Title: John Pinna & Kiriakou on Afghanistan
Show: Crossing Faiths
Date: 2021-08-17
URL: https://youtu.be/hYVznzuvhgA
Duration: 29:00

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[00:00] to welcome to crossing face where christian and muslim talk religion and politics really multi-faith people talk about religion and politics and then uh matthew hawkings uh is on hiatus uh he went in for a heart checkup and he two days later he was in open heart surgery so he's recovering uh there's some question of whether or not it was the heart surgery or my prayers that healed him we don't know yet but uh

[00:30] i'm gonna go on a little bit of both but i think the prayers weighed heavier because ishmaeli prayers are are uh weighed very very heavy with uh the almighty allah and and uh god or whatever you're calling them these days so our my good friend john kiriyaku who's uh going to sit with me and talk about the current unpleasantness in afghanistan uh as everyone knows this is an issue near and dear to me i i we've spent the last week going from uh

[01:01] uh facilitating visas to get to the airport to stay safe and stay alive at least that's been my um my uh my journey this week uh now we're moving from the tactical of trying to figure out what's going on at the airport and in kabul and afghanistan to some of the policy in dc i'm presently in washington engaging different agencies and the executive branch to try to give them some advice but we wanted to sit down and talk with

[01:32] my friend here because both operated in theater in central and south asia and there's been a lot of experts uh out there um i don't claim to be and i i know that john doesn't claim to be an expert but we do know a lot about the region and i don't think there's anybody who's an expert in afghanistan uh i would argue this more you learn the more you learn that you don't know and it doesn't matter if you're from the region or you have afghan blood the the the challenge is is that it's such an amorphous environment dynamic environment um but also there's uh such

[02:05] a rich history uh and also a rich amount of current events that lead to someone to uh uh the conclusion that there's so much that needs to be that needs to be said about it needs to be uh noodled over and it takes a team of people to do it so in this case we're here to talk about the taliban and we're going to talk a little bit about the origins because john and i spoke a little bit earlier about how there's so much that's not known about the taliban and their origins and

[02:35] their role in afghanistan um and uh we thought that it would be appropriate for us to have this conversation welcome john thank you good to be back with you yeah it's always good to see your face you know so uh it's one of these moments in time where we we only seem to talk about the something that's current new and terrible yes that's every conversation we have yeah so um but uh so original taliban i i i give you my 30 seconds that i usually tell people i usually say look you have

[03:06] a a the majority of the after the uh the soviet war uh as this we supported the mujahideen in the united states as the soviet work came to a close gene mujahideen was essentially roving around the country committing all kinds of acts uh criminal acts um some of the first uh issues that happened um were uh mujahideen attacking civilians and raping girls and the taliban started

[03:37] started to their profile started to increase as vigilantes someone that would hunt down mujahideen fighters right and and bring them to justice which is street justice you know hang them high type stuff and so as this struggle continued in the 90s the taliban's support grew and their numbers grew and eventually you had vigilantes that took over the seat of government uh and i don't know how you would feel but i'm a big comic book reader so batman love him but wouldn't want him to

[04:09] be the mayor of my town and wouldn't want him to be at the seat of government and so that characterizes at least from my perspective the taliban in in afghanistan particularly in the 90s and heading towards the the afghan war um and and one consideration is that they the the the taliban is on everybody talks about the pakistani taliban is it's it largely the recruits are largely the population from the pashtuns which is which is you know they saddle the border between afghanistan

[04:40] and and pakistan so and this is uh goes back to my whole theory that 90 percent of the problems in the world are are british made you know they have the british you know so that that line that borders from the brits but how what's your perspective on the origins of the taliban uh up to the up to the afghan war and and then maybe we can talk about their role uh during uh after 9 11 and then we can get to some of the current events yeah everything that you've said uh is true uh there's there's even more background

[05:11] that to me is very interesting and that is when the soviets invaded afghanistan it caused a refugee crisis and many many afghan families crossed the border into pakistan they they raised their children there they had children there and many of those children were educated in madrasas religious schools well the pakistani government was having a problem with with mujahideen um pirating essentially trucks as they were crossing

[05:42] as pakistani trucks were crossing into afghanistan on their way to iran to sell goods and so benazir bhutto was the prime minister of pakistan at the time she came up with this idea or her people came up with this idea that they would take students taliban the plural of talib student take taliban out of the madrasas and have them ride along with these truck drivers to protect them you know just a talib with an ak-47 to protect them as they as they crossed afghanistan to sell

[06:14] their goods in iran riding shotgun riding shotgun exactly and it worked and then somebody said well this this program is working maybe it would be more effective maybe it would be more cost effective even if instead of having the right shotgun in the trucks we just place them in in villages along the highway and so they did that and as vigilantes you know now they're on the ground

[06:45] uh bringing their own brand of law and order to these in their arms they're on the ground and they're armed and they had popular support because they were all about law and order and the next thing you know they begin to take over villages and then territories and then regions uh we get into the late 1990s and they take the whole of afghanistan and that was the origin of the taliban it's it's interesting because a lot of people don't know that they actually had popular support that there was

[07:16] uh they were the party of law and order and in in an era in a you know in a post-soviet uh war-torn country uh with you know a lot of armed militias floating around it was it may have been a relevant time or relevant period for a group like this to to take over or to establish order even though their rigidness was there and this is not a taliban sympathetic sort of thing but it it it was they were they were

[07:47] they were the entity for the time and they fulfilled a need and there could have been uh something else that was there i mean we i talk a lot about policy in in afghanistan and maybe if we didn't draw down and and leave and lock stock and barrel um we could have figured out a path for the mujahideen to uh address the human rights issues and present and establish the seat of government and go from there because it was the communists after the three years right three years after the yes this was a big mistake that was made in washington that once the soviets were

[08:17] were pushed out of afghanistan we just decided that our work was done there and instead of financing things like schools or physical plant you know sewage processing facilities or electrical grids or whatever we just went home and then figured that was the end of it in fact that wasn't the end of it and you raised an important point that i want to i want to talk about too and that is the fact that the taliban are not foreign interlopers they're not occupiers they're not an invasion force

[08:49] they're afghans yeah and so so many americans question well why didn't afghans take up arms against the uh the taliban well because they're also afghans right and the and people in in villages were having a problem with crime they were having a problem with piracy and with soviet troops and you know crimes against women they welcomed that law and order i think that's something that many americans most americans don't understand well also you have for thousands of years you

[09:20] have these infl we call in the west informal systems but they're very formal systems to afghans right and in in theater so and and you were talking about border crossings generally there was this there's a tribe there's a group called the arbi right and they would be in charge of all the border crossings and it'd be one of these things where this tribe generated revenue from assuring beginning payment from people that were crossing the border so uh and i you're you're familiar with the arbitrage right they they cost

[09:51] us right so if you didn't pay them something probably would happen they would get their payment one way or another as you were crossing the border and traveling down those passes right those systems were in jeopardy or or um were teetering after the soviet rule right um and they were being re-established right these tribes were reaffirming themselves and the revenues were slowly starting to to build and it was very mature up to 911 but then after the

[10:22] invasion the arbokai there was there was a during the karzai you know regime there was a lot of uh um no people nobody really understood the informal systems but then on top of that they started to establish border control like in the united states and so these tribes became disenfranchised and didn't have a revenue source and so what happened to these people and maybe you could talk a little bit about that because that is a vacuum that that the taliban now has really carp launched to film

[10:52] yeah see this is another thing that americans don't understand these systems seem so primitive to us but they worked you know it's like the hawala system that so many people in the region use for banking or for transferring money it works we don't like it we have a name for it walk through the whole hola system so so people understand sure uh while the system is a way of sending money where you either don't have access to banks or you don't trust banks let's say you need to send

[11:24] fifty dollars to your cousin muhammad uh and muhammad is in dubai so you go to the local hawala which might be in you know a bakery or the meat cutters shop or wherever and you say i want to send 50 to my cousin muhammad in dubai he'll take your fifty dollars um he'll give you uh i think it was a nine digit serial number one i did i sent myself fifty dollars just to try it out from uh from abu dhabi to uh bethesda maryland was

[11:56] the nearest wall i could find so he gives me a nine digit number i email the number to my cousin muhammad he takes the number into his local hawala in dubai says here's my my nine digit number and he gets 48 out of the fifty dollars the two dollars is for the transfer fee it works we call it money laundering right but for afghans dealing with small amounts of money it works it's the same system that the templars put together that is the the same thing

[12:27] yeah the basis for our public entire banking system and and in these places where you you have don't have the infrastructure um you know how do you get money to your your to yourself in maryland for example you know because so uh but so these informal systems were existed there were responsible parties for it and now we're at a point where and i don't know if we're gonna i guess we can jump through right we spent a tremendous amount of funds training afghan the afghan military and staff right afghan uh national security

[12:59] forces and train and establishing border border border patrols border a border guard and all these other things formal systems from a western perspective now all that's gone um and the taliban is stronger than ever and maybe you can give a little bit of an assessment from your perspective of you know it's it's you know we have a short time here but this summing up of you know we treat we spent billions of dollars on this training funding and all this and and all this equipment and ordinance but then and also establishing

[13:30] these formal systems that should have in in big air quotes established um a uh a modality for the sustainability of this democratic government yes but now um all that has has failed uh and and we've seen the probably the most explicit example of a failure in state building uh so what what is it from your perspective do you think is you know and is are are the the key areas that that you think uh are leading to the taliban

[14:01] strength because we're losing and the holes that they're going to fill um as i mentioned earlier i think they're vast right there is no border guard anymore so you know i don't know what the arbiter are up to these days but maybe they're going to reestablish stuff but border crossings are free now and the taliban's in complete control of it so are taliban mechanisms going to have more breadth and scope to them uh than than they did back in the 90s uh and do you think that um that any of these systems uh informal systems will re-establish themselves or do you think it'll be a complete new uh taliban

[14:33] overlay i think it's going to be a combination first of all um boy where do we even start with something like that how do we how did we get here we we got here because of corruption and tribalism uh i remember in 2012 i mean there was the there was a report in the new york times uh talking as i say when you say corruption and tribalism is it on the us side or is it on the afghan side on the afghan government side yes the the non-taliban afghan government side okay

[15:05] uh there was a there was a story about dyncorp dyncorp was charged with uh with establishing and training a new national police force the afghan national police and so they they set up this huge training facility they brought afghan young afghan men from all over the country from all the different tribes and all the different regions that was mistake number one and what ended up happening one night to make a long story short is that

[15:36] one of the recruits poisoned a pot of stew that was being served for dinner that night and he killed about a dozen fellow recruits well that night while the survivors were sleeping he let four members of the taliban into the dormitory that was being used for housing and they went bed to bed and stabbed all the other recruits and killed them so this was a story for a day or two days but to me it was it was a glaring

[16:06] example of exactly what is wrong in this country in afghanistan that that the tribe was more important than the nation that hazaras for example weren't supposed to be working with pashtun and northerners working with southerners and it just wasn't going to work and so you know when you hate your enemy more than you love your country

[16:36] it's doomed to fail nothing will work if if that's you know the prevailing the feeling the prevailing belief right and this is 2012 so 20. 2012 so we were already 11 years into it yeah so so i mean so would you say has that that change up to now you know in the in the when it comes to the tribalism what's your thoughts on that no i think tribalism has even strengthened in the intervening years and i'll tell you what i for me personally i don't really care

[17:07] who's who leads afghanistan if it's the taliban well you know what it's the taliban but i worry about minorities in afghanistan i worry about shia muslims i worry about the hazaras specifically when i was in afghanistan back in i guess it was 2007 i met with a very senior hazara leader and he made a point to me that was just so interesting it stuck with me he had a framed he had he had a shadow box quite a large shadow box mounted on the wall

[17:39] of his house and in it were all of his judo belts from white to black right so every time he earned a new belt he saved it and ended up putting from white to black and and i complimented him and i said you're a black belt in judo and he said i'm a fifth degree black belt and i said that's that's really incredible he said i didn't do it for fun i did it because hazaras are forbidden from owning weapons in afghanistan he said i'm a shia muslim i'm an afghan like any other afghan and i'm forbidden

[18:11] from owning a weapon he said i had to have some way to protect myself well that was under the afghan government the one that's supposed to be democratic and and supportive of human rights and being supported and financed by the united states what's it going to be like under the taliban for religious minorities like him that really worries me you know religious and ethnic minorities is tough i mean i think that from from the afghan perspective is that you know there's always been a system of collaboration cooperation amongst the

[18:41] ethnic religious groups you know it's just like it's like old school new york you know everybody has their neighborhood and uh you know and and it's like lebanon before the civil war yeah so it actually worked it was tenuous but it worked and you know and everybody has their you know their their master place of worship that you know and everybody's doing this thing and so you know i i when i was there in 2012 and i was at in herat and i was talking about the uh you know how to how do we instill a democracy and of course the the the the

[19:11] uh the ultimate council was there you know and they were they were you know they're all really close it's about 45 minutes from the from the iranian border so you know they're all sitting there you know like this and and i just told them like oh look started off the conversation with you guys have been done practicing democracy longer than than than just about anybody on the planet for thousands of years at the sure and jurgen level you know the village level right yeah and i said that you know the problem is is no two democracies are the same and uh and i said let me give you an example uh

[19:42] british democracy they have a house of lords in america we would it's it's outrageous to us that you'd have a hereditary body that governs right yeah with like 2 000 people in it right right and they're all psychos they're all sociopaths you know so um and and so but so an afghan democracy or american democracy is very very different than a british democracy so what is an afghan democracy going to be right and it's up to you to do that and the the the the the the top guy the elder right cut stands up and he says

[20:13] you know yeah you know john is right you know and and uh and he goes we we can develop our own democracy because we know what we're doing right and that approach i think was unique for that moment um it never i don't know if it didn't evolve in the halls of the us government certainly but it was one of those moments in time where i don't know if the afghans really had the opportunity to develop their own democracy because it came from the top down it was a cobble-centric uh very you know consolidated federalist

[20:44] system it's highly centralized you know i always say that uh the best system if you're going to implement a federal system it's like america before the civil war you've got you know you've got to have the uzbeks on the in the northwest you've got to have the tough geeks in the in the northeast you've got to have the push tunes in the south hazara somewhere in the middle um you know the nurse donnie's you know they got to do their own thing because you know that's why those those are my brothers and sisters over there you know so you know you you've got to figure it out in a in the right way um but it was really a top-down government during the karzai era it was very

[21:15] centralized um and you know karzai was appointing uh mayors in towns and they're all flying into kabul and then flying back out and um and the challenge i think now is that all those 20 years of ups downs left and right we have the dividend what are the dividends we have contractors that made a lot of cash we have uh the us government that had that implemented women's empowerment programming and and uh and and a lot of

[21:45] different um uh development initiatives civil society initiatives but now all that is is is is it for not because the taliban now is in charge and we know who they are and what they're about yeah and and so i know we're limited in time here so i'm getting into the question of okay are we dealing with a new taliban okay and and and more of all taliban it appears so because issues i think so you know i gave myself this this is a taliban that has been meeting with the united states officially or unofficially

[22:17] for several years now this is a taliban that that ought to have learned its lessons from 2000 and 2001 they're not stupid people right they they've been in power and they've been out of power and being in power is better it's nicer so i i can't help but to think that this is not the taliban that is going to rush to execute women in soccer stadiums or to stone people to death for listening to music or drag them behind

[22:47] jeeps as punishment for for some offense i can't it may come to that again someday but the taliban that we're looking at right now i think has learned some lessons over the last 20 years you know there was an interesting uh point that i i heard on one of the talk shows uh yesterday morning saying that um that something like 55 of the country was born after the 9 11 attacks right and so that includes many members of the taliban

[23:18] yeah so perhaps they're not going to make the mistakes their fathers made i think i think we should wait and see how this plays out well it's interesting because you know i i you know we hear all the the reports of of the taliban and i'm you know i i was pat myself on the back because we're trying to get people at the airport and it was it was funny because funny was but that uh the us passport holders afghan americans with us passports were come were coming to the airport and the taliban was letting them in

[23:48] um i had i and i i had gotten two reports and i was talking to somebody and and then roy reuters says this thing that the taliban has orders from the top to the down it says foreigners you know spirit them to wherever the hell they're going you know what i mean and and get them there safe but do not attack them which is uh it's it there's it demonstrates some of the sophistication particularly out of of of the command and control that they have um over their their people but not only that they look at the sophistication in

[24:21] taking such territory in large part by not firing a shot right it's not like they they they put an army in the field and they said we're going to just there was a front line that pushed um i my i had reports that talama of talent of talib tellings actually embracing kabulis and saying you know it's so good to be back and they were like is he attacking me is he not attacking and they were confused what's going on now that's not to say like i've got a lot of people that are in you know in hiding

[24:52] and who are you know with american passports or this or or or they were involved in us u.s programming and so forth and my you know where they said we're limited time-wise what are you what are your records right now if you were going to talk to the top on leadership uh you know because i would say look don't kill anybody right u.s government engage the us government and and and just put a freeze on any kind of whatever it is you're thinking don't do it yeah all right right now let's take it some time to freeze and establish

[25:24] some kind of communication so that the people that work with the united states who we cherish um and who they and and their afghan citizens their afghan people they have um the the peace of mind to know that they have uh um are in a safe zone for now um and we if we need to get them out we can get them out but if but we also need to establish some some some kind of criteria so that our national security is protected now that we have a new regime so what's what's your what's your you know your bluff your bottom line up front i i think it's

[25:54] twofold number one we owe it to the people who worked with us over the last 20 years to get them and their families out we need to we need to ensure the safety of the people to whom we promised safety number one number two we have to keep our line of communications with the taliban open as i said we've been negotiating with them for a number of years mostly in doha we need to keep those talks open even if we don't immediately establish diplomatic relations with the taliban we have to at

[26:25] least be able to talk and to exchange messages number three and i think this is the most important is we need to work very very closely with the chinese on this because the taliban and the chinese have excellent relations the chinese have an exclusive contract to mine rare earth metals in afghanistan that we know from a dod report has a value of one trillion dollars so the chinese have a vested interest in a stable long-term government in afghanistan even if that means a

[26:57] government headed by the taliban so if any country has any authority in afghanistan right now it's the chinese and we need to engage with them to ensure the safety of people inside afghanistan yeah yeah i mean it's it's uh right now i think you know when you're not talking it's a problem and you know iran is is a perfect example of that if you have no idea what's going on because no one's directly engaging the iranians so if we can figure out you know so you think you know should we have a

[27:28] consulate in kabul should we establish that right off the bat what do you think you know what it would be very high risk but i think at the same time it could potentially be high reward so yeah you know we we abandoned the us embassy we're in the process of of getting the last people out we destroyed all the documents and all the equipment in the previous few days but while we don't need this massive compound like we have now yeah i think we should have some sort of a diplomatic presence in kabul yes you know a building with a desk you know yeah that's it that's all we need

[28:00] you know and because at least there's some kind of engagement in what's going on and at least we can establish some kind of trust i mean it's the the the the trump government already recognized yes so it's so their their legitimacy is already there and it doesn't matter even if you say they're illegitimate they're there now so if we're going to not let this slide into a dies isis situation with a and a peppering of al qaeda we need to figure out how to maintain relations and say this is what's going on and you're right it is when the china's interest um to

[28:31] keep a stable country you know it you know because they have they're the rare earth elements and and uh and they have other interests there as well and and hopefully we have some interest i mean i helped set up the ministry of minds program with midas it's all gone you know i helped out to the anp when they had 600 generals retire i helped set up the career path and the the master's in plea in master of public administration policing and all this other stuff and all that stuff's gone you know it's just it's it's it's flabbergasting you know to to to

[29:03] his hand um but as my my his heart's been breaking this past week and we've been pivoting now to figuring out policy you know i think that your insights are are appropriate and and they they're helpful because where where the who are the taliban what are they about and where they're going and we need to figure out as a country how we're going to fulfill our commitments to the afghan people and to the american people and you know that's security that's that's um you know celebrating our wins but you

[29:34] know right now while we're licking our wounds we need to figure out you know how we're going to deliver on our promises and also pay the path for the future so john kiriakou i appreciate you taking the time thank you so much good to see you again yeah good to see you as well
