Good afternoon. My name is Scott Smith, I'm the director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia programs here at USIP. Thank you all for coming on a rainy day and to talk about maybe not also the most positive of stories but we'll see what comes out of these briefings. For me this discussion, this event, it's about Kunduz but it's about and what happened also about a lot more than that. I think all of us who are looking at this event have a sense that it was not just a blip, it was not like the falling of a district capital that then gets retaken. This was fairly serious in part because it reveals a lot of systemic problems and a lot of local dynamics and a lot of other issues that sort of reveal the state of conflict dynamics right now in Afghanistan. And for that reason I think it's worth looking both at specifically what happened a few weeks ago in Kunduz as well as some of these other dynamics that emerged out of it. And the first level of understanding I think are the very local level sort of actions of warlords, local leaders and so forth. And for this, Danny Dirksen published a few months ago a report on this history of DDR programs in Afghanistan and what that's left behind. And that was published, as I said, we have copies of it here and a lot of that sort of dynamic has contributed to why it happened that Kunduz fell so easily. So she'll discuss the local dynamics, then we'll move to sort of local and capital dynamics. Mr. Jalali who was a former Minister of Interior in Afghanistan will sort of discuss that. My sense in analyzing the unity government in Afghanistan has been that intuitively we have a feeling that the lack of unity and the lack of performance of this government has effects on the ground. And I think Kunduz is maybe a very clear example of a direct link between that lack of unity and weaknesses on the ground that allowed the city to be taken. Then of course others in this room will be better placed to say if I'm right or wrong about this, but I also think that the fall of Kunduz had a big impact on the decision that President Obama took to extend the troop level, the troop presence in Afghanistan beyond 2016. We all know that discussion has been underway for a long, long time, but this might have been a sort of catalyzing event or event that forced the timing of that decision. There's also a legitimate question of well it's the same number of troops, it's the same mandate, it's the same capabilities, you know what difference will it make in the next year. And Chris Calenda, who's been an advisor to three ISAF commanders as well as worked in the Office of Policy at the Pentagon will go through some of those issues. And then finally, Belki Samadi, who works on my team of USIP, will look at what I think has been a almost completely neglected feature of this story, which has been the humanitarian dimension and especially the issue of urban fighting and urban humanitarian catastrophes. And we haven't seen this since really the 1990s and I think it also has a psychological impact on Afghans as they sort of see a return of what was a very painful and very bloody history in the 1990s when you had sort of street to street fighting and the need to help massive urban populations with basic needs as water, sanitation and so forth, which is a problem that we haven't had to deal with really in the last 15 years, but now it's a problem which has come back. So with that brief introduction and sort of layout of how we'll address the topics, or at least how I hope partially to some degree the topics will be addressed, I'll hand it over to our panelists and after that as usual we'll have time for a question and answer from the audience. For those of you who are coming in, there are seats in the front which are available then they day over to you. Thanks Scott. Thanks USIP for inviting me today. So I will talk today about the local dynamics in Kunduz. How were the Taliban able to take Kunduz city? How in the months before did they capture the surrounding areas from where they launched their attacks on the city? Why did many of the Afghan security forces flee instead of fight? To answer these questions I will do the following. First let me give some background on Kunduz and then second I will look at three main themes of the past 14 years which I think will help explain why the Taliban were able to take Kunduz. Then I will look more closely at one of the areas where the Taliban launched their attack from and finally I will look at lessons from the Kunduz experience. The most central of which is that arming more militias to fight the Taliban as the government seems intent on doing will prolong the problem that it is meant to solve. First Kunduz history. Kunduz is ethnically diverse. It has Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Hazaras, Arabs and but the largest groups are Pashtuns. They originally immigrated from the south and these waves of immigration have triggered long-running conflicts over land, water and political representation that are still playing out today. They have gone through various stages in the past decades of war. People were mobilized during the jihad against the Soviets and then in the civil war in the early 90s and many Pashtun Mujahideen commanders joined the Taliban in the second half of the 1990s when they took a Kunduz city. So already in 2001 power was very contested in Kunduz and affiliations run along ethnic and factional lines. The international intervention reversed the power balance between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. The former jihadi parties who had been fighting the Taliban. These parties including Jamiati Islami, Jumbesh and Sayyaf's party divided up government positions in the Shura Yenazar faction of Jamiat party became especially powerful in the security sector of Kunduz because the security ministries in Kabul were under Shura Yenazar control in these early years. One of the themes of the past 14 years is this influence of the Shura Yenazar faction over the security apparatus in Kunduz and the Pashtun president pushing back by a point including proxies in government positions. Usually Pashtuns from his Islami or Sayyaf's party challenging Shura Yenazar influence but not quite succeeding in turning the table and this dynamic seems to have continued into the Ghani administration. In this case a young and well educated governor Omar Safi was appointed a Pashtun without jihadi connections and he made a big thing out of calling for the disarmament of the militias. But the police chief a supporter of a chief executive officer Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and member of Shura Yenazar put up fierce resistance and nothing came of it. So theme number one local government factions are working at cross purposes and this has led to a very weak government. A second theme of the past 14 years is that local officials and militia commanders have used anti Taliban operations to target personal rivals and their communities by labeling them Taliban. In particular it has been very difficult for some Pashtun communities. They're not well represented and especially not in the security sector. So theme number two many communities have been falsely accused of working with the Taliban and some have become disenfranchised not only Pashtun communities also other communities who are not part of the main political patronage networks. A third theme of the past 14 years is that the main factions in Kabul and in the provincial government support local militias to further their cause. A key moment here was the run up to the presidential elections in 2009 which coincided with the Taliban comeback in Kunduz. Different political factions used international and Afghan government support to fight the Taliban to actually support their militia commanders that were linked to them. Shuri and Nizar was very successful in this but other factions were also in on it. Some of these militias were illegal militias and others were part of official programs like the Afghan local police program. So three themes over the past 14 years. One local government factions linked to Kabul politics working at cross purposes leading to a very weak government. Some communities being excluded from local government and falsely accused of working with the Taliban. And three in enormous growth of militias over the past years and an increasingly fragmented and informal security landscape. So let's look east of Kunduz City. One of the three directions where the Taliban came from on the 28th of September. It's exemplary of the type of local dynamics of intra militia fighting that alienated the local civilian population and of the way that the Taliban was able to take over. The district is called Hanabat. It has different ethnic groups. The largest group is Pashtun. It has been flooded with militias since 2009. Some say around two and a half thousand men have been recruited and they're greatly outnumber the local police. I think there are about 150 local police. The people I've talked with said that many of the commanders are connected to someone called Mira Lam. He's not in the government but he's a former Jihadi commander and a provincial strong man linked to the Shura Yenazar faction. And he is said to have links to many of the illegal militia commanders, the AOP commanders and even has a lot of influence in the provincial police. And then there's another group in Hanabat with a major Pashtun strong man connected to Sayaf's party Dawat-e-Islami. These militia commanders continuously fight with each other and so that creates a lot of insecurity. For the local population these militias are a disaster. Children can't go to school. Boys are recruited into militias or even used as sex slaves. People are harassed when they pass checkpoints. Villagers are taxed. Militia commanders fight about the right to collect taxes. So every time there's a new commander in town people have to pay taxes again. And village elders try to mediate but they can't do much against these militias because they're backed by people higher up in Kabul. To give an example, 12 civilians were killed in a village east of Kundu city. It's called Kanam-i-Kalam and it's a mostly Pashtun village. This happened on the 2nd of September 2012. It was a revenge attack for the killing of a member of one of the militias. The villagers told me that the raid was carried out by two commanders with ties to Miralam. And Human Rights Watch and other organizations also investigated this and came to the same conclusion. There was also an official investigation. But people involved in this investigation told me they received phone calls from a high level member of the Kaza'i administration linked to the Suray-e-Nazar faction. Telling them to stop. So these two militia commanders remained free and kept operating just as before. Another example, one tribal elder from Kunduz told me he had to deal with three kidnapping cases in two weeks time. Two children and a businessman. The two children didn't survive it. He said that in one case the perpetrator, a militia commander, had confessed and was in jail but he was sure that he would be able to get out quickly with some help from people higher up. For the Taliban, Kunduz was a great opportunity. First, because of the weak government too busy fighting each other rather than doing what they're supposed to do, provide services to the local population. Second, because there are a lot of disenfranchised communities. And third, among the broader population there's an enormous frustration with these militias. So Taliban promised protection to communities from the militias. They promised lax taxes, justice, exactly what people are desperate to get. When I spoke with people from Kanam after what happened there some of them hinted that they had actually started supporting the Taliban. And this was happening also in other areas east of Kunduz City and also in the other directions that the Taliban came from on 28th of September. Some people supported the Taliban or also in many cases they did not support them but also did not support the government so there was room for them to come in. Or once the Taliban had a foothold in the area people were intimidated into supporting them. So it's not a positive choice for many people. They're just desperate with the government and inviting in the Taliban is also very risky because these are again armed men who are difficult to control for communities and often don't behave better than the militias. But people are stuck between a rock and a hard place and they wish that everyone would just leave them alone but they don't have the luxury to remain neutral. They have to choose. In late April the Taliban started their spring offensive in Kunduz and to control of the northwest of the city an area called Gortepa and then after that Chardara southwest of Kunduz City. Then in August they took control of part of Ghanabad I was just talking about east of Kunduz City and then on 28th September they took Kunduz City from these three directions so the northwest southwest and the east. After 15 days of fighting by the Afghan national defense and security forces with international help the Taliban were pushed out and what is the first thing that the Ghani government does it requests funding from the international community for more Afghan local police for more militias. Of course that government is in a very difficult position and the Kunduz example shows but the Kunduz example shows that deploying more militias is exactly why its own citizens turn against the government. Arming more militias is a dead end it's just perpetuating the conflict. Taliban will keep coming back again and again and also when it comes down to it militias often don't fight the Taliban but will just make a run for it as happened in some places in Kunduz because they're not loyal to the government but to individual strongmen. Obviously the capture of Kunduz shows organizational strength of the Taliban. There's the new leadership there's the role of Pakistan and these are all valid concerns. The Taliban are a major problem but they're also a symptom of something that goes wrong in an earlier stage and I've been traveling around Afghanistan for most of the past decade now especially looking at militias in the northeast and the southwest and USIP published my paper on this a few months ago and really one thing that I've found consistently is that locals everywhere become alienated from the government because political factions in Kabul and the international community back predatory local militias and officials and this offers a way in for the Taliban. The only way that the Afghan government can really stop the Taliban from taking another provincial capital and many are at risk. We're hearing about Bahlam next to Kunduz about Urusgan about Helmand in the south places I've done much research and I know that each place has its own set of issues that are similar problems are happening there and the only thing that the Afghan government can really do is to stop the infighting and work more closely together. I recognize it's all a long way off and the prospects look rather gloomy but to achieve any kind of stability in Afghanistan that's what needs to happen. They need to reconcile and eventually also to reconcile with Taliban factions and this also has to happen at the local level in Kunduz, in Bahlam, in Urusgan, in Helmand, in the other provinces and the U.S. it has much less of a presence now in Afghanistan but it still has huge leverage and it should keep pressing the Afghan government on these issues. Thank you. Thank you and that's actually a perfect lead-in to Ali's discussion but I also wanted to since the issue of militias came up I wanted to make another plug for another report we came out with in January of 2014 that looked at precisely this issue of militias. It looked at Kunduz as a case study and one of the conclusions it came to again this is nearly two years ago was once the international troops leave the balance of power on the ground is likely to shift in favor of the Taliban and this whole phenomenon of being stuck between a rock and a hard place and appealing to the Taliban was one of the things that seemed to be behind as you very well described the the local reasons for which Kunduz ended up being maybe far easier to take than even the Taliban imagined when they when they began pushing against that door. I was just speaking to somebody who I can't name because he or she is not authorized to speak in their own name but they have recently been in Afghanistan and pointed out that the closer you get to the center of power in Kabul the less serious the security situation seems to be. So maybe we'll take that as a starting point Ali for for your intervention. Thank you very much and good afternoon. I think Didi did a great job on focusing on the local politics which figures prominently in the politics of the nation and also in fighting this insurgency in Afghanistan. I will start out with the problem that is faced by Afghanistan today is a government that's weak institutions and strong personalities and it so happens that whatever you have in institutions they are influenced by these strong men whatever you have you have very you know the international community in Afghanistan people invested a lot in building the state institutions like police like army like other institution of the state but in the beginning the investment was slow and the dependence on strong men in order to fight terrorism by very you know light footprint of the international community actually made it very difficult for the institutions to develop into a kind of independent state institutions they were also influenced by strong men. One of these problems was between the relationship between center and peripheries and the local government and regional I mean provincial government and district governments were not given the authority to deal with the with the local problems that they face. Provincial government is a weak person he does not have he does not represent the central government in political terms because he does not have authority over other departments which are reporting directly to ministries in Kabul. A provincial government does not have a budget because his budget is the sum of the budgets of the department who are getting their money from the ministries in Kabul they cannot appoint people very easily. The most successful governor is the one who steals from different ways then he uses that money to make things happen so you have strong government governors and very weak governors the weakest are those who played by the books. During the past 14 years unfortunately the government reacted very hastily to challenges that they faced. In 2006 when there was an upsurge of violence and insurgency they rushed to tactical solutions they the first created this local police or the predecessor of the local police and in in the in term of six months they actually fled with their weapons and at the same time at those days that he would need to took over southern afghanistan and rist afghanistan and then later east of Afghanistan. Many of these countries came up and signed up for peacekeeping there was no peace to keep and many of these countries or who came did not have the capacity to fight insurgency war so this created that vacuum at that time. The rush to local police or militias to to fill the vacuum actually had a negative impact. At the same time politically the the country they took the local government from the minister of interior and created another entity the the independent director of local local ideology they called it. When I was minister of interior the the local government was under minister of interior police was under minister of interior it was very easy to coordinate the police and the and the governors and district administrators. After they were detached from the minister of interior the police were always defied the authority of the of the of the governor. This is what happened in kundus and the person who was appointed the kundus was was taken by the new government as is a pilot project is is is a is a kind of a province or that that that will receives more attention from the government. It was kundus, it was Nagar, it was Ghazni and Badgis. These were the the priority provinces but what happened because in the in the in the center there is a no unity in the government. There is a unity in the name but the two leaders of the government they have 50 50 percent authority of appointing people. So the person who was appointed as a governor he might be a nice person but he never been in the government. Never did you know a work in inside any local center government or local government. And the police chief was one of the five and shortlisted who was several times fired from other provinces. I was he was working for me in what time and then in Logar he was fired because he was accused of having you know cooperated in a conspiracy against this against the governor. And then the the the other the official that were appointed they were either related or connected to one leader or the other. So when they went there they were working against each other as rivals. In a counterinsurgency and insurgency war governments often defeat themselves. So they defeated themselves. Now let me look at the how this happened. People think that people say that this came as a surprise but given the situation in the in the in the north and particularly around Konduz in this year it's hardly a surprise. It was coming. I think late last year when Taliban was crafting a new strategy after the end of the combat missions of the international forces they actually switched to urban warfare. They started to go to urban warfare from guerrilla warfare in terrorism and in early winter there were a number of videos they spread around showing how the ways and means of conducting an urban warfare which signified that they wanted to take one major city. If this had succeeded that to take one or two major cities the insurgency would turn into civil war. That was the idea for the World War Fair that it was came to many people notice it in the end of 2014. Now why Konduz was the first target for an urban warfare? There are many reasons for it. One is that there was a heavy footprint of insurgency in the north particularly around Konduz. In 2014 when these surge fighters went to the north many of them were concentrated around Konduz. On the other hand many foreign fighters including churches, Pakistanis, Arabs and others they brought their families even to the north and in three out of seven districts of Konduz province with hundreds of families of foreign fighters were took residence there. Then the operation in Pakistan pushed many of these fighters into Afghanistan into production into also north around Konduz and so there was a concentration of these forces. On the other hand they said very well that the local militias actually give some local Taliban legitimacy by default. They didn't like Taliban they don't want them to come back but for them the militias are worse than the Taliban. Somebody told me that a Taliban commander will come will ask you for attacks annually and only one commander will do this but the militias four or five of them will come several times and tax you for several things. So this was another reason that Konduz was talking. And finally at this functional government in Konduz. In Konduz there were the as I said before the governor the chief of police the intelligence and other heads of the departments were not working together with each other. I think the governor wanted several times to crack down on militias which he was ruled out by people in Kabul. So that was dysfunctional government. Now why it was not a surprise because it was coming. Pakistan's I mean Taliban were proactive while governors reacted. In April the when the Taliban started their operations during the operations they took Gortepa as they they said. It is northwest of the in that the government never tried to take it back. Even in May when ANA sent gene forcements to Konduz they didn't go there but the only thing they did was to establish gates around Konduz. The gates to Al-Khanabad, the gates to Al-Aliabad, the gates toward Imam Sahib. And they actually took a very I mean defensive posture and left agility and initiative to the Taliban. Now if you look at the correlation of forces the existed forces in the north and around Konduz is seven times more than the troops of Taliban or fighters of Taliban. However the government troops were in defensive position. In 2010-2009-2011 when U.S. special forces launched aggressive raids on Taliban, they disappeared. Some of them were killed, some of them went to Pakistan. That vacuum was not felt. So therefore the the army or the police were in defensive position. The Taliban were able to take the time in place of the attack. And then in June they took over Dashti Archie. They took over also the Chardara established in the north, in the Al-Aliabad. In August they took Akhtar, the eastern part of the so they actually surrounded the demon. Now the jet of Mu'laumar when Taliban, some of the Taliban went to Pakistan in order to participate in a meeting or a gathering to elect the new leader, nobody took advantage of this situation in order to push the Taliban out of the surrounding districts of Konduz. After that the tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan created a new opportunity for the Taliban, particularly for Mu'laumar who wanted to legitimize their leadership to a Shoa force. Then through cooperation with the Peshawar Shora they actually finalized the plan to attack Konduz. In order to support that idea I think these supplies were moved from Pakistan to Konduz. The question is when all these things happened where were the intelligence service of the Afghan government? I was told that after the April operation it was decided that Konduz is the weak link in the defense of the north so they have to launch an operation in order to drive the militias out of the districts around Konduz. But then the Badakhshan insurgency happened when the insurgents from Khustak took over Jerm and Warduj and killed many local police there. So the attention was shifted to Badakhshan that actually cleaves the situation in Konduz. And then after the death of Mu'laumar there was a false hopes in Kabul that the talks of Marie would be followed by other peace talks. However when the situation changed and there was mistrust between Afghanistan and Pakistan became very acute and out of, you know, dashed all these hopes then the operation against Konduz supported by Pakistani, you know, intelligence became finalized. Now what happened in Konduz in fact? It was attack from three sides and during the heed festivities when everybody was out they infiltrated their men into the city with their weapons. Now it is very difficult to distinguish between people in the districts and in Konduz. They can easily go inside the Konduz. So it was a Trajan horse they created there and then the three attacks from three sides from Akhtash from Chardara and from Gortepa actually succeeded in a matter of hours. And people say that there were thousands of police there. Many of them were not there. Many of them were ghost policemen so they disappeared. And the some of the army fought there but the government and the leader fled to the airport so the city was left leaderless. It took two weeks with the help of the U.S. strikes to recapture. It's always easy to defend the city than to recapture because then you have to fight house to house. The the fraternity in Konduz actually signifies several things. First of all the low force to space ratio that Afghan government has. Afghan government, Afghan national security forces are very successful when they launch an operation clear an area but they do not have that capacity to hold it forever. This was the problem that the Soviets had too. They would launch many sweeping operations. They would clear the area. The insurgents would go underground or leave the area or hunker down but then they would come back. I think it was the chief general staff of the Soviet Union once he told the Central Committee that there is no place in Afghanistan that the Soviet army has not visited but still 70 percent of the area is not under government control because holding the area is very now with the operational Konduz actually most of the job was done by special forces army special forces and then the brigade that from the corps which is in Konduz they went and held the area. Now how long they can hold this area? Now they are operating in Dasherchi and also in Chardarat. It will be successful if they can find a way to hold it. Now how you hold it? The solution that they found that the governor found in the past was to create militias, local police and sometimes they call it the civil uprising I didn't thought about. They are all the same, all the same. Now militias in Afghanistan is a part of history in Afghanistan but that when militia can be effective and successful when it responds to the community either it is a tribe or either a mahala or a kind of a city or a village when they are from there they defend their homes then it is effective or it's a tribe these militias were not created by government never they were created by the people the tribes the tribe uses their own mechanism to create these militias and they're divided to to the people and they are responsible to them they have a police arbaka is not a militia is a police for militia is a police for for the tribal participation in and the defense so they they are they were effective in the past only when it was responsible created by the community and responsible to the community but now during the 30 years the situation has changed there was in the past you have a formal authority that was the government there was traditional authority that was tribe that was mosque that was a village that was mahala whatever during these 30 years a third center of authority emerged that the color derivative authority through money guns in support from foreign countries or foreign entities whatever you or NGOs that derivative power is now has destroyed that relationship that was in the past that and any war in afghanistan the past you see it was the army and also the community it was the the defense was army in the community both of only when the are the the tribe community and the the state institutions are part of one system it works when that system is broken tribes and communities take their own way they find their own way so to conclude there are a number of points to take note as a result of what happened in in kunduz first security cannot be achieved without the old government approach it is the governance it's economic issues it is security it is the army it's the police whatever you call it that security is not only can provide it by the arm in many cases when a security force protect the government from people it does not sustain when security post protects the government and also people from from lawbreakers then it could sustain kunduz was lost by dysfunctional government in predatory militia and recovered by formal institutions during the recapture of of of kunduz no militia participated no militia took part no only official or formal institutions took part that's with the army that the police some local police there were some people in the south at pharma jahidin who mobilized people wanted to go and save kunduz and i'm happy that they did not go there because the army and police did a great job to recapture kunduz and kunduz actually the government defeated itself correlation of forces in favor of the government as but ineffective use of ways and means caused the situation in kunduz and in particular and in the north in general to be destabilized afghanistan national i mean local police or militia works only when it's responsible to the community not to individuals like the individual that did he mentioned that milalam and qadrak or gecha or some others the division within the afghanistan unity government extends to the lowest unit of government in undermines effectiveness it actually seeps into the local into the provincial government then to district government then all the way to villages lack of coordination between the security forces emanates from institutional confusion and lack of mission clarity in divergent divergent professional cultures now as a legacy of the soviet era the the line between army police and intelligent has blurred become blurred in those days the army was army that they turned police into a fighting force sarandoy they call it and turned intelligence into a police police spying on people in the country so that line actually was never became solid again police is fighting armies fighting intelligence is fighting but they are with different cultures different perspectives and then the shift responsibility blaming on one each other now in uh i think it was in that spring with in in the operations in the car in the south that when the area was cleared there was a days of debate between police and army who should hold this area now said you are you are trained for this the army to hold a slave police as responsible for the area so it took days in order to defy who should hold the area after it was cleared the intelligence fighting too instead of focusing on intelligence they are focusing on going after people and also fighting without coordinating it with army or with police this spring in donggong the intelligence helped one village to rise against taliban without telling the army without telling the police and then when they when they actually stood up against the taliban the taliban called people from other side of the duran line and then police and army fought both so this is the kind of a problem that the history needs to be fixed i will stop here and thank you very much thank you i think i mean you said something that i think sums it up perfectly which is it was lost by dysfunctional government and militias and then regained by formal institutions but i think we can add formal institutions backed by obviously international forces as well clearly things haven't quite gone according to the way we thought we had planned it so chris maybe you can make some comments on on on that what is the strategy going forward what are the implications from this side of you know from from washington of the fall of of kunduz so i'll i'll try to draw on that thank you thank you scott thank you for to usip for this event and this opportunity i also want to you know express my sort of admiration for the afghan people what they're going through today uh with the with the uh you know very devastating earthquakes that that struck yesterday or or a couple days ago and uh thoughts and prayers to to uh those affected in their loved ones you know as i sort of looked at the situation in kunduz and followed that and then i hear uh you know did and and uh and ali jalali discussed in detail the uh the issues the thing that sort of strikes me about kunduz is if i were to sort of wrap this up is kunduz failed at that point or the defense of kunduz failed and the country is failing because success is nobody's top priority and when you think about that it's really it's really quite interesting success is not the government's top priority too often the government's top priority is kleptocratic behavior and self enrichment it's too often not the top priority of afghan elites too often that self enrichment and personal aggrandizement you can say the same thing about the taliban uh and you can say the same thing about regional and international actors the success of the country is nobody's top priority now there's certainly some individuals who see the country success as a top priority but it's not enough and to me that in many ways explains kunduz and and explains the situation that the country is in and the trajectory that it's following now the good news about kunduz now try to end with some good news uh as i as i work work my way through this is that it represents a real opportunity for change and a real opportunity for change before it's too late to make it too often a day of reckoning comes when it's too late to affect the necessary change to succeed i don't think we're there yet and i hope kunduz represents an opportunity uh that afghan elites and others can seize upon to actually first of all make the country success their top priority and second of all for international actors to get behind that i think there are five interrelated realities that were unmasked by by kunduz which leads me to this broader conclusion or broader set of conclusions the first one is that the afghan government is failing to win the battle of legitimacy in contested areas it may have the battle won the battle of legitimacy in areas in which our traditional strongholds but in contested areas it is failing to win the battle of legitimacy and that's due to all of the things that didi and and and ali mentioned a political dysfunction the predatory kleptocracy and and the utter absence of accountability within the system i mean i mean even a taliban has got a complaints commission where people can call up and say there's a local actor that's predatory the afghan government doesn't have that analog or at least they haven't had it uh if they do it's a it's a very new thing and it's not and it's not functioning second the government of national unity is only one of those three things elites are insufficient insufficiently serious about success within the government and there's some very interesting data points that i think prove that point first of all there's been little to no effort at the substantive political reform to begin the process of dismantling this predatory kleptocracy afghanistan has ranked in the top three in a transparency international corruption perceptions index for several years maybe it'll be a little bit better this year but there's still a major problem that is not being addressed even though there are individuals in the government that are trying very hard to address it they're being blocked and spoiled and stymied every step of the way by people with too much to lose by reform second we've been unable to pass electoral reform we had a we had an election in 2015 that was hugely problematic and despite efforts to bring together coalitions to address electoral reform that has fallen flat and are we serious about the war well we can't get confirmed a minister of defense are we serious about kleptocracy and political reform we can't get an attorney general confirmed these data points suggest to me that the government of national unity is only one of the three and not sufficiently serious as a corporate body about success third afghanistan is becoming increasingly economically unsustainable it is burning the candle at both ends on the one hand you've got huge security expenditures because of this war that is on the one hand dealing with an industrial-scale kleptocracy or insurgency excuse me and it's made worse by the predatory militias that we've heard so much about and and the local internal fighting so that's burning the candle on one end and on the other end is the capital flight from the from the predatory kleptocracy and this is going to make this burning the candle at both ends will be increasingly problematic in the near future fourth uncertainty is feeding malign hedging behaviors both internal and external it's a classic prisoner's dilemma where where most people recognize the benefits of a of a peaceful outcome in afghanistan most actors recognize the benefits of political reform in afghanistan but nobody trusts the others enough to take any step or to take any risk to bring to help bring it about and to bring this to the military so this is my fifth reality unmasked is that a military-centric campaign is incapable of surmounting this sort of political dysfunction and in fact the military efforts might even be making things more vulnerable so first of all five thousand troops international troops or 10 000 when you add everybody is far less than 140 000 the likelihood that this force plus the afghan national security and defense forces are going to force the taliban to surrender i think does not pass the straight face test if it didn't happen when you had 140 000 international troops and roughly 300 000 afghan security forces it's not going to happen at a much lower level a second of all is as ali mentioned that the weakened bad governance problems and and the fact that there's no real strategy to believe in there's no strategy for success that either the afghan government has developed or has been developed jointly between the afghan government and and its international partners and so what is happening with the military efforts is uh you have a an area that becomes vulnerable due to weakened bad governance due to predatory behavior due to taliban behavior uh that then creates a major crisis the afghan national security forces come in and a tactically impressive operation get rid of the sort of flashpoint you know the problem and then they leave and instead of then rehabilitating the patient the community the city with good governance and with economic support and and and healing if you will we instead bring the predators back in that make the community then more vulnerable and then over time this just creates a recipe in which the ultimately works in favor of the of the taliban and unfortunately we may see more conduces to come and there's a doomsday scenario involved with this even though the president obama has made the decision to keep 5000 troops in country the doomsday scenario is that by 2018 or 2019 or pick your date the international community just gets fed up and donor fatigue leads to conclusions that people say why are why are we pouring millions of dollars and risking the lives of tens of thousands of international uh soldiers and civilians to sustain a never-ending conflict that is just simply seems to be bank rolling a bunch of elites who are uh making tremendous profits off of this conflict uh and and no reform is in sight and if that happens and international donors pull troops and then pull funding you can get a political or fiscal crisis that leads to a political crisis in which the afghan state unravels and i think that is a scenario uh that uh that not only is will create a tremendous humanitarian disaster and it's certainly not something that the afghan government would want but is is is also something that uh i think the even the taliban would find themselves um on the wrong end of that so there are ways to address the problem i'll lay out five of them very briefly first and foremost we need to put first things first and we ought to we ought to have a series of conversations between the us in particular as a principal backer and the afghan government that assesses the current situation and actually develops a strategy to bring this war to a successful conclusion i find it interesting that the taliban every year can do an assessment and develop a whole of government strategy as they would define it and yet in 14 years of this war there has never been a joined up us afghanistan strategy for success wrap your mind around that we have military campaign plans but they're tethered to absolutely nothing there is no joined up strategy for success it's time to develop one in which we get both governments on the same sheet of music and towards a common outcome now if that common outcome is we want to inflict a military defeat and force the taliban to surrender all right we got to figure out how to do that my conscious that's probably not going to be realistic if that is well let's bring this war to a successful negotiated outcome develop a peace process in which the afghan government has the predominance of leverage then i think that's far more realistic far more doable second and and interconnected with this is a real political reform plan that the us and the international community afghan government get on get on board with with appropriate conditionality to where on the one hand the afghan government is actually earning the earning legitimacy actually dedicates itself to winning the battle of legitimacy in the contested areas and there's appropriate accountabilities and benefits for performance along political reform third is we've got to begin setting conditions for a peace process the one utility of the five thousand soldiers us soldiers in about ten thousand internationals it's not going to force the taliban to surrender but what it may do is bring about a mutual recognition between the afghan government and a taliban that they are in fact in a strategic stalemate and at the cost of further military efforts to try to achieve marginal gains is going to be far outweighed by the benefits but that recognition on the part of both parties is not enough they also have to know or believe that there is a compelling alternative path and setting those conditions right now for a peace process a dignified peace process in which the afghan government has got more leverage or has got as much leverage as it possibly can offers the best hope of bringing this war to a successful conclusion and bringing it to a conclusion that respects the the efforts and the gains of the of the past 14 years and respects the aspirations of of afghans fourth the military campaign needs to look very different a lot of military efforts are actually in intelligence efforts ought to be dedicated towards targeting opponents of the peace process the taliban like any other organization has a has a spectrum involved with it and and the most egregious actors the most the actors most opposed to a peace process ought to be much higher up on the you know on the military campaign plan list and and develop different ways to engage with those who might be more amenable to a peace process but that requires a strategic decision about what direction this war is going to go and then using your military instrument and your intelligence instruments and others to actually begin to make that outcome more likely and fifth of course there's a critical regional dimension to this not everything that's going wrong in afghanistan is pakistan's fault but pakistan's got a is a is a malign actor in the region or they've engaged in malign behavior in the region that they believed have been in their interest but it's certainly not in the interest of of afghanistan and they are not the only country in the region that has has used malign activity due to uncertainty and and hedging behavior so so developing a construct in which the region can get behind a reasonably and an acceptable path forward for afghanistan is is critical so i guess at the end of the day the question really revolves around well afghan elites will enough afghan elites finally make success their country's success at top priority kunduz i hope is a wake-up call i hope is a forcing function for that day of reckoning to happen and if it happens now there's still an opportunity for success if it happens too late then then i think that opportunities may pass us by i thought you said you're going to give us some good news in there but uh if there was some good news there was those five constructive proposals on on on going forward i think that you put them very well and and focused on on on the right things so we've had kind of a political and a security analysis of kunduz and we've seen the city fail the city was re overtaken or retaken by the government we can sort of you know check the box but at the human level i think you know some other things have happened and i was struck by an anecdote i read in a news account about a woman who left she fled to cobble and she said i'm never going back to a kunduz because you know this the north is gone or something like that i was struck also uh again this is just an anecdote but apparently as as we all know the number two nationality of those who are the wave of migrants fleeing into europe are afghans and apparently among those a large number from kunduz apparently after the first attempt to take the city uh in in april people sort of drew their own conclusions um as as ali said this was not a surprise um so there's a big huge dimension here which we haven't really looked at too closely given the the focus on the on the on the political and and the military side of it but belkis you can i was hoping you'd say a few words about that dimension sure thank you so last month today's the 28th of october last month on this day the taliban forces launched an attack on kunduz uh rewind 19 years to 1996 also the last week of september the taliban took control of Kabul Kabul city Kabul province although with far less loss of lives and destruction the psychological impact of taliban's rules restricting people's lives and the brutal treatment of men women and even children are very vivid in the minds of afghans especially those who lived under the taliban the unfortunate events in kunduz a few weeks ago brought back those memories for afghans inside and outside afghanistan so back to kunduz within hours of entering um the city the taliban opened the doors of the central prison fleeing some 660 prisoners that included 111 taliban detainees um most of those freed were convicted of murder sexual assault theft and robbery the fate of um i believe 57 children who are in the juvenile detention center as well as 35 female prisoners is unknown there are claims that the either the taliban or the male prisoners took the women and children with them that needs to be established so the taliban attacked governmental and nongovernmental and media offices in a systematic way during the following 48 hours after entering the city the offices of the government governor police department national security department and other governmental offices fell into the hands of the taliban almost all government offices including the um provincial branches of the ministries um were looted as well as the office of the afghan independent human rights commission uh some schools universities and civil society organizations uh the uh unama's office was burned down so were some other governmental and nongovernmental organizations so what did the taliban advance uh mean for people in condos first of all civilians were caught in crossfire between government forces and the taliban which in some areas continued for almost two weeks we are talking about 15 days of no water drinking water and no electricity human rights organizations including amnesty international human rights watch the afghan independent human rights organization commission women for afghan women and other civil society organizations have sense reported widespread and grave human rights violations while the extent and gravity of the violation still needs to be determined i would like to summarize what human rights organizations and civil society groups have reported so far first targeted killing of civilians so taliban had a head list of individuals those who worked for the government and those who worked for the NGOs when they entered the city they went street by street door to door knocked at people's doors and asked where those individuals were they even paid children to tell them who those individuals were the lackuance managed to escape um there have been reports of government employees being dragged out of their homes and their bodies were brutally mutilated bodies were found later on and the afghan independent human rights commission has confirmed it witnesses have also said that 15 civilians were shot dead along the road in maydana puhta while they were fleeing their homes sexual violence human rights and women's rights organizations have reported horrific stories of sexual assault rape and gang rape of women um female members of security afghan security forces government employees and women's rights and human rights organizations although the exact number may not ever be established because in afghan um culture or in afghanistan sexual violence is grossly under reported due to the culture of silence and uh stigmatization surrounding that using civilians as human shield so once uh in the residential areas the Taliban positioned their forces and military installation in people's houses and they did not allow civilians to leave their homes and they were forced to feed and um provide shelter for their fighters the afghan human rights commission reports the Taliban took more than 100 civilians and personnel of the security forces as hostages their fate and whereabout remains unknown the issue of internally displaced people again establishing the exact figure is challenging but some sources have reported that the number is around 17 000 families roughly about 100 000 people they have been displaced from their homes and they took refuge in Kabul and also in the surrounding provinces Tachar, Varlan, Balkh, Samanggan and Badakhshan um Condos city the population is estimated to be around 300 000 so for almost two weeks people were without drinking water and electricity now a little bit about the emissive hospital or trauma center on october 3rd as a result of an airstrike the hospital which is also referred to as a trauma center lost 24 people died of which 13 were the hospital staff members and 19 staff members were injured this is in addition to 10 patients killed and 18 patients injured emissive has emissive was not the only health facility in the city i'll talk about the number of health facilities later but emissive has decided not to reopen the hospital until an independent investigation has taken place and that they have assurance that this will not happen again emissive has also called on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission that's a body that was established in the early 1990s to investigate the attack but this commission can only initiate an investigation if they're asked by a concerned state and also one of the involved states have consented to the investigation so that's where they are now now about the current situation as of today and yesterday security situation still remains volatile Taliban have dispatched fighters from paktia and host to the area still under control of the Taliban in Kunduz province a multi-sector rapid needs assessment is still to take place because of security that hasn't taken place although the government and some civil international NGOs have done their own initial assessment of the situation the Afghanistan national disaster management authority ANMA has taken steps to track the returnees again it's very difficult to establish that but just on the 26th that was two days ago they said some 40 to 70 families are returning to kunduz on daily basis which is a good news yeah but because of the earthquake that triggered landslides the road from talakhan to kunduz's block now which may delay families returning to their homes as well as the delivery of humanitarian packages to those areas it's also expected that resources dedicated to kunduz may have to be shifted to the areas affected by the earthquake the united nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs or unitary has reported that 60 of the 65 health facilities in kunduz province is has now reopened they are functional the ministry of public health along with w h o iclc msf and other health organizations have provided medical supply to those facilities the ministry of public health has also relocated some of their staff from other provinces to kunduz but after the earthquake the situation has changed they have to go back to their provinces also according to yunichah there are 500 schools in the entire province we are talking about the population of roughly one million 500 schools of which 487 have reopened as of the day before yesterday and only 13 remain closed so while the talaban are currently out of the city the psychological effect is going to stay there for many many years and people not only need emergency kids they also need psychological counseling especially those who have been directly affected by what the talaban did in the past couple of weeks thank you thanks i mean i thanks also both the bell keys and and and chris for reminding us that on top of the political and security dimension of the taking of kunduz and the retaking of it we also have this earthquake which now complicates any sort of return to normality anyway i think that was uh those were excellent presentations um we will now open it up to any questions on any of the issues that have been raised or any other sort of issues that you think our panelists can help with yeah we just bring it up yeah a microphone is on the way that was a good description of the situation we know what happened the only thing that i heard that is important is that this functionality of the government this is the cause now talking about taking back kunduz or where it doesn't mean very much because at any time talaban can gather 1 000 people and capture a problem mr. gerrally knows that but what we didn't touch is the root of the problem the root of the problem is that the people don't feel themselves protected by the government the government doesn't do much for the people for the people to cooperate with the government and this is against this this functionality you can put back 120 000 soldiers in afghanistan the same game back and forth will continue now the root of the problem is that we have to help the government of afghanistan step by step not only for compassion and money because there are a lot of money in comparison spending afghanistan so my question to all of you is what is the way the plan to go through to help afghanistan to become functional and to help eat ministry in a distant with the this functionality exists in the ministry currently so how to do it i think my idea is that afghanistan government must develop a kind of sister ship with the same kind of organization government and organization united safe of germany or france or whatever to help them step by step on their work thank you okay i mean i think in fairness there was some attention paid to the fact that the government and the local population the government wasn't protecting the local population i'll give everybody a shot at answering this who wants to but i have to say whenever you hear that question i always ask myself as well what is the plan for afghans to also fix their ministries there's been no shortage of technical advice there's been no shortage of of planning of national development plans of interim national development plans and so forth that's just my prefatory comment i don't know if anybody wants to take a shot at how to fix the afghan government in three minutes i mean one of the so one of the challenges and you make you make a great point that people need to be served feel served and protected and part of the challenge is that for too much of the afghan government and there are there are officials who are doing their their very best but for too much of the government good governance is not their priority there are plenty of resources in afghanistan there are plenty of international resources but in eclectocracy people pay a lot of money to buy their positions and they don't it's not like a donation to the government where they're paying 50 to 100 or 150 or 250 thousand dollars to be a governor or police chief there's an expectation that they will make that money back and turn a profit and all this like the government over time became this gigantic vacuum cleaner like a 400 headed vacuum cleaner 399 headed vacuum cleaner that inhales money and resources funnels them to power brokers and super empowered people in the center who then blasted out to offshore banks in dubai and doha and other places so until that logic changes and it can't change overnight because there are too many people entrenched in that system too many people too much to lose it has to change gradually and over time it has to be it has to nudge in the right direction but until that until that begins to change just putting more money into the into the effort it's not gonna work it it actually i i guess i'll just i'll just agree with scott i think it actually begins with the recognition that good governance and the success of our country actually has to be a top priority and once that happens then i think a lot a lot of change takes place thank you okay um i have two questions for his excellency uh aliyah marja lali uh first did the international forces and national government have prior clue about the attack in kunduz uh if yes why it was not hindered before taking over kunduz province uh and why the air forces did not show up during the preparation stages of the insurgence while it was used back then one question and the second one um the second question of mine is uh where did the insurgent go we say that okay kunduz is empty now where the insurgents did the insurgent go why they are not chased to leave the afghan territory or going to be killed still there in afghanistan territory and uh my comments for mr criss one of the problem of the strategy failure is the miscommunication in false data provided to the u's government use good use government do not work with the local afghan and the afghan american are not mostly updated thanks and i just let me just add the uh i think at the beginning i uh noted that although it was the scene is a surprise attack but uh by no means it was not unexpected unexpected because the situation in the north and around kunduz was such that attack on kunduz was a matter of time and the reason that uh i asked some people in carvel in april and um and june that uh about the situation in the north particularly after the april attack of uh taliban in in the north and i was told that they are aware of it that kunduz is a weak place however there are priorities the first priority in that part was badakshan at that time you know in badakshan the insurgents attacked and took over germ which is a very critical area in in the badakshan area it connects with warduj which unfortunately it is now under kathalaban control and it connects with chatrall across the border there so everybody scrambled to find ways in order to stabilize this journey kunduz if there was only one battalion and kunduz all kunduz area one company they were deployed in 26 security posts so that was seen a very important so the the attention shifted from there to badakshan and then other other things kept it is nobody can can can can imagine that what all what happened in kunduz were there in the north this year one would not see kunduz is a weak point on the other hand the reason that expedited the situation were you know intensified the situation was the bad government in kunduz so it was it was expected that will happen that because of the lack of communication lack of coordination lack of the of the kind of a harmony inside the government nobody could set the priorities right straight and you know where the Taliban went they are still there they are not in kunduz but then in chardara they are there they are in archi they are in lamseh today they took over darkad you know darkad is a is a is a is a is a island island within the omu river and it's it's a district of taqar province and it has a really long history there's one of the the the only island the only territory of afghanistan that was took over by the soviet the first time and the style so uh they are there but the the the the the question is that how they can use ways and means under the government control to deal with Taliban you know Taliban's are they they as i said before the number of afghan security forces in the north is seven times more than Taliban but they have to be in that kind of a situation you have to be agile agility agility means to take action before the enemy that's that that is the problem i think and this would be coming from different uh institutional confusion different cultures lack of training lack of leadership all these things combined makes very difficult in many cases the the local police or they do not move out of the wire while in that kind of a situation you have to set ambushes you have to set raids and launch raids in order to be in order to be aggressive in ii against the Taliban otherwise sitting in static places fixed areas they will come after you instead of they come after you you have to go over after them i remember one battalion commander in the war that area that's this year in the spring he had one battalion that area and he used that that ambushes raids intelligence and he established security in that what they get in chak area that that's a district in a matter of months this is the way to do it but why it's not happening it are so many things so many complications within the government within the government last central government within the the the local government with all the power brokers with all the interest groups with all the foreign interference it is it is very complicated situation but if you ask me where the Taliban are they are still there yeah i think to build on Ali's point if if fixing this was easy it had been done by now and i can count at least five people in this room who have put a tremendous amount of personal and professional energy into you know into addressing these these problems and it's it's just hugely complicated and hugely difficult i mean some of the most talented people in the u.s. government and and you know with Ali's mentorship you know have tried really really hard on this but i think it gets back to this sort of recognition that we actually have to take responsibility for our own success and and recognize come to grips with the the things that are standing in our in our own way you've got to stop the self sabotage the the point that you made about the bad info you're exactly right we spent a lot of time up on in too many cases being used as a pawn in somebody else's blood feud and yeah and and for for many years in the conflict especially in the earlier years where it was where it was especially acute you know people with for their own personal agendas may have blood feud with somebody may have wanted somebody's land somebody's water rights may have had a political rival would just go to a guy like me who was a task force commander out in kunar in ura stand one day and just say hey smith is taliban go get him and then if he was really smart he would get a couple of other people to say yo smith is taliban go get him and us forces international forces would too often fall into these traps of going after people who had nothing to do with the conflict and everything to do with being a personal rival of another person and uh yeah and and and that really that phenomenon i'm doing a report with open society foundations uh on civilian harm in afghanistan and lessons learned and that was one of the big ones um where where this really accelerated uh the growth of the taliban it undermined the relationship between the us and the afghan government it undermined the legitimacy of the international mission and it undermined the legitimacy of the afghan government uh so this is a big problem and and i've got personal experience with this and you when i came into kunar in ura stand in the summer of 2007 eastern ura stand was one of the one of the most violent areas of the country and four of my soldiers were killed in the first 90 days and dozens wounded uh essentially fighting a fighting an insurrection that had its roots in this kind of behavior where an individual who got close to us forces convinced him to target a locally powerful incredible individual that happened that individual decided that he's got no alternative but to fight back and 90 of the population was right with him now fortunately i was on a 15 month tour so i had some quality time to think about this and and over time we were able to recognize what had happened and then begin to address it now i've now met with this individual seven times in fact it may be the only real commander to commander sort of relationship like it in this in this conflict but it that that issue really strikes home to me for those reasons and i appreciate you pointing that out and and we have to look very hard as uh you know within the u.s. government and how we avoid that from happening again and it's not just enough i'm sorry going on too long but people say well that's just afghanistan well last summer i was in the island of jersey of all places a channel island and jersey was occupied by the nazis in the second world war and there's a there's a a bunker in a tunnel complex they used to be a hospital and a command and control and and stuff and and there's a memorial to the the occupation and the struggles that people went through it and sure enough of course there were people on on all sides of the conflict and sure enough there were people from jersey who were using the germans to go after their personal rivals was like you know it just this is this is actually a systemic problem that that we have to we have to be very careful about all right let's go to maybe this side of the room and uh as we hand the microphone over i've been reminded by both old technology and new technology that i forgot to say please identify yourself before you ask your question your name and who you're affiliated with thank you very much uh my name is sami olas i'm sur i'm doing my public affairs taking my master from eugenia international university and we're here for 16 months uh i have a comment uh overall on the tunnel on the condos fall however national intelligence uh director he clearly told to the afghan people that they wore a taliban in condo in the fall was controlled from pakistan and no one is talking about pakistan it is controlled from pakistan and so this is pretty much clear for afghan people that the war was not taliban that that was definitely pakistan military to be clear second from my own uh experience i've been to pakistan in 2012 i think it's november i was with my father he had a kind of disease of heart he had was going to do in geography in rahman milko there was a friend of mine and he came after me that comment you you will be my guest when i went there all the people were radicals around the area that i was living one night their madrasas their arab people their afghans radicals and the most entrusted that was what for me uh there was a kind of system in their uh telecommunication i don't know from which operator they were receiving kind of messages from mark tires from killing of afghan from inside afghanistan for example a taliban is coming and kill someone they will receive message or they'll be very happy oh we killed this much people considering all these these these uh status so it's very clear that who is doing what and uh in the same time uh so that was my comment uh and my question is there a question my question is to be clear mister uh his excellency aliyah manjali he put a very nice point what was holding opposition to be secure our national army will go and they will kick out all talibans but who will hold these areas back there's no uh backup and the backup is directly depends on two things the first is afghan air force we have nothing regarding that up to which time will americans or air force will help afghan security forces and the second one about the local police the local police uh i think this will be uh the they're they're putting local police in areas that for example they will put uh can you ask the question please yeah i know we have other people who are the local police they will put local police in all in turn for example and all around will be talibans and there's no backup for those local police so how who will help those people to at least defend themselves thank you very much well i think i earlier noted that the final stage of the attack on kunduz was helped by uh elements in pakistan uh some reports uh quoting taliban sources uh indicate that while for a while for some time for a few when the peace process or the talks were going on there was some kind of a restrain on the operation of taliban reaction of taliban but once that situation changed and uh roly mansoor wanted to legitimize his leadership he convinced some of the elements in pakistan to help the operation in kunduz which was planned accordingly to the sources of taliban by qari baryal qari baryal is a major commander of the pishaw shura if you know him he was very active in tagaw and uh copies our area for for many years and he is from his beslami and later on he joined the taliban and he belonged to the pishaw shura and uh according to these reports that he could supply only 20 percent of his needs for the operation in kunduz and the rest was sent to him from pakistan that's the reason that afghan sources say that pakistan was involved in this but uh it is it is always the the the fact that taliban has their basis in pakistan without the supplies from pakistan without their sanctuaries in pakistan uh they cannot move freely into afghanistan you know they have uh their vehicles have permits from my side to move freely in pakistan if they take their permits from them they cannot move on pakistan so it is it is something that well known uh but what they with regards to the militia is that security by a local police or by by by afghan national police whatever securities is is is effective only when it's a part of a system part of a system i means that security posts create the sufficient time and space for reaction and if it is not supported by the reaction force to go and uh and uh deal with the with the with the with the with the threat the security force itself can fight only ours and then it will just be with the wipe out it should be part of us if you cannot support a security post in time you actually sacrifice it then you don't need to put that security force there you cannot i think it was uh the uh during the soviet operation they you refer to the air force air force can can be used as a force multiplier but not not a substitute of our force they can use it to multiply force for that reason the soviet posts could be sustained could be kept for years because they were supported by air supplied by air and uh but this this can be a force multiplier not a substitute for force tati did you want to add something on the local police yeah the local police as i said the local police is successful when i said that it is responsible to the community and created by the community look at that security for the uh the the local police in aghanda in kandar look at khakris khakris was very insecure area unstable area when it is but now khakris is much better aghanda because local police is from the area responsible to the area during the search i think in kandahar uh the u search they drove taliban from many of these districts for aghanda from from jerry from from khakris and after that the taliban shifted to uh target killing of uh in influential people in the area that was the the the reason that people supported local police in that area local police did very well there but when local police is part of a of a criminal network of a of an individual it has become a predatory force and that was as i said that uh taliban got legitimacy in those areas by default not because people like him but because hated those militias i can only agree to uh to to to to what you just said and and the uh the militias they're they're they're unsustainable they're not uh in many places communities are not in control they actually serve the interest of of of strongmen uh so um they they they alienate the local population and and and and also uh because they serve this personal interest of strongmen they don't they don't always uh fight the taliban they flee and what also happens a lot is that they actually switch to the taliban so it's it's not at all a guarantee of security against the taliban and that is really um really militias are are are very very unsustainable in that sense um i was actually gonna go to the first question i don't have a solution for how to move forward and fix the problem but in my view the uncertainty the economic political and security uncertainty in afghanistan drives um people or increases the gap between citizens and government what needs to be done is to re establish um confidence and relationship between government citizen and also citizen to citizen that needs to be established excellent point uh as chris was mentioning before that um the need for good governments needs to come from the government and from citizens there have been for the past several years support by uh at least uh use government as far as i know in strengthening local governance but again afghan authorities authorities need to understand the importance of good governance on the issue of pakistan and pakistan's involvement pakistan has always been interested have had some interest in kunduz go back to 2002 and 2003 when isi and um pakistani military officials were stuck in kunduz they were not supposed to be there uh i think it was president mosha ref who called the white house and asked the white house to intervene and facilitate the evacuation of isi and um military officials from kunduz so they have always been interested in kunduz thank you hi i'm gary sergeant i run a small consulting firm i'm a retired army special forces officer by trade um is there a different model nobody's asked the question how do we fix the problem in afghanistan is there something to be learned from another country that in my opinion has been semi successful with corruption sort of non-state actors floating around the country and that would be lebanon i mean is there a way to learn and take some of that from that country i know lebanon is a lot smaller but i spent time there and you got an organization called hezbollah that sort of runs the whole south and they work with the government any uh lebanon experts i want to take that on yes why don't you find one with the we like and then uh thank you very much the panelists and also people who ask questions i am sabbatullah i work for local governance department for five years in Kabul and uh i have a comment and a question and comment is kind of also an answer to what you said the constitution of afghanistan back in 2002 and three when it was worked on it laid out for the legitimacy increasing legitimacy of the government day by day starting with central election then provincial council's elections then district elections in going for municipal elections and all that unfortunately as chris mentioned that opponents of peace in the taliban unfortunately we continuously had opponents of peace in the government when i was in the government we worked very hard to go for the to uh lobby and push for elections at the municipality and district level but there were people who were blocking it we drafted the law of provincial councils to have on oversight on the provincial governors and that was blocked we separated financial support of the provincial councils and took it out of the control of the governor and that was blocked i mean those and i call all those people opponents of the peace they didn't want it to give up the resources that they have uh in the center and there is tons of literature that in places which are not industrial which are subsistence farming societies if you collect source of the power and authority to one center it will create insurgencies again and again and again it would yeah so uh thank you very much for reminding me about the time uh chris what is your recommendation how should we deal these opponents of peace inside the government thank you very much let's take maybe one or two more questions and then we'll give all the panels a chance to answer and and conclude you have one down here and then maybe david in the back thank you very much thank you for the great analysis and the insights i agree with most of that but uh actually my name is romeen my idea and councillor of the industry about what was done so on the issue of the afghan state failure uh i think there is the will for success within the government but i think we need to change the strategies we need to craft new strategies and tactics in order to deal with the issues within the country and in the region so simply when we say that there's no will within the government or between our leaders for success i think i don't agree with that but if we see the government has taken both measures on on different areas especially on corruption so we have you know opened different cases that were in a way considered closed and now with the government is opening them for investigation people who are corrupt or being followed up or investigated for to create a transparent government a government that is accountable for the people so we see both measures from the government that's uh that are signs for the will within the government for success and many other areas and also our government has taken different measures internally originally and internationally to stabilize that one or so so if you don't see the desired results that doesn't mean that they don't have the will but if we change or if we choose alternative ways to reach out to the region and also reform the domestic politics to be affected in the peace process so i think that needs time and that's gonna be done but just want to raise this decision thanks David you want to have the last question and then we'll give each of our panelists a chance to make their own conclusions and responses sure i'm uh david setney formerly deputies and secretary of defense for afghanistan and pakistan currently a senior associate at the center for strategic international studies i have one question a sort of team question with my colleague who's sitting in front of me here and a comment uh firstly the question are actually two questions i'm sorry about this you gave a very calm straightforward reading of some very terrifying facts when you listed what happened in kunduz uh it's how confident are you now the ability to get information about such things in afghanistan and kunduz or elsewhere as uh as the international presence decreases um it was how how well do we know what really is happening outside of Kabul i'd be very interested in your thoughts on that uh secondly a question here uh is um when will the younger generation of afghanistan which is well over 50 percent of the population when will they start to actually uh move forward and step into uh a role that uh starts to affect what happens to them uh will they start to take charge of the future i think is that is that the okay that's the question there and finally a comment i'm just back from travels including 10 days in afghanistan uh where i had the opportunity to speak to a number of people uh on the military intelligence side directly involved in the in the battle for kunduz and uh accepting all the points everyone has made about giving advice to the afghans uh there's not much we've done a lot of that over the years and and i will sort of leave it up to the afghans to give themselves their own advice almost but in terms of what we are doing i can say that as someone who is directly involved in in helping to build the afghan military and helping to construct the kind of support we were giving them that the current uh trained advise and assist commands that we had the so-called tax we have around the country are failing they're not doing their job either in Kabul or anywhere else the military leaders in uh in kunduz and minister jalali depicted some of but not all of the confusion the confusion and i'm happy to talk about later how just how bad the confusion of command was in kunduz uh the forces in kunduz had had no visit no oversight no assistance from anybody uh for probably almost a year uh so uh and people had predicted that kunduz would be a target so uh in even the limited area that the united states and nato said they were going to be active were not being active were not being effective so in those areas we can control we don't have strategy for success chris and but i'm talking about the united states and united states military doesn't have a strategy for success and the strategy we adopted is one of failure okay sobering um why don't you each take maybe a minute or a minute and a half to sort of address any of the issues that you want to and make a final thought bell keys should we start with you thank you david um the information i provided on kunduz came from uh so many different sources including uh the afghan independent human rights commission human rights watch amnesty international uh some women's rights organizations as well as uh yunama or yunichah um how easy and reliable is it to get reliable information from outside Kabul that remains a question about uh where you're talking about areas in afghanistan that's fully under the control of the Taliban so getting information in and out is challenging but for most cases uh there are civil society organizations who have either openly um established um establishments in provinces and districts or they work through informants that's basically how i get my information from thank you there's so many questions were there and um there are no easy answers to these questions no government wants to fail no governments and tends to fail uh the government in afghanistan did not start after 1987 afghanistan had stable governments in the past but so much happened in the past eight years so many actors were there and uh so many uh problems emerge which uh different actors reacted to them in different ways uh on the one hand afghanistan was fighting against terrorism on the other hand it was uh building democracy those who fought and uh was allied with the international forces to fight enter terrorism most often were not believing in democracy so uh it was very difficult time for afghanistan it takes time on the other hand uh afghanistan has transformed the past 14 years one has to realize that it is not the afghanistan of 2002 in this means there are problems but there are many opportunities many many assets afghanistan has it was not going back to the 1992s for the because those who were fighting in the civil war do not have any more the stomach to fight whether the what the gods had taught about us eventually i think afghanistan and pakistan should reach a kind of a cooperation for a peaceful resolution of this for a peace however peace that that that should not sow seeds of more conflicts peace that is first inclusive legitimate insustainable for that until then afghanistan will have to fight and talk together but uh the afghan national security forces don't have to uh defeat the Taliban tomorrow but the longer it sustained the survival of the state i think the less chance Taliban will have to have their way they have to uphold the the the the step i mean the the the to support the survival of the state in the achievements of the past 14 years david you talked about uh the in kondos who was there to help the in the the afghan security force out of confusion unfortunately the uh residual support version is limited to core commanders core headquarters and ministries and uh the u.s uh the elements are only involved in kandahar and and and and in Kabul the in the ghar area Kabul not even pakhtiyar not even in herald spain's were were helping in the north the germans in their


Life as a caregiver is very hard. It's very exhausting. But we're a married couple, just like everybody else.  And I'm like, well, thank you. But you know, at the end of the day, like we're just a married couple. And yeah, my life might be a little bit more challenging, but I feel like everybody has their challenges. This just happens to be our challenges. Alex does need help with like showering and toileting and getting dressed and putting his prosthetics on every day and medication management. And Alex can't like sit up on his own completely and he can't really stand on his own. Like, so he needs somebody to physically assist him, like in and out of bed, in and out of his wheelchair. He also has therapy during the week. He does swim therapy on Tuesday, music therapy on Wednesday, and then on Thursday his physical therapy at a horse ranch. And so he needs somebody to drive him to those and so that he can to go to them. And he needs a lot of assistance with like getting there and getting dressed and getting ready for all of the stuff that he has to do. There was about six or seven years there where I didn't do anything else. I just took care of Alex. And when I did that, I kind of just fell into this depression of like, I didn't really know who I was anymore. I was just a caregiver. I wasn't anything else. And it was exhausting. It's a huge, huge difference because I am able to go to school and then I also don't have to work. I, you know, I want to work in my future but like the benefits that we get from the VA and the education benefits are making it so that I can have a passion outside of my home. When Alex was injured and he started coming out of his coma and I, you know, finally grasped like his disabilities and what his life would be like, I definitely made it a goal to like make sure Alex still has stuff to live for. And it's a goal for both of us to find things that we're passionate about, to have fun. We like having fun. We have definitely a passion for life. I'm going to watch Alex take out in this mountain. This is what this is all about.


Well, of course, see, any technology which can automate at scale and be able to learn as it keeps interacting will always be something that will solve people's problems. And I think AI definitely has a role in that. Having said that, what I would say is that it's an emerging technology. So don't imagine that AI is that magic bullet which will take away all your problems. What I feel is that brands need to start building their AI solutions, they need to start checking the logs of where the AI fails and how it can retrain the AI engines in the bots and see at what point the bot becomes less efficient than a human taking over. I always believe that 80% of the questions, 80% of the queries can be answered very efficiently by the bot because the queries are relatively straightforward and simple. But if you look at a sales process or a consumer's journey through a purchase process, towards the end the questions become very, very specific and individualistic. At that point in time, it may not always be possible for a bot to gauge so many forms of variations in the tone and tenor of the question to be able to give the right answer. And I think in today's world, that's what I recommend to all our clients, is that you open with a bot, clearly stating that it is a bot. And at any point in time, give the customer the option of falling over to a human. That way you can bring in the efficiencies from a typical bot platform or an AI platform, but at the same time not suffering from an absolutely 100% bot solution where a customer might actually feel that he's not been serviced well. See, some of the trends we keep talking about is AI machine learning, which will continue to be the case. I think you still need to bet on that. But a few ones that I would like to highlight first is something which is my personal favorite, which is WhatsApp for Business API. I think that's something that brands are extremely excited about in terms of the number of use cases that it opens up. WhatsApp is clearly one of the largest platforms in the world, and it's on the first screen of every mobile phone and probably the most time spent on any app by any user worldwide. So that is tremendous potentials for brands and I think that's something that will play out over the next one year as the Vava accounts are made available to more and more brands. But one of the things that I always believe has been extremely under leveraged while a lot of talk happens about personalization and data, I think it's an extremely under leveraged area. Brands still have data in silos. There are CRM teams which have some part of the data, marketing teams, another part of the data. The whole data management platform and DMPs have not really taken off. While we do a lot of talk about that, I think that's an area where there is a lot of potential and personally I am very excited about using data, especially first party and third party data to enrich personalized campaigns and communications. And I think that's really the future I want to, as a consumer, hear about campaigns which talk to me, my needs based on what you know about me. There's no point in trying to sell me a scooter when I have never, you know, driven a two wheeler in my life. So that's really where I see people should be investing. It's not important in my head to bet your horses on ten different technologies. There are a few that are relevant for your business. You must work very hard to make a success out of that. Flirting with ten different trends and making a success out of none of them is not really the best way to go in my opinion.


Why do I not talk to Hebrew Israelites? This is why I don't talk to Hebrew Israelites. Because we are not of this world. We are the Israelites. This world was made for us. The only reason there is earth is because we here. The only reason there is a sun is because God gave us feast days. If the Lord didn't create the Israelites, there will be no need for the sun because the sun and the moon is to determine time so we can know when to keep God's feast.