when nobody dares to meet you. question. is the state english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.

provides the conversations of the great minds i'm joined with by edward de is a journalist author and television and documentary producer since the late one nine hundred seventy s. he's reported from some of the world world's harshest war and crisis zones from africa to asia the middle east and europe for a major european the major american publications include national geographic magazine the christian science monitor the international herald tribune and the financial times he's also written numerous books chronicling his experiences and insights on the people and politics that he's covered as a journalist he's also the founding director of the institute for media and global

governance based in geneva switzerland he first reported on afghanistan just before the soviet invasion and nine hundred seventy nine and served as an eye witness to some of that country's to mulch was events over the past thirty years his latest book killing the cranes are reporters a journey through three decades of war in afghanistan is a personal account of the people wars chaos and strife that has defined that nation for more than a generation and with our nation now stuck in a decades long war in afghanistan its insights are much needed they were welcome to the program they very much thank you for being with us killing the cranes cranes cranes you know well it goes back to a encounter i had with most who totally who was a friend of mine who is very severely wounded when a trauma sue the great northern commander of the northern alliance was assassinated by al qaida actually today twenty to ten years ago and i believe he was wounded

severely with over two and a piece of shrapnel i want to see him in two thousand and four and march two thousand and four and we talked had a very long rather depressing conversely. from kabul about the future of afghanistan the impact of so many wars since april one hundred seventy eight in afghanistan on the afghan people he maintained they were a nation traumatized also wasn't quite sure where everything was going with the international community and as you walk outside we looked up into the this amazing night sky that you only get in afghanistan with all the stars and he said you know for me the end of march was always the time when you couldn't hear the sound of your voice for the migrating cranes and what he was referring to with the siberian cranes that would fly from the southern wetlands where they wintered up to the north to siberia northern russia every march and then he said you know i haven't heard a single crane since being here and then he sort of touched my arm and said have we

even killed all the cranes. those are very symbolic point i don't have they i mean they're an endangered species you know the marsh and the martians but also they have been wiped out also in india and elsewhere but you know i think the wars probably have an impact you know remarkable. some just like really simple stuff the most americans are confused about tragically. afghans are not arabs oh absolutely not on that a little bit because i think most americans have the kind of fox news viewer you know all muslims are the same and all muslims or arabs and all muslims are somehow related to bin laden saudi arabia. there are striking people. there are different diverse group of people who are the pashtuns in the east in the south they're the tajiks the north the very mediterranean people you have the has are as the minority shia in the central highlands are actually we believe to be the remnants of just. means of thousand of the parent left one

thousand soldiers to maintain as for his southern borders and so it's a very diverse people. as a nation it somehow has existed but not necessary the way we think of it also during the one nine hundred eighty s. when the united states china and other countries saudi arabia pakistan got heavily involved in afghanistan against the soviets the arabs came in and you know the the arab legion here is the islamic legionnaires who gave support to the fundamentalist afghan groups but even you know the most fun it was meant was that afghans never liked the arabs they consider them arrogant and the the arabs consider them not real muslims and the arabs are probably the most famous for americans of the arabs who came in was osama bin ladin exactly and. the u.s. did the u.s. helped establish the taliban. indirectly absolutely during the eighty's we were the

cia provided most of that support through the pakistani military intelligence organization which was ludicrous because i was so i had its own agenda the american agenda was really to give the soviets their own vietnam was not really there for the afghans we talked a lot about freedom fighters supporting them and what not just the whole charlie wilson's way exactly exactly which also by the way the film misrepresented the situation we supported this rather nasty individual called. who is an extremist hated americans killed a lot of moderate afghans and is now one of the leading insurgent politicians against the u.s. and nato and afghanistan so we created that we listen to we can order a lot of the really good commanders inside afghanistan many who are moderate such as most sued another one of pashtoon and during the one nine hundred ninety s. after the civil war which was a brutal civil war the battle for callable where technology was shelling more those

killed as many as fifty thousand afghans during the soviet war it caught it was untouched practically it was actually the civil war between amongst the afghans which destroyed the city it looks like reza. and i was there and i should get three badly badly destroyed so after the age of the so it's up this after they've been so good and then when the began to emerge many afghans actually supported the taliban because the taliban promised peace security and they did do that but when they came into power in kabul in september one thousand nine hundred sixty they began to repress the other minority groups such as the tajiks that was ours that was specs and in that time the u.s. was involved unocal an american company with a consortium to that every pipeline exactly on the stand i mean i story in pakistan india right from from the oil fields to the power plant that was being built by general electric and they couldn't exactly exactly and they supported they they prefer to have one government in afghanistan and the army as well which people seem

to forget is that vice president cheney. made a grant of forty three million dollars to tell it in the spring of two thousand and one so you know it was about the opium production just saw at the open and in fact they did i mean you look at the chart of opium production there's this giant doesn't mean it looks like that's necessarily stop because they they were good soap and they may have been a market hedge to get the prices so that's also a factor get out of get out of production as to get the back exactly exactly as they can only from showing exactly. that's quite remarkable you started. your observation your reporting from afghanistan in seventy nine you write for the soviet this thing you know we've been there through that through the american invasion i mean internet through you know. there's we talked about the mythology of charlie wilson's war that the movie and the mythology very much is that you know we bankrupted the soviet union with that. and yet we've

been there now longer i think than the soviets were certainly longer than we've been at anywhere else right. and in law in his videotape that he saw just before the two thousand or. two dozen or so you know for every dollar that he spends of america spending a million and his plan is to bleed astride like you blood so it's just drive to extremes there's some truth to the war or or fallacy. of the analogy between these two i mean it's extremely costly war or involvement. in two thousand and one two thousand and two after nine eleven many people on the ground the information was there there were aid workers there were americans working for the usa ideally people in the state department to get experience on the ground and also numerous international aid organizations such as care which has been there you know for sixty years the swedish money for afghanistan which operated climbed

decimally during the soviet war. had a lot of afghans working for them they really understood the on the ground situation and the big warnings in two thousand and two was don't throw money at afghanistan and recognize that it will take many years possibly twenty or thirty years to bring about real recovery to prevent the real end of this conflict don't get involved militarily that is disastrous and a lot of recommendations you know keep small focus on the rural areas where eighty percent of afghans live and yet this was ignored we brought in the warlords who brought in a lot of the discredited politicians resistance politicians from the one nine hundred eighty s. who were thoroughly corrupt and they pushed themselves alongside the pakistanis and we put them into power the american ambassador i think it was an egregious mistake to put in an afghan as the u.s. ambassador to afghanistan because every afghan knew the guys baggage he didn't

particular understand afghanistan very well and they saw him with great admiration you know a local boy done good and that he. he made the big mistake i think of not allowing up bringing back the former king zahir shah would a few more years to live not because he was a great king in fact he was a lousy came but he represented a period of the one nine hundred seventy s. where most afghans look back every member of that as a nostalgic period of peace and he could have been used as a figurehead that would have brought together a lot of the afghans from different groups that questions the tajiks but that was not so what people were actually quite excited about the americans coming with the international community coming and they thought finally an end to the war but that just did not happen and when they saw that they brought in the warlords and these corrupt individuals one time. two thousand and two june two thousand and two with the first loya jirga this is a grand assembly and many of the women before the bombings or so this is after the

i mean this was june two thousand and three the bombing began october seventh two thousand and one this is the first attempt at bringing about real democracy a lot of people including the women you know health workers educated educated afghan women thought you know now we're going to have to say when they saw the war that was brought in or these individuals who who who used the whole situation they realized they weren't going to have a say so disillusioned began to set in and and it was like this one mistake after another and these are were mistakes which didn't have to happen i mean the british went in in two thousand and two and two thousand and three promised tribal afghans in these areas who are grown poppy saying allow us to destroy your crops and will compensate you for compensation did not happen so that left a lot of very angry farmers and farm is where they're in canada or australia or afghanistan or the states they all think the same way they want

a product they can sell if you want to make a living here. this is a big thing was all for the farmers. the according to see. in fact look at the time that we began bombing afghanistan and those on the g.n.p. or the g.d.p. of that nation was two billion dollars so here you've got a country the second poorest country in the world with a g.d.p. of two billion dollars. the bush administration had effectively the year before at least reduced the opium if you know we don't know how but forty million bucks was a lot of money in their entry. it was reported the washington post. that the taliban had offered to arrest osama bin laden and turn him over to a third country not a united states with their country for trial if the bush administration would present any evidence that he was had something to do write a lot and i pretty much everybody was horrified. how different would the world be if george bush and said fine arrest him. we'll put him on trial in the hague or

something like that you know we'll present the evidence and by the way here's a couple billion dollars to rebuild your country and we're spending true with respect we just spent a thousand billion there now so how different would the world be if that were two aspects one was in two thousand and one there was actually a growing and to tell a lie and spin develop i must suit. some other moderates commanders and they were bringing in a lot of. who were becoming totally disenchanted with the pakistani government's dominance of the arabs and that on this of saudi arabia were true we cannot forget saudi arabia both were supporting the taliban massively but there was this this dissolution because of the arrogance and the dominance and pakistan of the i so i always sought to run afghanistan and you know afghans don't take kindly to outsiders regardless whether the americans or al qaida. so this was building up

with the russians or anyone else a list of thirty forty players this. and so this is growing and mustard warrant us about this. and when i. assassinated killed in a suit september ninth one of the reasons was to give a present because they'd already taken eighty percent of the country and most of us was the last significant commander to resist. but they were also afraid that the taliban were in the process of collapsing and that this might have happened but this was ignored by the bush administration and by blair tony blair in the u.k. and after nine eleven. but you have remember the taliban were primarily illiterate people called taliban that means scholars they weren't scholars they were illiterate. you had a leadership perhaps of thirty forty people who probably knew what bin laden was up to globally but most most of them had no clue it really didn't care you know they

they really didn't and they were a faction in a civil war so i think you know heads we've gone with that there was already the basis of a new alliance and. must suit and i will hook want to involve the taleban in this new broad alliance because that's the only way it's going to work in afghanistan even today you have to involve any everyone even after the war when the soviets left the p.d.p. regime the communist regime message and others wanted to bring in former communists as long as they accepted the notions of you know had bush taken that offer there might be a stable afghanistan that i think would be a very good chance there was no need for this war that's you know seen from this war a conversation with journalists at work here it will continue or we come back just . into that only. if you don't work to bring justice and accountability.

i have every right to know what my government's doing you want to know why i pay taxes. well i would characterize obama as the charismatic. of american exceptionalism. welcome back to conversations with great minds tonight i'm joined by journalist and author edward zero day his latest book killing the crane's chronicles his experiences as a journalist in afghanistan during three decades of conflict in that nation you actually explain the three decades. ago but here. it's what what are the lessons from from that this thirty years that you've

seen in afghanistan that americans and americans and europeans i mean you know we're all in this dance together it seems should know that we don't know or that we seem not to be whether it's a policy level or the average person level should know to understand how we go forward. i think to understand what's happening today you've got to go back to the one nine hundred eighty s. you have to look at the past thirty thirty five years what happened in afghanistan also the fact that even slightly further during the sixty's and seventy's the u.s. and the soviet union were competing with each other out aiding each other as much as possible but what it did do was it produced a lot of americans including peace corps for example that a lot of people there in two thousand who learned a great deal about of have a sense we do have knowledge and people within the usa the you know other institutions but the fact is we have to understand that afghans have always

disliked foreigners who compose themselves it doesn't matter who they are or who they were they were always welcomed foreigners as long as they were. it's a guess i mean i didn't know that quote right exactly and i didn't counter you know once i did it was at the time in one nine hundred eighty nine and this is the point i made to him he said this is not your jihad what are you doing here and i said i will be here as long as my hosts allow me to be here but i will leave if they require me to leave just as i'm sure you will be if your hosts require you to leave and that in fact did happen in the early one nine hundred ninety s. the afghan was rioting kicked out the arabs including the likes of bin laden because of this arrogance because they were there not for afghanistan they were there for their own agenda and so everyone has been involved with afghanistan and has been for their own agendas and nothing the agendas of the afghans so i think what has to really pay attention to that what's happened so. here we are now you

know with with flypaper all of us you know sickly. and and you know one hundred cars a brother half brother or whatever just recently assassinated right the levels of corruption mind boggling cynicism here in this country about cars eyes former associate sure but i just you know. what. that's that is if you will if you were advising the president what would you say well i would say first of all forget any military options you know everything is been run by the military and you know why generals to the side and i feel very sympathetic to a lot of the soldiers we've asked them to become soldiers aid workers development workers relief workers i mean you name it you can expect them to do that afghanistan can only be resolved i think through proper and effective recovery including investment it's going to be in of people who understand afghanistan and

it's going to be led by afghans themselves the trouble with the military is that you know many go in for six months that's their standard. the year they cannot possibly begin to understand afghanistan in that period and in fact i was in the u.k. recently and talked to two royal marine officers who were returning the next morning to helmand and they were extremely angry they said this is a completely pointless war that we're being used as political poems and we should be negotiating with everyone and this is what it's all about it's about everyone being involved when we refer to use the expression tell about i think we should drop it it's really an armed opposition the taliban are part of it that is has been islami or friend will be in who's thoroughly infiltrated the government particularly ministries of interior you have the hakani network the senior he has to live with someone we work with but was actually a very good commander during the one nine hundred eighty s.

but who developed a hatred for the united states because of its perception of invading afghanistan so the answer. is well this i mean i size not change i mean i listened to to a speech interview the other night with the. secretary of defense and i i was really wonder which country was talking about because it's really not that i know and it's i think they're completely in another world and this is not the reality the reality is that you can talk about improvements being made that you're gaining of the taliban it's a group of war and i've experienced guerrilla wars and goal of mozambique ethiopia . if they don't have an offensive for three months that doesn't matter what is going to happen what is happening to the assassinations will increase the i e d's will increase they have been increasing august has been the worst month for u.s. troops nato troops in afghanistan so there is no military option and the military

who really know afghanistan they know that they know that and the thing is they say well we need security but the fact is that when they leave and if they leave it's. many areas will be taken over by opposition groups but it may not matter because there are many hardliners in the government in the karzai government who are corrupt or whatever who are even more hardline and the taleban or the opposition groups i think what it is is that you have to forget the labels and this is how the aid groups work the ones with experience they look at an area and they say ok who are the key players here and they will talk to everyone and they'll talk to nato they'll talk to local elders they'll talk to the government and they basically try and see what is needed the best security your best security is are good relations with local communities now this can backfire i mean in august last year two of my friends were murdered were executed american aid workers ten of them

european afghan. my arms and surgeons we don't know who they were they could have been bad it's probably good surgeons and because there is no confusion between the soldier and the aid worker this is been brought together by the p.r.t. is the mixing of the two and the fact is that they don't have mercenaries they don't have armed guards protecting them they rely the local population and we hate being the eighty n.g.o.s the ngos with a lot of experience but they cannot deal and they shouldn't feel with massive amounts of money we've given this these contracting companies have no understanding about them they go in with quick fixes there's no long term approach they take massive overheads i mean i think european and american taxpayers will be horrified to see how that money is being misspent in afghanistan and yet we continue to get contracts these people i mean i think these companies should be kicked out any

company that needs that needs to work with arms you know with mercenaries with armed contractors should not be working in afghanistan and but they realize ation that it's going to take twenty. three years there are no quick fixes but you've only got thirty years after we've stopped for now though let's be generous for now let's be you know for the thing is it's it's not going to work quickly and the focus has got to be on the countryside where eighty percent seventy five percent of the population live they are so resentful that they've seen all this money come in and they keep asking where has it all go we have seen no improvement i mean they have been improvements kids seven million kids going to school now in africa in ten years and i should you know damn well hope so but the thing is there are still seven million more who are going to school and you know health has improved you know many women there are no female doctors because a lot of the qualified doctors in afghanistan are working as drivers as interpreters for nato for the world bank for the u.n.

they should be better paid because they're all supporting twenty thirty people and their families there's more money doing exactly what they should be paid enough so they can go work in the rural areas so we i think we have to go back to the basics i revise what we're doing he. by the way you mentioned a number of other conflicts around the world have you ever run across over here you know party you know sort of here the president's also down no i never never that's no no no it might have any case. you have never been an embedded journalist you know most of what americans and i guess probably the rest of the western world knows about afghanistan and the region in general has come from embedded journalists. why is that information so fundamentally flawed. i think there's some very good reporters on the ground but a lot if not the majority of journalists go to afghanistan they are intrigued by the whole military thing and you know reporting for the boys and girls at the front

when they go in as an embed it's comfortable you know you travel with the troops eat well we go to bed things make a difference but so should say you you know. you know people who shoot back exactly but you don't see the afghans and even if you're with soldiers who are with you to go into the woods and you interview people they're not going to tell you what they think i because after the ordinary afghans are caught between the insurgents and the nato forces and you know afghans are survivors they know what i mean they they know that eventually the nato troops will pull out but the insurgents will be there so there are surgeons are not no no no no no exactly so so that's right and you know it's that so the thing is that when you go in and just report the military situation you really have no idea what's going on in afghanistan and i i went to helmand as with the world with the world bank trip and i was talking various people and i we did one of these trips into a town and you know i've been to a lot of towns of my own and i felt it was

a show and you know we talk to these elders and all i could think of at the time was you know what do they really think i'd like to come back here in my own and in fact in a sense i wouldn't mind where reporters should go back to the days of vietnam where reporters were not in better they could leave in the morning go out on a plane come back in the evening but they had the opportunity of going somewhere and of course nato argues we have to protect you and so you have to stay with us i have to side in this context as well of the global that exactly australia it would thank you so much for the like drugs it was a great pleasure for writing this really and that's it for the big picture tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites at top harben dot com and free speech dot org and. also check out our two youtube channel is there a link search on. this entire show is also available as a free video podcast and i didn't and we have a free telemarketer i thought it had happened in the app store you sent us feedback at twitter it's obvious for our but facebook atomosphere of our blogs message

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