audiences to hear that, you know,
link |
they're like, you came to here to experiment.
link |
You came here to punish.
link |
You came here to kind of reassert, you know,
link |
your dominance the world stage,
link |
you know, to work out the fear and hurt of 9 11
link |
that we talked about, which was so real, you know,
link |
impalpable and so important for American politics since then.
link |
Like you did, you worked out your problems,
link |
you know, on us, on our territory.
link |
And now what do we have for it?
link |
You know, and then the people who had a stake
link |
in that system, imperfect as it was,
link |
have been desperate to leave.
link |
And so this, I don't know how much people are aware of this,
link |
but, you know, I'm a scholar, I work in California,
link |
you know, I have friends, I edited a journal on Afghanistan
link |
and, you know, but I'm not a politician, I'm not a soldier,
link |
but people assume that, you know,
link |
Afghans have been desperately trying to reach me
link |
and anyone who is kind of on the radar as an American
link |
to help get them out.
link |
You know, that's the kind of like, you know,
link |
the symbol of voting with your feet, you know,
link |
is quite powerful.
link |
I mean, there's a huge swath of society
link |
that doesn't want the system
link |
and is literally living in terror about it.
link |
Naturally women, you know,
link |
I mean, especially women of a certain age,
link |
I mean, they feel like their lives are over.
link |
I mean, there is an epidemic of suicide.
link |
They feel betrayed and some people have done
link |
some good things in getting people out.
link |
You know, I mean, some, you know,
link |
the US military vets have been, you know,
link |
at the forefront of working to get out people,
link |
you know, that they know they owe,
link |
but the US government doesn't want these people.
link |
I mean, they have created all these obstacles
link |
to allowing a safety valve for people to leave.
link |
Looking forward from a perspective of leadership,
link |
how do we avoid these kinds of mistakes?
link |
So obviously some interests,
link |
some aspects of human nature led to this war.
link |
How do we resist that in the future?
link |
I guess beyond my moral and intellectual capacity,
link |
I'll just say this, I mean, looking at it,
link |
again, looking at it from my home ground as the university,
link |
and I think of the intellectual,
link |
you know, ways of thinking that I think students
link |
should develop for themselves as citizens, right?
link |
Maybe that's where to start is like historical thinking.
link |
I mean, these are all, you know,
link |
I try to tell people, you know,
link |
if you want to do robotics, computer science,
link |
you'd be a doctor or whatever.
link |
You should study history.
link |
Yeah, I mean, you don't have to be in a story like me,
link |
and it's, you know, my job isn't perfect.
link |
My profession is deeply flawed, right?
link |
But as I get older, I'm like,
link |
there are fewer and fewer historians
link |
that I actually like and want to hang out with and stuff.
link |
So it's like, I'm not offering myself
link |
as like a model for anything,
link |
but you know, whether you're a, you know,
link |
you carry the mail or you're a brain surgeon, whatever.
link |
I mean, I think it's a way of civic engagement
link |
and a way of like, you know, ethical being in the world
link |
that we need to familiarize ourselves with,
link |
because if you're an American
link |
or if you're from a rich country, you know,
link |
you need to be aware of your effect
link |
on an intricate world.
link |
You can't say anymore that you don't know or care
link |
what's happening in Afghanistan
link |
or really circle the globe and point to a place.
link |
I mean, we're all connected and we have ethical obligations.
link |
That's one place to start, but I would just say this,
link |
and this is a lot for a self critique,
link |
and that is so much of my teaching
link |
and like the themes of my research have been about empire,
link |
you know, how big states work,
link |
not only on big territories like the Russian Empire
link |
and Soviet Union and stuff,
link |
but the way in which power often is projected
link |
beyond those boundaries in ways that we don't see.
link |
So this is where things like neoliberalism
link |
or just, you know, if you want to take capitalism
link |
or just things that, you know, the idea of humanity
link |
or of liberalism or of humanitarianism,
link |
ideas that move beyond state boundaries
link |
are all things that we think about as affecting power
link |
in some ways that often harm people, right?
link |
So I think part of, as I've seen my job so far
link |
is to think about, you know,
link |
building upon the work of my people in grad school
link |
and, you know, scholars that have affected me.
link |
I mean, you know, we're all concerned
link |
with how power works and its effects
link |
and trying to be attuned to understanding
link |
things that aren't visible, right,
link |
that we should be thinking about,
link |
that should be known to us.
link |
And as scholars, we can hopefully play some useful role
link |
in showing effects that aren't, you know, obvious initially.
link |
So empire is a framework to think about this.
link |
And so you think about invading foreign countries.
link |
Obviously, if you're a scholar of empire,
link |
you've seen what that looks like,
link |
and that's horrific, right?
link |
You look at things like racism
link |
as one of the ideological pillars of empire.
link |
You know, that's horrific.
link |
It must be critiqued.
link |
It must be, you know, we must be educated against.
link |
Some of the, you know, gender exploitation of empire
link |
is also something to highlight, you know,
link |
to rectify and so on.
link |
You know, to be moral beings,
link |
we need to think about past inequality
link |
and the legacies of violence and destruction that live on.
link |
I mean, living in the Americas.
link |
I mean, look at, you know, we're all on stolen land.
link |
We're all in the sense living with the fruits of genocide
link |
and slavery and all those things
link |
that are hard to come to terms with, right?
link |
But the last few months in Afghanistan
link |
and thinking about empire, I think, made me more humble
link |
when I read people who say,
link |
to put it simply, have taken some joy in this moment,
link |
saying like, well, the Americans
link |
got kicked out of Afghanistan.
link |
You know, if you're against empire, this is a good thing.
link |
This is a kind of victory of anti colonial.
link |
You could see from the perspective of Afghanistan
link |
that America is not some kind of place
link |
that has an ideal of freedom
link |
and all the kind of things that we Americans tell ourselves,
link |
but it's more America has the ideal of empire,
link |
that there's one place that has the truth
link |
and everybody else must follow this truth.
link |
And so from a perspective of Afghanistan,
link |
it could be a victory against this idea
link |
of centralized truth of empire.
link |
That's another way to tell the story.
link |
And then in that sense, it's a victory.
link |
And in that sense also, I mean,
link |
you push back against this somewhat,
link |
this idea of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires.
link |
And outside this, I mean, I'm a critic of empire.
link |
I mean, you know, colonialism is a political phenomenon
link |
that stays with us.
link |
And I think, you know, we need scholars
link |
to point to the way in which it still works
link |
and still does harm.
link |
But it's part of being an empire
link |
that you can just get up and leave a place, right?
link |
That you can remake its politics on one day.
link |
And then because it fails to advance your agenda
link |
at one moment, you simply walk away.
link |
I mean, you know, we can point to other moments.
link |
I mean, 1947 on the subcontinent,
link |
you know, the way that the British withdrew
link |
played a significant role in mass violence,
link |
you know, that accompanied partition.
link |
It wasn't all the actions of the British
link |
that, you know, dictated that, right?
link |
There were lots of actors who chose to pick up,
link |
you know, the knife to kill their neighbor and so on.
link |
I mean, there's lots of agency in that moment
link |
as there is now in what's happening in Afghanistan.
link |
But I think the capriciousness,
link |
I mean, the ability to act as if your political decisions
link |
about other people's lives, you know,
link |
are something that can be made, you know, in secret.
link |
They can be made willy nilly.
link |
They really are beyond the accountability, you know,
link |
of those who are actually going to live
link |
with the consequences of shifting the cards on a deck
link |
in a way that decides who rules and who doesn't.
link |
I would love to hear your conversation
link |
with somebody I just talked to, which is Neil Ferguson,
link |
who argues on the topic of empire,
link |
that you can also zoom out even further
link |
and say, weigh the good and the bad of empire.
link |
And he argues, I think he gets a lot of flack for this
link |
from other historians, that like the British empire
link |
did more good than bad in certain moments of history.
link |
And that's an uncomfortable truth.
link |
There's like levels, it's a cake
link |
with layers of uncomfortable truths.
link |
And it's not a cake at all because none of it tastes good.
link |
I mean, I would continue to disagree with Neil Ferguson.
link |
So I'm still working out where I am
link |
and what this moment does to kind of, I think,
link |
qualify my understanding of the past into,
link |
I think in a moment of humility, I do,
link |
and I'm probably reacting to the kind of, as you put it,
link |
I mean, the idea that this is like a good thing
link |
that American power has been defeated here.
link |
I mean, I do think American power should contract.
link |
And I don't think, and again,
link |
if I had to create a tally sheet
link |
of what the Americans did in the US,
link |
I mean, I mentioned the American University of Afghanistan.
link |
It could have done that without invading the country
link |
and killing people.
link |
I've not now become an apologist for empire.
link |
I'm not now a mini Neil Ferguson,
link |
but ending empire is, I mean,
link |
those decisions you make are in some ways
link |
a continuation of imperil hubris, right?
link |
So you're not really out of empire yet.
link |
You're not really contracting empire
link |
for those who are living it, you know?
link |
But I think it's also, I mean, maybe I put it this way,
link |
it's be careful what you ask for, you know?
link |
I mean, I wanted the US out of Afghanistan,
link |
but I wanted there to be a political settlement.
link |
I wanted my cake and I wanted to eat it too, right?
link |
I wanted all kinds of things to be different, right?
link |
But why is going to Afghanistan even needed for that?
link |
You can play all those games of geopolitics
link |
without ever invading and taking ownership of the place.
link |
It feels like the war, it feels like,
link |
I mean, I'm not exactly sure
link |
what military force is necessary for,
link |
except for targeted intense attacks.
link |
It feels like to me, the right thing to do after 9 11
link |
was to show what was a display of force
link |
unlike anything the world has ever seen
link |
for a very short amount of time.
link |
Targeted at, sure, a terrorist,
link |
at certain strongholds and so on.
link |
And then in and out and then focus on education,
link |
on empowering women into the education system,
link |
all those kinds of things that have to do
link |
with supporting the culture, the education,
link |
the flourishing of the place.
link |
It has nothing to do with military policing essentially.
link |
I mean, I think, yeah, if you look at it through that lens,
link |
I mean, if any Afghanistan and then if any Iraq
link |
didn't end Al Qaeda, it didn't end terrorism, right?
link |
It didn't really deflate these ideologies entirely.
link |
There were, if you like, you could say there were,
link |
some limited discrediting of certain kinds of ideas.
link |
But in fact, I mean,
link |
look at the phenomenon of suicide bombing.
link |
I mean, it spread.
link |
I mean, it was never an Islamic thing.
link |
It was never a Muslim thing.
link |
Some Muslims adopted it in some places,
link |
but the circuits of knowledge
link |
about how to do these kinds of things only expanded
link |
with the insurgencies that emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq,
link |
and then they kind of became connected.
link |
And then they began to the present.
link |
I mean, the Islamic state is,
link |
it's the best thing that happened to the Taliban ever
link |
because it's on the basis of its supposed new stance
link |
as a counterterrorism outfit
link |
that it will get recognition from all its neighbors.
link |
It will get recognition from Russia.
link |
I mean, already with the evacuation of the airport,
link |
the United States was collaborating with the Taliban
link |
against the Islamic state
link |
and openly talking about the Taliban
link |
as if they were partners in the security operation.
link |
So, and then Al Qaeda remains present in Afghanistan, so.
link |
Trillions of dollars spent.
link |
The drones up above bombing places
link |
that result in civilian death,
link |
the death of children, the death of fathers and mothers,
link |
and those stories even at the individual level
link |
propagate virally across the land,
link |
creating potentially more terrorists.
link |
And a cynical view of the trillions of dollars
link |
is the military industrial complex
link |
where there's just a momentum where after 9 11,
link |
the feeling like we should do something
link |
led to us doing something.
link |
And then a lot of people realizing they can make money
link |
from doing more of that something.
link |
And then it's just the momentum
link |
where no one person is sitting there
link |
petting a cat in an evil way,
link |
saying we're going to spend all of this money
link |
and create more suffering and create more terrorism.
link |
But it's just something about that momentum
link |
that leads to that.
link |
And to me, honestly, I'm still a sucker.
link |
I believe in leadership.
link |
I believe in great charismatic leaders
link |
and the power of that want to do evil and to do good.
link |
And it felt like I honestly put the blame on George Bush,
link |
Obama, Trump, and Biden for lack of leadership.
link |
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
link |
Yeah, there is the military industrial complex component,
link |
And there's also, I mean, speaking of government leadership,
link |
it's also, I'd say the imbalance of power within Washington.
link |
I mean, the Pentagon used this moment,
link |
well, beginning in 2001,
link |
I think to assert this authority
link |
at the expense of other institutions
link |
of national government.
link |
I mean, the State Department diplomacy
link |
has become a shadow of what it was once capable of doing.
link |
And of course, I mean, other historians, US historians,
link |
which I'm not formally a historian of the United States,
link |
but we can go back to talk about Vietnam.
link |
We talk about lots of Cold War and post Cold War engagements.
link |
And I think we need a reckoning
link |
about how the United States uses military power,
link |
why we devote so much to our military budget
link |
and what could be available to us
link |
if we had a more sensible view
link |
of the value of military power, of its effectiveness.
link |
And I think we're willing to hammer home
link |
that this was a defeat.
link |
I mean, I think there should be accountability.
link |
And this could be a kind of opening
link |
for a kind of bipartisan conversation,
link |
because if you are a kind of American militarist,
link |
I mean, you have to look at the leadership
link |
that got you to a place where you were defeated
link |
by men wearing sandals firing AK 47s, right?
link |
Yeah, there should be a humility with that.
link |
I mean, we should actually say that,
link |
like literally the...
link |
You should say we lost.
link |
It wasn't just, you know...
link |
The American military lost.
link |
Yeah, and I feel I have very mixed feelings
link |
and it's, I don't know, a ton of veterans,
link |
but Mitch and I have topped my share
link |
and have a student now and they're suffering
link |
because they look at the sacrifices that they made
link |
that I didn't make.
link |
I mean, American society didn't make the sacrifices.
link |
I mean, men and women lost limbs,
link |
they lost eyes, they lost lives.
link |
There's been this, of course, quiet epidemic of suicide
link |
And I've heard some stories
link |
the fact that the State Department
link |
is seeing a similar surge of suicides
link |
because they see their adult life's work collapse.
link |
They've seen their relationships.
link |
I mean, they've seen phone calls in the middle of the night
link |
from people who they entrusted with their lives
link |
who they know are gonna be targeted.
link |
I mean, some of them have already been killed.
link |
They've seen the, I mean, I think just,
link |
I'd imagine just ideologically and professionally
link |
what they believed in and what they sacrificed for
link |
And I think that's bad.
link |
I mean, historically thinking of some of the precedents
link |
you were thinking of, I mean, if you think of,
link |
first of all, at a human level,
link |
I feel horrible for those people who,
link |
I may not have agreed with everything they had done
link |
and their choices in life,
link |
but I respect the fact that many good people
link |
went out of the best intentions as young people
link |
to do the right thing and make things right.
link |
And I respect that.
link |
And I've met enough to know that there were people
link |
who saw the gray and complexity
link |
and that's all you can hope for.
link |
But we don't want a generation of disillusioned veterans
link |
if we look at the other postwar moments.
link |
And this is kind of a postwar moment where,
link |
I think we need a conversation with American veterans
link |
about what they've gone through and what they're feeling.
link |
And they still have skin in the game
link |
because their personal connections
link |
and the end of their histories.
link |
And they're also gonna be future leaders.
link |
People who have served are often great men and women.
link |
And throughout history,
link |
whether you sacrifice you served in fighting World War II,
link |
in fighting Vietnam,
link |
that's going to mold you in different ways.
link |
That's going to mold how you are as a leader
link |
that leads this country forward.
link |
And so you have to have an honest conversation
link |
about what was the role of the war in Afghanistan,
link |
the war in the Middle East,
link |
the war on terror in the history of America.
link |
If we just look at the full context
link |
at the end of this 21st century,
link |
how are we going to remember this
link |
and how that's going to result in our future interactions
link |
with small and large countries,
link |
with China or some proxy war with China,
link |
with Russia or some proxy war with Russia
link |
what's the role of oil and natural resources and opium
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
What's the role of military power in the world.
link |
And now with COVID,
link |
it's almost like because of the many failures
link |
of the US government and many leaders
link |
in science and politics to respond effectively
link |
and quickly to COVID,
link |
we kind of forget that we fumbled this other thing too.
link |
And it's hard to know which is going to be more expensive.
link |
They seem to be symptoms of something
link |
of a same kind of source problem of leadership,
link |
of bureaucracy, of the way information
link |
and intelligence flows throughout the US government.
link |
All those kinds of things.
link |
And that hopefully motivates young leaders to fix things.
link |
Definitely, I mean, if there's one theme
link |
that jumps out to me and thinking about this moment,
link |
I mean, if we recognize that we live
link |
in a kind of crisis of democracy in the United States
link |
and in other countries that have long been proud
link |
of their democratic traditions,
link |
if we see them being under assault from certain quarters,
link |
I think military defeat is yet another addition
link |
to all the aspects of this that you mentioned.
link |
I mean, the fact that military defeat is a giant match
link |
that you're throwing on this fire potentially,
link |
if we think of its legacies
link |
and other postwar environments,
link |
when the veteran angle is one,
link |
when you have people who feel betrayed,
link |
I mean, they have been fodder
link |
for the far right in other settings.
link |
I mean, interwar Europe is very much
link |
about mobilizing dissolution veterans
link |
in the name of right wing fascist politics.
link |
If one thinks too of this moment
link |
of really increasing xenophobia,
link |
our immigration debate is now talking about
link |
whether or not Afghans should be permitted at all
link |
in the United States after 20 years.
link |
And I think immediately the response in Europe,
link |
which I followed to some extent, focusing on Germany,
link |
because it was really ramping up deportations of Afghans
link |
leading up to this collapse.
link |
And now they have been,
link |
a lot of right wing center right politicians in Germany
link |
have been watching all this with an eye to,
link |
using it to their advantage for a domestic German audience
link |
to say, in the context of recent elections,
link |
that we are the party who will defend you
link |
against these Afghans who are gonna be coming from this.
link |
So what I've tried to emphasize
link |
in talking to different groups about this moment
link |
is that it won't be confined to Afghanistan
link |
or even the region.
link |
I mean, obviously malnutrition, hunger
link |
will send Afghans to neighboring states,
link |
but where the European right is resurgent,
link |
this has been a gift, right?
link |
To say that the Afghans are coming,
link |
they're brown skinned, they're Muslim,
link |
they're uneducated, they're gonna want your women.
link |
And they will take the odd sexual assault case
link |
or the odd, whatever, dramatic act of violence
link |
that happens numerically in any population.
link |
And they will magnify that to say that,
link |
our far right group is gonna save the nation.
link |
And sorry, the main point I wanted to speak of leadership
link |
was that I think the serial,
link |
well, there were many, many carnal sins, if you like,
link |
but if you go back to our analogy of all the exits,
link |
I mean, what blocked some of those exits
link |
was an absence of truth and transparency and the lying.
link |
And so, I mean, this is no secret,
link |
anyone who's followed this, but we've allowed,
link |
and you think of the general mistrust of government,
link |
mistrust of authority across the board,
link |
of professors, of economists, of scientists, doctors, right?
link |
Well, I actually think that's the hopeful thing to me
link |
about the internet is the internet hates inauthenticity.
link |
They can smell bullshit much better.
link |
And I think that motivates young leaders
link |
to be transparent and authentic.
link |
So like the very problems we've been seeing,
link |
this kind of attitude of authority where,
link |
oh, the populace, they're too busy with their own lives.
link |
They're not smart enough to understand
link |
the full complexities of the things we're dealing with.
link |
So we're not going to even communicate to them
link |
the full complexities, we're just going to decide
link |
and then tell them what we decided
link |
and conceive some kind of narrative
link |
that makes it easy for them to consume this decision.
link |
As opposed to that, I really believe,
link |
I see there's a hunger for authenticity
link |
of when you're making decisions,
link |
when you're looking at the rest of the world
link |
and trying to untangle this complexity, the internet,
link |
the public, the world wants to see you as a leader struggle
link |
with the tension of these ideas, to change your mind,
link |
to recognize your own flaws
link |
and your own thinking from a month ago, all that,
link |
the full complexity of it,
link |
also acknowledge the uncertainty as with COVID,
link |
also with the wars, I think there's a hunger for that.
link |
And I think that's just going to change the nature
link |
of leadership in the 21st century.
link |
I think all the things you've highlighted,
link |
accountability is part of that, right?
link |
I mean, we need honesty, openness,
link |
and then acknowledgement of mistakes.
link |
Humility is the key to all learning, right?
link |
But also, I mean, you think just the headline
link |
from yesterday, the horrible drone strike,
link |
which was really the last kind of American military action
link |
on the day that the US was, I think,
link |
mostly departing from Kabul,
link |
wiped out an entire family, mostly children.
link |
You know, the US acknowledged that, yes,
link |
this was not the ISIS bombing outfit
link |
that they thought it was.
link |
But yesterday, they did a quick review.
link |
I'm not an expert on drone strikes in the aftermath,
link |
but those who've looked at it more closely said
link |
it was basically whole cloth taken
link |
from what the US government has been saying
link |
after all these strikes, you know,
link |
reproducing the same language
link |
and basically pointing to technical errors,
link |
but denying that there were any procedural mistakes
link |
or flaws, or it was just kind of,
link |
they found little ways of acknowledging
link |
things did not go as planned,
link |
but, you know, we follow the policies essentially,
link |
and yeah, that's it.
link |
It's a way of not even saying, you know, we screwed up.
link |
And it's kind of the legal ease
link |
that suddenly makes a war crime not a war crime, you know?
link |
And that reflects, I think,
link |
our refusal to take accountability.
link |
I think people are really sick of that
link |
in a way where the opposite is true,
link |
which is they get excited for people who are not,
link |
for leaders who are not that,
link |
and so they're not going to punish you
link |
for saying, I made a mistake.
link |
I just had a conversation with Francis Collins,
link |
the director of the NIH,
link |
and part of my criticism towards Anthony Fauci
link |
has been that it's such subtle,
link |
but such crucial communication of mistakes made.
link |
If you make a small mistake,
link |
it is so powerful to communicate,
link |
I think we messed up.
link |
We thought this was true, and it wasn't.
link |
So the obvious thing there was with masks
link |
early in the pandemic.
link |
There's so much uncertainty.
link |
It's so understandable to make mistakes
link |
or to also be concerned about what kind of hysteria,
link |
different statements you make lead to.
link |
Just being transparent about that
link |
and saying we were not correct
link |
and saying the thing we said before.
link |
That's so powerful to communicate, to gain trust.
link |
And the opposite is true.
link |
When you do this legal ease type of talk,
link |
it destroys trust.
link |
And again, I really think the lessons of recent history
link |
teach us how to be a leader
link |
and teach young leaders how to be leaders.
link |
And so I have a lot of hope.
link |
Partially thanks for the internet.
link |
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
link |
I mean, we need humility, accountability, honesty.
link |
And yes, studying the past is an important way to do that.
link |
I mean, to learn from past mistakes.
link |
And obviously there's stories of inspiration and courage
link |
and we can take some kind of assistance from that too.
link |
But also learning from, learning how not to do things.
link |
And then analogies are never like one to one.
link |
I mean, we talk about Vietnam.
link |
I mean, I think many Vietnam veterans would say,
link |
yeah, this is like deja vu.
link |
I mean, the story, the visuals of the Kabul airport
link |
and of the Saigon embassy were not the same,
link |
but close enough that people would juxtapose them.
link |
All of this right now, but I would just ask people
link |
that over analogizing is also a kind of path down
link |
making errors of judgment and comparison,
link |
and then sameness, but it's stretch.
link |
I mean, like 9.11 itself,
link |
I think the idea that people lack the imagination
link |
within our security apparatus
link |
to think this was even possible, right?
link |
And you think of the simplicity of having a $10 lock
link |
on a cockpit door, could have wanted all this.
link |
And again, I'm not saying either the time
link |
or in hindsight that I am omniscient about all this,
link |
but I had just been living in Germany the year before,
link |
and there was a plot there.
link |
This guy was hatching from Germany
link |
to blow up the mausoleum of Attertwerk in Ankara
link |
And so if you kind of dig, it wasn't unimaginable
link |
that you would use an airplane as a weapon.
link |
And the Bush administration kept saying,
link |
no one had ever heard of this.
link |
Who would do this?
link |
Like, well, not a lot of people do this.
link |
And then at that very moment,
link |
my wife was teaching the Joseph Conrad novel Secret Agent,
link |
which was about a conspiratorial organization
link |
that wanted to bomb,
link |
actually in retrospect, it was kind of suicide bombing
link |
because they tricked this guy into doing it,
link |
but they wanted to bomb the Greenwich Observatory
link |
for some obscure political purpose.
link |
So that's an instance in which, you know, the novel,
link |
right, to go back to our kind of humanities pitch, right,
link |
that my point was that, you know,
link |
as you mentioned, we need humanity, transparency,
link |
but also imagination, right?
link |
I think part of expanding our imagination is by, you know,
link |
I mean, obviously delving into your fields, you know,
link |
of engineering and the sciences and robotics
link |
and artificial intelligence and all that rich landscape.
link |
And then, but also we find this in film, poetry, literature,
link |
I mean, just the kind of stretching that we need to do
link |
to really educate ourselves more fully, right,
link |
across the spectrum of everything humans need
link |
to imagine, to reimagine security.
link |
You know, so much of what we talked about today,
link |
I mean, so much of, you know,
link |
our security is affected by others perception
link |
of their insecurity, right?
link |
Which unleashes a whole web of emotions.
link |
Can you tell me about the Afghan people,
link |
what they love, what they fear,
link |
what they dream of for themselves and for their nation?
link |
Is there something to say,
link |
to speak to to the spirit of the people
link |
that may humanize them and maybe speak to the concerns
link |
and the hopes they have?
link |
Yeah, I think I, you know, as an outsider,
link |
I hesitate to make any grand statement,
link |
but I would say, listen, I mean,
link |
there are a number of documentary films
link |
that are incredibly rich
link |
that will offer your listeners and viewers a snapshot.
link |
So there is Afghan Star, you know,
link |
which really brings you in the homes of a set of people
link |
who, you know, they want stardom, they're artists,
link |
they want to express themselves.
link |
Some want to push political boundaries, cultural boundaries.
link |
There's a woman who gets into hot water for dancing.
link |
But yeah, you realize that, I mean, people,
link |
I mean, they love art, they love music,
link |
they love poetry, they love expression.
link |
You know, people want to care for their children.
link |
They want safety of their families.
link |
They want to enjoy what everyone enjoys, you know?
link |
I think it's a very humanizing portrait.
link |
There's another great documentary film
link |
called Love Crimes of Kabul,
link |
which is a great snapshot of the post 2000 world
link |
that the Americans shaped a lot of ways.
link |
And it's about a women's prison.
link |
And it's incredibly revealing
link |
because it's about young girls and what they want.
link |
Well, not just young, but young, teenage,
link |
and then some middle aged people
link |
who are accused of moral crimes,
link |
ranging from homicide, which one woman admits to,
link |
to having sexual relations outside of marriage.
link |
And so it shows in a way continuity
link |
with the previous Taliban regime
link |
and that women are in prison
link |
for things that you wouldn't be in prison for elsewhere,
link |
and that Islamic law operates as the kind of judicial logic
link |
for these punishments.
link |
But letting these women kind of speak for themselves,
link |
I mean, it's fascinating.
link |
I mean, I don't want to get too much away,
link |
but women make very interesting choices in this film
link |
that land them in this predicament.
link |
So they don't all profess innocence.
link |
Some are like, I'm guilty, but they're guilty for reasons.
link |
In one case, one woman is guilty, she's in prison
link |
because it's a way to exert pressure on her fiancee
link |
to finally marry her, you know?
link |
So you get ethnicity, you get like, you know,
link |
kind of Romeo and Juliet things
link |
where their families don't like each other necessarily,
link |
but they find each other.
link |
You have questions of like, love, money, clothing,
link |
furniture, it's beautiful.
link |
And like, I mean, the parts with it,
link |
I remember showing it in class,
link |
there was a wonderful Afghan student who was a,
link |
I think a Fulbright at the ed school at Stanford,
link |
and she's a genius, she's amazing.
link |
It was awkward for her because talking about young women
link |
having sex and stuff, and it was just, it wasn't,
link |
you know, the snapshot of Afghanistan that she wanted.
link |
And obviously there's so much more,
link |
they're great writers and, you know, musicians.
link |
And I mean, you know, music is a huge thing.
link |
I mean, poetry, all those things are great.
link |
So she found it, you know, I hear you.
link |
I mean, it's kind of a taboo subject,
link |
but I thought the American students seeing it
link |
really identified with these women
link |
because they're just so real.
link |
And so, you know, young people trying to find like,
link |
I mean, relationships that are universal
link |
and circumstances that are very difficult.
link |
Love, love is universal.
link |
Yeah, yeah, so it's, I mean,
link |
we do have resources to humanize.
link |
I mean, you know, some of your people will know
link |
Khaled Hosseini, you know, he's an African American,
link |
he's done his stuff, but there are,
link |
there are a number of novelists and short story writers
link |
who do cool things.
link |
I think that another tragic aspect of this moment
link |
is that those people have now pretty much
link |
had to leave the country.
link |
So there's a visual artist I would highlight for you
link |
named Khadem Ali, who's a Hazara based in Australia.
link |
He does extraordinary work in blending a tradition
link |
of Persian miniatures with contemporary political commentary.
link |
His work is between Australia and Afghanistan,
link |
but he also, he had to flee.
link |
I mean, he was doing some work in Kabul,
link |
but it's a extraordinary kind of visual language
link |
that he's adopted that has been shown all over the planet now.
link |
He's got some of his work is in New York galleries,
link |
He's been shown in Australia,
link |
but he talks about migration in a way
link |
that puts Afghans and Hazaras at the center,
link |
but it's totally universal about, you know,
link |
our modern crisis of all the mains people
link |
who were displaced across our planet.
link |
And he attempts to kind of speak for some size of them
link |
in a way that like everyone can get.
link |
I mean, the visual imagery experts will know
link |
that it's from, you know, like the Shah Naam,
link |
like an ancient Persian epic that Iranians were attached to,
link |
that Afghans are attached to, that people can quote,
link |
you know, at length, that has mythical figures
link |
of good and evil that kids grow up embodying.
link |
They're named the names of the characters that are,
link |
it's called, you know, the Book of Kings.
link |
The heroes and villains are the staple
link |
of conversation and poetry and, you know, like Russians,
link |
I mean, the kind of, the resort to literary references
link |
and speak is something that, you know,
link |
Americans don't do, most West European countries don't do,
link |
but the fact that everyone's got to know this character,
link |
everyone knows this reference,
link |
the wordplay, the linguistic finesse in multiple languages
link |
is, you know, a major value of Afghan storytelling.
link |
As an outsider, I'm scratching at the surface of the surface.
link |
Yeah, but there's a depth to it.
link |
It's just like, it is fascinating.
link |
With the layers, yeah.
link |
With the layers of Russian language that's.
link |
The culture, it's a, I've been struggling,
link |
and this is kind of the journey I'm embarking on
link |
to convey to an American audience
link |
what is lost in translation between Russian and English.
link |
And it's very challenging in some of the great translators
link |
of Dostoevsky, of Tolstoy, of Russian literature,
link |
struggle with this deeply.
link |
And they work, it's an art form just to convey that.
link |
And it's amazing to hear that Afghanistan,
link |
with a full mix of cultures that are there,
link |
have the same kind of wit and humor and depth of intellect.
link |
I mean, the humor thing is, that's, you know,
link |
I'm so much of our visual imagery
link |
is about like this sad place in Dower or whatever,
link |
but the, I mean, socially, again,
link |
I'm gonna engage in some stereotypes
link |
about generalization stuff, but just the,
link |
you know, the Afghan friends that I've come to
link |
be close with and really love, I mean, the humor,
link |
there's so much there of common stuff of like,
link |
when I go to Ireland, it's one of my favorite places
link |
and just like the, I feel a sense of pressure,
link |
like the humor all around me at the time.
link |
I mean, I feel like there's something between Ireland
link |
and Russia with the humor stuff where it's like,
link |
you've gotta be on your game if you wanna be, you know,
link |
so it's, yeah, I feel like the intensity of conversation
link |
in terms of, yeah, you have to be on your game
link |
in terms of wit and so on.
link |
I mean, you have to, there's certain people I have,
link |
like when I talk on this podcast,
link |
they're like that, certain people from the Jewish tradition
link |
have that, like where the wit is just like,
link |
okay, I have to, oh yeah, I really have to pay attention.
link |
It's a game, it's like, you know what it feels like?
link |
It feels like speed chess or something like that
link |
and you really have to focus and play
link |
and at the same time, there's body language in the,
link |
and then there's a melancholy nature to it,
link |
at least in the Russian side.
link |
The whole thing is just a beautiful mess.
link |
Yeah, I mean, there's a funny TikTok video
link |
that went around that I got from like some Afghan
link |
acquaintances that was a, that he's an Irish comedian
link |
kind of highlighting, you know,
link |
kind of Irish and German national stereotypes
link |
around hospitality.
link |
And this Afghan woman said, you know,
link |
I didn't know that the Irish were just white Afghans
link |
because the whole, like, you know, the hospitality,
link |
like politics of like, of refusal.
link |
You know, you don't take something
link |
that's offered to you the first time.
link |
You don't, I mean, it's the culture of receiving a guest.
link |
You know, that's, you know, Americans aren't,
link |
I mean, that's not, you know, that's not always,
link |
I mean, the different, the regional cultures
link |
where that's the thing, there's whatever,
link |
but it's, I mean, the kind of like generosity
link |
and the kind of, you know, that's real.
link |
I mean, that's, and that's a cool thing.
link |
And that's amazing.
link |
That's, you know, the food, I mean, going off
link |
just the superficial things, but all of that,
link |
the warmth of hospitality and of wit and humanity.
link |
I mean, that's what we don't see viewing the place
link |
just through war and geopolitics
link |
and the moving pieces of the map and stuff.
link |
And that's hard to see when, you know,
link |
there are gaps in language and in religious tradition
link |
and all that stuff.
link |
And then, you know, being open to the fact
link |
that people do things differently, you know,
link |
and it's, and the gender dimension there is important,
link |
They're kind of, you know, arguably each culture
link |
has a kind of gender dynamic that's different.
link |
And so I think it's helpful to have humility
link |
in thinking that some Afghans
link |
will do some things differently, you know.
link |
But then you'll also have Afghans who say,
link |
every woman should be educated.
link |
Everyone should work and so on and so on.
link |
So there's no, there's no single way of, yeah.
link |
And there is a gender dynamic in Russia too.
link |
We need to be respectful of that.
link |
And that's not always what it looks like at first.
link |
I mean, that's definitely, I don't know, yeah.
link |
Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation
link |
where the power is.
link |
Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet
link |
who was born on the land that is now Afghanistan.
link |
Is there something in his words that speaks to you
link |
about the spirit of the Afghan people?
link |
I mean, everyone owns Rumi, I guess I'd say.
link |
I mean, that's gonna get me in trouble
link |
with certain Afghan fans of Rumi
link |
who wanna see him as an Afghan.
link |
Are they proud of Rumi?
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
link |
Do they see him as an Afghan?
link |
Yeah, I mean, it depends.
link |
I mean, some people will be militant and say,
link |
you know, the Iranian's gonna have him.
link |
But they'll also say, you know, he's,
link |
I mean, you can say, I mean, again,
link |
he's like a Rorschach blot.
link |
I mean, he's a Sufi, he's a Muslim,
link |
he's a Central Asian, he's Iranian, he's Afghan,
link |
I'm trying to think of the analogy,
link |
but he's something special to everyone.
link |
So I guess I would not walk into that conversation
link |
and claim that he's one or another,
link |
but it's a cool thing.
link |
I mean, it's the, but I'm glad you brought that up
link |
because that's a good way of seeing something that Afghans,
link |
I mean, we live in our country in Afghanistan
link |
and say, okay, Rumi's everyone, you know,
link |
Madonna helped make him famous in the United States,
link |
you know, for better, for worse.
link |
They used to sell stuff at Starbucks
link |
and that's all complicated and embarrassing.
link |
And his translations are very much disputed
link |
where you have people be like,
link |
there's some awful Rumi translations.
link |
And there are, there are also a lot of,
link |
speaking of the internet,
link |
there are lots of fake Rumi quotes, you know,
link |
like Rumi said, always be your best.
link |
Like, Rumi didn't say that, you know, that was, you know,
link |
I mean, that's kind of slow stuff like that.
link |
But the cool thing is like, I mean,
link |
I think you can read Rumi as a religious thinker,
link |
but you can also, you know, read Rumi as,
link |
you know, in an Islamic sense,
link |
but you can also read him as a kind of spiritualist, right?
link |
As someone who, or an ethicist or moralist.
link |
And so I think that's, I like the lens of Rumi
link |
as a gateway to Afghan ecumenism and cosmolitanism.
link |
You know, the theme I keep emphasizing of,
link |
of meeting actual Afghans who were actually,
link |
you know, fluent in Russian, fluent in German,
link |
fluent in Turkish, they know Dari, they know Pashto.
link |
They've gone to university or sometimes they haven't.
link |
And yet, I mean, they are,
link |
I like the category of the popular intellectual,
link |
you know, the intellectual who isn't,
link |
isn't formally educated necessarily.
link |
Although of course that's represented too,
link |
especially increasingly now with the generation
link |
of going to university all over the world,
link |
you know, Stanford, MIT, everywhere.
link |
Afghans are well represented there.
link |
But just being, I don't have any kind of worldly knowledge
link |
that is not limited to a province, to a village, to a hamlet.
link |
But sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not.
link |
Because of, again, not because of some fairy tale story
link |
of curiosity wandering the globe out of, you know,
link |
some sense of privilege, but out of necessity,
link |
out of survival of having to adapt.
link |
And it's really extraordinary that, I mean,
link |
also let me think about like professions,
link |
so like, you know, ask an Afghan, you know,
link |
what does he or she do for a living?
link |
And what have they done in the past?
link |
I mean, the answers one gets,
link |
shoe salesman, task cop drivers, surgeons, all in one guy.
link |
I mean, that's not just Afghan,
link |
but that's, you know, that's very common.
link |
But it's also Russia is the same.
link |
I think it's whenever there's complexities
link |
to the economic system and the short term
link |
and the long term history of how the country develops.
link |
And it's basically the people figuring out their way
link |
around a mess of a country politically,
link |
but a beautiful, flourishing culture and humanity.
link |
And that creates super interesting people.
link |
So we can often see, okay, there's Taliban, there's war,
link |
there's economic malfunction,
link |
there's harboring of terrorists, there's opium trade,
link |
all that kind of stuff, but there's humans there
link |
with deep intellectual lies.
link |
And like, I love the movie, Love Crimes.
link |
And the same kind of hopes, fears, and desire to love
link |
the old Romeo and Juliet story.
link |
And I think Rumi to me represents that.
link |
The wit, the intelligence, but also the just eloquent
link |
and just beautiful representation of humanity of love.
link |
Some of the best quotes about love are from him,
link |
half of them fake, half of them real, but.
link |
The best ones are real, right?
link |
The best ones are real, the best ones are real.
link |
Robert, this was an incredible conversation.
link |
Oh, thank you for having us.
link |
Thank you for the tour of Afghanistan
link |
and making me, making us realize that there's much more
link |
to this country than what we may think.
link |
It's a beautiful country and it's full of beautiful people.
link |
You made me think about a lot of new things too,
link |
so it was definitely, definitely great online too,
link |
so thank you so much.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors
link |
in the description.
link |
And now, let me leave you with some words
link |
from Winston Churchill.
link |
"'History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.'"
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.