All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast fee.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, introducing Ali M. Latifi.
He is a journalist from Afghanistan who recently wrote this very important piece.
We ran it at antiwar.com.
It's at technologyreview.com, life in the most drone-bombed country in the world.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thank you.
How are you?
Really happy to have you on here.
Great piece of work that you've written here.
I guess I'll just start with an apology for my country continually destroying yours.
Really, I've tried.
There's nothing me or anybody else can do about it, apparently, but there are a lot of people who regret what's happening here, and I don't know if you guys even know that.
It's far from consensus that we ought to continue to kill you guys this way, but it is what it is.
This article is about in the two and a half, almost three years of the Donald Trump administration, for all the talk about the negotiations with the Taliban through Zalmay Khalilzad in Qatar and all the rest of that, that in fact, Donald Trump has escalated the war in Afghanistan, especially the air war there, right?
Right, but I think the one thing we have to remember, because the piece got cut down, is that this air war predates Donald Trump.
Yes, it got worse under Donald Trump, but when Afghanistan earned the title of the most drone-bombed country in the world in 2013, Barack Obama was the president, and in fact, when Barack Obama became the president is when the global drone war really took off, because his whole thing was about removing ground forces.
He had that surge for a while, and then the eventual pullout in 2014, and so all of this meant more and more reliance on drones around the world, and we have to remember it was the Obama administration that changed sort of how these casualty rates are reported, the definitions of what is considered an enemy combatant and all of this.
So yes, it got worse under Donald Trump, that's undeniable, but I think we have to get off this mentality that these sorts of things are only tied to Trump.
Oh yeah, well absolutely not.
I mean, even the headlines, even the mainstream news headlines about the record number of air attacks in Afghanistan say since 2010, right?
A record, the last time it was this high was at the height of Barack Obama's surge in 2010 and 11.
No question about that.
As you say in here, this is the longest war in American history, longer even than Vietnam now, started by George W. Bush in the fall of 2001, 18 years ago.
Right.
So yeah, pretty hard to blame all that on Donald Trump, who was goofing around on TV.
I mean, he's a part of it.
Who knows what, at that time he wasn't even in Congress or nothing.
Anyway, it's an important point.
I'm glad you made it, because yeah, this is not about Trump.
This is about the USA, the US government, the American people, and our war against Afghanistan.
And that is kind of unfair, because there are a lot of people who, they don't support this at all.
They'd stop it in an instant if they could.
But at the same time, you know, this is a society, and if something like a major proportion of the 300 million of us demanded that this war end tomorrow, it would end.
But we don't, and so it doesn't.
So there is some responsibility there, even for those of us, regular Joes who don't have the literal ability to intervene in any way.
You know, it could be done if this was the popular concern, but it's not.
And unfortunately, my friend, it's just because you're too far away from here, and nobody can hear you screaming.
So.
Right.
That's what it is.
But now, anyway, I'm sorry.
So tell us about this piece.
You start off with an interview that you did with a kid who he talks about when he was 10.
He's a young man now.
He talks about when he was 10, and when he first found out what a drone strike was, and what that meant to be living in a world with American drones in the sky.
Right, right.
So basically, I had been, I mean, I had been, I think every journalist here, at one point or another, has hopefully tracked the drone war.
And in the last few years, also the proliferation of the airstrikes in general, not just drones, but also airstrikes.
So it's something that I've been following for a while now, for a few years.
And, you know, a lot of my family's from the east, from Nangarhar province.
And it's one of the most affected provinces in terms of the drone war.
So that's why I decided to go there and talk to people there.
I had talked to people there in that same district that's profiled in the piece about two years ago.
And we were just in a village there, in a house.
And I remember because we were there, and it sort of what I was saying earlier about how the idea of enemy combatant has changed.
It was me, another journalist, Imran Firoz, who's Afghan-Austrian, but reports out of Germany.
And then with people from that district, from Khogiani district in Nangarhar, including, you know, obviously some older men.
There was a young boy, maybe 15, 16, and a little girl that was maybe three, four years old.
And we were the only ones in the room.
And, you know, we were asking all these questions and sort of going over everything.
And at one point in my head, I started to think, if there is a drone bombing here now, me and Imran, you know, he has an Austrian passport, I have a U.S. passport.
In almost any case, by any definition, we would probably be considered enemy combatants or sympathetic to the Taliban or whatever for just being in that area and meeting with these people.
And then I started to think of the young boy who, like I said, might have been 15, 16 years old, and this little girl that was running around.
And it reminded me so much of the kinds of stories we're constantly reporting on.
And at one point, the people we were talking to, you know, they said, you should go because you might end up being part of your own story, meaning that you never know when, you know, a drone could hit, when a place might be targeted and bombed.
And that was sort of one of those moments where, you know, you're always reporting on these things and you have to go visit people who are subject to, whose family and friends are subject to these kinds of strikes and attacks.
But when you're very much right in that situation, thinking about, you know, having someone tell you you should leave before you become part of your own story, I think it kind of hits even more.
Because to me, just sitting there in that room and looking who was there and sort of the discussion we were having, it reminded me so much of how I might start a story on an attack somewhere, on a drone strike somewhere.
So it's quite unsettling.
And this is a major problem because, for instance, Hogyoni, the district where I went to report on this story, it's not easy to get to.
You know, there's a heavy Taliban presence there.
The road isn't necessarily the safest going there.
And so a lot of people are, you know, Afghan journalists are afraid to go there.
Afghan rights workers might have trepidation going there.
And at the same time, we also have to remember that these strikes happen at night.
They happen in remote areas at night.
So by the time anybody can reach the site, you know, the whole area could be cleared up.
You know, it could look as if almost nothing happened, or it could just look as if there was a firefight or an IED went off or some other kind of bombing, where it would be very difficult for you to prove directly that, you know, this is what took place and that it was civilians being targeted.
And none of this is by accident.
Yeah, well, so I want to go back to one of the things you talked about there, where if you were killed in the middle of reporting this story, to the military, that would simply be marked down as EKIA, Enemy Killed in Action.
And as we know, from the leaks to Jeremy Scahill, who ended up publishing a whole book about it, The Assassination Complex, that was based on documents that were leaked to him about one of the air campaigns, at least in eastern Afghanistan.
And I guess, specifically in the Nangarhar province, actually, they talked about how essentially the only way to be counted as anything but an Enemy Killed in Action would be if the Americans go on the ground and investigate and themselves disprove it and show that, nope, it was a kid on a tricycle, or whatever it was instead, which of course is never going to happen.
Everything is automatically counted as an Enemy Killed in Action, unless shown otherwise, which no one's trying to show.
And even people who want to show it, it's not easy to show it.
This is something that was mentioned in the piece as well.
Like I said, for instance, I also reported in that story about what they called the mother of all bombs in 2017, which was dropped in another district of Nangarhar province, which is basically the largest non-nuclear weapon ever dropped anywhere in the world.
Right, 21,000 pounds.
Exactly.
I went, it was dropped, if I remember correctly, it was a Thursday night around 8 p.m., 9 p.m. in, again, a remote district of Nangarhar province.
The next morning, we left Kabul to get to Achin district, where it was dropped.
We got there by, I think, 10, 11 in the morning.
And we stayed there two, three days.
We were never allowed on the site.
And you have to remember that, even let's just say we finally, if the next day, whatever time, we were, even if we got there at 8 a.m. and we were allowed to go, that's still 12 hours later.
And in 12 hours, a lot can happen, right?
And when we were there, the following days after when this so-called mother of all bombs was dropped, we got the sense that the district governor didn't fully understand what was going on in terms of this precise area where the bomb was dropped, exactly who lived there, who was targeted, who got killed, what the environmental impact of it was, what kind of, say, like a crater and aftermath and things like that were left over.
Even the Afghan soldiers we were talking to seemed to have, it was very clear to us that that entire area was under the watch and care of the U.S. military.
And we could see their helicopters flying in the sky.
And then I went 10 days later, again, we were able to get a little bit closer to the actual site, but never directly to the actual site.
And the interesting thing is when I went 10 days later, in that area, there was more fighting, there was gunshots all around, there was the sound of explosions, there was helicopters again flying in the sky.
And again, you could tell the district governor that we went with, he seemed petrified and he had no real information of what was going on.
And what we have to remember is that the Afghan and U.S. governments claimed that when that bomb was dropped, that something like 90 so-called ISIS fighters were killed.
So the question is, if it killed that many fighters that claimed to be part of ISIS or Daesh, why 10 days later was there so much fighting?
We could hear gunshots, we could hear explosions, we could see helicopters flying over the sky.
Do you know what I'm saying?
It's like, if this was really meant to make that area secure, and you claim that you killed 90 armed opposition fighters who are claiming to be part of ISIS, then why?
Why is there still that level of an intense fighting?
I think what had happened at that time was that a Green Beret had been shot and killed just a few days before.
And that bomb was essentially just revenge.
I don't think they followed up with a ground campaign to finish mopping up or what, however they call it.
They just said, oh, yeah, well, how do you like that?
Exactly.
But again, this is what I'm saying is that, okay, so you drop these bombs, and yet even that area itself, how is it that 10 days after you drop that bomb, the fighting is more intense than it was the days immediately after?
Hey, call it insurgent math.
You know, as Stanley McChrystal said, for every one you kill, you get 10 more.
And you know what, too, there was a, I quote this in my book, there was a piece in the New York Times by a local politician, I guess it was, or local, local guy of some kind, wrote a piece saying that the ISIS-K so-called radio station was just blaring and gloating and bragging after getting hit with that bomb, because for them it was the greatest public relations move ever.
Sure, they lost a few dozen guys, possibly, but they get to say, look at how important we are to the Americans, that they use their biggest non-nuclear bomb on us.
That just goes to show what great guys we are, and also it goes to show why you should be so outraged that they would do such a thing, that you would want to join up our group.
So come on down and sign up, and that this was the best thing that had ever happened to this group of, as you, I think, correctly say, so-called ISIS fighters, who are really just local posh-to-militia men anyway, but this is the best thing that ever happened to their group, was that America dropped that Moab bomb on them.
And again, this is sort of, you know, this is what we keep coming back to, is that there is a lot of domestic and foreign media that, either due to lack of access or just taking things for face value, will report that, you know, again, like they claim to name the nationalities of all of these Daesh fighters that they said were killed.
You know, they were saying they're from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and Pakistan and this place and that place.
And again, this sort of, I remember when that report came out, we were, you know, in that district.
I think we were like 10 kilometers from where the actual strike took place.
And we were all looking at each other.
We said, okay, so it's the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world.
You dropped it on these people.
You can't, if it's really as powerful as you say, well, you can't identify someone's nationality by their bones.
And no one who's coming to be part of a terrorist group or an armed group or anything like that would carry their passports with them either.
So how are you going to identify the nationalities of these people to say that they came from these places?
It's not to say that there aren't foreign fighters in Afghanistan.
There definitely are.
A thousand percent.
There's no question about that.
But just, there was something sadly humorous about the fact that, you know, they were naming X amount from Tajikistan, this amount from Uzbekistan, this amount from- Well, the agenda is pretty transparent, what they're trying to say is these aren't local Pashtun militiamen with, you know, parochial grievances.
These are international terrorists who are coming for us.
And there's definitely a contingent of that.
There's no denying that.
That's definitely a truth.
And the other thing we have to remember when I say so-called Daesh, I mean, because first of all, the groups that call themselves Daesh in Afghanistan have no connection to the ones in Syria and Iraq.
And secondly, if you talk to, so I've done a lot of research on these groups that call themselves Daesh since about 2014.
I've been to these districts.
I've talked to people displaced by these groups.
And the things they keep saying is that like, we don't know who these people are.
They don't talk like us.
They don't look like us.
They deal exclusively in U.S. dollars.
You know, they- Didn't they all originally come from Pakistan?
Weren't they refugees from the war in the Swat Valley?
A certain percentage of them, yes.
But again, when you talk to people, the thing that they keep saying in those areas is like, we don't know who these people are.
They literally say they don't look like us.
They don't talk like us.
They deal in dollars.
They- What does that mean?
I mean, they're Egyptians with blue eyes or what?
This is exactly the question.
But the thing is that the people in these areas are so afraid of even the name Daesh.
As soon as they hear, as soon as these people say that we are quote unquote Daesh, people get freaked out and leave those areas as quickly as they can.
Because this name of this group, Daesh, has such a bad reputation in Afghanistan.
It has such a scary connotation to it.
Well, what about the relative power between the Taliban and the so-called ISIS groups now?
So the thing is, is like, is like when these groups appear, at first they don't say who they are.
All they say is, you know, the Taliban are not real Muslims.
We're going to take the Taliban out for you because they abuse you.
They take bribes from you.
They collect taxes from you.
You know, they put pressure on you.
Basically, they just say they're not good Muslims and they're not fighting a proper war.
According to them, the way they put it is like, we'll drive them into the mountains.
And when these groups drive the Taliban into the mountains, then they come to the people and they say we're Daesh.
And that's when the people of these areas get really freaked out.
Because as I said, the name Daesh has this really scary connotation in Afghanistan.
And then they also had a reputation where they would say, OK, you know, give us your boys to fight along with us, which is unfortunately for all these kinds of armed groups, that's not rare.
But the scariest part was when they would say, give us your women.
You know, if you have a widow, put this color flag over your house.
If you have a single woman, put this color flag over your house.
And even though that's never been proven that they actually do take the women, that's the last straw for 90 percent of these people.
That's what makes them want to run out and move to the city of Jalalabad or come to the province of Kabul, because they're so afraid.
Like, how could someone go to that level where they want to take your girls or they want to take your women?
So the Taliban, it sounds like they don't have much trouble running the Taliban off.
Is that just because the Taliban is too busy fighting the so-called national unity government there?
Or because they really are that much stronger already?
It's complicated, right?
They hate each other.
These groups that call themselves Daesh and the Taliban, if you talk to fighters from any of these groups, they hate each other.
They want to drive each other out.
They have this competition with each other.
So they definitely do, eventually.
These Daesh forces, because they're so well-armed, they're well-trained, they're well-financed.
As I said, so many people that I spoke to said when they recruit or when they go even to the market in an area, they're dealing in U.S. dollars.
So they're not just ordinary sort of fighters.
And also their brutality, all of this lends them what seems like upper hands and that at least for a while, they can fend off the Taliban.
And so it's really complicated.
Well, you know what?
It sounds conspiratorial or whatever, but I think it's a fair question at this point of whether you suspect that the ISIS-K group is actually supported by the U.S. and or say its Saudi and Pakistani allies in order to prolong the war.
I mean, look, the Taliban is supported by the Pakistanis, it's supported by the Iranis, it's supported by Russia.
The thing again with these sort of fighters that call themselves ISIS or Daesh is that it's very hard to tell.
I mean, like I said, even the people in the areas where they eventually take control don't fully understand who these people are and what they want and who their leadership is and what their goal is.
Because at the end of the day, the Taliban claim that they want to end the occupation and yet every day they're killing Afghan civilians.
But with these groups that call themselves Daesh, no one really knows exactly what they want or even if they wanted to at some point negotiate with them, how to negotiate with them.
And even the thing that we have to remember is that when these reports of these Daesh groups came up in Afghanistan, it was 2014, 2015 when the U.S. was withdrawing and saying our fight is not with the Taliban.
We're not going to directly target the Taliban unless they target us.
And the members of the unity government were going around the world to the United Nations on television, using phrases, like things that prove that they know nothing about technology.
The president was saying something like if the Taliban is Windows One, then Daesh is Windows 10, which I have no idea what that means.
And so, you know.
That they don't work right and crash all the time and programs won't run.
Sorry.
This is what I'm saying is like if you don't understand technology, use another metaphor.
Yeah.
Football.
Talk to Americans in football.
We're perfectly cool.
Yeah, something like that.
Like they want to make it seem like it's an upgraded, more advanced version, which in a lot of ways he is right about it.
You know, for people, my question sounds kind of goofy.
I mean, there's a great piece at Afghananalysts.com about this from a few years ago that says that the Afghan government, and I think the implication there is pretty strong that and therefore with, you know, working with CIA on this, that they supported this group at the beginning as sort of revenge for the Pakistanis supporting the Afghan Taliban.
And we'll see how you like that.
And they wanted to use these guys against the Pakistanis for some attacks inside Pakistan and use them against the Afghan Taliban here.
But then of course, just because you back an armed group doesn't mean that they're going to be loyal to you from now on, you know.
So apparently that is where they got their start, you know.
The other thing you have to remember is that, you know, the hype kind of backfired on them because they were using this Daesh threat in Afghanistan as a way to get the foreign forces not to withdraw.
But what ended up happening was that Iran and Russia got closer to the Taliban, started funding them, started training them, started arming them.
I've been in districts in the West and the South of the country where they say we found weapons that were clearly made in Iran and Pakistan.
And, you know, I've talked to people in different provinces in the West and in the South of Afghanistan who say that they've seen Irani fighters on the ground helping the Taliban.
And, you know, all of this comes from this idea of the government going all around the world and constantly saying Daesh is here, Daesh is here, Daesh is here.
And it could spread to Central Asia and it could spread to Iran.
And if it makes it to Central Asia, then it gets to Russia.
And if it gets to Russia, it gets the EU.
So this definitely backfired on the government here, because as much as they spread that around as a fear to keep foreign forces here, it only gave more leeway for the Iranis and the Russians to start getting involved with the Taliban.
Right now, and that's an important point to whatever, I don't know exactly how proven it is, what help the Russians have supposedly given the Taliban, or I guess I have read more reports about the Iranis, but this is all recently.
And it's not to frustrate the United States and try and with the purpose of using the Taliban against the Kabul government, it's ISIS, they want to keep them on the margin.
That's their concern.
And that they're so they're back in the Taliban, because of course, what's the point of back in the national government in Kabul that has no ability to do anything about anything.
So if you really want to fight ISIS, the Taliban is the only game in town, right?
Well, and this is the thing in 2000.
I think I can't remember if it was in 14 or 15.
When I worked for the Los Angeles Times, I spoke to Salam Raimi, who was the president's chief of staff at the time.
And he said that when the Taliban do join with the Afghan government, when there is actually peace, and this was years ago, they will fight Daesh with us, which I would believe, which does make sense.
Because as I said, these two groups really do have this hatred for one another.
And you know, this is one of the things that the Bush, sorry, that the Trump administration was trying to push a lot, saying that the Taliban is supporting foreign armed groups in the country.
And there's using Daesh as an example.
And there's literally no proof of any of that.
So a lot of the sort of talking points have actually ended up backfiring on Washington, and on Kabul.
Yeah, no surprise.
Well, although, I mean, Iran and Russia have always supported the government in Kabul that America supports.
It's not like they're turning against it, right?
They're just hedging their bets and back in the other side, again, because of the third side.
A lot of regional countries play both roles.
Pakistan, you know, says they support the government here.
Well, that's a whole other story with the Pakistanis, right?
But it's the same with Russia.
And it's the same with Iran.
You know, we have to remember that look, a lot of Afghanistan in a lot of ways is like Lebanon, we have the worst neighbors in the world, who are always sort of trying to meddle and use us as sort of their game board for whatever their ultimate goals are.
And so to say that, you know, it's only Pakistan playing a double game is not fair, because Pakistan is certainly playing a double game.
But there's more and more evidence that Iran and Russia are also playing a double game here.
Well, but I mean, at the end of the day, the Russians alliance with the Tajiks and the Iranians alliance with the Hazaras is their core interest there, right?
No, I think those are those are those are simple readings of the situation.
It's not I'm on the other side of the planet from there, man.
What do I know?
Go ahead.
It's not it's not just an ethnic issue.
Look, it's, it's, it's, we're talking about global politics, we're talking about some of the most important, powerful countries in the world, you know, in Pakistan is a nuclear armed nation, Iran has nuclear ambitions.
Russia was was it was a superpower, you know, that that sort of wants to be on the rise again.
There's a lot of complexities to the issue here.
But I think what the central tenant of the story that I wrote, you know, leaving aside all these global politics of it, is basically what is happening is that this reliance on technology, without any attempt at proper ground information, is only making the war worse, because you're killing civilians.
And when you're killing civilians, you know, you you will turn an entire village against you, you will turn an entire district against you.
And if you're trying to sort of prove to the people that you are the better alternative to whatever group, the more you're sort of exactly the more the more the more you're killing people, the more you're destroying territory, the less likely they are to ally with you.
And this is something very important to remember, you know, it seems so basic, but it's something that a lot of people, obviously, the ones in Washington are out of touch for me, because they're not here.
But even decision makers in Kabul, you know, how often are they going to these districts?
And how often are they really talking to people who have been affected by these things, and really sort of understanding what it means to lose your child or to lose your mother to lose your father, or your brother, or your neighbor, or to spend years as the young men I profiled in my story, seeing dead bodies around you, and living in fear, they said, like, when we hear the sound of a drone, the children know to hide, even the animals know to hide.
And that takes a real psychological toll on people.
So again, it's sort of this question of is is sort of, you know, people kind of refer to drone warfare is almost like video game warfare, because it's so far removed.
Is that any better than traditional warfare?
Because I keep asking people what's worse, you know, if you feel like there's an occupation and there are foreign soldiers around you that you know, are essentially there to keep you in line and possibly fire on you or people around you, or at least you can see them directly, you know who they are, or is it worse to have something in the sky that you can't see, and you can only hear and you only know what it's intending to do, essentially, when it's too late when it's already carried out its target.
You know, this is sort of one of those questions about warfare all the time.
What's worse having these ground troops that you feel like are, you know, I'm curious about, do you ever ask them, would you prefer I mean, not that it makes much difference, but on the margin, does it make a difference whether there's a pilot in the plane that's killing you, where there's at least a chance you could run out of gas or something, versus someone hiding in a trailer in Nevada, and killing you via satellite from an entire width of a planet away?
It's called the sort of term in Dari and Pashto is pilotless aircraft.
But I don't know if the average person understands that the person, you know, sort of pressing the button is, as you said, in Nevada or Arizona, they just know that there isn't a pilot.
Yeah.
I mean, is that part more annoying that there's not even a single person risking themselves to carry out the attack?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's definitely come up, you know, there's so many, and that's the other thing is, I don't remember if we made it into the final story, there's so many conspiracies about how drones started, who created them, what their intentions were, what the technology behind it is.
It's one of those things, because like, you know, a gun, everyone understands how that operates, a bomb, everyone understands how that operates, a landmine, you know, you understand how that operates.
But this is essentially just a flying machine that comes and kills, as the teacher in the story says, you know, it's something once you come to its attention, you'll never make it out alive.
I like how you talk about sort of these superstitions that grow up that like, oh, well, there's this glow in the dark stuff that they put on you, and you just have to take your shirt off, go swim in something.
I mean, this is what desperate people do, trying to figure out a way out of this, which there's no way out of.
And again, this is what I'm saying is, it's one of those things where there's so little information, so little understanding of it.
For me, it was the same issue, because when you talk to people, and they say things like, you know, there's this substance that they use, or there's like these trackers that they put on you.
It's very hard to get physical evidence of that and to know what it is.
And when you ask the US military, you know, they just say we can't give out information on how we operate.
So in a lot of ways, we're as much in the dark as anybody else.
And I've tried to ask reporters in other areas who have worked on this issue of airstrikes and drone strikes and things like that.
And, you know, because the problem is, in Afghanistan, it's even more of a problem is that A, these things happen under darkness in the night, and they happen in remote areas where there might not be proper electricity or internet, or you might not have the nicest phone to sit there, you know, and record what just happened.
And it's not the first thing that people think about.
I was talking to some other journalists recently, and you know, they've been wanting to cover these kinds of things as well.
And they said, but there's no, you know, it's very hard to get the evidence.
We can only go after and have people tell us what happened, but there's no visual evidence of exactly what happened.
And, you know, they were saying, the ones who had worked in Somalia, who had worked in Iraq and in Syria, you know, they said, in those places, immediately after something happens, people take out their phones and document everything and upload it online and send it to somebody.
But in Afghanistan, there's much less of that happening.
So it's very hard to get, you know, real visual evidence of what's going on and of this toll.
And this is part of how the government, both in Kabul and in Washington, can get away with saying, you know, we killed X amount of Daesh or X amount of Talib or X amount of what's the other word that they use?
There's another word that they use for any kind of anti-government force.
Insurgents.
Yeah, that's vague enough to include anyone.
Militants.
They, you know, they keep broadcasting these numbers every day and it's almost impossible to check up on that, you know.
But this is part of how you get away with it, is making sure that there's, you know, no chance at evidence.
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Hey guys, check out Listen and Think audiobooks.
They're at ListenAndThink.com and of course on Audible.com and they feature my book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as brand new Out Inside Syria by our friend Reese Ehrlich and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there.
Reese might be one exception, but essentially they're all libertarian audiobooks.
And here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to Listen and Think audiobooks.
Just donate $100 to The Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org slash donate.
And now, before I forget, who all do you write for?
Because I want to read all your stuff.
I mean, I've written for Al Jazeera, for CNN, for the New York Times, for the Los Angeles Times, for a lot of places.
Do you have an email list by any chance when you publish a new thing?
No, no, I find those kind of annoying.
I know, I do too, but I need them.
So, no, no, not so much.
I mean, you can always follow me online and you'll see that what I publish or when I speak on different television stations or radio stations.
Yeah, I'll get a Google alert for your name or something, I guess, here.
Let me make sure.
This is such great stuff.
And in fact, I'm so far over time for my next interview, I got to postpone it.
So we can keep going if you still have a minute.
Yeah.
I wonder what you think about the peace talks.
And I guess if I could just set it up a little bit, it seems like, and I know I'm oversimplifying here, I'm a Texan, what can I do?
But it seems like the Taliban pretty much rule all of the predominantly Pashtun areas.
And that maybe, like, right about now would be a great time to call time out and to have a peace where there's no point in the different sides biting off more than they can chew.
They pretty much, you know, have what, you know, more or less amounts to where they have natural power and authority anyway.
And so maybe everybody can shake hands and stop killing each other now.
And especially if America gets out of the way here, what do you think?
Again, I don't want to get into like this idea of ethnicity, because there are non-Pashtun Talibs.
There are plenty of Pashtuns.
I mean, the president is a Pashtun.
The chief executive is half Pashtun.
So this idea kind of doesn't necessarily hold water in reality.
But the Taliban control a lot of land.
Let's just put it that way.
Well, but I mean, the map doesn't lie, right?
So there are obviously people are all mixed up, you know, on an individual basis.
But in the south and the east is essentially Pashtunistan.
And that's where the Taliban are dominant mostly, right?
No, not because the north as well.
I mean, no, that's much more complicated than that.
Let's just put that aside for a minute, because that will take a long time to explain.
But in terms of the peace talks, you know, the problem with the peace talks so far is that a part of it is the government's own fault.
A, the government has not been included in it.
B, the Afghan people are not included in these talks so far.
The talks are so far directly between Zalmay Khalilzad, who doesn't really consider him an Afghan anymore, even though he was born and raised here.
But he worked for the Bush administration.
Now he works for Trump.
And he's literally only representing the interests of the United States.
And so these talks are, at this point, really only between the Taliban and the United States.
And if you look at what's constantly being discussed, it's only things that seem to favour these two sides.
You know, the Taliban want a complete foreign withdrawal.
And the US keeps going back to this ridiculous line of the Taliban can't support you know, foreign armed groups like Al-Qaeda and so on and so forth don't exist here.
Anyways, it's just a ridiculous talking point.
It doesn't add up to anything.
And so what people want are real peace talks where, you know, even if the government is unpopular, at least the government should be a part of it.
You know, there should be a way to get some level of the people themselves involved in it.
Because what's going to end up happening and what's been the fear is that, you know, Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban will decide the fate of the country.
And everyone else will be forced to sit down and accept it.
Of course, there's almost nobody in this country that's anti-peace.
You know, and everyone wants a peace.
But the question is what kind of a peace and peace at what cost?
And right now, we're in this sort of situation where there is no real information about what's being discussed, and what the potential is.
So people are constantly sort of living through these fears and these conspiracies of what the fate of the country might look like.
And obviously, you know, the talks were suspended for a while.
And now they seem to be picking up again.
And you know, the big question is, what does this peace mean?
What will it actually be?
You know, what will it include?
And how will it affect the average person's life?
Because as I said, anyone with half a brain knows that you cannot win this war on the battleground.
It's been 18 years.
Neither side is winning.
Or if you want to say maybe the Taliban has the upper hand at this point.
But the government and the US are certainly not winning.
So the only way to get over this war is to come to some kind of a negotiated settlement.
But it has to be a proper negotiated settlement that includes everybody as much as possible.
Because if the decision is left to Zalmay Khalilzad, and the Trump administration and the Taliban, then once again, the Afghan people are left out.
Yeah, but the thing is, you include all these other things and the deal never gets done.
I mean, in this case, as you were saying, the deal was supposed to be this minimal thing, where you promised to keep al Qaeda, that doesn't even exist in Afghanistan, out forever, and we'll go ahead and go.
And then that's the most you could have ever dreamed of getting these sides to agree to.
And then the reason it fell apart was because at the last minute, Trump tried to insist that the Taliban and the national unity government shake hands and make a deal when they hadn't laid any groundwork for a deal at all.
The only reason this deal was going through was because they'd excluded the national unity government, which has no interest in seeing America go whatsoever.
It may not have an interest in seeing America go.
But I think at this point, you know, the Trump administration has made it pretty clear, even the Democrats who have come to visit recently have made it clear, and in their debates, they've made it clear that they want out.
So if the unity government is being realistic, they should be thinking about, okay, if they want to leave, how are they going to leave?
And how will it not be a situation where we're left in what happened in 90s when the US, you know, pulled out after essentially ignored Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet occupation, and that led to a civil war.
I mean, just as a thought experiment, what if Donald Trump just said, forget it, deal or no deal, we're just leaving?
Or what if he made that more minimal deal with the Taliban, just keep Osama's ghost out of here, and we're fine?
And then, do you think that the Taliban and the national unity government could just hold their own talks and work things out without the United States there, or it definitely would turn into 1995 civil war again?
I don't know if it would definitely turn into like 1989, 1990.
But there's just a lot of, look, the central fear more than anything, is that these talks will only benefit the Trump administration and only the Taliban.
Do you get what I'm saying?
Like, if you?
Well, yes.
I mean, I think I'd like to send you my book.
And if you have the patience to read it, I'd like to know what you think about how wrong I am about stuff.
So I make the point in there that when America leaves, if it's now or 20 years from now, that the national government in Kabul is not going to be able to stand that we propped up a thing that essentially is doomed.
So I don't know how you can negotiate a soft landing for that, right?
At some point, you have to just quit and hope that everybody who actually lives there can figure out another way to work these things out other than trying to rely on the Americans who, as we've been talking about, have only been making things worse this whole time.
Right.
But if you start a mess, you know, you've got to figure out how to clean it up.
Well, do you?
I mean, look, it's been 18 years.
And by clean it up, that means drop bombs on everybody all the time.
You know what I mean?
So what cleaning?
We're talking about the Americans, the Donald Trump administration.
There's no cleaning.
Well, this is the question on everybody's mind is, fine, you want to deal with the Taliban, get your deal with the Taliban.
But at the same time, why aren't you legitimately properly pushing for a deal?
Also, whoever happens to be the government at the time is the government, whether they're popular or not, no matter how the Taliban feel about them.
There has to be something because at this point, you're literally just as I said, for all intents and purposes, is just an American.
There's nothing left about him anymore.
Of course.
And not only that, I mean, he's a neocon who studied with Paul Wolfowitz under Leo Strauss and Albert Wollstetter at the University of Chicago.
He's a bad guy.
No question.
You should read the things his wife publishes.
It's even worse.
But, you know, this is what's it's one of those situations where, again, the Afghan people are left out of the decision over their own country after the after the Soviet withdrawal.
You know, the Soviets completely pulled out, the U.S. completely abandoned Afghanistan.
And then we had the civil war.
And now we're in a situation where, OK, the U.S. came in 2001.
They did all of this, the good, the bad, the everything.
And they left this situation.
And then they leave again.
And now what happens?
You know, there has to be some kind of an assurance that you have a vision for what kind of deal we could be talking about.
I mean, my idea was that, you know, and and I understand that that people are all mixed up and you pretty much poured cold water all this.
But it seemed to me like the the government in the north, although it does include posthumous in the government, that the posthumous population mostly is not represented by that government and the power, the more natural power in those areas are the Taliban.
So why not just have kind of autonomy?
I'm sorry, I can't hear you, but hang on just a second.
Why not just have autonomy as much as possible for those areas?
But you're saying that the power is so mixed up and the ethnicities are so mixed up that that's moot.
So if that's if if autonomy for you guys here and autonomy for us guys here within kind of a loose confederation, if that's off the table based on those kind of ideas, soft lines, then what is the solution?
I have no idea.
I mean, I think I think the only like I said, it's clear that the only way that this war will end is through some kind of a negotiated settlement.
But it cannot be the kind of negotiated settlement where it's Washington and the Taliban making all of the decisions and 32 million other people are left to deal with the aftermath without any say in what that decision is.
Correct.
That's the problem that that's what scares people.
I understand.
Yeah, no, of course.
It's nice to think of these things in sort of like political science terms that, OK, like, you know, all the U.S. can do is pack up and leave.
And believe me, there's plenty of people in this country that want the U.S. to pack up and leave because it's only made things.
It's made people more reliant on foreign aid.
It's messed up the economy.
It's, you know, brought this hyper capitalism to the country.
It's led to more civilian casualties and, you know, corruption and fraud and these sorts of things.
But at the same time.
This mess was created somehow, some level of this mess has to be resolved.
Because if you're.
I mean, you're talking about 32 million people here who will be left with the aftermath of whatever kind of a decision.
So what the only thing Washington can do is say, OK, we'll make a deal with you.
But a condition of our deal is that you also make a deal with Kabul.
And then hopefully Kabul includes, you know, as much of the average person in one way or another.
But hasn't that been the poison pill all this time?
Because Kabul's point of view is they never want to make a deal with the Taliban if that means the Americans are going to go.
I mean, look, the reality is the Americans are in go at one point or another, and the Americans are constantly making that clear.
I'm not so sure that's true, man.
I mean, I really wish that was true, but I don't think that that's right.
I mean, the military, they have that Bagram Air Base and you'd pretty much have to drop an atom bomb on it to get them to withdraw out of there.
They're going to have.
Look, the only the only campaign promise that Donald Trump can deliver on, the only way that he can beat the Democrats at their own game at this point is to declare some level of a troop pullout from Afghanistan, some kind of a, quote unquote, mission accomplished to this war.
I agree.
But does he realize that?
I think so.
I think it's the only because he didn't get his wall.
He didn't get the trade tariffs with China properly.
He didn't get North Korea.
He didn't.
You know what?
This is like the one thing that's very easy for him to deliver on.
And it's the one thing that all of the Democrats are also saying they're going to do.
So it's if the Kabul government wakes up to some degree and understands that some kind of a deal is being made.
I mean, this this is what angered the Kabul government is that deals are being made without including them.
And I think that that's a fair reason to be angered, because you're talking about something you will be responsible for once the decision is made.
So you like supporting anti-war radio hosts.
That makes sense.
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Go to Scott Horton dot org slash donate.
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And thanks.
Hey, let me ask you this.
What's all Gulbuddin Hekmatyar up to nowadays?
Running for president.
And does he still have his own armed militia inside Kabul?
No, no, no, no.
I mean, he made a peace.
He made a peace in 2016 or 2017.
He made a peace and he came back and, you know, he got a fancy house in Kabul and he was able to run for president, which he'll lose.
But he disarmed his faction of the Hisbi Islami then?
Yeah, they're just political now.
And they're still out there in the field, but he doesn't have an armed militia with him.
I mean, when when that first happened, I had read some stuff in The Washington Post where some of the government people were saying, my God, he's acting like we surrendered to him and we let all his guys out of jail.
And now they got all these guns and we're really worried.
So that was a few years ago, though.
Right.
I mean, that's his ego, right?
That's how he's going to portray it.
But at the end of the day, he's sitting in a house in West Kabul, like making ridiculous speeches about his run for president that he's going to lose.
But he's not a threat to to try to launch a coup or anything like that?
No, nothing like that.
I mean, he'll he'll definitely try to be a political spoiler.
You know, he I mean, he keeps trying to be a political spoiler, even though he ran in this election.
Now he's saying we need an interim government.
But he's very much become a part of the political system now.
Whereas, you know, he used to have suicide bombings.
Now he just says stupid things on TV.
And this is, you know, this is sort of.
In the ideal world, when the Taliban do come back and they join in politics, you know, hopefully this is what will end up happening is that at a certain point, one of them will run for president and they'll lose the way that Hikmet Yar lost and the way that Ustad Sayyaf lost in 2014 and the way that other warlords have lost in previous elections.
You know, like join this idea of whatever semblance of democracies in Afghanistan.
And then eventually you see that you're nobody, you know, you keep losing these elections.
Which, by the way, I mean, do you do you think that there's much opportunity for that, that the Taliban could possibly agree to go ahead and participate in politics and join the parliamentary system in Kabul as it exists now?
And I guess on the other side of that, and there's a gray area in the middle here, too.
But on the other side of that, are you worried at all that they might just march on Kabul?
No, that's not going to happen.
I don't think they want that full responsibility.
Anyways, I think it's a lot of talk, but taking over the entire country, that's a lot of work.
And again, you have to remember that from 1996 to 2001, they were a pariah state.
They were completely left out.
They had no economic support.
They had no diplomatic support.
And that made them suffer even more.
There was a famine, there was droughts, you know, people were suffering, people were hungry because they were seen as, you know, I don't think they want to be seen as a pariah state anymore.
And they had a hard fight against the resistant groups at the time, too, right?
They weren't even done winning the civil war at the time America intervened in 2001.
Kind of, yeah.
And then they recently put out statements that, you know, we don't have a problem with foreign investment in this country from foreign countries, including the United States.
We just don't want their troops here, which again, it's, you know, like they keep talking about the occupation, but they're constantly killing Afghan civilians.
So I don't know exactly how they're fighting the occupation.
But the idea is, yes, that they would somehow become part of the political system.
They may get some governorships, they may get some ministries, and they would eventually be allowed to run for parliament and, you know, even for a president.
And, you know, if that happens, I think that's the best thing that can happen.
Because again, as I said, as happened with Hikmet Yara, as happened with Assad Ziaf and General Dostum and all these other warlords, you see that they don't have the popular support that they think that they do.
And they eventually slowly and slowly become disempowered and disenfranchised.
And so that's the best thing that could happen with a deal with the Taliban.
Yeah.
Is that they, again, that's like the best case scenario.
Right.
And, you know, I mean, there's the whole idea and they are just the headlines never stop confirming what bastards the Taliban are, as you say, they target and butcher civilians constantly.
And I, at the same time, though, you could say the same thing about Hikmet Yara four years ago, right?
So if he can be brought in from the cold, if General Dostum can be in the government, then hell, why not anybody?
This is what I say.
This is what a lot of people say.
And, you know, this is what I mean when people say, when I say everyone just wants a peace, because, you know, we've had communists in our government.
I mean, look at how brutal the communists were in the 70s and the 80s.
And now they've been a part of the government since the Karzai administration.
And then you had people like Dostum and Sayyaf and Hikmet Yara and these people, you know, some way or another being involved in the government and in the political system.
So now the question is, let's just bring the Taliban in and deal with them, you know, the way we've dealt with everyone else.
It's just a matter of how to make that a reality, and how to make it a reality where good or bad, whatever this government is, they're at least part of it.
Right.
Well, good luck to you, man.
Sorry, again, the context of this whole conversation is the vastly escalated air war over there.
Drones in planes, too.
Used an F-35 and an F-22 to bomb some supposed opium hut in somebody's backyard.
Things going completely crazy over there still.
And then, and also, as you pointed out, we didn't really get to talk about, the media doesn't cover this at all.
As you point out, the Pew survey of television news coverage doesn't even count Afghanistan on the list anymore, is how remote this is to the mainstream, but it's as important as it's ever been.
So.
All right.
Thank you.
Yeah, really appreciate your efforts here.
And I'd like to keep in touch with you.
I'm going to send you my book.
And if you feel like reading it, I'd be really happy to hear your criticisms if you have any, too.
But great to talk to you.
Thank you, Ali.
Appreciate it.
All right, you guys, that is Ali M. Latifi.
He is a reporter out of Kabul in Afghanistan.
And check out this important article at technologyreview.com.
Life in the most drone-bombed country in the world.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
