08/24/16 – Bette Dam – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Beta Dam.
She is a journalist writing out of Afghanistan, at least most of the time here.
She's the author of the book A Man and a Motorcycle, How Hamid Karzai Came to Power, and right now she's working on a biography of the late Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
Welcome to the show.
How are you?
Thank you.
I'm fine.
How are you?
I'm doing really good.
I appreciate you joining me on the show.
I'm sorry I haven't been reading you all along here, but I sure am glad that Anand Gopal recommended your work to me.
I've been learning a lot here, Googling around for the past couple of days and reading some of what you've been writing.
I guess the most important part to start with would be the reason that Anand and I were talking about you in the first place was he was saying you were the one who really had the story on the last years of Mullah Omar's life.
That would be the last 15 years of him, or 13, 14, somewhere around there.
I guess, I don't want to steal your thunder or whatever, but you have a surprise for us, I think, compared to what most people thought they knew about what Mullah Omar has been up to ever since the regime change in Kabul back in 2001.
Yeah, true.
So it's been part of a very long research.
The story of Mullah Omar is not easy to get, not so much because Afghanistan was terribly difficult to travel in, but it was just because after 9-11 there was hardly any trust, or how to say, like there was hardly any contact with the Taliban, with the journalists and the Taliban, but also with others.
So there was a new territory.
And I also started off with the idea that Mullah Omar was in charge all the time, and he had the most wanted of Afghanistan, a terrorist linked to Al-Qaeda, friends with Osama Bin Laden, all those assumptions I knew and I started with when I tried to know a little bit more about him.
But it was this Karzai book that made me think, and that I thought, hey, do we actually, do we as the West, do we as the USA government, who is in the lead in Afghanistan, know what's going on with the Taliban?
Do we not, without having contact with them, assume too much?
So that's why I started talking to them, and I tried to find Mullah Omar.
I asked around in the south of Pakistan and south of Kandahar.
And one of the outcomes of what I will write down is that we did exaggerate his role in a very questionable way.
We did make him far, far more bigger as an enemy than we should have.
The enemy we portrayed in the media, but also in the press releases from our armies, from the Western armies, was wrong, basically.
And now, so Anand had reported back in 2010 about this letter from basically all of the leadership, I think, of the Taliban, except for Mullah Omar.
And he said that they all had permission from him to go ahead and do this.
And it was basically the letter of complete capitulation.
I've seen in your journalism where you refer to this as well, where they really offered to recognize the Karzai government and disarm, and they were told not good enough.
But I guess the real scoop here then is that Mullah Omar was never the boss of the Taliban, at least insurgency, again after that.
He just went home and that was it.
This is two major points you're making.
By understanding the fact that Mullah Omar was not so important and hardly was active in the Taliban post 9-11 until the claimed death of him recently, that is only, you can only understand that when you understand this early days of post 9-11.
And exactly as what you say, I think it's a shame, it's a shame Anand and I only write about the fact that all these individuals of the Taliban, including Mullah Omar, Mullah Brother, Mullah Obaidullah, all the names, if you Google them you will find them as the most wanted and terrorist and all that stuff.
They were sitting at home after 9-11, which is news that is important.
And I'm, this year you're interviewing me in a year where it's 15 years ago after 9-11.
So in a week or two from now it's 9-11 again and I will try to write again what happened with the enemy in 2001.
Why did they surrender?
And why did Karzai, I talked to Karzai himself about this, give the amnesty to the Taliban?
That's extremely important to understand the current situation, they understand Afghanistan and to understand why we are not winning in Afghanistan.
And it was just hubris then, right?
Why would we deal with the Taliban?
We just whooped them.
Yeah, true.
Why would you deal with the Taliban?
You would have dealt with him if you would have known why they let Osama Bin Laden in the country.
And that is also important.
Why did Mullah Omar not ask, in the end, not ask Osama Bin Laden to leave Kandahar, to leave his country, while the U.S. asked for it several times and pressed and put sanctions on his regime and whatnot.
And that is an important question to understand at the day of 9-11.
There are so many questions unanswered.
Did Mullah Omar know about 9-11?
Do you know?
Did he know?
I doubt that he knew specifically about it, although, I mean, his ambassador Motlake had warned that an attack was coming and that the Americans needed to do something.
I don't know if they knew the specifics.
I doubt it.
Yeah.
But Motlake, or however you pronounce it, he certainly did try to warn them.
Yeah, there was, I think, there's an individual here and there who was informed.
But the relationship between Mullah Omar and the Arab Osama Bin Laden, who was not from Afghanistan, was never good from the beginning.
So it was a difficult situation with the two of them.
There was the famous American reporter, Arnaud de Bourghrave from UPI.
He knew a lot of these leaders from back in the 80s, from the Reagan years days.
And he interviewed Mullah Omar in August of 2001 or July 2001, just six weeks or so, seven or eight weeks, maybe, before the 9-11 attack.
And Mullah Omar was clearly seething with resentment against Osama Bin Laden and said, you know, for one thing, denounced Osama's authority to issue religious rulings of any kind, saying he didn't do the 12 years and the 12-step program to be a proper Mullah or whatever, to be able to make these pronouncements.
And he said Osama was like a chicken bone stuck in his neck.
He couldn't swallow him or spit him out.
So for him to say that to an outsider like de Bourghrave, to an American, is he was clearly very angry with the position that Bin Laden was putting him in at that point.
Yeah, and for the Americans to fail to take advantage of that at that point is just unforgivable.
It was difficult to fail.
There was hardly any communication with the Taliban.
I talked to the ambassadors from the U.S. at the time who were present in the region and they have fixed opinions about what was happening.
They were they were sure that Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar was actually one.
You also see that a lot in the communication.
Well, there was a tremendous amount of differences.
Also, don't forget, who is the Taliban?
Why was Mullah Omar not joining the international jihad of Osama Bin Laden?
It was clear that Osama Bin Laden was angry at the U.S. because of their Saudi policies.
And why did Mullah Omar not join?
For them, it's to understand who the Taliban is.
Why?
What is their ideology?
Who are they?
Why do we not?
Have an eye for the nuance.
If we talk about terror, that is the biggest threat these days to put it all together, to make ISIS and to have Taliban and to have al Qaeda.
There's so many differences.
And if you know the differences, they become human and you can sort of deal with them.
And at least you have an understanding that might lead to dealing with them some way in one way or the other.
And that was my biggest surprise in the last couple of years of one after the other misunderstanding of who they are and why why they are fighting now.
So, yeah, the book about Mullah Omar is definitely not only about Mullah Omar anymore.
It's about us.
It's about how we see the current terror threat, how we trying to see and make it every time terrorism in in a sort of almost in a sort of we are obsessed with we are obsessed with calling attacks in Afghanistan, which is an extremely tribal society with lots of different interests.
We continuously say, no, no, no, there are no differences.
It's all that's good and that's bad.
And the bad Taliban and we need to kill them.
I just don't understand why that is not changing, because that is why we lose.
And I'm not saying it's good or bad.
I think it's just wrong to see the the current situation and the history of Afghanistan in this way.
And yeah, I don't know.
I'm surprised I have a tremendous lot of fun, too, with this book, because I learned so many new things that's not in the media, that is not in the press releases.
And I do more and more understand terrorism now, and I would not call Afghanistan a terroristic country anymore.
I don't do that in my book because I don't think it is.
So lots of bold statements from this Dutch journalist, but I hope you do understand a little bit what I'm talking about.
Sure.
Yeah, no, I mean, you're saying you're talking about an insurgency against an occupation and you're saying it's worthwhile to parse the difference between that and, you know, terrorist strikes like Al-Qaeda attacking American civilian targets with American civilian airliners and this kind of thing.
This is Red Dawn just for them.
And we're the Reds.
Exactly.
They're the Wolverines.
Yeah.
So it's good to leave your ideology of of this war on terror, but also that the attacks are anti-Western.
You should leave that behind.
You should leave it behind when you enter Afghanistan and you should leave it also behind.
I'm afraid to say when you leave, go to Syria and Iraq, where I worked before.
The countries are like full of families and clans and tribes.
This is a sort of post-colonial blah blah for many Western analysts right now, but it's extremely important.
And they if you need to know them and you need to know why they support you one day, the one day they support you and the next day they don't.
They see us Westerners as a tool to use for their personal gains.
They survive.
They have no state.
They haven't had a state for a long time, not in Iraq, not in Syria.
There's dictatorships, there's unrest, there is civil war, but there's only one thing and that is the tribe, the family.
And that's the orientation point.
And if you want to enter as if you're the Soviets or the British long, long time ago in Afghanistan or now, the Americans and their NATO allies, you need to be aware that you are not you, you know how this system works.
That prevents that allies they chose in 2001, meaning Hamid Karzai and the governors of Kandahar, you should not see them as a governor or a president.
You should see them as a tribal leader.
Why is Karzai sending you often to a certain area in Kandahar to sort of attack a certain enemy in 2009?
Why is the governor, Abdul Razik, sending you to Helmand in a certain area to a certain group of people?
Why is he doing that?
He says it's Taliban because he knows how to speak your language.
But in the meantime, there's so much more important in his mind.
And that is gaining resources, having the power, securing your future.
So I've seen too many times that the Westerners who fly in and out, six months, five months missions, go to the governor in Helmand or go to the governor in Herat and say, where is the Taliban?
The soldiers did that again and again and again.
And you see the governors looking at them, knowing much better and also being able, because the Westerners cannot cross or do not cross check this information often, they just manipulate them.
It doesn't mean the Afghan leader is a bad man.
It doesn't mean the Westerner is doing wrong.
It's just that they are not prepared.
You cannot go in Herat or in Kandahar, fly in, think there's terror everywhere.
You ask where the terrorists are and you start fighting.
It's definitely the recipe for the current chaos we have in Afghanistan.
So, yeah, I think we should leave that blueprint of a war on terror behind and try to look, what is the game the Afghans play?
Can we do that also?
And and how can we benefit from that?
All right now, so there's so much to go over here and especially, you know, you mentioned the Helmand province and it's in the news that an American got blown up by an IED there yesterday and then this morning they announced they're sending more troops to Helmand province.
And yet this thing has never been really pacified and under the control of even American allies.
And now they're saying that virtually the entire province, less the capital city of Lashkar Gah, is already under the control of the Taliban at this point.
So unless they're sending the whole Marine Corps back, which never made a difference in the first place back in 2010, then what are they even doing?
What do they think they're doing down there?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
And I do miss that question when I hear the reports yesterday and today with an like an announcement that the troops fly in again to Helmand without the extra question like, OK, but we've done that for 15 years already and it's not going into the direction we wanted to go.
Shall we have a strategic pause here maybe?
Shall we just keep our breath, look at Helmand and see what's going on in the field?
Who's playing the cards there?
Make it just as if the US is not doing this, as if there is no map in Kabul of the Helmand tribal leaders.
And I am afraid that there is not.
There is a different attitude of seeing it as a black and white, that the Taliban is indeed taking over, that the governors are gone, the district leaders are gone and that we need to fight them.
And I think.
I would like to have another look at Helmand.
And see if we can prevent the soldiers to come and see if there is in this extreme big chaos, because it's so difficult now after 15 years of the wrong recipe for the for the sick country, so to say, if you keep on doing that, it's a big chaos.
So it's also not so easy anymore as it was in 2004 and 5, where we said you probably need to just lay down your arms, find out if you know who is who.
Why is person X fighting the other one?
Why is he doing that?
And that well, although, you know, asking Americans or the you know, the Westerners to try to figure this out in the first place, I really all you're illustrating is that that's asking the impossible, that this whole thing is a fool's errand, because no, they're not going to figure out.
They have an infer.
You know, you are a good enough journalist and I guess a solitary enough one that you can go to Helmand and spend enough time and ask these questions and get real answers.
And you can kind of solve your own information problem to a degree.
But for any combination of militaries from the West to come to Afghanistan and figure out whether these two tribal leaders are simply fighting over a poppy patch or.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Or which boy they want to rape or whatever their problem is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, this is just it's absolutely insane to think that that somehow the mission is the Americans getting Helmand right.
I mean, it's just illustrates the how it basically cannot be.
And, you know, I'm curious, too, because you keep saying you're totally right, obviously, about and this is something I've always wondered.
And I never really knew who knew the answer to this.
The Americans always, of course, say that anyone fighting against them, I guess they'll say the Haqqani Network or a little bit of Hekmatyar's guys.
But mostly they say any resistance, any insurgent resistance against the occupation or against the Afghan government is the Taliban.
And I wonder, I mean, to what degree is that even true?
Could you put a percentage on the Afghan insurgency that actually is the Taliban as opposed to and I know that it's been 15 years ongoing kind of thing here.
So it changes.
But are there other major groups that are being omitted?
Or is it just that what we're really talking about are the men of the neighborhood and they're not really part of the Taliban or anything else at all?
They're just armed people defending their territory just as anyone else would.
Yeah, this is for me the such an important question.
Also, when I lived there in Afghanistan, every explosion and every dead person, I was wondering who's behind it.
I first, when I started in Afghanistan, I did a little area in the south only that I had, I could go everywhere with the car.
So it was a little bit doable to find out if there was a suicide bomber in the tea house killing a certain person.
Why that happened?
It was easy for me.
It was doable in the sense that I had access to information and the Afghans knew.
They knew immediately like, oh, but Mr.
Mohammed Jan is dead.
Oh, yeah.
Well, two years ago, he killed the nephew of Abdullah in Derawood.
And then the other way around, the wife of Mohammed Jan, who's killed now, you know, like that tit for tat going on all the time.
That suicide bomber in the tea house ended up in the Western media, by the way, as a Taliban attack.
Which is something that is simply not true.
That means that if you continue doing that, the Taliban becomes in the media extremely big, but it doesn't exist in the field.
It's so much more complex.
So, yes, I tell my colleagues, journalists, I would love to have a team of journalists who, with maybe only the bigger explosions, just pause a little bit.
Don't report and think twice.
Who is behind here?
Don't let...
I don't want to be fooled with my work.
I want to do it right.
So I need to take time.
And I really hope we can at some point, we can maybe select 20 old attacks where American soldiers died, Dutch soldiers died, Afghans died, and to have another look in it and see who was really behind it.
And I think you will be extremely surprised by the enemy and the diverse picture you will get, meaning that black and white picture did not exist and meaning that sometimes how sad the Western soldiers who died did not die for the ideological war against terrorism.
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So, yeah, right, I mean, and this is the thing, I mean, with the Taliban being obviously a religious movement in the first place, it's become so easy.
And when the Americans from the beginning, of course, as you said, conflated Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as though they were one thing in the first place.
And now, hell, they're willing to conflate Iran and Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and the and anybody they don't want is they're all just radical Islam, whatever.
But that that denies without even mentioning the fact it denies even the possibility that these people are simply fighting for their homeland and they do the same thing if they were Buddhists, just as the Vietnamese did when they were Buddhists.
Exactly.
I'm also saying in my book that the conflict in Afghanistan and also a little bit in Syria and Iraq is not so much about Islam.
It is much more about private interests and the political interests of the private interests surviving and and looking for the day for tomorrow.
What are we going to do?
Who are we going to work with?
With a bunch of Islamic leaders that studied the Koran school, who are based on the other side of the border, which calls themselves the Taliban.
Do we have a leader?
Do we connect with tribal leader Ahmad Zai, who's also in Pakistan, but who has a big field of poppy and he can offer some, you know, every day you make these calculations or do you work with the president?
The president is just one of the components of resources, as it is the Americans, as are others.
So it's not so difficult.
It's really Afghanistan is not so difficult to understand, but you just need to to like to have the will to do that and leave behind, like you say, the generalization, which is so dangerous, because like you say, we do tend to make it all one.
And that's very dangerous.
And I think the troops need a very clear enemy.
They're black and white because otherwise troops cannot operate.
But it doesn't exist.
So if I hear Trump nowadays talking about how he would like to solve the situation in the Middle East and maybe also in other countries like Afghanistan, I understand that he wants to say, oh, we just send troops because it will solve the problem.
I do understand the mechanism behind it, but it will only increase the problem.
It will not solve it.
I understand and I agree with Trump that there is a big problem.
There's a lot of insecurity.
There's no state in Iraq.
There's no state in Syria.
There's no state at the moment in Afghanistan.
Extremely dangerous.
But sending in more troops to kill certain individuals every day is not the solution.
The solution is much more difficult.
I always say sending troops is the easiest thing to do.
Get them together, get them in the airplane, go to the forward operating bases and start shooting, basically.
I do not mean it as not respectful to the army, but that is how it works.
I do think if you go to the forward operating base, you take down the walls and you're trying to establish connections with people, you try to establish and make contact and you have a political diplomatic way of getting the groups a little bit into the same direction.
I know it sounds almost naive and I do think that the troops should stay around as a sort of fireman in case your negotiations are not going very well.
I do need troops in that case, for example, just only as a last resource.
But now, for example, there's a little ISIS threat in Syria, sorry, in Afghanistan.
If you follow that, there's one claim here and there last year, you see an immense response of the US army that is disproportionate and it will create more unrest in Nangarhar.
Since January 2015, the US is constantly involved in fighting in Nangarhar.
That is not without a result.
In a very cynical way, you can say that if the US troops continue doing this, they create an enemy in Nangarhar and its enemy doesn't matter if it's ISIS or Taliban, you create unrest and you create, yeah, you create hopelessness for these people.
And I'm very, very, I'm very also disappointed that also in Kabul that the US army is not at some point thinking like this, the drones might not work.
Why do we keep on sending them?
Yeah, and I think we need to have the strategic pause soon and reconsider.
All right, now, let me let me be a little bit cynical here about, yeah, about the peace and negotiations and all that.
Yeah.
And I don't favor military escalation in any way as an alternative, by the way.
But it seems to me like if I was, you know, the leadership of the Taliban, you know, or whatever's left of them.
I did read one thing that said that the new guy was at one point even a mentor to Mullah Omar and commands a lot of respect and is helping to unify the Taliban in a way that Mansoor, who the US just drone striked a couple of months ago, could not do.
But even even if it was still Mansoor and kind of a less tight coalition of Taliban fighters, I don't see why they would come to the table and bargain at all.
Isn't time on their side that some someday, somehow, at some point, the North Americans are going to finally bug off and then they'll be able to deal with the Taliban or with the so-called national unity government in Kabul on their own terms.
And they're in the catbird seat.
Why would they come to terms with Ghani and Abdullah's government now when all they have to do is not lose, which they've been doing a really good job of not losing this whole time?
Yeah, I do think that you make a mistake.
By saying they as if there is a very well-organized Taliban at the moment sitting ready to take over.
OK, that's absolutely not the case.
The internal divisions of tribes is in the government of Afghanistan.
It's everywhere.
And it's also in the Taliban.
Mansoor, for example, the man, the leader who was killed by the US drone not so long ago, was a very big tribal leader and he was basically only favoring his East Aksai tribe.
You see how he slowly, slowly, slowly appointed his own people in crucial positions, not only in in little districts, but also very much in Helmand, too.
And you see how his tribe is connected to routes that are related to drugs.
So ideology and Mansoor, I think I wouldn't see it as such a strong leader in the sense of the Taliban, we think he is.
So you don't have an easy insurgency organized.
You can call them and you say, OK, come to the table.
That's also very difficult for them.
It's just totally divided on all sides.
And that's why it's so in other words, you think, is it possible then that the Kabul government could break off one or the other tribe and negotiate some kind of peace with the Taliban instead of trying to just continue to resist them violently this whole time?
Yeah, yeah, I think so, too.
I think it's just the Kabul government needs a lot of diplomatic assistance to do that.
They have a lot of people at the moment sitting and as ministers that act as militias with their own guys in black and weapons driving through Kabul as if they are kings.
They don't want to share.
They also don't want to share power.
So they need a lot of guidance and assistance and courage to change and to get together with others who drive in the same cars, but who call themselves Taliban in the south of Kandahar.
Yeah, I think that that's the most difficult part for peace.
But I think killing either the minister or his militia or the guy in south of Kandahar is not a solution.
It will not bring the people together in the hope that they can share.
But I do understand that if you continue tomorrow and you stop and have a ceasefire in Afghanistan, let's pretend you have that.
It's very difficult because there's so many groups you deal with.
But let's pretend you have that.
Then the real dangerous game is starting.
How to let all these people share.
And we are not ready for that as the West.
I think there is, as I was in Washington not so long ago to talk with people from the State Department and the Pentagon.
There is no roadmap for that.
It doesn't exist.
So we only can think in military at the moment, which I from the moment I entered Afghanistan as a journalist was extremely disappointed in.
As a political scientist, I thought we can do more.
But the war on terror is a military game.
And it's difficult for many people in Washington to leave that behind.
But I think we need to think about the roadmap without weapons and to see if we can make deals in the sense of sharing and that we can sort of establish a little government that can provide services here and there, because that's what the people also want in Kabul.
Well, but doesn't, you know, having American and Western forces and money stay there, isn't that a moral hazard as far as, you know, helping the government in Kabul to not compromise?
Because at the end of the day, they're still protected by American fire.
And so wouldn't they have much more incentive to go ahead and work out a deal that could possibly even last into the future if they did not have this foreign backing propping them up?
Yeah, that's also was interesting to see that Ghani continuously is one of the main defendants of more troops in Afghanistan.
He in every press conference, he's saying we need more troops.
We need to have the Americans here with me because we need to defend our ideals.
We need to defend the ideology of the pro-Western democratic government.
That's all the language Washington wants to hear.
But of course, Ghani will, if the military will definitely leave and there's no other plan for filling the gap that will come, Ghani will be gone from tomorrow on.
There will be no life for him.
There's so many enemies at the moment on other sides and all sides.
So Ghani is also accused of making up an ISIS attack for that reason, because he can say there's ISIS in Nangarhar, so the U.S.
Army is like a pothole.
Think, oh, then we need to send more troops.
And Ghani has his troops.
You think that's right, that that he's invented the Islamic State threat in Afghanistan?
I think, no, I don't think it's invented.
But too many times in Afghanistan, leaders, also Karzai, also Ghani, make up an attack as if it's Taliban or if it's ISIS.
It's nothing new.
And you're talking about attacks that they themselves have have done, or they just blame whichever random bombings on whoever they want.
Yeah, yeah, they blame it easily.
And this Ghani that Ghani claimed it was ISIS is reported on in the local media that it was a sort of way of gaining more troops.
It was just Ghani is super afraid, which is understandable.
And so it's a it that then, yeah, it's in his interest to have the troops.
But it's not for Afghanistan, in my opinion, the long term solution.
For for the country, I know, let me ask you this, you know, I read that they've got a peace deal where they're working on a peace deal with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar now, and I know that part of his party has actually been in the government for a while.
There has been Islami and all that.
But he's talking about bringing 20,000 families, which I guess includes the male heads of household to Kabul from a refugee camp where they're currently in Pakistan and and bringing their guns with them.
And I wonder whether you think that's peace or whether that's just a Trojan horse to let a madman like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar into Kabul with all those men.
It sounds like he could just be the, you know, kind of a forward special forces group clearing the way for, you know, other forces to come and back them up and sack the city.
Yeah, definitely, because there's an unstable government at the moment.
So it's very shaky in Kabul.
The Hekmatyar has lost a lot of reputation.
There are desperate refugees on the border.
The situation is very serious of Pakistan, who wants to throw these Afghans out and Afghans are afraid to go back into Afghanistan.
So Hekmatyar can easily find 20,000 refugees, no problem, including the weapons.
The fact that he's saying he has a deal now is interesting.
It's positive, but there is a deal in a sort of very unstable situation with a government that has no...
I mean, maybe it will work, but it is also possible that history shows us that tomorrow Hekmatyar says, no, I'm against you.
And then that's not a firm government that can stand up with its army and the police and say, no, no, back off Hekmatyar, we are the strongest here, we are leading the country.
That situation doesn't exist.
In that sense, it's dangerous.
And so if the Americans, like I was saying before, if they just cut off all aid and finally bugged out and said, you guys are going to have to work this out yourself.
And you said, well, Ghani, of course, he'd be gone almost immediately.
But what about the government in Kabul, the national unity government structure itself and the army and the rest of it?
Would the whole thing just disintegrate if the Americans weren't there propping it up or it might last a little while like the government in South Vietnam?
I think it might last a little while, but if the U.S. decides and makes this irresponsible decision to step out immediately and also take away the money, it's a very bad future for Afghanistan.
They did that when the Soviets left in the 90s.
And it was a terrible civil war, a terrible civil war.
You can, if I do understand a lot of Americans want to leave this conflict behind, they hate it.
It's not successful.
The Afghans, they say they don't want peace.
They only want to fight.
I don't agree with that.
I think there's on both sides have been terrible misunderstandings and mistakes, as I told you in this half hour.
But I think you cannot leave now.
There's a big responsibility for the West in in the current situation where you've given the wrong medicine for so long to your patient.
You cannot walk away.
He will die.
Well, I guess I just wonder, OK, let's pretend that it's, you know, I don't know who's who's worse, Clinton or Trump.
But I mean, I guess the problem is if we leave now, everything's going to fall apart because what we've created is actually a big distortion from, as you're saying, we've been given the wrong medicine this whole time.
But I just wonder, like, at some point, shouldn't the people of Afghanistan go ahead and call this doctor a quack and just, you know, find in other words, could we possibly do anything but create further distortions so that if we have the same conversation in another 15 years, we're going to be saying, no, we can't leave now because everything is so distorted.
If we do, the next civil war will be a disaster.
Yeah, no, I totally understand.
Maybe what we can be, the interesting thing is that, like I said, the the question you ask, like, what if we leave is not answered.
It's not answered in policy papers.
It's not answered in Washington.
There is no plan.
Right.
Yeah.
No.
Yeah, we're not leaving.
Don't worry.
That's just my idea.
Nobody cares what I think.
No, but I think you should actually think about withdrawing more and more troops because that's not solution.
I do think you need to leave on that front.
But you cannot leave without having a plan in place.
You know what I mean?
Yes, I absolutely understand what you're saying.
And there's no disputing.
I don't think that if America left now, that the, you know, the collapse of all we've been propping up would be catastrophic.
I'm not so sure I agree that there's even a possibility that the U.S. could figure out a way to provide a softer landing for the coming down of those distortions.
But I understand why you would be really hesitant to to see my plan implemented, because it certainly would mean everybody picking up their guns and going back to solving this in an ugly way, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
And I do think that in the end, the Afghans are still willing to work with the Americans, the Taliban, not everybody, but I think the Americans still have a lot of leverage if they lay down their weapons and try to have a different approach.
They still have a lot of access and opportunities.
All right, well, listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show today.
No problem.
I've really learned so much and I can't wait till your new book comes out.
Yeah, I will let you know.
All right.
Well, thanks again.
OK, thank you.
All right, so that is Betta Dam and she is the author of A Man and a Motorcycle, How Hamid Karzai Came to Power.
And you can find articles she's written at Al Jazeera, at The Guardian, a great interview of her at The Diplomat back when John Kerry was fixing the election a couple of years ago for the the new regime there and all this.
So and she's working right now on a biography of Mullah Omar.
So that's the Scott Horton Show.
Check out the archives at Scott Horton dot org.
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Help support at Scott Horton dot org slash donate and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks, y'all.
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