diverse the night ever known in my little corner of new jersey, and getting into jazz and starting to read all these other writers more seriously like art, i began to wonder why my friends and night such a narrow perception of the sugar rich cultural tradition and what i thought that my father was some outside of his cultural tradition when in many ways he was just exemplifying it. >> watch booktv this weekend and every weekend on c-span2. >> next, i discussion on the current political situation in afghanistan. and the role the taliban and other powerbrokers like the u.s.-china russia and pakistan play in future peace arrangements. the brookings institution hosted this event. >> welcome to brookings. i michael o'hanlon.

very briefly putting the role of mc just to say hello and welcome you before i hand the baton to tom bowman of national public radio who will be our moderator. tom is a very distinguished and accomplished npr reporter, also really thrilled he would join us. he spent ape lot time in a field field in afghanistan and elsewhere embedded with u.s. combat units and other parts of the broader effort there that now is approaching the end of its second decade pretty soon. next to tom and beforehand the baton to them i will just entered is my co-panelists laurel miller who was the acting special representative for afghanistan and pakistan in the stick up romcom numerous other jobs in that capacity and that organization as well, has been at the rand corporation subsequently where she recently completed a co-author 200 page study study on age proposed afghanistan peace agreement written as as a simulated or perhaps model agreement that parties themselves could perhaps

consider because even though we all are aware that america is not going to write the ultimate peace deal, the parties themselves may benefit from provocation as we know we've been talking about having a peace negotiation for a a long time but it's not clear how specific people have gotten in their overall concepts of what that would mean. thrilled to have her. she's now at the international crisis group, a remarkable organization that does skilled research around the world. speaking of remarkable, vanda felbab-brown, my intrepid field researcher extraordinaire who's written a book on afghanistan summer years ago but also study transnational criminal networks and insurgencies around the world, carly worked on a book on mexico but also has recently studied in nigeria where she's just back from field research and indonesia and many other parts of the world, i'm a huge fan of her bravery and brilliance. without further ado, tom, thanks

for joining us an overview. >> thanks to her board for coming out. afghanistan is back in the news thanks partly to the "washington post" and series of afghan papers. i hope you have many questions because we will be calling on you very quickly and i want to stop asking michael how he sees things right now with the peace talks, and also talk about your proposal to have 5000 troops in afghanistan for the next five years. as some of you may know, there is talk about reducing the forces in afghanistan now currently about 13,000 down to about 8600. that could happen sometime this week. but your plan says go lower, to 5000. talk about that, why that number. >> on the peace talks i what you say they know more and i will tee up and hopefully what -- which appetite and struck again

that laurel is writing this paper and some of the thinking vanda and some broke close confidant to me that's the essence of what we've seen so far in substantivese discussion for how to reach power-sharing compromise is, how to with the taliban, set of forces and afghan set of forces had no interest in working together. they are still pretty bitter enemies. peace is a long way off. i hope a i'm wrong but in the meantime i think we need a concept that americans can discuss, debate andss hopefully settle on to some extent for the new presidency. at a time i first decide to write this 5000 5000 troops foe years concept when president trump was again talk about pulling out of syria completely and may be turning his gaze next afghanistan. when democrats were criticizing trump forra his fecklessness and his recklessness talking about these foreign commitments and yet i since the democrats didn't want to commit to a long-lasting afghanistan presents either,

everyone hopes we pull something out of a hat to get a of that allows us to go home without defeat but it don't think that's veryry likely. the 5000 for fighters concert is way to take the drama out of afghanistan policy and say let's just try tocy have about the sae size presence in afghanistan we have in iraq and let's gradually go down to that number. i'm not suggesting we should with the first week of the new president determine whether it's a democrat or reelected president trump but that could be a conceptual framework that would allow us to keep two or three major bases, and then perhaps the least initially one or two in the east. would create kind of the major footprint that allows us to intelligence gathering, airpower strikes which we still do a lot. this year as i think has been the most since 2012 or so. this would allow us to sustain the afghann forces in the help they needee most but continue to lead most of the fighting to

them as we've already been doing frankly now for the better part of half a decade. that's the basic logic of the concept. give a floor below which we will not go unless there's a peace deal, suggest we glide down to that floor overha the next coupe of years and then stop having his annual reviews in washington that takes so much time and energypo from senior policymake, and dramatize an elegant afghanistan almost too much in our national security discourse. that's the basic concept. report. talk a little bit about that, and also, do you think peace is a long way off? maybe the peace deal could come soon, but actual peace is a long way off?

>> i think peace is a long ways off but that doesn't mean that the peace process has to be a long way off. that doesn't mean it is not worth doing. worth staying, for militarily and diplomatically engaged in afghanistan for some period of time, to give it a real shot. where my analysis differs from michael's is that i don't think that, given that we have all seemed to digest the idea that the u.s. is not going to win the war, the second-best satisfactory option is to keep it going for an indefinite period of time, or specify a number of years. i don't think that is truly sustainable politically in the u.s., i don't think it is sustainable even operationally for an indefinite period of time. it certainly doesn't do anything for the afghan people who are

greatly desirous of peace. in my report, i tried to paint a picture of what the substance of an outcome of peace negotiation might look like. it is a set of ideas and options arealternatives that intended to fill in some of the gaps in thinking and analysis of what the substance of peace could look like. i think when you look at it, you see the process will take a while and why it is difficult to do, because these are issues that will be very contentious. but you also see that afghanistan, although complicated, is not so much more complicated than a lot of other places around the world that have had peace processes, some of which have actually produced results. the kinds of issues and the kind of possible solutions are ones that have been explored in other peace processes, and occasionally succeeded in bringing down levels of violence.

>> the taliban have repeatedly said they want all international troops out of afghanistan. your plan calls for some sort of a residual force that would be going after terrorists, isis and so forth. talk a little bit about how you envision that kind of a force. >> i have included the idea of potentially having some kind of militaryinternational element that would counter terrorism efforts, working with afghans. whether that could be led by americans i think is somewhat questionable. by no means, am i certain that you could get taliban agreement to such a residual force, certainly not at the outset of a negotiation. i don't think you could enter into a negotiation assuming you could get that as an outcome. but i think it's something that

you could try to get as an outcome of a peace negotiation. but i do think there's a hard question for u.s. policymakers as to whether that's a must-have element of a peace process or a great if we can get it element of a peace process. because i don't think it's certain that you could get that through a peace process. >> the pentagon has repeatedly said they would like some sort of residual force to remain in the country. what about that? you've been recently in afghanistan, talking to the taliban. would they accept some sort of a residual force, do you think? >> well, so, first of all, i that of many of the members of taliban and to the extent that i was able to speak with individuals, it's not at all clear how close they are. so it's also very important to understand that the taliban is talking to tremendous amount of people, in fact, to just about all the power brokers except members of the president and government. they tend to tell to people what

they want to hear. so same individuals or same factions will tailor messages very much on the basis of what they expect the audience to hear. that said, with this preface, and the need to understand that we are very much, we, the international community, is very much operating in a very opaque environment where preferences are not clear and not stated, there have been some consistencies. one of the most significant, most striking dimensions from the conversations i had was that the taliban members were systematically expressing that a disastrous outcome would be for the united states to withdraw without a deal with them. so, they still very much want that the u.s. strikes a deal and they very much like the deal that the ambassador achieved by the end of august and then president trump cancelled for -- canceled. for them that's still the

, starting point of my further talk and more or less the end of what they envision, the talk. they are, however, very unhappy about the possibility of u.s. withdrawing its forces without a deal with them, fearing this greatly augments a chance for civil war in afghanistan that they very much want to avoid. >> now, some of the military people i talk with over in afghanistan say that the u.s. leverage is the money to keep the country going. that if all u.s. troops leave, the money leaves with them. talk about the taliban. do they talk about that? >> oh, absolutely. oh, absolutely. and that's another issue that they are very focused on with, really, quite consistent messaging across large numbers of interlocutors that it would be disastrous for the united states to liquidate its socioeconomic accomplishments in afghanistan and eliminate aid once they are in power. and they definitely believe that they will be in power, although they will make the argument that they will share power in some form with someone.

and the in some form is really the crux of all the difficulties in the negotiations that will be the -- really, the hardest part. but nonetheless, they assume that they will be in power, that to some extent, in some form, they will share power and they're also rather clear that they do not want to repeat the 1990's, including the economic, socioeconomic collapse in the country. and so, they message very clearly by pointing examples to saudi arabia and say, look, united states, you have such a great relationship with saudi arabia. we perfectly want a regime like saudi arabia. we would be very happy with a regime like this, so we and you could be friends after you made the deal with us and your forces leave. and you should keep the money flowing. and indeed, in my view, the -- really, the long-term or not even long-term, the grappling that the united states needs to

, and the international community needs to deal with is not just how do we get to a peace deal, how do we get to significant reduction of conflict, but how do we then shape the behavior of power brokers, one of which will be the taliban, quite likely in power in some form. what kind of leverage will we have so that we do not see really catastrophic loss of human rights and freedoms so that there is some accountability in the country and some respect for human rights and i very specifically say some because under the current situation, it's problematic and it's likely to see significant deterioration after peace deal. i wish that the peace deal could be the way the afghan government envisions it, essentially a replica of the colombian deal in which the taliban gets minimal penalties and just agrees to demobilize and have five seats in the afghan parliament. the afghan government still puts

that forth as the model they want. they bring in colombian advisors constantly to explain the colombian process. i think it's completely unrealistic. this is just not the way the deal will look like. >> talk a little bit about the taliban. if all u.s. troops leave, or even if there's a residual force, do you think the taliban have enough power to actually take over the country again? i would say they don't and they are well aware of it and that's why they are so leery of us leaving without having a deal with them, a deal that positions them well to have significant power in a transitional government and more than transitional government. so, they are well aware that they -- the security is the worst it's been from many dimensions, the level of taliban influence is very significant.

you can go to liberated districts in 20 miles out or 20 kilometers out of the liberated district, the taliban is there and government officials will not go there. in free districts, government officials might be absolutely hunkered down to just the office and have 40 body guards and not dare to step out of the office because of the level of taliban presence. but that said, the taliban is well aware they cannot just take the country. and that they will face a civil war that will be very fragmented civil war or that could erupt in the south. there are important southern power brokers who can become significant military obstacle and they will have capacities in the north. it's not going to be the line moving more and more north past the shomali plain, so they want to avoid that. the war is stalled but it's stalled in the way that gives gradual, small accretion of power to the taliban. >> ok. >> i would just add, i mean, i largely agree with that.

there's no question that if the united states left tomorrow, that the taliban would seek to take advantage of that. but there would be very strong opposition to the taliban. >> so likely a civil war? >> likely an intensified and more multisided civil war than you see now. it's also why i find it quite worrisome that some on the afghan government side seem to be thinking they'd be better off with an american departure and no peace deal compromising with the taliban if that's a choice they had to make than going ahead and compromising with the taliban. >> i agree 100% but just to build on that point, i mentioned earlier, we all know that the united states has used more ordinance in afghanistan this last year or two than all through the 2010 decade except the very beginning of it. that's extraordinary and it shows that the afghan army still needs a lot of help, even though they're doing most of the fighting and dying and we only have, you know, at this point, 15% the number of people we had at peak, they are not ready to hold on. on the other hand, they do have all the major cities, 60-plus

percent of the population lives under government protection of one type or another, however imperfect. the u.s. government stopped providing these kinds of statistics and the statistics are probably, you know, a lot more uncertain than i just made them sound anyway, but at present, the taliban is so far away from winning this away that -- winning this war that i'm really glad that laurel and vanda emphasized the point, they would not be the automatic and immediate victors if we pulled out, especially if we kept some of the security assistance flowing. so i think the most likely thing is either a hodgepodge of different smaller cities gradually falling into taliban control in different parts of the south and the north and the west, but the government holding on to other parts, or ultimately, you could imagine more of a ethnically-based breakdown, pashtun versus tajiq with a lot of ethnic cleansing to each side help consolidate their own territories. i hope it never cops to that, of course, but you could imagine that as well. those are the kind of outcomes as opposed to a complete taliban takeover.

>> now i would like you to each address this question i've been asking people really for the last several years, senior people, military people, civilian, how would you do it differently? let's say the towers come down, the 9/11 attacks happened, military goes to afghanistan, overthrows the taliban, each of you is in charge of this effort. tell me what your plan is. >> i go first? >> yes. >> so, i'll start with the early chronology. i think that -- and i'm not really being too harsh on the bush administration when i say this because everybody says they were distracted by iraq, they didn't care about afghanistan, but frankly, nobody cared about afghanistan. once we got rid of the taliban, there was a hue and cry from any part of the american debate or europe that we should go in and do sort a medium footprint strategy and try to build up afghan institutions in what proved to be sort of a golden window of '02 to '06 when the taliban was not really fighting. that was the missed opportunity, above all others, in my judgment

, because if you had built reasonably competent army and police in that period of time and tried to reach out, perhaps, to some more taliban elements and be more inclusive and more inclined towards amnesty for some of them, i think you could have built a society that sort of functioned and didn't create the huge opportunity for a taliban resurgence by '07, '08, '09. that's the fundamental thing that -- the fundamental opportunity i think we missed , and again, i'm not really trying to be overly harsh on the bush administration because i wasn't advocating it myself at that time. i was distracted by iraq and by homeland security and by all the other things. so, it's not accusatory but as i look back, that was the number one missed opportunity. >> laurel? you're in charge. >> i don't think that it would have been realistic to build up the afghan security forces or governance capacity, really, much more quickly or more effectively than was done, i just think there are natural limits on the ability to do those kinds of things in societies that are as poor and as institutionally undeveloped

as afghanistan. the key thing is that period from 2002 to around 2005 preventing the insurgency from taking hold, from developing , would have required political outreach to taliban individuals. i don't say the taliban as an organization, as such, because it had lost some organizational integrity. >> was that a mistake, not reaching out to the taliban? >> it was absolutely -- it was absolutely a mistake. it was not a mistake that was -- it was not, i don't believe, from people i have talked to, an explicitly considered and rejected policy choice by the bush administration. because the viewpoint at that time was, what taliban? we've swept them away. there are no more taliban. but there were people who understood afghanistan better than that, who knew that you were risking the rise of an insurgency if you didn't deal with that.

nevertheless -- >> rumsfeld, of course, said we'll bring the taliban to justice or justice to the taliban. >> yeah. >> in early '02. >> yes, there was really the idea that the bush administration, given that orientation, would have reached out, is somewhat implausible. but let's even set that aside. there were many opportunities over the last decade to be more serious about trying to negotiate with the taliban, and to have done that at the height of american power in afghanistan at the time of the surge would have made a lot more sense than doing it at this low point of american power in afghanistan that we're at now. >> well, i would add to the issue of reaching out early and reaching out at the peak of power, you know, before the surge and before the limitations of what the surge brought out became visible. also, really being far more serious about governance.

and at the beginning, the light foot approach significantly limited to what kind of governments the united states and the international community could ask for, putting in power not necessarily in power in government but putting de facto in power through relying on them for military gains, egregious war lords that generate enough entrenchment for the taliban that the taliban still has today. the taliban is vastly unpopular but it's not the issue. the issue is what kind of governance people face at the local level. and oftentimes the governance through government or government-associated power brokers is more predatory, more capricious, more rapacious, less predictable than brutal and predictable but restrained governance by the taliban. so that has been a key problem both in the beginning because of light foot approach and later on when consistently the issue of

, the moreexigencies taliban killed the better, compromised what we were asking for in terms of governance. now i would point out or reinforce what laurel said, namely that there are limits to how fast this can be built and we see those problems across the world. in insurgency after insurgency, the initial clearing seems easy, and then the morass of governance undermines the gains and brings in resurrection enforcement of the defeated entity that morphs in one way or another. there are a few places when that hasn't happened but even in the most optimistic cases, the cases with sort of greatest gains, greatest institutional strength, like colombia, the afghan government points to, we see resurrection of the far. we see dissident groups, all kinds of new actors and real, real struggles to bring the state in, in an effective

noncapricious, nonrapacious ways. >> ok. >> and that's really the crux of our problems in afghanistan. >> ok, great. >> let's go to questions now. do we have a mic out there? here we go. a gentleman here, i think, was first. >> so, i see our reports are sort of a mess in the sense that they were providing overly pessimistic outlooks by d.o.d. personnel as to the conduct of the war, but their analytics are fairly accurate and bna only has about 70 medium helicopters to cover the entire country. is there a reason why, to risk invoking the vietnam model, that we are actually giving them the helicopters that they need for evac support and just to normal

operations so they aren't like a static army? >> i think -- your question is why we haven't helped the afghan government build up its air force capacity more quickly? was that the -- >> medium helicopters. >> i mean, i would just -- there's a long sort of sordid history of u.s. efforts to try to build up any kind of air capacity on the part of the afghan government that's complicated by what the way u.s. security assistance works, but is also perhaps even more importantly complicated by the difficulty of trying to build up these sort of high-end capabilities in a -- in a military that has the kind of limitations of human resource capacity that the afghan -- that afghanistan has. and so, it's been a -- it's been a very slow process. it's not a matter of just giving them helicopters or not giving

them helicopters. there's the training. there's the maintenance, there's all that goes along with it. if i understood your question correctly. >> also, the difficulty of a country with 75% or 80% illiteracy, it's very difficult to train pilots if they can't read, and as far as maintenance of a helicopter, you would have -- and they will likely have contractors for many, many years into the future. >> couple additional points. just to back this up. we decided as we got more serious about building an afghan police in the mccrystal and petraeus years. we decided to be more effective so we would not have to do so much of the fighting ourselves. the afghan air force writ large, i know you were talking about helicopters, but air power writ large, there were a lot of problems in the corruption of the leadership of the afghan air force even more so than other , parts of the afghan military , and we wanted to try to weed that out first to the extent possible. a third issue was do you buy

them russian helicopters or not? those are the helicopters they're used to flying. those may alleviate a couple of the maintenance challenges of taking care of a black hawk and yet, first of all, you know, do you really want to rely on that equipment at a time when the russian defense industrial base wasn't very strong? and then over time, did we really want to try to work around american sanctions on russia that were preventing that sort of thing? those are some of the practicalities of why that didn't happen. >> i would add one larger issue and that is the one that you mentioned, the static army, and it's -- the afghan army is a static army not simply by -- as a result of the physical capacity limitations it has but also very much as a result of choice. i mean, the reality is that with the exception of the afghan special operations forces that are vastly overstretched and overused, the majority of the afghan army continues to be in a static garrison mode. you never win a war by being hunkered down. any kind of war, let alone a counterinsurgency war.

>> back there, sir. yep. that gentleman right in the middle. >> vanda, i was intrigued by something you said. marvin weinbaum, the middle east institute. you mentioned there are discussions going on between the power brokers and the taliban. i heard similar stories, particularly what happened in moscow. that raises the possibility, does it not, that we could see a very different kind of peace process? a peace process in which these power brokers seek to strike their own -- their own deal with the taliban, something which bypasses a government which struggles for legitimacy anyway.

is this realistic, and if it does happen, what would that process look like? >> well, it's certainly something that it's on the minds of many very important power brokers in afghanistan that there is a lot of activity to just about anyone who is not in the government and even some officials who are still in the government under the current national unity government that have that on the mind. and frankly, the taliban is rather happy with the process. they very much engage in those talks, and sides believe that they can strike a deal and divide the spoils in a way that will outsmart the other group. so, the power brokers will outsmart the taliban, the taliban will outsmart the power brokers. this is taking place both in the south as well as in the north. i don't see how that process could be successful unless the

official -- successful in the sense of even accomplishing that short-term power division arrangement, not saying anything about its desirability or sustainability, but how you could even get to having that arrangement done without some significant weakening, significant hollowing out outright collapse of the afghan government because the afghan government is, of course, very actively trying to prevent those processes and stop those processes from going on. the significant issue, of course, here is the huge paralysis after the elections that is still not resolved, and the paralysis that is increasingly taking on crisis elements. i don't think we are in a full-blown crisis but there is more and more crisis markers to it and to the extent that that happens, that both saps the energy of the afghan government from thinking what it needs to focus on, which is real

substance of the talks, as well as enables and empowering and fuels those side conversations and fantasies and perhaps really destructive scenarios. because some of them involve power brokers who have very substantial followings and forces in the afghan national security forces. >> i would just add to that, one hears from both sides engaged in these kinds of conversations and dialogues, the line, i mean, i've literally heard it from people on both sides, well, you know, when afghans sit with other afghans, we can sort these things out. you know, to which i then think, if you could just sort these things out, i think there wouldn't be some of the problems that there are in afghanistan. so, there is this sort of over optimistic idea, and of course both sides can't be right, that they're going to succeed in outsmarting the other side. so, i don't think this is terribly realistic as a near-term proposition so long as the united states is still engaged in afghanistan and still engaged in trying to get a peace process going.

because i don't think the u.s. would tolerate that kind of informal format for a peace process. even apart from the afghan government's views. moreover, part of what the taliban wants out of a peace process is legitimacy, and international legitimatization of their role in governance, partly as a route to having the money continued to flow. and it would be pretty hard for them to achieve that objective through these more informal means. but if the u.s. washes its hands of afghanistan, washes its hands of a peace process, i could imagine in that scenario, these kinds of varied power centers trying to come together to cut some sort of deal. hard to imagine it would be any more sustainable than the kinds of deals that were cut and then immediately failed in the 1990s. >> right here.

>> thank you very much. my name is paul, president of the global policy institute here in washington. i remember distinctly right after our victory, a senior afghan official said, in a private meeting, please don't leave, because if you go, in three weeks, the taliban will be back. and i said -- i was shocked. i said, i thought we won. i thought, as you alluded to, as the administration said, where is the taliban? it's gone, finished. well, it looks -- that was pretty prescient in some sense. the next question -- i mean, my question really is, can we believe on the basis of what we know and what the ambassador has been doing that the taliban are negotiating in good faith? in other words, he's trying to arrange some kind of a deal of power sharing of some kind. is that realistic? or it's just window dressing because essentially we are

surrendering, we are leaving, and we want to put some kind of a nice window dressing to the whole thing and say, ok, we've done our best, which leads me to my own personal conclusion but i would like to hear yours. this reminds me of the paris agreements in vietnam when the north vietnamese realized that the united states was bogged down with all our internal domestic issues, watergate, nixon and what have you, well, they attacked south vietnam and the south vietnamese, when they saw that we were not coming to the rescue, folded in two weeks. >> that's a good question. michael, you want to address that? can the taliban be trusted if --re is a peace ddeal deal? >> i think you need to write a deal that doesn't depend on trust, which is part of why i'm thinking it's so hard and i so appreciate laurel's report. i'm not going to betray any confidences but about a year ago i spent an hour with the president who was gracious enough to receive me and it was pretty clear, he's made it

amply obvious, that any kind of a peace deal that he was interested in, if you were going to have taliban join security force, they would have to be individually vetted and recruited into an existing afghan army and police. that was my sense of what he and other afghan leaders have been envisioning. but that's not realistic as a, you know, that's basically victory for the afghan government and defeat for the television, who then get fairly -- for the taliban, who then get fairly gracious, forgiving terms for their individual fighters. that's what that is. so, laurel got into things like, could you re-write the constitution so that there's some direct power for local leaders, more than there is today, maybe even direct elections at local levels, even though the taliban would like to control the whole country. they could have some share in the overall country but maybe dominance in some of the south and east. even that, they're not going to like. that's not what they want, but that is the sort of thing we have to let them think through, both sides, because otherwise, you're asking one side or the other, essentially, to acknowledge the other side has the upper hand or the other side has won. i don't think either side is

anywhere near that. the president certainly wasn't when i spoke to him or anything i've heard him say publicly , and the taliban think they're winning and they'll certainly win if and we depart. so both sides think they have the upper hand and the actual mechanism for sharing power in a way that doesn't depend on trust and keeps both leaders safe physically, very hard to envision. >> if there's a peace deal between the u.s. and the taliban and the taliban goes to talk with the afghan government, won't the taliban legitimately believe they have the upper hand? we just dealt with the u.s., now we're going to see you folks. >> i'm afraid that's possible. we just dealt with the us and now we see ufos. >> it depends on trust. that is what i mentioned, the process exists. can the taliban be trusted for us and anti-allied terrorist groups, particularly al qaeda,

particularly 1%. it is what is part of the deal and a great deal of variation of other people believe the taliban and holds up to that. there is a great deal of variation in the taliban. the way the phrase is in afghanistan. it is closer to it, very different leadership, the leadership that is much more integrated to global jihad he network that has significant liabilities and commitments to them. it is not an easy thing. will they hold up -- i want to say the taliban and is, to the

extent, very focused on legitimacy and not losing international money. that is the leverage. will the taliban live up to it? depends how much they get. the taliban believes they have power and they will share some power with others. the outcome of the deal is liable to hold up to it. >> if there was a priority trust between the parties you would not need a piece negotiation. the piece negotiation is to test the possibility that you can find a significant overlap of interest and accommodations and compromises that they are willing to abide by the terms that they agreed to but you will only know that if you engage in negotiation and try to mitigate the risks of failed implementation through the structures you set up but you

can never know in advance whether you have trust in the other side's willingness to abide. >> back there. >> i have been doing some consulting in recent years with the foreign ministry and finance ministry and their is a lot that at in the near future as being possible to achieve assuming a peace deal is reached. my question is about powerbrokers in afghanistan, the mistakes that are being for lack of a better term the great game players, china, russia, iran and pakistan.

what are your thoughts about these peace talks and what role are they pushing the taliban, given any assurances or backstops. are they playing the role of a spoiler or hindrance? how do you assess that? >> china was leaning on the pakistanis to not have any more safe havens. they want a level playing field for the one built one road. >> possibly. the short answer to your question is yes and no and everything in between. there are ways in which there is pressure in the right direction towards stabilizing

the situation in afghanistan, coming together in a peace process with respect to china, specifically, china prefers stability and stability in afghanistan but bottom line is what is best for pakistan and what is in pakistan's interest given the close relationship between china and pakistan. i don't know if you mentioned in the a. india is opposed to a peace agreement but it will not play much of a role in spoiling it. for iran and russia there is a comfortable position of having it both ways. if there is a peace agreement that brings greater stability to afghanistan they benefit from it. if there isn't they blame the united states. they can more or less sit on the sidelines and pick and choose when they want to be helpful or less helpful. pakistan is the most complicated of these.

as the united states has shown intent to negotiate the peace agreement with the taliban and the pakistanis have been relatively more helpful in pushing the taliban and along but the pakistanis have been perfectly clear that they were not going to fight the war on afghan soil. that means they are not going to make the afghan taliban in the nme, they will pull their string but not going to cut the strings altogether. >> afghan scholar here. the russians think about how we

are -- that is a question. do we want to leave? yes or not? to leave afghanistan, yes or not. we want to get out of afghanistan. this question, the second question talking about afghan government and the taliban. it is not also true the afghan government, today we are talking here, fighting what you need in the same and going on. for us, the afghan government,

how can people not exist. and local issues. are we talking about the taliban, enjoying hotels and talking competition with us, are they in the same world fighting underground? because someone who comes back, joined isis, joined the taliban and, the pakistani taliban. we have more in 2002.

>> are they a cohesive unit? are they fragmented? do they speak for the entire movement? are there military commanders on the ground saying we don't want a peace deal but we will bomb outside bagram or the east? what are your thoughts on the taliban as a cohesive unit? >> some members of the afghan government, many strategies have been attempted. it is remarkable how cohesive the taliban and have been. one is the overall cohesiveness to be maintained for three decades and the second is capacity, especially capacity after 2001 for the most egregious -- it is the capacity on local communities by being

responsive to local communities giving it the inference that it has. does it mean every single unit, every single commander, probably not. very rarely, just for a while. almost never the case you have 100% of compliance. can you have 80% compliance? 90% compliance in a way that changes the security picture? i will say one thing more. the taliban is the taliban leadership. very uncertain as to the presidents of its own military commanders and that is why the taliban has difficult questions about what kind of arrangement

it wants, what kind of presentation, how many ministries, what kind of role for women. everything is answered to after we are in transitional government. committing itself on human rights, with those issues, they will be very contribution. >> i will add a point similar to your last one, the taliban is going to because us what they do in a peace process because of concerns about maintaining their cohesion or being able to implement any commitments they make to a peace process. this is why you indicated don't see them moving forward with

deployment -- developing policy positions are negotiating positions because those will be divisive issues, before you absolutely must make those decisions. it doesn't mean they can't get to that point. it doesn't -- that is why the peace process takes a long time. they haven't done the hard work yet. >> richard coleman from cvp. it is such a sad indictment on the cobol, continue to live for the american people.

top military people, what are we doing here. looking back after 20 years, what is our mission other than avoiding embarrassment or you cut and run and lost to afghanistan when it was lost, and with afghanistan before us is there a possibility we will ever have -- their assessment? or is it fog war? >> we all have thoughts about this. what is the goal, what is the purpose, preventing another 9/11 has to be the central purpose and we achieved that at

a very high cost, not the right strategy but we have achieved that. we have 1 million mistakes and frustrations. the mission has not gone great overall. knowing most of the commanders and ambassadors and others who have spoken to this issue some of them have tried to look on the cheerier side with a more hopeful message. i don't know anybody who tries to deceive the american people publicly. there may have been an air force officer who was told to only show the good news. i am sure that happened on a number of levels. consistently we know the president of the united states behind us mission wanted to put it in perspective. none of them were bullish on this mission very long even in their public pronouncement. none had goals they stuck to very long. commanders, diplomats and ambassadors tended to have

their debates in the public eye, do we do a search first? how much airpower do we use? do we allow attacks against the taliban? the police are doing very well. that message came through loud and clear. i don't know anyone who said they are on the verge of handing the war over to them. there were hopeful strategies. sometimes people listened to experts briefly about how to build anti-opium strategies. they didn't work. it doesn't mean people were being duplicitous, the opium is already gone, give us one more year. i never heard anyone say that either. i admire a lot of the reporting at the washington post and the subsequent story, the first was fundamentally incorrect, that construed this pattern of duplicity on the part of american policymakers, i am pretty emphatic and disagree. >> he raised the issue of vietnam.

i wonder how much of this issue you can lay on congress. congress never had serious hearings on the russian situation going back 18 years. there was no j william fulbright that had serious long-term hearings on afghanistan. >> there were multiple hearings, quite a statement. >> i'm talking about serious long-term hearings akin to the fulbright hearings. i have been going to afghanistan for years and watched almost all of these hearings on the hill. what is going on in afghanistan? i will let you know when i go. to keep in touch. >> with regards to reflection

of the american public. in vietnam, domestic political opposition that rose up to the vietnam war and you had that move in congress, how to hold the leaders into account. there is no optimist into the war in afghanistan. if you look at opinion polling, increasingly unfavorable but by no means comparable to what we saw in the vietnam era. 50,000 americans. >> congress had an oversight role. >> the most tragic and difficult issue is how the system can correct itself. i do not believe every

portrayal of the war however positive was motivated by that. there have been many structures in recognizing problems and being able to afford this was the system makes it difficult to experiment the policy and excruciating, different, unpredictable circumstances and say let's try something else. it is difficult to get into the tube and it doesn't work but also on the civilian side and military side we did our best and didn't work honesty would often be punished. similarly to be in charge of

dispensing money, we really don't need it would result in punishment including much less money and creates that. it was well-known there were problems but it was difficult to tolerate the mistakes in ways that were useful and all along as the policy was unwinding we would have a surge, we are willing to live with the consequence of catastrophic demise. the hard reckoning needed to take place at policylevels, the patient is on life support, do we allow this by civil war by liquidating a policy that will radically improve things but some level of hope, some

prevention. >> i would add to that, a systematic problem that needs to be addressed in the future. the big one is the policy discussions, the strategy discussions focus overwhelmingly on how much effort to put in. you could talk to people who deny what the conversation is about but it is a lot of what the inside policymaking is about. how much do we turn up the dial and how much do we turn down the dial on the level of effort. there really isn't a means within the system for addressing the question of how to end the war. it is not how the policy discussion, the concept of war termination is not part of the

conversation as opposed to the us government so what you see is a modification. the initial aim is to illuminate the problem with al qaeda and get rid of the taliban and because they were part of the problem. then it morphed into a preventative mission that is never-ending. >> my name is derek boyd. members of the panel, in the near-term it seems to me we are in this period we were discussing the us withdrawal from afghanistan and i'm interested in what are the constraints on that issue. that the governments will face.

>> i will put it this way. donald trump, not unlike president obama, slightly different in personalities in politics but not different on afghanistan. they both concluded no ambitious strategy would work. they both said so most of their presidencies. they have the desire to get out with the desire to protect the homeland from a terrorist strike for syria and iraq. they had to wrestle with these competing impulses that were almost contradictory. we had annual policy reviews in the first 3 years of donald trump's term when we were on the verge of saying we had enough and presidents emotionally are always a bad plant most

and a modest and sustainable us force. it will take a while. it is more sustainable, less dramatic, and otherwise contradictory pressures. >> the consequences of rapid withdrawal, and the deterioration intensified civil war. i personally think there are a lot of questions as to what the impact would be.

the afghanistan papers, it is much more important than the issues, the failure of us leaders to both internally, it is the remaining terrorist threat for afghanistan, from that dimensional level alone of that us effort and to articulate in an honest way publicly what the remaining threat is. because of the shadow of 9/11 it looms in a way that has clear eyed analysis of what the quantum threat is. >> the military says the terrorist threat has expanded.

21 terrorist groups operating now in iraq and afghanistan. >> i challenge anyone to name the group number 10. that is greatly exaggerated. >> they always come up with the number but never the name. anyone else back there? >> thank you. there have been a number of mentions of the necessity of keeping usaid flowing into afghanistan following whatever peace deal might be reached. at the same time there were mentions of corruption in the afghanistan papers reminded us that anyone paying attention didn't already know. it reminded us of how much usaid has that into the corruption that exists in afghanistan even among the afghan government. i wanted to ask in the

political climate of america first, endless wars, how the us taxpayer dollars that are going to afghanistan can be used in a way that doesn't fuel corruption and illicit trade and trafficking. >> i don't think that is a way -- afghanistan or nigeria or somalia or colombia, the golden child of us company insurgency, to get to a stage that you have 0 divergent and 0 corruption. it would only hit this stage if you had 0 diversion and 0 corruption in systems that have extremely weak institutions and are really based around patronage, corruption is the purpose of government and the essence is disorganized.

that said, we can be more diligent, the international community can be more diligent about preventing the most egregious forms of governance. this is where i have been urging of the policy in a while. what forms are most destructive. they exclude geographic groups or corruption that systematically undermines the capacity of afghan security forces. then when we decide what corruption is most destructive to peace building in the country we need to follow up on the red lines. the policy in afghanistan and other countries, has forever been okay and qualified for aid, 21 conditions at if you

fail these conditions a year from now you will be denied money and it is not just the international partners, there are 20 of 21 conditions and we say you tried. so as long as we set unrealistic guidelines for one reason or other because of military exigency that violate our anticorruption tools will be limited. >> there is an explanation for why that happens. we had intertwined counterterrorism objectives, counterinsurgency objectives and nation building a objectives which is a subset of counterinsurgency objectives and because of that we had a

strategy that depended for achievement of its counterterrorism objectives on the continued existence and performance of the afghan government. because we decided our counterterrorism objectives required physical presence of the united states military in afghanistan we therefore had to have a counterterrorism partner in afghanistan which would be the afghan government so we created this poll dependent relationship that we were dependent on the survival and performance of that afghan government and therefore you can never impose genuine conditionality in that scenario. they have you over a barrel. they know you need them as much as they need you. >> i would like to use that as a transition to answer your question about what is at the united states wants in afghanistan.

not surprisingly there is tremendous confusion in afghanistan about people and along the afghan government as to what the us wants. what he was wants most is to get out and get out in a way that avoids meltdown, avoids civil war, leaves the best chance for peace and with good reason. the war might not be unpopular to the extent that it generates mass demonstrations on the mall but there are very genuine questions with resources being invested generating outcomes and benefits that justify those expenditures into tackling the opioid crisis, those are very

valid important questions and they have to be asked with the corollary question if you go out are we prepared to live morally and international relations, a very real possibility that afghanistan will slide into civil war. >> nonetheless, the fact we have conditions and conditionality and ignore this and they are wanting to get out and are not getting out, whether it was president obama in 2016 or donald trump has generated a situation where the political elite can get away with anything including murder because the politics, all this remains about politicking,

bargaining, bringing it to the precipice but it never becomes about serious governance. i wish we had a dire moment, you have a chance for peace, 40,000 of your people are dying per year. you have enough interest in yourself to fix it and our messaging about our need to leave needs to be couched within that. many afghanistan believe we want to be there because of great power competition with china and russia and the promise of minerals on the afghan desk, were all imaginary objectives and believe they don't have to negotiate because we will stay and continue fixing the problem but they don't have to fix the afghan military because we will stay and fix the problem.

over the past 24 hours because of fixing the problem. >> leaving afghanistan cannot be taught this. in afghanistan, reducing afghanistan, and the ability to so the afghanistan problem, an alternative to stop the afghanistan which is fatal to the threat of terrorism and

insurgents -- >> afghanistan was pretty isolated in the 1990s and look what we got. i don't know how to make it work, the number one concern i had was a measured terrorist strike. mentioning that period, it is not reason enough to say our mission is bound for failure, they helped us when the cold war in a more direct way than any american ally because it led the soviets through the 1980s, they accepted the risk, did the dying for that mission to be successful and that brought a end to the cold war. i'm not suggesting 30 years later that should guide our policy.

if we can't come up with a policy that works, but if we have a strategy that is muddling along and the cost is tolerable it is something to keep in mind before we pull the plug. >> some people later became the taliban and so it is a little complicated. >> bill goodfellow. afghanistan peace campaign. it is hard to believe after 19 years, a great cheerleader of this militarized approach, after the devastating washington post series how you can still advocate watered-down version of more of the same with the idea that it might work. it seems to me our guys are losing and your 5 years, 5000 troops i don't think will change anything and we need a

new plan. just continuing with the same militarized policy seems to me madness. >> i support laura lapse concept and the work in the ngo engagement of these processes. i'm not enthusiastic about the near-term prospect of success but i commend the effort. .2 i accept this has been a frustrating mission and a lot of americans paid a high price, we are trying to protect from another 9/11 and we are at the point that 5000 troops could do it and that is the level we have got in iraq, the level we have in a couple other middle eastern countries. a number of extremist movements, not all of them equally seriously threatening to us but a posture that creates 4 or 5 major

strongholds for american collaboration with indigenous partners, intelligence gathering and application of airpower or special forces is the right strategy because i can't think of a better one but i don't see leaving as a strategy and i support the peace process but they are willing to talk to each other and have the upper hand so tell me how soon that will work. the realistic alternative is what i had, accept this and go home and run the experiment. we can survive the resulting terrorist threat to the united states of it doesn't get worse. i support what they are trying to accomplish with the peace process but it will take 2 to 5 years. >> carter of cnn.

may i ask you a question? you have been observing this for 18 years and have gone there multiple times. from a political perspective, can the united states be a us leader go to 0 afghanistan? canada us leader, is there a risk of not having presence there or is there not? >> it depends which president you are asking that question. he said he wants to get out of afghanistan completely. my guess is those at the pentagon and elsewhere said we should leave some number of troops there to fight as michael was saying 5000, 2000, 3000. he also wanted to leave syria

and that did not happen. he did not say i want everyone out of syria, certain people talked him out of it and we still have troops in syria. my guess, listening to trump he wants to get everyone out. my guess is he will be persuaded not to do that. >> i find it hard to imagine if donald trump pulled troops out of afghanistan within the next year that it would have any impact on his election one way or the other. i find it hard to believe that is the consequential political issue barring a major terrorist attack that ensues in the aftermath but i don't find that likely otherwise. the question about the persistence of the american

military presence, the problem is so long as your strategy relies on your continued presence you will have the insurgency and a week partner in the afghan government because it will face the x essential question of privatizing over counterterrorism objectives and you will continue to have the us drawn into the counterinsurgency because those military officers present will be under threat. the idea that there is a small number of american troops that you can keep on the ground indefinitely just attending to counterterrorism objectives instead of setting aside the counterinsurgency to me is

implausible and while i agree the peace process is not a high probability of success you then face the question if the peace process fails you leave anyway. >> i would add afghanistan is in some ways in a special place, say we face the major attack out of mozambique, somalia, pakistan. relentlessly, donald trump or democratic president, let's invade the countries with full force up or down the regime. we wouldn't do it even in somalia and i would argue we should not do it in any of these countries. in afghanistan we are stuck in a place where the threat happened once and cannot imagine any other way, we

cannot risk running the threat even though we have dealt with that threat in other places. the counterterrorism issue, national security objectives does not imply necessarily it means something perfect. we have to answer the hard reckoning that if we leave with our peace deal or even with a peace deal are we willing to live with the consequences of war including massive levels, humanitarian, moral and other consequences of the answer may be yes but that is the question that policy makers need to place and the public needs to grapple with and i would add to that the question we should be asking is what are the red

lines under which we should leave and i have articulated a set of development in afghanistan that i did not believe it was justifiable anymore to stand on the upside what are the minimum positive developments? >> let's try to keep the answers to a minimum. >> >> my name is carl polls or, the n social equity, i'm not an expert on this region but to somebody who has been observing in terms of defining our national interests nobody has mentioned oil. the whole region -- why we have so many footprints in that region, because we protect the life blood of the capitalist economy.

what is different now? 20 years ago we were importing most of our oil and now we export, we have become somewhat self-sufficient for a few decades so i think geopolitically, 10 or 20 years from now do we need to go back in once we exhaust all the oil. maybe i am totally off but that must be part of the calculus. >> is oil part of this? >> there is some natural gas in one part of afghanistan but it is not a place - afghanistan is a different picture in terms of its potential exploitable resources and it is a landlocked country.

if you are going to look at american policy perspectives afghanistan is not one of the more useful places to be investing your resources. >> way in the back. >> how secure are our supply lines? >> the supply lines for the us military? that has not been a major issue of late. with reduction in the number of us forces it makes the scale of the challenge less. and things have been on a more stable footing in the us pakistan relationship where i have not heard of any threats

to the supply line. >> there have been many threats in the supply line. the level troops now you are not having nearly the supply lines you had in past years. the trucking mafia make sure those roots are secure. >> it is lucrative. >> dave louden. have any of our discussions detected any generational seachange that offers any kind of promise and if so or if the issue is civil war or stay in, what kind of metrics might you apply, monitoring such a thing? >> much of the analysis centers

on the young afghan generation that the level of human capacity, having been there, very impressive. will they be able to change the system enough? nigeria has enormous capacity, extraordinarily educated individuals, young people for several generations, nonetheless the country continues to grapple with egregious miss governance and corruption. the individuals in afghanistan changing the system to doing better. enormous urban rule divide. and young afghan people, it

might -- you have a good number of people in those spaces, they might be educated. they do not want to go back to the 1990s, nonetheless they face positive economic opportunities. many of them working in agriculture, subsistence agriculture so what are the alternatives? it is a huge challenge for afghanistan with the taliban and in power. and develop process or we will see in a rather short amount of time the emergence of muslim

brotherhood mobilizations by other forces and new conflict in emerging five years after. >> another generational dimension on the television and side. there are some close analysts of the taliban who say the younger generations of the taliban or more radical senior generations and this is a phenomena and that has developed in part because during the war more traditional structures, community structures have broken down. i don't know the scale and dimensions of the problem and if it is real that is another reason even if there is a peace deal. >> the global jihad he network, they talk about palestine and afghanistan, much more because,

fundraising structure of what is happening, it is quite significantly. the afghan branch. >> anyone have a question? way in the back. >> i list this to laurel before other members of the panel dependent on success and peace process, and the continuation of civil society program so they have placed a holding pattern.

what would you advise folks to do in terms of tailoring economic pros and uncertainty? >> i hesitate to say it because i don't know for a fact that i suspect what is going on is existing programs are being redefined to be in support of a peace process or implementation of a peace process. i say that because i just know how the government works and that is the typical way it works. i don't think, if there are programs being pegged to implementation of the peace process i don't think there is much you can do other than stand by and see if one develops some traction but i also would say there are

probably at this stage limitations to how effective they can be anyway unless the peace process takes hold. >> last question. >> let's say you have an unrealistic form of government along with the existing government, what policies or programs would they implement other than holding onto power? >> the taliban is explicit that it wants a country ruled in accordance with islamic doctrine. that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. afghanistan is the islamic republican of afghanistan, the taliban does not believe the islamic character of the

republic is adequate or what kind of combination expresses how they believe it is inadequate. it is very much questioned that discussions, some interlocutors say a woman can be even the minister but absolutely not a prime minister or resident express great restrictions in the role of women and public space when they reach puberty. and the shadow district and military commander but they tend to impose significant restrictions on what we define as civil liberties and

freedoms. they will tolerate education for girls up to a certain point and often have a taliban member presents to make sure only what they believe is being taught and also make sure the teacher shows up and does not moonlight or collect money for being a teacher. they have been prohibiting music, programs and tv, now once we are in power, we cannot allow it. they are quite explicit they do not want an economic collapse. it does not mean they have an economic vision, the flow of international aid and investment. it has been quite effective in

reaching out and promising chinese investments will be protected in a country ruled by the taliban and. >> they claim to foreigners that they recognize mistakes of the taliban regime of the 1990s it is important not to repeat the mistakes. precisely what they will do differently is another question. if there is a piece process these are questions that will be explored but i don't think in reality are they going to know until the aftermath. >> thank you for coming. happy holidays, appreciate it.

[inaudible conversations] >> here is a look at our schedule. next remarks on antitrust issues and how to combat them to maintain a competitive market. after that, former treasury and defense to permit officials discuss current us sanctions policy including recent sanctions against iran, turkey and north korea and then alaska

governor mike dunn leavy looks at his state's budget and fiscal landscape. >> this holiday week, booktv is on c-span2 every day with primetime features each night. tonight the theme is bestsellers. investigative journalist gordon farrow details efforts to stifle his reporting, puma surprise winning columnist george will offers his thoughts on conservatism was investigative journalist jodi kantor and megan to we discussed the me too movement and their investigation of sexual harassment allegations against harvey weinstein. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern on c-span2 and and joy booktv this week and every weekend on c-span2. >> this weekend booktv features three new nonfiction books. saturday at 6:00 pm eastern, inside trump's white house. >> think about that.

the russians elected him against all odds to be president of the united states and he is a russian spy. think about that. that is like landing a man on the moon, like the assassination of julius caesar, like this for columbus, one of the greatest events of world history if they were to achieve that. >> at 8:20 eastern the ethical algorithm, computer and information science professors michael kearns and aaron ross discuss algorithm design. >> philosophers have been thinking about fairness for time immemorial. lots of people thought about privacy and the like. they never had to think about these things in such a precise way that you could write them into a computer program or an algorithm. >> sunday night at 9:00 eastern on "after words" new york magazine contributor thomas williams with his latest book self-portrait in black and

white. >> socially and economically more diverse than i had known in my corner of new jersey and started to read all of these writers more seriously and i began to wonder why my friends and i had a narrow conception of this rich cultural tradition and why i thought my father was outside his tradition when he was just exemplifying it. >> watch booktv this weekend and every weekend on c-span2. >> how to combat them to maintain the competitive market held by the hudson institute, this is an hour.