start start. >> host: we're talking with nicholas schmidle, "to live or to perish forever." a book on his two recent years in pakistan, country very much in the headlines and is going to dominate headlines for in time to come. nick, one of the many striking things about this well-told series of tales is the time you spent with the taliban. not fighting u.s. troops, but

with the other side of the taliban, the enforcers, people who bring the law to the northwest frontier, and perhaps you can start us out by just telling us how you got there, introduce -- something you can read for us from the book that would explain how you got in there. >> guest: sure. the first thing real quick, we were talking last time about -- before the break, and after georgia si died, he had been my introduction to all these people, and after he died i wrote a piece titled farewell my jihady friend. the article was published and even though he had been killed there was still this article ircould show to variousgigi -- jihad dis and say i had a role in this guy's life. >> host: you weren't a typical

journalist relying on a translator. you were in the think of things and knew what was being said. >> guest: right. it was different in the northern frontier because i didn't speak the language but i want it to visit the taliban that had taken over swat in 2007. they had a series of suicide bombings and attacks on the government, and set up a miniislammic state so i needed some sort of introduction, and there was a local journalist who said he could supply it. he showed my article to the taliban members. they said, okay, this guy seems like he is objective. you can bring him. so i showed up and i took a bus into swat, and i met my friend, and two hours later were supposed to meet one of this taliban honchos and it was five-mile trial -- drive to a

spot on the side of the road and where is where i will read. we had just been driving a few minutes when my friend's phone rang and the person said there's a taliban checkpoint between where you u and where the meeting is, 50 men with black temperature bans, shoulder-length hair were packed tightly on the back of at the truck. they looked like a frightening combination of livestock being taken to slaughter and bunch of viking raiders. a few dozen tall -- talibs made an impromptu check opinion. in a vehicle behind is a husband, wife and daughter looked anxious. the teenage girl fumbled to move her head scarf. we rolled forward in line.

unfolded a newspaper and pretended to be reading. one more car in front of us. they motioned us to the side. our driver eased forward. they looked over our car and waved us through. i discarded the newspaper, spun in my seat and stared out the back window. i wanted to watch and keep watching the talibs for hours to cram the midge -- image my mind of them command the road. at the point of close contact i was too scared to take pictures. a different kind of pakistan. that pakistan was no longer a figment of someone's worried imagination. four hours from the capitol, five trucks with militants totally unchallenged had arrived and were in charge. >> host: of course, gang gore ya and swat where the pakistani

army is trying to take it back from the taliban. you got even deeper in the taliban world than swat which is, again, just a few hours from the capitol city of islamabad. can you tell us more about -- for instance, there's a marvelous passage about your summer camp day with the talibs. >> as a quick interlude there the guy who we were going to meet was this fellow named icabahan. he was a local taliban commander but not a hard core commander. there is a difference one the old generation in the new generation. so the night we met up with this guy he made a call. he toldes afterwards he called ahead, described our, gave our license plate, and the talibs parted their ways and let us through. this was so indicate testify of

the important of relationships, particularly in the northwest frontier. we got to this guy's house, and we broke the fast, it was during ramadan, and then we start talk about life in swat, and he started showing me dvds and videos of talibs attacking americans in afghanistan and iraq, which was six hours from the capitol. i was in the middle of nowhere, i wasn't about to say my dad and brother are part of the army. so i changed the subject and start talking about philosophy, and the guy said, you know that osama has written a philosophy book. i said no i didn't. so he brought me in the next room and showed me this book shelf full offed a candidate paraphernalia, and he said osama's philosophy book is in that backpack but i promised i

went touch it. i said, so who is the guest you're so worried about. he says this guy was left behind al-zawahri. i thought it was time to get back to the hotel. >> host: you had already eaten so didn't spoil your appetite. >> guest: . no the next day we called this guy as were we about to go to the taliban spans, response -- e said we we are having second thoughts and he said, no way i'm going with you guys. those guys are extremists. >> host: so this guy had a house guest, is scared of the other taliban guys you were on the road to meet. >> guest: right. so a day alert we are invited by the ones causing all the problems in swat. this is october 2007, before the pakistani army rolled in, and

everyone knew the taliban were gaining strength nut not to what extent. so there were two ways to get to the camp. the swat river separated the two and you could either do around on a bridge and cross through miles of taliban country, running the risk that out a random checkpoint someone didn't the the message you were the welcome foreign guest of the day, or you could ride along the main road, park the car and board a carriage attached to a zip line that was taking people across the river into into the middle of the camp. we chose the second option. seemed the more fun and the less dangerous, oddly enough. and boarded this carriage with six other guys and watched as the car and our chances office any sort of quick getaway disappeared on the other side of the road. and we arrived at the middle of the taliban camp and it was a summer camp, jihadie poems were

playing. long hair. >> host: one of the many things people don't understand about pakistan, this is a land of poets, or would-be poets and poetry is incredibly powerful. not arabic poetry necessary limit but you're seeing a wide range of traditions in one camp. >> very much so. this is actually park a poet the. the nature of the park a poetry, it was rite of passage and a father telling a son you have grown up, now it's time to fight jihad. that was the frame being repated. >> host: poet the tens to be more level. >> guest: it does. so we met the guy who is running this whole operation right now that no one has seen in years, literally, and he emerged, welcomed me, and he was this young, sort of goofy guy with flintstone teeth and long hair and said, you're welcome to spend the day here, go wherever

you would like, and i would lean to my translator and said, tell him we very much appreciate it but we're in a camp right now with 10 to 15,000 people who are all eager to fight any american. any sort of body guard would be agreement as a show of the hospitality. he took his senior body guard and said watch the american and the local journalist and make sure nothing happens to them. so here we are crawling around the camp with his top lieutenant as our body guard. so there is way mosque, the friday service, and shortly after there the taliban set up a wooden platform in the middle of the river, on a bank, to which they were going to administer their first public lashing on this day, and myself and 10 or 15,000 people lined 'around -- sat around the platform and the talibs marched three individuals who had been, quote, arrested in a kidnapping plot, and lashed them for 25, 20 and 15 times,

depending on the extent of theirs involvement in the crime. >> host: that's another thing that often gets missed in western reporting, is that the taliban, and similar organizations in muslim countries, have been able to make great inroads with people because the locals are disgust evidence with corruption in the local justice system, and the taliban appeared at first to bring some integrity where you couldn't bribe the taliban. you would be punished if you molested a woman, et cetera. later on, of course, the taliban rule becomes oppressive but clearly it was res resonating with those people. >> guest: there was no police no security services, so the taliban were the only one racing

around in pickup trucks to stop kidnappers, they were punishing people. so it's hard to define the main driving behind the initial thrust of the taliban appeal. the second one is they never had, unlike india, significant land reform so are there are massive landowners. >> host: like bhutto's family. >> guest: exactly. this is why parts of pakistan that have yet to be infected with the taliban problem are ripe for it because you have hundreds of thousands of people living on landlord property, very opressed and if the taliban can come in to promise to give them strength and no longer to be deciding laws based on sharia and not on the whims of the landlord, that that struck a chord. >> host: based on my own

experiences in pakistan, it's only half a jobe -- corruption is so bad it makes my jury -- nigeria look like a quaker meeting. what used to trouble me in pakistan if i wanted a beer i had to literally sign a half a dozen different forms and have itself differed to my room where i would drink it secretly, looking away from the player orientation to mecca, and yet when you do to pakistani parties among the elite, the whiskey, preferably johnnie walker blue or black, last choice indian whiskey, is used freely, and the point being you have corruption, hypocrisy and some of the most fro found differences in wealth when the phenomenally rich, ruling families or pakistan, and the people who live in virtually medieval bondage.

>> guest: if i could talk about the urban elite. i think this is a key to understanding why pakistan has not sold itself up to now that fighting the taliban is their war. the urban elite, as you mentioned, will drink whiskey at night, will talk very much in support of the taliban. many people in pakistan are in love with the taliban idea. >> host: in romance. >> guest: the guys that are righteous, simple, basic must hims who are trying to implement the law, and yet no one really wants to live under those guys. they don't want the streets to be patrolled by them. they don't want to be lashed by them. so this is a major difference and up until recently when the taliban advanced to within 60 mols of islamabad, and conquered a district near swat. i don't think the pop laying realize the reality of the bump kins -- bumpkins was becoming

more and morereal and was on their doorstep. >> host: i know you believe that the pakistan will muddle through, and yet the scenario you just described, the situation you detail in your book, sounds eerily like a situation in the mid-1970s under the shah of iran. >> guest: you're right. i and i find myself thinking about that. i find myself adopting the position of, pakistan will muddle through, and then there have been certain people who over the course of the past year and a half said, what is in place to really prevent pakistan from deinvolving and the situation becoming like iran in 1979, and the initial responsible is, pakistan has a huge army. after course the shah had a huge army as well. and so i think that what prevents it from being -- i think we're beginning to see a sea change. i think tea taliban overplayed

their hand by moving in, and now we are going to gradually see a shift. it's very interesting, but the president zardari, for all of his faults. >> host: and they are many. >> guest: is actually a fairly savvy character, and i don't think he did this on purpose but inadvertently the peace deal with the taliban he signed in swat was sold to western countries and western diplomats as, we're going to give the taliban this. if they move out then we know what their real intentions are, and the irony -- i don't give him full credit for planning this cut be the irony i the taliban did just that. they moved out and the country has turn against the taliban. so it's a weird strategic success on his part that in light of sort of the spirit of objectivity i feel like i should give him credit for. >> host: well, i certainly the question now as we speak is will the pakistan army will continue

the offensive or be another aborted one. we're speaking with a terrific young author, brave young man, nicholas schmidle. the author of "to live or perish forever" i would like to move away from your adventures. this is a remarkably written book. where did you learn to write so well? certainly not in the u.s. school system. it's clean and clear. >> guest: i read something once and i can't profess to having followed his advice. i read it was by hemingway, and a young apresence tis of his said, how tie learn to write? and hi suppose answer you have to read the classics because you have to know what you're up against, and journalists are very competitive in terms of the

story but not that competitive in the way they tell the story. so there were a lot of reporters in pakistan, not actually in swat. but that were working on similar things while i was there. it was always trying to find a way to tell the story cleaner, more compelling, more character driven and so that hemingway notion of knowing what you're up against, and always kind of competing, why write if you're not going to write something better than what has been done previously? >> host: it's very well done and truly the character portraits, they really work. the pakistanis in this book get up off the page and live and breath forked the readers, so my congratulations on that. what's next for you? more adventures? >> guest: good question. >> host: please don't tell me you're going to become a washington drone. you're too good for that, too talented. >> guest: no washington drone. i was kicked out of pakistan

once, chased out of pakistan again. so unfortunately as long as i still -- i'm obviously to some extend threatening to the security of the establishment there i have no idea while. it's a self-agranddiesing thing but i pushed pakistan aside for a bit. i was in the mdise last month. if have done some stuff in north africa. i'm really interested in how the economic crisis will -- what are the political instabilities the result of political instability robbed the world as the result of the economic crisis and how will this recalibrate the political center around the world as various right wing and left wing groups pop up to use the crisis to their advantage. >> host: during the two years with the pakistan that is captured so marvelously, you were did get to india. india didn't capture your? >> guest: to some extent. india is very ecclectic and

very -- it is enchanting, but i went india to actually vacation. >> host: not enough trouble for now? >> guest: i feel very comfort enable muslim countries. i was in minneapolis and there's a large somali community, and inside some of thermals, there are no windows, very close, very much like a traditional suc, and the call to prayer is coming off and it struck a chord. there's something that is very comfortable about that culture for me. so we will seem i did spend time in bangladesh, which is the culturally, religiously, very much like pakistan. >> host: which had been part of pakistan at partition in 1947. >> guest: right. >> host: it spun off after the civil war in 1971 and now is one of the poorest, most vibrant

countries in the world. >> guest: exactly right. socially it couldn't be more different than pakistan in that -- >> host: how. >> guest: you can good -- the conspiracy hawking, the notion that there's a central intelligence agency plot behind every development in bangladesh is not there. so i didn't have to dress in local clothes. before i went though taliban areas i was dyeing my hair to blend in. the fear factor was there. at bangladesh you could roll into any village, ask questions. it was very easy to work, very simple country, very simple people that don't come with a lot of psychological baggage. >> host: a tradition which is very different in your book it explains to a degree why extremism hasn't really gotten traction in bangladesh chase huge muslim country. >> guest: bangladesh in 1971 -- many people tell you that they

fought for independence to free itself of the islamization that pakistan was trying to impose on it. geographically, india, second largest country -- third largest country in the world was in the middle of pakistan and bangladesh, so geographically it was an untenable notion that these would be one country. pakistani establish emt, based in the west wing, pakistan as we know it, was trying to sort of connected them and hold this countries together, so many people will tell you that they fought once already to free themselves and so to draw it to -- to impose a secular democracy to fight against islamization and they aren't about to let it happen again, so you see a similar reaction about the emergence of the islamist parties. >> host: one thing we need to talk about -- this hour has gone by quickly, you're a great story telar in person as wells on the

page -- this huge, desolate, sometimes threatening pakistani province in the southwest corner, the big brute inside west pakistan, and you made it out there through the wilds to a port that pakistan dreams of developing with chinese help as a middle class outlet for central asian oil and gas. >> guest: you're right. it's gwadar, and it is -- the pakistani -- >> host: a dream. >> guest: it is. it's what the government is banking on, the next dubai. so i went there in the fall of 2007. they had just built a glorious five-star hotel on the top of the -- it's a hammerhead shaped bay and on the top of the hammerhead shaped harbor, and what happened is nat doing this, in billing this port and investing so much confidence, the natives of the area feel

very disenfranchised and they say this might be the next dubai bought we're not going get any piece of it. >> host: they haven't excludessed government from any real wealth. >> guest: totally there was an influential shipping magnate that said the government was prohibiting the people from sweeping the floors. no piece of this project would be for. the. the politicians around the province used them as the grievance they have been able -- they the nationalist parties have been able to leverage as their drive and motivation to sever themselves from pakistan. >> host: you're meeting fascinating people, fishermen being pushed out of existence. you're witnessing the destruction of a world civilization, a fishing village that people were attempting to turn into dubai. permanently skin skin skin

tackle, and as we moved into the final few minutes of the interview -- i wish we had more time. when a writer finishes a book and sees it in print, almost inevitably he or she will suddenly think, i didn't capture this or i should have said this. any regret, anything you think you would have liked to put in that you didn't or any person that you thought should be in there? >> guest: you know, i don't -- >> host: our is it perfect. >> guest: by no means perfect. this is very much a book about my life for those two years, and not as much -- well, it is a piece of journalism, and while it is a book that i have written, it's a reflection of the two years i lived there, and i kind of try and live by the notion that you do what you did and so there ircertain people i wish i would have spent more time with, certain people that i wish there were more characters, but i think the portrait is -- i

mean, i real. >> host: it's a brilliant portrait. >> guest: i wish there was another character i could have strung out to that length to be able to really understand the mind of someone, which it be a jay hady or pakistani army officer that is so often simplified. >> host: you did on the other hand the opposite of gaze. you spend some sometime with senior political leaders with the rich, the privileged, in islamabad and elsewhere. when you go from seeing the abject poverty in these years or slums, to these parties, does that create some sort of psychological disconnect? >> guest: i often would rather have -- i really tried to stay away from the party scene. tried to stay away from meeting bureaucrats. there was very little to contribute. you knew what they were going to say. you knew the conversation was

going to immediately turn to how american policy has handicapped pakistan's development, and not to tote -- i mean, america is not free of responsibility in pakistan's lack of development and supporting military dictatorships. so the conversations with the elite were to easily predictable, and when i first arrived in pakistan, a woman said to me, a very conspiracy hawking, antiamerican woman. >> host: your sponsor. >> guest: my sponsor, the irony of that she says there's no way you like any other western journalist is going understand pakistan because you don't speak the language, you don't dress locally. you don't ever leave islamabad. a year later when i -- i would rather speak with the tea boys at my office than the other fellows who were working at this institute, and she said she came up to me and says, there's no way you can be a journalist. she said you speak locally, you

dress locally and know what is going on so you must be working for someone else. >> host: i did fine that in pakistan, of course, when the plumbing breaks, the central intelligence agency does get blamed. sometimes words fail using. the vocabulary doesn't reach, and you can call this book a work of journalism but it's better than that. there's should how much serious art tis industry and objective and i keep coming back to the amazing objecttivity of a young person writer who was able to achieve in a portrait of this incredibly complex society. so, i do have to warn you one thing. i think you may be in real physical danger. not from the pakistani intelligence agency but from your peers who didn't good to pakistan, who stayed home on a

campus and are trying to write the great american novel. this is a great piece of writing, and nicholas schmidle. the book is to live or parish forever, and i am just plain jealous, congratulations, nick. >> guest: thanks. >> pat robertson is the found are of the christian broadcasting network. here he provides advice on how to maintain economic stability in unstable times. the library in virginia beach host this event it's 45 minutes. [applause] ...