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Dear listener, it's finally happening. Welcome to season three of Conflicted. My name is Thomas Small, and I am very happy to say that the wonderful and mysterious Eamon Dean is here with me, as always. Hello, Eamon. Hello, Thomas. I'm so happy that we finally do it. It's been a long time, my friend. I mean, we did have that wonderful bonus episode on Afghanistan a few months ago, which we
which you guys really liked, listeners. You loved it. But we haven't had a full season for nearly two years. Indeed. It's overdue. Yes, it is. And what a couple of years they have been as well. My goodness, the whole world has changed. I mean, we reached the end of season two of Conflicted, which was all about the collapse of the New World Order, just in time for the New World Order to...
well and truly collapse all around us. And you'll never guess, I'm actually, Eamon, in your home country of Saudi Arabia. Here I am in my hotel room in Riyadh coming to you direct, dear listener, from the heart of the Middle East. So are you ready to start season three? Oh my God, you have no idea. ♪
Just before we get going, we first wanted to say a huge thank you for your patience in season two. We are so happy that you've stuck with us. And at last, we are back with a brand new run of episodes. More than ever before, in this season of Conflicted, we're coming at you with at least 16 episodes. So get ready to hear our voices a lot in 2022. Season three is also more ambitious. We're focusing on the Middle East, but this time even more deeply, going further back in time and
and exploring history and religion in more complex ways than before. Our hope is to genuinely alter the way you think about the world. And today, in our first episode, we're picking up where we left off in Afghanistan.
In our bonus episode, we focused on the story of the Taliban's rise to power in the 90s and took you, the listener, behind the scenes with Ayman's dramatic story of facing an oncoming caravan of Taliban warriors and being unable to fire upon them. We thought it was important to go on a historical deep dive because at the time, the news reports were all focused on the present.
But that's what Conflicted does best. On the picture of the present, we paint in the background to help you understand the present better. So, to take up where we left off, and also once again back to where we began all those episodes ago in season one, we start with 9/11.
Ayman, by that point you've been working for MI5 and MI6 as a double agent inside al-Qaeda for what, like 33 months? Almost, yes. Obviously your brief must have included Afghanistan. Well, actually most of my time was spent in Afghanistan over the 33 months prior to 9/11. So the Twin Towers come crumbling down, the world is in shock,
And on September 12, what did you think was in store for Afghanistan? There was no question that there would be massive retaliation. America was wounded deeply. And that sense of the two oceans and the nuclear deterrence that protected America for a very long time was shattered.
So what were you doing then on that September 12th and on the days following? What was your job inside the intelligence services? Well, I ended up basically looking at maps of Afghanistan and pinpointing locations of camps, supply routes, weapons storage facilities. So my role was to familiarize the intelligence services and, you know, of course, the UK's MOD, the Ministry of Defense,
with the military apparatus of Al-Qaeda. And what did you consider the American-led invasion's prospects to be at that time? Were you bullish? Were you bearish? What did you think? Did you think that it would be a cakewalk? Or did you think America would get bogged down as it did?
I thought that the Taliban will be able to withstand the American onslaught for roughly six months because it's not a Vietnam. I knew that the advanced technology and the experience of the Americans in Iraq
in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein to liberate Kuwait, made sure that the Americans basically will not be bogged down in the sense that they would be able to smash the Taliban's fighting ability as a coherent force. You thought the Taliban would hold out for six months.
But in the end, they barely survived six weeks. Why is that? In many Taliban units who were tribal in their nature, they decided basically just pack and leave. I'm not going to withstand the B-52s dropping, you know, hundreds of tons of explosive over my head. I can't fight that. So I'm going to go back to my family because don't forget that
The Taliban's were not wearing distinct uniforms. They all wore civilian clothing. So they melted into the background which collapsed the Taliban's ability to run a military campaign to resist the Americans. And what kind of firepower did America bring to the table?
At the beginning, they had the difficulty because Pakistan did not really open all the military air bases. And so they were using the American aircraft carriers, F-18s, and even they converted F-14s to carry smart guided bombs. But then, of course, it is the long range firepower of both
the B-52 and the B-2. These are long-range bombers. They can fly all the way from Arizona to Afghanistan over 18 hours, drop their bombs, and then come back again. So, you know, that continuous barrage of massive ordnance falling over Taliban positions, which actually had more psychological effect, you know, than just the actual damage.
So at that time, I mean, here we have this lightning strike invasion. The Taliban fold quite quickly and the coalition has has clamped the country fast. But did you feel then that that America was pursuing some kind of overall strategic goal or was it just revenge? Was it just in response to 9-11? You hit us, we hit you. Or was was there already a glimmer of a kind of of long term goal here?
From the beginning, you know, the thinking in D.C. and in 10 Downing Street was the Taliban must go and therefore who will replace them? So from the beginning, the question of nation building was on the table. And how did this idea of nation building strike you? For me at that time, because I was maybe swept in the moment, I believe that maybe it could work.
Because at the time I still was believing that Tony Blair was a force for good. Okay, so at the beginning you thought well, maybe Tony Blair can save the situation But when did when did you realize that that was unlikely to happen? I think three weeks into the war when you start to see over reliance over in on warlords who were involved, you know in gang activities and drugs, so
So the over-reliance on these, yes, they were opposing forces to the Taliban, but they were criminal classes. I mean, they were, you know, people who the Taliban put away for a good reason. They were terrorizing the civilian population before. And so this Machiavellian execution of the war started to, you know, give me doubts that
I don't think basically they are serious about nation building. Were there other actors on the ground in Afghanistan that the U.S. could have allied with? I mean, maybe they were stuck with these warlords. Who else might they have allied with? They could have...
more or less picked up their allies in a better way and allied themselves more with the tribal leadership and relied on a more tribal consensus building effort rather than trying to rely on warlords and people who were involved in the drug trade prior to the rise of Taliban. However, more or less, the biggest doubt that came to my mind that
There is going to be a difficulty in this nation building was the rejection of the return of the monarchy to Afghanistan Yes that in December of 2001 at that during the negotiations in bond between Afghan power players not including the Taliban the Afghan party Wanted to bring back the king but the Americans vetoed that
And you think that that was a sign that the American nation-building project was sort of more ideologically slanted than it should have been Yes, and there is actually another You know mistake which I highlighted at the time, you know that the Taliban are do you bendy's and they listen? You know a lot to the do you bendy scholars in
Pakistan and India. So long-term listeners will remember that the Deobandi movement, which comes from northern India during the Raj, during the British rule there, is one of the biggest reformist, revivalist political Islamic movements in the world. And because it grew up in the context of throwing out the British, it has a particularly strong anti-Western, anti-imperialist edge to it. And the Taliban are part of that stream of modern Islamist thought.
Exactly. I suggested at that time that there are many moderate pacifist Deobandi scholars, Afghan and Pakistani and Indian, who could have been actually courted initially, even if it was just outside of the bomb process, in order to...
in a facility the not only the we don't call it the surrender but the Rehabilitation of the Taliban back into the political fold so they can be you know placated and at the same time not be pushed towards mounting a resistance movement in the future and
And the third issue, which we already talked about it before in the last episode, which is the rejection of the, you know, aspects of Sharia to be incorporated into the new Afghan constitution. All of this gave me doubt that it's not going to work.
So as you say, too many warlords had been invited into the process, warlords whom the Afghans had effectively rejected earlier. And this is because the Americans, you know, they'd assumed if you were against the Taliban, you were good. Forgetting that the Taliban had, of course, arisen by fighting assholes, let's be honest.
But that's what America went in there thinking, the enemy of my enemy must be a good guy, which is a pretty naive view. So what opportunities in those early months were lost? I mean, you once told me that you had an idea. This sounds crazy, but you had an idea that America should have actually consciously put together a massive Islamic, a Muslim invading force to conquer the country. Well, or at least a peacekeeping force.
Which countries might have contributed to this force? I would say Saudi Arabia. I would say the UAE. The UAE already contributed before. Indonesia, Malaysia. I mean countries with men, with manpower. Big armies.
Turkey, Iran, Egypt. I mean, there is no shortage of big armies in the Muslim world. I mean, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, as well as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, all of these countries, basically among them, they have millions of men in terms of manpower. They could have spared 100,000 troops easy in order to facilitate that kind of
revivalist Afghan political tradition of the lawyer jirga, of this kind of rule by consensus. It could have happened, but no one reached out to them because somehow the Taliban basically were viewed as the absolute villains. Everyone forgets that Afghan society and Afghan history is full of villains. It's just basically some of them are better than others.
The plan that you're suggesting isn't so different from the plan that informed the invasion of Kuwait in 1991 to expel Saddam Hussein. And in that case, America, working closely with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, brought together an enormous coalition of Islamic countries to help legitimize
that invasion. So they could have done the same thing, although that took months to cobble together. That took six, seven months for that invasion force to be formed. I suppose America...
just didn't feel they had the time for that kind of diplomacy? I think it's just the inability to see further than a four-year election cycle. It's the question of, okay, we want to show the American public that we took revenge. And, you know, you could have taken revenge straight away. Like, I mean, just bomb the hell out of them.
But the question here is what will replace the Taliban afterwards to make sure that the Taliban do not return? Because guess what 20 years later the Taliban returned. Okay, so before we get to the now we can do a quick summary of what happened after the invasion so between 2001 and 2008 the peace process Did did sort of move ahead the bond agreement was signed a
Elections were held, Hamid Karzai became president, and it was fairly calm at first. Then, as you told us in the last episode, the US got distracted by Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist leader there, Zarqawi, arose, began sending money to the Taliban where they were held out in the AfPak border. And then they started launching terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan again, creating the instability that became endemic there.
George W. Bush goes, Barack Obama arrives. Now he promises to sort out Afghanistan. When he arrived, did you feel more encouraged, Damon? No. On multiple levels. I just did not trust him. I did not feel that he was going to make any significant changes. I say this, why? Because he had a much bigger fish to fry, which is the financial crisis.
I mean, America and the American economic system was in dire situation. So for him, the focus was actually how to get America out of the mess they are in financially before he can actually get America out of the military mess in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
That is certainly true, Eamon. That's certainly true. But he did increase troop numbers in Afghanistan. He did try to solve the problem there. So let's speak about those efforts, I mean, in a concrete way. What were the U.S. tactical errors at that time? It's like this, you know...
It's like a gambler going into a casino and saying, OK, well, how do I recover my losses? Put more money in so I might like to recover the old losses. It is that habitual gambler, you know, situation which is hopeless. Well, that makes sense to me, Eamon. More troops, more, more, you know, more fists punching the Taliban in the face.
Yeah, but again, we come back to comparing oranges and apples here. We come back to comparing Iraq and Afghanistan. You can't compare Iraq, which is an open desert, to Afghanistan, which is a mountain society. Iraq, which has decades of central government with Afghanistan, which has decades of rural population. You can't compare the two at all. And therefore,
You know, the idea that the troop surge will actually serve as a catalyst for the Taliban to capitulate, it was the opposite. They increased their ranks, they increased their number. More recruits joined them because, you know, it's like introducing more virus into a body that will create more antibodies. Obama would have actually done better if he spent the money on the infrastructure of the country than actually sending more troops.
Another problem, I suppose, that when you send more troops to Afghanistan, more American troops, all you're doing possibly, and I'd love to hear what you think about this, is bloating a corpse really that was already riddled with corruption. I mean the U.S. corruption in Afghanistan is pretty infamous.
Oh my God, don't get me started. No, no, I want to get you started. Come on, let us have it, Ayman. Talk to us about the corruption in the US forces in Afghanistan and how it contributed to the long-term failure there. You know, in the last episode, we talked about the rotten corpse of the Afghan nation state and how the army and the military and the Ministry of Interior, they were all corrupt. They were actually more or less a reflection of how corrupt the US military was. The US military there in Afghanistan relied a lot on contractors.
You know, some contractors who were based in the US, some contractors who are ex-Marines and ex-Green Berets and ex-whatever, you know, special forces. So by contractors, you don't mean people who are building bridges. You mean contractors, people who come with weapons of their own. These are contract killers, mercenaries, warriors. Mercenaries, you know, people who come basically, you know,
raise private militias from the locals. But they are Americans. They are American contractors who have contracts with the Department of Defense, with the DOD, with the Pentagon, or with the State Department, or with the CIA. And these contractors then, who are based either in places like Hong Kong or Singapore, or in the Middle East, in Dubai or other places. But what they do is that they...
end up being the logistical arm of the Pentagon. They are not just only logistical, but also they do some of the operations in which will go under radar. I'm not saying black ops, but we are talking here about raising private militias, establishing private security firms to, you know,
employ Afghans, former warlords who are rejected by the Afghan National Army from joining their ranks. So they become the private thugs of the U.S. military. And you end up with a situation where these contracts are worth so much in terms of
protecting convoys, protecting the transport of weapons, the transport of fuel, the transport of food. After all, American troops used to enjoy McDonald's on subway and other fast food chains and their bases. - Delicacies, I think we call them delicacies in America, Eamon. - Exactly, but these delicacies need to be transported somehow. And you know, America is not going to spend the life of American Marines and GIs protecting the shipments of Big Macs.
I was just gonna ask you why in God's name would with the Pentagon be relying on American You know contract killers and mercenaries when they have a huge army of their own and you're saying it's because it's because of the political Optics of the situation they would rather mercenaries be killed then than their own boys if you like exactly because these mercenaries are not just only Americans in a meet these mercenaries are South Africans Colombians Venezuelan army, you know ex-soldiers and
you know, people from Nepal, you know, from the Gurkhas. I mean, we're talking about multi-national forces, as well as from local Afghans and local Pakistanis, I mean, basically who joined these private security firms set up by these American contractors. And
And they are given the job and the task of protecting logistical supplies. The Pentagon did not want to spend American blood protecting these shipments. So who will do with these people? But where does the corruption come in, Eamon? Where does the actual corruption come in? I can understand the Pentagon is paying people to do some jobs. But how is that corruption? The corruption comes in the form of obscene amounts, you know, of overpayments for these projects.
You will have the American contractor coming with South African, Venezuelan, and Colombian mercenaries saying, well, I have a 2,000
manpower, I'm happy basically to supply you with whatever you need in terms of manpower and to protect these shipments and to protect the logistical support lines. But the problem is that he's only employing 1,200 and he is pocketing the salaries of the 800 that he is quoting the DoD for. This is precisely the sort of corruption you outlined for us in the previous episode about how the Afghan military was working
Exactly. But the difference here is that the American generals, and I'm not naming anyone. Oh, no. Come on, Eamon. Give us the names. Who are these guys? Who are them? Come on. We want to throw the book at them. It's our policy. It's just the trouble with corruption, Eamon. People who know about it, they don't speak openly about it. I have kids.
Oh, that's true. But, you know, you will see that there will be a certain contractor who I know and a certain general who I know. The general will turn a blind eye to how much the contractor is overcharging for the services and the obscene amounts of money asked for these services and for these contracts.
And then, you know, four or five, six years later, when that general's time is over in the military, you will find him serving on the board of directors as an executive director in that company. And he is paid, you know, six, seven figures sums of money, you know, in terms of, you know, remuneration and bonuses and salaries and stock options.
Yes, that's how the entire gravy train that that is the classic example of corruption But you know Obama President Obama must have known about this many people must have known about this Why didn't he do anything about well, you know when you are? In a fighting a war we don't rock the boat. I mean you already fighting a war and you know, basically that the
This money is going here and there, and it is important that this money keeps flowing because it is feeding the black ops, it is feeding the irregular rendition sites, it is feeding the
operations that you need to be done in order to win the war against the Taliban in a dirty way, which your military is restrained from doing. That is exactly the issue. Bribing certain officials, bribing tribal leaders, paying ransom money to certain local commanders from the Afghan society in order to facilitate the American military.
intelligence gathering and you know, so on so so, you know That's why in any war you will find that dirty money is part of it But in Afghanistan the dirty money almost almost matched to the legitimate money. So in 2014 2015 2016 a new player arrives on the field of the Middle East Isis and
Before long, they're also in Afghanistan. Why were they in Afghanistan? What did they seek to achieve there? Well, Afghanistan had three important elements for them. First, it's an ungovernable space. Second, it's full of American forces. And third, it has, you know, Shia minorities.
So for ISIS, their two favorite targets, Americans and Shia, they were available there in Afghanistan. And also it is a failed state ready to be infected with the virus of ISIS. And when we talk about ISIS in Afghanistan, are we talking about the whole country? Are they everywhere? And I mean, I would have thought ISIS and the Taliban would get along. You know, why are ISIS there?
fighting the Taliban and ISIS. I mean, it seems crazy. Aren't ISIS and Taliban equally bad guys? You know, aren't they both terrorists? - Oh, no. I mean, I wouldn't degrade the two, and actually the two wouldn't get along whatsoever.
ISIS is an extreme, like absolute extreme version of Salafist jihadism. The Kharijites were a very, very early Islamic movement that were so zealous in pursuit of what they considered to be Islamic purity that they took it upon themselves to excommunicate fellow Muslims and to tell, basically to say, you are an apostate, therefore you can be killed, your property can be looted, your women can be raped. And
And this was very early on within the first century of Islam, this tendency within Islam manifested itself and the broader community rejected it. ISIS is another manifestation of this possibility within the bosom of Islam. And by Salafists, we mentioned earlier how the Taliban are attached to the Deobandi movement. Salafism is a different movement. It comes from the Arab community.
part of the Middle East. It is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, with characters like Sayyid Qutb. It comes with a fusion with Saudi-inflected Wahhabism. It's the sort of Islam that underpins al-Qaeda and other such movements. Exactly. While al-Qaeda was tolerant towards the Ubandism and the Ubandis were tolerant towards al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda did not represent a rejectionist
jihadi Salafism towards other Sunni trends. ISIS, however, was completely, you know, they rejected Al-Qaeda themselves, actually, and they believed Al-Qaeda were kuffar, you know, they were, you know, infidels, they were apostates. You're an extreme Muslim when you think that Al-Qaeda isn't extreme enough.
Exactly. But they were not all over Afghanistan. I mean, they found their, you know, natural habitat in the province of Kunar. So Kunar, this is in the east of Afghanistan, where the majority of the population there are Salafists, not Deobandis. Is that why ISIS are there? Yeah. And they call themselves Ahl al-Hadith, you know.
It's another name for Salafists there. It's just, you know, we don't need to be bugged with the terminology. But nonetheless, they found in the Salafist tradition there some sort of an incubator. So a minority, of course, of, you know, the Qunari Ahl al-Hadith Salafists joined ISIS, but they were just big enough, between 500 to 1,000 people,
They were big enough to actually cause significant headache for the American forces, for the Afghan government. And did ISIS have any sort of big game plan in Afghanistan? I mean, you know, they're obviously they're crazy killers. But in Syria and Iraq, they had this basic goal of establishing a state, which they accomplished.
But in Afghanistan, is that what they were trying to do? Or were they really just troublemakers there, trying to make things difficult for their enemies? I believe they were just a disruptive force. I mean, their ultimate aim is just the disruption and to present themselves, hopefully, as the alternative to the Taliban, to those Taliban units who believed that the Taliban were not, you know,
vigorous enough in their pursuit of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. And they succeeded in attracting a few hundred disaffected Taliban fighters, but that's it. I think the project of ISIS in Afghanistan failed on the same way that the project of ISIS failed in Yemen.
because there was already a traditional jihadist groups there existing on the ground and trying to out-compete them and trying to supplant them, it takes considerable amount of persuasion resources and that's something that ISIS in Afghanistan did not have. So instead of being the alternative, they became the disruptor. I see.
The Obama years are coming to a close now. We have this situation where ISIS is on the rampage in Afghanistan. The Taliban are well and truly back causing problems. Corruption heretofore unimagined is endemic both within the Afghan and the American security apparatus. And then we come to Donald Trump.
So Donald Trump had risen to power by attaching himself to really the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, the old right of the Republican Party who were not interested in policing the world. They rejected the neoconservative movement. He had no interest in nation building and was determined to get out of Afghanistan. So as Donald Trump enters the scene, Eamon, were you encouraged?
Well, there is always a tendency to believe that, you know, when a right-wing leader comes in, that troubles come with him. It's not always the case. And in the case of Donald Trump, I was encouraged when I saw that he was happy to talk to King Jong-un, you know, the president of North Korea, or the leader. And it became clear that he is willing to talk, but
on his own terms. And he, and in later years, his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo,
sounded both like two New York, you know, mafia dons. I mean, basically trying to make a deal. I will make an offer you can't refuse, kind of. Well, you told me once, and I found it quite telling that, you know, Donald Trump is an expert at recognizing lost causes because, you know, he's failed so many times in his life. He's lost so much money. He's been bankrupt so many times. So many of his businesses have failed. So coming to power, he looked at Afghanistan and
and thought, well, this is a lost cause. We got to get out of here. - Say whatever you want to say about Donald Trump, and there are, you know, we could be spending hours talking about his faults,
He recognized in Afghanistan not only a lost cause, but he recognized what Afghanistan really was, a money-making scheme for corrupt Afghan officials and American officials and American military generals and military contractors. Therefore, he decided, you know what, let's talk to the Taliban. Let's continue those tentative first steps that Obama took in order to talk to the Taliban in Doha, in Qatar, and let the Qataris be the mediators.
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To move away from the American perspective and start walking in the Afghan shoes for the moment, I mean, it's obvious now that Afghans themselves agreed with you at the time and they knew that their hold on power was shaky and that they needed to negotiate with the Taliban. I mean, Haramud Karzai, then the president, he wanted negotiations to start in 2007.
but the Bush administration refused. So Karzai knew as early as 2007 when the Taliban were then well and truly coming back, we must negotiate with these players. But Bush said no.
there were negotiations with other resistance militias, including your old friend Hekmatyar's group, Hezbollah Islami. And they did sign a peace treaty with the Afghan government in 2016. So on the ground in Afghanistan, the Afghan government, to the extent that it was sovereign, was trying to cobble together some sort of peaceful arrangement with these other actors.
Now, in February 2018, Donald Trump is president and Karzai's successor as president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, publicly called for peace talks with the Taliban.
Now, presumably, he would have discussed this move with the Americans and Trump said, OK, go for it. And then a new, a resurgent peace movement began again in Afghanistan. And the people, they were worn out. They wanted an end to all the fighting. And then there was a big conference in Tashkent in Uzbekistan, where 20 countries, including the U.S., lent their support to President Ghani's call for peace talks.
So how is it that a few months later in July 2018, the Taliban end up talking peace with the Americans in Doha, in Qatar? Trump had asked the generals, look, how do we end this shit show there in Doha? Why Doha? First of all, the Taliban from the beginning did not trust the government of Ashraf Ghani. So at the end of the day, you know, I want to talk with the paymasters. I mean, the Taliban knew exactly that
Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Fahim, Ismail Khan, all of the leaders, Abdullah Abdullah, all of the leaders of the Afghan government and their factions, ethnic or otherwise, depend on American patronage. So why am I going to waste my time talking to them? Because they will be going back to their paymasters
the Americans, they will be asking their opinion. They will come back again. And I don't trust if they are going to tell the Americans what we want to tell the Americans. And I can't trust that they will tell us what the Americans really wanted to tell us.
So, the Taliban insisted that it should be direct talks between the Taliban and the Americans and that they wanted to be in Doha because it will be a safe, secure location. And the Qataris were more than happy to provide that safety, security and guarantees for the Taliban that no one will be arrested, no one will be harassed from your side. And of course, the Americans were happy to see basically that since they will be transported
from Pakistan by military planes, Qatari military planes to that military base in Doha and then from there they can have the talks. The Taliban insisted, direct talks, because we don't trust the government of Ashraf Ghani. I think the Taliban and Trump, I would say, realized that the mediator here shouldn't be the Ashraf Ghani government and the other factions because they have a lot to lose financially if there is peace.
And why not the Pakistanis though? I mean, weren't they in a good position to be this mediator? The American intelligence in particular, the CIA, did not trust the Pakistanis. Also, at the same time, Pakistan...
was still teeming with terror organizations from Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-Tayyiba, that American officials wouldn't feel safe landing in Pakistan just to conduct talks with the Taliban. Therefore, Doha was the most secure location for the American mediators and the Taliban felt that the Qataris will keep their words that no one will be harassed.
So there we are in Doha. The Taliban are on one side of the negotiation table. The Americans are on the other side. What were these negotiations over? I mean, the Taliban presumably really wanted one thing for the Americans to leave. So why didn't Trump then just leave? Well, first of all, the manner of leaving need to be done in a way in which basically it doesn't embarrass his government and to say basically that, you know, he left Afghanistan to be devoured by the Taliban.
During that time he basically wanted to empower as much as possible the Afghan National Army He started the process of arming them with attack helicopters and attack propeller planes Which are light attack aircrafts that will enable the Afghan National Army to have in air superiority over the Taliban before leaving Afghanistan Trump wanted to make sure the Afghan army was strong enough to resist the Taliban for at least a
some time so that it wouldn't look like America had cut and run, left their allies high and dry, and the Taliban just took over the country in a lightning strike, which is, of course, what happened. Some people will always say that would the Taliban have taken over Afghanistan so quickly like this if it was Trump who's in power rather than Biden? And there is an interesting answer here.
You see, during the negotiations between the Taliban and Trump administration in Doha, ISIS in Kunar were presenting significant challenge in terms of security for the American forces. So what Trump did
He authorized the use of the largest non-nuclear conventional bomb in the American military's arsenal, which is called the MOAB. The MOAB stands for the mother of all bombs. The mother of all bombs. He dropped the mother of all bombs on ISIS in Afghanistan. Exactly. 20,000 pounds, 10 tons of
of high-yield explosives that were dropped on a cave network in the mountains of Kunar. It killed more than 106 ISIS members, including their leaders. But many people did not understand that the significance of that bombing is that it was a message to the Taliban. While we are negotiating with you, you know what? We could actually use a firepower that could obliterate your hideouts.
you know, so deal with us now in a proper manner or we will do that. And so,
Trump did not shy away from using massive bombs and massive orders in order to persuade the Taliban by attacking Isis that we could do this to you and did the message land did the Taliban learn a message since that bomb fell on Isis the Taliban did not kill one single American soldier after that so Trump had insisted any attack would be met with the swiftest retaliation and he had proved that he was willing to do that by dropping this mother of all bombs and
But it is also true that following the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement, which was signed in February 2020, so that's about a year before Trump left office, and which interestingly did not involve the Afghan government at all, the Taliban did begin a wave of attacks against Afghan government forces. So they weren't attacking the Americans, but they were attacking the Afghans.
From one point of view, it looks like the U.S. had sold its allies in Kabul down the river. But some would say that it was the Kabul government actually that betrayed the Americans because for years they misrepresented how many actual troops they have on the ground. They said we have recruited 300,000 strong Afghan army and security forces when in fact they only have 80,000. 220,000 were fictitious numbers in order to collect their salaries from the Americans.
This is that corruption on the Afghan side. Exactly. They lied and lied and lied to the Americans about, you know, intelligence gathering. They lied to the Americans about their capability, their ability. They were unreliable allies. And so as far as the Americans were concerned, why should we be honorable to the
dishonorable allies. So as far as Trump was concerned, I want to get out. This is American taxpayer money, and it has enriched the pockets of so many corrupt Afghan officials, as well as American officials, and he knows that.
So he decided, you know what, as the Taliban demanded, let them slog it off with the Afghan National Army. And actually for Trump and Trump's administration,
Those months after February 2020, they were a good testing ground of the capability of the Afghan National Army. They saw for themselves because the Afghan National Army was absolutely unreliable in the sense they were telling the Americans every time basically they got beaten, oh, we have killed 400 Taliban this day. And then the next day we have killed 258 Taliban today. Actually, some people were keeping tabs
that the Afghan National Army in a year killed 45,000 Taliban. But yet at the same time they were saying, oh, we estimate the number of Taliban around the country to be about 15 to 25,000. That's it. How could you kill 45,000 out of 25? I mean, I don't know what creative math you come with. With such creative math, they could become bankers.
So the U.S. and the Taliban, they agree peace in February 2020. Over the intervening year, negotiations were supposed to take place between the Taliban and the Afghan government. They sort of did and then they sort of didn't. There were prisoner swaps at times, a lot of fighting. It really was a mess.
Which brings us to Joe Biden. Now, like Donald Trump, actually, Joe Biden isn't a fan of state building. He never believed in the Afghan state building process. And as a Democrat at the beginning of the war on terror, he had opposed Bush's war. And he largely stayed that way throughout. He was always opposed to the neoconservative project.
So Trump and Biden are quite similar in that way. How are they different when it comes to Afghanistan? Well, actually, they were exactly similar. I mean, both of them did not believe in nation building. Both of them did not believe that the American taxpayer money should line up the pocket of corrupt people. And I think both of them believe in some sort of military might should be used as last resort. The only difference is
that Trump was a bully and he could easily prove his willingness to use overwhelming power. He's willing to pull the trigger.
Joe Biden is just little grandpa, man. I mean, he's such a good guy. I mean, you know, harmless. And that is why the Taliban were thinking he will never drop, you know, a bullet on us, let alone, you know, drop the mother of all bombs. He is no Trump. You know what? Let's roll the government back like a carpet, you know. And they took over Afghanistan in nine days in a lightning speed campaign because they knew that Biden was
will not use any overwhelming force to stop them. Trump, in my analysis,
in order to appear strong in front of the American people, he would have dropped several of these mother of all bombs on the Taliban advancing forces to tell them, stop where you are until I evacuate everyone I want. You are going nowhere near the Capitol. And they would have respected that. The Taliban would have respected that show of force. Biden was just, you know, we have a saying in Arabic that he's the kind of a guy that he would not only let the cat has his dinner, but he will offer more.
In addition to being less of a bully than Donald Trump, Biden also made quite a serious tactical error. So as soon as he came to power, his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, immediately said that they were going to review the peace deal that Trump had signed with the Taliban, and they were going to give their opinion on that deal by May 2021, which is actually precisely the month that Trump said the troops were going to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
And in the end, Biden announced that he was going to withdraw the troops on the 11th of September 2021, 20 years after 9-11, a sort of symbolic day to withdraw the troops for sure. But you believe, Eamon, that this was a major mistake. Why? It was a big mistake because Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, he knew what he was doing when he decided that we should withdraw around May.
Why? Because for those people who don't understand the dynamics of the Taliban jihad in Afghanistan, the Mujahideen of the Taliban are seasonal. So they join during the summer and then they go home during the winter. So they winter in their homes in massive numbers. And then during the summer, they come back to swell the ranks of the Taliban. So the Taliban are always at only 25 percent military readiness during the winter.
So, you know, the snow in the mountain passes start to melt around, you know, March, April. So only around May that the mobilization starts. So they are not exactly fully. By May, they will be around 40 to 50 percent of their military readiness. So if you withdraw in May, you know, the Taliban won't have enough numbers to overwhelm the Afghan National Army, at least for another month or two.
So when the Biden administration said, oh, we're going to delay until September, it was music to the ears of the Taliban. Oh, thank you. I think we can probably defend the Biden administration at least a little bit, given how unstructured the transition was from Trump to Biden. Oh, yeah. I mean, Trump Trump was a very irresponsible president at the end.
And a lot of his apparatchiks in the administration were tremendously irresponsible. And in addition, I imagine within the Pentagon, there must have been a lot of higher ups who were unhappy with the idea of this very lucrative war coming to an end. Presumably, they were doing what they could to postpone things, hoping that maybe Biden would change tack and keep the war going. Not only that, but also the contracts for the evacuation of sensitive materials, equipments,
military gear because not everything can be left behind. Some of it need to be to leave. Otherwise, it's so advanced it will fall into the hands of the Chinese. So basically, the contracts for evacuating all of this were just the final sherry on top of the corruption cake. Oh, my goodness gracious. So they wanted to prolong it as much as possible because there were so much fine
final money to be made. - Now, we all remember the scenes of the American withdrawal itself, the chaotic scenes. We also remember hearing about the Taliban getting their hands on a tremendous amount of American weaponry. Why did the Americans leave so much weaponry behind if, as you say,
they had paid these men to get rid of it in advance. I mean, what was going on there? Why didn't they sabotage at least these assets so that they couldn't be used? Why didn't they destroy them? Well, first of all, the majority of the weapons that you've seen captured were actually the weapons of the Afghan National Army. Which the Americans had supplied them. Exactly, yeah. So the reality here is
What you saw there was actually battalions and brigades worth of weapons. So the commander of the unit will walk to the Taliban and he will say to them, you know what, we have tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons inside our base. We don't want to sabotage it. You know, pay us 50,000, 100,000 US dollars and it's all yours.
And so the Taliban will pay them and they will give them amnesty and the Taliban will walk in and just pick up everything. That is what happened. And the reality here is that the Afghan National Army had far more weapons than they needed because they lied to the Americans about their true numbers. They said, we have 300,000 weapons.
troops, part of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan security forces, when in fact the maximum number was 80,000. Were these weapons in the Afghan army, I mean, were they very advanced weapons? Is America scared now that China's going to get their hands on them?
Most of the advanced weaponry that the Americans didn't want the Chinese to have already evacuated. So basically what's happening is that the contracts to evacuate the most sensitive technologies were done, were carried out. So no sensitive technology fell into the hands of the Taliban. But what you have is already weapons that are quite advanced for evacuating.
Even for Iran, I mean, you know, recently there were clashes between the Taliban and the Iranian forces on the border, you know, in which the Taliban, you know, basically like, you know, overrun the Iranian forces because they had better weaponry. So, you know, and of course, basically the Iranians, you know, quickly throw in the towel and said, hey, like, you know, calm down, you know, guys, easy tiger, like, let's talk.
So the reality is that, you know, there were tens of billions of dollars worth of weaponry that the Americans supplied to the Afghan army that fell. So you say the Taliban have got their hands on some advanced American weaponry, but how might the Chinese get their hands on it then? Are they going to sell it to the Chinese? Oh, yeah. I mean, there is a tradition, you know, the
Many times during the war, when an Apache helicopter fell during combat, the Taliban came, dismantled it, and started selling the parts to the Chinese. When any American drone would fall into Taliban territory during the Afghan war, they would basically sell the parts to the Chinese. And that's how the Chinese started their Wing Loong operation.
drone program, reverse engineering the American technology. So, you know, I mean, one of the ironies of the Afghan conflict is that America was there to save its national security. But at the same time, you know, their weaponry was finding its way through the Taliban to the Chinese market in order to reverse engineer it and for the Chinese to become a bigger threat to the American national security. Oh, my goodness.
How many times during Conflicted have we pointed out how American policy has inadvertently benefited the Chinese? It's quite remarkable. Poor Afghanistan. But what about the future, Eamon? You've described the situation in Afghanistan at present as a game of poker.
Afghanistan is the chips lying there waiting to be taken and the dealer is weirdly the Taliban But who are the players around the table? I mean, obviously we've there's China. Well since the last episode, you know things are becoming more clearer I mean there are now several players who want to get involved in Afghanistan and the first in a two major players here are China and Pakistan in unison and
because they want to become the infrastructure builders, the route for the rebuilding, the commercial route for Afghanistan, the port for Afghanistan, the access to the sea. And then you have the Emiratis and the Turks. They are fighting with each other over who will run the airports in Afghanistan. The Emiratis are offering to run the airports in Kabul, Deir el-Abad, and
and the heart for passenger and freight services. And of course, the Emiratis, you know, want to have these contracts. The Turks want to have exactly these contracts, too. And none of these players, not China, not Pakistan, not the Emirates and not the Turks. None of them are against dealing with the Taliban. They don't care. They're happy to deal with the Taliban. They're behaving in a way that you think America should have been behaving all along, treating the Taliban like criminals.
partners we can negotiate with, not imposing upon them some sort of bogeyman status? Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, the rehabilitation of the Taliban, if anything is possible like this, could take years and years and years. And that can only basically happen with
a tremendous amount of patience, diplomacy, trade, and commerce to isolate Afghanistan because the Taliban is going to actually cause Al-Qaeda and other unsavory groups to reemerge there again. Do we really need to go back and repeat this cyclical history again? No.
Only the only way to strengthen the wing within the Taliban that wants to engage with the rest of the world is through Talks and commerce in particular let commerce flow into Afghanistan So those are the countries that you feel look upon a Taliban run Afghanistan as an opportunity But what about the countries in the neighborhood that are worried about?
I mean Iran must be at the top of that list. Yeah, Iran is conflicted and no pun intended concerning Afghanistan. In one hand they see them as an opportunity, but on the other hand they see them as a threat, you know, and already border clashes between the two shows that the Taliban are not going to take any diktats, you know, from Iran whatsoever and that the Taliban is demanding that Iran treat them as equals and not like in the past a group that just were supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
So the Iranians are afraid of the Sunni power next door and of an emboldened Pakistan because of it. But at the same time, this could be a potential customer for greater trade in the future. It all depends on Iran's ability to bribe the Taliban enough. But also they're afraid that if the Emiratis and the Saudis and the Turks are going to get there with better terms,
Then these countries will have a no significant amount of leverage over the Taliban that the Afghanistan will become a territory through which Espionage and possibly even sabotage against Iran could originate from what about Russia? What do they feel about what's going on? What's been going on there all what Russia wants is for the Taliban to control the IMU in which is the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan the
The Tajik jihadists and others from not launching cross-border attacks into these countries or trying to destabilize these countries These countries are considered to be satellite countries as far as Moscow is concerned They were members of the Soviet Union these countries they were parts of the Soviet Union. So there's a reason for that
Exactly. They are considered to be the security buffer, you know, as far as Russia is concerned. And so the Russians are offering infrastructure projects, you know, maintaining the dams in Sarubi and in Darunta and some hydroelectric power, you know, projects in the country in return for a goodwill from the Taliban.
And the Taliban basically are, you know, feeling that, well, you know, why not? I mean, if they, you know, and this is why the Taliban are actually, you know, playing some game here. They are making, you know,
you know, these groups a little bit visible on the border. You know, they're making the IMU visible. They are making the jihadi Tajiks visible in Badakhshan, also in Badakhshan. Threatening the Russians, reminding the Russians of the possible threat so that the Russians will give them concessions. Exactly. And they're making the Uyghurs, you know, the members of the Islamic Turkestan group,
the east, the Turkestan Islamic Movement, ITIM and TIP, which is the Turkestan Islamic Party, they are Chinese jihadist groups from Xinjiang province, which is bordering Afghanistan from the Wakhan Corridor. They actually are parading them a little bit, you know, around that border area. Reminding the Chinese of what might happen if they don't play along. Exactly.
So the Taliban are savvy political operators. They are not your average towel heads. They are more smarter than you would give them credit for. And they are using this leverage on both China and Russia to gain as much concessions as possible.
But would you say that all things considered China is going to end up being the winner? I mean, you think of the rare earth minerals that Afghanistan is loaded with lithium, especially all of which China needs to be a leading chip battery and lithium processing power. They're going to win, aren't they? The Chinese, they're certainly not going to be hobbled as the Americans have been hobbled by ideological and moral scruples. They're going to do what needs to be done to get their hands on those resources. Not only that, but how many other, you know,
multinational companies are going to be crazy to go and operate in Afghanistan. Most of the mining companies are either from Australia, Canada, and America, and Europe. And none of these have the risk appetite to go and actually operate in a very dangerous environment like Afghanistan. So you really only have the Chinese and to some extent the South Koreans and the Japanese and the Malaysians and the Turks who are more than willing and happy to come and operate
So these are the countries that are already courting the Taliban over the question of the minerals and the minerals rights. Well, it's been a long 20 years, Eamon, since America decided to venture into Afghanistan only to withdraw in, well, let's put it bluntly, in defeat. Exactly. What's the takeaway? Where did America go wrong? A lot of money was spent, not much return on that investment. Where did they go wrong?
I think the Americans went wrong when they actually decided that instead of waging a campaign to rebuild Afghanistan in terms of infrastructure, they decided to actually just fund projects that were designed to say to the Taliban, in your face, they waged a cultural war on Taliban values, forgetting that some of these values are also entrenched Afghan values.
So trying to teach modern arts to Afghan people and trying to talk to them about modern liberal ideals and spend money on these programs that were supposed to be allocated to infrastructure and for things basically that will actually bring them benefit.
That alienated more Afghan people and actually emboldened the Taliban. Well, Ayman, it sounds to me like you're describing something that some people call hyper-liberalism or radical liberalism. People who hate it the most, they call it wokery and all that sort of thing. Yes. This hyper-liberalism, Ayman, this institutional wokery, if you like,
is really the guiding ideology behind America's global hegemony. And over the past 30 years, since the end of the Cold War, that weird nexus of radical liberalism, global capitalism, and idealistic militarism has evolved, but it remains the U.S. government's guiding star.
The question is, for how long? We've just told the story of America's retreat from Afghanistan, but some might say we've told the story of its retreat from the Middle East entirely, as it pivots towards Asia and, quite frankly, focuses more and more on itself. America is fraying, the result of huge social and economic stresses which the COVID pandemic has only exacerbated.
So, America's quote-unquote empire in the Middle East, is it drawing to a close? What we want to do in this third season of Conflicted is to tell the story of the rise of that empire in the Middle East, which will force us to go back to the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. What we want to do—and stick with us, dear listener, because what we're proposing is a historical and cultural trip that will stretch your imaginations—is
is to deep dive into the subterranean conflicts that some thinkers have said are ultimately to blame for the riven, blood-soaked Middle East that we see today. Deep cultural conflicts that have been called the clash of civilizations.
Well, there you go. We've finally gotten up to the present day when it comes to Afghanistan. And on the next episode of Conflicted, we are properly going to explore this idea of the clash of civilizations, setting out the course for the rest of season three. But before we head off, there are a couple of exciting things we want to tell you about. First of all, as always, I want to encourage you to join our discussion group on Facebook. We have almost 2,000 members now, and we love seeing all your love for the show.
In the group, you can continue the conversation with your fellow Conflicted fans after each new episode and get all the news about what's coming up before anyone else. First being news of brand new bonus content that we will be launching for Conflicted's biggest fans very soon. And we need the Facebook group's help to come up with what that bonus stuff might be. So find the Facebook group by searching for Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group and find out how to get access before anyone else.
And as always, make sure to follow us on Facebook and also Twitter by searching at MHConflicted. And please spread the word about Conflicted to all your friends. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow our community. All right, that's everything for today. We'll be back in two weeks.
Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced by the late Lamenta J. Kotayevich and Sandra Ferrari and edited by Sandra Ferrari. Sandra Ferrari is also our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.