we're developing drugs in india and technology in vancouver because people can't get here. this is the national suicide of our immigration policy. we have the greatest higher woy an order of magnitude, and people tell you china graduates 25,000 engineers a minute and we graduate 5,000 a year, yeah but their definition of "engineer" gas station attendants qualify. we have something, and we have a chance of losing it. the way to fix it is public education and immigration. everything else is so far down the list. >> so get to work on immigration is your message? >> yes, it's true. >> on that note, thank you very much for coming. mike bloomberg, larry summers. [applause] .

>> ahmed rashid, author of "taliban," and other books about pakistan and afghanistan, what would you sum up what you think the situation has been?

>> very complicated. very complex. huge dangers involved in terms of the resurgence of the taliban. the fact that taliban has now become a regional model. you have taliban in pakistan, in central asia. there is a big fear about al qaeda, whether they will attack europe or the united states. and now we are entering a kind of end game where we are possibly withdrawing, nato is certainly withdrawing, and what are you going to leave behind? my fear is they fall apart the moment the americans leave. it will be very difficult to get this region stable without a military presence there. >> if you saw a member of the taliban there walking down the street in kabul, is there any way to recognize him? >> yes.

they have their trademark black turban, a lot of them do wear black clothes. they do stand out. they have a mannerisms which perhaps would be difficult for an american to recognize. i wouldn't be able to describe it to you. for example, when i go to -- in pakistan when you go to peshar, or a border city on the border with afghanistan, when you are walking down the streets, you can certainly see who the taliban are and who are not. >> are the taliban among the people now? >> not among the people, but in the rural areas yes there are a lot of taliban. even in kabul, 10 miles outside kabul, you have taliban. n.g.o.'s, aid workers, they know they are out there. the same goes for kanduhar, the

second largest city, which is to be the target of the second largest u.s. offensive in the months to come. right outside the city, they are visible in the villages. they are not hiding during the day. quite visible. >> this book, "taliban" that i have in my hand. i know in the introduction and you have a second introduction, when did you start writing this book? >> i started writing it in 1999. it was published in 2000. at that time i couldn't find a publisher to publish it. several publishers agreed and then struck me down. i found a publisher that stripped many of my rights. this was a publisher in london. anyway, i was grateful to him that he published it. he then sold it to yale

university press so that it could be published in the u.s., and i was very surprised, you know, because i had such a difficult time trying to sell the book. and actually in america, it really took off. i remember it sold about 20,000 or 30,000 copies before 911 because people were waking up to the fact -- the clinton administration, because you had had al caeda hit, you had the hit on the warship, and people were waking up in washington and the military to possibly, you know, what is this taliban? so on the week of 911, it just came out in papererback. >> where were you on 9-11? >> i was at home. i called my wife in. i said, this is al qaeda.

after that, i met with people who were trying to prepare, you know, for the war and what to do. a lot of people wrote to me asking me -- a lot of europeans, government, all sorts of people wrote in. nobody had any clue what the taliban were and what this all meant. >> i mean, whether you get into the book, it is so complicated, this whole business. there are a lot of simple questions i want to ask you. can you be a member of al qaeda and a member of the taliban? >> you can, but 99.9% of the taliban are not members of the al qaeda. you have central asian militant groups and other militant groups that are members of al qaeda.

the afghanistan parliament, they never took part in 9-11. the majority of the public didn't even know that osama was planning 9-11. they haven't taken part in any kind of international terrorism since then. yes, they have killed american soldiers in large parts in afghanistan, but they haven't taken part in the london bombings, the spain bombings, et cetera. other groups have, but the taliban have remained very outcast. as they see it now, as they have said, this is a jihad against foreign ouchings. -- occupation. so we are not talking about a global jihad or attacking americans everywhere, we are only talking about getting rid of what they call the foreign occupation. >> when was there a person that was a member of the taliban? what is the right way to pronounce it? >> taliban is the right way to proit. -- to pronounce t -- it. an al eye of the taliban.

he is very extreme. he is very close to al qaeda. he has benefited from al qaeda training. probably al qaeda money and al qaeda training. i wouldn't call him al qaeda. i would call him an outcast extremist group with close links to the taliban but probably closer links to al qaeda. i wouldn't call him necessarily al qaeda. but there are several groups in afghanistan which are linked to al qaeda which i would call al qaeda. >> this book, why did you write it in the first place? what was driving you to get this information out? >> you know, i have been covering afghanistan for 30 years.

there were many stepping stones in the middle when people around me told me, you must write a book now. this period is finished. for example, when the soviets left, people said write a book about the soviet occupation. when the geneva accord was signed, when the communist regime in kabul fell in 1962. there were many reasons i should have written a book, and i kept deferring it, and i was one of few journalists who as they conquered the whole of afghanistan, bin laiden came in, and then i really -- bin laden came in and then i felt the lack of knowledge anywhere about who these people were. then i felt, now i have to write a book. so really this book is not just about the taliban. it is squeezing together all my 30 years of knowledge and experience about afghanistan.

but writing about the specific period of the taliban, how they emerged, and what happened after that. a lot of it had to do with my mother. my family were urging me, my wife was urging me, write a book, write a book. when are you going to write a book? stop all this daily journalism and write a book. everywhere i went, people didn't know. i'm an activist. i was trying to wake up people that looked at this as i major threat. if you read the end -- nothing has changed in the book from when i wrote it in 1999. i'm trying to say to the american western public, wake up. this is a huge threat. al qaeda is there. the taliban are ousting them, and you are all ignoring them. >> where are you from? >> i was born in pakistan near

the islamabad. >> what aabout your parents? >> my father was an engineer much we settled in england. after the war. he was in the british indian army at that time fighting the japanese. he was one of the first indian graduates of engineering university in england. so for some years we settled in england, and then when we moved back to pakistan, he moved back to pakistan in the 1950's. so i got my education partly in england and partly in pakistan. eventually i went to university in england. >> where did you go? >> i went to cambridge. >> what did you study? >> i started actually studying english literature. i fancied myself as a writer of fiction. i used to write a lot of short stories. i used to write a lot of poetry

i was there in 1968, and it was the whole radical movement and anti-vietnam. and by 1970 in pakistan we had had this tralmic experience about bangladesh and the war in east pakistan which eventually became bangladesh. huge atrocities were committed. a person from my generation, it was perhaps probably the most traumatic things that happened in our lives. so that led to a fair amount of you know radicalization at university as everyone was. >> if you look at the numbers today, and you look at india sitting there with 1.2 billion people. you have pakistan on one side with about 170 million. correct me on any of this. on the other side was

bangladesh with about 162 million, and then above it, right above pakistan, afghanistan, with 28 million people. when did the british influence -- i know the british got out of afghanistan in 1919 or something like that. when did the british come into that world? >> as early as the 16th century and early 17th century. but they set up training stations around the rest of it, and then the trading company, east india company, ruled parts of india, especially along the coast, and conquered the whole of india. and it was only after point indian mutiny or what indians and pakistanis call the indian war of independence, quick queen victoria at that time took over part of the british empire and then india was ruled by the british government rather than by the east india company.

then that lasted until 1947 when partition took place. that was the creation of pakistan in two halves, one on one side of india, the other on the other side of india, and the british left. we've been an independent state since then. >> was pakistan called pakistan when it was under the whole umbrella? >> no, it was british india. it was india. >> so you were actually born in british india? >> no, partition took place in 1947. i was born in 1948, one year later. >> so you were educated in cambridge, and when did you start thinking about being a journalist? >> it was part of this whole thing, wanting to become a writer. i thought at one point i become a ph.d. i was in afghanistan in 1978 when the communist coup took place

and overthrough the republican government. i was in kandihar when the soviets invaded. my father moved back. i was working with my father and his company, and i came back. i had a friend who said let's go try to sell these pictures to one of the newspapers in england. we went to the "guardian." the man at the "guardian" said, i want the story to go with these pictures. my friend said, you write the story. i wrote the story for the "guardian" and he took the

pictures. after that, it snowballed. i knew what was going on. i knew a lot of the figures who had come into power then through the soviets. then i just started, you know, going back to afghanistan. i moved back to pakistan in 1982. i was one of the few journalists who was able to go and see the whole soviet set-up. as well as going to the mujahideen. that was unusual, because the soviets would say, if you are going to see the mujahideen who are fighting us, we will not give you a visa. >> who were the mujahideen.

>> they fled after the soviet invasion and became refugees in pakistan or iran and other places. five million came into pakistan, and if you think of the afghan population at that time being 20 million, almost a quarter of the population fled, and they came into pakistan, and then of course they were aided and abetted by first pakistan to launch attacks against the soviet occupation, and then of course, the americans got into it, the c.i.a. got into it, the saudis, international help came to them, and then they became this guerilla force. >> the name came from where, mujahideen. >> the name is an islamic term which means you are fighting for the faith. at that time it was portrayed as a jihad much like the taliban

is saying today. except that jihad was supported by the americans. this was a jihad at the height of the cold war and here were these afghans actually killing soviet soldiers. many people have pointed out that actually this war was the closest -- you had the c.i.a. just across the border in pakistan, you had russian soldiers a few miles across the border. this was the closest the americans and soviets actually got to literally fighting. >> are you aligned right now with any particular leader in pakistan. >> no, not at all. i am very much a journalist and reporting on whalts happening. not at all. i haven't taken part in any type of politics. >> this book, go back to 9-11, and i read in the introduction that you sold over 1.5 million copies of this book. probably more than that by now. >> certainly more than that.

1.5 million was in america after 9-11. but it came out in 26 languages. so i have no cut of how much it sold. >> still published by yale? >> i have been very pleased. it has been in print for 10 years, which is very rare for a sort of academic political book like this. one reason is, of course, that afghanistan has been in the news. but two areas i am grateful for as an author, one is students, it is still on university courses, it is still a textbook for any courses on terrorism, islam, south asia, afghanistan. if you do any of these courses, it is still a book. it is still a book to be read. and secondly, anybody who goes out to afghanistan, for example the u.s. military, it is -- you know, i was very touched. some of your most fames -- name

famous regiments, i am told by the officers and all who send me e-mails that the book is put at the top of the rucksack of every soldier that goes out to afghanistan. and that has been kept. >> can you remember someone who held this book up and said you have to read this? >> yeah, i think at that time, certainly, i mean -- well, i remember my publishers telling me that literally 24 hours after 9-11, i think president bush was still out in washington, and they said 300 orders of copies of books had come from the white house. >> did you ever find out who was responsible? >> no, i have no idea. but i presume -- the hardback had been circulated and people in the know, people interested in

this region have read it, people interested in who are doing terrorism have read it, so i can presume that spln must have alerted everyone that they better read this book. >> did someone else in this country hold it up or put you on television or start the whole process that led to a million and a half copies being sold? >> it came in the news. it was reported quite widely that everyone in the white house was reading this book. tony blair in britain said, we are all reading this book on downing street. so that was a bit of a public thing. and you know, it was read by prime ministers and presidents and their staff. all around europe. and there was huge -- anyone who wanted to come and visit them and all the rest of it. but here i think, you know, it became known certainly in the sort of east coast belt here of

the policy wonks if you like, it became known that everyone in government was reading this book. the military began to read the book. so as i said, this was an incident that was literally, you know, 90% of americans have absolutely no idea about afghanistan, they had no idea who the taliban were, and they had very little idea of slamic -- islamic fundamentalism and al qaeda. when the book came out, it was one of the first comprehensive pieces of writing on him, his life, what he stands for, what his links to the taliban were. nobody really knew about it before then. >> did you ever talk to george bush about this? >> no. >> did you ever talk to tony blair about it? >> yes, i did. i appellate -- met mr. blair several times. i spoke to people like rumsfeld, and a.i.d., and the

state department. >> i became frustrated by the bush administration later on. very quickly i realized that they were going to go into iraq. everyone there thought the same, once they start preparing for iraq, the eyes are off afghanistan completely, and that's what happened. i used to come to america to attend conferences, and they would call you in pro forma, but they weren't going to carry out in your suggestions because you knew the funding, resources, the troops, everything was for iraq.

>> the best announcement i have been able to read is as a country we have spent 300 trillion -- billion in afghanistan. have we gotten our money's worth? >> no, not at all. i think if that had been a concentration on afghanistan. i remember two or three experts and friends of mine in the states, on the back of an envelope we worked out what the u.s. needs to do is give about $5 billion a year for five years for the development of the country and about $5 billion for building up the security forces of the country. we came to $10 billion, which if you shared with europe is chicken feed. if that had happened in the first five years, afghanistan wouldn't be in the mess that it is today, the taliban would not have been able to come back and stage their resurgence in 2003-2004. y;pt3what happened was that evt

paltry sum was not spent. and if money did go, it was not spent properly. there was a lack of focus, lack of attention, lack of expertise. i mean, the kinds of things you see now, general mccrystal doing in afghanistan where the military officers are learning the languages and they know all the tribes and they are investigating tribal history and who is who and what is what, nobody did this for years and years, so there is so much wasted. wasting of lives, wasting of american resources and money. it is really only the last two years that i think your country has gotten serious and tried to do something about this. >> let's just hypothetical, go ahead to 2014, 2015. based on what you know now, when we're going to bull -- pull out, what will be the situation? >> again, i'm on a mission to say -- it is clear the americans

want to withdraw. and certainly before your 2012 elections, i'm sure president obama will want to show the people that he's ruled the forces out of iraq. if that is the case, we have a short time left. he didn't give the date of july 2011 whereby he wants to start the withdrawl of american forces. so we're talking about a serious depletion of -- what's the military forces in afghanistan. >> what's the number of total troops nato and american right now? >> it is about 140,000. by the end of this year, there will be about 100,000 american troops. >> and the rest will be nato? >> and the rest will be nato. >> how many countries are left participating? >> they are down -- it is about 47 countries. many of these countries have -- and some of them are getting out? >> some have already announced. the canadians are saying we're leaving in 2011, come what may, the dutch are probably going to

leave also. there is a huge controversy going on in germany right now. the german chancellor, angela merkel, may be forced to announce some kind of withdrawal. so what the point is, on top of that, general mccystal and general petraeus have said, we cannot win this war on the ground. the task for the obama administration is you have to look at the political settlement. a settlement between karzai and the government and the taliban. how that will shape out depends on the americans. at the moment, obama has said that he will not support talks with the taliban leadership, although karzai is doing that. what i think is vital now is that the americans agreed to

talk to the taliban leadership. and we really now work in the next 18 months for a serious political settlement, which includes not just the taliban and karzai, it also includes the whole region. pakistan is involved in this war. pakistan has six neighbors. they are all involved in this war. they have proxies. they all want a piece of the. -- they all want a piece of the pie even more. zwr what do you understand our mission to be there? why are we there? >> i think the mission has changed a great deal. i mean, if you look initially it was there to take revenge on the attacks on new york and washington and to get rid of the taliban and al qaeda. except the leadership of thank taliban and al qaeda all escaped. you didn't commit troops even during the war in 2001 in sufficient numbers which would

have trapped al qaeda and the taliban. they escaped and came back in again. i think the other mission cast to rebuild the country, which, again, didn't happen. >> why would we want to rebuild that country? >> i think there is no doubt they wanted to leave afghanistan in a failed state in the kind of conditions that it was in 2001 would just be an invitation for all these extremes to come back again, and you would have to repeat the whole performance all over again. >> aren't there ewe countries in the world that they could move to if this country had been restored to some semblance of democracy? >> well, you know, afghanistan has six neighbors. in the 1990's, what fueled the taliban appearance in 1993, was a civil war. that civil war was fueled by the neighbors. pakistan was backing the taliban. india, iran, central asia, the five repics of central -- republic licks of central asia were backing -- >> are you talking about turkmenistan and -- >> yes.

you had all the areas wanting to carry on fighting because they wanted influence in afghanistan. >> why? >> because afghanistan is so strategic. it is a landlocked country surrounded by six countries. now, all the ethnic groups of afghanistan spill over into the neighboring countries. that's the first reason. for example, the pesthtan of afghanistan spills over into asia. all these groups have interests. the gulf, if there was ever going to be peace there. what i'm trying to say, we need a political settlement that is

not just in afghanistan but also includes the regions. these same countries that fueled the war in the 1990's cannot be allowed to do that again because that would be devastating. that would create another civil war in afghanistan which would invite back probably al qaeda. >> i have a profile here. read this and tell me what's right and what's wrong. 99% are muslim in afghanistan? >> yes. >> 80% sunni. 19% shiite. two-thirds lirve on less than $2 per day. 3.3 million involved in opium production. 1/3 of the gross domestic product is drugs. there is no television. literacy 34%. >> probably lower than that. >> highest infant mortality rate

in the world, 257 deaths per 1,000 births. >> right. some of these things have improved. let me tell you. today under the taliban there are about 100,000 students in school. today there are seven million. so probably the literacy rate has probably gone up. health has improved enormously. there have been a lot of investments in health by the europeans and americans, et cetera. especially health related to women has probably improved. so some of these figures. but the economy is way down. the drug thing, you are absolutely right, which is a huge portion of the g.d.p. - so there have been some very good things on the social side, health, education, but there -- they have been very late building of the economic structure, of an indigenous economy which would provide jobs, which would actually lift people's

living standards. >> in the back you have some apendices. one, a sample of taliban and social issues after the capture of kabul. i want to read some of this and i want you to explain. taliban are muslim. is it all based on religion by the way? >> no, it is not. the taliban is a mixture of two or three things. a very orthodox secretary of sunni islam which is very reactionary even within the main frame of islam. a code of the peshtoon tribes from which they belong. because they come from very backward areas of afghanistan, they are adhered to, and the third was the influence of madrasa education, which taught them this extremeism.

>> what does peshtoon? >> they have ruled afghanistan for years. until the soviets arrived they predominantly subjugated the minorities. a dozen minority and ethnic groups. so the ethnic question in afghanistan has always been terribly important. karzai is a peshtoon. the taliban, also, are peshtoon. so in many ways this is a fight between two tribal groups. the peshtoons livelive under a tribal code and tribal úyñhierarchy.

one of the tests has been how to move this tribal hierarchy into a modern state structure. because the old kings of afghanistan are ruled by basically buying off the tribes. doing favors for one tribe, buying another one, whatever. and obviously you can't do this in a modern state structure. you want education, economy, and all the rest of it. this has been one of the challenges. >> let me read some of the decree. "if women are going outside with -- going outside with fashionable, ornamental, tight and charming clothes to show themselves, they will be cursed by the slamic sharia and should never expect to go to heaven." >> well, this is the taliban in the 1990's when they were ruling the country. >> do they still expect this of women? >> there have been suggestions, but let me tell you, during this war, they have burned down hundreds of girls schools and

boys' schools. they say these schools are used by the americans and by the c.i.a., et cetera. now, clearly, this is going to be one of the most contentious issues in any dialogue with the taliban, the treatment of women. because there have been huge advances in afghanistan over the past seven years. women are very weary, naturally, of what talking to the taliban means. does it mean that our rights disappear again and we go behind the burqa? >> to prevent music. to be broadcasted by the public information resources. in shops, hotels, vehicles, and rickshaws castets and music are prohibited. this matter should be monitored within five days. the shopkeeper shg imprisoned and the shop locked. if five people guarantee the

shop should be opened, the criminal released later. " what is all that about? >> they shut down all the media. they shut down music. what is ironic is that today the taliban are media specialists. the way they use the internet, you know, they get out news faster than the americans and nato does. when there is an ambush or an attack, they claim responsibility literally within minutes, you know? american head quarters in combule -- kabul have not even put ow -- put out a statement that these soldiers have died. so the taliban they suppress the music and radio and television. now we see the taliban using the media more effectively than the government.

>> some of this other stuff, just to put it on the table, to prevent pidgeons, to prevent kite flying, the kite shops should be abolished. to prevent the british and american hairstyle. people with long hair should be taken to the police department to shave their hair. the criminal has to pay the barber. what is this business about the religious police? >> that is something they adopted from saudi arabia. in saudi there is a religious belief that everyone goes around so that everyone goes to prayers at the same time. the taliban five times a day will say their prayers. they will close down five times a day. this has never happened before in afghanistan or any other south anche -- asian eastern country. if you wanted to say your brares, great, if you didn't want to, you weren't forced to. the taliban forced everyone to say their prayers.

they used young kids who had no education, no training, they carried long sticks, some would carry guns, and they would enforce this. the british and american haircut is very amusing. if you remember at that time the film "titanic" came out, and leonardo dicaprio had this hair cut which was followed -- they had banned tv and video, but pirated videos were all the rage in kabul. even the taliban used to watch it. and the titanic was the biggest seller ever because it was a love story or whatever, and his hair cut was the favorite haircut of the young people in kabul. the taliban realized this was a sign of defect, like what is happening in iran now, when women sort of slightly take off their head covering.

the taliban thought this was a spine -- this was a sign of revolt and they had to ban it. >> it is a law now that 25 members of parliament have to be women. >> right. >> where did that come from? >> i think it came largely from the west, but it also was a strong demand among afghan women. afghan women who struggled through the taliban era, women who were not allowed to go to school, who were not allowed to be educated, who had been working before even during the civil war but had been banned by the taliban. >> the reason i asked is if that was a demand on the part of the american government that they have 25% women? >> it was not a direct demand like that, i think. i think what the americans said was that we would like to see more women in parliament, and

please find a way to do it. >> they did the same thing in iraq. i guess there is no american federal legislature here that has 25% women in it. >> of course. both iraq and particularly in afghanistan, the united nations house, formed the constitution. and i think the u.n. took in a lot of the demands, requests made by european parliament. -- european powers. i think this was more of a request coming from the scandinavians, for example, something like that. but as i said, there was a strong women revival in afghanistan after the defeat of the taliban, and they were insisting on a proper share. they certainly have gotten more than any other muslim country, probably than any other western countries. >> this sounds like it is off the wall. i'm going to change subjects completely. i'm going to ask you about a guy named a. cuqon.

>> he is kept under control, as it were. >> tell me in 25 words or less, what did he do? >> he was one of pakistan's leading nuclear scientists who proliferated nuclear technology various technologies. >> iran, north korea? >> yes, but the argument is whether he did this on his own, with a team of people, or whether he did it with the military and state structure of pakistan. the military is not run by a cuqon, and the question is whether a cuqon is doing all this proliferation, whether he was doing it on behalf of the state.

>> and i assume the u.s. didn't like it when they found this up? >> very much so, and they put a lot of pressure on musharraf and he was caught during a shipload to libya. these were caught by the americans and british, and then it became general musharraf, then general of pakistan, and he was taken to prison. >> i want to read you what he said. he said, "we realize this poor country has been robbed continuously for the past 60 years.

democratic governments proved to be no different from military dictators. the good times lasted only for the five years of our independence. leaders at that time were so honest that when maulana maudoodi taunted liaquat ali khan the prime minister showed liz bill at the next gathering that he still had to pay the taylor. what a contrast now!- our rulers and leaders own luxurious villas, extremely expensive cars, foreign properties, and foreign-currency accounts. their luxurious way of living would put many to shame. their motorcades bring city traffic to a halt, causing untold miseries to the public. the emperors and kings in our history were kind. what do you say about this?

we are seeing this in our own country now. >> that's the way popular -- he's stating a very popular view. at the same time, he's become very much an islamist. he's holding fundamentalist views on almost everything. what his argument boils down to is that we are not following the presepts of islam. >> many young pakistanis believe this. of course, many of this is true. we still don't have a stable government.

we have corrupt rule. the political leadership includes the military, both civilian and military. the united nations is trying to develop the nation. our economic indicators are also terrible. not as bad as afghanistan, but pretty bad. and countries like -- you know, we make enemies around ourselves. we don't take responsibility for anything. for example, the extreme -- extremism now in pakistan, we say the americans told us to fight the jihad against the soviets in the 1980's. this is all for the americans or it is a fall to conspiracy by india or israel. i think the biggest thing we need to do is take responsibility for our own actions and we dough don't do that. >> what do the pakistanis say behind the scene about america? >> there is a lot of anti-

americanism in pakistan, even from the elite who have benefited largely from american largesse. whether it is the military elite or the civilian elite. i think a lot of this anti- americanism is fueled by the mistakes that have been made in pakistan have been made by us primarily. yes, the americans have had some wrong policies, by going into iraq, failing to resolve the middle east and plin problem. -- palestinian problem. american foreign policy is full of things that should not have happened. at the same time, i think we have to recognize what we are responsible for ourselves. >> i want to go back to what i asked you earlier. four or five years from now, what is it going to look like in

your opinion in afghanistan with al qaeda or with taliban? >> i hope that within the next 12 to 18 months before a serious american withdrawal starts from afghanistan that there is a political pollen endorsed by the west and is backed up for continuing money for aid and development, that there is a kind of cease-fire that holds and that there is a regional agreement among the neighboring countries that holds. all this is a very big and complex game. you have to do an internal settlement, you have to do an externl settlement. you have to guarantee the building up of the state. >> and al qaeda will be left? >> al qaeda will be left. everyone acknowledges that the heart of al qaeda are perhaps a few hundred people. and you don't need armyies to go -- armies to go after these people. you need economic intel jens.

you need special forces. you need a war of intelligence rather than a war of hundreds of thousands of troops. >> so we will be spending a lot more money in afghanistan and pakistan? >> not just you. i hope there will be a lot of burden sharing with western europe, with japan, with countries who are contributing now to afghanistan in a meaningful way will continue to do so. >> on the day we are recording this, april 15, when you were here in washington, there was a front page story in the "the washington post," and the headline was u.s. retreat from afghan rally marks rogs of blunder. and it is the -- it is pronounced the valley. the kurengo valley. here is what it says in the middle of the article.

for u.s. commanders, the valley offers a heart lesson in the limits of american power and good will in afghanistan. the valley, extreme isolation, its axel-breaking terrain, and its ininhabitants suspicious of outsiders make it impossible to wage an insurgencey. we have been there since 2005, and the troops were, in essence, bullet magazine -- magnates. u.s. troops can be forced out. their picture is in there. the captain's picture is in there. you read this, and you go, is all this worth it? you can see our captain is sitting there holding hands, explain that, with the local tribal leader? how do we keep doing this? what's the good of all this?

>> let me just say, the kurengo valley is a particular area with a long history of opposition to all outsiders. it was an area that the sovietss too impossible to occupy in the 1980's. perhaps you should never have gone there. the first american troops went there about four years ago because president karzai insisted on it. it was not part of the american military doctrine to occupy every nook and cranny in afghanistan. you occupied areas where you could win the population, where you could do some good work, and where you could resist the taliban. and this was a bit of -- this was really off the beaten track. this was a central mujahideen center.

there is a little hilarity. broadly speaking what this shows is that for too many years the military, the civilians, the american civilians in afghanistan, they pursued wrong policy. i think now finally, the new counterterrorism doctrine by portreus and mccrystal, if this ha had -- if this had happened right from the beginning, i don't think we would have had the taliban resurgence in 2003. the fact was that america refused to deploy troops in twue, 2003, 2004. what happened, there was a vacuum. it was filled first by the warlords who were rapacious and horible to the local population, and this vacuum was filled by the taliban. if you had filled important areas where populations could

concentrate earlier on and had an economic plan to minimally develop the country -- i'm not saying turn it into switzerland, but just give it a basic colony, which the afghans had in the 1970's and 1960's, i think the whole story would have been different. >> so when you are talking to americans and there is no camera there and they are not reporting, what do they tell you about? do most americans you come in contact with care about afghanistan and our role there? >> i think now it is certainly the number one policy agenda for this administration. >> but do they care? >> yes, they do, because i think people in government care because they still see it as a potential threat, the fact that al qaeda is still out there. but i think now in this administration for the first time, you have people that really do care about afghanistan. they have served there, they

have learned about afghanistan. if you are looking at the military, if you are looking at people in the state department, you are looking at n.g.o.'s and aid workers, you know, people who go there are -- i mean, why am i stuck with afghanistan for so long? it is not just the fact of the country, the people just draw you in. the country sucks you in. if you go in for the first time, you will be forever involved and interested in afghanistan. it has a very magnetic appeal. >> give us an example. >> i don't know. the afghans are a special kind of people. this was a people who were never colonized. the afghans were the only anche people who were never col owe niced by the -- who were never colonized by the british or anches and they received a sort of gand our but enormous warmth and hospital by talt.

the country is an amazing looking country. it has everything, desert, mountains. the highest mountains in the world, the lowest desert. the landscape, the people, it is all very odd. many afghans joke that, you know, 4/5 of afghanistan is uninhabitable, and the afghans joke when god made the world in seven days, he made the rest of the world in six days and then someone said there is a gap in the middle there, so he collected all the bits and pieces that were left over, you know, the spare parts that were left over for making all the other countries and he threw them all down and said this is afghanistan. so that's why afghanistan has a bit of everything, you know? it has areas which look like

switzerland and it has areas that look like the sahara desert. people reflect the same. you have people who are completely wlite with blue eyes who are supposed to be the decendants of alexander the great, you have mongolians, people from central asia and people from south asia, and you can see it in their faces. it has languages from all over the world. there are dozens of languages. so this is a very special place. >> what are the chances that pakistan will ever get back to normality? >> well, i hope that we will, you know, as long as democracy continues, as long as the military does not intervene again. we have a very bad democracy, a poor democracy. if this democracy was given time, if there was another election without military teerns, a new kind of new generation of leaders that come in and get attracted, come nool politics,

come into public service, you know, i think things things will slowly change. the problem is that, you know, our whole democratic experience has been interrupted by the military every 10 years. so we go back, we re-invent the wheel every 10 years. it is a terrible situation to be in. >> so do you have another book? i know you just put one out in 2008. >> well, the decent into chaos covers most of the post-9-11 period and brings you up to 2009. at the moment i am not working on any other books. i think things are too much in flux. perhaps i would like to write a novel and move away from some of this factual stuff. >> my guest is ahmed rashid. his book is available in paperback, "taliban" and it has been out for 10 years. thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> for a dvd call 1-877-662- 7726. for comments visit us at q-and- a.org. >> next lot, your comments on "washington journal." live a 10:00 a.m., the house of representatives will have a pro forma session and live it 10:30, the united nations review of the global nuclear nonproliferation treaty begins with remarks by

the iranian president and the secretary of state hillary clinton. >> mahmoud ahmadinejad od is scheduled to speak today at the conference on nuclear nonproliferation. a lanky moments of his speeches at the cspan video library, every comment -- every video since 1987. >> eight governors talk about job creation, live coverage as the u.s. chamber of commerce gets underway this morning at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 2. this morning, we will talk with the new mexico governor bill richardson as the previous the summit hosted by the chamber of commerce which will examine the role of state in encouraging job growth and