people, this was true people power. the landscape has clearly changed in 40 years. there is no monolithic media. broadcasting has given way to narrow casting. are a thing. but c-span is more relevant than ever. no government money supports c-span. it is funded as a public service to -- from your cable and satellite provider. c-span is your unfiltered view of government so that you can make up your own mind. , special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction to talk about the efforts. good morning to you. guest: it is a pleasure to be back. host: what are you tasked to do? guest: i am the inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction. what that means -- it sounds $132icated -- but we spent billion over the last 18 years

trying to rebuild that country to make it self-sufficient so we can keep the taliban and the terrorists out and never be a launching place. i don't do the reconstruction. i have a staff of about 200 auditors, criminal investigators, accountants, et cetera. 30 are in afghanistan. the rest are here in the united states. we try to prevent fraud, waste and abuse of all the money. host: the money we have spent, are we closer to that goal? guest: we are getting there. not as good as we would like it to be. we have accomplished a lot over the 18 years. i have only been there for seven. eventually the agency will go out of existence when the assistance ends. we could have done a better job and i think i have been here before to cite examples of the four stories. -- horror stories.

i think our staff does a good job of trying to prevent the fraud. host: part of your job is to put out reports on the status. one report has this line. when it comes to the possibility of peace in afghanistan, you resumptionhanistan's of its fighting season between the afghan government and the taliban insurgency. spring 2019, macy a break in the clouds." -- may see a break in the clouds." guest: this is the first time we are close to a negotiated peace. we support it. i think all americans and all afghans would like to have a lasting and fair, sustainable peace. we have negotiators negotiating with the taliban for the first time. they have met a number of times and are working on it. the difficulty is that the afghan government is not

participating because the taliban don't want them there. there are a lot of tricky issues that have to be resolved. we highlight them in a report. risks for the first time to reconstruction and also to peace if we don't take care of some of these problems we have identified. host: when it comes to the taliban, is the idea of reintegrating them into government and society? guest: we list eight or 10 of them. one of the first things is there will still be a need for security forces in afghanistan. the afghans have been fighting hard but they have been losing territory. they have been fighting for years over there. you will have security even if you have peace. the taliban is not monolithic. it is not one organization where everyone follows the rules. you also have other terrorist groups out there. the other thing you alluded to

is you have to reintegrate those 60,000 plus taliban who have been fighting the government into society. that will take time and cost money. us until are with 10:00 to answer questions about efforts in afghanistan. if you want to ask questions, (202) 748-8000 free democrats. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. maybe you are a veteran of the afghan war. if you want to give comments on reconstruction efforts, you can call us at (202) 748-8003. there are headlines about the process with the taliban. some saying no breakthrough yet. they are also taking place in moscow. talk about russia's part in this. guest: my office is not involved in the negotiations. i don't really know what is going on other than the press reports. that kind of interesting

the russians are involved in this. we all know the former soviet union invaded afghanistan and had to leave. i have to defer to our negotiators on what the significance of that is. host: the report be put out includes high risks that you identify. you will expand more widespread into security. 30 terroristare groups operating in afghanistan. even if you negotiate with the taliban, you have to deal with isis. the other risks we talk about is you have a problem of corruption. you have a problem of narcotics. it is the largest producer of heroin in the world. we have to deal with the issue of how the taliban are going to treat women. us in the key goal of coalition, to improve the lives of women and girls in afghanistan.

today aftereven spending billions of dollars is still a very poor place to be if you're a woman. the taliban, and we know from their terrorist activities in the past and how they treated women, this could really destroy everything. if they go back to very evil ways. that is one of the risks we highlight. the coalition is not going to support -- in my humble opinion. they may not support financially the afghan government, even if the taliban is part of it if they are allowed to go back to their evil ways of how they treated women. host: under the topic of security you talk about the civil policing capability. where are we with the investment we have? guest: the police in afghanistan is one of the more corrupt agencies. we devoted a lot of time and effort to training the police to be paramilitary police, not really to do normal policing.

they are going to be the face of the afghan government. that is one area where you have to reform the policing. host: what is the biggest hurdle? guest: they did not get the training. rampant corruption. do your are not able to simple law enforcement functions. the military is a little better but they just really have not been trained in the rule of law and governance, et cetera. host: is that the job of u.s. forces to help them? guest: it has been a function of the u.s. government. we have a report coming out. the problem is nobody handles police training that well. this is a nato operation. there are some countries in nato which actually can do it better and have done in the past but they have not been involved as much. that is a difficulty. it is not a deal killer, but it is something we have to focus on. viewers,listeners and

what we are saying is don't allme once there is peace these problems disappear miraculously. you still have to deal with the security situation. he still have to deal with corruption. you still have to deal with narcotics. you have to deal with the women issue about how they are treated. you still have to deal with oversight, which is very difficult for the u.s. and the coalition to oversee how the money is being spent. not the day after the peace treaty and say lo and andld what happened? -- say, lo and behold, what happened? we hear there is planning being ,one and we are glad to hear it but congress has to be involved. congress appropriates the money and how it's being spent. we think everybody needs to

focus on these high risks, plan how to handle them. peace, aal is lasting lasting, fair peace treaty in afghanistan, you have to address these issues. host: our guest with 10:00. the first call comes from silver spring, maryland. this is mr. john sopko. caller: i have a question for mr. john. the united states decides to leave afghanistan, who will control the billions of dollars? guest: i did not hear that. dolla -- billions in billions of dollars in minerals. guest: we hope the afghan government will. what the caller honed in on is an important risk. that is economic development. those minerals are in the ground. they are not worth anything in the ground.

you have to get them out and you have to process them. the problem is most of those minerals are in areas where the terrorists control the terrain. that is why we talk about security and we talk about economic development being tied together. could be a wealthy, self-sufficient country if it could controlled minerals and allow foreign investment in. right now many foreigners do not want to invest in afghanistan because of the security situation, for loss, corruption. if they can address those three, those minerals will help afghanistan pay for their peace. host: they don't have the infrastructure currently. guest: minerals are heavy. you need railroads, roads, safe roads, laws that protect investors. investors have to come from somewhere else. who was going to invest in

afghanistan if your rule of law is very precarious? your investment is very precarious. taxation is very precarious because of corruption and poor laws, as well as the security situation. they are all interconnected. those are some of the high risks we identify that we have to take care of. there is not as much oil. it is more heavy minerals in afghanistan. there is some oil and natural gas, but that is not the big one. host: let's hear from steve, and afghan war vet. and i wantd morning, 2008-2009as there in as part of reconstruction. the civil affairs side. -- i admire your work. i have read your work since i left. he reported some of the abuse

and fraud and waste to your team. i appreciate your work. that being said, what i carried back which taints me today and haunts me are the 35 people we lost and 158 wounded trying to do what is nationbuilding, supporting the military-industrial complex. generals get more stars because they spend more money at the state department gets more powerful because they spend money. i regret that and i came home with a great anger towards my government that my guys died for trying to build a nation. i used to ask my department of state, what do you want this department -- country to look like? 1950's america, 1920's america, 1980's america, or 2010 america? what year to want this to resemble for its industry and i will tell you how many trillions of dollars we will spend. we need to come home. ien it came to the taliban,

had cease-fires with the taliban and my third tour having come to understand what it is we need to do to the point that general petraeus was sending his people to find out what i'm doing. as i told them,, if he understood his enemy the taliban are one of two parties. i did lots of deals with the taliban. i would trust them immensely more than the karzai gang in power. at least the taliban would give you a straight answer. if they don't like you, they will shoot at us, but you could count on it. host: i apologize. we will have to let our guest respond. guest: steve, i want to thank you as a fellow american for your service. dedicated service for the number of tours you did. i also think you had a lot of important points.

i can't really address the issue of the military-industrial complex. i don't think i agree totally with you on that, but i am concerned and i think our report highlight the problem of poor planning. that has been a problem from day one. and not really knowing what we wanted to accomplish. the third thing is we may have tried to turn this country into little america. you talked about if it's 1880's america, 1940's, 2010 america. go in with aally true understanding of what we wanted to accomplish and devoted our resources. we spent a lot of time looking at programs which make absolutely no sense. part of it is because there is poor planning. part of it is because we started

spending the money. once you start spending, it is hard to stop it. i understand your feelings. i understand why there is a desire to get out. you expressed that. i don't do policy. my office does not do policy. we get the policy from congress and the president. and then we see how well you are doing to meet that goal. to get a peace treaty with the taliban and the other terrorists so we have a lasting peace in afghanistan. we can start to withdraw our troops more. so we can maybe cut down the amount of assistance. we are looking at that and i think we all agreed that is a good goal, a lasting peace in afghanistan. i know the afghans want it. host: you talked about planning and preparation. what does that mean for the response teams that are there?

is there job hobbled by that? guest: to some extent. what do you want me to do? i know soldiers who went out there, people in the a busy. -- embassy. we have a program but it does not quite make sense. contractors said this is stupid. i will perform it but it makes no sense for where we are. there was one case where we talked about millions of dollars spent trying supporting rare white italian goats by airplane, to have them breed with afghan goats. that made no sense. we talked to an expert that breeds goats and he said this is ridiculous, but somebody had this idea. it sounds good on paper, and we spent the money. we should have spent more time talking to the afghans and more

time listening to the afghans before we spent all the money. maryland, stephen, hello. caller: thank you for all your work. i have seen you a lot of times on c-span so i appreciate everything, you testifying before congress and whatnot. i was wondering how effective has the money that has been spent to eradicate the opium sure or control -- i'm not how they are defining it -- how effective has that been? has there been fallout from the child sex abuse and pedophilia report they came out a couple of years ago? guest: two good questions. i hate to say it but probably our counter narcotics programs have been the greatest failure. we have spent over $8 billion and we have little to show. i will say this. the government will come back and tell you that we have made

arrests, seizures, but that is great but ultimately the amount of opium that is produced in the event of heroin which is exported is bigger now than it was when we started those programs. i look at inputs, outputs and outcomes. the outcomes have been horrendous. we have failed miserably. i am not pollyannish about this. this is a tough job. i worked on the hill with senator sam nunn and carl webb and others that looked at fighting drugs down in columbia and mexico and ecuador and peru. those have taken years to do. it is a failure. issue, a report we issued at the request of 140 members of congress. they wanted to see how well the

lahey act was being implemented in afghanistan. act is named after senator lahey, current senator from vermont who said, and i think rightly so and congress passed it some time ago that no money could be spent, no federal u.s. desistance money -- assistance money can be spent by foreign military units or police units who violate human rights. in afghanistan there is this horrible practice, which most afghans hate but it is a practice and unfortunately in the hinterlands it is very prevalent of sexual predication creditor --

preditation of little boys. i think they have improved. know whether that is still going on, i can't really say. presencee don't have a in the countryside where many of these actions occur. that is how i can answer that question. i think it is a very good statute. it should be enforced. our military is trying to enforce it as best they can, but ultimately it is up to the afghans and the afghan government to enforce this. this is a human rights the elation, the rape of small boys in afghanistan. host: how much money have we invested in that? over $1 billion. the coalition has spent that much or more. i don't think we ever came up with a figure of how much being spent -- is being spent. most of it is to train soldiers and the state department and officials that if they see it,

reported and investigate it. it is a minimal amount and compared to the $132 billion we have spent totally. host: what does that go to? guest: the biggest chunk of money on women went to a program called promote. that was the name of the program. by the prior out administration with great fanfare that it would be the largest women's program the united states has ever conducted in the world. it was going to train tens of thousands of women to improve their lives. we did an audit and i highly recommend anybody he was interested to go on our website and look at the promote audit. it basically was a failure. it oversold. it did not really focus on the afghan women. i remember talking to missus gh -- mrs. ghani, the president's wife.

she was besides herself about how foolish some of the program was. it was designed by americans in northern virginia and did not reflect reality on the ground. the reality on the ground is an afghan woman in a village once the right to walk out of her house by herself. sayset a certificate that you have attended a training program. the main focus was to westernize women, afghan women in the major toies and not to wear 70% 80% of the afghan women live in the countryside. if you want to do a women's program in afghanistan, you should train the men, not the women. the men are the problem, not the women. the women want their rights. the vast majority of them do. they want to be lifted up. it is the men who are suppressing the rights of women in afghanistan. host: how does it get that far in the sense going into the planning for the program maybe

will not result in the end result? how does somebody not say, wait a minute, we are missing something? guest: that is the question we ask every time. the problem is the decisions made in washington -- a lot of it is the way our government works. the two-your budget cycle. you come up with a program. , ithe time it is designed was a good idea then, but two more years have gone down the pike. nobody considers asking the afghans. that was one of the first things. i have been doing this for seven years. i was amazed at the number of projects that we built where the afghans did not know about it until he gave them the keys to the building. that is how ridiculous it was. part of it is our reward system. the individuals designing this get rewarded for designing the program whether it works or not. i have had a number of contracting officers, u.s.

contracting officers, dedicated contracting officers. if i can pause for a second. contractors.o poo but we get more contractors killed in afghanistan who work for american companies than american soldiers. they are the ones that carry this job. they are on the front line a lot. i've had american contractors rewarded byn't get raising concerns about how stupid a program is. i get rewarded by implementing -- whether it's succeeds or not. host: this is john sopko, special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction. thomas in maryland on the independent line. you are on with our guest. caller: i'm a retired military

officer. the reason i'm calling is ended behavioral therapist. you talk about who gets rewarded. why are we not relentlessly linking the programs we think are of value, if we are able to pitch them, to either their economic reward or the contingency of something they want? there is that question. the other one is if they say we are not interested in improving women's welfare in afghanistan, and i say this as a social worker trained in this theory, why don't we put on the big boi bridges and say there seems to be a cultural or religious difference of opinion and we are probably not going to do well here? why don't we be honest about the fact that if we don't continue to stay in afghanistan, china will be glad to take over that territory and not give a darn about human rights? there is this allusion we are rebuilding nations.

iraq, ieen to iran and agree with that caller we need to dispense with nationbuilding and go behavioral earlier regarding what we want from that country. the difference is we are not as honest as the british were. we are not into imperialism and colonialism, but we have this photo allusion we can democratize or make it something they are not interested in. itself thatreligion does not promote the idea of being straightforward with somebody they consider current or future enemies. thank you for your service. agree withve to almost everything you said. you remind me that the new head of difd, the british aid program, the gold standard on a member ofis

parliament named rory stewart. he wrote a book called "the place between." afghanistanross right after the taliban were kicked out. if you read that book, and i'm not getting a percentage of his royalties, but read that book at he raises every issue you do. it is a little bit of this hubris we have. we can turn another country into little america. and there is a second point and that is the mendacity. those are the two words i would describe our experience in afghanistan. hubris and mendacity. the mendacity is we lied to ourselves and belied to the american people. we came in and oversold what we could do in a short period of time. it is like that thing with the goats. we sold congress we would change the industry for raising goats.

six months, nine-month, whatever. because we have a two-year appropriation cycle. you have to show success. the person we interviewed who was an expert on it who was hired by this program and quit out of discussed said -- digust said it takes 20 years to do that. if you go to afghanistan, you go for six months a year, that's about it. you have to show success because you want a promotion. every year somebody will go over and say this program before, my predecessor was horrible but it will succeed because i want to show it. the problem is, and this is why i go back to what i said before, many problems we see in afghanistan or problems that we create. we shoot ourselves in the foot because we have an hr system, human relations system, how we hire and fire people that is broken. how we procure things is broken. not justin afghanistan -- just

in afghanistan. how we design programs is broken. how we reward people is broken. we just do it again in afghanistan. it is like on steroids, all these problems. host: 130 billion we have slated for reconstruction. guest: we spent $700 billion on the war. host: how much goes to the government or how does it get to the government? is it cash? guest: that's another good point. cashof the money we spend we do the contracting. money that we call on budget where we cut a check to the afghan ministry of finance and they do the budgeting. if you think we are bad in our contracting, if you think our incentives are bad, go to afghan government contracting and holy mackerel.

you have never seen anything like afghan contracting. the government is improving. but still, we lose visibility. i, because we have law enforcement authority -- i think the viewers should know this. , fbi and irse agents who can make arrests. but i lose my legal authority to do that if the money goes on budget. one of the risks because of the afghans committing crimes with u.s. money, that is the way the law is. one of our risks are. as we go into a negotiation and pieces developed, -- peace is developed, there will be fewer americans to watch the money. there is a tendency that we will ship more of that money on budget to the afghan government. to me, we don't have the

controls in place. i think i testified before a house committee. why don't you just pilot the money in the circle and burn it? it will be totally useless or almost useless, except we will feel good we gave them money, but totally useless to the afghans. host: jack in davenport, florida is next. caller: john, i appreciate your spirit. why is it the words you say do not get eliminated -- illuminated? i'm back from afghanistan become trying to get money owed to afghan from government contractors. moneyvernment contracting that was not given to the afghans. please, can you tell me why we are hurting ourselves, shooting ourselves in the foot why not allowing the money that is owed thefghan young guys,

builders who did not get paid by the contractors? how can we get the money to them? every day we do not give a penny to them is a data become a bad guy. we went there to make good guys. we are making more bad guys. guest: jack, i think you had a good point. we are doing some research on that. we have done some investigations in the past about afghan subcontractors not being paid. jack, i would love to talk to you more personally. i think if you want to go on our hotline and just mention my name and mention this, we will get back and talk to you about how we can help. you are correct. if an afghan contractor does not get paid, if he is screwed by an american or foreign contractor, and everybody assumes there is an american involved, we just turned somebody into a taliban recruit. you are absolutely correct about

that. let's see if we can do it. the hotline is s igrhotline.mail.mil. we don't have a monopoly on good ideas or monopoly on facts and information. if any of your callers have facts, have information, served in a guinness tin, solve problems, or are suspicious because a colleague came back and all of a sudden he's driving around in a mercedes and he should not be, call us. we can try to do something. we will reach out to those people who have stolen money from the american taxpayer. of information from that tip line, and a lot of information from afghanistan.

host: give me an instance from the tip line. guest: a soldier came back and all of a sudden his neighbors saw him driving a fancy car. and buying aguns new house. somebody pick of the phone and called us and said this is suspicious. spouses talking about the money they came back in the mail, or came in different occasions like that. we had a guy sending some ill-gotten gains back. hundreds of thousands of bribes. he would hide the money and electronics and ship them back. it look like he bought a hi-fi or some type of radio. it was full of cash. you want to find out something, and we did. this tip line is really good. we have thirtysomething people in afghanistan.

we are better known in afghanistan that we are here, and we get a lot of tips and afghanistan that try to help us protect the money on budget. host: this is from marion in virginia, democrats line. caller: hi. you talked about afghan women. i am an afghan woman. before talibanfe as a child. teenager and young woman --a teenager and young woman. that women aret not going back. yes, they would not go back. --y are trying so hard to you guys hear them that they don't like this piece talk. they are not even being part of it. no one hears them. you spent soime,

much money on women and children. how much did you spend on education? of any successful situation in any country. you spend ony did women's health and hygiene? how much money did you spend on stopping child marriage? -- how much focus did you put on women's equality and running the government to be part of the government? at the same time, asking government and saying if you don't even involve them in the talk between the u.s. government and the taliban. and now with the military, do you know who supports the taliban? where do they get the military

support? the money, the guns? i just want to know about these things. host: thank you for your call. guest: let me just correct the caller's question a little. i don't give out money in afghanistan. we oversee it. the real question is how much money have we spent, the united states and the coalition has been for these things? we have spent billions of dollars on education and health care. those have been two key elements .f the usaid i don't have this figures offhand, off the top of my head. if you go to our website and look at our quarterly reports, we total those numbers up. it is into the billions. we spent a lot of money on infrastructure, but we are

spending money on paying for doctors, nurses, paying salaries for teachers. that is a big portion of the assistance. quite a bit of money was spent. whether it was well spent, we have some questions about that. the other question i think is where do the terrorists get their funding? they get a lot of funding from extortion, kidnapping and narcotics trading. they do get funding from outside of afghanistan. they get support from other organizations. i don't really do counterterrorism per se, so i think you could probably find those numbers in testimony that comes up from either the military or the state department or our intelligence agencies who have broken down those numbers of where the money comes from. nda from chico, california.

caller: they say that afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, since alexander the great. i guess that is where america is heading as long as we stay there. they also say when we build a road, they blow it up. when we build the school, they blow it up. give always be like this. as far as the boy think is concerned, that is a reenactment. a aou read the koran, it's version of the islamic hers in a parody voice -- version of paradise. virgin boys are highly prized in paradise. host: we will leave it there. guest: i don't know the question is. host: we have a comment off of twitter. she talked about afghanistan

women in the future of the country. discussions about their future. guest: again, i'm not part. of the negotiating team my office does not do that. afghans when im go over there and from the press is they are not at the table. that is a concern. i know a lot of afghan women and men have expressed they are not at the table. the afghan government is not at the table either. host: when it comes to data collection from afghanistan, one thing that will not be part of that is how much control is by the taliban. guest: that's a concern we have. this quarter in the quarterly report we noted this is the first time the u.s. government is not collecting information on the number of districts or

territories controlled by the taliban or the afghan government. nor are they collecting any information on the population under control of the afghan government or the taliban or terrorists. why is this significant? this is significant because last year or the year before last, officer,r military general nicholson, a great guy, great military leader articulated to congress and to the american people that the two tests for success or failure in afghanistan are the amount of territory controlled by the afghan government and the population. he said based upon -- you can judge our work in afghanistan by looking at territory and population. he said by 2019, the afghan government would be controlling

80%. that was the goal and that was the test to hold us to. all of a sudden they are not clicking the data on it. -- collecting the data on it. somebody in congress asked me the same question that the caller did. what does this mean? to me, you have to ask the government why they are not collecting data. it is like going to a football game and halfway through they turn off the scoreboard and say never mind. the score is not really important. what really causes us concern, and i believe in transparency and i believe in what lincoln said. give the american people the facts and we will be free. i think the american people have the right to know how well we are spending your money. my money. that is fair, too. indications of success or failure are now either

classified or were not collect -- we are not collecting it. when they read the quarterly reports or they hear testimony, the american people don't know how well we are doing a job. in the the fault of us american government because the american taxpayer has the right to know how their money is being spent. i'm a firm believer in that. host: from fort lauderdale, mark. caller: hello. i love mr. sopko. it's kind of love-hate. speech about the boondoggles and the money thrown but, it makes me sick i'm glad to hear about it. the women's subject has come up a couple of times this morning. do you remember back before the when we choseon

the taliban where the guys that were fighting the russians tooth and nail as our allies, prior to that, at least in the cities, afghanistan, the women were getting modernized. they had jobs. they did not have to wear those hoods. they were making progress. russians camethe in and destroyed the society and we kind of handed it to the taliban and let them run wild that the russians were gone -- after the russians were gone, the religious people in the modernizen't want to to an american-style democracy. any place that did modernize, -- theyy it was with were getting pretty secularized but we did not like the guy redoing it.

you take a look at our allies. saudi arabia. they don't give women any there and we just handed them billions of dollars in arms because they support us. host: what would you like our guest to address? caller: here is my main question. how is it this agency keeps running considering how our government hates whistleblowers and does not like it when they get exposed for doing stupid things like throwing billions of dollars into wasteful projects? that is my question. guest: mark, i'm glad you asked that question. it is something you should be proud of and it is something we should all be proud of as americans. i'm inspector general. i'm an independent inspector general. i may be more independent than others and that is because of the statute that created me did not house me in one government

agency. we should be proud. i go overseas and i talk to ambassadors from england, germany, switzerland, whatever, japan. of ourl are in awe inspector general act. 1978. congress passed the independent inspector general act that says there shall be independent inspectors general, nonpartisan, apolitical inspectors general whose job is the day they are nominated and confirmed, they immediately start investigating congressional actions as well as executive actions. you don't know how many foreigners and journalists in particular say this is amazing. i wish we had an ig act and germany, the u.k., in norway or sweden. we should be proud of that.

how do i stay in existence? since 1978, inspectors general, if they do their job correctly and stay in office in a medical the president is -- i was appointed by president obama, but i'm not an obama appointee per se, i continued under president trump. there are many ig's appointed by president reagan who went through the democratic administrations, republican administrations, it does not matter. i would tell the viewer thank god we have a forward thinking congress and they passed this bill. i'm glad you support it. the reason i'm still doing what i'm doing in the 70 other ig's are doing it is because we have support of people like you. host: how often do you get calls from members of congress directly asking about your work?

guest: on a weekly basis. we get briefed by members of staff all the time. i have a team briefing some staffers on this high-risk list. i just had people briefing on the women's issue. a number of senators and staff are concerned about women's issues. long-term doing a lessons learned report on raising all these issues that the last callers have raised about gender. erw do you hinder gend issues in another country? we are trying to come up with best practices and what works and did not work in afghanistan. host: john, hello? caller: i think you're doing great work. we question i have is spent almost $1 trillion in afghanistan. thousands of lives have been lost. i know it is a different culture. they don't seem very grateful.

lithium tolot of chinese contractors, but don't spend a nickel in afghanistan. should the u.s. be requesting the afghan government that their ministers not give these contracts to china and th give them to the u.s.? guest: that's a good question but i can't answer it. i don't do policy. that is a real policy issue. there were some contracts given to some chinese companies early on. that are also allegations there were bribes paid for that. that goes back to the rule of law issue i raised about that. that is a policy issue. i would recommend you raise it with your local congressman or senator about that. decide, they can put conditions on the money we give.

that is an issue somebody else raised. we should be brave enough to say no to the afghans. if they are doing something we don't like, don't give them the money. that is one of the things we early on criticized the administration, the last administration, about we are doing this and putting no conditions on it. little boys, we didn't care. you want to steal the money, we did not care. it was only around three or four years ago that there was a general who ran our programs that told me the first time the department of defense put any conditions on the money they gave to the afghan military. can you believe that? after being there for 18 years, it took us the first 14 years before we had conditions. you would not do that with your children. do whatever you want.

this is just common sense. you put conditions on giving the money to somebody. this is not something they have a right to. the american taxpayer wants to book. b bank for his buck.g for his you should do that any time pico into a development field. host: david from maryland -- michigan. democrats line. caller: i like the comments in the questions from the previous caller from florida. my question is, you said the taliban has received some funding from the opium trade. i always heard the taliban had all but destroyed the opium trade because of their fundamentalist islamic beliefs. which is the truth?

guest: the truth is both. when the taliban was in power for one season, one growing season, they stopped all production and export. people don't really know why they did it. was it because of their religious fervor or did they want to drive the price up? opium, you can buried in the ground for 20 years. the price obviously for raw opium and heroin went through the roof. the next year they made a ton of money on that. or the third reason given was they wanted to try to impress the international community to get assistance. we don't really know. i don't have an answer about the motivation of the taliban to do that. since then, since they got kicked out of power, they are

taxing the growers and more importantly the producers who run the labs and export it. we hear estimates and don't know for sure. i think dea may have the best numbers. anywhere from 30% to 60% of their operating budget comes from the taxing of opium. this is one of the things where he is correct on both sides. host: terry from florida on the independent line. caller: good morning. thank you for coming on and educating america. what you said about the lahey sorry, any country that is still doing this? we should not be sending money to countries that are doing things that we don't like. especially in violation of human rights.

that to todayly and what the military is sending onward to other countries. i appreciated. -- appreciate it. guest: good question. i wish i could answer it. i only have authority to look into afghanistan when we did that report. what you are highlighting is the lahey act is one of these statutes that puts conditions. and that is what we should do. it is a great statute. it is something used around the world. it applies everywhere, but i have not looked at what is going on in other countries. i have read newspaper accounts but it is just anecdotal. that is smart conditionality. that is what we called for in afghanistan and we hope it is

being done elsewhere. host: indiana, independent line. go right ahead. terry from lafayette? caller: yes, sir. the chinese are getting contracts. as soon as we leave they will be right back. we have given millions and millions to pakistan and i would not give them a dime. heroin comes from afghanistan. 80% of the world's hashish comes from afghanistan. host: we will leave it there. guest: i don't know what to say. host: when do you estimate your job is done? what is the timeline? guest: whenever congress tells us that.

the statute says we go out of existence when the amount of development, redevelopment, reconstruction falls below $250 million. i believe it is three months or six month afterwards. congress can decide before then. we are a temporary agency, and i believe in temporary agencies. i think there should be more temporary agencies in the government. we still have a mission for a while because as we note peace will cost money. is that 70% of the comes fromrnment donors. so if you want lasting peace, you are going to have to support the afghan government. now more than ever, you need oversight because there will be fewer soldiers and fewer state department and aid people there, so you have to protect that money, otherwise, you are

burning it up. our guest is a inspector general for affix announcer: next on c-span, college commencement speeches by president trump, maxine waters, and rod rosenstein. we will also show a 2013 commencement speech by robert mueller. today, president trump spoke at the commencement for this year's graduating class of the u.s. air force academy in colorado. he talked about his monetary policies and proposals to --elop a new space course space force. the president speech is half an hour. [applause]