[inaudible conversations]

>> for more information about the national book critic circle and the nbcc award, visit bookcritics.org. >> welcome to booktv's coverage of the 2010 virginia festival of the book in charlottesville, virginia. this is a festival held over five days and several different venues in the town of

charlottesville including places at the university of virginia. coming up today are several different author panels. we're going to show you panels discussing early american scientists, the french and indian war, women and war and the business of book reviewing. we're also talking with several authors about their books. but first up today, reporting from pakistan in afghanistan. here are jay malcolm garcia and nick schmidle. >> thank you all very much for coming. my name is ted genoways. i'm the editor at the environmental quarterly review. and it's my pleasure to welcome you here on behalf of the virginia foundation on behalf of the humanities which is the producer of the virginia festival of the book. it's my obligation before we even get started to remind you that -- that the festival and

the foundation are both -- have hit rocky foundation times and there are steps that you can take to help them. not the least of which is a tax deductible gift to the festival, which would be a fine thing to do. you can also let your legislators know that you've been attending this festival. that you've enjoyed this. that you think this is culturally valuable. and courage them to support the festival and to keep the foundation stores open and the programs that it supports underway. i'm also encouraged to remind you that part of the way that the festival reports and shows that what it is doing is valuable is by collecting the data from those sheets that hopefully all of you have been handed as you came in. please do fill those out and return them to the people who are gathering them at the back.

the volunteers who are graciously giving their time to make the festival possible. that information is extremely useful to keeping the festival going and to keeping these events open and free to the public. last -- well, two things. you're going to get a chance to hear these guys talk in just a minute. and i'm sure after you've heard them you're going to want to own at least one copy of their respective books. and you're in luck in they're on sale. [laughter] >> at the back of the room. and it is always our pleasure to have the uva bookstore selling at these events. they do a great job and once again are here to make sure that those books are available. and the one last reminder before i introduce the speakers -- no

doubt as you're trying to coordinate and get to the various events with your friends you are in regular cell phone contact. however, now would be a great time to pause that cell phone communication because you are where you need to be. and we're hoping not to have any interruptions during the event so if you can just switch them off, that'd be great. so i think that gets the housekeeping stuff out of the way. and it brings me around to our two speakers today. nicholas schmidle and j. malcolm garcia. i'm really pleased to have these guys here not because i think they have really outstanding books i'm looking forward to hearing them talk about. but because each of them has played a really critical role in my time as editor at the virginia quarterly review.

when i took over as editor in 2003, i had this notion that i wanted the literary quarterly to be able to do something that was more -- that was more timely. that was more current. and was more international. i had that ambition but i didn't know exactly how to make it happen. and one of the earliest and luckiest5& coincidences was th malcolm garcia sent me a piece that was called "curfew" about his time in afghanistan. it was about a specific set of occurrences in afghanistan on one long treacherous evening. it was something that i still don't know exactly why malcolm sent it to us but i'm really glad that he did because it was exactly the sort of thing that i was looking for. it appeared in the second issue that i put out as editor.

and malcolm has been writing for us on a regular basis ever since then. that piece of writing along with some other pieces from afghanistan that he's written are part of this book that is out now. he's also reported for us from probably more places than i can remember. but i can -- i can say that his work has -- from our pages along has been reprinted in three american best anthologies and it also appears in the current issue of vqr, which is also for sale at the back of the room. and he has a lead portfolio on afghanistan and includes malcolm's report in the days leading up to the afghan election. there's -- somewhere after that time when we started to get a

bit of a reputation as someplace that was publishing long form international coverage, i got an email out of the blue from nicholas schmidle. and the email said something along the lines of i'm in pakistan for a couple of years. i'm here on a grant. there are some places that the pakistani government doesn't want me to go and i'd like to go there. [laughter] >> and, you know, how can you resist that? so i agreed to that. and again, nicholas has been writing for us ever since then. i'm not sure how many times he's written for us now, three or four, at least. and among other things that that reporting that he did from parts of pakistan that the pakistani

government didn't want him to be in, won him an award which is an award for international coverage that shows unusual courage. else most recently in our winter issue had a story about the group of somali young men -- somali american young men who have been returning to somalia as suicide bombers and jihadists. and that -- that story will be picked up for reprint in the next issue. so both of these guys doing really, really outstanding work from all over the world. and as i say, they also have these two marvelous books that are just out. one about pakistan, one about afghanistan. and i look forward to hearing what they each have to say and we'll have plenty of time for

q & a afterwards. i'm going to have nicholas go first. it's my real pleasure to welcome both nicholas schmidle and j. malcolm garcia. [applause] >> ted, thanks so much for that overgenerous introduction. and not -- it's not a slight how long it took. that's just a comment on the content. is there a little feedback back here? i'm sorry. okay. i'm going to try to keep this to 8 or 10 minutes and tell one or two stories that gets back to the area where the pakistani government would rather me not go into. i'm going to talk mostly about swat which malcolm was recently there border boxes two months ago. i was there about two years ago. so we can kind of hear how things have developed since then if he cares to come back full circle. but in the fall of 2007, about a year and a half into a fellowship that i had been

living in pakistan on behalf of from the institute of current world affairs, i started working on a piece for the "new york times" magazine called next gen taliban. it was largely a profile of this new generation of taliban following the -- following the government, storming at the red mosque in july of 2007. and what i found so compelling about this story idea was that these taliban were no longer under the -- under the control and under the authority of the traditional authority structures that had fostered the first generation of taliban. that being they were no longer abiding by the tribal authorities. they were longer -- they were no longer under the control of the religious parties, the mainstream religious parties that often use conventional politics, parliamentary politics as sort of a shield and cover for jihadist activities. and finally they were no longer under the control even of the intelligence agencies which by most conventional histories

claims that the pakistani intelligence agencies, largely created the taliban in southern afghanistan in 1996. so i was doing the profile of one individual who was this middle-aged mullah who was undergoing this sort of mid life crisis. and this was a guy that was referring to mullah omar's taliban, the afghan taliban as our boys and was considered sort of a godfather of the taliban but now the pakistani taliban were rocketing his house and that's firing rockets at, not throwing rocks at. and his wife was under threat. this is the character study of what happens when the taliban sort of go wild. but i needed to get -- i needed to meet the younger generation and be able to kind of figure out what was making them tick. so in october of 2007, through a mutual friend, arranged to meet a young journalist in the main city of swat which is north of islamabad. and i was going to go spend

several days there with him as a guest of the swat -- the pakistani taliban. and this is a time when it was a really interesting time because the taliban were very much playing for public sympathies. and they were interested in having journalists. they were not -- they hadn't sort of turned the corner yet where they had lost all inclinations towards being -- towards providing some sort of alternative judicial structure. i think now they've -- now they are no longer sort of -- it's not a hearts and minds game anymore. it's a pure terror game in my assumption but again, this is a bit dated. malcolm can commented on thislary. i come in on a wednesday evening. these people fix these fixers who are translators, guides, second pair of eyes, a second gut instinct. any good coverage throughout the developing world that you see is largely the result is a much better gauge of how good the fixer is than how good the journalist is, in fact.

this is a prime example. where i show up and this fixer says, quick, go to the hotel, drop your bags 'cause we're going to meet this taliban leader for dinner this evening. and i thought this is how we start off right. this is how we get moving i'm only here for three days. it's during the holy month of ramadan and we're going to break the fast with this guy. he lives two hours outside way up in the pine forest and he was going to meet us in the outskirts of the area and we will travel to his house and break the fast and whatnot. as we started leaving the area, my fixer gets a phone call from someone who says, listen, the report of the taliban have set up road blocks all outside of the city. and they're stopping for cars, they are looking for supervise and improperly covered women and taped cds playing un-islamic city and i dyed my hair and

clothing and i thought this is a bad idea. and so we call up to our buddy here. and he was waiting on the outskirts of town. we said -- my fixer is saying this, we hear they set up this roadblock and we've got this american journalist in the backseat and this isn't going to be great. he said great give me your description of your car and the license plate. don't worry about it. people wonder how these foreign al-qaeda leaders and groups are able to base themselves up on borders. hospitality cannot be overemphasized. and the connection -- the importance of connections cannot either. so the man who has made the offer. he's hosting this this evening and said don't worry about it. he puts in a call and arrangement next bend and we come there are four flat-bed trucks with 60 to 70 taliban in there. long hair, floppy caps and i'm

in the backseat thinking, oh, man, this is it, right? this is the beginning. this is the end, you know, so i've got my nose in an urdu newspaper and this is something you don't want to make eye contact with anyone but you don't get to drive through a taliban roadblock every day so you want to soak inasmuch you can. and as we pull up to the roadblock they're pulling over every car. we look in the car behind us and women -- the young ladies are pulling their head scarves are up and everyone is obviously very nervous and every car is getting pulled over and trunks are getting popped open. taliban are searching the cars. and we inch up and they take a quick look at our each other, part and wave us through. look, i don't know who this man who's waiting for us around the next bend but obviously he's got a little bit of pull. so he gets in the car and he can see how enforce.

he said don't worry. you are guests of the taliban this weekend and we will take care of you. so again, i don't know whether you're supposed to take that -- is that supposed to comfort you or not. [laughter] >> he gets in the car to us and we drive to his house for the evening and as we're breaking the fast, he senses -- i'm having a pretty good time. no doubt about it. this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and i think that he begins confusing empathy for sympathy. and so he takes out his cell phone and he wants to show me his videos that he's downloaded of he and his colleagues, supporter, fellow talabanis blowing up american convoys in american afghanistan and iraq. mostly in afghanistan. the others were, you know, sent in from iraq. it's a little comfortable for me for two reasons. my father is a marine general and my brother is a marine lieutenant who at the time was in iraq fighting against jihadis.

he start showing the videos and i'm trying to find out a way -- this is not the time, you know, night's fallen we're in the middle of this pine forest. he's shown us is bunch of guns now is not the time to say my father and brother are part of the crusading army that you swore on your life against and i want to make that clear. i can't watch these videos any longer. i change the subject and we start talking about islamic philosophy and jihadist philosophy. i got a philosophy major and this is where i really need to put it to use and here we go. and he asks me if i ever read osama bin laden's philosophy book. no, i haven't. we can stop watching the dvds and we can switch the focus of the attention so he brings me into another room, adjoining room where we are sitting and he's got this book shelf set up that is part of his al-qaeda, taliban paraphernalia. a letter signed from mullah omar thanking him for making a aid delivery. weapons that he has allegedly recovered from soldiers in kunar

province across the border in afghanistan. and then a bunch of dvds and at the bottom there's a backpack and he says actually, he says the book is in that knapsack and i promise the person who left that knapsack that i wouldn't touch it until he returned. and i'm like well, we've got mullah omar's signed thing. we've got the .9 millimeter beretta and ak-47s who left this bag who you're so worried about. he said this bag was left by zawahiri who is al-qaeda's number two and now things are getting creepy and we've got the sense of people who have been here that i definitely should not be in the same room. and so i went back into the adjoining room and made eye contact with my fixer, hey, listen we should scoot. and so that evening we went back. we made the two-hour drive back through the road blocks, no issues. on friday morning we were set to go to meet the main militant leader. and we were going to go for the

friday prayer and then after the friday prayer, these taliban, which were a bit more hardcore had promised that they were going to -- there was going to be a big sort of rollout party. we weren't really sure what this meant. we wanted to be there. but friday morning, 11:00, as we're preparing to leave my fixer and i are looking at each other this is actually not the greatest idea. we're going to go in the middle of this taliban camp and not really have a way of getting out because there are two ways to go. you could either drive through a series of taliban-controlled villages to get to the -- to get to the mosque compound area or you could park your car on the side of the swat river and get into a carriage to a zip line that the taliban have set up and sit in the zip line and push yourself over the zip line and go 50 meters and watch your car disappear over the road. we had a fantastic day there and i can talk about this a bit more later during the q & a. we witnessed a public lashing

and we saw the taliban really illustrating that they were in total control of the area. but what was the most fascinating and telling thing that happened that morning we called kahn. we said we don't know if we want to go. we have the invitation but, you know, these guys are serious. and we've broken bread with you. you might be a pretty extreme dude but at least you're not -- we can hope that you're not going to watch them cut our heads off or something because we've had -- we've had some connection. and his response was, no way am i going with you guys because those guys over there are extremists. and at that point the emergence of this next generation of taliban was very apparent and was on display. anyways, that story appeared -- that tale appeared in a piece that i did for the "new york times" magazine the first week of january, 2008. and two days later, the police showed up at our house and

deported my wife and i from the country after living there for two years and so i came back and that story, the deportation story and all that is in the book and i'll turn it back. >> thank you, nicholas. i'll turn it over to malcolm, who's got -- somewhat of a different story. but i'll let you set it up, malcolm and tell us about the book from afghanistan. >> well, the story is i'm not going to travel with nick. that's what i'm telling you. [laughter] >> and i want to thank all of you for coming and also certainly ted and all the staff volunteers, interns at vqr who have given me so many opportunities. the story behind "curfew" that ted referred to -- the reason i extent to vqr is that it had been rejected 12 times and i had started counting after that.

and i can tell this now, i didn't even remember sending it to vqr when ted sent me his acceptance but when he said he was going to pay me $100 a page i remembered it and i said i'm down with it. and thank you again. i came to journalism through the back door of social work. i worked in san francisco for 14 years with homeless men, women and children in cambodia and salvador and refugees and i got into that work because i went through a phase where i was hitchhiking across the country. and at one point i picked up pneumonia and i landed in san francisco weighing about 130 pounds and the indigent care sent me to a shelter and you're guaranteed a place at shelter putting down exercise mats and they hired me for $400 a month full time. and that was my introduction to social work and it took me 14 years to realized i wasn't getting paid enough so i went into journalism.

[laughter] >> and september 11 happened and i was working at the "kansas city star" newspaper. and i realized that the cliche was true that september 11 among many other things was the d-day for that current generation and so i told my editor i wanted to go overseas. i didn't tell him that i didn't know where afghanistan was. that i'd only really known about it from rambo 3. but i just knew i wanted to go. and i'd figure out where i was going later. fortunately -- well, unfortunately for the newspaper business but fortunately for me overseas bureaus had been cut so much and when 9/11 happened newspapers were scrambling. they didn't have anybody over there. the "kansas city star" was part of the knight-ridder chain and

they put out an apb and it said who wants to go to afghanistan. i left on saturday the following day. and so i spent friday night, frankly, drinking and looking at maps. [laughter] >> 'cause i thought at the very least i should learn where this place was. you know, telling people far to the right of the united states just didn't have much credibility. and that resulted in returned trips pretty much after that from november of '01 to as recently as last august. and obviously there are a lot of stories in between. but for this segment of this part, i'd like to refer to one incident that happened in 2003. by that time i was close friends with my colleague khalid who i called bro because he's always correcting my pronunciation of my name and as a social worker

all the people i worked with, the homeless people i worked with they all had street names. if they called them by their proper names, no, no, i'm gypsy, i'm alabama and too tall because it gave them their it's. -- identity. so it was very natural for me after he corrected me 1,000 times to just start calling him bro. and he accepted that. and he butchered my name and i used to tease him about that and he called me the man who comes from outside. and throughout the years we worked together, we're always dealing with a lot of war orphans, homeless kids on the street. and they're literally like fleas on a dog. they don't ask for money and they will follow you for blocks and clutch at you and everything like that and you find yourself getting callous saying no, i can't give you money. on one particular morning there were five boys outside the hotel that i was staying at.

they asked for money and i said no and they didn't follow me and that made an impression. so on following mornings i saw them i would give them candy. and i thought i would leave it at that. that was it. i'm going to give them candy. they're not how long me. that's good. and one day they said beer not eating the candy and i said what -- it upsets their stomach because they're not eating real food and i said hock i'll take to you lunch. get some real food and we're back to the candy. the lunch progressed from ones a week to every day. and then, you know, i started sounding like my parents. i said why aren't you in school? we're war orphans. so we found a school that they could actually enroll them. they work around the street schedule of the kids. if you made more money begging

in the morning you went to school in the afternoon. if you felt you more money in the afternoon begging you went to school in the morning. that intrigued me. i wish i had thought that when i was working with people. so we put them in this school. and then we started tutoring them at night making sure they did their homework. i'm saying this not to elevate bro and i as the heroes of afghan social work. but to point out a certain naivete on both our parts. and that we didn't realize that by initiating this, we had crossed a line and they had expectations. you know, we had given them a kind of the attention and affection that they hadn't received before. certainly from westerners. and, quite frankly, from their own people and i don't see that critical of afghans but when you have nothing it's very hard to give to other people who have nothing and you can get very hard on your children. we see that in the united states

among impoverished neighborhoods and we certainly see that in third world countries. well, i hadn't really thought that through. and so the problem came along when after five months in afghanistan it was time for me to go. and there's no real follow-up plan for these kids. 'cause i hadn't thought it through. i did a mad scramble and i talked to aid organizations and that type of things. we've got our hands full. or you can tell these kids to come here. a lot of what i used to experience in as spoil worker. they will not come to you. they don't know you. you have trust issues, et cetera, et cetera. and i realized at that moment well, i'm not sure if i realized it but i had questions because i wondered if i had done more harm than good because i had set up expectations and i was going to leave and i had plans to send bro money and that type of thing but i knew in my heart that wasn't going to work. that bro was going to have to get on with his life when i wasn't there he was going to have make a living sending money

to afghanistan can be difficult. and then when people get it and ñbro and his family there's no guarantee who's going to get what before it gets to the kids because everything is scrambling. and so i set up false expectations and in the end i disappointed myself and i disappointed the kids. and i'm saying that not to make myself a whipping boy because i realized to a certain extent what i had done a metaphor for u.s. policy in afghanistan and i know it's very easy to beat up on the united states because of the perceived failures in both iraq and afghanistan. it's important to note those failures. but i don't day this to beat up on any government but to hold us and myself accountable. that that interest has to go beyond talking. we have to really think hard about what our level of commitment is.

and with the united states the tragedy of afghanistan was when i got there in november of '01, my feeling was they would have been happy to have been an occupied country. this is a country that had been blown to hell for 30 years as a doctor told me. he said welcome to the 12th century. he was absolutely right. you can't begin -- when i got there, it looked like photographs my father showed me of london after the blitz or europe after world war ii. it looked like sand castles after waves had washed over them and receded. i had never seen anything like that. and as a social worker i worked in some miserable places but i hadn't seen anything like that. but united states chose -- and the western countries chose to have other priorities and so a lot of promises were made in the years that i was there the aid never came through like it was promised. and then the country deteriorated. and with the deterioration of the country in terms of the war effort came a deterioration of

morale where the afghan people were very angry with the western countries. and they began to kind of rewrite their own history. after a while they started saying, you know, under the soviet union it really wasn't that bad. under the taliban it wasn't that bad. we had security. at least when the taliban said they were going to cut off our heads they really did cut off their heads. the western countries say they're going to give us money, they don't give it. and it has reached such a point on my last trip, it was actually a very dangerous place for westerners just to be wandering around the country because the disappointment is so vast and also what they see representative of western countries are huge humvee, hummers whatever they are called now. big black trucks is what i'm talking about. with windows painted black and you can't see them. ngos who i'm sure are doing god's work but they get huge amounts of money, you know, they'll spend $250,000 on security to drive from point a to point b.

that may make perfect sense. but if you're the guy waiting for this aid since '01, feelings aren't fact and they're real and the feelings aren't real good and i think that's something we're forgetting as we proceed with our policy that in some ways the policy has to be careful that it doesn't do a malcolm. that it doesn't set up great expectations and then doesn't follow through because that has been the problem -- one of the many problems all along. so in my rant and i'll get off my soap box and drink a glass of water. [laughter] >> before opening it up to general questions, i want to follow up with each of you a little bit. nicholas, i wanted to ask you a little bit about since some of the reporting that you've done -- or did in pakistan, you've gone lots of other places

looking at terror networks in other regions. and i wonder if you would talk a bit about that. and what you see happening globally. >> so it's a good question. i think that the -- i think we can -- it's become a truism to talk about pakistan being the center of all global activities. and into all jihadist global activities. but to try and put this theory to test in december of 2008, i was in north africa for a few weeks doing a piece about al-qaeda's franchise there and kind of looking at how the franchise model had worked for them. you know, we had one franchise in al-qaeda in iraq and we had one bona fide franchise in another area and we had since had one franchise that's emerged

in saudi arabia and yemen which oddly, though, has still yet to be officially blessed by al-qaeda's -- by zawahiri who does most of the blessings of these franchises. the franchise model is not working. and so while you have a great -- it's an interesting dilemma for these militant networks because you have rising resentment against the united states. you have an increasing amount of youth anger and willingness to take up arms and a willingness to blow themselves up. and yet the organization can't -- al-qaeda as it existw3ç caves and whatnot and along the pakistan/afghanistan border but mostly in pakistan can't connect to them and these groups are fledgling. the underwear bomber could have caused a great amount of harm but, you know, you've got one kid on an airplane with a bomb strapped in his underwear eight years after 9/11 when you had 16 -- or 18, you know, very organized well-trained suicide

bombers. so i think that's kind of a testament to where we stand now in terms of the diffusiveness of the global jihad for lack of a better word is that everyone wants to get in but the organization -- the super structure isn't there. >> it's a related question for you, malcolm, because as nicholas mentioned you've been recently in pakistan and into swat and talking to some of the al-qaeda-affiliated groups but not al-qaeda proper and i just wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that trip and what you saw? >> what stood out to me is that when i talked to some of the al-qaeda-affiliated groups they are critical of the pakistan taliban which i thought was interesting.

the only reason that i could think of that was that when the taliban occupied swat valley, it spread such fear that the conclusion i reached that it was kind of a political or a tactical move to disassociate from the pakistan taliban and say they're nothing but bandits and, you know, bad people who don't represent us because right now there is some support for pakistan military to push back against the taliban and it just struck me that they're trying to sort of disown these -- you know, we can cut off our right hand. we still have our left hand we can do all sorts of things with that but strategic move have sort of disowned them for the moment. >> related -- and this is sort of for each of you, are the that i shall we've just put out is -- has a number of lead essays about afghanistan.

as sort of as you alluded to. there seems to be some slippage going on now between what we mean when we're talking about our strategy. that al-qaeda and the taliban are often talked about as a single group even though that doesn't seem to be the way they're operating. and it's created something of a -- at least the public confusion if not a military confusion in afghanistan. and again you've been there fairly recently. what's your sense of the progress of events there? >> well, i think the conclusion i reached from this last trip to pakistan -- the only way i could understand it in my own head was that in some ways these al-qaeda groups are kind of like the mafia. you have, you know, your chicago

branch, your new york branch and you have different branches sort of vying with each other because there's so many people getting involved. and nick knows more about this than i do. but, you know, the unifying factor is just a huge rage begins the united states which really struck me in this most recent trip both in afghanistan and pakistan and from the most educated people, people who had gone to mit, et cetera, to the beggar on the street with polio. they all said 9/11 was a crock. that it was an inside job by the united states to give it -- give the u.s. and the western countries an excuse to invade central asia. i mean, it renders one speechless when you hear. but at the same time, you know, i heard it so often the hard questions that i sometimes think we as a country avoid is, you know, why would -- why would an otherwise reasonable person say that?

what have we done to contribute to that kind of thinking or to create that kind of reaction that one would come up with this fiction? and 9/11 is such an emotional point for all of us that it's really hard to deal with that question without getting either angry at the person asking it or, you know, angry, you know -- just getting angry with the people saying this nonsense without trying to figure out somebody who went to school at mit really believe this stuff? >> you mentioned this rage against americans. but you also -- you told me that when you were most recently in pakistan and meeting with some of the young recruits that you met with them and sort of went to an unexpected place. >> we met in a mcdonalds. and one guy told me he had been

in a metal band and he insisted that i played a guitar because i had a ponytail. he was just insistent. i said i couldn't play a guitar to save my life. if you want to kill me, this is a good time to do it. [laughter] >> he just said well, you're just too modest. you're a very modest man and blah, blah, blah. and under the golden arches, you know, i just got this stream of, you know, stuff about how, you know, the united states is this. the united states is that. and it's okay to blow things up and this, that, and the other. and as nick was referring to they always came back but you are our guest. because i would always push back you can't hate a government. it's not tangible. you can hate obama but you can't hate a government. you have to have something physical. so when you say you hate the american government and i'm sitting here, i am the tangible thing of the american government so you must hate me. that's why i can't just go

prancing around this country without dressing up as nick did and, you know, feeling equally foolish. especially when people came up and started speaking to me in their native language. i didn't think i'd passed. i passed well enough people would come up and start asking me questions. i can't say anything. [laughter] >> i'm from chicago. [laughter] >> so i started pointing at my mouth and ears trying to pretend like i was a deaf-mute. [laughter] >> it's strange to feel scared for your life and embarrassed at the same time. there's just something that's not right about that. 2÷ and i really got off the subject. but, you know, it was an interesting discussion the whole thing about tangible versus intangible. they just insisted we'd never do anything to you because your our guest. you pknow, they are doing thing

to people because they represent the bad things that they attribute to the united states. >> and actually on that point you referred to being -- i guess, i don't know if you were officially deported. you were asked to leave. but then you made a return trip to pakistan that was a little harrowing. >> well, so officially deported -- i mean, we have a deportation order that says your visas have been cancelled. you're to leave the country immediately. so through my wife's connections -- this is my wife here in the front. she's actually the unsung hero of the whole pakistan experience. i had been -- when the cops came i had been there for two years. and i hadn't -- part of the terms of my fellowship was that i stay therg two years and learn urdu and that was the shtick. for her she was allowed to go. she was able to go back to the states twice and sort of get a little piece of america.

take a deep breath and then go back to pakistan. so when the cops came, i was like oh, man, i'm craving some pizza pork and beer. ricky was made the spa director. she was the only non-muslim american to ever attend the international islamic university. and she had just been commissioned to start hosting a reality tv show in urdu in which she was making over pakistani women. [laughter] >> she was extremely well-connected and when the cops came and delivered this deportation order who said you have 45 minutes to get your stuff together and go to the airport, we called one of ricky's nutrition clients who happened to be a cousin of the prime minister who at that moment when i called him and said, listen, we're in a bit of a bind and the cops are in the driveway and they are looking scary and angry. he said don't worry about it. i'm playing bridge to the

security advisor and i'll transfer the phone to tariq arriz. but when i went back there was a change of government. in february. and the new government allowed me to come back and write a story about a mainstream peaceful moderate form of islam that in my view -- you know, the taliban make a lot of noise but the other has the numbers and if you want to understand mainstream islam, these festivals are the place to be. i've gotten an assignment to do this piece for smithsonian and 10 days what was supposed to be a three-week trip and with a new fixer and getting back to the incredible spot of fixers we started getting phone calls from the same cell phone number from someone pretending to be people who didn't exist wanting to meet me in karachi first a ministry official and second a newspaper

editor and i would have never -- i would have never looked at this phone number and say something is funny about this but let's follow up. my fixer called me and he said he's an interior minister. it's not done so cell phones it's done on land lines. i'm going to ask about this individual. he called the interior ministry. he said neither does that person nor does that office exist. so we thought, all right, this is a bit creepy. this is actually very much a page from the daniel pearl playbook and i called the embassy. i had met with zadari the night before who then became president and we called his office and said, you know, we're getting really dodgy phone calls from the intelligence agencies. and to make a long story short border boxes an hour later, the phone range again. friends in islamabad were watching television and local television was reporting i had been kidnapped in karachi. so whoever was making these phone calls apparently wanted to get us out and -- whether this

was them forecasting intent or whether this was just them trying to get into my head, they being the intelligence agencies, the latter worked and i said, okay, i'm out of here. let me get this festival for a couple hours and do what i need to do so i left in a hurry. and eventually the u.s. embassy -- i couldn't get a ticket out of the country. all the planes were booked. the u.s. embassy got involved and helped me get out and threw me in a bulletproof car and took me to the airport. i'm incredibly envious and jealous of malcolm as i was going to the airport in a bullet-proof vest, if you have to be taken out of a country by the u.s. embassy, that's when you know your time is done at least for a while. so i pledged to ricky and my mom, i probably won't be going to pakistan anytime soon so we'll try to figure out some other place to travel.

>> we have time for a few questions from the audience. yes, go ahead. [inaudible] >> we just hear bad things and bad things. >> i mean, i'll tell a quick success stories. there's no agencies involved. but it really is -- i think it reflects very well on pakistani public opinion in the course of the past year. and that is that -- when we talk about the taliban and -- there has always been a distinction that i think mainstream pakistanis felt between the taliban as an abstraction which was very appealing -- every pakistani is angry against the united states and the u.s. policies. you have these guys in the hills they're bum kins, they're a little bit backwards but they're

fighting the good fight and there was support for the cities. so you have sort of admiration for the taliban as an abstraction but and an ideal but the reality of the taliban, the guys with the beards and the guns standing on their street corners, no educated pakistani really wants that. and so that distinction had held for several years up until last spring when the taliban moved out of swat into the neighboring district and for the first time came within 60 miles of islamabad and suddenly from then until now worth the distinction has begun collapsing and i think public opinion has certainly turned and now the newspaper editorials while still always conspiratorial are less should we fight against the taliban and more now how do we fight against the taliban so i think that's actually been really encouraging, you know, you've got -- the -- if once public support begins to dissipate than the military can more effectively launch the

counterinsurgent shi >> i think in afghanistan there are two points. i don't think anyone really wants the taliban to come back. and when i said earlier that they rewrite -- they were rewriting history, it's an indication of their frustration. there's a lot of good will there that the united states could tap into. you know, if it really follows through on what it has committed to and also if it takes a hard look at the karzai government. the election showed that it's a very corrupt government. and again, both people in the united states and afghans are certainly asking this question. do we really want our sons and daughters in afghanistan mostly sons to die on behalf of this corrupt government? and, you know, you're light there's a lot of bad news but i think the news is bad because a lot of the hard questions haven't been asked and, therefore, things weren't thought through.

there are a lot of agencies that are doing excellent work. and again, just like in this country from my social work bank account i have rally off nonprofits are doing great work but whether it's in this country dealing with poverty and in afghanistan dealing with what they're dealing with, are these individual great works actually educating a aconsume -- will it stand. and with the poverty in afghanistan and pakistan. >> let's take one more question before we'll have these guys go to the back of the room and sign books and they can talk one-on-one. yes, go right ahead. [inaudible] >> you both seem to talk about the anger with the u.s. but don't seem an explanation for the roots of that anger?

and is that because you never found out or you just dismissed it out of hand as being irrational? or did you try to find out what was behind it and maybe you could share some of the issues like the problems india versus pakistan, for example, and where the u.s. support is between those countries? or any other explanation that you have for it. >> well, i mean, you actually touched on it. many people said until the kashmir issue is solved and also the palestinian issue, there's never be peace in that region. there are also people -- i mean, history holds sway there at least in my experience in afghanistan and pakistan. and, you know, people were harking back to a time, you know, before my parents were born. i mean, they can recite the wrongs of history from way back. and so i didn't dismiss it. i certainly don't know how to address it when people areying,

wronged from this time a.d. all the way up to the current time. i don't have an answer of how you address an anger so deep that they're reaching for these points. i do think, though, that to begin addressing that anger you have to deal with obvious issues that haven't been dealt with and -- what i heard from people were the palestinian and the kashmir issue. >> i think it's a fantastic question. in my mind there are two sides of it. the one of which is that in 2007, there was a broad-based movement led by lawyers for the restoration of a sacked chief justice. and the u.s. stance in that whole fiasco was terribly wrong-headed. and what happened was you saw pakistanis -- middle class pakistanis and i think this is why you see english newspapers.

you see ivy-league educated in the capitals is during the whole administration you had the bush administration not -- i don't know what position the obama administration would have taken but nonetheless you had them supporting a clearly undemocratic dictator while still parroting the talk of the promoting democracy in the muslim world and that burned into the public imagination for that year. and so i think it's built off of that. the second thing is from a security standpoint, from pakistanis, so pakistan for the first 58 years of its existence, it was always the -- it was always viewed pakistan/india from the u.s. perspective and it was always balancing one against the other. and so when the u.s. made this nuclear deal to start sharing nuclear technology with india, the pakistani thought here we go. we're next and they didn't get

it and now they're angry. you've got 180 million people. you've got nuclear weapons. you've got al-qaeda based in the country. all they want is to have the pakistan problem viewed as a pakistan problem and you've gone now from pakistan/india to this silly moniker afpak. what do we have to do to be referred to as that problem? it's that sense that it's sort of an attachment to what is a larger u.s. security focus, whether it would be india or in this case afghanistan so i think it's the sense of also being always used. there's this -- we can't say this on c-span but they always talk about pakistanis feeling like they've been used and thrown away. and whether that would be with regards to india or afghanistan so i think that sentiment is certainly there. >> before sending these guys to the back of the room to sign books, i wanted to mention to

everyone that if you are interested in these questions of the region, you're in luck. there are a couple of additional events that we're sponsoring over the next two days that you should try to make plans to attend. the first of which is an event with photographer louis palieu who will be showing his photographs from the southern part of afghanistan. he spent the last three-plus years there photographing. and he will also be playing an audio slide show and talking and showing video that he shot over there. i've seen the material. it's really outstanding. and you should try to established. that's at 8:00 pm this evening at the bridge progressive arts center at the end of the downtown mall and just across the bridge. also tomorrow night at 7:30 pm

at jefferson hall, which is just across the street from us here, there'll be three reporters who all are featured in this issue. louis, i should say is also featured in this issue. jason motlaw, elliott woods and nelson shea who's hiding in the back of the room as we speak -- all three of them have been in afghanistan reporting for us in the last few months. and so there's still plenty more to be said on the subject and each of these guys has covered different parts of the country, different aspects of what's going on there. if you can make plans to attend, i think you'll find that they've got a lot to say and are just as fascinating and as accessible as these two gentlemen are. thank you again all of you for attending and to you guys. [applause]

>> i'm going to send the two of you to the back of the room right away. if you would, let them grab a seat and so that they can start to sign so that they don't get swamped and never get to sign. [inaudible conversations] >> the virginia festival of the book is held every year in charlottesville, virginia. and that's where booktv is covering several different panels. talking with several different authors. we're standing outside city hall and you can see out here that three presidents are represented

in charlottesville, james madison, thomas jefferson, and james monroe. well, the next panel you're going to be seeing is women and war. there are two authors on this panel. it's laura browder and carla the army nurse corps in the vietnam war. >> well, i'm really excited to be moderating this panel. boundaries, people's lives and i think this is right. we've been at war now continuously for what i think is the longest period in our history as a country. there aren't that many people working on figuring out how that's affecting us as a nation and how it's historically affected us. our speaker today are thinking about the topic in the history and in the present and what they're learning is important to all of us. i got interested in this general topic or this particular topic in 2007