9/13/21 Mathieu Aikins on the Recent US Drone Strike in Kabul and Life in Afghanistan Post-Withdrawal

by | Sep 15, 2021 | Interviews

Scott interviews journalist Mathieu Aikins who has remained in Kabul to report for the New York Times. Aikins and his team recently investigated the drone strike the U.S. carried out on August 29th that officials claimed had targeted a car carrying explosives believed to be driven by a member of ISIS. However, the team from NYT found a devastating scene with the bodies of children and a distraught family claiming to have just lost ten family members. Aikins and his colleagues were able to identify the man as Zemari Ahmadi. Ahmadi worked for a California-based aid organization and was trying to get his family on a plane out of Afghanistan when he and many of his children were killed. 

Discussed on the show:

  •  “Times Investigation: In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb” (New York Times)
  • “Examining a ‘righteous’ strike” (Washington Post)
  • “The Taliban’s Fight for Hearts and Minds” (Foreign Policy)

Mathieu Aikins is an international freelance journalist currently reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan. His upcoming book is The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground. Follow him on Twitter @mattaikins.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio.

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I'm 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 the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at Scott Horton dot org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show.
All right, you guys, introducing Matthew Akins.
You longtime listeners will remember his reporting with Anand Gopal and my interview of him from, I'm gonna say, I'm almost certain 2014 about the bad election in Afghanistan that year, and then in 2000, I'm gonna say 16, he did that great report for Rolling Stone from northern Yemen from the Sada province there on the terrible air war going on against civilian targets there and all of that, and he has remained in Kabul reporting from Kabul and live tweeting from there and writing now for the New York Times, and before we get to that, I almost forgot to mention, he's got a new book coming out this coming February, his first book, The Naked Don't Fear the Water, A Journey Through the Refugee Underground, which is endorsed by Anand Gopal, which is great.
All right, and then his newest piece, and there's a couple, his latest for the New York Times is Time's Investigation, In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb, a very polite way to put it.
Welcome back to the show, Matthew.
How are you doing, sir?
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
So I mean, man, what an end to the war, huh?
Suicide attack killed 13 Americans, I think it was, wasn't it, 11 Marines, a soldier and a Navy corpsman killed in a suicide attack, and then along with, you know, another 160 something people, I believe, and then the reprisal strike against the Islamic State or, I guess, an alleged attempt to prevent another attack by the Islamic State resulted in essentially this massacre of these two innocent families here.
So it's really great work that you've done here, and I really do appreciate it very much.
I wonder if you could take us through the story.
Thank you.
Yeah, on August 29th, the U.S. announced that it struck a suspected ISIS suicide bomb, car bomb, some kind of vehicle with explosives in it.
And the next day, I went there in Kabul with a photographer who worked for the Times, Jen Hoylerbrook, and we got there to this courtyard of this house where the strike had happened.
There's this destroyed Toyota Corolla there, and a very distraught family who told us they had just lost 10 members of their family, including seven children.
We could see, you know, body parts splattered around the courtyard, but not really evidence of a big bomb that had gone off, you know, it just looked like there had been one missile strike because the walls of the courtyard were still standing and there was other visual evidence, which I'll get to later.
But what was obvious, what was very clear was that civilians' children to be killed in the strike.
So that was what we reported.
There was other media outlets that reported that that day, you know, we were confronted with the family's grief and tried to convey that as well and promised them that we'd keep investigating, which we did, you know, over the next two weeks.
I was on the ground here in Kabul and we had an amazing team in New York and elsewhere who were working, collecting various forms of evidence, analyzing photos and videos from the scene, piecing together the last day of the person who had been targeted in the strike, Zamorai Ahmadi, who, you know, again, the U.S. claims wasn't an alleged ISIS facilitator or they said that one had been targeted in the strike and he was clearly the target.
So you know, what we were finding out is that this guy was working for an American-based nutrition and education international company that was into soybean processing and food aid.
He had been there since 2006.
He was a beloved colleague that was, you know, his co-workers were heartbroken.
His boss in the U.S. was furious and heartbroken and they were all cooperating with us, telling us about his last day, the family members, too.
And it seemed to us that what the U.S. military, you know, which had been observing him through a drone the whole day, interpreted as a series of suspicious moves on behalf of ISIS, was just kind of a normal day at work and ultimately we obtained the security camera footage from his office, which was really key.
And that showed him, you know, coming and going, who was in his car and it also showed him filling up water canisters, you know, jugs of water, which he was bringing home to his family because there hadn't been water in his neighborhood since the fall of the government.
So we don't know if that maybe was what the military interpreted as explosives, but based on the analysis of the scene, videos, photographs we showed to experts, there's just no evidence of a significant secondary explosion, a bigger blast, you know, triggered by the missile strike.
And that was what the U.S. military claimed.
That's a General Mark Milley, the top, you know, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman.
He had claimed that there was evidence of that.
And he had also called it a righteous strike.
Yeah.
And, and that's important, right, that you guys, there's this video presentation that goes along with your article there at the Times website where the narrator there says that they got, I think, three different independent explosives expert.
I think, I forgot if they say exactly or imply retired military guys or professional, you know, contractors of some kind who came in and said, yeah, no, there's no secondary explosion here because all the telltale signs such as X, Y, and Z are not here.
Correct?
Yeah, that's right.
So we, we had a number of factors.
I just want to make that clear that you went there to the courtyard and you said, well, I don't see evidence of a secondary explosion, but someone might say, yeah, but what do you know about secondary explosions?
And then, but the point is that it's not just what you saw or did not see there, but also people who this is their job professionally is doing examinations of aftermaths of scenes of explosions.
And, and they said, and they all agreed the same conclusion as you, is the point.
That's correct.
And, you know, the Washington Post actually published their own investigation based on images and videos where they talked to experts and they reached the same conclusion that there wasn't evidence of a bigger bomb blast and a significant secondary explosion, and there probably wasn't explosives in the car.
Yeah.
Now, Matthew, I mean, is it's somewhat clear or is it completely clear that really what happened here was mistaken identity?
There was a Toyota Corolla that was up to something and they thought this was the one, they maybe lost track of it for a minute and picked up the wrong Corolla or is that just a supposition?
We don't know what evidence they have or, or, or, you know, don't have linking Samurai Ahmadi to ISIS.
You know, he was someone who wanted to move the United States.
He was desperately hoping to be resettled there as a refugee.
His American based company was sponsoring him and his family.
So as his family pointed out, you know, why would someone like that have a motive to commit a terrorist attack against the US?
He wanted to get on one of those planes from the airport and then be making plans to was hoping to, but we don't know what evidence they have.
I think the, the, perhaps the most like conclusive finding of the investigation is just that, you know, if, if there wasn't explosives in the car, then how could the vehicle have posed an imminent threat to us forces?
And then how could they have made a decision to take this strike in the guy's home, you know, in a crowded residential neighborhood?
They struck the car and they killed 10 people, seven of them, children.
Yeah.
And, you know, people can go and look at your Twitter feed too, and see pictures of these children and, you know, further, you know, comments by their family about what happened and all of that there too.
So, and I really appreciate that.
I mean, man, and it's brave of you to stay behind in Kabul.
We're going to talk more all about that here in a few, but, um, you know, what's, uh, something Stalin said about numbers and statistics and what have you, which is different than the picture of this beautiful little toddler whose life was torn to shreds.
You know, uh, it's, it's important to humanize these humans, I guess, as they say, right?
Yeah.
So we can mourn them.
I mean, there are thousands, tens of thousands of victims of, um, drone strikes and other, you know, bombs and missiles fired by, uh, U S aircraft since 2001.
And we only know the names and see the faces of very, very few of those, you know?
And I think if we saw more of them, maybe we wouldn't take their lives so lightly.
You know, maybe we wouldn't be so cavalier about these over the horizon counter-terrorism strikes, for example, that we're going to use now that we've withdrawn troops from Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Um, it really does say something too, doesn't it?
That this is the last thing that happened, the last two things, a suicide attack by some guys who used to work for the Afghan government and, uh, and then a reprisal or a preventative something or other type reactive strike that kills all these innocent people.
In fact, speaking of the reprisal, did anybody ever report what actually happened in Jalalabad?
Cause that was really the reprisal strike was they hit somebody there, but I never heard any followup about how many innocent people were killed in that one.
It's not, from what I've heard, only two people were killed in that strike and they may have had a connection to ISIS.
I don't know if they were actually the planners of the attack, um, but we don't have reports of civilian casualties for that strike.
But the fact of the matter is we don't really have good on the ground information.
Um, that area wasn't easy to access.
Certainly right now there's not, there's barely any reporters in Kabul and then there weren't any outside foreign reporters that is, um, at the time.
And that's really the case of the last majority strikes.
We don't have any version, but the official version.
Yeah.
And, you know, I don't know, it sounds kind of pedantic or whatever, I guess.
But you know, people have a stereotype of just, oh, these Afghan cavemen or whatever.
But if you go and look at the reporting here, look at the pictures, watch the video presentation that they do showing this guy and his family, you know, these are city folk.
They're not hillbilly Taliban from some Valley way out in the mountains somewhere, whatever.
These are civilized people who look like people in your town who you can identify with.
You know, this guy's driving a Toyota Corolla around.
How many people listening to this have ever driven around or ridden around in a Toyota Corolla?
Probably all of us at one time or another.
I know I have.
And and here he is, he's going around this guy, he works for an NGO where he literally not just some line of BS where he collects a bunch of money, but he actually his livelihood is going around delivering food and water to desperate, poor, hungry people.
And and this is the guy who got bombed to death here, him and his people, you know, not just no different than us, but maybe better than some of us, you know?
Well, I mean, I think one of the things that's notable about the strike is that it happened inside Kabul.
And, you know, there's really only something that we could have imagined very recently with the fall of Kabul, the Taliban and again, yeah, these most of these strikes took place in rural areas where people, yeah, they look like what we imagined Taliban to look like.
They look like rural Afghans, they had turbans and beards.
And so perhaps we do feel more sympathy seeing this guy because he looks more like us.
But that's a pretty troubling way of measuring the value of someone's life.
I know it.
And I'm sorry to put it that way.
I just feel like it's sort of like an act of desperation to try to get people to see because it's just a recognition of the fact rather than, you know, it's not something I'm trying to indulge, but I think you understand what I mean.
It's so easy for people to just put this out of sight and out of mind, you know?
It is.
And it's not just about, you know, feeling good or bad.
I mean, there's whole systems that work based on whether or not the consequences of these actions are, you know, something that we feel good or bad about, we feel sympathy for.
I mean, you see the same thing in the United States that some people's lives are worth more than others.
Some people, you know, are easily stereotyped as deserving what happens to them.
So that kind of calculus, there's a philosopher named Judith Butler who talks about something called grievability.
You know, some people, we can grieve more easily than others.
Some people's deaths are mourned more than others.
And she doesn't mean that like, you know, in the sense that loved ones cared more or less about them.
What she means is that, you know, publicly there's going to be more grief if, well, you know, if a banker freezes to death in a park, for example, that's going to make headline news than if a homeless person does.
And these are related to inequalities of power, right?
We have an equal society, both at home and in the world.
And Afghans, rural Afghans are some of the least powerful, poorest people out there.
Yeah.
All right.
So what more can you tell us about the innocent people who were killed here?
Well, the other, the cousin of Zemarai Nasser who was killed was a former Afghan army officer who had also worked as a contractor for the U.S. military, a security base, as a security guard in a base, sorry.
And he also had a resettlement case and was hoping to go to the U.S. and he was planning to marry his fiance earlier this month so that she could be included in his resettlement case.
And then the rest were children and then Zemarai's adult son.
So they were little kids.
I mean, you can go see the photos.
There's no way they could have deserved what happened to them.
Yeah.
And then I think I read, not from your reporting, but somewhere else that part of the story here was as he pulled into the courtyard, they had kind of a little tradition where they would let the kids drive the car all the way into the courtyard, the last few feet kind of a thing, something like that.
So that was why all the children had run out to kind of participate in this little ritual, Yeah, I mean, this strike happened in an incredibly dense, crowded residential neighborhood.
So by default, there should have been an assumption that there was a very high risk of civilian casualties of collateral damage, even if this was an ISIS facilitator, there was going to be civilian casualties if they took the shot where they did.
Yeah.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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All right, man.
So first of all, tell me about your decision to stay in Kabul.
Did you decide that long before the Taliban came or you thought, well, I don't know, 50-50, maybe I'll go to the airport, maybe I won't, or how did that all take place there?
Well, yeah, it was just a matter of staying at my post, doing the job that I needed to do, you know, pretty much most of the other news organizations, I mean, all of them did, including the New York Times, they evacuated their staff.
So I'm a freelancer, so I can make that decision for myself, and I decided to stay.
That's good.
And I guess, you know, a lot of people thought that this is going to be like the Khmer Rouge or ISIS or something where the Taliban is going to come in and start butchering everybody and it's going to be this insane sort of chaos, and I guess it hasn't been that, but what has it been?
Can you tell us?
Yeah, it's been a very strange, uncertain period.
I knew that the Taliban, I mean, I believed that the Taliban were going to come in and start killing everyone, because the Taliban want power, and they understand that the way to get power now is to get people to cooperate with them, and they've been spreading that message well before Kabul fell, you know, they're saying we're going to win, but when we do that, we're going to forgive you, and if you work with us, and if you don't, you know, resist, we'll forgive you, which is, you know, a very rational thing to do if you want power.
That made sense to me, and that's basically what they've done.
There hasn't been any mass killings or mass persecutions, there's been a lot of false reports that have spread, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been, you know, pretty serious incidents.
There were some journalists who were detained and beaten viciously for covering protests, local journalists.
The airport was a tremendously violent scene, but that can't really be blamed on the Taliban as much as the internationals who made a complete disastrous mess of it, and were relying on the Taliban basically to provide security and keep Afghans who were desperate to escape from rushing the airfield.
But we don't really know in these early days, you know, we don't really know what's going to happen, what the Taliban are going to do once they consolidate power.
But I do think it's important to wait, withhold judgment, and see, I think we have to cover them objectively, we have to call it like we see it.
And there was, and has been, I think, a rush to judgment about what they're going to do.
It doesn't mean it's not a very dangerous, very sinister situation in many ways.
Now, so there's been a couple pictures floating around, and I hadn't really tracked it down to the source or whatever, but it's all these women dressed completely in black, where their entire faces are covered, they got these crazy hoods, it looks like something out of science fiction or something.
And someone, I guess there was one picture where there's one woman in the group who refused, she has her, you know, the top of her head covered.
But otherwise, she's refusing to go along with this, and this auditorium full of women.
This is at the university now?
Is that really right?
Yeah, Scott, that's quite a curious incident, event that is now surrounded by a maelstrom of controversy and misinformation.
So I don't know if we can really unpack all the layers there.
I will say this, that this is a kind of a staged event, you know, they bust these women in from somewhere, dressed up like this.
Oh, so this is like a protest, in other words.
It seemed like a very canned event, there was lots of Taliban guarding them, journalists weren't allowed, I didn't go there myself, I had a colleague with there.
And he couldn't get close, no one could get close to talk to these women, find out who they really were, or if they were really women.
I assume they're women.
You know, there are women who dress like that, the style of clothes they're wearing is very much imported from the Middle East, it's kind of, you know, you see it more like Saudi Arabia.
But Saudi Arabia has been funding a lot of mosques and stuff here for a while.
Through the cooperation of people in the Afghan government.
And so there is this ideology or this kind of aesthetic as well.
But so in other words, though, this is not, you know, the women of Kabul have been ordered that they better all start dressing like this, too, kind of thing.
No, no, no, this is a group of women who had, who were brought, you know, whether they were hired to do this, whether they were voluntary, I mean, But they were brought there by the Taliban, you're saying, not, they weren't protesting the Taliban.
They were there for some kind of stunt by the Taliban, but it's not clear what their point was.
They were there in support of the Taliban.
And the woman who was, I don't know about the woman who was not wearing it, I mean, she might have been a journalist who was there, I'm not exactly sure.
I know there's some fake photoshopped images that went around that event.
That, you know, that's such a complicated issue.
The fact of the matter is, is that most women in Afghanistan, especially in rural areas, do wear, you know, some kind of covering hijab, they call it, which may cover the face as well.
That's that's just pretty much standard for conservative.
Although, I mean, in the picture, I saw the hoods that they're wearing stick out so far.
You know what I mean?
It looks like a costume from some extras in Star Wars or something like that, where it's like, this is ridiculous, you know, but maybe that was the point.
I don't know.
Well, it's much more intense than the burqa.
Yeah, well, yeah, that which is, you know, absurd in its own way.
And I know from talking with your colleague Anand Gopal in the past that that's not the Taliban's invention.
That's just, you know, out in the countryside in Pashtunistan.
That's how they've done it for a very long time.
I don't know exactly for how long, but certainly predating the Taliban.
Yeah, that's, that's right, it predates the Taliban.
All right, now, so I guess it was announced, you know, the form of the new government, do I have it right that all but one of them were Pashtun members, you know, kind of OG Taliban guys from a long time ago from the south and the east, and that all the Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras, which were essentially excluded.
And then I guess that was announced, first of all, that's a question, supposed to be a question.
But then also, this is supposedly an interim government, and they're working on it.
So maybe there's an opening there for further integration of these now sort of subject populations.
Yeah, this is, yeah, there were a couple of Tajik and Uzbek members in the group.
But it was basically the kind of hardcore, I think hardcore is the right way, just the core of the Taliban, and it was the senior membership.
And I think this is a group that they came up with, really, because this movement prizes above all else, unity.
So this was a unity government for the Taliban, they picked the senior figures that everyone would rally around.
And that makes sense for them, I think, and they need to stay unified right now.
They have some really very serious challenges up ahead, governing the country in the face of a humanitarian financial crisis, being top of that list.
But whether or not, you know, this is a means to an end of an ultimately more inclusive government, you know, that does, yeah, bring in other parts of society, people outside the Taliban, that remains to be seen, that was clearly not what happened here.
But again, I think this is more recognition of the reality of what's happening right now, which is the Taliban have seized power, and they need to unify themselves and kind of govern immediately in the face of pressing challenges.
And the bigger conversation about what kind of future system and who's going to be in it will come down the road, if it comes at all.
You know, I read this thing by Ashley Jackson back two or three years ago now, I think, where she has spent all this time there and talked about how one of the inventions of Hakanzada after Mansoor was killed, you know, Hakanzada became the new Mullah or whatever, the top dog.
And that he had this policy like kind of Maoist People's War, not that Petraeus could ever figure this out, but where instead of blowing up everything that the Americans had built, they just wanted to take it over.
And they just came in and said, the Americans built a school, we'll just appoint the principal, they created a police force, we'll just make sure our guy's the chief.
And this kind of, you know, tactic across or strategy across the country.
And it included a lot of integrating, I think, even Hazaras, I say that because they're Shiites and so further on the outs, I guess.
But definitely Tajiks and Uzbeks and bringing some of them in and saying, hey, you're good enough Muslims for us and we're not Pashtun chauvinists, we're Muslim chauvinists and you guys are welcome to join our team and be part of it.
And that this was their smart tactic, right?
You can't just wage war against everybody, ask ISIS in Iraq, they're gone.
So this is apparently working, but it seems like only up to a point here, or I guess they could appoint other people to lower positions in the government and keep all the very chief positions at the top for themselves, I guess.
But I don't know, it would be interesting to see how this plays out.
I guess it's still very early.
Yeah, I mean, clearly their strategy has been successful so far.
Yeah.
Well, okay, so can you give us an update on, I know you haven't been exclusively covering this or anything, but you must have a better word than me on what's going on in the Panjshir Valley, if they're still fighting or surrenders or, and I'm curious about where's General Dostum and Mohammed Atta Noor and, you know, these various other kind of notoriously anti-Taliban warlords now.
Well, Dostum I think is in Turkey, if I'm not mistaken.
I honestly don't know where Dostum and Atta are right now.
I know Atta resurfaced in Uzbekistan initially.
So they're not part of what's going on in the Panjshir Valley there?
No, the ones that stuck around were Amrullah Saleh, who was the vice president from Panjshir, and Ahmad Massoud, who is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the famous anti-Taliban commander.
So they have gone to ground, there's rumors that they're now in Tajikistan.
And the Taliban have captured the main population centers of Panjshir, including the provincial capital, Bazarak, it's a small valley.
And the rebels, what remains of them have kind of, I think, gone up into the high valleys and are perhaps carrying out a low level guerrilla war.
But Taliban are in control of the main valley.
And there are reports, there's lots of, the interesting thing about, one interesting thing about the whole Panjshir thing, which got a lot of international media attention, despite it being a very small province, was the incredible amount of fake news that surrounded it.
Despite disinformation being spread, a lot of it by pro-Panjshir resources, Indian media was really going and getting quite worked up over it.
They were playing clips from a video game, reporting that it showed Pakistani fighter jets over Panjshir.
So there was a lot of confusion and fog of war.
And that has not helped our understanding of what is actually happening on the ground there now.
There are reprisal killings.
I'm sure there must be some reprisal killings.
That's just been a characteristic of this war on both sides for a while.
But if there's any kind of wide scale scorched earth or massacres, anything like that, we don't know.
We don't have evidence.
We haven't been able to get in yet.
Taliban are saying it's still a war zone, it's not ready, but we're going to try to follow it up.
And the fact of the matter is the Taliban have allowed international media to operate in Kabul.
So there are more and more journalists coming back.
And that will mean that this kind of stuff will get, I hope, uncovered if it's happening.
But we just have to wait and see.
All right.
Now, before we have to get on the ground and do it now.
So Hamid Karzai, the former president, has announced this sort of triumvirate with Abdullah Abdullah and with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
And they're supposedly trying to, I guess, grease some skids for integration of former regime people with the new government in some kind of way.
Do you know anything about if they're making, if they're having any effect on this or if they're still just sitting on the outside?
I mean, it seems like Hekmatyar is already pretty good friends with the Taliban.
Any?
Not, not really.
I wouldn't say no.
No, he was, you know, an enemy of theirs previously during their old government.
Well, yeah, but he but but didn't his be Islami fight with the Afghan Taliban against the Americans for most of the last 20 years?
They made common cause in some areas.
They also fought each other in other areas.
Eventually Hekmatyar came over to join the current government a lot.
Most of the people still wanted to fight.
You know, obviously they joined the Taliban, I think some joined ISIS.
The former power brokers, to my, from what I've seen, have not made a lot of headway in getting included.
And they're not super popular among the Afghan population.
I would say they have more support from outside, from, you know, the West, maybe not Hekmatyar, but people like Karzai, you know, when the West talks about inclusive government or neighboring countries talk about inclusive government.
One of the things they could mean is including some of the characters that we used to fund in your new government so that we have a stake, too.
And I think that would be a mistake because the people's corruption are the reason why this whole mess.
One reason why this whole mess reached the point that it's at, I hope, I hope inclusiveness will mean, you know, bringing in people who are representative of a broader segment of society.
And we just have to wait and see.
It's early days.
So.
Well, I am very curious what you think about the possibility of the Americans trying to continue to work with the Taliban against ISIS or possibly even in favor of the East Turkestan Islamic movement or things like that in the future here.
Well, I'm not sure about the East Turkestan Islamic movement, but counterterrorism is definitely one of the main potential points of cooperation or conflict with the Taliban and the West, the U.S.
Now the Taliban are in power.
They have much less incentive to work with and tolerate groups like al-Qaeda, you know, who they were definitely making alliances with at various levels, especially tactical to fight the Americans.
Now the Taliban have to govern the country.
So I don't think they're going to be quite so interested in having those groups around.
So that's one area of cooperation.
I think humanitarian, the humanitarian crisis this country is facing right now has been a drought, a record drought this year.
People are going to starve this winter if humanitarian agencies can't get on the ground and just feed people.
Financial crisis, you know, Afghanistan was dependent on aid money for so long.
So people are in desperate straits financially.
Migration is another area, you know, I think Germany is already talking about bringing its embassy back and I think places like, countries like Germany, the Europeans will be very eager to prevent flows of Afghan refugees coming.
So these are all potential areas that the West could cooperate with the Taliban.
The Taliban, if they're capable of it, you know, of showing reforms, of showing that they're moderate, of showing that they're willing to try to govern the country inclusively, but in return get some help on that and we could avoid a looming catastrophe of this country.
But I'm very worried.
I think Afghans, as much as they've suffered for the past 40 years, are facing perhaps one of the most frightening and difficult times.
Yeah.
I mean, that's such an important point, right, that they are facing the worst kind of economic depression with the suspension of whatever percent, it must be the super majority percent of all the foreign aid that they've been getting now with the end of the war or the end of the American, you know, occupation there.
So I don't know what all their markets are doing, but they must be all, you know, crashing.
So and then, I'm sorry, on that ETIM thing, I don't know much about it.
You're in a much better position to learn than me.
I know that.
But I do know that the Trump government bombed them, the military bombed them in 2018, but then Pompeo took them off the terrorist list.
And that to me is suspicious.
That's all I got.
But it seems like something to try to keep our eye on, you know.
For sure.
Well, it's great talking to you, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for doing the show, Matthew.
I love your work.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APSradio.com, Antiwar.com, ScottHorton.org, and LibertarianInstitute.org.

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