>> this is the first reelection. >> nearly every seat that it could but as historians have observed what is even more remarkable is the communist recognize the victory at all because once they did everything fell apart. . . advisor on

pakistan and afghanistan is also

at the event. this is an hour and 40 minutes. >> it is a pleasure to be back here at columbia particularly in this room where i might mention 17 years ago in january of 1997 i chaired a meeting by the then dean who is president of cairo now, a meeting where he had a delegation with the taliban who came into the united states. this is a delegation that came to new york about 3-4 months after taking control of kabul. i might mention the people who were there the delegation was led by the person who was later

their foreign minister and i saw him in kabul. he is a reconciled member. and he is currently a member of the afghan high peace counsel in kabul and another one who was the minister of refuge's and was assassinated after returning from a meeting in dubia strike to start a peace meeting. and their interrupter for the

event is likely to be in the next cabinet. so this is a historic room. i met you first at the international association service meeting in san francisco. let me start by referring to something that jack mentioned which was that i was on the u.n.delegation at the bon tox which warns the process that led to the current government of afghanistan after 9/11 and the united states decision to ov overthrow the taliban regime. one of the issues we faced at bon was how to cope with the

fact that there were many on the ground leading armed groups such as the main figures in our book who later became governors who some people called warlords. there was a question whether they should be incorporated or whether they should be held countable or issues about amnestty for war crimes or not. i might mention one person who is not here today, the head of the sponsoring organization, was at that time the under secretary general of the un for peace keeping operations and before this, after a meeting on september 24th i attended as an outside expert and someone you will be hearing more about and

chaired by richard haas. i went to see marie to tell him my conclusion is the u.n.might be asked to send a peacekeeping force to afghanistan or to kabul to remain the capital free of the influence of the warlords so a non-political process could develop which is one of the classic problems coming out of a civil war. the was a multiple national force with the mandate but you would have had a degree of access to and done a remarkable amount of research about the development of the people called

warlords. i wonder if you can talk about the countability and how to cope with the people as the country is transitioning from war to a greater degree of political legitimacy. >> let me start by saying what a privilege it is to share these two comfy chairs with you. your work on afghanistan has been the central set of text to start with. so to be here and talk about my book with you is really a thrill. i think the center delima you present about the presence of these actors, the fact they were partners of the u.s. military and then the question of quote

what to do with them after the taliban fell was sort of the central question that animated the writing of this book. and for me, i guess, it comes down to a question of definition first. i think if you define warlords as predtory spoilers who are seeking gains at the expense of the state building project and the creation of peace and good governance it is very difficult to make an argument they should not be marginalized. ...

of the two main characters in your book. and the chapter is about those two men one of them is currently the governor involved in afghanistan and one is the governor that comes from kandahar. they are open with interesting pictures of the company, a group that stands out more than you do with me.

hispanic i had the experience of meeting both of these men on two different occasions. the first that i write about is currently the governor for coming upon a decade. he is a native of the province he joined the mujahedin when he was a teenager and then fight to the taliban and along with his longtime nemesis joined the americans to take the sort of central northern back from the taliban in the fall of 2001. he just finished his run for the presidency, and it looks like from the numbers he doesn't have a shop which isn't a surprise. he comes from the southern

province, the same province as president karzai and comes from the side that has a legacy of the rule and involvement in afghanistan and he helps the center of gravity in 2001. >> you said that they helped karzai -- >> depending who you talk to you might get a different picture. and then i think it's fair to say he took the governorship for himself and had then was appointed and taken out and then back and eventually in 2007 which is when my story began, sorry, 2005 was then moved and began his tenure which came to

the end when he decided to run the presidency. he is also -- his presidential aspirations began when he was interested in running in 2009 but described to me a process by which he was kind of convinced that it would be better because the patch turns as a whole for him to support president karzai, so he did that. >> before we get back to the conceptual argument can you say what it's like being in their presence and being in their offices. with you and not just telling interesting stories, but understanding their style of governance and how they integrate the ties with the formal position. hispanic the offices that they

have multiple ar art palaces tht they have and when you meet with them, they have different styles. so they are similar in that they have these very ornate policies, one in the northern sharif and one in jalalabad on the border and it's an experience as if you are kind of going back in time. you are essentially entering a kind of court in which -- >> which is specifically on the covert of your book. >> i picked this cover because it is important to be seen and it's quite amazing how similar my experience was meeting with them. so you know, you get an audience in which you are waiting with a number of other people so there are people who are tried for

elders who come from the district, they might be business people, journalists, and these are basically people that have come to get their advice, they've come to ask for something in their communities and for themselves, and it is the courtly style of politics in which you sort of realized that the informal is as much or many more cases more important than the formal but they are quite different from each other i should say. he also has a more but i kind of think of as a more corporate style. very soon after the taliban fell he wears nice suits. it gets closer and closer.

he has a nice watch and choose and he has a staff that kind of operates it and it feels like a firm. it feels a little bit more futile to be honest. he's very interested in the aesthetic so he spent a lot of time and money renovating the kings went her countless which is where he saved. and the second time that i interviewed him, we sat in the garden and there are tribal elders waiting and it feels like you are out of a different time. >> not to put you on the spot since two new these men and they knew you, but to lay out one

side of the argument, there are people who strongly criticized the corporation of men like this into the political system. can you start by giving us a brief outline of the type of arguments that those people would make about what those men had done and why they would argue that it's not important and then we will look at the other side. >> sure. the dominant narrative after 2001 was these are the individuals that were responsible for dragging the country into civil war. they made it clear they were interesting in profiting in the economic activity. after the reign of the way many people argued the taliban was

popular. to then bring these people back into the fray after 2001 was to take the country back after a really dark time and was to ignore i think what was a kind of popular end tuesday as i'm about a different kind of politics which would be democratic and accountable and representative and kind of a new chapter for afghanistan. so why would you want these sort of old characters and the legacies of abuse. hispanic in the agreement when these men were appointed to the various positions i think that he was initially the head of the

military figure before becoming a civilian and becoming the governor. he didn't care particularly about what the formal appointment was. he was the governor in charge of the security forces and both of them of course exercised authority and formally over the several provinces not just of the colleges thatothe colleges e supposedly the governors of. nonetheless, they didn't behave as people feared that if you did not have a renewal of the civil war of course there was plenty of economic activity accompanied by their illicit activity into the line between the two things is often quite difficult to discern especially i should add in the view of the fact that the main economic activity in both of these areas was the u.s. war effort. maybe not always thought of as

economic activity that produced him to distribute it more money than anything else including the drug trade. so, why is it that they did not reproduce exactly what they had done before? and although they maintained their capacity to exercise power through having the command over the men who couldn't use violence and having control of money, some of which was official state money into some of which was something else. how did they change from the civil war to powerful figures in a government? the >> one of the things that from the beginning this project was about was about trying to understand this intuition that i had from the beginning but that required a lot of investigation to figure out if it were true it was that not all are the same,

and so for me, i was interested in trying to figure out precisely this question. by the time i started to research in 2007, people were already talking not as warlords as much as actually powerful governors. so it struck me that something already at the very beginning of the research, something seemed at a minimum they were interested as the board board governors come and i think the reason that they made that transition for me is partly about understanding them and their circumstances and understanding the way the state is organized in afghanistan, so he caused many peopldoes many pe how highly centralized the afghan state is coming and what that afforded to the president karzai who didn't have a whole lot institutional way, there wasn't that much there in the beginning, but affording the

very important tool that was the tool of appointment and so every appointment that was made outside of kabul would be the ministry of interior and lady ly the director and the government, but it was his decision that would go. so with that allowed him to do was to play these warlords off of each other in ways that actually brought them into the system. so the kind of central argument that i'd make is the reason why you're not all of them are equ equal. but also different in terms of other local competitive environments looks like. so, for example, as you said, he was the head of the seventh army clerk in the north of afghanistan. he was the commander, he was a colorful commander from the

province and he had meant that were loyal to him and relationships. but most importantly he had a major competitor in the general and he also had another competitor in mohammed who was another major figure. this was my interpretation of he recognized the facts on the ground he couldn't dominate the space on his own. actually there was an incentive to engage in the government and this is where the use of the word for lord becomes unhelpful because these are actors and find it to wage a war against

somebody and the reason i kind of took on the word strawman is because these are individuals with great strength in their own right outside of the state but the central reason as i understood it was to be their competition, and so he kind of began an interesting relationship in which sometimes he misbehaved on the sometimes he demonstrated loyalty. in order as a part of bargaining relationship and it took a couple of years before he was actually appointed by governor but by the time he was appointed by governor, everybody knew" in him and including hamid karzai that he was going to be in charge in part because president karzai decided he was going to be in charge of both coming and knowing that the genital and another commander that there

were all these other players that were not really happy about that but would have liked themselves or their own to be there, that motivated him to serve as an effective governor to continue to have the support of the central government. >> of course you're talking about the relationship with the government. but as i mentioned the major source of money, the major source of coercion was the united states and its coalition partners. now, both of them developed different kinds of relationship with the international military presence as well as the international civilian presence which is important for us as americans to understand because while people in this country often see this warlord or corruption as an afghan phenomenon as you know in afghanistan meet many people say you americans brought to this. but these people in power it's your money that has created

corruption and so on so he was the governor first in kandahar which is the home of the tao the ban which meant that there is a large u.s. military force there and also not just the military force, but there were counterterrorism operations that is the cia armies which were parallel to the state plus the special forces operating separately from the main military operation. there were special fundings some of which was used by the governor at least in kandahar for his own projects. and when he moved again it was a little bit less kinetic most of the time. it became relatively stable and in the presence there with the provincial reconstruction team

which was led first by the british and then by the germans after nato became the head of the organizer of the international mission, the international mission. can you describe how each of them related to the international military how they used it politically because dealing with the rifles of the central government have that relationship with us was an important. >> for sure that relationship with the americans is absolutely central to understanding his story. a lot of people said to me over the years he was really not a major player until the american plans call something in him and connected with him and first afforded him an opportunity to take power in kandahar or sort of enable that, but that also allowethen alsoallowed him to mn

extraordinary amount of money. i think that he and a number of others have estimated just in kandahar before he even moved he had already made several hundred million dollars through contracts. >> when you say contracts but st are those contracts with two? >> contact us for example i think grappling -- >> for the u.s. military. >> that's right to be a contracts for the u.s. military that sort of centered around construction and a loud hymn logistics. >> vehicles, fuel. >> so he built a kind of expertise in particular doing construction work that he then brought with him. but the relationship with the americans continued to be very deep, and i should say actually that my first trip in 2007 was not on my own. it was actually with the u.s. military commander of the

american prt. he suggested to me you know you're interested in the warlords and governors. you should come back with us. so i got on the helicopter and flew out. i had never been to the border. i had certainly never flown in the u.s. military helicopter. what i didn't realize is that they would keep me on the base. but they got all kind of people in and what i realized was the first of all this wasn't a good way to do the fieldwork so i didn't have that arrangement in my trips to kandahar. but what became very clear was how intimate the relationship was command that's been very interesting for him as a governor because i'm the one one

hand, the benefits are very obvious. basically first of all they force the independent source of influence and income outside of his relationship with president karzai. the other thing it does is give him a leg up from the perspective from all the other actors. >> other local competitors, very prominent. one of the most prominent families in afghan politics with the coercive power, the family for example have a legacy of having great influence inside the province and the natives in the province, and in fact one of the major kind of brothers and one of the major figures had been the governor before he came and people talk to me about how

the americans didn't really work in that relationship and people said they didn't think that he was serious for example in the reconstruction. they thought that he was kind of a quiet religious man. they didn't engage with them in the same way. when he came the money started slowing in the province. one of the strongest achievements people talked about was the paving of the road from jalalabad to the capital and what's interesting is when you talk further about that, who actually saved the road? the americans. but a lot of people don't know what's the difference. if it is the construction companies, get all the contracts from it of course the government takes credit. it's fascinating to study and that is sort of the point.

the provincial reconstruction team once the governor to take the credit for the work that is being done because they are trying to enable his authority and his presence on the provin province. building the institutional power of the state or the government or are they empowering this individual. and as you know and as one of the biggest findings in this research for me was in the post-conflict state and in the weak states in general there often isn't. it's not a clear distinction between the government as an institution and the people occupying that institution. it can rise or fall negatively, and so i think the sort of

tricky part was that the americans were doing some kinetic work we need military operations in which they might maintain people or property might be damaged or there might be civilian casualties and in those cases the blowback might come right back to the governor, so part of what i think was valuable to the americans is that he was on their side and was willing to absorb the political unrest and manage it and much more as the time went on and i think that he became increasingly incapable of managing that backlash. we should say that it's a very

wealthy province on the border with pakistan. so, the folder of the body to the insurgency was very real and was a huge challenge to the governor. i think that it is emblematic. after. i first went in the summer of 07 independent the summer of 08 and then 09 and by this point president obama had been elect elected. when barack obama was a presidential candidate he made a visit as you will recall to afghanistan. so maybe you were even on this trip. he made the decision to rather than first meets president karzai to stop off first in jalalabad and say hello to the

governor. he wanted to be photographed leaving american troops on the field and he wanted to go where everybody went so they had to find a place that was reasonably secure and have an airfield big enough for the plaintive land, and therefore they took them to jalalabaintojalalabad to me to n soldiers. however, they said while you are here the first thing you must do is agree to the governor to embrace him and that was the picture that the afghans saw of barack obama.

they took credit for that joke. that story had tremendous length because people interpreted that story in a number of ways. other places saw as people said to me if barack obama first comes to see the governor before he goes to see hamid karzai what does that mean? it means that he wants the government to be president. it means he thinks everything that the government is doing here is fantastic, and it means

that if he's president, the governor is going to be in a really good spot. there were rumors when he was invited to the inauguration and for the ultimate -- >> = invited that he came anyw anyway. >> to this day i believe president obama doesn't believe -- the >> i think that is very fair to say. today's thto this day it is exty how many people know about the story, and i think then there was the story many years later about i think it was in "the wall street journal" the story that came out in 2013 or 2012 about how corrupt it is collecting the tax into the contracts. >> that is when barbara, ordered the bill to go after -- the

relationship had some ups and downs but mostly they were hugely valuable. >> in which he was unaware. >> the internet one-way relationship with barack obama. it was different because as you said the british and the germans hagermanshavegermanshave a datae swedish came over and took over and the swedish have a different approach to the development. their approach was to challenge the majority of their funding which of course would be much less than the american amount of money for the central government in order were through kabul in order to support the creation of the governing system in which the direct aid wasn't coming in. >> who described it to you that

way? >> it was described to me not just by local people but also by this the swedes. >> the governor's relationship was extremely colorful like to say, very turbulent. on multiple of patients they asked him to leave and remain in the team because the reconstruction team he said applied to reconstruction and that was and accurate. then he said i should change the name to the stability team then he said the afghan security forces are providing them the security so that wasn't an accurate name either so there was a very contentious relationship. to me. he could take credit for everything that happened in that

province. nobody was thinking the swedes did this or the germans did that come even though for example, they created a base that has all these things for which the donors and usaid has had a presence. they obtained credit because he could make an argument that unlike the americans, the europeans were not really doing much. all of that credit went to him. the relationship in the business community he could kind of of monopolized and controllemonopos getting what contracts in a more direct way, and of course all of the kind of fallout that would come from the military activity he didn't have to deal with, so it is a double-edged sword having a powerful donor working with you because the relationship can become problematic sometimes. >> let me ask about another issue. you mentioned the word corruption. let me add to that drugs and

narcotics. kandahar, the two provinces where he has been governor have been out on the major poppy producing areas in the country and the production has gone up and down and they are important, both of them are on the border with pakistan. kandahar is also closer to iran. although i believe now it has been replaced with marijuana. they mentioned they are on the border with pakistan and on the border with uzbekistan and

central asia. you may want to go back to afghanistan sometime. can you describe a bit the relationship of the government of the two governors both to be narcotics economy and to the counter narcotics efforts that were spearheaded especially by the united states. there are a number of other government officials.

a decade ago there were the high province's number two and three actually. and so, one of the -- one of the central performance possibilities for them, one of the things that they could deliver both to president karzai and more importantly to the donor community with the cultivation of the poppy so there's a number of researchers that have done work on this, the person i learned the most from his david mansfield. a sort of the incredible complexity of what it means to think about the narcotics into the counternarcotics. >> about is which it becomes extracted from and another important fact is they are

highly visible and photogenic. i have a photograph of myself which at that time in 2004 was number two just in the glorious field of purple -- it was the highest quality. >> it was demonstrated to me they are how they would take the paste and avenger ideas and of course the more refined it is, the higher along the value chain you are in the ability to profit. so, these, both of these provinces saw really dramatic reductions in the production about six or seven years ago. and it was touted as, you know, an extraordinary thing to come down to the poppy free as the

u.s. office labels different provinces. and what was interesting was to understand how had it exactly happened. so when i saw for example people inside the government about how it happened, they told me a story about really powerful law enforcement and policies and explaining to the afghan people that this was nobut this was not this was etc. and enforcement of the policy that was a level of the government. when i talk to other people who were observers outside of the government, it was a slightly different story. it was more a kind of racketeering story. there were people that had been really involved in the different kinds of illicit activities and most people were now into positions of influence either inside the administration or

they were connected to people in power and it was a decision once the decision was made at the top and the governor that this was -- this kind of activity is over there was an incredibly powerful kind of informal at apparatus and that would be the end. >> what is an informal at practice? >> it is armed men inside of the police and outside of the police who have the ability to enforce the wish of the governor. one of the things that became really clear to me and one of the reasons why i think they have a role to play in the government is that when you look at an institution like the police and a province and you look at it on paper especially at the beginning, this is the

first time the force is being stood up. there hasn't been an enormous opportunity for the training and capacity building and all of the things that we associate with building and police. spank in the history of afghanistan that was a police force of course it was 30 years. >> sure. but now we are talking about the time in which a new chapter of government and the people that have been policing, they are no longer policing. and so what i saw in particular is that even though the formal appointment process and the way that people were chosen to be the leaders and the rank-and-file, that was decided from the ministry of interior in kabul. in fact, the governor because of who he was in that province and the kind of armed men with whom he had relationships for a long time he had enormous influence over who was put into the police

and the result of that was a lot of men who have fought with the governor for a very long time had known him for a very long time, some of them as long as having been teenagers together joining the mujahedin who now own an entirely new livelihood to him and an opportunity and i thought thisaw this was not jusy in the police this was also people that knew the business opportunities in their relationship with him and had opportunities to get involved in the politics in an informal way or even truly run for a seat in the council, all kinds of different ways in which these men who had been fighters were kind of reinventing themselves and they owed to the governor can and dand so when he made des like no more poppy cultivation, he actually had the ability to enforce the policy. and so, what's interesting is that there has been -- there was an uptick in the poppy cultivation around at the time

of the second presidential election in 2009 that buying hearing from people doing research kind of closely on this is that in fact now we are not seeing it again, we are seeing the control of the governor being asserted. so the interesting thing about that is on the one hand it's a real success story because the policy was to get rid of the poppy. the challenge is that the farmers who are no longer cultivating the poppy in many cases are suffering economically as a result of that and the promises of all kind of other economic opportunities have not manifest in the way that people thought they would. so there is a lot of unrest about it and there are questions about once a week or withdraw the presence from the country while thwill the governor's enfe ban in the same way, will it be worth it to them? because the governor has not had

a successful experience in terms of enforcing the ban in part because of the dynamics of the province it is much more difficult to control power in that kind of autocratic way in the tribal province on the pakistan border. >> that is something we haven't had a chance to get into here. before we turn to questions i just want to ask you to comment on two things. one is we've really talked about the subject of your book, the process of the state building governments and so on in afghanistan. what we haven't talked about at all is what gets covered in the media which is the war with the taliban and i wonder if you can comment on how that affected those two governors. and second, i think that i would not be surprised if some people looking at you or trying to imagine you in the circumstances of which there are photographs in your book are rather curious

about your personal experience as an american woman graduate student of the origin or dissent dealing with these afghan strongman. you know, it is an unusual form of the fieldwork and perhaps other graduate students and others would be interested in your personal experiences. >> sure. of course what we hear the most about here is the insurgency, the taliban insurgency and the questions on how it ended and as the american troops are leaving, while the telegram etc.. i think my experience of studying these governors in particular, but also the two other governors i talk about in the book who were not as successful because they didn't sort of have the same profile as these two governors is that

there is a whole host of very powerful actors that are not the telegram and arnold are not interested in the taliban coming back to power in the kind of stereotypical sense of retaking kabul and that have regained politically, economically from the changing of that regime. i think what is interesting about these characters, the reason they came to power is there is an extraordinary pragmatism to the afghan politics and i hope we will get to talk about this in the context of the election that no animosity that i've been able to detect is totally permanent and totally to the core of who any particular afghan strongman is

and i'm sure that we can talk about the decision to take the generageneral as the vice presil candidate for example. if someone had told me that happened last year, i would have laughed hard and for a long time. so i think it's -- i think they are -- >> by the way he has a phd in anthropology. >> that's correct he's an alumni in colombia. and he was one of the most vocal national critics of this particular set of characters including the general who is now his running mate, so i think what that tells us to me it's about the kind of agility and flexibility and dynamic quality of the afghan politics, and so looking at these characters was looking at a very different story than the story of the town

of them. of course they were fighting on behalf of the government through the policies and through their influence over security forces to defeat the insurgency, but i don't think that precludes, you know, down the line some interesting different kind of positions on their part about the possibility on the role of the taliban and afghan politics. it was difficult for me to let anyone come to afghanistan until 2004. i was really lucky that i met the ambassador who was our first merit an ambassador after 9/11 to couple. they let me -- while, they let me buy my own ticket and work for free.

many of the students here know what that experience is like, but they let me come with bad. and the most northeast border tajikistan, pakistan and china and the most -- it is the most remote place i've ever been in and one of the most remote parts of the country. i just fell in love with the place and because we were in a small village, i started to see two things. number one, how complex the politics was coming into these individuals that have a particular kind of strength have commanders that were known at the local level, what kind of influence they had and the complexity of their role. but the other thing i realized is that it's hard to find afghans, at least i have yet to

encounter one, who isn't interested in talking about politics and able to articulate a very sophisticated analysis of whatever particular question he posed to them. so i realized that it wouldn't be difficult to do fieldwork in afghanistan from that perspective. i don't think that if i decided to look at the politics of the governor in new jersey and we could talk about some interesting parallels, but if i decided to look at that i am not sure if i showed up in new jersey and try to talk to different people and showed up in their offices i don't know. >> there are members of your ethnic group in new jersey. >> that is true i would have an advantage over that one. but i am not sure that i would have had the kind of access and the kind of interest in new jersey as i found. and i think the thing i realized

pretty quickly is that you can leave kabul and you will find first of all very interesting things happening, often or interesting than what is happening in kabul. but also a lot of people that haven't been asked about their opinion about things. and so, it was very rare that someone said no to an interview, which was interesting. i think it was actually very helpful that i was a female, that i was short actually because i think i just don't have a terribly intimidating persona. so i think that when i approach people that might otherwise find the kind of questions that i was asking for the kind of subject matter particularly threatening, i don't think that i was projecting a threatening vibe. so i also think it is a very disarming identity because they are just sincerely trying to learn and i had no preconceived

idea of what a warlord was or that these people have done certain things. i was interested in asking the question what kind of governor are you. argue. but the other thing that i should say is the vast majority of my time, you know, i don't know maybe something like 200 interviews that i did, four of those interviews were with the two people. the vast majority of what i learned was talking to the people that hated these governors and worked with them i think i just came back about a week or two ago.

it's hard for me to imagine next year traveling to jalalabad. it's really very dangerous. so the trick for me i think is the more i was there the more comfortable i was into the more people i knew, the more that i trusted myself, but objectively the situation has gotten more dangerous for the researchers every year so it remains to be seen for the researchers and the journalists in a highly permissive environment.

the two questions that may be on a lot of people's minds 81 was the american effort forth and who is going to the presidential election. i am i to just ask you to answer the two questions that you just posed and i will frame that may be slightly more specifically. i'm wondering if you can -- you have had this extraordinary experience of studying the country at a time and a deeply trying to understand its

politics at the time when people were not really concerned about it. having that knowledge and learning and then becoming first in advisor and then to become a part of the foreign-policy establishment making the policy when you look at it now having been on the inside, what do you think the americans have really accomplished and what do you think as we enter this new chapter? do you have the sense of what our world will b be going forwad in the afghan politics having been those on the outside and on the inside? after cow >> first, i should say when i

started working on afghanistan in the 1980s, it was a greater concern and the perspective that i brought i was coming from my particular generation of being the kind of people that were 18 and 1968 i was studying and trying to look at the politics in that region more from the ground up and i saw my dissertation actually on india, and i got involved in afghanistan initially from the perspective of documenting the human rights violations, and my interests developed into one of trying to understand more how the conflict looked to the people who were living with them and not as a part of the cold war so i have to integrate all of those things and then it went to the period that it was half

much less interest to people coming and i made a concerted effort to diversify my academic subjects, which i actually succeeded, but i was foiled of course by osama bin laden with a lot of people's plans and lives. and i would say now since 2001, i've become practically i would say inappropriately overly involved in this country that i actually should have nothing to do with in some sense taking it back to my boyhood in philadelphia. but what happens and i'm sure that you have the same experience as th you work on a subject like this for a long time its premier league the knowledge that you have and

everything that you know is something that someone else disagrees with in any case, that the relationships with the people that you develop and i don't just mean with afghans also there is that good in the neighboring countries that are involved in the international organizations and the u.s. government, and i might add in this very gathering are at least one person i mean met when he ws working for the u.s. government, one woman that works for the turkish government who was in the turkish embassy in afghanistan, quite a few people who are from afghanistan who have studied in some way or another. so you have developed this people who are in the mission in afghanistan of course and who are now working on issues relating to it. so those are the things that keep you coming back. i think what -- i don't even

know how to explain this exactly, but what i trie i've to do in a lot of my work is to look at how these big global issues have an impact on very local issues the global actors don't understand or perceive and vice versa and actually, the story that you told about barack obama is a very good explanation of that because on the one hand from the plaintiff view of senate debate could senator obama what was relevant about afghanistan primarily was that we had troops there who were fighting two enemies of the trigger rests who had attacked the united states and he wanted to show his solidarity with those troops and there were some people advising him who were

aware of the reality of the ground in afghanistan but when you are running for president of the united states, the rivalry between the leader of the tribe in kandahar and his rival is not what his utmost on your mind because you are not competing for the votes. so what's important is the picture of barack obama with the troops but that wasn't the picture that the afghan people saw because they have their own media. they saw the picture and that actually had a total interaction with important results because it was actually the start of hamid karzai's belief that obama was out to get him, which then continued through the election

of 2009. it was a completely unintended consequence and one that may not even be understood today. i think similarly these issues of the local politics in afghanistan have been interpreted by people here as having something to do with the war on terror which they might be somehow connected to, but often they are not. i won't go into more details, but being in the government and as an advisor i would try in my imperfect understanding many afghans have criticized how imperfect it is and how effective it is and my relationship with various people, but i try to bridge that gap, but i finally concluded it isn't able to be bridged because

there's an asymmetry of power in the world and we have a lot more money into violence at our disposal and therefore we are able to implement our ideas and protect our interests more forcefully if not always work effectively because we don't know more than those with less money and power at their disposal. and that means there's also an asymmetry of knowledge because afghans have a much bigger incentive to try to understand the united states than the united states does to try understand afghanistan. they are correct such as the belief that th barack obama was trying to support the many things we do unintentionally

give rise to the conspiracy theories. so the main thing that i've gotten out of it is something that may not be evident to those that know me well because i don't always act on it which is a degree of humility about what we can actually accomplish in the world either for good or evil because i have seen a lot of -- on the whole i would still say that the effort -- we had at ththe international community me in afghanistan since 2001 was worth it. one feels that more than other weeks because of the successful conduct of the election although we don't know if it is successful for the purpose after all is to choose a president, not to stand in line and have your fingers died dye.

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very likely no one will do anything to stop it as some will at least take a cell phone and take a picture of it and put it on the internet so people will know about it and i've seen that have a tremendous impact for good and ill on the linkages between people in conflict torn countries like afghanistan and those of us who are fortunate enough to live anymore peaceful wealthy society. >> it that why don't we open it up then? >> i will go over here so i can see the people more easily. >> i think we have a mic there.

>> okay. because this is being broadcast we will ask you raise your hand and i will recognize you. please form a line behind a microphone and identify yourself name and affiliation of any and ask a question and try to keep it relatively brief. thank you. these go ahead. >> congratulations and very good work. i'm a former student from afghanistan. it's good to see you dr. mukhopadhyay. >> thank you. >> i think afghanistan is not as black and white because it's very complex. it's extremely complex. there are so many factors. these war loads and did not exist. there's a contextual and historical side to this. >> i'm sure you have a lot to say --.

>> i will get into it. the question that i have, i have worked with others because i worked for the government there. the stories that you say are very relevant. i have quite a few of them myself but i won't get into that the regional dimension i think is these people are primarily help supported by different regional countries. our top was invited by the present of tajikistan as if he is the head of state. the same thing goes for -- he has close connections with pakistan and so on and so forth. how do you see that and i think the story that you mentioned about president obama a dozen

other prime ministers -- that kind of loose to the credibility of these factors. i would just end it with this note and it's very interesting. i was with a bunch of ministers visiting aalto and it's very interesting story that he says he asked to fund a project in the usa came three times and didn't find the process and he was so frustrated that he said i will fund this project him pay for it for friend and you will pay me later in the same thing i heard from -- that his construction companies were building because he had all those other things in the government had to pay him later. there are so many stories. what i do want to tell you is. >> you have your questions. >> look at the regional parts.

>> dipali before you answer i think we will take three to time because we have a long line. introduce yourself. >> carl mayor. a writer and journalist who has written and followed afghanistan for a long time and was helped by barney rubin. two interrelated questions. one is that i'm interested in what's happened in a few years of the past and thinking first of all the big figure on the radical islamic side. are these people still part of the political equation? the second question, i was interested yesterday to hear carlotta gall talk on npr and she was,. >> she is an author that just published a book called "the wrong enemy." >> what she was talking about pakistan making the obvious point that pakistan is related with domestic afghan politics making the point that there were

two views she discerned of the americans about the military the role of the military in pakistan that paradoxically the u.s. military was much stronger and more stringent in saying we should be tougher on particularly protecting of the radicals on the border with afghanistan. it the diplomats, the civilians who kept saying oh we have really have to take care. we don't want to rupture our relations with this important ally. i'm wondering what is your perception of that as well? >> okay and finally. please go ahead. >> hi. i'm cathy with world politics review. you were good enough to let me interview you about these people so thank you for letting me do that. i wanted you to talk more about this issue of centralization you talked about. in particular there has been criticism that karzai centralize

the government sending forces to be activated and you implied that it's been a bit of an advantage in terms of his ability to bargain so i'm wondering how you see the trajectory of centralization under the potential of dula administration. >> dipali what are you talked to the issue of centralization and i will deal with the discussions on pakistan. >> with great pleasure i will receive that question to you. again the regional division is hugely important and it's important for a variety of reasons. one that uas which is the political and that i raised you know, the political leverage that comes vis-à-vis the central government and also other players that are in your area as a strong man that you get from having direct relationships with other countries.

now islam famously the major warlord from the western part of the country in the herat province who features as the shadow case in my book a strong man so strong that there wasn't any competition around him to make it worth it to work with the sender had a relationship with the iranians that amplified his power economic we militarily and politically and he's that. so i agree with you entirely on that point. on the question of centralization i think this is a really, this is a real paradox that you have a state in which a tremendous amount of real power lies in the provinces and the districts in the villages and yet you have the government which is organized and barney

you can also comment on this but as i understand it the start way this is not something that came from the outside that the westerners said oh this kind of government would be benefiting that historic way centralized and particularly the idea of appointments, but that is -- now she's is an anthropologist and described the prerogative of the afghan movement to decide who will govern. >> and he was writing about the afghan government 40 years ago. >> that's right from the historical perspective. so on the one hand it doesn't -- it looks like it doesn't match and i'm just beginning a new project about this trying to understand the difference logic by which karzai appointed all kinds of entered governments that it affords the central government a certain amount of influence. for this kind of informal

politics. going forward there are number of political players in afghanistan who believe that there should be serious decentralization. there are a number of scholars and thinkers and there's a debate around what would be a better -- i would be interested to know what you think. just speculating let's say that to the main main contenders for the presidency are abdullah abdullah and ashkan ghani. between the two of them with the ashram gandhi would be interested in maintaining a strongly centralized state and abdul up to love would be more interested in the possibility of decentralization. we can talk more about why that would be the case. it's not clear to me that the path is fixed in one direction or the other. some people believe there would have to be a constitutional amendment around this.

other people say there is room for maneuver here but i think it is a central question for the next government about the extent to which decisions that made the possibility for example might governments be allowed did? might governors be able to have budgetary authority? might they be able to collect taxes? and it's hard for me that at least in the short-term it wouldn't be a loss for the president. i will leave it there. >> to comment on that reflate a think week tend to think of government as having, as an institution that should divide accountable services to the people and therefore a degree of decentralization that provides accountability for the people would be better especially if you have a fragmented society.

the rulers of afghanistan have generally thought of government as an institution to prevent that country from being torn apart a imperial powers and rapacious neighbors and that leads you toward a different structure of governing. the dynamics of control versus accountability are still there and if some argue that decentralization would lead to accountability and others argue that decentralization would lead to chaos of the war and fragmentation. it's not a simple matter to find the right talents. it's one of the issues in the current election. just briefly on the question of pakistan i want to mention something we haven't mentioned so far which is afghanistan is a landlocked country. in order to maintain a military presence or any kind, for any outside country that does not border on afghanistan to maintain the military that any kind of presence there you have to bring everything through other states.

specifically location. in order for the united states to have any access at all to afghanistan it needs to have good relations with pakistan, iran or russia and the central asian states. the russian route which also is political is a very lengthy and expensive so given u.s. iran relations there simply is no alternative for the united states to depend on pakistan for its logistics. i would also mention pakistan has nuclear weapons. there is just a limit to which any army can launch against its own supply route and that is why whatever emotions people may have been different departments

of the government about what's going on in pakistan, when i was singing government there was a lot of different views expressed by people in many different departments but ultimately the conclusion was we have to balance our sometimes very strong differences with pakistan with our mutual dependence on it. i think afghanistan as a state has a very similar difficult problem. yes please. >> hi. i have two questions. has the war on terror had been used as a justification for invading sovereign nations like afghanistan as well as taking away our constitutional rights such as the widespread spying by the nsa on american's? to protect us in this so-called war on terror and my second question is do afghanis believe that 9/11 was an inside job by the u.s. government and other

entities in saudi arabia in order to justify the invasion of the country? >> we will take two more. please go ahead. >> on the question of warlordism thought arose maybe a little far-fetched that there is a stark analogy against stretching it somewhat but to think of the feudal lords of how their basis for continuing existence living off the surplus and peasants creating great difficulties after while fighting each other peasants and so forth and then ultimately they were able to maintain their privileges through formation of what ultimately became an all powerful state. i think there are certain

similarities for the former feudal lords who now became administrators of the central government. and tax collectors. they continue to live off the surplus of the peasantry. i have a sense that something like this is occurring in afghanistan. is it a little far-fetched? orchid bees that kind of framework for and standing for dynamics of warlords being converted into governors and then integrating into a central government. and of course the interest of the united states which will not convince the power enables the continuation or the return of the taliban and perhaps some integration of taliban. given the direction of globalization and the concern of the u.s. for maintaining hegemony, world hegemony and

immobilized world anticipating it -- with iranian provincial or regional concern or authority, chinese or russian. we see that manifesting itself today so that there are some similarities i think or some overarching ways in which we can look at the emerging issues in afghanistan. >> thank you. >> joke why the department of defense. i was wondering what the current status is in the country. the problem of debt in the country. >> i may have some of the audience answer that question. >> do you mean that on the economy's? >> yes because of worse

indebtedness is one of the main drivers of poppy cultivation. indebtedness and insecurity. dipali d. want to take the question about feudalism? >> yes. let me start with the first. i have not heard 9/11 as an inside job particularly in afghanistan. let me just say that. the war on terror is a justification for occupation of another country. i also have not heard that. i don't think there is any question that 9/11 had not happened, that 9/11 happening was a catalyst for intervention in afghanistan. i think that's a different statement than saying it was an excuse for occupying another country. on the parallels --. >> dipali before you go into that cannot comment on the same question?

is well-known and it's been reported in the press the united states held a series of direct discussions with the representatives of the taliban leadership in germany and qatar from 2010 to 2012 and which of course al qaeda was a central question. i could say the taliban never questioned whether al qaeda had carried out 9/11 or whether 9/11 was the reasoning i'd states hated afghanistan. they said you are punishing us for something we didn't do. so it was quite a different argument you can argue whether that's in accurate statement on their part or not but it didn't face the reality of what happened. iraq is an entirely different question which had nothing to do with 9/11. we are not going to talk about that here tonight however. >> i hope the parallels about feudal -- visit was loud

inspiration for my argumentation in this book. the scholar who influenced my work as well as influence barney's work was the head of the sociology department here at columbia for many years. who described a process of stabilization in europe as many of heard me say many many times which involves engagement on the part of princes with strongmen so it involves involved all kinds of bargains that i thought had very interesting parallels and residents with experience in afghanistan. i was lucky enough to talk about the project just before he passed away and i think he gave his reluctant blessing. he was nervous always at least in his writing for people to draw parallels from the experience in other parts of the world but the differences are obvious.

i think there are quite interesting parallels there. on the question of property and don't have an answer to that. my only recommendation would be the point of david mansfield. >> do you know any recent data or information on back? >> i think you should go to microphone. come over here. it's closer. >> we are working together on a paper now on what is likely to happen to the drug economy in afghanistan after the security transition the end of the nato combat role in 2014. i know you are not prepared to speak on that. >> i would say if you look especially at the most recent

afghans surveyed the number one reason is always going to be costs. prices in particular in 2012 wind up tremendously which motivated a lot more cultivation. dad is always a reason it will try to continue and if you look at areas like -- nimruz went up 345% in cultivation so you see a parallel there and also the relationship. that's what i wanted to comment on. >> thank you. one of the things that has happened to afghanistan as it does to all countries to go through war is the destruction of the subsistence economy in which people produce their own food and other goods and its replacement by a cash-based economy. of course the influx of huge amounts of cash for counterterrorism only reinforce that.

under conditions of insecurity where it's almost impossible to get regular goods to market and there are no functioning financial institutions in many parts of the country, growing and marketing narcotics is one of the few ways of raising the cash and also it's usually to get the cash to plant the poppy in the first place people borrow money and depending how good the crop -- the crop as they may or may not able to pay off their debt so there's a cycle of debt which is one of the drivers of the poppy crop which has to be addressed and if farmers are to enjoy security. as dipali mentioned although the strongmen are able sometimes to use their capacities to mobilize forces to suppress poppy cultivation it does lead to hardship on the vulnerable parts of the population sometimes.

sometimes there are perverse ways that people address it such as growing hashes and marijuana instead of opium which is less photogenic and less profitable but also a something you can make money out of and the law is very weak. i don't see anyone else up the of the line so i guess i think dipali. i'll i'm sorry someone is moving up. please go ahead. >> i have a history in afghanistan since 1967. that ding said we use the word strongmen warlord and we can also use governor in some cases. why don't we just say leader, regional leader? aren't we prejudicing the outcome by using different terms also without the u.s. aid or assistance will there be a state in that sense of the word?

>> maybe i will take the opportunity and answering the question to say a couple of closing thoughts. the question about the use of the word is a really interesting and important one and this one that different people have written about. for me the word leader is as i said at the beginning i think is an accurate label for a number of these at yours first. i think i was interested in the kind of strength that they were bringing to the formal state. the kind of informal strength so the idea of ding strong in a particular way and away that we studied and understood different as a function of different characteristics was an important part of the story for me. i also was interested in using the word warlord because it has a certain connotation and

precisely because of that it strikes me as a word that's important and instead of factors it's important to understand in a disaggregate it and more complex way. so one of the ways to do that is to use the word and then move away from the word and try to look at it from a different perspective. >> can i just say on the word also it's not a word used only by outsiders. it's part of the political discourse in afghanistan and components called them warlords and their supporters describe them in a different way. >> yes, his commanders or as a leader or now as a governor. >> any choice of terminology is taking sides in a political argument. >> that's true. someone told me early on in this project notice which afghans use

the word warlord and which don't canacadea whole case in its own right. i think ultimately this project and this is related to the second question starting off on the project being about warlords ended up in being about the state and what it means to govern the state and the comment you made just now i think is really at the heart of the study and a larger research interests which is in order for his state of afghanistan to survive to what extent does governments involved in certain services in a transparent and accountable way and to what extent does it involve being able to have some as the central government or the regime are the ruler some kind of control and influence over what's happening outside of the capital? there are moments in which those two intersect and you end up

getting something that looks like governance from both perspectives but there are also many moments than they don't intersect. part of the think what makes studying afghan politics from the outside so difficult is you see a lot of things that stayed counterintuitive for problematic or corrupt or corrosive or maybe even the whole state is falling apart. if you think about it from a good governance perspective of what we hope the government would do and by we i don't mean just outside but afghans but if you try to understand the state is trying to serve -- survive in a neighborhood in a certain set of conditions it becomes clear first of all that is in fact very much surviving. but also that it requires a certain kind of politics in certain places that may in fact involved intimate engagement.

that is sorted for me the lesson in the book that answers that question. >> i would just like a little elaboration of that to put it in historical perspective. of course as dipali greatly said the structure of the government and in afghanistan is very centralized and that the government is often very weak and that's not a natural phenomenon. that's something that was built in afghanistan with the assistance of the british empire and agreement of the russian empire in order to bring stability to the space between those two empires at the end of the 19th century. since that time the struggle over how to stabilize that space which is a geographical area with very low agricultural yields, relatively little water in which doesn't produce enough resources to pay the cost of

governing itself has been an international project so whereas sometimes we will look at it and say this is how the afghans are the afghans will look at it and say this is how the international community has imposed on this. similarly the centralized state began its a state that afghanistan has had for over a century that we have thought about trying to revive it and strengthen it and push it in certain ways because of our security needs. in that sense afghanistan is in our neighborhood and just as the night states in the international community were key political actors that interacted with the strongman with mohamed atta and i reversed his name again. auto mohammad in afghanistan we are political actors and we cannot, of course we can, we have the power to walk away from

it and place responsibility on the people who live there but i'm afraid that's neither factually or morally correct because we have been implicated in with ob in the future. that's why the discussions about whether we will remain involved in how we will remain involved is something we cannot escape. i think dipali's book is an important contribution to that discussion and we will now have an opportunity to queue up at this table over here and purchase it from her and she will sign it for you. thank you all for coming. [applause]and iran an area calld

baluchistan. this is an hour. [applause] zvi good evening everyone and thank you for coming. we are going to look at a beautiful picture but it's part of the place that i know well and i have reported from as well. make a sign if you can't hear me. i am going to tell you about "the wrong enemy" which is my book. america in afghanistan 2001 to 2014. it's the story of the war. i avert ported there for over 10 years from afghanistan and also in pakistan. i wanted to write a book for two real reasons. the title tells part of it. it's a quote from richard holbrooke who is america's special envoy to afghanistan and

pakistan as you know before he died in the last few years. he once said to the british foreign secretary in fact maybe we are fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country and it was when they were grappling with the problem of the taliban and afghanistan. the obama administration was trying to work out what to do. the insurgency has gotten so difficult in afghanistan that they had to do -- orders surge of troops of the foreign troops had gone up to 120,000 in afghanistan and they were losing the war. it was a very critical moment and the surge had to be done but at the same time they were fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country. the source of the problem and surely when you fight a war you have to go to the source was

across the border in pakistan. that is where al qaeda had taken refuge after 9/11, after the american intervention. within months they cross the borders into pakistan's tribal areas. in some of these areas you are looking at and the taliban as well who had given sanctuary to al qaeda all through the 90s they had also moved across the border. they started to regroup. as i reported in afghanistan and those early years after 9/11 because i went there straight after 9/11 i started to hear this from all the afghans. i would follow them into the battlefields in the bomb sites but you know the real problem is in pakistan. so i went over to pakistan and started reporting therein i found taliban hiding out at first and then they started regrouping.

they started getting more confident. they started moving around and i spend a lot of time inclined to in baluchistan which is an area we will tell you about it. we both know it well. they're unbelievable things going on there on many levels and there is a great control by pakistan and pakistan's intelligence to prevent reporters going there and prevent reporting coming out of what is going on. so the second reason i wrote this book, it really sums up the word. it tells the whole tale. if you want to know the war in afghanistan he will get the whole thing from the beginning to the end. there are two main themes and one is we were fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong place. the second thing is pakistan has not only controlled this but has also controlled the message. they have controlled the journals and they have threatened and intimidated their

own church was so the reporting is not coming out about what's happening in pakistan. the level of threat of journalists and i actually ran into problems myself which is in the book. i was in my hotel room in quetta in 2006. i was warned, you are not supposed to come here. you are not to talk to the taliban and that was quetta where we knew the taliban leadership for hanging out and running the insurgency. the pakistanis were basically telling me get out of town and don't come back and they threatened all the people who worked with me and the pakistani journalist in that town were told stop working with foreigners. it became very difficult to operate their. i'm sure willem will tell you his experiences but really an important area because that is where they orchestrated the resurgence of the taliban and this enormous push against

american forces and against the whole project in afghanistan. the presence of foreign forces. they didn't want a successful government in afghanistan. they wanted ,-com,-com ma pakistan wanted to keep afghanistan under its own thumb in order to control it and dominate it so that it could use afghanistan as an annex or a client state if you like. those are the real themes that i was following. over the years i saw the insurgency get worse and worse. the afghans are really losing ground. the whole of afghanistan became incredibly difficult to report from. the whole eastern as well which sebastian has reported on fantastic it was also precarious it was all coming from pakistan or al qaeda was still very active. i kept reporting and kept doing

my daily job and then of course we had this amazing moment in 2011 when bin laden was suddenly found in abbottabad and was killed in a u.s. special operations raid. i was in kabul at the time. i got straight on a plane to islamabad and within 30 hours i drove up to abbottabad and found the house and started the reporting on the whole idea of how could he hide here for six years in this house? he was just hundreds of yards, just a few hundred yards from the top military academy in pakistan. so i then continued for another couple of years looking at how did he hide there, who knew, who is hiding him? how did he survive? he had three wives with him and

they had 16 children, quite a small compound. it was a three story house but it was small and he had his courier and his brother and their families. it was fascinating and very difficult. a lot of denials from the pakistani government that eventually i did find what i thought was really important to report and is part of the main chapter at the end which was the bin laden was actually being protected by the pakistani secret service the isi intelligence. i found an insider in the isi who admitted that in told me yes we do have a special desk. they were responsible. one man was responsible for looking after bin laden which manhandling him as the cia might

handle and asset. they call it an intelligence. it was completely deniable. they will still deny it but it exists and they did it to attacked him but also to use him so that he could influence their own relatives and he could be used as a figurehead work to control things. he was better in their pocket that large. so that was the main thing i found. there's much more to say but i'm going to leave it there because i want to take questions afterwards and i will hand it over to willem. thank you. [applause] >> thanks. hi everyone. it's a real honor for me to talk with you. not the least because i think one of the first times i came to grips with what was going on in

baluchistan was by reading your looks and looking at some of the -- by scott who was there with you. i went there six or seven months after that period. this region is the size of -- [inaudible] it's a vast vast area of pakistan. [inaudible] >> this is a tv producer. i'm just going to speak with my

voice. this is a region that's the size of montana and wyoming combined in the borders both iran and afghanistan. it's a hugely mountainous region and a very sparsely populated part of the world. but the people who live there are, they historically have been there for several hundred years. until the british arrived they ruled themselves. it's a very tribal society still today. after a partition went in pakistan and it became two separate countries the ballucci felt a little disenfranchised. they were made to join pakistan in 1947. i first went there to settle the dynamic between both sides of iran and pakistan but also understand why that part of pakistan were unhappy with their

situation and many of them are incredibly unhappy. i traveled around on my first visit for five weeks and met with various militant groups. many of those in pakistan seeking independence from the rest of the country. this has scared the pakistani central authority is a great deal. the example of bangladesh in the early 70's seems to be -- pakistan when the mongolian nationalist is or their own nation-state and essentially got it with international approval. the people in this province feel like they have been treated as second-class citizens for a long ti now and starting most recently around 2005 some of them started to pick up arms on behalf of of attacking the government in a particular military which controls the entire providence.

that insurgency is campaigngn hs spread since then and it has become clear that it's increasingly prevalent. the counterinsurgency launched by the pakistani intelligence agencies that paul talked about earlier has been especially brutal and human rights watch in particular has gained a lot of attention for the problems there. they have been picked up kidnapped disappeared tortured and in many cases executed their bodies left on the side of the road is a policy that human rights have labeled the kill and dump policy. when i first went there and saw this beginning to happen i was really surprised the incredible hospitable people and a great deal who had a will great love for america. they hoped the western nations might come to their aid and

support their desire for separate state. that hasn't happened. carlotta is reporting the idea of supporting a small population relative to the rest of the country in their demand for autonomy and independence ultimately for many of them has not been high on the priority list when america's dealing with drones and al qaeda and bin laden and the taliban. a lot of these people feel marginalized as pakistanis and forgotten by those of us outside and carlotta alluded to how difficult it is to report from this region. the pakistani military maintain control physically but also in terms of information flow and journalists like carlotta and myself face problems getting out of there and many that local journalist have ended up dead from reporting about the insurgency. i met