So I think you have to just leave your mic open. Yeah, I think everything's going through your speaker. That's fine. You can see the participant list here on the side. Okay, just let me know when you want us to get started. So we'll get started as soon as the numbers kind of study out. And I'll keep this trained on you. You look very good. Good to go. Hello everyone, my name is Aaron Keisler. I'm an MA student at KCL in the Department of War Studies. I want to thank you all for coming to what's going to be an absolutely fascinating discussion. It's safe to say that much of the world was shocked by the rapid fall of Kabul and the former Afghan government the Taliban just a few months ago. The East College London has previously held discussions on what the future of Afghanistan may look like under the Taliban. But we feel it's just as important to look back the last 20 years of this nation building efforts and examine what decisions, actions and events brought us to where we are today. To do this, we have brought together panelists from the US and former Afghan government who are on the forefront of these efforts to give their perspective on the challenges and shortfalls over the last two decades in Afghanistan. From the US side, we have David Young from the Office of the Special Inspector General from Afghanistan Reconstruction, you may hear the term cigar. David Young was a supervisor research analyst in the cigars lessons learn program, and was the lead for the agency's comprehensive reports on stabilization elections, and it's 20th anniversary report what we need to learn. For those of you who haven't I highly recommend you read this report, it is absolutely eye opening. David service a civilian advisor to us forces in London and Nearest on provinces, during the surge and as a governance advisor in Afghanistan with the World Bank, the US Institute of Peace, Adam Smith international and Afghanistan's independent directorate of local governance. In addition to Afghanistan he has extensive field experience in Israel Palestine, the Balkans, the caucuses and Northern Ireland. From the former Afghan government we have Mr Abdullah Konjani who is the Deputy Minister of coordination, strategy and policy in Afghanistan State Ministry for peace. In this role, the coordinated the peace process with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan governments. Just as important Mr Konjani is a King's College London alum and holds an MA in conflict security and development, and was the recipient of the Alexandria Peterson scholarship. Finally, we have our moderator who will be taking me Dr Christine Chang, who's a senior lecturer in war studies and teaches the MA in conflict security and development program. Working with the UK government stabilization unit. She co authored securing and sustaining elite bargains that reduce violent conflict. The final report of the influential elite bargains and political deals project. She's a co author of corruption and post conflict peace building selling the piece. In Abdullah, we are going to give you about 15 minutes to give some opening remarks on your perspectives, after which point Christine will come in to moderate the discussion, before we open it to the audience for q amp a. In giving your opening remarks, I would like you to address two questions. First, after spending $145 billion over 20 years. Why were the US, the Afghan government, and the international community unable to achieve lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan. And second, could the effort to build a stable democratic government and nation Afghanistan have ended differently. David will start with you. Thank you. Thank you for that warm introduction and thank you to Christine and Kings College London for hosting this. I think the best way to answer those questions is to examine how poorly positioned the international community was to actually improve governance in Afghanistan. To talk about US efforts. I think it's instructed to look at the contrast between what we hope to accomplish in rural communities specifically, versus what was actually taking place on the ground. Our hope was that if we help the Afghan government provide better services, Afghans would bestow upon it more legitimacy, and the Taliban would be isolated and wither. Basically, we tried to help the Afghan government out govern the Taliban. So we helped hire provincial and district government staff and then we empowered them with programs that actually delivered these services, you know everything from handing out fertilizer to training doors to building and staffing schools and clinics. And the hope was that this would jumpstart a virtuous cycle of governance where Afghans could hold their officials accountable, and that this in turn would make those officials motivated to start to serve their constituency equitably, and then that this this this virtuous cycle would last be on the presence of donors in the country. But that's seldom how it played out. Instead of bringing benevolent officials into people's lives, we often brought or helped bring individuals who lined their own pockets, or diverted donor funds to their own ethnic and tribal and kinship groups. And other times these officials were simply incompetent, which had the same impact as if they had been corrupt. And you can imagine how disillusioning it is as a rural Afghan when you don't have much exposure to government. Then your local district office gets staffed up. They're given a sizable budget. And then the money starts disappearing or you see it going towards specific groups to the exclusion of others. And the Taliban saw this as a perfect opportunity to plant roots in that community. And they would approach the community and say, we will fight for you against that corrupt government, we have your backs and we will make sure your voice is heard. We just need help with food and shelter, and we need to know the names of the local officials who have betrayed you, and we need you to let us know anytime Afghan or coalition forces are passing through your village, so that we can set up an ambush. And once those lines are drawn and the community initially allies with the Taliban, and then government officials start getting assassinated, you can be sure that this marginalized community is now even less likely to receive services and attention. And so the cycle deepens. They become more dependent on the Taliban for support. The chain of events all started because we sent in or helped send in officials who often exacerbated the very conflict that we were hoping they would go there to address. So you have to ask the question, why did we bring or help bring corrupt and incompetent government officials into these people's lives. It, you know, it certainly wasn't by design us officials never set out to fail so spectacularly in this way. So you have to understand why you have to go further upstream. And in fact, upstream is where cigars lessons learned program spends most of its time, as we try to map out American systems and institutions, and how they lend themselves to such counterproductive dynamics, because the, the, the, the further upstream you go, the bigger the problem gets, which is certainly frustrating, but also the clear it becomes that nearly everything we did in Afghanistan was path dependent that bad decisions and dynamics upstream guarantee that the people actually rebuilding Afghanistan would have few meaningful decisions to make. From there, there was often no choice but the bad one.  What you find is a single massive problem that caused them all. We don't prepare for these missions. When the Vietnam War ended, the American government and public were exhausted, understandably, they collectively concluded, we're never doing this again. Let's be sure to never do this again. And so why prepare for something that you have no intention of doing again. And then after an intense decade or more spent training our military and civilian officials, how to rebuild a war torn country. We just turned off the lights. We dismantled training houses and military units that we built up through trial by a fire during the Vietnam War, and then we slashed USAID staff by 83%. But you, you really can't wave a wand and prevent another Vietnam from happening, or two of them, as it were in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are going to be unstable countries that demand US national security attention. So not preparing for those wars won't prevent them. It will simply mean you won't be prepared when they come all the same. And this lack of preparation came through loud and clear Afghanistan. Across the 20 years, our latest report details how we ended up improvising our way through the reconstruction campaign. There was a lot of speculation all over the place, specifically in our strategy throughout the war there was this constant preoccupation with resources for the first decade especially troops and spending increased dramatically because we recognize that rebuilding Afghanistan was a monumental task. And so more resources were poured in. What was even failed to notice was that our own institutions were not equipped to actually do the rebuilding. You know, for, for example, it doesn't do much good significantly increase USAID budget in Afghanistan. If by doing so you have to hire inexperienced staff to oversee it. The main variable that we thought to change was the dollars that we could point the problem. And this of course meant corruption metastasized and conflict grew when we carelessly threw around money and communities that were not equipped to manage it. Any more than we were to disperse it. And we had trouble seeing this because we were building our own institutions from scratch. Our institutions were not ready to be on the lookout for this kind of corruption. Our institutions weren't ready to anticipate how our programs could backfire because very few people in government had studied these things in decades. This also meant that our sense of time was inaccurate and highly politicized. Now I'm sure it sounds very strange for me to say that we didn't have time to build our institutions. Even if we walked into the war completely unprepared we had 20 years to figure things out and that really should have been enough time to find and train talented people to do the institution building on our end. But the problem was is that we never knew that we'd have 20 years. In fact, if you take a snapshot of in time and interview as we have many people who were either on the ground or at headquarters throughout those 20 years, they all said that they always thought they were about to leave, that they were told they were always about to leave, and that they had to act accordingly. And you can imagine what this does to everyone involved from the ambassador all the way down to the contracting officer. Everyone will seek out and did seek out short term solutions, because the long term just didn't exist. Even for the people at headquarters, why build institutions why cultivate lots of staff with anti corruption expertise, if we're about to leave, and that mentality of why bother lasted for 20 years. And then compounding this was immense pressure to make fast progress in the little time that we always thought that we had left. And this pressure came from every administration and Congress. So if you want to know why we helped hire corrupt and incompetent officials. One of the reasons is that we didn't think we had the time to do it right. And that impatience cascaded downward on to every actor involved. Our institutions basically became motivated to just try something try something try anything, because we were always about to leave. And in many cases, doing nothing would have been better. And that is certainly not an option for an army captain, or USA program manager who is supposed to demonstrate improvement in their district in the next six months or in their area of responsibility in the next six months. So what do you do, you become an expert at creating the appearance of progress, rather than actual progress, you. You thrust into a system that is rigged against you. And so you rig it right back. And that's because no one was permitted to think far enough into the future to be thoughtful. You also don't have to go very far upstream to see our own personnel constraints, which had significant downstream effects. We often hired amateurs, or we reassigned people whose main qualification was that they were available. And on something of this scale and complexity, the quality of our personnel has an outsized impact. They can't be recruited and trained and become skilled enough to make a difference on compressed timelines. And that's the same problem in Afghan institutions. You can't build a capable ministry in a few years. And that's that's really not because you can't stuff it with enough computers and furniture. It's because it's hard to recruit and train and retain good people. It's hard everywhere. It was especially hard at the State Department and USA aid. And you can just think about it from their perspective. Let's say you run the Asia Bureau for USA. You're already underfunded. You are not permitted to have any extra staff for emergencies. Then we invade Afghanistan, and you're told this is the government's highest priority. But you're also told that we won't be there long. So you have a choice. Do you cannibalize your own long term programs elsewhere in Asia for a mission in Afghanistan that everyone says is just a flavor of the month. So that that doesn't seem wise. So some managers split the difference by sending the staff they could afford to lose for a year, meaning, you know, not their best and brightest. And this is really emblematic of the ways in which the US government was not structurally motivated to staff this mission properly. And the biggest hole in that category is the absence of any meaningful surge capacity, you know, to have good personnel for an unexpected war that may last years, you can't expect to draw good people from the existing bureaucracy. Every government agency is going to have antibodies that resist that the ship of government, you know, just just can't turn at that speed, especially for a temporary mission. So we have a bench to draw from so that a major disruption like rebuilding Afghanistan doesn't upend the entire bureaucracy. But we didn't have that bench of talent. We so so we hired helicopter pilots as police advisors, and we asked Navy SEALs to build relationships with rural Afghan elders. And USAID had no choice but to hire a thousand development experts in a year. So our system completely broke down with catastrophic effects further downstream. So taken together, if the problem is upstream, the solution is upstream, we need to invest more in our own institutions so that they'll be ready to conduct these missions more effectively. And that kind of investment really can only that kind of investment and preparation can really only take place between these large scale missions, and these campaigns at a time like right now. You know, we can't afford to wait until another Afghanistan or Iraq is upon us because we'll just improvise our way through it just like we did this one with the exact same results. But this this argument that I'm making for more investment is a very tough sell at this particular moment in time. Just like after Vietnam, the appetite for necessary reforms is not there because everyone wants to move on and pretend that we can just wish these missions away. But they're really not going anywhere. We've done three of these large missions to the tune of many trillions of dollars, just in the last 50 years. And we conduct small scale stabilization and reconstruction missions in conflict zones all over the world on a near continuous basis. We are strengthening the education system in Yemen right now, we are expanding access to justice and Somalia, and we're training armed forces in Niger and Mali and many other countries. So it's only a matter of time before one of these campaigns, one of these state building enterprises escalates, or we might get hit with a another surprise mission, like Afghanistan. But state and USAID in particular are not given the resources, staff and flexibility to prepare for such escalations. Meanwhile, no one blinks an eye when the Department of Defense spends billions of dollars preparing for contingencies like air sea battle against China. You know something that has yet to occur. Now I'm not saying that those preparations are unwise they seem quite prudent to me. But preparing for things that we continuously do also seems wise. Rebuilding a conflict affected country is a craft and it really must be practiced between between our wars are artillery brigades and our armor battalions and our fighter squadrons. They're all thinking about and practicing their craft every day. And that's exactly how it should be. Okay, a farmer doesn't wait until he's hungry before he plants his seeds, right. So we need more people thinking about the craft of stabilizing and rebuilding conflict affected countries, and we need them now, long before we do this again. So I'll pause there and thank you all for the opportunity. Thank you so much. David, it was shocking how honest you're willing to be. But I think for those of you out there who read the secret reports, it probably isn't surprising at all but it's, it's still, I think, quite astounding to hear from the list of a government official. I'm going to turn it over to Abdullah who's sitting right next to me, and maybe have some reflections to on on what David has said. Thank you so much professor and Aaron for organizing this it's always a pleasure to be here in school where I have received so much generosity myself. I have to also acknowledge the incredible work that Dr young is doing, especially with his two last reports that I also benefited so much from that thank you. David to you and your team. I understand and to respond to those two questions are and I think it's important that we need to really understand different dimensions of the historic and culture context of Afghanistan and what we have known today war on terror. Before that I think it's important to touch upon three topics as raising them some questions for for the audience that they may really think about it. Firstly, I think it's important for all of us to look and back into the global war on terror what has happened in Afghanistan what has happened in Iraq what has happened in Syria what has happened in your man what has happened. In many other parts of the world I think it's important to look into that and and and really deconstruct how we behave as especially for the American tasks tax payers as the superpower in the world, why we are failing almost everywhere. Why Afghanistan is not a single failure. To some extent, Iraq was the same Syria was the same Yemen was the same. And, and we might see as Dr young was telling us many other surprise intervention in the future to the second point that I would like to also highlighted a little bit. Two thing about Afghanistan mission has been super politicized I think in our discourses one is about the cost and the second one is about the duration. While all of us forget to raise two other questions connected to the cost and to the duration of the US presence in the world. I think the first one is comparing the cost. I understand into bigger budget of the Pentagon annually that they are still investing on city around the world. And secondly, I've understood was not only place in the world where the United States soldiers were there and a state for 20 years there were other countries in the world that the United States has remained post to that world 2000, a world, a world war two. I think these questions are also important. And I've understood is also need to be looking to that context in order to find a way and how to do politicize the cost dimensions of the war and terror and I've understood also the duration of 20 years. Back to the questions that you have been raising I think it's important to understand the nature of the intervention and 2001 in Afghanistan. My reason is that the prime objectives in Afghanistan and post 2001 was to chase the terrorists and hand them an estate building has been a secondary objective for the United States and its partners in Afghanistan. This war and terror specifically led by military, I think had a lot of primary objectives implications and of course collateral damages that one of those collateral damages could be corruption. By saying this, I'm not ignoring the fact that African state remained corrupted. We as the officials all of us to be blamed that we have exploited we haven't shown enough patriotism in order to serve, but we have to also see it in a bigger picture that the corruption and the failure that we are facing today. And I think I would touch upon four things which is important to understand today. First one, the political system in Afghanistan itself. A super centralized system has been developed of it, it was itself a flawed design, pouring money into that small mall wall malfunctioning system could not produce public services. And that has happened because over or American friends were taught on that time that the super centralized dealing with two three people would be one of their achievements and fighting the terrorism in Afghanistan. And most of the Afghans and most of the officials hasn't has not have not any agency into that conversation when the constitution of Afghanistan has been drafted and later on ratified in Afghanistan. The system is important to see, I mean a super centralized system that the dictator could sit there, and he's signature from the head master of a school to the appointment of a minister, and, and, and the, the, the head of the supreme court has created a lot of political corruption in Afghanistan. We have to be very mindful that the financial corruption was a small part of the bigger political corruption and Afghanistan that most of the people are failing to recognize that political corruption internally and internationally. I think it's important to, to, to look into that system, why the system could not be able to, to deliver services to the people. And in order to ignore that and reform that political system in Afghanistan I think our partners as distorted to come up with a quick fix that quick fix was two other design in Afghanistan one was the PRT's provincial reconstruction teams method led by the, our partners and the second one was the design of development through NGOs in Afghanistan and international, which I personally believe both of them has had a lot of problem itself to So with the PRT's, I think one of the key pro one of the key causes that we could not develop a strong institutions specifically at the provincial level that was because of the PRT's lead and resources that they have been dealing with it in the past for 20 years in Afghanistan, especially at the first beginning years. So you had a, even our, our, our local structure and governance has become one of the, one of the secondary hands for the PRT is one of how should I say one of the tools for the PRT teams to react in a state of delivering themselves independently services to the people exercising the legitimacy of the state and giving some source of support morally and financially and politically to the people. So when we are talking about failure, we have to really identify that how conflicting sometimes this to role was, and how we could not identify in a clear mandate for these two, and how sometimes we replaced one by another. And why we could not, and it has been almost natural that in a, in a country like in Afghanistan, if you have a commander leading a PRT team with millions of sometimes with 100 millions of dollars, a governor with the budget of I don't know $2 million, they cannot compete in getting the the heart and minds of the people. So it's important to look at that. And I am not referring that as a corruption but I see it as a political as a political failure for both of us. The second design that we have introduced in Afghanistan in past 20 years has been the NGO design of development, if I may say it. I'm sorry that because of the language barriers I could not come up with a better wording for them but I will try to explain them what I mean by it. So in the past 20 years, the national institutions has remained super super weak. And international community tried through the system to, to give more resources for the NGOs to replace the Afghan institutions. And David knows much better than everyone, for example, in the past one year that I worked for the Afghan government. The U.S. AID system does not recognize an Afghan entity to be the first recipient of some of its grants. It needs to be either an American company, for example, or a British company to get that grant and then they subcontracted to second one and then second one to the third one and third one to the fourth one. And I still do see this as one of the biggest problem for Afghanistan when it comes to wasting the resources I have seen it myself that sometimes from $100 only $10 we used to come to Afghanistan while the rest $90 we used to go going through these bureaucracies of the, of the NGOs of the expert companies firms I don't know these kinds of stuff. And the second problem with the NGO was, I'm, I hate to bring this in the public domain that countries like Afghanistan easily has the potential to become a cash cow for so called international experts to go there and receive thousands of dollars for, for, for being there only for just sharing some of their thoughts. I'll give an example of myself when I joined the state ministry for peace. I had few international advisors. And one day I asked one of them how, how much she was receiving. She told me that she was receiving almost $3,000 per month as a salary. And the next five of my advisors salary expanses transportation and accommodation. That was two times of my annual budget of the whole state ministry for peace. To go into like five months tough conversation at the different levels with the people there in order to cancel those contracts and hold them. We need this expertise, but I don't need it at the cost of two times of my the whole budget of the ministry. I come out with the figures I said just with my advisors to tell them. So this NGO system of development itself was a problem in African society. A person who taught that he or she knows everything about Afghanistan were used to patronize the system in Afghanistan. I'm so sorry to be using this world thing, through a colonial system of reality towards a third world country like Afghanistan and telling very high official people what to do. And even some of our international colleagues could not understand the position of the people in the government so even they were not respecting that the minister is there and or their advisor not the people to do the to do the exact words. This system of NGO has also reinforced the failure of the state in Afghanistan, and if I may say it. And it has been one of the key obstacles towards the development of the institutions, because when the institutions are very weak, then the corruption is one of the byproducts of a week in institution. And the worst case scenario is, if you're going to be replacing the institutions by the international entities. In order to give another example and to pause there. I think what one of the key question which is relevant for the future to also to look into the bureaucratic system of some of the international institutions who are dealing in the countries like Afghanistan. I'll give an example of the UN, for example, one of the one of the key problems that I think we are repeating ourselves is that we are trying to do very inexpensive things through an expensive bureaucracy in a countries like Afghanistan. I really hope that Dr young will and his team would look into the expenses of the UN also in Afghanistan how much they are spending in their security administration, administrative cost salaries, plain charters assets I don't know these kind of stuff because Afghanistan is going into the new face. To the best of my knowledge I'll give an example, I had a project to be to be managed and monitored by UN agencies in Kabul the budget was around 1.2 million and 30% of 1.2 million. Because for the sake of administration of one part of the UN agency in Kabul they were claiming for that. And that pageant has not been spent in the past three years because every year 3% 30% of those budget will go into the UN. And by when the couple collapse almost 70% of that budget has gone to the UN administrative cost, regardless of being implemented for for the actual activities and projects in Afghanistan. It may go on this. It's not a good time to come up with different examples and facts in a public domain and in public conversation but I can go into 10th of these kind of examples to tell to the audience how this, how a poverty porn if I may say in a country like Afghanistan could be easily exploited by some of the international institutions in Afghanistan. And at the end of the day the solo accusation and gold and allegation go to the, to the indigenous people while they have some sort of agency but not to be blamed for everything that has been done in the past three years. I'll pause here thank you so much. And I look forward to hear from the address. Well, as promised, very frank, very honest, and both of you. And so much to touch upon here and I know what believe told me stories as well, aside from the one that you've just shared with us. There are lots of different ways in which we can take this conversation but let me start. Let me just start by picking up on this difficulty of the fact that we tend to like to manage our money in a particular way right so there is a political problem here that when the money comes in as taxpayer money. We need to be accountable for it back to the taxpayers so politicians putting all of these systems around transparency. If we don't put them in then we get in trouble so then David, and the secret office is in charge of making sure that that money is spent the way it's supposed to be spent. At the same time, we have the kind of dynamic that you're talking about that every time we put in checks in the system. It ends up, you know, costing quite a lot of money as well. And frankly to the people on the ground to the people in Afghanistan to Afghanistan themselves. That looks like corruption and I've heard this time and again, everywhere in the world that I have gone. If you ask anybody whenever they, they talk about international expats for the UN for the World Bank for whatever institution is for NGOs and so forth. They look at those institutions and say why are the same people doing basically the same jobs getting paid three times five times 10 times as much money, even though the local people say have a lot more expertise they look at that and call it corruption. We think about corruption in lots of different ways, but you know the conceptualization of it is kind of lost when you're living, you know, the tragedy of it every day right it just doesn't look fair. And if you think about it in terms of fairness is absolutely not fair. But we have these systems in place and I don't. I mean, if you two between the two of you managed to square that circle David and Abdullah, you know you'll have solved a lot of the problems right. So at the same time we need to manage the money in a way that satisfies our domestic audiences who are sending the money overseas and actually, you know I pay for it as a taxpayer. David case for it as a taxpayer, Abdullah actually now that he's here will be paying for it as a taxpayer, but at the same time, we also know that it's insane. I think of the, maybe 10% of that money actually ends up in the hands of back ends, and I think actually 10% in some cases is high. And it really depends. I would love for the two of you just to do you see some other fix way around this how do we, how do we practically deal with this problem, given the concerns on both sides.  So I think that it's a very difficult problem to to address but I, I, I want to add a little wrinkle to it and that is that before we can address those larger concerns. There's also a gap in the in understanding between our government oversight personnel, and the people who are actually implementing in this case the Afghans who are implementing programs on the ground so for instance, in around during President Obama served there was a program called the District Delivery Program, and it was meant to be sort of be a stabilization program that was supposed to empower local officials to deliver the programs that I described earlier right so you in order to deliver programs first you have to staff up and so this was the program meant to staff up people across the country across key terrain districts. One of the biggest problems was that it was flagged by USAID for fraud alerts or misplacement of misallocation of money because of a slower hand receipt process that was being put in place by the Afghans who were running the program. It was an on budget program meaning it was money spent through the Afghan government, as opposed to going through partners, but there was still this significant gap created because our oversight personnel thought that money who had been missing when really it was simply just a matter of the receding the receding process was much slower to materialize and so we shut the program down. We USAID US government shut the program down well before it had really ramped up because of these red flags that were mistaken red flags. So from my perspective before we can address these much more seemingly intractable issues of how do you reduce the overhead of partners. So I think it should be a bit of lower hanging fruit of trying to make sure that when we do put money on budget when we do send money and not just an Afghanistan but anywhere that there's more sensitivities to understanding what that budgeting process of the host nation country looks like so that it doesn't get shut down prematurely so that it doesn't raise unnecessary red flags. So I think that that's certainly an easier task to address, then the overhead problem that Abdullah wisely raised because a lot of that in Afghanistan in particular was due to security. And because the overhead costs completely ballooned due to security costs now that doesn't mean that wasn't corruption wasn't involved you know there was considerable evidence that that people were being paid off essentially not to attack our convoys on roads as they are driving through the country. And that's plenty of that money there's evidence that it went to insurgents. And so, you know that problem is, is much bigger and much harder to solve in a place where security is rapidly deteriorating and creating that kind of overhead. So I would say that some of that overhead is absolutely due to inadequate and inappropriate bureaucracy doing its bureaucratic thing. And some of it is due to an incompatibility and a lack of awareness of the different ways of budgeting in different countries and what that can mean for red flags. And then part of it is just simple security. Thank you. Professor, I may suggest. When you're intervening when we are intervening from the West in a country like Afghanistan I think there are three must that we are missing when it comes to dealing a country like Afghanistan first of all, we have to have some sort of humility when it comes to dealing in a country like Afghanistan we have to go with a fresh mind when an open mind to see what's going on, and to find an indigenous solution for such a problem. Most of the time our friends at the different level from security to development to the governments, they are going with a preconceived notion that has been built based on their European system of reality, their Western system of reality. And they have become the victim of their own system of understanding rather than dealing productively with the things in Afghanistan. Aside from that I think most of everyone who engage in Afghanistan every country they have a convenient circle in the country. Either that's historically or that's going to be built up through the time and sometimes most of our most of the diplomats, most of the policymakers has become, has become the victim of that political information and advices that they are receiving through different governments. And the last thing which is also important than most of us we are missing by intervention in a country like Afghanistan is that we are not listening to the masses to the communities. We are listening to the elites. It's very prone that a group of elites could easily manipulate as in a country like Afghanistan, especially if that country is not secure. If it's insecure you are sitting, for example, in your green zone in Kabul, and every other night you need to write a cable back to DC or to Paris or to London, you will be inviting those 10 people that you continuously know them. And you think that you are happy as a human to engage with them and have a, aside the conversation you may be happy to have a social, like a friendly dinner with with with them too. This is one of the key problems that we have been facing in the past 20 years and I found that an arrogance, mixed with some sort of knowing everything, coming and trying to enforce your own way of solutions on the local communities while whole society is pushing and resisting against it. And that's the biggest lesson that we're not trying to build upon that at the moment if I may say so. We Afghans or starving at the moment, three to five million people will will die if we would not reach out to them with the basics of life. We are reinforcing the UN system in Afghanistan the injure system in order to go and to invest on local social infrastructure and well being within the society. Why we are not doing because it makes a lot of efforts it makes it needs a lot of efforts it needs a lot of knowledge it needs a lot of hard work and it needs like, you need to go and rebuild everything from the beginning I'm very happy. And to be very honest, we are mostly very lazy in dealing like countries in Afghanistan we we want to just use the system. As David was pointing out that has not been reformed in the past 20 years to be the main channel of our resources that's why I strongly suggest that we need to really go from the beginning and see what we have learned and build new institutions, and the people be centered and the key drivers of those institutions. Well, I'm not sure we're going to be able to solve all of our problems in one conversation but I think you guys had a good go of it. Let me invite folks to put questions into the chat please or into the Q&A function. If you do that I'll ask one more question but please do put in questions and what I will do is invite you to be a panelist and then I'll turn on your mic or your camera and then you can actually ask the question to whoever you want. Or, and I'll just collect a round of questions and feel free to probe as as deeply as you want to so please put whatever your whatever's on your mind about these issues into either the Q&A or the chat. And I have another one for all of you. And I think, and this applies to both sides right both to the Afghan government as well as the US government and that is the how do you tell an institution that doesn't want to hear the things the nasty unpleasant things that you've had to say to actually make them sit up and listen. And I say that because you know if there was one office in the entire US government that knew what was coming. It was David's office right it was the secret office and we have so many of these reports I've been reading these kind of glancing through the reports every so often for the past decade or so. It's not like the information wasn't there it's not like the warnings weren't there but nobody acted upon them. Similarly, it's not like the Afghan government and people in it there were people that knew what was coming and people did put up warning signs right and said hey look we can't keep doing this forever. We're undermining our own legitimacy. We have problems with people believing in us we have problems with the army, feeling like they want to stay in fight. What can we do and yet people would just continuously ignore all of these signs. So, again, I know that there are no great answers to this but if the two I'd love to hear the two of you think about what you might see institutionally how do you make, how do you know how to make people listen, I guess, because I feel like the two of you probably tried in lots of different ways. Right. And yet, it didn't work so, but in some cases you know what it does and I do feel like after the people are always happy to listen and we look back and we see all those reports right or you look back and say oh so and so said something and so and so tried to say something but at the time it just doesn't it doesn't resonate and maybe this is just an impossible problem to deal with but David what do you think are the ways in which we could make those conditions just a little bit more welcoming a little bit more possible for success or at least for not to make the same kind of devastating failure in the future. Sure. So I think one of the critical ingredients to why sounding the alarm often didn't work, especially in the second decade was because of the first decade. Once we had invested so much and spent so much time there and seen so little results and often things just only getting worse. It became very hard. So two things happened one, there's just the sort of the fallacy of thinking. We've poured in so much money now, let's just give it a little bit longer and try a new strategy and you know or try a new new component of a strategy. And the, and so when that happens you'd have this sense that it will only get worse as things get worse that you think that pulling out now will only make things worse and so you become a textbook quagmire, you know, you become a victim of you can change the environment that you're in such that extracting yourself creates a far worse situation than if you just continued muddling through. And so the path of least resistance is absolutely to continue on to try and innovate a new strategy a new approach. It is institutionally far easier to tweak than to pull the plug, because of the amount of resistance that has gone in, and the widespread recognition that everything that a withdrawal would be catastrophic. So that's that's the reason why reforms are hard, once you're in it. Right. How to actually work around that and navigate it. We have found that I think that there's, I would say there are two ways of doing that. And that is, it's not enough among those who study this closely to be right. Right. We have to really, I think, and that assumes that that those of us who do study it are right and we're often wrong so I want to put that out there first. But one of the things that I think is critical is that for those who study it closely, and who feel like their message is not getting through to policymakers in particular. There needs to be improvements in the modes of communication, and it's not enough to perfect the research, but it's in the messaging, and, and how you message it, and that improving how we manage up essentially in this among State Department and among USA to among DoD officials, and communicating that with Congress and with the American public I think that's a critical piece of it. The other piece for reforms we found far greater success in our lessons learned program, or we found significant success in trying to implement reforms that aren't related to Afghanistan but are related to the institutions for future missions. And that was why the lessons learned program was established to begin with is to capture the lessons from Afghanistan and make sure that we learn them certainly for the next time, and, or for ongoing operations even at the smaller scale, and then to the extent possible in Afghanistan, you know as as possible. And so, those two methods, I think our critical components that have improving the way that we communicate our understanding. And, and second, recognizing that once you're in that quagmire deep in it, the reforms really need to be framed around the institution itself, rather than a hope of changing things in Afghanistan. And so, you know that that that's a, it's, it's quite a bit of humility as Abdullah had mentioned that it requires. But it's, that's where we have found more success. And so, you know, we've we've gotten our reforms into congressional legislation, the American US government agencies have adopted many of our recommendations. And we've found that those are critical victories as a result of persistent collaboration and cooperation with them. That's great. And yeah, what you said actually makes a lot of sense I mean the political management of it I've seen myself and working with the UK government, a key part of it is actually trying to be more political and I think most people who work on this stuff normally are but an obvious key to success. Abdullah, what do you think? Well, correctly to the how to make people to listen to you, especially if they don't like what you want to say, it's the toughest job. You may have, especially if you were within a rentier state, because you would face a lot of consequences of your resistance towards some of the things that you see it's going into wrong direction. But I think I mean for for a different design of intervention in a country like Afghanistan, my humble suggestion would be that there should be some sort of check and balance in the design and the whole whole mission. And the reform shouldn't be shouldn't be going through the people who are implemented reform should be itself one of the strategic objectives needs to be done through a third party that may have enough leverages on all parties to implement that before. Having said that, I think one of the biggest problem in the past 20, 20 years in Afghanistan has been that the reform has become so politicized, both inside the African government and among our international friends. I remember I was a journalist until 2019 I was the critic of government myself for a long time. The reform agenda has become a part of the verbal abuse between President Kazai and and some of the people sitting in DC, regardless of looking into negrity of the reform within African society. We have to make sure in the future that we do politicize our reform agenda, and we give it to the institutions, not to the implementers to bring reform. That's necessary, and I pause here. Thank you so much. I'm going to invite our wonderful guests to actually ask their questions so I've got about a few people who have managed to add, and then I've got an anonymous person so I should have a shot and then Jim, and then I'll ask the anonymous question, and then I just tried to add Rachel as well. And so maybe I'm sure you could kick us off and if you could just tell us where you're from and, you know, a little bit, a few words about yourself. That'll just give some context for our panelists when you ask our question and I think our panelists can also see the questions in the Q&A or in the track one of the two so I'm sure it's all yours. Yeah, Dr. Cheng. So my name is Anusha and I am a very proud Wall Studies alumni. I graduated in 2017 so, and I'm currently sort of an independent researcher slash journalist. And I was just wondering this is this, a lot of this has been lots of talk about how the US has failed in Afghanistan, and that seems to be sort of where the main focus is, but my question is more of, and this is to both the panelists to what degree has, would you say that it's corruption within Ghani and his close circle that led to, you know, to the failures that we see today. Okay, so I'll leave that. Do you want to take that? No, I'll leave that for a moment. And then I'll take the next one from Jim, maybe Jim, you could ask the first one and then I'll come back to you for the second one just to make sure that we get to everybody. Thank you. Yes, my name is Jim Dingman. I'm in New York City. I have been a journalist for several decades. I was down in Laram, Manhattan today, the World Trade Center was attacked. So that still remained in my throat for many weeks afterwards. But what also remained in my throat in my brain was, and this is both to David and to Abdullah, was the inability of the United States to deal with these complicated situations to start with. Because in David's comment, and I must admit I want to thank David for all the work you guys at Segar have done over the years, those reports have been quite illuminating. You mentioned Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan. I mean, I could go back into Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. I mean, you know, the question is how institutionally is the United States prepared to deal with these kind of complicated situations in the third world, period. And do they really learn? And with Abdullah, thank you so much. I wanted to ask you more if you could talk about, you were raising the question of the... Frankly, this makes me angry to hear the issue of these people from the NGOs coming in and essentially sucking up resources that could be used to actually impact people at the grassroots. But the question of neocolonialism comes in, and I hate to throw that in. You know, it's sometimes not used as a term these days, but what you're describing was something quite disturbing. And I know we're going to have a huge amount of after-actions about what happened, etc. I've been seeing it happen in the United States for the past couple of months. I've actually been part of that. I've actually had Barney Rubin talk for the first time about what had happened, and he did a huge, like, gestalt for an hour and a half nonstop about what occurred. But, you know, I just want to raise those things to you because, you know, I was asked to comment at the Council on Foreign Relations a couple of weeks after the attack, and I was pretty pissed off about what had happened. I wanted revenge. I think that some people are going to, with this whole argument they're making about the bond talks as an inflection point, they're going to forget the fact that most Americans were not interested in any kind of compromise with the Taliban. They wanted to crush them. And so even though in retrospect that may be looked at as a lost opportunity, which I can see is coming up, people are going to forget that, like, people were blinded with their desire to crush them after what occurred. So, you know, I just want to, I just raise those points because, you know, I'm 72. I've watched and lived through Vietnam, so I sort of have that baggage in my brain. And what I've just seen is frankly a even worse repetition of what occurred back in the mid-70s. And I have to be rather blunt about that, having served there myself. So anyway, thank you so much. Very thoughtful to listen to this. I'm glad these kind of conversations are starting. Thank you, Jim. And that's, that was very heartfelt and difficult to Abdullah. Do you want to take whatever you want to take out of the answers that you might want to give? I think Dr. Young will go first.  I think I will say that maybe not everybody wants to answer all of these questions and that for David there is still acting as an official government employee, so there may be things that trust that you might not want to say. No worries. I appreciate the caveat. We tend to study systems over specific individuals. We look more often at problems with specific programs, certainly our auditors. We do have an investigations directorate that looks at crime. They have, you know, there's been about 160 convictions through that through through our cigars investigations directorate since the beginning of the, since cigar was established. But the role of senior level officials is an open question. And one that we don't typically look at. I will say that Congress has asked us to look at the allegations in the news lately and significantly on social media that senior Afghan officials have responded when they fled the country took large amounts of cash with them. And this is something that we are looking at and that that research is underway right now. So stay tuned for that but we certainly do not make a habit of looking at specific individuals from a research perspective, only from an investigation criminal investigations perspective. And that's not something that I could really speak to as I am not a criminal investigator for cigar. So the Jim's question, I think it's, you won't be, you won't be satisfied with the answer but the answer is typically that we don't learn from these mistakes, and just as to sort of salient examples in my mind is that cigar has had multiple lessons learned reports from that were post Vietnam. One, or actually one was post Vietnam on security sector reform that closely mirrors this, the analysis lessons and recommendations of our own security sector analysis for Afghanistan. These were recommendations and lessons and analysis that essentially was put into a drawer and and never used in the wake of Vietnam. They're also on the civilian side us aid has done lessons learned reports. As you may remember there was a great deal of us aid support to Southern Afghanistan before well before Vietnam during sort of in the cold during the Cold War. And there were lessons learned on that on that assistance as well in Southern in Southern Afghanistan that were likewise, mostly ignored for the next time we went in. And so part of this is a, you know, you could look at it from a technical perspective is that is a knowledge management issue. Where did these reports go, you know, it was just, it was by luck that we encountered them. They were not at the top of everyone's agenda during the invasion and during the 20 years and so that's the technical perspective and there's the political perspective is that these, the reforms are so difficult. And the, there's so much resistance in our own agencies to actually commit to these reforms that it's not a matter of these. The, the ideas being, or the reports being discarded or ignored. It's that even good people with good intentions who are smart trying to do the best they can were unable to achieve these reforms, which begs a much larger question, instead of asking, what do we need to do to do this right. We have as professionals in this field we have to ask the question, are we capable of this. And it is an, it is absolutely an open question. And it is certainly a credible argument could be made either way. But at this stage that we're, we're committing so much so many resources and time and effort to rebuilding countries at this scale, and we don't really have a model for it working begs a question. Is this something that needs to be tweaked, or is this is the theory of the case completely flawed. And again, it's an open question, but I certainly share your frustration, Jim that it's that we, it does not appear that we are learning these lessons. And I will say, just like at the end of Vietnam, there was there were some reforms and sort of clear eyed thinking sober assessments as to what was what had had gone wrong in Vietnam. And we're seeing some of that today. While the sort of the institutional resistance to these larger reforms are is there. I definitely want to give credit to Congress and US agencies for committing to certain reforms for small scale reconstruction stabilization you may be familiar with the stabilization assistance review and the global fragility act, and the global fragility strategy these are all really difficult undertakings that, in particular, DoD state and aid have undertaken to try and come to the necessary consensus for how these three agencies in particular can work together in the future. They are small or big, but they they certainly have small scale stabilization in mind to do this more effectively. And they are, you know, the reforms are important, they're moving in the right direction, but they're, they need considerably more of this, but I definitely want to give them credit for for for significant movement away from the inertia that we saw, you know, for basically the first 15 years of this war. Thanks David. Thank you Professor. To the first question I have two disclaimers to be very honest to no short firstly, I'm ashamed of myself, most of the time to be part of a government that collapse and to be alleged to be super corrupted to be very honest so I have no moral ability to come up and criticize others. I feel it every minute to be very honest. Despite I had a very unique position and job, which was policy political coordination of the peace process I was nothing to do with money at all in my, in my section. And this claim that is since I'm coming from a different political constituency if I may say so I've been critic of the president himself as an inner circle, I, I do not see any position for myself to come up and comment on that but generally I would say two things, which might be something to be considered by Dr young to firstly. I think we all need to be all of the government X government officials need to be held accountable. And even we are now in a better positions. We are now all over high officials. Now they are living in the United States, and there should be an investigation on their wealth. There should be an investigations on their bank account. And that should be a started from myself in UK. I think that I have been super clean and go after the others. And I think American taxpayers has the best opportunity could ever present themselves to come after those who have failed the people of Afghanistan their money, and the image of everyone. And the second point that I would like to make that we need to also make sure that when it comes to dealing with investigation on the corruption that we take it out of the political discourse that we have towards a form start of conversation over reforms over, I don't know, corruption over making people accountable. That creates more complication from for all of us. And I think it's important that we shouldn't be looking only about taking few millions of dollars out the day that we have been escaping Afghanistan but also looking to 20 years how much we have made it in past. And to be very honest, they're very well known people for the US establishment. They know who has been our finance minister. They are their their villas and in Miami, I don't know when and in DC. So you don't need to go on into a very super complicated international system in order to find out these things. If you're going to ask emerities, they will give you a details of how much an African who has an Emirates. I really hope that this conversation go there. To the point of Jim, Jim, I think I fully understand your frustration anger, and I share with you. We are here today to discuss, because we don't want me and you and your grandson in the future to be again angry and frustrated with what has happened. Because my country. It is not easy. I've never been out of my country in my life. I spend the five regimes there to five regime changes there. And now I fully understand what it means to not have a country is nothing to do that I could not leave in the West. It's something different that nobody can really understand that nobody can understand if you would not be in such a position yourself. Thank you, Professor. Yeah, this is kind of, I have to say this is kind of heartbreaking. I gave a big hug when he arrived in London shortly after we arrived in. Thank you so much for that. And you know, and I've been the only student that that I've had also to be going through this. It's, yeah, it's, it's very, very hard. I have a couple more people with more questions that I'll read the one from our anonymous attendee first so one of the main examples of corruption is nepotism. And this is another President ghani question appointed all the key positions of government, specifically the key positions of security institutions based on nepotism and ethnicity not merit. I'd like to know the inside of panelists on the world of nepotistic recruitment on the collapse of government to the Taliban and I feel to some extent that's kind of being addressed by David in his comments. So I think Abdullah can can answer that if he if he wants to. But let me let me move on to Rachel has a question and then we have a couple more anonymous questions which I'll read out in just a moment so Rachel. Why don't you help you. Absolutely are you able to hear me all right. Yes. Awesome. I'm Rachel and I'm just pursuing an MA and actually under also under Christine guidance here at King's and and particularly interested in kind of the operational level of actually getting I guess more more localized and in touch aid via these international programs through of course you know just going to your point that 30% of of it can go to overhead and but at the same time the necessity of security and and sometimes those administrative processes being run anyway. So to ameliorate that you guys both spoke more on communications and modes of communication in ameliorating some of those costs that can then not only more be more situationally gauge and actually bring about some of these, these projects in a more cohesive manner, but what is is some of the, I suppose my question relates to if you are trying to fix those modes of communication what are some ways you can actually operationalize that is this is this training programs between the NGO staff and the local community how do you merge the gap between the people and the NGOs they're working with them if you must funnel the funds and equipment and staff through the NGOs and through the what has been termed multiple times the bureaucracy of it. How can you how can you do so in a more meaningful manner. Right, I think that one seems aimed at David so you can buy that I think there's a version of it in the chat as well so I'll read out two more questions for you also there's one from an anonymous attendee and this one's for David as well. Now the outlook for America's position on counter terrorism, when it comes to its 20 year involvement in Afghanistan, more on terror was the initial goal for us intervention and mission creep into institutional building came afterwards so what does the withdrawal are the US's fight against domestic terrorism. And then this one is for the panel and I think a bill is well positioned to answer it so what does the current outlook mean for China as it shares the border with Afghanistan. So how is trying to be involved with the US and Afghan actors and Afghan state building prior tools to the withdrawal this year and what can this mean in the context of US China relations post withdrawal. So, there's a lot of talk around time everywhere. And we'll see what what you all think of this. So David do you want to try and, and have a go at some of the ones that were directed at you. So, cigar is basically in the business of illuminating risks for the US government and then trying to help the US government understand whether those risks can be mitigated. And if so how they can be mitigated counter terrorism, however, is not one of the risks that falls under our purview that is in our that is in our job scope or mandate to highlight right so, for instance, you know, the oversight that we provide to the US and about, you know, isn't about drones it's not about us forces, you know, own sustainment or weapons and, you know, it's about reconstruction, right. And so the risks that we highlight, rather than about counter terrorism or much more risks to civilians risks to funds that we have provided already being lost or seized by the Taliban or equipment sees by the Taliban that was originally provided by the reconstruction mandate. So I couldn't speak to the risks of counter terrorism and what that means for the withdrawal but I'm sure my colleagues have interesting things to say about it. Regarding the, the NGO question from Rachel, I think that the, the building up support for NGOs and empowering them really draw it. Brings into focus a critical choice and that is and that comes down to what can we do that is sustainable. For instance, you there's basically two paths, let's say you wanted to run a program in Afghanistan USA or Gifford or now fcb wanted to run a program in Afghanistan. You can either go through the government, which then pays its own, you know, its own ministry staff and then it feeds out through the government into an implementing partner, which is what inevitably be afghan, or you can bypass the government, go straight to an implementing partner like you know what you might normally call like a development contractor like c'monix or creative or a ecom that then outsources it further, you almost always one step further to an afghan partner, sometimes afghan sometimes international again and then eventually like we discussed it in theory should make its way to an afghan partner that is subcontracted and we talked about how the that process of subcontracting creates many overhead outs so that a very small portion of it actually makes it to the ground right for me. The there is it is in a country that suffers from major human capital constraints like Afghanistan in terms of literacy human development, you're going to have that problem if you want to have that that happy middle ground of where the costs are the the transactions are transparent, they match with and are aligned with oversight requirements and standards, but still empower local, local officials and local partners right there's going to be that a significant loss of the actual money going to beneficiaries so mitigate that absolutely to me the bigger question though is on sustainability by passing the government as a whole created no enormous problems for basically meaning that the government couldn't practice financial management of those funds, so that when we took our hands off the clock, the gears would keep grinding right and so that is one of the reasons why so much of what we did was unsustainable was because we bypassed the government.  So most of the time that we did, we thought we encountered major obstructions potential fraud corruption, etc. So you can't really have it both ways where we say, there's so much corruption in the Afghan government on the one hand, and on the other, you should go through the Afghan government for everything for sustainability purposes. There's tension there and we got to deal with that. I think that the real question for how do you empower an NGO to do the to build an implement programs in a way that is sensitive to the community's needs, and takes them into account. The first path through is to make sure that it's sustainable, and simply having us directly empower these NGOs does not create a sustainable model if those NGOs as soon as we leave, don't have a reliable partner in the Afghan government to feed it to them. So to me that's sort of an upstream problem that has to be addressed before we can really talk about how do we shave off a little more for beneficiaries in the subcontracting process. Okay, I'm going to hand over now, and there's a final question here. And I think it's actually an important question. A moral question. And it's directed at Abdulla, but David, you're welcome to comment back after Abdulla speaks as well. It's about the issue of humanitarian intervention, and the famine that's basically taking place right now. I don't have any other thoughts on this. But what does he think about the present policy of withholding billions of dollars from the Taliban government to deal with the present situation inside Afghanistan, and recognizing that it's domestically very difficult in order to have this money to the Taliban government so I'll let you comment on that question the China question anything else you want to touch upon. Thank you, Professor. Firstly with the nepotism. I think one of the key factor that most of our European allies has been have been missing in the past 20 years has been the role of nepotism and identity politics and it and the role of ethnicity within the politics of Afghanistan. And I don't blame them because in the West, you don't have such a thing. You only would like to deal with those phenomena naturally that is very familiar to you. You are not familiar with those phenomenon. You, you could not easily understand that issue in my own. I mean my reading is one of the foundation for the corruption, one of the key causes for the failure one of the key obstacles towards an institution building in Afghanistan has been the number nepotism and identity politics Saturday in the past 20 years. In a state of promoting in institutions the leadership always try to rely on a strong people who are loyal to them and ended up ruling of two three people over 35 millions or ruling of 300 elites overall and country over 35 million people. That's where I think we need a lot of more attention and research how this patrimonialism within the system of governance in the past 20 years in Afghanistan has led to current failure and how big driven factor it has been.  And if you allow me, I remembered a story that I would like to share with Rachel, regardless of judging it, I'll put more lessons for all of us so Rachel. The state ministry for peace one day, a friend of mine, a journalist, a Western journalist showed up in my office. And she told me that she's very proud to receive the good project from USAID for communication and the peace process, she was a long, long time friend to me and then she explained her program to me and then I told him that's wonderful that was about communication. And then I told him that's a very good idea. Don't you think after 20 years in the state of you coming from West to do two hours of seminar on peace education. I hired someone with PhD from a Stanford, for example, who is an Afghan now in Kabul that he could do this job. She told me, well, I will go back to the people and get back to use this conversation continued between me, the consultancy and some of the people in USAID for three months after three months they come up with an idea they told me well, we will not bring for one day seminar anymore, someone from the West, but we would like to pay only $200. If you want to hire that guy from the Stanford graduated Afghan guy to do this job, and I told them why is this, by bringing a journalist from the West, you're paying at least for the round trip ticket you're paying for accommodation of a week for an armored car for the security for I don't know salary, and at least it may cost something between $20 to $30,000 I mean I am talking about an estimation. I could never have answer of that question and that was disturbing for me, and I stop it at the cost of my friendship with that journalist. And her my leadership, it would not happen because I don't. We are we're violating the common principles of morality when it comes to dealing, while this 30 or 20 or $10,000 could be enough could could have more beneficiaries enough once and I think that's where we ended up what Dr. Young was saying that I fully understand that there has been a generalization when it comes to corruption within the African society and the blue and and and the African institutions, I called 10 times my partners to come over and do an investigation to give me some sort of credential that at least I am not corrupted, nobody come up but in every conversation almost with every diplomat and every ambassador there was one thing which I can consistently hearing from them that there is African government is corrupt so we would like to find an alternative way to to help you.  We really do not understand yet how the China world reposition itself post 2000 and we know that the Chinese are very cautious at it. One thing that they are doing at the moment of course they are exploiting maximum PR out of the failure of the United States by tweeting. We haven't seen yet the China to become a portion development partner for the Taliban yet. And we haven't seen also the China to have an independent from Pakistan, a policy towards the Taliban, because it would be it has a lot of other causes that I think time does not allow us to to elaborate. About the moral question, the anger in Afghanistan humanitarian crisis, Professor your member, we have every right to oppose the Taliban but not at the cost of the life of the people. But I would like to also take this opportunity and alert the people in DC in here, everyone on to very problematic policy that I do see most of our Western EU, Western partners might be following in coming Firstly, there is a premise that the Taliban is reformable, if I may say that I don't know it's English reformable. So reformable. And that's why most of the country, most of the westernest thing that they could leverage through to financial means to change the behavior of the Taliban. And this has been exactly the premise that we have built our peace process upon that, while it didn't, it didn't produce enough result. I really, really hope that we would not put again, billions of dollars on such a mate of Taliban being a reformable group, ideologically and changing their behaviors in the coming years. So that's why I think it's important to come back to the questions that who we are partnering again in Afghanistan, because as David has been pointing out at the beginning one of the key reason for the cost for the failure in past 20 years has been that United States has partnered up with the wrong people in Afghanistan. The biggest example was President Kazai, who turned up to become totally different. And Ghani was a second example. And the second warning is, I'm not ignoring and denying the importance of NGOs and UN in Afghanistan, but there is a need for reform in their expanses. I was listening at that their friend of mine told me that for example when it comes to climate change from every dollar, you and only spent 15 cent of it. 85 cent is going into the talks. And if I may, I mean, Afghanistan, the security situation, lack of a good partner, lack of strong institutions, the collapse of the NGO system in Afghanistan, really, really increased the risk that most of this money in a state of going to the people, it would go to the salaries, to the armored car, to the security companies to provide securities. While I was thinking recently that there is a lot of indigenous kind of social welfare system historically in Afghanistan that we could go and reach out to the people and give them the money. And thank you so much, Professor. And I really hope that I could, I was able to respond to these questions. Thank you. Thank you from both of you. I think you made it through some pretty tough material and I think you are both very honest and reflective of so many of the mistakes that we've seen over the past 20 years and I think everybody in the audience really appreciates that so thank you so much to the two of you for engaging like this. Thank you to Aaron for helping to organize. Thank you to Danny who's behind the scenes here. And this will all be recorded, or has been recorded and will be posted. There might be things that you want to share with people in DC friends journalists feel free to tweet it out. And hopefully the situation, but we know the situation is going to get worse. The only question is how much worse and how long will it last and Anyway, I'm pretty sure that this is not going to be our last Afghanistan discussion so thank you so much to everybody have a have a great day after run off and teach now so David will catch up Dave Wynne's downline we can chat a bit and and to everybody else thank you so much. Have a great day.


It really hurts. I know. It feels like it's starting to swell. We're going to have to get you to the emergency room. I know, but I'll get some appointments canceled. We'll get Stacy to look after the kids. It's going to be okay. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to book a video visit with a doctor right now. So there's a meeting I need to get to this afternoon, but this rash is really bugging me. I saw a doctor at urgent care over the weekend, but since then it's gotten really tender, and I feel like it's getting worse. It looks like Dr. Shelley prescribed Triancylone Cream for your dermatitis. Are you using it as prescribed? Yeah, but it doesn't seem to be improving. Well, let's take a look at it. Can you position your phone in front of it so I can take a better look at it? So I'm sorry you hurt your ankle. Have you been able to walk on it at all since you injured it? Well, I haven't really tried. It helps me if I can see it. Go ahead and point the camera at your foot and then move it back and forth a little bit. It hurts, but I can move it. Okay, good. That makes me feel a lot better. How about when you touch it? Is it tender at all when you touch the bones? You know, actually, it feels a lot better than it did. Okay, great. Why don't we try walking a few steps and see how you do? See, it actually looks a lot worse than the description that Dr. Shelby left in your medical record. I'd like you to come in and see a dermatologist. Is this something I should be concerned about? I mean, I guess I could get to the emergency room right away if I had to. Oh, no, you don't have to worry about it. It's not an emergency. You don't need to cancel your meeting. We can actually make an appointment right afterwards. Okay, that's awesome. Can we set up something for four? Yeah, we have a 4 p.m. slot open. I'll book you for it now so you can go to your meeting and then afterwards you can go see the dermatologist. Okay, that makes things a lot easier. Absolutely. Is there anything else I can help you with today? That's it. Thanks a million. My pleasure. I hope your Kaiser Permanente video visit was helpful. You're walking on it pretty well. That leads me to believe that this is more of a sprain rather than a break or anything worse than that. The mainstay of treatment here is really rest, elevation and ice. But you can also take an anti-inflammatory medicine for pain like ibuprofen if you need to. Great. So this is my first video visit. Do I pay with a credit card? No, there's no extra charge for this visit. Thank you. Do you have any other questions at all or is there something else I can help you with today? That's it. It was great meeting with you. Get better soon. That was easy. Yeah, Sherby's driving through traffic to get to the emergency room and having to pay for a baby sooner.


my friends I know you can tell I'm extremely happy to be here in Churchill today I know that things haven't been easy for the past year and a half for members of the community ever since a devastating flood badly damaged the Hudson Bay rail line land access to Canada's only deep water Arctic port has been cut off you all know too well the kind of far-reaching consequences this has had on your community prices surged projects had to be put on hold plans had to be delayed families students workers and shop owners were left stranded from the outset as I told Mike our government was determined to restore land access to Churchill we wanted to establish a new model of ownership for the future that would empower the community and indigenous peoples in the spirit of reconciliation we know that nobody is more vested in the future of this rail and this port than the people who live here our goal was to find the right partners to see this project through and after more than a year of hard work our government successfully facilitated the deal struck between Arctic Gateway Group and the former owner the rail now the rail line is now partly owned by the community and on that note I need to acknowledge the incredible work done by a proud man at Oben my friend minister Jim Carr on this file thank you Jim see this has been a model of community empowerment and economic development for others to follow two great Canadian companies came together Fairfax financial and AGT foods along with community leaders to ensure the future of not only the rail line but also this port racing against the changing seasons this new partnership group faced its first big challenge fixing the rail line before winter and my friends as we saw last night they were more than up to the task this means that families will once again be connected to each other the tourists will visit the polar bear capital of Canada and that the port will resume its operations that's just not a line polar bear capital of Canada as we drove in from the airport half an hour ago I spotted my pole by first polar bear in Churchill so with this new deal Churchill will have full control over its future now I want to take this moment to thank the people of Churchill for your patience I know times have been incredibly tough but the resilience and determination you have shown has been inspiring you organized town halls you made your voices heard and when things weren't moving fast enough you put pressure on everyone involved you did everything you needed to do to make sure we got this done and that we got this done right and today I'm happy to announce that the long wait will now be over the rail line is expected to resume its regular operations servicing both passengers and freight by the end of November this this is your victory we owe the progress we made to your dedication hard work and perseverance today's announcement marks the beginning of a new chapter for Churchill one where people can enjoy everything their town has to offer and can share it with visitors la voie ferrée permettra également d'attirer des nouveaux investissement qui sont de plus sont plus que nécessaire dans la communauté et de créer de meilleures occasions pour les gens et les petites entreprises d'ici par exemple bel vous voulez installer la nouvelle génération d'internet par fibres optique à Churchill mais pour apporter le tout le matériel requis il y avait besoin d'une voie ferrée en fonction alors quand le service reprendra la ville va attirer plus d'investissement comme celui-là qui permettront à la communauté d'aller de l'avant cela dit notre soutien ne se limite pas à mettre la voie ferrée entre les mains des nouveaux propriétaires et de fournir les fonds pour la rétablir nous nous sommes aussi engagés à verser 43 millions de dollars sur 10 ans pour veiller au bon fonctionnement de la voie et nous continuons à faire des investissements judicieux et ciblés dans la communauté today we are also announcing more than 3.8 million dollars towards 40 projects that will increase tourism provide skills training help offset the freight costs stemming from the rail line closure and open the door for even more investments in the community and more opportunities for residents we're also taking unprecedented steps to fight climate change here in Churchill you've seen firsthand what climate inaction looks like and your community has been at the forefront of the effects of climate change that's why last week we announced our plan to put a price on pollution starting in 2019 manitobans will directly receive a climate action incentive this incentive will help Canadians adjust to an economy in which pollution is no longer free I will also note that there will be a 10% top-up for people living in remote communities like Churchill in Manitoba this means that a family of four will receive on average 339 dollars every year le reste des recettes que nous allons recueillir au moyen de la tarification de la pollution permettra de financer des programmes d'efficacité énergétique pour les petites et moyennes entreprises les municipalités les universités les écoles les hôpitaux les les organisations sans-bulucratif et les communautés autochtones nous pourront aussi aider à protéger l'environnement à créer de l'emploi et à renforcer l'économie locale today is great news for the people of Manitoba and indeed all Canadians for generations to come I'm gonna end it here because I know I want to take some questions and I'm looking forward to the community celebration shortly but I really want to say thank you thank you for being here this morning thank you for working with us thank you for opening this new chapter on a brighter future for Churchill and for Manitoba merci beaucoup mes amis


Somebody give me an answer, give me an answer Hey curlfriends, my name is her, I'm the greatest R&B singer of all time. I just wanted to come on Bianca Renee today's channel because she is my number one fan and I thought it was only right for me to be here just to support her because she always supports me. Okay, just kidding, it's me guys, it's me, it's me Bianca Renee. As some of you may know, her is my absolute favorite artist. If you don't know who she is, are we even friends?  Coachella's coming and she's performing and you need to make her a priority on your schedule, okay? Just camp out in front of the her stage all day. Forget everybody else. Unfortunately, I will not be at Coachella this year, I really wanted to go and see her. Oh, this is like my first concert that I'm missing of her as I feel like a bad friend, like I'm letting her down. But it's okay, I decided just to dress up like her and then display her music in my room. Same thing. This look was obviously inspired by her specifically what she wore to the Grammys this year. Here's a little photo of when she won her two Grammys, nominated for five. Let's give her a little round of applause. So proud of my pretend bestie. Now because I love her so much, I thought it'd be really fun to recreate her Grammy look and in order to do so, I needed a really cool wig. So today's video is actually sponsored by RPG Show. RPG Show is an amazing wig website where I get a lot of my wigs. They're really popular, a lot of YouTubers get their hair from them. But I went on their website, right? And I looked through their entire like hundreds of wigs. There's so many good ones. But I didn't really see one that was too similar to hers hair. So I told them my idea and they were like, hey, what if we just customize a wig? So I was like, oh, let's do it. So the way you're looking at right now is custom made by me. It's literally named after me on the website and it did not exist until I made it. So thank you RPG Show for allowing me to create my very own wig. I think it's so fun and so perfect for the look that I was going for today. So if you guys want to check out the Bianca 002 wig, I'll make sure to link that below in the description box. Now her H-E-R stands for having everything revealed. So without further ado, let me go ahead and reveal to you exactly how I created this look. So first I got a neon body suit from Boohoo and then I found a long sleeve mesh neon shirt from Windsor. Now let's start working on this hair. I just washed it, I deep conditioned it, kind of left in a little bit of the conditioner. It dried while I put on my makeup, so I'm going to reapply some water and then to keep it nice and hydrated, I'm going to be adding a leaving conditioner by Shea Moisture.  Now I'm grabbing my got to be ultra glue gel, even though it's called ultra glue, it's not actually a glue, it's just a super intense gel.  I'm also grabbing my tango teaser to help smooth down all of my hair so I could easily put it into a braid. Then I just created two braids, one on each side. It's time to tuck these braids away, so I'm just grabbing some bobby pins and laying them flat on the side of my head. Pull one braid around to each side as tight as possible and then use a bobby pin to lay it down. Grabbing a wig cap, I prefer the ones with the mesh net that way the clips of the wig can actually go through. And now it's time to grab our wig. So this is Bianca 002. She's naturally curly and this is a silky texture. There's 20 inches of length here. The hair color is a natural hair color cap size one. And as you could see, this is a lace front wig and it has two clips on the side, an extra band to make things tighter and one more clip on the bottom. The lace color is medium brown and there's a 200% density. So now it's time to cut off the lace here in the front and the lace at the back. Using some hair scissors, and it's going to carefully cut along the line, making it look as natural as possible, not cutting away any of the baby hairs just yet, unless you want to, but just kind of cut it off so that it fits your natural scalp. Now let's put her on. So I like to use the clip in the back first and then I bring the rest of the wig, pulling it forward to my forehead. And voila, look at how amazing it just naturally looks right out the box. To make sure it's nice and secure, use the two clips on the side and stick it under your hair to really lock it in place and keep your middle part flat down on your head. Look how nicely that hairline just blends in with your scalp. I think it looks so natural and that's not even using any baby hairs or anything. So now we're just going to get some more got-to-be gel just to lay down these ends so that nothing flies off and you also could use a bobby pin to stick them down even more. Now the artist, her, likes to wear her curls nice and big. She likes that volume, so I'm going to kind of pick it out a little bit to make it bigger. And I'm also going to use the natural curl pattern of this wig to keep that volume on the inside, but I'm going to create some bigger curls on the outside. So yes, I am going to grab a curling wand. I'm going to grab my Heat Protected by Myel Organics. This is something that's going to help protect my hair since this is real human hair and I don't want to get any heat damage.  Not on my watch, not on my watch. So now I'm going to grab random pieces and add a couple bigger curls all around the sides of my hair. And voila, the hair is complete. I think it looks so beautiful. I love the mixture of the natural smaller tighter curls and the big curls that I added. Look from behind, I literally look like her. Like I run up for an autograph. Like look at this. So happy with it. But let's continue with the look. Not only does she have her hair popping, she also has to have her accessories.  So I added some hoop earrings. And she also had on a really big Neon Jacket at the Grammys. So I found this one not designer, probably like 10 bucks from She-In. Now if you take a good look at her part here in the photo at the Grammys, she actually had some bling going all the way down. So I found some at Michael's craft store. This was like five bucks. I should have used a coupon. It would have been two. And these are just little like rhinestone stickers that would be perfect. So we're going to put this on our scalp, starting right at the front of the part, pushing it down and seeing how long you want to make it. Just about like midway through your head, cut out the length you desire, and then just stick it on there. I was hoping that the sticker on there would be enough, but it kind of just kept popping up. So then I grabbed my got to be gel again, got a little toothbrush, added it on there, and then pressed it down to keep it in place. And that is how I got the her Grammy look. But it would not be a her outfit without the most iconic accessory, her sunglasses. She never shows her face because she wants you to focus on just the music. Back with how we got to this look right here. I had so much fun creating this look. And if you guys want to get this wig for yourself or any other wig on the RPG show website, I have a coupon code for you guys. So before you check out, make sure you use code Bianca to save you some money. By the way, if you guys live in Aruba, I'm coming to you Memorial Day weekend because her is performing at the Soul Beach Music Festival. It's a really fun festival. There's beach parties, night parties, two days of concerts and a comedy show. Her is performing LMA, John Legend, Charlie Wilson. It's going to be so much fun. If you guys want to go, get your tickets. I'll link that below as well. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you give me a thumbs up and subscribe. I post two new videos every week, once on Friday and once on Sunday. And make sure to follow me on Instagram at Ms. Bianca Renee so you get daily beauty tips and you can see what I'm doing in my day-to-day life. I'll see you guys in my next video. Thanks for watching Bianca Renee today. It's like the morning time, don't wake up bad. It has any weekend two tickets that they just don't want anymore and they want to give them to me because I've helped you with your curls. Just let me know, just call me.