10/15/14 – Anand Gopal – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, Al Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee.
Lots of it.
And you probably prefer Tastegood, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee, company at darrenscoffee.com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world.
All specialty, premium grade, with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darren's Coffee.
Order now at darrenscoffee.com.
Use promo code Scott and save $2.
Darrenscoffee.com.
I got Anand Gopal on the line, thank goodness.
Anand Gopal is a great reporter written for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and I guess a lot of other places, too, I don't have in front of me.
But he's the author of this book, No Good Men Among the Living.
Or is it Left Among the Living?
Crap.
Anyway, welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Anand?
I'm pretty good.
Thanks for having me.
I'm sorry, I lost my tab.
I had one here.
Here he is, Anand Gopal, nominated for a National Book Award for his book, No Good Men Among the Living, America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes.
And man, I'm sorry I haven't gotten to it yet, but I do very much want to read this book, and it's on the top of my list.
It's next on my list to read.
And then I'll interview you in depth about it, I hope, then.
But anyway, so welcome back.
Sorry for the disjointed introduction there.
Happy to have you here.
First of all, it came up on the show earlier today, sort of out of context.
And I was wondering if maybe you could tell us a story again real quick about the letter from Osama bin Laden to Mullah Omar saying, hey, man, I'm kind of sorry about what I got you into here, but don't worry.
Trust me, it'll be worth it later on, kind of a thing.
Could you tell us that?
Yeah, this took place a couple of weeks after 9-11, because keep in mind, Mullah Omar didn't know anything about 9-11.
This was completely bin Laden's thing.
And so a lot of the Taliban leadership were pretty upset, because they realized, well, look, our country is now on the crosshairs.
And so they sent people over to bin Laden to try to pressure him and see if they could actually turn him over.
At that point, bin Laden sends a letter to Mullah Omar saying, essentially, well, look, I'm really sorry about this, but just trust me here, because the U.S. is going to come into Afghanistan.
It's going to get bogged down in a really long war, and it's going to be a big blow to the empire.
So you just wait and see.
And then so, well, I mean, obviously, the first lesson from that is the obvious one, that it's telling the tale of his strategy, what it was really about.
Yes, it's true, Mullah Omar got you into this mess, but that's what I was trying to do was cause a terrible war.
But at the end, it'll be great, kind of thing.
So that's an important point for Americans to note about, you know, kind of how they got into this thing.
And then, of course, there's the point, like you say, about how the Taliban didn't do it.
And I guess, could you elaborate a little bit on just how willing they may or may not have been to turn bin Laden over after September 11th, with or without this letter?
Well, you know, Mullah Omar famously once said that Osama bin Laden is like a chicken bone stuck in his throat.
He can't swallow it, he can't spit him out.
What he meant was that bin Laden was viewed as a problem by the Taliban leadership, and they'd wanted to get rid of him for a while, but they'd wanted to do it in a way that wouldn't make it look like they were handing him over to the infidels, you know, handing him over to a non-Muslim court for justice.
And so one of the possible solutions they raised was to hand him over to an Islamic court, but the U.S. didn't accept that.
And so it was really an impasse.
Finally, right before the bombing had started, in fact, some Taliban leaders went and secretly met with the CIA to try to engineer a deal.
But the bombing went ahead anyway in early October, and so any possibility of a deal pretty much evaporated after that.
And then now, as far as what this reveals about al-Qaeda, too, isn't it the case, I mean, I guess first of all, is it really right that he expected virtually the same level of war against the people of Afghanistan that they got from the Soviet Union?
Because didn't the Russians kill approximately a million people, or upwards of near a million people during their war in the 1980s?
Are they that bad of collectivists and martyr syndrome koofs that they're willing to say that this is what bin Laden is saying to Mullah Omar with a straight face?
That, yeah, I might get a million people killed, and completely bring Afghanistan to absolute ruin, but also it'll hurt America, too.
I mean, is that really his argument?
What level of sacrifice is he arguing is worth it here?
Well, yeah, that's actually it.
I mean, that's basically what he's arguing.
You know, and he makes references to the Soviet Union in lettering, so he's saying that the Americans who come, get blocked down, it's going to be an extended occupation, and implied in that is there's going to be maybe a million deaths.
You know, and Osama talks about sacrifices, of course, of Afghans, or even of his own fighters, but, you know, as we know, he was never willing to sacrifice himself.
He was safely ensconced in Pakistan, and I think it tells a lot about his mentality and the mentality of al-Qaeda.
Yeah, that's crazy, man.
All right, so now there's some recent news here, and you know what?
Honestly, man, I kind of, I just had the gut feeling what I read in the Washington Post this morning was a lie, but then again, it seems like kind of an easily verifiable thing one way or another, too, so I don't know.
But they were saying that, so last week, the Pakistani Taliban said, hey, we're loyal to Baghdadi and ISIS, not Mullah Omar now, and then they came out and said, no, no, no, that's not true.
We still are Mullah Omar first.
We're just saying we like Baghdadi and what they're doing over there, and good for you guys.
And so then, according to the Washington Post today, they're saying, no, that's true.
Screw Mullah Omar.
They don't really say it like that, but now our first loyalty is to the caliph of Mosul, Omar Bakr al-Baghdadi, and I was just wondering if you know what's really going on there, or is that just some COINTELPRO kind of thing, or what's up?
Well, the way to think about this first is to recognize that the Pakistani Taliban is in one group.
You know, it's really a dozen or two dozen different small groups.
And so what happened over the weekend was that some of the commanders of some of these small groups came out and said, you know, we now support ISIS.
We declare allegiance to ISIS, not Mullah Omar.
That's not the same thing as the Pakistani Taliban overall doing it, but it's proven to some commanders in the Pakistani Taliban doing it.
And, you know, I think it has more to do with local politics in Pakistan, because some of these groups are trying to make a peace deal with the Pakistani government.
Other groups are trying to resist a peace deal, and so some of those groups who don't want a peace deal, and also the same guys are saying, you know what, we're tired with our current Taliban leadership, because they look like they're too close to the Pakistani state, and so, you know, we're going to declare allegiance to ISIS.
It doesn't really mean much, though.
I mean, just coming out and declaring allegiance to ISIS, they're still going to be doing the exact same thing that they were doing before.
Sure.
Because we've got to get on the news and on the radio.
Yeah, and they've still got a giant Shiite-ruled Persia between them, too, so it's not much in an Islamic state like that.
Yeah, so it doesn't really mean much, but it's good publicity, you know, and it's a way for them to tell their superiors, you know, to basically thumb their nose at their superiors and say, if you guys want to negotiate with the Pakistani state, well, we're just going to go our own way.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, we've got to take this break.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Anand Gopal.
And I'm sorry, what paper are you writing for most recently here, Anand?
I'm writing for Harper's Magazine.
Oh, writing for Harper's.
That's right.
Oh, yeah, I could ask you about that election a little bit, too.
The great Anand Gopal.
We'll be right back, y'all.
Hey, Al Scott here for Whole Food Multicomplete at WholeFoodComplete.com.
Whole Food Multicomplete is an entire supplement program in one bottle, containing 100% RDA of vitamins and minerals, plus live probiotics, digestive enzymes, antioxidant herbs, energy nutrients, and more.
It's made in America using real foods and live probiotics.
No chemical synthetics.
It's soy-free, gluten-free, and independently tested and verified.
They're so sure you'll love it, they're taking 20% off your first order with coupon code SCOTTHORTON.
Satisfaction is guaranteed at WholeFoodComplete.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Anand Gopal.
I write for Harper's Magazine, formerly with The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, author of No Good Men Among the Living, about the war in Afghanistan.
We're talking about, well, both Afghanistan and Pakistan here.
And now, Anand, you were mentioning how some of these Pakistani Taliban groups are in negotiations with the government right now.
And then, yet, I'm reading that a bunch of people are dying in drone strikes.
And I'm wondering, is that one faction or some factions of the Pakistani Taliban having the Pakistani government have the Americans drone strike their enemy Taliban factions for them as part of their peace negotiations with the government in Islamabad?
Well, yeah.
I mean, historically, over the last few years, that's what's happened, is that the so-called bad Taliban, which are the ones that are not in peace deals or negotiations or don't have any sort of contacts with the Pakistani state, they're the ones who bear the brunt of the drone strikes.
Them and the Haqqani Network, which is an Afghan group, which is based in Pakistan, they also get a lot of the drone strikes.
But there are other Taliban who are called, quote-unquote, the good Taliban.
And these ones have a good relationship with the Pakistani state.
And they tend not to get hit by the drone strikes.
They have, but they tend not to.
All right.
And then, so, I'm sorry, man, I'm behind.
Can you tell us, can you give us an update on the recent casualties and, you know, what it means for the people of Pakistan?
Because it's been, am I right, it's been since the last president or the last prime minister that they've allowed this, and now it's all back again?
Well, yeah, there was, for a while, a moratorium on drone strikes in Pakistan, but it's picked up again.
There was a few this month.
And, you know, the thing with these drone strikes, as it's always been the case, is we really have no idea, most of the time, who's being killed.
You know, we're told that some militants have been killed somewhere in the tribal areas.
It's almost, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to get there.
So we really don't know.
And, you know, often, in case it's months later, then it comes to light that, in fact, so many people were killed as civilians, or they weren't militants, or they're very unimportant people.
And so the story, the true story of what's actually happening, it may take months to sort of unfold.
But the important thing to know right now is that the drone strikes, after having sort of abated for a while, they've started up again in the last few months in Pakistan, as well as other countries like Yemen and Somalia.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, now, there was a recent report by Reprieve, where their best data was that it was, what was it, 48 or 50 to 1 civilians versus, quote, known terrorists or known militants being killed in the Pakistani drone strikes.
Do you think that's really right?
Is it that far out of whack?
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if God actually got on the ground and interviewed people and interviewed survivors, and there's other journalists and organizations in Pakistan who have done that.
And that's what it seems to me, that there's a lot of civilians that are being killed and continue to be killed in all of this.
And, you know, one of the ways in which they decide who to kill is a so-called signature strike, which is that they look for certain patterns of behavior or look for a place where there's only men of a certain age at a certain time, and those guys get blown away.
So, of course, it's just a rescue for hitting the wrong people.
So, this is continuing.
You know, it's interesting, Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize winner, she actually, when she met President Obama, a lot of people don't know this, when she met President Obama, she told him that drone strikes in Pakistan are only fueling terrorism.
And so I think that's a sentiment that people, certainly some people in that part of the world, share.
But it's not something we tend to hear about a lot.
Yeah, that would have been fun if that was why they gave her the Nobel Prize.
Finally, someone talked back to Lord Obama about his mass murder campaign over there.
And it's not just that.
I think you kind of referred to this there, too.
It's the terror that all the survivors live under all the time.
Buzz, buzz, buzz in the sky all the time.
Yeah, you might get vaporized by a drone, like living in the Gaza Strip.
No person, no child, no grandma, no sister, no innocent person of any description is safe from the fear of the drone.
And, in fact, from the drone and from its self-fire missiles in practice.
They have every reason to be absolutely terrified all day, every day, and in the middle of the night.
And related to this is the fact that with drones flying around, the Taliban can accuse you of being a spy.
And this is a bit of a major problem, too.
Every time there's a drone strike, then the Taliban want to figure out who's the one who gave the U.S. the CIA these coordinates.
And so you've had a lot of people who've been summarily executed by the Taliban accused of being spies.
No way of knowing if they were actually involved or not.
But in every aspect, I think it's made life difficult for a lot of people there.
All right.
Now, so can you talk about, as I mentioned before the break, when you mentioned Harper's there, it reminded me that you had written, I think, two different pieces with Matthew Ayd, right?
About the two different stages of the Afghan election?
I wrote one piece with Matt Aikens back in April.
Oh, Aikens.
I'm sorry.
Man, I get my names mixed up.
Pardon me.
Aikens, right.
Yeah, I wrote one piece about the elections.
And then more recently, I wrote a longer magazine article about sort of looking at who the U.S. is leaving behind in charge in Afghanistan, looking at the police force in Kandahar, which turns out to be pretty notorious for their torture.
And, you know, the types of torture include things like using power drills in people's skulls, putting wrenches around people's testicles.
The police chief of Kandahar is a very close ally of the U.S.
And he sort of was kind of made by the U.S., by the U.S. presence there.
And that's sort of what a lot of people in Kandahar City and in the suburbs are living under.
But then the other part of that is, other than the absolute horror of living under these people America's put in power there, is the part about leaving.
Are they leaving?
Are they really leaving?
And does 20,000 count as leaving?
And is that really the number?
And what kind of a presence does that represent?
And for how long do you think they're really going to stay?
Yeah, they're not really leaving.
And in fact, the people who are staying behind are sort of the ones who I think have caused the most damage over the last 10 or 15 years to the special forces and CIA.
And so you have those, say, trainers and special forces operatives numbering 10 to 20,000.
And on top of that, then you have all of the militias and commanders and warlords that are being supported and paid for by the U.S.
And if you add it all up, it's up into the hundreds of thousands.
You can think of that almost like a proxy force that's on the ground in Afghanistan.
And if you think of the Taliban as a proxy force for Pakistan, what you have essentially is a continuing proxy war, which has been going on with one guy or another over the last 35 years.
And it really doesn't seem like there's any end in sight for that.
Yeah, all right.
And then now, what about...
Oh, man, just real quick here.
I'm sorry, two, three minutes.
Can you tell us about the power-sharing deal between...
Was it Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah here?
Yeah, you know, the thing to remember about or the thing to keep in mind about this deal is that it happened only because the U.S. and the international community is propping up the Afghan state.
And so both sides didn't want to bite the hand that feeds them.
And essentially, they were told, look, if you guys resist any sort of deal, then we're going to pull the plug on the funding and then the whole thing's going to collapse.
And so these guys basically came to the table and called out some sort of agreement.
But it shows how weak the Afghan state actually is and that without sort of continued massive injection of funds, that the thing will just collapse overnight.
And so while the power-sharing agreement kind of seems like good news because they're not actually fighting each other, it's also kind of bad news, too, because it reflects how weak the state is.
All right, now, well, hell, are the conditions just right for the Taliban to march right in like they did in 1996 and say, we might be mean as hell, but we're peacemakers compared to the guys ruling you now and win with a credible argument in that same sort of fashion?
I don't think so.
The Taliban aren't very popular with themselves either.
So it's not like...
I mean, people don't like the warlords and the government, but they don't like the Taliban either.
So really, they're sort of copying all these sides.
On the one hand, Taliban are executing people and behaving like nasty guerrilla forces, and on the other hand, you have warlords torturing people.
And so I don't think they have the support, the popular support, really, to go sort of march in and take Kabul.
And also, they're kind of outgunned.
As long as the U.S. is sort of backing one side with money and with weapons, the Afghan army probably can hold major cities like Kabul.
But that's still the key, as long as America's there to back them up.
That's the key.
If that stops and all bets are off, we'll probably see the country collapse into a civil war.
All right, thanks, Inam, appreciate it.
See you all tomorrow.
Thank you.
Mike Swanson knows his stuff.
He made a killing running his own hedge fund and always gets out of the stock market before the government-generated bubbles pop, which is, by the way, what he's doing right now, selling all his stocks and betting on gold and commodities.
Sign up at wallstreetwindow.com and get real-time updates from Mike on all his market moves.
It's hard to know how to protect your savings and earn a good return in an economy like this.
Mike Swanson can help.
Follow along on paper and see for yourself.
Wallstreetwindow.com Hey, Al Scott Horton here for The Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Edited by libertarian purist Sheldon Richman, The Future of Freedom brings you the best of our movement.
Featuring articles by Richman, Jacob Hornberger, James Bovard, and many more, The Future of Freedom stands for peace and liberty and against our criminal world empire and Leviathan State.
Subscribe today.
It's just $25 per year for the back-pocket-sized print edition, $15 per year to read it online.
That's thefutureoffreedom at www.fff.org Peace and freedom.
Thank you.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State.
In The War State, Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War II.
If this nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone, we are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com in Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at scotthorton.org or thewarstate.com.