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 --

in 2000 included. we stumbled across each other in a couple years later having stayed in contact decided we should do a book about this province that so few people hear about. this book baluchistan in the crossroads is a result of that. i'm hoping it's something people will pay attention to more and more. human rights organizations and other organizations are talking about a bit more openly but in pakistan is very much a taboo subject. as a consequence i am black worsted from the country for writing this book so i think that speaks volumes of the attitude of the government towards the people in this province. i think i will leave it there and if you guys have questions for me or carlotta we will happily take them. [applause]

>> there is a microphone coming behind you. >> it's just a boom mic. go for it. [inaudible] what's the difference between the two? i the same people and are the object is the same? >> i think they're the same but we call them the afghan taliban because they have afghan leadership. the pakistani taliban which is a more umbrella group of all the groups along the border are mostly pakistani so people are born and raised in the pakistan side of the joran line.

the pakistani taliban are pashtun so they are along the border. what's interesting is i think they have allegiance and they have similar thoughts so most of the pakistani taliban actually cut their teeth and learn to be fighters with the afghan taliban. and actually sometimes swear allegiance to the taliban. for most people i would say they are all the same. they certainly talk the same. when you meet them they say we have the same names. we might do different operations but we believe in the same thing which is you know a very radical islamist caliphate. they swear allegiance to mullah omar which is the afghan leader and they have this weird relationship with the pakistani intelligence which is they are all actually what is the word? they are children of the pakistani intelligence services.

they were raised and fostered by them and of course they do have relations with punjabi militants and others. i would say you've could put them on the same basket and they have relations with al qaeda. [inaudible] they are interested not in getting afghanistan back but the government -- [inaudible] >> you see people try to make that argument. i don't really buy that actually but i think the afghan taliban have been a bit more i would not call them nationalists

because their islamist. they are not nationalists in the sense of pashtun nationalists but they do keep themselves to themselves. they haven't done a great deal of international terrorism for example. there are real name is internally in afghanistan but i would say they allowed all the foreign fighters to live in and train and expand in afghanistan under their regime. mullah omar was in power in afghanistan he had everyone there. he had al qaeda and he had all sorts so he was close to al qaeda and he thinks along the same lines. i think it's semantics. sure if you are an academic and you want to see each rule group fine but actually they are all on the same wavelength and there'll aiming toward the same thing. which is to have an islamist radical sovereign kingdom that

stretches beyond borders. they would love to stretch it right across the middle east from pakistan and kashmir. in that sense they are on the same wavelength. >> i have a question for you. as a journalist i'm curious how you got an isi former agent to confess the largest national secret open secret in pakistan and my hats off to you because that must have been quite -- for you but also more generally i know the afghan election is ongoing but do you think it was a success and if so do you think it's harder for the taliban to attack the afghan government elected by the afghans? >> i'm going to disappoint you on the source because the wording is very carefully

profited in the book and really for the safety of the people involved i cannot go further than that. as i'm sure you all appreciate its dangerous for journalists to help me work on that sort of thing and it's dangerous for the source him selves. i have been very careful how i have phrased it. there is more i know but it was all i could put in because they said if you say more it's too dangerous. i'm afraid i'm going to stop there except that i really trust and believe in the source and his motivations. as for the elections it's very exciting as afghan politics always is. i was there before the election. i had to the on the book tour before the election happened but i was there in the run-up. it was very exciting. a lot of people very motivated. i think because now they realize

karzai really was stepping down and they were going to have a chance to choose someone new. so there was a great deal of debate even within families and ethnic groups all over the country. i even heard, talk to people in kandahar who said they were long lines of people coming out people who didn't want to vote five years ago because there was disillusioned with the security system and karzai in the way the country was going. they did come out this time so that was good. at the same time we had obviously dreadful things happening. many of you might've heard to colleagues got shot the day before the elections. cathy survived but on yeah died. that was in a pashtun area where obviously security is not 100% and they went to see how the election would go. would people turn out and would

people be too intimidated by the taliban. that was the great fear. i think what i'm hearing since the election is it was a big success in the main cities and a lot of people turned out in a lot of people really showed i think that they believe in the way forward is democracy. it's quite new to afghans but they really are embracing it. what we are hearing also there was intimidation in places where people didn't come out and vote against the security is so bad. the communities they are they are so fed up with the to and fro between the taliban and the government forces or the american forces that they just say i don't want to vote. i don't want to go out. there's a sort of disaffection and that still exists in big areas. i am worried that some people will feel disenfranchised.

we need to see. the good thing is the two-front runners and it's getting everyone discussing and i think that's really good. >> two questions. the first question is what is their feeling about the fact that their problem is being used by the pakistani and how does that impact. [inaudible] second in the aftermath of the elections when the u.s. is pulling back even though -- what options does that leave the taliban? >> i will take -- you take the first one. see the first question was about the impact of having the taliban

presence in baluchistan has had on the baluch nationalists. those are the people who want ... dan is a region to be a separate entity and the second question was about the concerns of the future given the u.s. pullout in afghanistan. the province of pakistan has a dividing line. it's a pretty rough run between these baluch ethnic group and the qatar pashtun ethnic group. cutting through quetta which is the next city the presence of the taliban in quetta and north of quetta has been a pretty significant one over the last seven or eight years and carlotta has been reporting on that. ..

prejudice and the islamist in possession on the old tradition. but if the tribes are left together i think they would live

find together. i think the problem is the militant islamists, the gender of the taliban has created problems. on the elections it's something i'm very worried about and it's in the last chapter of this book i see some hope in rejecting the taliban and there was an uprising i followed a year ago in kandahar which i think shows a feeling in the provinces about the taliban the people rose up and threw them out but at the same time i went over to pakistan and i thought a great deal of preparation and planning after 2014, and i've also seen people.

they reestablish the presence and influence and i think they would love to return to the training camps and the whole taliban era and one of them i went to the madrasah and they are really set on that, so i think it is dangerous because pakistan will support that and continue to push because they see that as a way of controlling the security area. >> [inaudible] >> i think what they like is for the television to control the patch and create a lot of chaos to the net canso then it can be the pakistan area of influence.

i don't know if they will actually stage an attack they might be a bit cleverer at this time and try to do it on the people in the cities including the northern alliance is telling them it's in our interest to cooperate or you know look at all these assassinations, so i think they might try a more sophisticated campaign. in those days they staged the defenses against the city. i think they might try to do it but they can't make a big pitch to gain the supremacy over afghanistan because they see the forces leaving.

>> you said that it's basically about the taliban and obviously it is controlled by the army part of the army. so are you saying that the pakistan army is the right enemy, one. and two, whether they are or not, they are behind all of the chaos what is going to happen in afghanistan? why does the u.s. government keep holding the pakistan army funding by the veterans and having a dialogue with the army and not the government collects

we already know this but i don't understand the reason. >> this is also why i wrote the book because there's still a lot of debate inside of the military but it is between parts of the american government between the military. the military mostly know because they are on the ground they mostly know what's going on and when you talk to them they are the most frank. the cia has its own opinion and the diplomats tend to say no, no there is no proof. so you've got to this model in sight of the american executive, which is troubling, and which i think causes a strange foreign policy. but you've also got this argument that they all come out with which it is we must engage pakistan rather than cut them off because we didn't impose

sanctions because of the nuclear issue and that is a disaster this decade when there were no military to military contact. there was very little even financial aid coming to pakistan and pakistan was more in the opposite direction so the argument is to engage and we will have a better time. we are engaging and spending a lot of money and get nothing back. and actually they are going along in the opposite direction increasing the nuclear arsenal thanks to a lot of the money and yet killing people in both just -- baluchistan in the extras of judicial killing compared to any genocide in a lot of countries.

it is really comparable. and then what they are doing in afghanistan, i shall, you know tens of thousands of people dying. the whole country filled with ied is for fertilizer from factories -- it is out of control and it's extraordinary, i agree with you why is america doing this? their argument is if we didn't engage and try to persuade, it would be even worse. mainly the idea is that more radical people and even possibly bin laden we can't hold nuclear weapons. i don't buy that. i think that is lazy thinking and sloppy and it's time that diplomats -- and i've actually from britain and they are just as guilty and it's a much

smarter way of dealing with this and using that leverage that we have had the financial assistance program to get a better result. >> [inaudible] >> he said from what i've been told the consequences are so horrendous as anybody could imagine -- they shouldn't be making a policy [inaudible] >> the national security council is this the view that if

something happens to that army -- [inaudible] >> but they did it the same way. [inaudible] spinnaker but these are democracies that are not run by the military. military. that might be the military thinking that it doesn't necessarily have to be -- >> [inaudible] spinnaker those aren't really the people -- [inaudible] >> who are you waving at? >> it's very disappointing. i found as a reporter it has been difficult to get stories

into my own paper. occasionally i will do a reporting trip and i will get the stories come about i can't go down there very often because it's in one of those very forgotten places, so i think the same comes with the administration. it's something they are not -- they have mentioned it occasionally. i know when they have the talks, but it's very low down the list. >> i think what they were saying about the crimes being committed there against the people living there you know all around the world the crimes that were reported widely enough and the attention is brought down, then typically outside parties whether that be the united states or the european union would be obligated to be involved and i think that's one of the strengths of the pakistan military agency has been to

really control the information flow and to minimize the death. there've been thousands of kidnappings of very ordinary people for the most part and many of them have ended up dead and that there are bodies being found almost every week now. the idea is that this into being very widely reported because it is difficult to the editors but also to get access, meaning that it is less likely that outside powers would intervene. >> it is just so far down the list. there are things they are concerned about. for the people that includes their relationship in the military that we talked about here and that would include their policies on the drones strikes to the continued forces in afghanistan and of the people in baluchistan.

>> what if the americans were to withdraw financially and able to impact what would the consequences be for the rest of the region. how vital is everything going on? >> it is an unstable area that is if pakistan changed its policy supporting the tablet and i think that we would suddenly have peace in afghanistan. i think that it is as important as that. the telegram is more popular. the uprisings show that they are sick and tired of the town of van and they want to prosper as normal democratic life. so they really would reject is and that's why they all told you why aren't you going to the source of the problem because i think that it's the finance, the money stopped and the support.

they would just collapse. now then of course you still got young men who were unemployed and the post-conflict work and i think they saw the huge problems it can't support itself, it's got corruption. but i think they could start to work on that, so i think it's huge. and i also think that for pakistan, if they stopped supporting and running these proxy wars they could start to get a grip on their own problems problems. it's time to end that obsession with trying to manage their own defense through the proxy militant groups who are now just so powerful that there are problems in the survival and

pakistan itself. >> i want to thank you for highlighting the book and also wanted to ask you do you have any photographs or any mentioning of some of the leaders in some of the things that have come recently that have normally dealt with such vital issues like to justify a member of parliament because we see that some of the photographs photographs. did you come across the tribal conflicts.

the far more remote regions still controlled many aspects of people's lives, and a lot of the tribal leaders have not been kind to the members of their own tribes. there is still a huge amount of underage marriage going on. you mentioned the treatment of the women in the region is pretty despicable frankly by our standards at least and i do talk about that in a book about the authoritarian way in which they control their own people. this is though i would say one of the main arguments advanced by the pakistani central government in the military about why baluchistan requires a heavy military presence to protect people from their own historic leaders, these tribal leaders. many of the people in the the left to remote regions rejected that wholeheartedly and i think that

it's very difficult to generalize. but there is a compact situation that plays out between the old tribal allegiances into the old modern self identification in the nature -- in the nation if that makes sense. >> you ask about women being buried alive. >> one of the more famous leaders in the photographs we tried to show quite how much exists in this particular area before he was killed by the military. people that did essentially worship him as a deity that controlled the aspect he made a raise decision related to the property rights into the marriage and to their kinship arguments. so yes we do try to explain

that in the book in the photographs in the right. >> in your buck have you covered some of the relationships on the council in the role or the interest it has in the territory and when it's talking about the army with everything going on in the country we have the militant groups killing the officers and citizens of the country and the groups questioning the constitution and the country itself today there is a war going on. what is the sort of motivation that they have are the people in the country of just fighting justifying and supporting the elements that are against the state at its very existence?

>> i touch on the narcotics issue, but i don't go into it in great detail. it's a problem certainly in afghanistan, but i don't go a great deal into the funding partly because my great friend has written a brilliant book as you can find on that whole thing thing. i touch on them as being the original sponsors of the telegram. >> the other question was about the support for the government on the ordinary people. >> or how the telegram win the support. i would say that it very do through the years. in the beginning they came back with such force and then they

put in about 2006 and they managed to have a message that the forerunners were leaving or they were here for no good and so there was a sense among the people about okay they are back we better listen to them. so it was that sort of movement. and then actually that failed and it turned into a big fight and caliban became touch more rigid in how they actually forced people to support them through intimidation and threats. but they also use clever propaganda that they don't trust them and they are only here to gain the natural resources or to do other things. don't believe them when they say they are going to do the aid and education. so they are the clever enthusiastic propaganda.

sometimes that works especially with the thought of the foreigners that don't have their best interest at heart. some of that work. but in the end i think what was there is the regions where they have risen up against the tablet and because it had been angry about the danger and the insecurity that's created. but they also realized that their community is through ostracized not benefiting from the jobs into the development project and so they start to present the telegram because of that and the agencies can't come in and do the development and so people started to really suffer and they start to get very angry that the tablet and event had been.

one of the men i interviewed had eight sons that helped end the uprising and it was just last year for the february. they've been living through the era. they should have been in school all this time and they said it was because he lived in the area of the constant caliban american push and pull and he ended they are really angry about that now and so that over the years became a very important part of the push and pull between the local people. they started to see that it was highly international. does that make sense? >> yes, i'm long-winded.

>> [inaudible] she's asking if if they receive support from the authorities and in all of the instances that i've met with these groups i have seen no evidence of that. they do not seem to get money frankly they are living in very, very basic and difficult conditions and remote mountain valleys and systems and many miles from the settlements.

i've never seen the evidence of that at all and i would say quite frequently in pakistan when there are problems the easy way to assign the blame is to be in the authority. >> there's no doubt about it and i think what i understand there is enough to channel the money and that's where they get their help >> is great to see that you identify so quickly they offer the right friends speech [inaudible] because of the shortsighted

qualities that that doesn't happen. >> the way that i see it is more that they understood how they could run the insurgency. they did it with america so well against the soviets. they funneled all of the money from america and it was so successful. the soviets had a hard time and eventually withdrew and then i saw them thinking let's continue we are onto a good thing. it's working. and as you know they moved into kashmir and i met a militant leader who was training people all over both from kashmir and in afghanistan he even went to

chechnya to bosnia and he was on a sort of worldwide trip to train the mujahedin and that was all sponsored at the pakistani military. so they thought we are on a good ticket lets find other places to do it and i think that's where it got out of control and the civilian government would have said hang on what are our aims where are we going with this but they thought let's keep doing it we are good at this. then you can see they got it going and couldn't stop. they couldn't bear to give it up. these are the protégés and so that's how i see it more. >> how are we doing? do we have other questions?

[inaudible] >> from my experience, there's a huge amount of interaction in the border region between both sides of the border. many of them have tribal ties and immediate family, and actually in the very divinity of the border, people live on one side and work on the other. it's like commuting from new jersey to new york in some ways. some of the larger tribal groups have a presence hundreds of miles apart because they are such a nomadic people and have tribes in the nature province and then you have other members of the tribe which is the provincial capital so there is a there's a great deal of interaction in terms of the militancy not so much.

the movement by the nationalists that i've talked about at least strongly reject some of the ideologies that the brother and as it were into the other militants on that side of the border that tends to the a lot more religiously inspired and the motivations of the last seven or eight years since i started reporting that and they've even seen from the secretary and standpoint in the predominant iran so that ideology in light of the nationalists tend to be more secular minded. i hope that is helpful. >> we discussed the other day how he is forming his disappearance and also we know -- what do we think whether it is the pakistani connection

disappearance or how it will affect the debate in the reconciliation of afghanistan. >> [inaudible] >> i'm not sure if everyone understands that they talk with the afghan government and the afghan taliban. i was just there recently and he was complaining president karzai, that america was intervening and trying to prevent his peace talks. the main character in the latest peace talks was a man that seemed to to be detained by the united arab emirate after he passed for talks with the afghan officials. everything seems to point to the

fact we have talked to the american officials that asked the united arab emirates to detain him whereas people pointed out that the pakistanis did ask to meet him while he was in dubai so they were aware that he was there. but at the moment it is just an opposition that they were behind the detention. certainly i know a lot of afghans and pakistanis that are concerned about the relationship between pakistan and the united arab emirates. they feel insecure around people that are worried about the arrest. i wouldn't put it past them, but i don't actually know. as for the peace talks i never knew they were going anywhere quite frankly.

they went to open the peace talks and the government i think they are controlled and under the difficulties because the families are still in pakistan and if they can't really act as independent actors. but also in afghanistan all the new people running for president, all the front runners aren't interested in the peace talks. they don't want to see that van comeback and to start coming back with a great deal of interest. so i don't think the peace talks were going to progress very quickly this year, especially with the new elections. i just don't think that it's going to happen. so that's my 2 cents. [applause]

>> we are signing books if anyone wants to buy any. 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 over 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 are art palaces that 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