characterize a particular action in the sanctions domain, which is to say, how severe. you can write the number on it for yourself if you want or else just when we get up from here, go and stick it on the labelled -- the numbered, rather, step in this escalation ladder we have created. >> and liz, i think it doesn't have to be a sanctions action, right? it could be another kind of course of action. >> absolutely. and particularly, if you come to this conversation knowing very little about that, then do what you know. and do put it in one of those buckets, because as you well point out, of course, this ladder is specific to an array -- a whole of government set of tools. thank you for that good point. and also, thank you to you all for coming, and i want you to join me in thanking our panelists for their comments today.

here c-span3, we'll stay live and take you to the brookings institution in washington. foreign affairs senior fellow michael o' hanlan moderating a discussion on afghanistan. it will be moderated by tom bowman. just getting under way here live on c-span3. >> many other parts of the world. i'm a huge fan of her bravery and brilliance as she studies these kinds of phenomena so without further ado, tom, thanks for joining us and over to you. >> michael, thank you. it's great to be here and thanks to everyone for coming out. afghanistan is back in the news, thanks partly to "the washington post" and its series, afghan papers. so i hope you have many questions because we're going to be -- start calling on you very quickly. and i want to start by asking

michael how he sees things right know with the peace talks and also talk a little bit about your proposal to have 5,000 troops in afghanistan for the next five years. as some of you may know, there's talk about reducing the forces in afghanistan, now currently about 13,000 down to about 8,600. that could happen sometime this week. but your plan says to go even lower, to go to 5,000 for 5 years. talk about that. why that number? >> and on the peace talks, i'll just say that laurel and von did no more and i'll tee up and hopefully whet your appetite for what they're about to say. laurel, and some of the thinking that vonda and her close colleagues have done, to me that's the essence we've seen so far in substantive discussions about how to reach power-sharing compromises, how to deal with a taliban set of forces and an afghan set of forces that have no interest in working to the

right now. they're actually still pretty bitter enemies in the field so i think peace is a long way off, is my bottom line, and i hope i'm wrong. in the meantime, we need a concept that americans can discuss, debate, and hopefully settle on to some extent for the new presidency. and at a time -- i first decided to write this 5,000 troops for 5 years concept when president trump was again talking about pulling out of syria completely and maybe turning his gaze next to afghanistan and when democrats were criticizing trump for his fecklessness and his recklessness in talking about these foreign commitments and yet i sort of sensed the democrats didn't really want to commit to a long-lasting afghanistan presence either, everyone sort of hopes we pull something out of a hat and get a peace deal that allows us to go home without defeat but i don't think that's very likely. so, the 5,000 for 5 years concept is a way to sort of take the drama out of afghanistan policy and say, let's just try to have about the same size presence in afghanistan that we have in iraq and let's gradually

go down to that number. i'm not suggesting we should do it the first week of the new presidential term, whether it's a democrat or re-elected president trump, but that could sort of be a conceptual framework that would allow us to keep two or three major bases, near kabul, a base in the south around kandahar and one or two in the east and that would create the kind of major footprint that allows us to do intelligence gathering, air power strikes of which we still do a lot and this year has, i think, been the most since 2012 or so. and so, this would allow us to sustain the afghan forces in the help they need most but continue to leave most of the fighting to them as we've already been doing, frankly, now, for the better part of half a decade. so, that's the basic logic of the concept, give a floor below which we're not going to go unless there's a peace deal, you know, suggest that we glide down to that floor over the next couple of years, and then stop having these annual reviews in

washington that take so much time and energy from senior policymakers and dramatize and elevate afghanistan almost too much in our national security discourse. that's the basic concept. >> great. laurel, let's turn to you now. you've come out with a report on a peace plan. 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 a genuine peace process that grapples with all the different issues of how to govern and secure afghanistan is a ways off but that doesn't mean a peace process has to be a long way off and having a process under way that brings the sides together into genuine negotiations can have a positive effect on reducing violence in and of itself and is worth doing and in my view, 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've -- we've all now seemed to digest the idea that the united states is not going to win the war, that a second best and satisfactory option is to just keep it going for some indefinite period of time or some specify a number of years period of time. i don't think that's truly sustainable, politically, in the united states. i don't think it's sustainable even operationally for an indefinite period of time. and it certainly doesn't do anything for the afghan people who are greatly desirous of peace. what i have done in my report is tried to paint a picture of what the substance of and outcome of a peace negotiation might look like. it's a set of ideas and options and alternatives that's intended

to help fill in some of the gaps in thinking and analysis of what the substance of peace could look like. and i think when you look at it, you see why a peace process will take a while and why it will be difficult to do because these are issues that are going to be very contentious, but you also see that afghanistan, although complicated, isn't so much more complicated than a lot of other places around the world that have had peace processes, some of which have actually produced a result. that the kinds of issues and the kinds of possible solutions are ones that have been explored in other peace processes and occasionally succeeded in bringing down levels of violence. >> now, the taliban have repeatedly said they want all troops out, 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 that -- how you envision that

kind of a force. >> yeah. so, i've included the idea of potentially having some kind of residual international military element that would continue counterterrorism efforts, working with afghans. whether that could actually be led by americans, i think, is somewhat questionable and i'm by no means 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 intente 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 the -- that you

could get that through a peace -- >> the pentagon has repeatedly said they would like some sort of residual force to remain in the country. well, vonda, 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 need to say that out, of course, 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 duls government and 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 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 1990s, 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? >> well, they -- >> jump in on that. >> 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. >> okay. >> 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 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 that -- 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 immediate player kpejensys, the more 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. >> okay. >> and that's really the crux of our problems in afghanistan. >> okay, great. let's go to questions now. do we have a mic out there? here we go.

in 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 kasz evacsupport 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 hometown helicopters. there's the training. there's the maintenance, there's all that goes along with it. if i understood your question correctly. >> it 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 army and police in the mccrystal and petraeus years. 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. these are some of the pralkt caltys 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 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 both sides belief 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 continue to flow and it would be pretty hard for them to achieve that objective through these more informal means. but you know, 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 surrounding, we are leaving, and we want to put some kind of a nice window dressing to the whole thing and say, okay, 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? >> 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. so just one -- this is not really -- 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 affiamply 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 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 since and the taliban think they're winning and they'll certainly win if and when we depart so both sides think they have the upper hand and the actual mechanismed for sharing

powe 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. >> yeah. >> and the trust issue, you both want to -- >> i mean, i think that depends on trust in what. so there are multiple dimensions to the talks as they exist, one of which is can the taliban be trusted to prevent the emergence of anti-u.s., anti-allied terrorist groups and counter them, particularly al qaeda, but arguably wider set. that is apparently part of the deal that the ambassador agreed to. there is great deal of variation on whether people that the taliban will hold up to that. i think there is great deal of

variation bwithin the taliban i how they react to it. so some tall bana members leave al qaeda was a plague on afghanistan and they believe it was a big mistake that they hosted it. others were much closer to it. it's leadership that's much more integrated into global jihadi networks and has significant liabilities and commitments to them. so, it's not an easy thing for them to truly agree to that. will they hold up -- i also want to say that the taliban is very focused on not using international legitimacy and not losing international money. that will be the leverage. will the taliban live up to the intra-afghan deal? depends on how much power they get. the fall bataliban believes the have power and will kindly share some power with non-taliban

power brokers. if that's the outcome of the deal, they're quite liable to hold up to it. >> because they won. >> if there was a priori trust between parties, you won't need a peace negotiation. the point of a peace negotiation is to test the possibility that you can find a sufficient overlap of interests and accommodations and compromises between the sides that they're willing to abide by the terms that they agree to but you're only going to know that if you actually engage in the negotiation and then you try to mitigate the risks of failed implementation through the structures that you set up. but you can never know in advance whether you can have absolute trust in the other side's willingness to abide. >> back there. >> jeff stacy, i've been doing

some consults in recent years with the foreign ministry and the finance ministry, primarily on regional economic integration issues, and there's a lot that is basically looked at in the near future as being possible to achieve, assuming a government is formed and a peace deal is reached. my question really is about the power brokers outside of afghanistan. the stakes that the big, for lack of a better term, the great game players, so china, russia, iran, but primarily pakistan. what are your thoughts about how helpful they're being in the -- in these peace talks and what role or are they being -- are they pushing the taliban? are they giving any sort of assurances or backstops or are

they playing a role of sort of a spoiler role or a hindrance role? how to you assess things at this point? >> do you want to jump in? >> i'll start. >> china was leaning on the pakistanis to come up with a deal to not have any more safe havens because they want a nice level playing field for the one belt, one road. if you could address -- >> possibly. i mean, i think that the short answer to your question is, yes and no, and everything in between. i mean, there are ways in which there are, at times, some pressure in, you know, the right direction, i mean, towards stabilizing the situation in afghanistan, towards coming together in a peace process with respect to china, specifically, i believe, yes, china would prefer stability to instability in afghanistan. but its bottom line is really what's best for pakistan and what's in pakistan's interest given the very close relationship between china and pakistan. for india, i don't think -- i

don't know if you mentioned india, india's basically just opposed to a peace agreement but it's not going to play much of a role in actually spoiling it for iran and for russia, they're in the somewhat comfortable position of having it either and both ways. if there is a paemt agreement that brings greater stability to afghanistan, they benefit from it. if there isn't, they get to blame the united states. so, they can more or less sit on the sidelines and pick and choose when they want to be a little helpful, when they want to be a little less helpful. pakistan's obviously the most complicated of these. my sense is that in the last year, as the united states has shown more seriousness of intent to negotiate a peace agreement with the -- with the taliban, that the pakistanis have been relatively more helpful in pushing the taliban along, but the pakistanis have, at the same time, always been perfectly

clear that they are not going to, as they would put it, fight the afghan war on pakistani soil. and that means they're not going to make the taliban -- the afghan taliban their enemy. and so they will use their leverage, they will pull their strings, but they're not going to cut the strings altogether. >> okay. right here? >> afghan scholar here at national security. i'm always thinking that we are in '89 where the russians thinking how we goet out of afghanistan and now we're thinking how are we going to leave and that's also a question. really, do we want to leave? well, yes or not and it's for us it's good to leave afghanistan, yes or not. i think the russians at least had a clear answer for themselves, we want to get out of afghanistan. this question, i think, also

good to her first. the second question, we are talking about, like, afghan government and the taliban, like two body institutions that cannot talk with each other. but it's not also true and afghan government is start with arc and finish with arc. today we are talking here is the first -- is the vice president is fighting with ghani, both of them in the same election and abdul is fighting with ghani and going on so there's no afghan government, and even if for us exists here in an afghan government, for the afghan people, not exist and i agree with you that some case they prefer taliban above, unfortunately, above the afghan government in the local issues. my last question is, are we talking about the taliban? there's the gentlemen who were in the -- enjoying the hotels and talk and conversation with us, or you are the same who are

fighting on the ground? are they going to accept the decision? because same as with, like, someone like major, he comes back and joins the government but where's the pupil of his? joined isis, joined the taliban, joined the pakistani taliban. what will happen with all those forces and we have unfortunately today more taliban fighters than in 2002. >> you know, it's an interesting point. is the taliban a cohesive unit, are they fragmented, are the folks in doha speaking for the entire movement? or are some military commanders on the ground saying, we don't want a peace deal or we're going to start bombing outside of bagram or in the east. what are your thoughts on the taliban as a cohesive unit. >> the perpetual dream of u.s. policy and also currently a

dream of at least some mekz of the afghan government is that the taliban can be fragmented and peeled off and many strategists have been attempting to do that. i think it's quite remarkable how cohesive the taliban has been and that's one of the sources of its endurance. i will say there are two sources of its endurance. one is the overall cohesiveness it's been able to maintain for three decades now and the second is its capacity, especially capacity after 2001 to push back from most egregious brutality, when the community pushes back against them, it's really the capacity to calibrate brutality on local communities by being somewhat responsive to local communities. that gives it the endurance that it has. now, does that mean that every single unit, every single commander would obey by the decisions? probably not. that's rarely, almost no -- nowhere, but very rarely, i can think of the malis for a while,

but just for a while, almost never the case where you have 100% compliance. the question is, can you have 80% compliance? 90% compliance? in a way that substantially changes the security picture. i would just add one more thing, laurel, before you talk. but the taliban is the taliban leadership. it's clearly very uncertain as to the preferences of its own military and middle level commanders. and that's why the taliban punts all the difficult questions, all the core questions about what kind of arrangement it wants down to future. the response to what kind of representation, how many ministries, what kind of role for women, everything is answered through, after we have a deal, after we are in transitional government, we are going to create a commission that will study that. and one of the reasons they say that is because they understand that committing itself clearly on human rights, women's rights,

pashtu and non-pashtu issues will be highly controversial. >> i fuelly agree with that vanda said and i was going to add which is that the taliban themselves are going to be cautious about what they do in a peace process because of concerns about maintaining their cohesion and being to -- being able to implement any commitments that they make in a peace process. so this is why you, as vonda indicated, don't see them moving forward with developing policy positions, developing negotiating positions, with arctticulating them because tho will be divisive issues. and why take the risk of being divisive before you absolutely must make those decisions and have those internal conversations. but you know, it doesn't mean that they can't get to that

point. it just is yet another reason why a peace process is going to take a long time because they haven't done that hard work yet. >> reggie coleman, retired from cvp. looking at the afghan papers -- and i didn't regular every word -- it's such a sad commentary and indictment on the kabul to continue to lie to the american people, how successful everything was, the afghans are doing their part, you know, we really are pushing the ball forward. and statements from top military people saying what the hell is our mission, what are we doing here. and so i mean, looking back after 20 years of treasure and blood, what is our mission other than avoiding embarrassment, political embarrassment and some -- one party being able to point to the other and say you cut and run, it was yours.

you lost afghanistan, when it was lost from the beginning. do you think any of those lessons will ever sink in? we had vietnam already, and the salons had afghanistan before us. is there a possibility that we will ever have a military that you can trust when their assessment of how things are going, or is it just, you know, fog of war? >> you want to address that? >> i'll start on that. we value thoughts on this. first you asked about what is the goal, what is the purpose. i think preventing another 9/11 that originates from or near afghan soil has to be the central purpose. i think we've essentially achieved that so far at a very high cost, and not the right strategy as we look back perhaps. nonetheless, we have achieved that. secondly, there have been a million mistakes and frustrations. i think the mission has not gone great overall. having said that, knowing most of the commanders and

ambassadors and s reps and others who have spoken to this issue publicly, some of them have tried to look on the cheerier side, give a more hopeful message. i don't know anybody who tried to deceive the american people publicly. there may have been an air force officer at a command in host province who wrote in the "washington post" yesterday who was told to only show the good news. i'm sure that happened at a number of levels. but consistently we know the presidents of the united states who were behind this mission wanted to put it in perspective. none of them stayed very bullish very long, even in their public pronouncements. none set high goals that they stuck to very long. the commanders and diplomats and ambassadors and s reps, the special representatives, tended to have their debates in public eye about do we go for a peace process first, do we do a search first, how much air power do we use, do we allow attacks against the taliban. we all know the afghan army and police aren't doing well. that message came through loud and clear for 18 years. i don't know anybody who said

the army and police are doing great, we're on the verge of handing the war over to them. there were hopeful strategies. sometimes people listened to experts like vonda at least briefly how to build anti-opium strategies. they didn't work. it doesn't mean people were being completely duplicitous, it's not saying the opium's gone, give us one more year. while i admire reporting at the "washington post" in the subsequent stories out of that six-day series about the first day was fundamentally incorrect. the first day that construed this pattern of duplicity and deceit on the part of american policymakers, i don't think that existed. i'm pretty emphatic in disagreeing. >> you raised the issue of vietnam. i'm wondering how much of this issue over the past 18 years you can lay on the -- at congress. congress really never had serious hearings on the afghan situation. really going back 18 years. there was no jay william fulbright that had serious, long-term hearings on

afghanistan. could you each address that? >> well, there are multiple hearings. so to say there were none, tom, i don't think it's quite a fair statement. i think -- >> i'm talking about serious, long-term hearings, akin to the fulbright hearings. >> right -- >> i've been going to afghanistan for years now, and i would watch almost all the hearings on the hill. a general would come in, sir, what's going on in afghanistan? i haven't arrived yet. i'll let you know when i go. come back, and let us know, just keep in touch. that was repeatedly going on -- >> what congress does is a reflection of the american public. i mean, in vietnam, there was a domestic political opposition that rose up to the vietnam war, and therefore you had that kind of -- you had that kind of move in congress to look for how to get out, how to hold the leaders to account. there is no widespread domestic

opposition to the war in afghanistan. if you look at opinion polling, it's increasingly unfavorable, but it's -- by no means comparable to what we saw in the vietnam era. >> true, because -- because there was a draft clearly. >> obviously a big factor. and 50,000 americans died. >> still congress had an oversight role. and i'm just wondering did they handle that oversight role? >> you know, i think that really the most tragic and the most difficult issue is how can the system correct itself. i, too, do not believe that every portrayal of the war, however positive, however inappropriately positively was motivated by deception. but there clearly have been many structural difficulties in recognizing problems and then being able to afford risks. so the system makes it very

difficult to experiment with policy and the excruciating difficult, unpredictable circumstances and constraint and to say this didn't work, let's try something else. policy is not like toothpaste, but policy is like toothpaste, you can squeeze it out of the tube, but it's very difficult to ram it back into the tube. often it doesn't work. but also for individual officers both in the civilian side and the military side to say we did our best and it really didn't work, that honesty will often be punished. similarly to be an officer in charge of dispensing money and concluding we have too much money, we really don't need it, will result in punishment including why congress by locating much less money, and that creates other sides. it was well known that in the system that there were real problems, but it was very difficult for the system to tolerate the mistakes and correct them in ways that were

useful. and all along, and especially as the policy was unwinding, we -- the question became if you don't do this, are we willing to live with the consequence of catastrophic demise if we pull out under the circumstances. so the real hard reckoning took place at policy levels and among the public of saying, okay, the patient is on life support, but do we let the patient die, do we allow dramatic collapse, dramatic war by liquidating a policy that's not radically improving things but that's keeping some level of hope, some prevention of utter meltdown. >> i would just add to that. i think of the sort of systemic problems that need to be addressed in the future, a big one is that the policy discussions and the so-called

strategy discussions focus overwhelmingly on how much effort to put in. now you could talk to people who would deny that this is what the conversation was about. but it really is a lot of what the inside policymaking was about. how much do we turn up the dials, how much do we turn down the dials on the level of effort. there really isn't a means within the system for addressing the question of how do you end the war. it's just not part of the way that the policy discussion, that sort of concept of war termination is not part of the conversation and policymaking within the u.s. government. and so then what you see is just a modification of the aim. the initial aim was to eliminate the problem of al qaeda and to get rid of the taliban because they were part of the problem and replace them with something else. then it morphs into a preventive

mission that is never -- never-ending. >> members of of -- sorry, my name is derek boyd. members of the panel seem to agree that peace is a long way off. in the near term, it seems to me anyway that we're in this period where we were discussing the u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan. and what i'm interested in are one what are the constraints on that issue that the government, the pentagon, and so on will face. >> well, i'll put it this way -- that president trump not entirely unlike president obama, two different guys, slightly different in their personalities and politics, but they are not totally different on afghanistan, as i read them. they both concluded that no ambitious strategy was going to work. they both essentially said so.

most of their presidencies. and they both had to balance the desire to get the heck out with the desire to protect the homeland from another major terrorist strike, or regional dislocation on a scale that like we saw with isis taking over syria and iraq could flood refugees into important allies of the united states. they both to wrestle with competing impulses that were almost contradictory. we saw almost annual policy reviews in the second obama term and now in the first three years of president trump's term. when we're always on the verge. saying we've had enough, and presidents emotionally are almost always at that point, and most of their voters are at that point. but then you say, does going to zero really work? is that really responsible? so far no one has concluded that it would be. my prediction, part of why i wrote the 5,000 troops for five years paper, i think we can settle into a presence that may concede more territory indirectly to the taliban but allows the after gallon government to hold on to the big cities with a more modest and sustainable u.s. force.

i hope like laurel -- i'm not wishing war for an indefinite period. i think it's going to take a while. in the meantime, let's sort of make the u.s. military presence there more sustainable, less dramatic, less in need of constant review. i think that's the way you sort of reconcile these otherwise contradictory pressures. >> you know, we've all agreed about what the consequences of a rapid withdrawal of the u.s. probably would be. and we've talked about a deterioration security and likely intensified civil war. in terms of what the impact would be on the united states, i personally think there are a lot of questions there as to what the impact would be on u.s. security. and one of the issues that i -- as far as i've seen is actually not touched on in the afghanistan papers that have been published so far, but i think is much more important than a lot of the issues that are touched on is the failure of u.s. leaders to both internally

have a clear analysis of what really is the remaining terrorist threat for afghanistan, and does it justify from that dimension alone the level of u.s. effort there. and to articulate in an honest way publicly what the remaining threat is. because of the sort of the shadow of 9/11, it looms in a way that i think has obscured clear-eyed analysis of what the quantum of thread really is from afghanistan. i personally think it's lower than many claim. >> if anything, the military is saying the terrorist threat has expanded. they say there are 21 terrorist groups operating now in and around afghanistan. >> that i challenge anyone to name me a group number ten on that list. that is a greatly exaggerated statistic. >> they always come up with a number but never the names. >> right. little, tiny splinters. >> all the way in the back there.

>> thank you. james sebens. there have been a number of mentions of the necessity of keeping u.s. aid flowing into afghanistan following whatever piece daley might be reached. at the same time, there have been several mentions of corruption and, of course, the afghanistan papers have reminded us all -- of course, there was nothing revealed there that anyone who was paying attention didn't already know. but it has reminded us of how much u.s. aid has fed into the corruption that exists in afghanistan even among the afghan government. so i wanted to ask in this sort of political climate of america first and ending endless wars how the u.s. taxpayer dollars that are going to afghanistan can be used in a way that doesn't fuel corruption and illicit trade and trafficking. >> look, i don't think there is

a way to -- in countries like afghanistan or nigeria or somalia or even colombia for that matter, the golden child of u.s. counterinsurgency efforts to get to a stage where you have zero diversion and zero corruption. you will only have that stage if you have zero diversion and zero corruption to start with in systems that are -- that have extremely weak institutions. and really based around patronage network and client -- corruption is the purpose of government. and the essence around which politics is organized. that said, we can be much more diligent, the united states and the international community can be much more diligent about preventing the most egregious and destructive forms of governance -- of corruption. and this is where i have been urging policy to go for a while. say what forms of corruption are more -- most destructive.

when they systematically exclude particular ethnic groups, particular geographic groups, for example, or corruption that's systematically undermines the national security forces. then when we decide what corruption is most destructive to state building and peace building in the country, we we need to develop the wherewithal to follow up on what we say are our red lines. unfortunately, the policy in afghanistan and in other countries, somalia is another prime example, has forever been okay afghanistan, in order to qualify here are 21 conditions. if you fail these conditions in the review a year from now, you will be denied money. well, the year comes, and it' s not just the u.s., it's our international partners. afghanistan fails 21 of the 20 conditions. we say, okay, you tried, you met

once. next time around, we mean it and we'll really cut off money. so as long as we set unrealistic guidelines and the tools that we for one reason or another because of military exigency is to violate anti-corruption tools will be limited. >> but there's an explanation for why that happens. and it's that in afghanistan, we had intertwined counterterrorism objectives, counter done isinsurgency objectives and nation-building objectives, really a subs is debt of the counter inserge see objectives. because of that we had a strategy, the united states had a strategy that depended for achievement of its counterterrorism objectives on the -- the continued existence and performance of the afghan government. because we decided that our counterterrorism objectives

required the physical presence of the united states military in afghanistan, we, therefore, had to have a counterterrorism partner in afghanistan which was the afghan government. so we made our -- we created this co-dependent relationship where we were dependent on the survival and the performance of that afghan government. and therefore, you can just never impose genuine conditionality in that scenario. they have you over a barrel because they know that you need them as much as they need you. >> i'd like to use that as a transition to answer your questions, sir, but what is it that the united states wants in afghanistan. surprisingly or maybe not surprisingly, there is tremendous confusion in afghanistan among afghan people and including among the afghan government as to what the u.s. wants. i mean, i would posit what the u.s. wants is to get out and get out in a way that avoids meltdown, that avoids civil war, that leaves the best possible chance for peace.

but to get out. and with good reason. the war may not be unpopular in the extent that it generates massive demonstrations on the mall, but there are very genuine, very important questions to ask with the resources being invested at this point to generate -- generate outcomes and generate benefits that justify those expenditure versus putting the expenditures into tackling the opioid crisis in ohio or versus putting those expenditures improving education in montana. those are very valid, very important questions to be asked. and they have to be asked with the question, okay, if we go out, are we prepared to live morally in terms of international relations, security counterterrorism objectives, the very real possibility that afghanistan will slide into civil war.

nonetheless, the fact that we have set conditions and waived them, that we have set conditionality and ignored it, and the fact that we have had a set of presidents all wanting to get out and not getting out at the last minute, whether it was president obama in 2016 or president trump, has generated a situation in afghanistan where the afghan political elite believes they can get away with anything, including literally murder because we will not have the wherewithal to leave, and so the politics, all this remains about bargaining, bringing the ship of stage to the precipice but never becomes about serious governance. i wish we had the strength to say afghanistan, you face a dire moment, you have a chance for peace, 40,000 of your people are dying per year. develop interest in yourself to

fix it. and i think if -- that our messaging about our need to leave, about our desire to leave needs to be couched within that because unfortunately, many in afghanistan believe that we want to be there because of great power competition with china, russia, because of the promise of the trillion-dollar worth of minerals and the afghan dust for all kind of imaginary objectives and, hence, they believe that they don't have to negotiate because we'll stay and we'll continue fixing the problems. that they don't have to fix the afghan military and get it out of its mold because we will stay, and we will fix the problem. that they can continue having fights like over the past 24 hours because we will continue holding -- fixing the problem for them.

>> leaving afghanistan and -- solving the afghanistan problem is not -- cannot be co-exist -- i'm wondering that if you reduce the number of troops in afghanistan and in using the income to solve the afghanistan problem, whether we choose another alternative which is to stop this overspill of the afghanistan problem by isolating them and cut down the transnational network which is faithful to the spread of the terrorism and also the insurgency. that is kind of the -- to isolate it. >> i'll just say that afghanistan was pretty isolated in the 1990s, and look what we got. so i'm not sure in the -- in principle your idea sounds good, i don't know how to make it work in a way that protects from the number-one concern i had which

was a major terrorist strike. i'll add one more point and a tangent. mentioning that period, there's one thing i want to say about the afghan people. it's not reason enough to stay in our mission is bound for failure, but it is something to keep in mind, they helped us win the cold war in a more direct way than almost any other american ally. to be blunt, they bled the soviets through the 1980s. and they did the hard work, and they did the -- they accepted the risk. they did the dying for that mission to be successful. and that largely is what brought an end to the cold war. i'm not suggesting that 30 years later that should fundamentally guide our policy if we're not able to come up with a strategy that works. if we have a strategy that's sort of muddling along and the cost has become tolerable, i think it's something to keep in mind before we pull the plug. that kind of moral and historical debt to what they've done to help us. >> if i could add to that, some of the "they" in that sense are people who later became the taliban or members of the

haqqani group, so it's complicated. it's complicated. >> thank you. bill goodfellow, afghanistan peace campaign. i find it hard to believe after 19 years, you've been a great cheerleader of the militarized approach. after 19 years, particularly after the devastating "washington post" series, how you could still advocate basically watered down version of more of the same with the idea that it might work. it just seems to me -- i mean, we are losing, our guys are losing, and your five years, 5,000 troops i don't think will change anything. and it just -- it seems we need a new plan. sort of regional diplomatic approach that laurel's talking about, but just continuing with the same militarized policy just seems to me to be madness. >> first of all, to be clear, i support laurel's concepts. and vonda's work in some of the ngo engagements she has on the peace process. i'm just not enthusiastic about the near-term prospects of success. but i commend very much the

effort, point one. point two, i accept that this has been a frustrating mission. and i accept that it -- a lot of americans have paid a very high price, and the american taxpayer has paid a high price. but we are trying to protect from another 9/11, and now we're at a point where i think 5,000 troops can do it. and that's sort of the kind of level we've got in iraq, it's the level we've got in couple of other middle eastern countries. we've, as tom said, got a number of regional terrorists and extremist movements not all of them equally seriously threatening to us -- >> maybe not 21. >> maybe not 21. i think a posture that basically creates foreor five major strongholds for american collaboration with indigenous partners, intelligence gathering, and where necessary the application of air power or special forces is the right strategy because i can't think of a better one. and i wish i could. but i don't see leaving as the strategy, and i fully support the peace process. but again, you've got parties to this that barely are even

willing to talk to each other, and each of which thinks it has the upperland. you tell me how soon that's going to work. the realistic alternative we have to something like what i sketched out is to accept defeat and go home and run the experiment. and i hope laurel's right if we do, that we can probably survive the resulting terrorist threat to the united states that it doesn't get a lot worse. those are the two choices, if you want to make a decision tomorrow either/or. i very much support what they're trying to accomplish with the peace process. i just think it's probably going to take two to five years. >> carter. >> carter, cnn. tom, can i ask you a question? >> yes. >> you've been observing this war for 18 years. you've gone there multiple times. you also pay attention to the political situation in the united states. from a political perspective, can the united states, can a u.s. leader go to zero in afghanistan?

can a u.s. leader bear -- is there risk for a u.s. leader of not having a ct presence there? or is there not and we can just get out? >> i think it depends which president you're asking that question. i think this particular president would like to -- he said repeatedly he wants to get out of afghanistan completely. my guess is that those at the pentagon and elsewhere would say, well, sir, we should leave some number of troops there to fight that -- like michael was saying, maybe 5,000, maybe 2,000, 3,000. he also wanted to leave syria, and that did not happen. he said three times over the past year and a half "i want everyone out of syria," certain people talked hip out of it. and we still have troops in syria. so my guess is, you know, listening to trump, he wants to get everyone out. my guess is he will be persuaded not to do that.

>> i think it's 50/50 either way. you know, i -- who. a to say? but i find it hard to imagine that if president trump pulled troops out of afghanistan within the next year that it would have any impact on his election one way or another. i just find it hard to believe that that's going to be the consequential purely political issue barring a major terrorist attack that ensues in the immediate aftermath. but i don't find that particularly likely otherwise. i would just say to the question about just the persistence of an american military presence there at 5,000 or 2,000, a problem with that proposal from my point of view is that so long as your counterterrorism policy and strategy relies on your continued presence, you're going to have the insurgency perpetuated.

you're, therefore, going to have a weak partner in the afghan government because it will be facing the existential questions of having to fight an insurgency which it's always going to prioritize over u.s. counterterrorism objectives. and you're going to continue to have the u.s. drawn in to the counterinsurgency because those military officers present are going to be under threat. and so the idea that there's some, you know, just small number of american troops that you can keep on the ground indefinitely just attending to u.s. counterterrorism objectives and setting aside the counter insurgency to me is implausible. and therefore, while i agree that, you know peace process is not high probability of success, you have to then face the question if the peace process fails, do you just leave anyway. >> tom, i would add to the counterterrorism question here. afghanistan is in some ways in

the special place in counterterrorism because we are there. say that we faced a major attack out of nigeria, out of mozambique, out of somalia, out of pakistan. realistically, would there be president trump or a democratic president, president bloomberg who would say, okay, let's invade these countries with full force, topple the regime, take over governance? we couldn't do it even in somalia, and i would posit that we should not do it in any of these countries. in afghanistan, we are stuck in a place where we have said the threat happened once and, hence, we cannot imagine any other way or we cannot risk running the threat even though we have to live with that threat in other places. so to me, the -- the counterterrorism issue is clearly key vital u.s. national security objective. that's not implying necessarily, though, that this means of

prosecuting it is the only way of prosecuting it. i think where we have to answer the reckoning is if we leave, if we leave without a peace deal or even with a peace deal, on we willing to then live with the consequences of civil war, including massive levels of afghans being slaughtered. are we living to live the humanitarian, moral, and other consequences, and the answer may well be yes. but that is the question to me that we have to face as a country, that our policymakers need to face, and the public needs to grapple with. and i would add to that that the question today we should be asking is what are the red lines under which we should leave. and i have articulated a set of developments in afghanistan where i did not believe it was justifiable anymore to stay. and on the upside, what are the minimal positive developments where we should leave. >> okay. we've got about ten minutes. let's try to keep the answers to

a minimum. si sir? >> my name's carl poser, and i have a project called the center on capital and social equity. i'm not an expert on this region. just as somebody who's been observing, in terms of defining what our national interest is, nobody's mentioned oil. the whole region, the reason -- why do we have so many footprints in that region and bases? because we protect the lifeblood of the capitalist economy, that we protect across the globe. much different non-than 20 years ago. 20 years ago we were really importing most of our oil. and now we don't, we really export it. we've been somewhat self-sufficient even for -- maybe for a few decades. i think geopolitically, i would be thinking about can we, you know, 10, 20 years from now, do

we need to go back once we, you know, exhaust all the fracked oil. maybe i'm totally off, but that might be a part of the whole calcul calculus. >> anybody? is oil part of this? >> not really. inmean, there is some natural gas in one part of afghanistan, but it's not -- it's not a place -- yeah. afghanistan is a different picture in terms of what its potential, exploitable resources are. and frankly, it's, you know, it's also a land-locked country. it's not a -- you know, if you're going to look at american policy objectives from that perspective, afghanistan is not one of your more useful places to be investing your resources. >> okay. way in the back there.

>> stanley cober. how secure are our supply lines? >> the supply lines for the u.s. military? >> yeah. >> that's not been a major issue of late. i haven't -- you know, first of all, with the reduction in the number of u.s. forces, it makes the scale of the challenge there less. and things have been on a -- a more shall we say stable footing in the u.s.-pakistan relationship in the last years where i've not heard of any threats to the supply lines, threats to close that down -- >> really going back years, there haven't been many threats in the supply line. you're right, the level of troops now with 13,000, 14,000, you're not having nearly the supplies coming in that you had in past years. also the trucking mafia in pakistan i'm sure makes sure that those routes are secure. >> it's lucrative.

>> dave louden. have any of our discussions detected any generational sea change 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 to just monitoring such a thing? >> well, you know, indeed, much of the analysis that are optimistic about afghanistan centered on the very impressive young afghan generation. that the level of human capacity has expanded greatly. many young afghans my age or younger are very impressive. will they be able to change the system enough is one of the

important questions. i could again draw analogies to other countries -- nigeria has enormous capacity, extraordinarily impressive oxbridge-educated individuals, young people, and has had for several generations. nonetheless, the country continues to grapple with egregious misgovernance and corruption. so will the young individuals in afghanistan be able to change the system toward better is one big question. the second is there is enormous urban rule divide. you also have very many young afghan people that are in rural spaces. it might be that most people are in cities, but you still have a good number of people in rural spaces and even in the cities, many of them like opportunities. they might be educated, they -- many will have been born after 9/11. and they do not want to go back to the 1990s. but nonetheless, they face no

jobs, many graduates are without jobs. they face positive economic opportunities. many of them are not motivated to work in agriculture, subsistence agriculture, or opium poppy agriculture, what are the alternatives. one of the issues that really is a huge challenge for afghanistan with the taliban in power, with the power-sharing is whether the country's leadership will be able to develop prospects for those young people, or whether we will see in rather short amount of time the emergence of muslim brotherhood like mobilizations, a coopation of other sources and new conflict emerging five years after the deal. >> there's another generational dimension on the taliban side. there are some close analysts of the taliban who say that the younger generations in the taliban are, in fact, more cad

cal than some of the senior generations and that this is a phenomenon that's developed in part because during the war, more traditional structures, tribal structures, community structures have broken down. i don't myself know the scale and dimensions of that problem. but if it's real, then that's -- that's another reason why even if there is a peace deal its implementation could be difficult. >> the younger leadership or younger midlevel commanders are much more plugged in to the global jihadi networks than the older generation was. in the 1990s, to talk about palestine and afghanistan is like what, what's the issue? there is now much more because of internet communications, fund-raising strategies, much more knowledge of what's happening in the global jihadi spaces elsewhere. and we saw it significantly with isis and the afghan branch. >> okay, i think we have time for a couple more.

anybody else who hasn't asked a question? way in the back. >> cat -- can't hear you. sorry. >> hi, is this better? perfect. all right. mary smith from dai. i'd like to address this to laurel first if i can both other members of the panel. so usa and afghanistan has several development programs that are dependent on success of the peace process, namely jobs for peace program and the continuation of a women's civil society program. and so they've kind of been placed in a holding pattern since the awesome, there's uncertainty. laurel, what would you advice the folks to do regarding best practice on tailoring these economic growth and governance programs amidst all these -- all this uncertainty. >> i hesitate to say this because i don't know it for a fact, but i very strongly suspect that what's going on is

that existing programs are being redefined to be supposedly in support of a peace process or implementation of a peace process. i say that partly because that's -- i know how the u.s. government works, and that's a typical way it works. you know, i don't think there's -- if there are programs that are being pegged specifically to implementation of a peace process, i don't think that there's really much you can do other than stand by and see if one develops some -- some traction. but i also would say, you know, there are probably at this stage limitations to how effective some of these programs are going to be anyway unless a peace process takes hold. >> anybody else? last question. >> let's say you have an

unrealistic miracle and the taliban do form a government along with the existing government. what kind of policies or programs would they want implemented other than just holding on to power? >> well, the taliban is rather explicit that it wants a country that's ruled in accordance with islamic doctrines. now of course, islamic doctrines can be interpreted in a wide varietal way and under the existing institution, afghanistan is the islamic branch of afghanistan. the taliban does not believe that the islamic character of the republic is adequate. one of the big signs is whether the war should be emirate or republic or what kind of combination that expresses how they believe -- how they believe that the existing setup is inadequate. now that's part of the issue that will be very -- very much questioned.

there are big discussions about what role for women, some taliban interlopers will say, look, a woman can be even the minister, but absolutely not a prime minister or president. others will express much greater restrictions on the role of women and the role of public space when they reach puberty certainly. if you look at how the taliban rules and practice on the ground in territories where they control, it varies substantially by the shadow district governor blagojevich and military commander, but they tend to impose significant restrictions on what we would define as civil liberties and freedoms. they will tolerate education for girls up to a certain point. they will often have a taliban member present in the school to make sure that only what they believe is appropriate. at the same time, to not collect

money for being a teacher and -- and abroad. so certainly they have been prohibiting music and tv, soap operas. they sometimes say we are only prohibiting it now once we are in power, we'll allow it. right now we cannot allow it. they are quite explicit that they do not want an economic collapse. now that does not mean that they -- that they have really an economic vision other than preserving the flow of international aid and possibly international investments. and have been quite effective in reaching out to china, for example, and promising china that chinese investments will be protected in the country ruled by the taliban. >> i mean, they claim that they recognize, they claim to foreigners at least that they recognize mistakes of the

taliban regime of the 1990s and that it will be important not to repeat those mistakes. pre-sasly what they regard as mistakes and what they will do differently is another question. and you know, one hopes if there is a peace process and it takes time, these are questions that will be explored. but i don't think in reality you're really going to know until the aftermath. >> so on behalf of vonda, thank you for coming. thank you to tom and laurel. happy holidays to everybody. really appreciate you being here. >> thank you.

tonight on "the communicators," pennsylvania democratic congressman mike doyle, chair of the house subcommittee overseeing technology and telecommunications.

>> our concern is to make sure that we close this digital divide that exists in our country, and we have an opportunity to do that now. and i think that's important that we do that. there are kids literally 40, 50% of their homework requires internet access. and they can't get it where they live. they go to mcdonald's, or they go to a library to find a hotspot to do their homework. these young people were being greatly disadvantaged in our country when they don't have access to broadband. so that's what i think we're going to be focusing on is how do we do that, how do we close the homework gap, how do we close the digital divide, how do we get broadband deployment out to these unserved and underserved areas. >> watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. tonight, testimony from faa administrator steven dixon on the safety of boeing's 737 max

aircraft, including the design and certification process. he also answered questions on the faa's role in investigating the two crashes that claimed the lives of over 300 people and their dealings with boeing. the hearing is held by the house transportation committee, and you can watch it tonight starting at 8:00 eastern on c-span3. also coming up tonight a forum examining the role of congress in national security issues. we also hear about the current impeachment inquiry against president trump, constitutional war powers, and executive branch leaks. the event is hosted by new york university law school and the sidley austin law firm. it starts at 8:30 eastern on c-span2. c spa's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, the bipartisan policy center's william hogeland discusses the 1.38 trillion dollar government spending bill that will be voted on in congress this week to

avoid a government shutdown. then the fulcrum editor-in-chief david hawkings previews the house debate and vote on impeachment articles against president trump. watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning, join the discussion. mr. chairman, there are 23 ayes and 17 nos. >> the article is agreed to. the resolution is amended is ordered reported favorably to the house. >> with the house earthquake is approving two articles of impeachment against president trump, abuse of power and obstruction of congress, the house rules committee will meet to determine the guidelines on how the debate will unfold in the house floor. watch live coverage of house rules tuesday at 11:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. watch on line at c-span.org slash impeachment or listen live with the free c-span radio app. joining us from miami this