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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  February 27, 2010 8:30am-9:30am EST

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they might stop feeding me. i was so arrogant and full of myself. each place we went to it was a different sort of food. we got some tomato. i would get a chicken leg. i remember having a discussion with a guy, we had chicken. i wasn't sure it was chicken. it doesn't look like a chicken leg. i got chicken. i don't know what you got. by the last place we got to you could tell it was either their wives or mothers cooking the food because it was really good. was it really good or i h b s for so long that it just tasted -- you eat -- by the time you eat a ritz it tastes like a
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stake. i don't know. those last two meals we had were really good. and it was season. i thought it was my last meal at that time. this would have been really good. is this it? is this my last meal? they gave me a piece of chocolate. then i got rescued the next day. you had your hand up for a long time. >> i really appreciate it. without people like you -- my question is do you keep in contact with the marines that rescued you? >> some of them. i had a book signing in palmdale, california and one of the marines that rescued me showed up. he drove from los angeles. that is a 2 hour drive to drive up and see me and i keep in contact with two others in the d.c. area. there is one who is at 29 palm.
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they are all over the place. slowly but surely i am getting in contact with more and more of them. you are so awesome you don't know. i constantly tell them thank you so much. they are like i was just doing my job, you know. rescuing you was the coolest part of iraq. you just don't know! you just don't know! they blow it off. they are outstanding. they put us on a helicopter to kuwait and kept on trucking with the mission. they didn't miss a beat. how incredible is that? you talk about heroism. they are my heroes. every day all day long they are my heroes. is that it? want to get to signing? thank you so much. thank you, thank you, thank you. i appreciate everyone that came
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out. >> shoshana johnson served with the u.s. army from 1998 to 2003 retiring on a temporary disability honorable discharge. she was awarded the bronze star medal, purple heart medal and prisoner of war metal. for more information visit shoshana johnson.com. recently authors seth jones and mark moyar discuss their books on the u.s. strategy in afghanistan. the program is an hour. >> tonight on booktv in prime time a discussion and call in program on the war in afghanistan. joining us are two afghanistan war arthur's, mark moyar and seth jones
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seth jones america's war in afghanistan" and "a question of command: counterinsurgency from the civil war to iraq". seth jones told me you just returned from afghanistan. what are your impressions? >> my impressions have changed since i got back because we obviously had the capture of the taliban's second-in-command. what i will say as we move into the late winter and early spring, there will be nato offenses where we're seeing u.s. marine corps forces in the river valley as well as over the past week the offensive by pakistani intelligence agencies and u.s. intelligence agencies against senior taliban official in pakistan. we are seeing an offensive on both sides of the border. >> has our mission in afghanistan changed since president obama came to office? how would you define our mission? >> the fundamental mission of
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trying to provide a stable and secure afghanistan has remained the same. how we do that has changed with a large infusion of troops. seeing a lot of activity this year. the most prominent example we are making progress, the most important thing is looking at long-term afghan development. when i was over there last month i was looking at how to develop and afghanistan that becomes more self-sufficient? all of that is important but how do you go about doing that? >> in a recent foreign policy magazine article this is what you wrote. in developing the afghan national security forces the u.s. and afghan governments must provide short-term fixes with long-term deployment. it is a project that will take longer than american policymakers would like no matter how many resources they allocate. >> in a situation like this you
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need leadership. leadership is the key. you can't develop a leader in a year or two for the critical mid levels of command. in the past week tried to speed it up. in recent months we finally figured that out and we are moving towards better long term development and we are doing short-term fixes in terms of getting the afghans to replace some of the bad commanders who are already there. >> mr. jones, "in the graveyard of empires: america's war in afghanistan" page 317 you wrote first step must be to address massive corruption at the national and local levels which has steadily alienated the local population and fuel support for insurgent groups. several forms of corruption appeared to have contributed to the insurgency. drug-trafficking. bribery aaron senior officials and pervasive extortion among afghan police. >> corruption if you look at world bank and transparency
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international data, they rank afghanistan at the bottom of countries worldwide. one of the things i think we found is when you look at afghanistan's previous periods, they were fairly legitimate governments over the course of the 30s and 70s. we are facing a crisis of legitimacy with the central government and over the long run in order to establish stabilityh some legitimacy at the central government level. in particular that means doing something about large-scale corruption we have seen. government officials in the narcotics trade as well as individuals and golf in large-scale extortion and bribery. usually about major contracts. large amounts of cash. this is not just about police checkpoints but large amounts of money that are being used and it is partly fuelling the
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insurgency because it is separating local population from a government they view as illegitimate to some degree. >> are we doing that at all? >> there have been steps. most of the key cabinet ministers like the minister of defense or the minister of the interior actually tend to have pretty clean records. the interesting thing about corruption is people tend to forget the main insurgent groups especially the taliban are involved probably in more widespread corruption than the afghan government is. they make their money primarily off of the drug trade and taxing local farmers. in a sense the insurgents even worse in these areas. multiple organizations developing corruption. >> thanks for joining us. if you would like to participate in our conversation we will put the phone numbers on screen.
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737-0001 in the east and central time lines. 000 2 if you live in the mountain or pacific time zone. you can send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or twitter.com/booktv. here is a little more about our guest. we start with mark moyar. he is a professor at the marine corps university and he has written a couple books including his question of command book and phoenix and the birds of prey, counter-terrorism in vietnam and triumph forsaken. the vietnam war 1954-1965. he has served -- several times to afghanistan. our other guest is seth jones. author of in the graveyard of empires. he is a political scientist at the rand corporation and professor at georgetown university. we have been in afghanistan
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eight years. is there a end game to this. >> i think there is. it has taken a long time to get there. in the early years there didn't seem to be much violence or a need to focus. we had iraq. insurgency didn't get going until 2005 on a large scale. we were slow to react. we tried for several years to ramp up the afghan forces quickly but it was a quantity push over quality. that gets to the issue about corruption. corruption starts with commanders on the afghan side. at some level they are tolerating this. for too long we let them sort this out. we have seen some encouraging examples where we are starting to prostitute people for corruption, governors and police chiefs. we just upgraded the training mission to a three star general,
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general caldwell. and our best and brightest going over there. most of them were going to iraq. general caldwell and general stanley mcchrystal and a lot of other great folks. we will see a turning point this year. >> we are beginning to see what looks like the u.s. and afghans potentially moving toward the tipping point. what is interesting again is we seek a major effort. there will very soon be an offensive in the canned our province as well. what is interesting is over the last seven years in particular, the taliban leadership has been able to operate in pakistan in other neighboring provinces with impunity. the command and control structure that existed across
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the border, this week we have seen it become public information about the taliban leadership including shadow governor is being targeted in pakistan. this becomes a systematic effort, changing the game in pakistan. this means nowhere is safe for the taliban leadership. >> what was the point of pre announcing our intentions for this week's military actions? >> they knew the taliban would figure out. they are good at surveillance and they would have seen this troop movement in advance. we have not lost much in terms of the element of surprise. it did enable us to set the groundwork with the local population. before the offensive we had a lot of meetings with the local elders which proved very beneficial because you are already seeing them cooperating with us even as the offensive is on going. it is important to help make sure we had all the afghan
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leadership on board. >> he pointed this out. in my view the focus will probably not be the military operations. they will be the development side and also the political effort. what you see is a range of tribal community leaders that have a hold on power. part of the negotiations have been trying to co-op or coerce if possible allegiance and influence of these key power brokers. this is where power is decentralized. this will be a major struggle over the next couple months because the taliban as they have done historically will try to corrupt the same individuals as well. >> before we go to calls,
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question for both of you. seth jones 11, what if we left afghanistan? what would happen? >> in my personal view the taliban and the groups allied with it would probably slowly, assuming they were backed by states in the region, there is support from iran and pakistan, would take increasing tracts of territory. it is difficult to know how long that would take but i think they would make a push to take the bull at some point. as we have seen with the insurgent groups, they have a close alliance with al qaeda. you potentially see training camps at some point. based on the relationship between some of the insurgent groups and foreign fighters, we
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would be somewhere around where the u.s. was in the 1990s and early 2,000s. >> i agree with that and emphasize, pakistan is very much watching what we are doing in afghanistan. if we were to withdraw, that would push them in the direction of supporting the taliban. also make it much more difficult for us to deal with that government. there are lots of reasons to be concerned about deterioration in pakistan. >> first call from virginia. please go ahead. >> i wanted to follow up on what you said about long term development in afghanistan.
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three cups of tea. it was used -- economic value. the department of agriculture is considering getting perils out or sewing machines to the women in the afghan region to try to change the sociology. >> there are a range of efforts by the state department, especially the u.s. agency for international development. the ministry of rehabilitation developments to pursue a development strategy that is in line with military efforts and that is in areas that have been pacified or areas that are relatively peaceful to provide a range of development product. in the north there have been efforts that i have seen up
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close to get women involved in making carpets. long term sustainable work for women. there are a range of projects as you look across southern afghanistan. some of them are. part of the question is are they quick impact? is there a long-term focus? in areas that are most vulnerable to the insurgency and most insecure, there had to be a counterinsurgency part of that. they have to encourage the population to oppose insurgents as well because otherwise insurgents will intimidate, they will destroy, where they will be sustainable over the long run,
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where they have been involved in helpful long term counterinsurgency projects. >> are we nation-building? >> that depends what you mean by nation-building. we are to some extent changing our institutions. we are trying to build a national culture which has been weak in the past. one of the things i had the opportunity to see, with 18-year-olds they are doing a very good job bringing together people from diverse ethnic groups and provincess together at instilling a sense of nationalism. we are making progress and that is a long-term effort. you won't do the same thing with the 40-year-old. that is in the long term where you make progress. younger generation afghans who will see the importance of the nation's state and be more virtuous and avoid things like
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corruption. >> is this peter? you are a workaholic but that is not what i call it. i watch you in the morning. two quick questions i was going to ask either of the guests. the first question is how important -- to the taliban? is it going to hurt them? and the number 2 question, they have been growing poppies for a long time. it is easy, it is low maintenance, why can't we buy that from them, turn that into morphine. they are in a war zone. when you go to a hospital or
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doctor. >> the first question you had, it is important militarily. the one thing they would like to have is a sanctuary. that is what they have had. they have been able to process opium. doing those things is a lot harder when you are up in the cave for running around the hills somewhere. any insurgent will tell you that. they like areas to rest and recuperate. it is important to take this away from them. and we have to deal with pakistan sanctuaries. it is clearly something we don't want to allow them to have anywhere. it is not going to be the be all end all and holding it. it is important to deny them sanctuary.
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>> what about the pop the question? >> there have been a number of efforts to deal with the pop the issue. there have been effective efforts in the east of afghanistan to get farmers to grow affairs things including wheat, fruit in some areas because there are those options. the problem we have in the south in parts of kandahar, nato forces and afghan forces don't actually control the territory. it almost makes it. whether you try to buy it or not because they don't control the territory. the taliban unknowns some of the land and taxes farmers for doing it and run the key trade routes along key roads where the narcotics is taken. the first step in much of the south where most of the poppy is grown actually has to be first
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to control that territory and then we get a question of whether it makes sense to buy it or try to get farmers to grow other things like beat or look at other options. >> does it make sense? to grow other things? is that possible? >> it certainly is. the u.s. agency for international development developed in the 1950s in agricultural production. that area has historically been a hotbed for a range of different types of produce including wheat and a range of fruits and vegetables. there clearly is an option. >> gee of bonny in maryland. good evening. >> how are you doing? my comment is will the war ever
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stop? do you understand god is watching every step and progress, love your neighbor as you love yourself and we are the brothers of this planet and we are here to multiplied? >> where are you going with this question? what would you like our afghanistan war authors to address with that question? >> i would like to hear their joyful expression on that question. do they believe in change? >> anything you would like to address? >> let me talk about the question of is this war ever going to end? that is a big question because the american people have limited patience. i do think we can get to a point where the insurgency is down to a nuisance level and it will be
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an ongoing level of violence but the key is to develop afghan security forces to be point of they can handle these without american combat troops. if we can get to that point it becomes a nuisance. >> two additional points and it is worth remembering, if you look at the taliban regime through december 11th and you see it right now. what you see is one of the most repressive regimes that we have seen that regularly violates basic human right to. its view of women, large-scale oppression of be headings of individuals. what we're seeing is a range of
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militant movements that have been very brutal. for the u.s. to withdraw would subject the afghan population to the same sort of barbarity that they had to face in the 1990s. this is the area where the u.s. and other intelligence agencies indicate the core al qaeda element remains. osama bin laden and others. i think the caller liege this has to end. the afghans have suffered a tremendous amount here. we are also dealing with some groups whose behavior in the past has been a very abusive. >> next call for our two guests from tim in idaho. >> good evening, gentlemen. i have a retired -- i fought in
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three war is. it befuddles me the fact that how are we going to continue to finance this work? and do you really believe down deep, are we going to come to a solution? i listened to what you got and it is the first intelligent thing i have heard about this war. are we going to be able to accomplish what we set out to do? >> we are going to be able to develop and afghanistan that is self-sufficient in terms of personnel. if we can draw down the number of foreign troops we will be in good shape and public opposition will subside. there is an important question on how long we are going to keep funding the afghans. we have raised pay end of the
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cost of maintaining these forces is going to become very high which the afghan government in its current form might not be able to pay for at any point so we have to come up with a way to draw down those forces. we need to continue some investment in that country for long time. we pull out after the soviets left. >> a little bit more from the foreign policy magazine article. leadership tasks the delay number of negative consequences in the near term. some afghan commanders will let the americans do their work for them. some u.s. commanders will relegate their afghan partners to a important tasks because of doubts of their competence or loyalty. afghanistan's leaders will be slow. how many afghanistan troops are
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fighting alongside u.s. troops right now? >> we are moving into a position essentially trying to have all the afghan army forces partnered with our forces because there are number of reasons. it helps us because they can get intelligence and on the other hand we can provide them with assistance in a lot of areas that they are not capable of. we are moving towards this concept of partnering. every marine battalion partnered with an army battalion. there is certainly a danger that they will become overly dependent on us. part of that is having the right american battalion commander who works with his counterparts. it will be a struggle. we tried to keep turning things over to the iraqis and it didn't work. we had to take a large role.
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the same things happen in afghanistan. we are working with them more closely because we can't allow them to fail. in the long term we have to figure out a way to withdraw. we have done fairly well in iraq to let them take responsibility. >> to go back to that caller's point, are we ever going to get out of their? are we ever going to win and the name of your book, "in the graveyard of empires: america's war in afghanistan". >> foreign governments, whether it is the british or the soviet invasion that began in 1979, it has been pretty clear that foreign governments have had a very difficult time stabilizing afghanistan. but between 1929, and 1978, there was a period of stability.
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what is clear is afghans do have a history of stabilizing their country. there have been recent stable periods. as we look at trying to create a stable afghanistan, we increasingly has mark noted, have afghans with the central government and the local government level doing the bulk of that work. just one thing. we have often thought of over the last eight years there has been a concept of trying to do this from the top down. .. graveyard of empires" you write this.
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charles from sales, missouri. go ahead with your question for our guest. call code good evening, gentlemen. this has been alluded to before and as long as we throw money at and ew government, iraq and afghanistan, once we throw money at them they're going to go back to the tribal affairs or whatever and here we are -- we wasted all this money. it started during the bush administration. and worse all the persons that have been killed and wounded -- now that's really terrible. just remember and i think one of you alluded to this before. once we leave they're going to go back to the same old same old. and i would like tower -- your comments and good health to you. >> that's a good question and a
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good comment. if you look at the last 100 years in afghanistan, there are and have been stable periods. so part of the question for the united states, for nato countries operating in afghanistan and for the afghan government more broadly is to find ways, as has been done in afghanistan's history of ensuring long-term stability. what i'd note in the pastun areas of the country, it's a belt that really goes from herrat to the west of afghanistan from the south and the east. pastuns are the largest tribal group in afghanistan. power has been very decentralized there. the pastuns want to do a lot of the policing at the village level. we've seen them use other local security forces. i think part of it as we move forward -- as we look towards
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more stable solutions, we've got to think about top-down efforts to build a stronger central government as mark alluded to with afghan security forces and with development efforts that one of our previous guests noted. as well as bottom-up efforts to work with local -- key local legitimate institutions and in pastuns areas with shura and jirgas. and we need to look very carefukindf build on that point. aren't you ignoring how the pastuns are the majority tribe and they aren't represented compared to the minority tribe? >> well, i would say the president, of course, is -- i mean, their range of key ministers, the minister areas are from pastun. there are -- the president has tried to balance some of the key pastuns.
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with some of the in the northern areas. compared to what we saw in the early period in 2001 and 2002, we've got more of a representation of pastuns in the government. what we don't have yet and what -- what we need to do is start finding a way to incorporate taliban pastuns into this government in some respects. this is what we call reconciliation. we're going to have to reach some sort of agreement with those individuals that want to switch sides on being able to pull those individuals who have been fighting against the government. and most of them are pastuns into the government. >> mark moyar, i'm a mom of two iraq veterans and although i'm very proud to their service of our country i can't help wonder why we are sending more and more troops into afghanistan. it seems like all i keep hearing
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about lately is how difficult it is to train afghan soldiers. as many are i lit railroad track. -- illiterate. it just seems an impossible task with our soldiers being caught in the middle, being injured and dying almost on a daily basis. >> yeah, i'd first, you know, point out we were saying the same things in iraq a couple of years ago that this is a hopeless situation. we're at a time i think which is turning point going forward. it has been valuable already to have these extra troops there. as mentioned -- you need to deny them sanctuary areas. and if you don't have enough troops what happens is and we saw this in iraq before the surge that going to clear one area and clear this a insurgentary. it wasn't into the insurgent area we weren't able to build up. and the same thing is happening
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in afghanistan now. the other thing i would add, too, through the partnering effort -- our american forces are having a multiplying effect on the afghans. what i mean, for example, there are cases where you'll have 40 afghan policemen and you take 10 american troops and put them with those. those 40 may have been very ineffective before. when you add the 10 americans, they bring in a lot of extra teeth. they keep an eye and make sure things aren't done improperly. instead of those 10 americans you have 40 more afghan troops who weren't contributing much and are now. >> this is book tv in prime time we're talking about the afghanistan war tonight with mark moyar and seth joan. here's their book "a question of command. seth jones "in the graveyards of empires." what's this picture on the front of your book. >> it's a soviet tank sitting in an afghan field.
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just a reminder of the soviet experience in afghanistan partly to learn the lessons of the soviets. >> mark moyar you written quite a bit about vietnam. are there comparisons. >> there are some comparisons certainly. i mean, lots of similarities. lots of differences. i mean, one of the things i like to point out to people we often invoke the idea of afghanistan being another vietnam as in its hopeless, you know, and i argue in here and in my other books on vietnam that there were actually periods when we were pretty successful. 1962, 1963. we made a lot of progress in counterinsurgency which unfortunately is undone by the coup that we orchestrated against the south vietnamese president. and then also after the tet offensive you had some very effective counterinsurgencies. i think it's a myth that they are all powerful and there's nothing we can do to stop them. >> seth jones we spent about
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$680 billion on the vietnam war in today's dollars. about the same that we spent in iraq. how much have we spent in afghanistan? 979 service members have lost their lives so far. >> well, the exact amount is actually difficult to calculate. but it's been billions of dollars. one of the things that's been a little bit different in afghanistan, though, and it's been helpful there's a much greater foreign presence so we have german forces operating in the north. italian forces operating in the west. and a range of other nato countries that have at least -- even if they haven't used a lot of their forces for combat operations or sent development people into the areas that are most war torn, they have provided assistance. the germans have been involved in some police training. the italians have been involved in some of the justice sector reforms. the japanese have provided a lot of money for demobilization of combatants and now for reintegration of taliban right now.
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so one of the things that at least that has been helpful in the afghan context is that burden-sharing has been much more acute in afghanistan than it was in iraq when we really do have a lot more partnered nations that are providing -- i mean, the japanese have ante'd for senior taliban leaders. >> bashir, thanks for holding. you're on the air. please go ahead, bashir. >> caller: i have a question for mr. seth jones. i have read your book. and i commend you. one major problem is that we are still dealing with the conflict of north and south. just like in many other places. the center for global crisis in 2003 put out an excellent paper
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called "disenchantment of pastun." how are you going to win the hearts and minds of afghans when the well-known afghan proverb says -- you probably know it. it says you can make an afghan grow to a house with kindness. but you will not be able to take them to heaven by force. >> well, it's a -- it's a great question and a great point. i would say that one of the things that the afghan government and nato more broadly has to do better including in pastun areas is to recognize again that power very localized in these areas. and that they may not act according to the interests of outsiders, whether it's u.s. or nato governments or even whether
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it's the central government. they'll act in their own interest. and that's okay. because what we see i would argue when you look out across the east and the south is a range of tribes and subtribes and clans, that don't like the taliban, don't like the insurgent groups and had it with them and they would like to help stabilize, secure and provide services to their own populations. i think in that sense we, a, need to recognize that they're not doing it for us. they're doing it for their own population. that's okay. in this case, we can help them help their own populations. that's actually important because this does not always have to be about the central government. especially in pastun areas. again we see a recent public opinion poll that came out by abc and bbc which indicated that
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the taliban is well under 10% support versus 90% support in that recent poll. so leveraging desires and interests of the local population, i think, is quite critical. >> james, houston, texas. hello. >> caller: hello, good evening. thanks for taking my call. my question is going to center on the proliferation of the radical madrassas that are cropping up in the pastun region of pakistan and afghanistan. with the narrowing version of islam promoting jihad and shahada and with the influence of persian entities and with military training seem to be giving the taliban a new group of fighters. what are we doing as a nation or
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as a group of nations to get these countries to back off support of these schools? >> mr. moyar? >> yeah, i think we are doing things behind the scenes to work on some of these issues. and it is a very important matter. as you mentioned a lot of the insurgents are coming out of these madrassas and we also talked about other efforts to promote education in rural afghanistan. i do want to hit on something -- one of the earlier callers mentioned was a question about greg mortoson "a cup of tea" and these doing a great job. but you can't add beat the insurgents through education. because we've seen in case after case, you know, vietnam, a prime example as well, el salvador -- if you just send in the teachers, the insurgents are going to kill them or force them to flee because they fully recognize those people are a threat. so we need to do the education
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piece but in conjunction and closely coordinated with security and governance. >> in early december president obama announced an additional 30,000 troops on top of the 68,000 or so that were already there. how many have moved over? >> i'm not sure the exact number. there's certainly more coming in in the spring. i believe there's a marine -- entire regimental command that's scheduled to come in in a couple months here. but clearly it's interesting to compare them to the size of the iraq surge. some more in deployment size. i do think they are already starting to make a difference. as i mentioned in helmand, they are playing a critical role. we're going to see more in kandahar coming up this year. and again it's not -- it's 30,000 americans but factor in the number of afghans that are being empowered by having those americans having worked alongside them.
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>> i think the biggest difference that we're seeing now is just -- in 2006, the united states moved most of its forces out of the south. it's the taliban's heartland, their center of gravity, where most of the key taliban leaders are from. and they handed it over to the british and the canadians and the dutch and the australians. it left some special forces. now what we're seeing is the area where it's increasing its forces in general is in the the south. i mean, this is the taliban's heartland. so not only were we increasing forces. we are going -- we've had forces with strike forces into the heartland of the taliban. so that's -- it's an increase in the numbers but also the location of those forces as well. >> what is your role as an advisor to general mcchrystal? >> well, i served in 2009 as a plans officer and a advisor to the u.s. military looking at a whole range of issues for the military in afghanistan. >> and you just got back.
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did you meet with general mcchrystal when you were over there? >> yes, i worked with general mcchrystal fairly regularly. >> where is he based and what type of security does he have. what's it like to get to see him. >> it's based in kabul where the headquarters are located. he usually gets on the compound quite easily. he's somebody who in general has a strategy that is very population-centric. he's a very people-oriented person. he is very friendly. he takes that strategy and personalizes it in his interactions with individuals. it's very interesting to watch. >> does he ever get off base? does hamid karzai ever get out? >> there's no question that general mcchrystal like every major u.s. and nato military commander gets out quite a bit. gets out into rural areas.
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gets out into urban areas. meets the population. in fact, general mcchrystal has been very adamant about getting out regularly. president karzai has not gotten out a lot. he does occasionally get out in general. he was out a little bit during the presidential campaign. but he's not gotten out and interacted with the afghan population partly for security reasons. i mean, his helicopters have been targeted in the past. there have been several assassination attempts on him. >> is abdullah abdullah still in pakistan or has he left? >> i'm not sure where he is right now. i want to comment, too, on the question you mentioned. the reason i went out last month was that general caldwell is starting a new leadership initiative on the afghan side. and wants to get them more discussion about leadership which i think we've not paid enough attention to. and one of the -- one of the things we've seen for many of the afghans is they don't go out
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into the field as much as we would like. a lot of them want to try to do things by cell phone. and at the same time, they micromanage. you know, they'll be in their office but they'll be telling someone what to do hundreds of miles away. and so in one of the points i make in the book is that case after case, you know, in philippines in templar and malaya and vietnam, they spend a lot of their time out there circulate what we call battlefield circulation and going out and also assessing the local commanders is this person doing a good job or not or providing some coaching to those commanders. >> mike from l.a. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. during world war i and world war ii when the west was all over the middle east, why don't they try and make afghanistan a main focal point in creating stability in western family governments then when they're already there instead of waiting so long and having to deal with
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it now? >> it's a good question. the u.s. actually was, i think, relatively weak in that area. even it was involved in some areas of the middle east, it was -- you know, the biggest powers in the region by far was the british. the british had a major presence especially in the area of india. as well as the russians and the soviets. and afghanistan during that period was primarily a -- served an area of competition between the british and the soviets. but by the 1950s, so about a decade after world war ii, you did see a major increase in the u.s. presence there especially on the development side. and if you go into places like helmand or kandahar provinces in the south, you still see today areas like farms, the whole central helmand river valley
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where the u.s. contribution at that time was on a development level. and you still see those -- a lot of that infrastructure still there today. >> another tweet from terrortracker. why is the hand-off of bag ram prison to afghan control receiving so little critical inquiry in the west? >> that's a good question. and we have seen a lot of problems with how detainees are handled. we also saw the same thing in iraq. and seth probably knows more about the bagram piece but in iraq we had a lot of promises with huge numbers of people being arrested, inadequate facilities to train them. and initially we had -- we would -- some commanders would go out and arrest massive numbers of people. and when i was last there, which was 2008, there was a lot of concern about who was being let out of these prisons in iraq. and i think there's ongoing concern 'cause they have been letting a lot of people out.
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especially now that our presence in iraq has subsided. they're having a lot of trouble tracking these people. iraq, i think, is -- you know the future there is uncertain. and we talked about the ethnic problems there. the sunni versus shia. is that going to blow up again? i don't think anyone knows that for sure. >> anything you want to add about bagram prison? >> no, i would just note that i do think -- one of the lessons from iraq and from abu ghraib in general was decent treatment of prisoners. and when you look at the recruitment policies of a lot of the jihadi groups now, they use abu ghraib -- the photographs that came from it and just the entire episode for recruitment purposes. there's an extraordinarily negative implication when you start to go down that road. so as we move forward on baa gram and other internment facilities, i think there has to be -- and my sense is there is
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slowly an improvement in the way prisoners are treated. >> michael, chicago. good evening. >> caller: yes. gentlemen, good evening. how is it going to. i appreciate you taking my call. hopefully this isn't somewhat of a loaded question so bear with me. in your opinion, do you think it's naive to take the charlie wilson train of thought to say, hey, if we would not have left these folks high and dry after we pushed the soviets out of afghanistan that we would be in, quote-unquote, mess that we're in now? second part of that question, i hope it's not loaded, clearly northern alliance, the folks -- before we went in and took kabul, et cetera, these folks were pretty skeptical about the commitment that the u.s. had. what are these folks doing? when i say these folks, i mean, us the united states, doing to make sure that we maintain that -- our credibility? a lot of folks say, hey, the
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usaid et cetera and i'm sure afghanistan and i have a long memory i'd be thinking about hey, these folks left us before. what's going to stop them from doing it before they exerted their will for lack of a better term? >> let's start with seth jones. >> that's a great question. i can't tell you how many times i got asked that question and continue to get asked questions by afghans pakistanis in that region. i think it was a problem that the u.s. and ultimately the soviets got out of afghanistan. because what we saw is the central government collapse by the early 1990s. and afghanistan move into a direction literally of anarchy. competition among the warlords and their militia forces. had the u.s. been there, played a more direct role in brokering an agreement and trying to settle the disagreements among the major actors i think it could have ensured long-term stability. so part of what the united
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states has to signal now and it's become a little bit more difficult with a 2011 deadline that's been announced to some degree although i think there's some disagreement on that. there's development aid and forces long term to the region. and i think it has -- it has done a pretty good job of trying to convince the afghan and pakistan governments and those others in the region that it is committed in the long run to stability of afghanistan and part of that is actually working with neighbors. the russians, the indians, the afghans, the chinese, the iranians to some degree as well on that as well because as we've learned historically from afghanistan, the neighbors have a large stake in afghanistan as well. >> yeah, i'd say, you know -- and when i was there too last month there was a fair amount of concern over the july 2011 deadline that has been set. and everyone over there i think is doing an excellent job of reassuring them that, you know, that doesn't mean we're going to
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have a massive withdraw on that date. but i do think it's very important what i say in this country about afghanistan. i think it's important that the president and members of congress are out there talking about the firmness of our commitment. i think we can do more. in that area. to reassure them. now, there's an argument to be made that if we put a timeline, that's going to sort of force them to get their act together. i think there's a certain amount of -- i don't think we're quite to that point yet. i think you do that when they're on a firmer footing. i think right now we need to send them the message that we are going to be there for the long term. i tend to agree with president karzai's timeline it's going to be five years to get them to the point where they can take over most of the security. that may be a little aggressive but i think an aggressive timeline is good. >> lou is on the air. >> caller: i'll make a quick
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question and hopefully it's a good question and i'll hang up and listen to the answer. who exactly is following the taliban? paw my point is this. -- because my point is. i don't think -- [inaudible] >> and afghanistan -- >> lou we caught the basis of your question about funding the taliban. sorry, your cell phone was fading out there. let's talk about who is funding the taliban and the activities of other countries, outside players, in afghanistan. we'll start with you, mr. jones. >> well, the taliban has done a pretty good job of gaining redundancy in its financing. >> what do you mean? >> it gets funding from a range of types of behavior. it gets money from the drug trade including taxes against farmers. taxing the movement of poppy
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along major roadways. it also gets some support from mosques and from major donors in the arab world including wealthy donors from saudi arabia, the united arab emirates and other areas. but it also have gotten support and continues to get support from -- on the taliban case, despite the fact that iran nearly went to war with the taliban at the end of the 1990s, iran has provided some low level support to the taliban and some other insurgent groups. >> state support. >> state support, the iranian revolutionary guard as has elements of the pakistani government. interservices intelligence directors. and so there have been -- there has been state support. so interestingly the arrest of the mullah, the second in command at karachi recently has been a notable -- or at least
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brings up the question what is a notable shift in pakistan's policy towards taliban. >> yeah, i think that's an excellent summary. the only thing i would add is mention how leadership is really crucial in terms of afghan security forces and it's also crucial in terms of the taliban. and, you know, they don't have a huge foreign presence but we do know that some of their commanders are pakistani or from other countries. and those people are very important. in many cases they are more important than the large amount of money. because, you know, we've seen some very militarily skillful taliban forces. and that's not an accident. they're getting some very good leaders from pakistan and elsewhere. and that's again part of why the pakistan piece of this is so crucial. >> well, let's talk a little bit specifically then about pakistan. it sounds a little schizophrenic that if the head of their isi is supporting or their isi is supporting the taliban efforts
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but they're also our ally, is that -- did i say that correctly? >> you did say that correctly. the pakistan government has tended to act in its own interests, as any state would. they have targeted militant groups that threaten state. so they have targeted al-qaeda and foreign fighters on their territory. they've helped capture khalid sheikh mohammed and a range of others. they've also now increasingly targeted what some people call the pakistani taliban. ... taliban, based out of the south waziristan because it's like to massoud had another range of militants. dave operated in areas where militants can be targeted for suicide attacks in pakistan. but at the same time they have assisted historically militant groups have operated in afghanistan and kashmir in india. >> host: and when you say they do you mean state support? >> guest: elements of the pakistani state that included suor

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