Good afternoon to you. Here. Present. Present. Here. That's by our heads for just a moment of silence. Lord, for all that you've done, bless us and keep us all. We ask it in your name. Amen. American Men and Council, today's work session is for one City Council discussion item, the Development Standards Text Amendment, Stormwater Impacts. We have Ms. Christa Hampton, Planning and Development Services Director, as well as Ms. Dana Higgins, our Engineering Director. And I think they will collaboratively work on some opening statements and work through a presentation. Thank you, ladies. Thank you. Good afternoon. Today we're here as a result of our conversation from the text amendment regarding parking standards and landscape standards for redevelopment of existing sites. So today, our agenda, we are going to review the details of that text amendment, go over just the three parts of that. We will then, I'll turn it over to Dana to talk about the stormwater issue and the impacts of this amendment on that, and then we'll open it up for questions. So there are three parts of this text amendment that are impacted. It's a transitional buffer yard, and I will be describing what each of these are, a street protective yard, and as it relates to sites that are currently nonconforming with the existing ordinance and the landscaping related there, too. One thing we want to make sure people understand is that the buffers we are talking about are not the buffers related to stormwater. So, you know, a lot of our different ordinances, for instance, our building code, we'll talk about town homes, zoning, we'll talk about town homes. They're two different things. Similarly, when we're talking about buffers, it's about use, and it's not about the stormwater buffers. So those are not impacted by this code. The first part of the text amendment relates to transitional buffer yards, and just in layman's term, that's an area between two different uses of intensity. So it's intended to provide an area between, let's say, a commercial property and a residential property, or an industrial property and a lesser commercial property. So what this amendment does is exempt renovation or reuse of existing structures. So this isn't new construction. These are existing buildings, only where the buffer would require the reduction in the number of parking spaces in an existing lot. So a fairly narrow area, existing buildings, existing parking lot, the buffer in that area of the parking. So what this does not exempt is the entire buffer requirement. Only the vegetation that may be in that parking space that would cause the removal of that parking. All other requirements remain to include a fence. So if a fence were required, it will remain in that place. And I'll show you some examples. So in this one, this is over off of Sumter Street in the top section in the back, and I'll make sure I don't touch it because you know what happens with the smart board. In the back of this area would be required. You can see on the bottom of the slide that is where the vegetative buffer usually would be. If this building were redeveloped, which it was, the vegetation would not be required. However, a fence would be required in that location. Correct. So that used to be the freeze auto. Karen, you redevelop that. So because what would have happened, the vegetative buffer would have required the removal of all those parking spaces. So this amendment would relieve that requirement. However, an 8-foot fence would still be required. Can you go back to that? If they would have to remove this parking. Correct. So if they would have removed the parking, a parking variance would have been required. The one today, so I don't want to get confused with September. So September, I don't know the specific zoning of this classification, so I don't want to answer incorrectly. But more than likely, yes, sir. So Chris, I have a question. If the parking, if for some reason they had to, is there ever a situation where they would lose parking somewhere else and then still have to, this is what I envision that it means, you only have to, you only have this exemption or change if you would end up practically pulling up a parking space. Exactly. Is that the only time it applies? It's only when you are going to remove a parking space. In this instance, transitional buffer yards, so let's go through each one, but the one we're talking about right now, transitional buffer yards, the only way it's not required is if you're having to remove a parking space. And I will say, I think that the language here may need to be a little clearer because I think there are a couple of different interpretations of it. So it needs to be a little clearer so that there are no, it's just real clear with, because it was clear to me, but it wasn't clear to others. Right. And that's, I understand that there are folks who don't read it the same. The zoning ordinance gives the sole authority for interpreting the zoning ordinance to the zoning administrator. And I have spoken with her, Hope Hasty. She is of the same mind, and she can make a formal interpretation that is logged and thus establishing that fact, that it is only in that area. So it would make that clarification. But since we're still in a draft mode, we couldn't just clarify it in a draft mode. That is absolutely up to council's prerogative. I mean, I would, I would rather not have to put her in that position if we're still in draft phase. But it would need to go back through Planning Commission. State law requires anything, any change that was not reviewed by Planning Commission to be re-reviewed by Planning Commission. So that, that's just the step that would need to occur. Okay. My question. You first. Is that contingent upon? Especially, is that contingent upon? The interpretation is up to the zoning administrator. So she, she... It will ultimately feed into... So the Planning Commission would have to review any changes to this text. If you were to make a change from what has already been reviewed by Planning Commission, it would go back only to Planning Commission. It wouldn't go to the Board of Zoning Appeals, just to Planning Commission. Just a quick question. So renovation and reuse. What kicks it, kicks this out as far as addition. Is there any addition? Let's say it's a restaurant adaptive reuse building and they want to do exterior commercial fridge, you know, connected to the building. Does any addition to the square footage boot this, this policy? It would, we have in the last part of it, provision about additions and when non-conforming site features have to come into play and it's a, it's a sliding scale depending on the value invested. Okay. And actually with, with regard to additions, it's the amount of the addition. So 25%, 50%. What I, when I was speaking with our land development planner who reviews landscape plans, we have had a handful of projects ever have to come into compliance due to expansion. Right. It is a rare exception. It was based off of a construction percentage value, not the addition to the four walls. There's two. There's one that's based on construction value, which is the, the one that we'll talk about in a little bit, but then there's also an expansion. Okay. Size. So there's two different thresholds. Gotcha. Thanks. So here we are. The, this is Spotted Salamander. So the red area, these are two actually different projects, two developments. One is the Spotted Salamander to my right and the one in the middle here is an office building, but those three properties are all residential. So this would exempt from the vegetative buffer if there were to be a redevelopment of the Spotted Salamander as well as this building here, it would exempt the vegetative buffer. As you can see down below, there's a little kind of a screenshot. Street view to show where, however, a fence would still be required. And this is in a historic district. So obviously the fence would need to be reviewed in that way, but additionally, that area there behind would need a fence. You know, I haven't done a scientific analysis, but I ventured to say that's accurate. Yes. All right. Street protective yard. The area between the street and the parking lot, it has not come into play in our downtown districts that have zero lot lines. So most of the time you have a building there instead of a parking lot. But the street protective yard is that area between the parking lot and the street. And this, again, would exempt renovation or reuse of an existing structure only in those areas where the parking space is impacted. So if parking space is not impacted, the street protective yard is required. Here is an instance that we came up with. This is off of Sims, off of Divine. You can see right there in the front, there are two parking spaces adjacent to the right of way in the red where it would not have that street protective yard that would normally be required. However, in this example it shows it does not exempt you from everything, that transitional buffer yard that we just talked about because you have a residence right down to the bottom. It would be a modified one, but it would be required there between those properties more than likely an exit fence. The final piece is nonconforming site features. And what this is, is an element of the property that does not meet the standards. So landscaping for a current site, nonconforming means it has parts of it that doesn't meet. So let's say you have a large parking lot without any trees in it. What this amendment does is to existing parking lots and sites, it increases the threshold at which the site does not meet current standards, must make partial improvements. So it used to be at 50%. There were some improvements that you had to make to an existing lot. This has bumped it up to 75%. And then at the 75%, previously it required full compliance with the landscape ordinance. This is just the partial compliance. So again, if you had, if you were investing in a building more than 75% of its value, it would require that the entire site come up to current standards with regard to landscaping. At 50% previously, you could do some of the items. So we're eliminating that partial at 50%. And at 75%, now it's partial. Does that make sense? I know I've said it a couple different ways to try to get it through. Could you give us an idea of the difference between the partial versus what those specific items may be that makes a difference? Sure. So we've already talked about transitional buffer yard. So we know what that is. So that would be the buffer yard, which may be anywhere from 15 to 30 feet with or without a fence. The street protective yard, the area between the street and the parking lot, as well as what's called interior plantings. So as when you see new parking lots, you see that most of them have tree planting areas within them. Older lots do not, generally speaking. So it would require that you put in those kind of interior parking planting areas within the parking lot. And I don't have a picture for that one, but there is an example, one of the stormwater examples that's two-notch and covenant that would show you kind of what that would mean, the Old Midlands Shopping Center. What are we trying to achieve with this? It's the same that what you have is a lot of times when you're redeveloping an existing structure coming into full compliance with the landscape code is a struggle because the lots are usually pretty tight. So all of these were a result of what council asked us to do which was look at how we can encourage redevelopment of our existing building stock. We've got redevelopment taking place. Currently they would not be required, I mean currently they would have to come into full compliance with the landscape ordinance. All of the standards. This amendment would, they would have to come into partial compliance. Screening, so they would not have to do interior, they would not have to do the interior plantings, those kinds of things, but they would have to come into partial compliance with the protective yard, with the buffers, and they would have to do any screening necessary of for instance dumpsters and those types of things. They would, yeah. But they would not have to come into full compliance which would be all of the other items. Well in some, in the smaller sites. I would just say we have a cost wise too. I mean I think one of the things that we should be doing as a city government is helping people improve the appearance of properties in our city. And you know, if I go to make my building look better or to make my company grow for me to have to in some cases lose parking amounts to where I now have to go rent parking places off site, it's just, again I think it contributes to the fact that we may not have quite the appearance renovations that we could enjoy around here. I mean we got great tree cover and it's a pretty city. We just need to modernize our building. We need to take the penalty away from making that investment and that's what interests me here. I know y'all saw one that we saw downtown where in that particular instance the owner spent a couple of million bucks renovating two empty buildings that were occupied by homeless folks and at the end of the day they had to plow up some four or five parking places behind their operation to landscape and then if they had to put the wall in it was going to cause some 13 or so more parking spaces which was going to result in them having to go rent places off site in order to meet the parking requirement and I just don't think that's what we really intended to do with this. Anna? I think, I mean I'm in agreement but I just think that the language that we have here is not clear because it says what I'm reading, from what I'm reading it's really not about the number of parking spaces but it's about the location of the parking spaces, right? Because if we're only talking about parking spaces that will be located where a buffer would be, is that correct? Correct. And so this really refers to what require a reduction in number of parking spaces in an existing parking lot. It's wide open and I think you really, I think that is why people are misinterpreting it because it's really not about the number of parking spaces. It's about where those parking spaces are relative to the buffer or the landscaping requirements. Am I not reading that right? Well that's where it says where the protective yard. So in that location where the protective yard would require the reduction in the number of spaces. So it's only in that spot where the protective yard or in the case of, in the case of the transitional buffer, I'm not sure which one you're looking at, where the buffer. So only in that where the buffer would require the reduction or where the protective yard would require the reduction. And those are defined areas Okay. I mean, I just think it can be cleaned up. But if y'all understand it. But it could be cleaned up. I was just, I was going to add, Ms. Harbert, I've been doing this for years. I still don't understand the way zoning codes are written. I mean, you almost have to have a degree in that to understand it. I don't think you can, you can actually, I don't think it's possible to make the code language itself easy to understand. And that's one reason why I think when we finish with all this is we'll try to put some brochures together that not just this, but all the lot of the things that we're doing just kind of put it more into layman's terms. But I tend to always call an expert when it comes time to interpret. Building code and the landscape code and the zoning code. Well, I think. Herbert and Mr. Till is sort of getting that same issue. And that is. Making sure. That language is clarifying. Making sure that it's simple. Of course, code and language. Code and language and planning language is not in any of our real houses. The person's on the outside. What is this? What is a non-conforming what is non-conforming features of persons outside of this? And one thing we do have to our one thing we do have a favor is this. The new code has definitions in the back that are actually written in English. So and a lot more definitions. Our previous code had very few and they were fairly obtuse. So it we do have that in our favor. So for instance, non-conforming is defined. We have a lot of good definitions. I think that's the deal. Ms. Hanson or Krista. Educating designers, landscape architects who understand this stuff. This is this is pretty pretty common practice. They would pick up on this pretty easily about exactly what the new I guess limitations are the new guidelines. Wouldn't you say? I would believe so.  So it's all about interpretation the back and forth presentation of that particular property. Do we or can we make sure to educate and market this when we roll it out to specifically, you know, architects, landscape designers, general contractors because we're talking about an inventory of buildings that are pretty affordable. But it does take a designer to come on board. There probably going to be some life safety upgrades to stuff like that. Just just to let them know, don't overlook this. I think we're going to have probably a couple dozen updates to the educate them on. But I think it's something they'll pick up quick on especially with that back and forth interpretation with our staff. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, I'm for the record, I'm real comfortable with the language that's there. I'm just saying all code language is difficult. And I just, I'm very comfortable with how it's written. But Joe, I can agree with that. But in my wheelhouse, I'm an expert. I shouldn't say an expert, but I'm an expert from Genesis to Revelation. I understand that theologically, but that these are other matters that a lot of us don't understand. And I think practically, practically, folks need to understand. Just to tell her those that he has a knowledge of those. Our wheelhouse is totally different. Folks on the other side are in the community. Their wheelhouse is totally different. Their understanding of what it means to talk about the issues that we're talking about these days. So if we could just put it in a diverse wheelhouse, where everybody understands what the issues and what the language really means. I think that's kind of why we have examples put together. And I think, you know, sharing those examples, obviously you can't change a language in the code because the code language is the way it needs to be legally. But what we can do is make sure that it's been suggested by this body already is sending out information and showing pictures of examples to those the folks and making that readily available. So there's no question. And I think that's probably the proper way to do it at the appropriate time. Mr. DeBall. Chris, my hang up on this discussion is I think it's still a link to the discussion we're going to have in September on the 7500 Fairfield Group. In your opinion, are they linked? Talking about parking in this one and talking about parking in the other. Is that the only thing? It is. I don't believe there's a substantive link except for that you're talking about parking spaces because what we're talking about in September are what is the city going to require for parking spaces? What we're talking about now is what parking spaces are there, whether they're required or not, and whether this landscaping will take them up. Because for instance, in some of these instances in the downtown area where it might be taken up, they're currently not required. So it really has no impact on that. Except for most of these are non-conforming with regard to the number of spaces they have currently that are required. Most of these places couldn't be built with our current parking requirements. I just want to, because I guess it's the lawyer in me, so please forgive me, just give this as a consideration really for the language to make it simpler. It says what require the reduction in parking space in an existing parking lot. I think just even the reference to a number of parking spaces gives, because then someone might say well it's not a whole parking space, it's half a parking space. And you get into those kind of discussions. So I think even just putting the word number makes it slightly confusing to people, but what you're really saying is the reduction in any parking space. Within that area. Within the required number. I don't think it's about the number. It's any. And I think the number of parking spaces would be what is what may be throwing folks off. You can see the difference. Yeah.  Well in some instances you can, if that parking space will still meet standards, like let's say it's an 11th parking space and it's, and you just need two feet to get, you can, that can still be a parking space and you can still put the landscaping in. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. Site specific. Yeah. But it is any. You are, you're correct. It could go, as I've heard lawyers say before, it could go either way. You could argue it from either side. So either in the number or any. At 475 an hour they'll tell you that. That every dime. You know, I'm open to counsel's pleasure if they wish to make some language to make it more terrifying. We're, we're happy to, to work with you on that. But do y'all, y'all see what I understand is saying the number of parking spaces and we really don't care about the number of parking spaces. You care about the reduction of parking space period. And I could see someone arguing. Well what's, you know, in the number, how many numbers? It's not a full parking space. So I don't have to, I don't have to, I don't have to comply with it. I just, but you know, I don't have to implement it if y'all want to. But that's where the interpretation of staff will come in. And that would be hubs, correct? Yes, sir. I think it makes it more difficult for staff, but I will leave it there. So would this be retroactive? Like if somebody go back that had to, let's say, put in the curb cuts along the buffers and the, this was the other word, the words we're talking about here. No, because that would make it not more nonconforming. I mean, it's, it's currently nonconforming.  You can't make something more nonconforming. Okay. I'm going to make sure. We have plenty of that already. Thank you, Krista. I'm going to turn it over to Dana. Ms. Higgins. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. One of the request was to look at the stormwater impact. And today we're going to talk a little bit about stormwater just to give you a little background before I get into the calculations. Rainfall data is published by NOAA and DHEC makes it available in their BMP manual. They have it over many different return frequencies. This is the chance of a storm happening in one given year. It ranges from one year frequency to a hundred year frequency. Basically a one year storm has the chance of happening a hundred percent in one year. A hundred year storm has about one percent chance. You just basically take the number, divide one by the number. So a two year storm is about a fifty percent chance. Today we're going to talk about the ten year frequency. That's about a ten percent chance of a storm happening in a given year because that's what we require our consultants to design by. Pretty rare. And this data is gathered, I understand, over about a forty-five year average. So the information is provided over the duration of a twenty-four hour duration. That's pretty redundant. And for Richland County the amount is five point three inches. So those are the numbers that we're working with today when I present the storm water information. We also felt like it might be easiest to show you the volume of water that is impacted over a twenty-four hour duration. So the volume is actually calculated based on the rainfall data, the area that's contributing, the land cover, which is grass would be pervious, and impervious would be like pavement, the slope and the length of the watershed contributing. So any questions before we get into the, okay, I brought my hydrology book in case anybody needs to deep dive into this. We have four examples today. So the first example we're going to talk about is actually the Jim Moore site, which we have a resident on Marion who I've talked to and actually was very interested in the site. This particular project, they are not going to be doing any demolition of existing structures and not impacting the parking lot, or they are demoing, I'm sorry, the existing structures and they are demoing the existing parking lot. They are not renovating anything. So they are going to actually have to come into full compliance. This text amendment does not apply to this. They will have to fully comply with our existing landscape ordinance. And what would be the full requirement for people such as myself? That would be the interior plantings, the street protective yard, the buffer requirements. Yes, pre and post have to equal. That's right. Quantity, they have to control their quantity. That's exactly right. Okay, so this actually does impact Cotton Town, so we felt like this was a really great example because they will have to come into full compliance. Our next example is the Midas property on Bull and Gervais. That's a great point. Thank you for making that. So the Midas property, we took a look at the existing conditions on the left and we have a lot of impervious area. The condition on the right shows everything in red is bringing the site in full compliance, which is what they were contending with. They did go for some variances, but we just felt like this was a good example to show what we would not be requiring in the future based on this text amendment. So what you see in the red, they would not be required to do the street and buffer yard requirements except for the fence. So because it's all impervious now, there is no additional impervious that this text amendment is going to create. It's actually not going to adversely impact in creating more stormwater. It's actually just going to, there's going to be a lost opportunity to reduce the stormwater impervious area. So in order to look at the calculations from a stormwater standpoint, we took a look at the volume of water for the 10-year storm over a 24-hour period. And there was around 93,200 gallons. So if the ordinance was implemented and this text amendment did not go through, there would be about a 2.4% reduction in stormwater. So it would be around 91,000. Example number three. Example number three is a bank located at Park and Lady. Is that correct? So this actually has a street protective issue. They have an existing parking lot and they are looking at renovating their structure. So the text amendment would not require them to install the street protective yard that you see on the right side. This is no new impervious. It's already there. But we would not require them to dig up the impervious. So the volume of water before is 314,000 gallons. If we had them put in the landscape buffer, it would be 306,000 gallons, which is about a 2.5% reduction. And our example number four, which y'all have already talked about a little bit, is the covenant and belt line. Two-notch, excuse me, covenant and two-notch parking lot. So this particular example, existing conditions on the left, proposed conditions on the right, with the text amendment, everything in red would no longer be required, which is what Christa was talking about with the tree plantings within the parking lot and the buffer area. So the loss of the opportunity of removing the impervious, it's about 1.9 million gallons before it would be 1.855 with about a 2.5, 2.4% reduction. So we would be losing that opportunity. We also wanted to talk a little bit about our permits. There's been some confusion over whether this violates our permits. So we just kind of want to talk about two important ones that have been discussed. We have an MS4 permit and a wastewater consent decree. So our MS4 permit is municipal separate storm sewer system. And this permit was issued to us back in January of 2010. We are actually required to monitor our water quality and quantity within the city limits. We also monitor for pollutants, and that's through our stream gauges, but also on construction. Make sure there's no sediment that goes into the catch basins. And we also try to educate the public. We try to do the blue thumb landscape to let herbicide and pesticides are discharged properly. And this ordinance does not violate, this text amendment does not violate that permit. We also have a wastewater consent decree that was issued in 2014. Early on we did have some supplemental environmental projects that were storm water related. And that work was done in Rocky Branch, Smith Branch, and Gills Creek. And those were creating watershed management plans. We did a stream cleanup. MLK was one of those projects. So those were done back in 2015. But both of those, the text amendments will not violate. So going back to any of the example slides, I want to say this back to you in normal English. Basically what we're saying is the impact of this new text amendment would only impact about 2.5 percent of storm water drainage. Is that what you're saying? Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what we're talking about. It actually, we took different examples and they all landed around 2.5, 2.4 percent between the different properties, no matter what the size. On this particular one, again, and I know no one in here is an estimator. But in our sense, and Will, you've got more background just than anybody, if we required the purchaser and redeveloper of that shopping center to put those trees in the parking lot and do all that, would that deal have ever happened, would that site have been renovated? In your opinion? Yes. I'm just curious, what's a lot of them? Thank you. That most people are using, which is an anomaly, I think, with four and a half inches in less than 50 minutes. I'm not sure there is a system design that can handle that volume coming in every direction. But as we continue, and I know y'all are doing a ton of storm water projects everywhere from Rosewood to Shandon downtown. I know coordinating with DOT, it may be good for us just to remind people and share the information of what all the other projects we're doing and some of the innovative things that we're doing to try to handle some of the storm water that's out there. Can we go and give it to you now? You do not have to give it to us now. I wasn't sure if I was requested. No, but if you could provide that for everybody, I think it would be helpful just to keep everybody up to date. Absolutely. I'd like to share it with constituents as well. We actually have a CIP on our GIS that's very interactive, and we'd love for you to keep it up to date monthly on what the progress on the construction and we also have it outward facing the public. We actually just implemented a customer portal for lodging complaints or anything questions. Maybe if you could share the link with us, that would be good to share out. Absolutely. That would be very helpful. I just have one more question for clarification. So most of what you showed is about a 2.5, 2.4 differential on just that particular site. That's correct. And if we're fortunate as a city, we might see 15, 20 of these redevelopment projects in a year. We're fortunate. Correct. Probably would be less than that. So if it's just around a 2.4, 2.5% on some 10 or 15 parcels in Columbia, the global impact on stormwater in the city of Columbia is negligible. Correct. Anybody have any follow-up or any other questions? Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, ladies. So we have Madam City Manager, I think we got a 15-minute break before we start upstairs. We were going to... I was going to seek clarification, so it's scheduled for second reading on the 16th, and that's still the will of the council. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thanks. I had mentioned to Ms. Wilson, new business and work session, we've got some suggested very simple editing to our surplus property policy. I was going to, if it's okay, take a few minutes and just kind of run through this so everybody's aware of it. So if there's any issues, we could get it on the agenda for the first reading, perhaps on August the 16th meeting. The next meeting. I was going to say, are we going... Well, we don't have new business in the work session, sir, but I thought this evening... I mean, the council can do that now. I guess if you want to talk about it, it was a notice for the work session. It's on you have new business in the council meeting. Right. When I had sent it around, I talked about the work session, but... Well, I think the email referenced it, but I guess it was also talking about the new business from the evening. Meaning, maybe I misunderstood. I mean, we don't have new business on this agenda if it's okay with the city attorney to talk about it now. We have copies of this for you to have then. It's fairly... This won't take me just a second. We're not going to vote on it. Just... We'll like to get a copy in everybody's hands. It's basically somewhere at some point, way back when we had a thing that said contiguous real property owners would be informed of the city's intent to sell the property, and they'd be given right-of-first refusal type things. We're dealing with some big properties and some big buildings, and these are just suggested edits that came from staff to modernize this as we look at some of our bigger properties. That's basically... I mean, can I just... What I would say is everybody just take a look at it. I would ask Ms. Wilson if we hear no objections to perhaps put it on the agenda for the next council meeting. Not today, but the next one. I can't say that. You can. I think if you're adding... Like we discussed, if you're adding it to new business this evening, then it's going to go through the process. So that's fine.  We're just trying to follow the process, sir. Yeah. We just suggest tonight maybe it's just to go on the agenda. Okay, that's fine. I thought we did that to refer stuff to committee. No, yeah. Just so it can go on the agenda. We want to make sure that city manager doesn't have any announcements or anything she needed to make before we... I didn't know if you had anything that you wanted to share before we break before tonight. Okay? Just making sure. Okay.


everyone and welcome to the first of three panels in our symposium on Afghanistan. Today we will be discussing the legacy of the US involvement and the implications of the withdrawal. We'd first like to acknowledge the importance of promoting Afghan and woman voices on the subject and we made a great effort to have these perspectives represented on each of the three panels but unfortunately given the nature of the ongoing situation and the importance of confidentiality at this time we're unable to bring these voices to this panel. But we have three speakers with expertise and a long history of study and work in the region that we are excited to welcome today. Mike McGinnis is a veteran of 16 years in the US army during which he deployed to Afghanistan three times. He is currently a freelance writer and host of the You Don't Know History podcast. Alan Mentha is the co-founder of Welcome Home Jersey City, an organization created in the shadow of the Syrian war in 2016 as refugees started to resettle in Jersey City. In addition to this volunteer work Alan is employed at Taylor and Francis LLC. Eric Isaacson is pursuing his MA in Middle Eastern History here at Tufts University. Previously he served in the US Air Force as an airborne cryptologic linguist and he was trained in Persian Dari at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He was later deployed to Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011. Thank you all for joining us both in person and on Zoom and if you have any questions throughout the panel please send them in the Q&A box to be answered at the end of the discussion. I will now pass it on to our moderator for today's panel Zach Burpee who is a junior studying international relations in Middle Eastern studies and is co-president of the Middle East research group. Hey everyone thank you so much for joining us again. I believe we have over 30 people watching in person at the Fletcher School like Cabot 205 so thank you all for coming in person and virtually. Yeah first we'd I'd love to just get some opening statements from the panelists so they're going to talk about their prior experience with the country and their initial reactions thoughts and reactions when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban so Alan if you'd like to go first. Hello my name is Alan I'm the executive director of Welcome Home and Welcome Home provides community services to refugees from all over the world in Jersey City. We focus on educational employment and material support as an extension of the services that are brought by the resettlement agencies in Jersey and to an extent in New York. We work with a number of Afghan families who came to Jersey City with a special immigrant visa status and those families are entitled to all the benefits of refugees they arrive with the ability to start working right away and they're entitled to public assistance and they're entitled to all the services from the refugee resettlement agencies. We expect to welcome a number of families from the joint base McGuire, Dix, Lakehurst in New Jersey in the coming weeks and months but primarily I expect that we'll be serving humanitarian parolees from Afghanistan and humanitarian parolees like asylum seekers are not entitled to any public benefits they're entitled to few services from the resettlement agencies and they have to apply for work authorization which generally takes about six months these days to receive so unlike the refugees and SIVs, the special immigrant visa holders who arrive at refugees because they serve with the armed forces in Afghanistan, U.S. armed forces, these folks are going to require a lot more support from private organizations, from private individuals, from community-based groups like ours so we have really shifted our focus in the past few weeks to raise money and to find available housing for these folks. We're going to have to match funders with affordable housing which is at a premium these days particularly in this part of the country and you know I spend much of my days talking to people about the special plight of these parolees and advocating with government officials particularly the state level senators so that Congress will approve benefits for these humanitarian parolees so that's you know that's that's kind of where I stand I don't have a lot of direct knowledge about Afghanistan I've never been there and we depend on translators to help us communicate with any of the families especially at first but we are seeing a really a once in a generation event right now that will require all of our communities to come together and collaborate ways that we never have so I think that's enough for me for now I'll turn it back over to you Zach thank you for having me and having us thank you very much Alan Mike if you'd like to go next yeah you know thank you everybody for bearing with me you know but you know I really do appreciate the invitation to come on and partake but I got deployed to Afghanistan three times between 2007 and 2012 I did 15 months between 2007 and 2008 12 months between 2009 and 2010 and then I did eight months in 2012 you know my service you know I would say it was always colored by my politics but especially the longer I stayed in the more I realized that we were not doing enough to help the afghan people you know we were failing in that mission not just as a defense department or an armed service but overall with a war effort that you know was widely forgotten you know or maybe even ignored I'd even say but you know it still kind of falls on the country to realize that we have seen historically we can hold our political officials accountable when it comes to these types of conflicts especially when you have something as counterintuitive as counterinsurgency but yeah you know I have a lot of feelings about what happened in late August other you know and I'll sum it up quickly and that it was a prime example of of his poor planning you know we we decided we were going to pull out we pulled out all the infrastructure that possibly could have been used to make it easier for our afghan allies and the people requesting visas to to have the the ability one to have just their paperwork processed in order to leave a you know the country but you know instead we pulled out and then had to end up sending back so it's it's a the humanitarian disaster that I don't think is being played up enough or being paid close enough attention to and if we don't really focus the way Alan's organization is on on trying to assist them it could only end up being much much worse thanks Mike um Eric if you want to even it's sure thanks Zach um so my experience with afghanistan actually begins before I I even went there so in the air force I was an airborne cryptologic linguist trained in persian dari at the defense language institute out in monterey california uh spent 15 months there learning persian specifically the dari dialect spoken in in afghanistan um but that's accompanied by uh a um an education culture in the terrain in the myriad ways that we might experience the country um and our instructors were all from afghanistan many had left quite a while before either during the civil war or soviet invasion or after the rise of the taliban but um so I got a good sense of the different people we had a good cross section of the different ethnicities um in our teaching team and certainly a feel for the language and and the culture um and I was there for seven months between 2010 and 2011 um I was uh not employed in a linguist capacity during deployment um but I was uh I was flying in support of aerial reconnaissance and intelligence um so I saw a lot of the country from uh both the air and the ground um I spent time uh between uh bagram and kandahar with a little bit of time up in up north in mazar sharif um and I I did get to use my language a bit on base where uh some of the uh locals in in the area of bagram were employed to do sort of menial tasks around base and I used to volunteer for uh the guard duty for them to escort them around uh the base so I could use my language while in country and so that was an interesting thing um and uh definitely had um an appreciation for the country for the people for the language um definitely saw some of the living conditions they had and uh sort of anecdotal histories of what life was like under the taliban prior to us involvement um in terms of the the withdrawal um it's like in in its idea like uh you know we've had several presidents now talking about we're going to we're going to pull out of the middle east and and afghanistan but in the idea I can see why that's an attractive um an attractive proposition particularly when uh you know they're beholding to voters um but the way that the way that it went down where it was just this complete kind of withdrawal and now it's just it's chaos um it wasn't done with any respect to history the last time that there was a major vacuum in afghanistan between the soviets um and and when the americans ultimately came in that's when we see the rise of of a group like the taliban that's when we see them harboring um groups like al-qaeda and it uh it's it's not a great situation so um I'm very kind of disillusioned with the way it went down um and I I agree with mike and that there there really wasn't um it seems like uh to use this term piss poor planning or um that there was either inattention or ignorance of many of the factors that should have been considered when approaching uh the the task of withdrawing thanks eric i'm gonna go off that last topic and and one of the biggest topics in regard to the seemingly incredibly quick um takeover the country by taliban has been the really quick collapse of the ana afghan national army um there have been you know many american pundits talking you know saying we poured so much money so much equipment so much training into the ana and they just like topple all over within days but in reality it was much deeper than that um mike if you want to kind of talk about that and in the quick collapse and what the us contributed to to these issues yeah i mean this is what tells me when i hear that all right and if i get a bit heated i do apologize because i i serve with many ana units somewhere good somewhere bad but you can honestly say that about any uniform military right um but to say that they didn't fight and just collapsed uh even though that's a fallacy um what the united states uh government and the military specifically did is after the invasion in 2001 we handpicked warlords that suddenly became kandak commanders which would be like a brigade level equivalent here in the united states army um you know and these these now kandak commanders uh would grift uh to no you know to no end like we they would set up they would use your people set up checkpoints to shake down truck drivers um and honestly they flat out rob their um subordinates uh you know because there's there's no direct deposit so how do you think payroll gets gets handed out it goes to the kandak commander well he takes his cut passes it down to the next level uh they he take that commander takes his cut and he passes it all the way down to where there's barely anything left and it's not the promised salary uh to the soldiers that are out there fighting uh you know on the ground um but like you know and i and i pose this question to somebody else if there was no incentive for you to change the material conditions in which you live are you really going to stand there uh and and get shot or blowed up i mean that's it's an honest question uh because i'll tell you right now i won't you know i'm sorry i don't um and then you know you you also have people that you know those same pundits that are like well they wouldn't fight for afghanistan well a lot of these these soldiers uh you know they they're not fighting for afghanistan they were literally fighting so they could have some money to send back home to take care of their family you know and and i think that you know uh you know the other two panels could probably attest to this even more than so that myself but this is a very tribal country where people identify with their clan and their tribe a hell of a lot more than this kind of uh pie in the sky idea of afghanistan right so i mean it's it's it's very frustrating to hear that because you know almost a hundred thousand uniform members of the uh you know the afghan military under karzai and ghani you know they they were killed fighting in taliban so like it's you know it for me it's complete it's a completely misleading topic would you hear uh one especially from people who have never stepped foot in the country or haven't even spoken to an actual person from afghanistan uh you know throwing things like this out yeah allen would you like to go off that a little bit um i would just say that i would i would um kind of second what mike said and that it's it's very difficult to generalize about afghanistan it's a very complex country it's a very heterogeneous country um with lots of significant minority populations that you know don't identify with each other necessarily um and um and even the families you know the families that we help here they don't necessarily feel that they have that much in common with each other some of them do but it's it's it's based in part on linguistic and religious differences ethnic differences and uh sometimes their attitudes towards western culture generally but i think that the idea of afghanistan is very abstract um and so you know it's it's it's it's risky business to to try to lump everybody into um you know the same mold hey eric have you any experience with that kind of tribalism how it contributed to these issues um yeah to to a degree i um i can uh i can agree with both uh allen and mike um in some of these assessments um it is a very tribal country it is a very uh ethnically uh linguistically and religiously uh divisive country um you've got the four major uh ethnicities in afghanistan you have the posh students the tajiks the usbex and the the hasara um the the former three are predominantly sunni while the hasara are predominantly shia um the the posh two is a language uh uh that's spoken there uh by the majority ethnicity uh the posh students you also have uh darry uh which is a uh a branch of persian so along with project darry um and and farsi has spoken in iran so there's there's people speaking different languages there's people practicing different religions there's people um of different ethnic groups and there is still a very tribal mentality there um where they are often at odds um and you know this is true now this was true in 2001 um they there have been times where they they work together um with the americans against a common enemy the taliban but if you look at the civil war uh that we have following the collapse of the um the uh the withdrawal of the soviets and the subsequent collapse of the um indigenous afghan communist regime we see uh the leaders the warlords of these different ethnic groups tearing the country apart they they were all shelling cobble because they were upset that they're that they personally or their ethnic group was not adequately represented in the new government so there is a lot of this going on um and i think it's also important to note that um and i think mike was kind of getting towards this afghanistan is kind of uh an idea um that many people aren't really necessarily on board with so afghan is synonymous with poshtun so land of the poshtuns well uh they were the majority group the leadership was typically uh traditionally poshtun where does that leave other significant ethnic groups um it's not that they're refuting the existence of a political entity such as afghanistan but um is it something they they're going to fight for and i think another concern when we're thinking about the a and a and the pundits kind of written them apart it's really easy to make comparisons between um uh american servicemen and what if we saw americans running away in combat like that shot for cowardice or whatever the the punishment uh in vogue at the time is going to be but um americans traditionally are not fighting on you know in their own backyard we're going somewhere else to fight and these people have families these people have connections to the community that are all at risk if they're affiliated with an organization that is opposed to the taliban so there's a lot of complexity here whether we're talking about demographics or the political reality on the ground um it's it's far too complex and it is fallacious and outright ignorant to to make these these assertions of you know the a and a they're you know they're they're cowards or they're they're not loyal to afghanistan it it's not that cut and dry to make these uh these assertion thank you very much all of you um one of these these uh ethnic ethnic uh groups and ethnic areas has still held out resistance um in the panchee valley in the north um the taliban have claimed in the last week that they've conquered the whole um the whole valley um but you know just as when the soviets you know supposedly conquered the valley in 90s um they held out for many many years and and um nrf or um national resistance front and spokespeople are saying that they're just waiting for the right moment to strike um what do you think this signals until like the rest of afghanistan and other like could this inspire other resistance movements across the country um mike if you want to touch on that i mean that that's always a touching question right um i mean the the the resistance front has a great kind of face with uh amad shahd mesud sun right uh because mesud ran the taliban ragged uh whenever they tried to get up in the panchee year it never ended well for them and they you know that's why they they literally stooped to uh loading up plastic explosive inside of a video camera so they get exploded near him right um but the thing is with mesud's kid i don't think he has the military acumen that his father had um but i mean getting back to like what eric was saying it so many people in afghanistan uh are going to associate more with their tribe right so if you have the majority past tunes who like say what happened after the taliban took power right they went into the huzara shot and just started murdering huzara uh by the thousands right so the huzara has kind of circled the wagon so to speak around each other in order to fight back um and i i could see that happening right like say whoever uh you know the taliban identify as a past tune military commander to kind of and go because there are going to be people that are like yo you know we're not happy with you being back here uh and they're going to send somebody out there that is you know going to mostly be made up of the past tune ethnic group i mean is tajiks will go and protect themselves khaziks will go and you know they will form groups to protect themselves huzaras will do the same thing um so i i wouldn't say there's going to be this big unified uh resistance because even under mesud it wasn't a big unified resistance um you know mesud if i remember correctly and eric please correct me if i'm wrong but he was ethnically tajik i believe you know and that's where most of his manpower came from where people within his own kind of ethnic and linguistic group um it's just i'll finish off by saying this it's going to be very difficult i think um to get a multi-lingual multicultural multi-religious uh kind of popular front resistance to the taliban girl hi eric do you want to say a thoughts on this are going to move on is it sure yeah i i wholeheartedly agree with with mike's assessment there and um looking historically even if we're looking at uh you know pre 2001 or the early days when we had a very small footprint um special forces teams go in uh in november of 2001 um they the the resistance forces that you had were typically of the same ethnic group as the commander that they had and you would have these really charismatic type commanders like amachama suud or uh dostum for the usbex um you had similar type guys for for the posh dunes who like guldbadine hek matyaar who himself was not taliban but he was just as bad as the taliban um and they they do kind of keep to their own um of course there there is some collaboration at times post 9 11 a lot of this was facilitated by a foreign power we have the us go in they're working with the northern alliance uh dostum comes back you've led the turkey he comes back uh if anyone's seen the the movie 12 strong it's that story you got the michael bay treatment um it's uh it's it's it's it's going to be a a tall order to ask these very disparate groups um who are likely you know in in the event my my expectation would be if they are mounting resistance who's in charge of the resistance um and then if they have a successful resistance what happens to the country who's in power after that do we wind up with another civil war like we have between 92 and 96 where masud hek matyaar dostum all these guys tore apart the country because they were dissatisfied with the amount of control they were given um it's uh i i don't know what's going to happen um it's uh you know history teaches us anything it's we we cannot predict the future but drawing on what has happened in the past it it probably doesn't bode very well um i don't know of the you know qualifications for masud's son exactly but masud in certain ways he was definitely a warlord there's a very unsavory side to masud that we tend to overlook but um he uh he could be considered in certain ways a renaissance man he was uh you know had a european education he spoke french he um he was a great tactician he read and wrote poetry um and he was very charismatic for his people such to the extent that he was assassinated by al-qaeda um in a very insidious fashion because they needed to get rid of him out of the panchir valley um his his nickname had been shiri panchir which is the lion of panchir he was uh almost like a napoleonic type figure in terms of the the scale or the the the esteem with which he was regarded um i don't know if that character exists right now in afghanistan um and only time is going to tell uh if we see them emerge next we're going to move more towards um the us withdrawal itself many criticisms of the withdrawal have come to surrounded the issues of the special immigrant visa program like alan mentioned earlier so valin if you want to have touch on a little more specifically your experience dealing with um people in the siv program in the last five years and how that's changed in the last month month or two um yeah i um i'm not sure what to say about um the specific experience we've had with uh sivs it's it's it's the only um sort of afghan uh refugee that we've worked with um and you know sivs are you know they're translators they might be drivers anyone who is employed with the armed forces and um it's also difficult to generalize about them in terms of their education and uh even mastery of english uh i would like to um but i can't um and we work with um you know uh you know families who are uh if if afghanistan is a very abstract idea one thing i can say about the sivs is that um they to some degree believed in um the american idea um they saw hope there uh i believe um and that's my impression from just working with families here not from any kind of informed opinion or data but um you know we have been advocating for uh several administrations to accelerate pace of resettlement for these sivs because it's a it's an incredibly complicated application that takes years to process and we've been advocating that if we simplified we've been collaborating with other organizations like veterans for i can't remember veterans for american ideals or something like that um to um you know to work with specific legislators to introduce legislation to um to change this process to make it easier because the writing's been on the wall for a long time that we are going to withdraw from afghanistan this didn't come up uh just last year or just this year we've known this for a very long time um so you know just to go back to the beginning i mean it was a chaotic withdrawal but really um it's been uh you know there's several administrations that can be held to account for how poorly this is to manage um and now as a consequence of this sort of mad scramble to get onto a transport plane uh where i believe uh probably a small minority of the evacuees were actually sivs or were in some stage of the siv process what we have were people who probably were able to make a good case to the guards or whoever was managing you know the onboarding of the planes that they had to admit for here at the taliban and there are many people in afghanistan who do um and um and and and and those are the folks we're going to have to work with now folks that we don't know nearly as much about um and you know the family that we're going to help uh move in uh on monday you know the the head of the household is uh he's got a three-month consulting contract with community nations he's a banker he's very well educated all four of his children speak english fluently they went to an american school in afghanistan um he will eventually have to apply for work optimization um like every like every other corollary but he's going to be the easiest of all of the folks we're going to work with everyone else is going to be a major challenge because they don't have connections already in the united states they don't have friends already they don't have um the same education on the same privilege uh the same access you know i i i'm i'm going to feel partial to this um fellow that we're helping because we've met and we like each other you know and we can speak to each other without the the obstacles of language that's not the case that's not going to be the case for probably 95 percent or more of the uh the families that we work with in coming months and years hey thanks alan so we're going to be doing most of our q and a from audience later but this is very related um so this is from emily um it's a question about um the cause for delays and betting sivs uh if translators and allies were trustworthy trustworthy enough to conduct military operations with us how is that not enough of a qualification to provide them refuge how 20 years in is this still a problem news for anyone i mean i'm just going to be blunt about this we all know why uh it's you know we we have an inherently unequal uh governmental structure uh that makes it hard for people of color amongst other minority groups uh to to get ahead and if we were having that issue with americans you know people who are born here um do you really think they're going to extend that to somebody who literally has been other for 20 years uh that that's the sad part afghan people are are ridiculously warm uh you know they're i i loved uh you know probably 90 percent of the afghans i came into contact with and i say 90 percent because the other 10 percent was actively trying to kill me while i was there um you know but you know we do we we spent 20 years othering the afghan people and and i you know i mean that in a broad way like the media other afghan people you know you didn't see a lot of media especially our big conglomerated media really talking about the plate of the regular afghan people until you know we decided to drop a drone strike on a family of 10 the last day we were there right that's when it suddenly became a problem um so i mean i just don't have faith in the united states government to actually extend a hand in good faith to any uh refugee or or anybody or any of the other statuses that i'm not well versed on um you know and i that's why i think that it's it's a prop you know that that we haven't fixed this issue to get our allies that help us out over here um alan if you want to jump in on just you know why things if you have any more thoughts on that or i i don't really know uh i mean it's it's very difficult to understand the rationale of the state department and how they allocate um quotas for different nationalities from the refugee program um the siv program sits apart from the refugee program um but there i think they're always looking at numbers and they don't they don't want to kind of overwhelm um you know the system or and and and you know affect public opinion um obviously uh just to sort of piggyback on what mike was saying in a general way about you know american politics you know a lot of his is optics and um you know those of us who work in immigration circles you know took to heart with the biden administration said about uh you know putting aside a lot of the previous administration's policies with regard to immigration but now we see them really extending them things really haven't changed that much and they're more concerned about the numbers of folks coming up through the southern border than they are with any strictly humanitarian intentions and um you know that's that's a shame i i you know i i honestly believe that we have the capacity to help many more people than we do but um i don't think that politicians uh feel the same way and in this kind of uh these kind of optics and this kind of politics i'm sure has affected the siv program to a degree but i'm not really privy to you know the machinations of the state department and and the other organizations that have to do with this i just know that um all of the resettlement agencies and all the veterans groups that i'm connected with um bemoan the fact that there are you know tens of thousands of sivs who've been languishing in afghanistan who could have come years ago thanks alan um next uh we're gonna go zoom out more towards just the general foreign policy um what message does this withdrawal send to both u.s allies and adversaries around the region around the world um eric if you want to start with this um yeah sure uh i think one thing we uh one message that that it can be sending is that the the u.s uh does not value all of its allies once once an engagement is completed um we saw a a different situation but with some similarities the way we dealt with the Kurds um in the syrian conflict just a couple of years ago um we had similar things in in vietnam the the message could be you know it's dangerous to be an ally of the u.s um especially if once an engagement is done you still have to live with the problems in in the place that that you're from so the afghans still in afghanistan have to live with the taliban and one message could be you know if if you're an ally especially if you're not a a major power or if you're if you're not even a national entity you're a resistance group or something um of that order um it it may or may not be beneficial to uh to seek out the u.s as a partner um because that relationship is not necessarily valued mike if you want to jump in yeah i mean this is a tricky one right because um different countries are gonna take this different ways i'm on board with eric a lot you know honestly across the board that that is absolutely true um and the sad thing is i think this is only kind of like cementing the fact that a lot of our i don't know uh you know maybe maybe non-governmental allies you know like eric can point out like the curds um you know our comrades in afghanistan and you know the the dozens of other locales on the planet where we're having shooting wars that we don't know about right um like a lot of these groups already know how the united states treats allies like that like we saw at first hand with the curds during the gulf war like when we pulled out and left and you know saw sit on one after them um you know like this is only cementing that fact that we spent 20 years out war in this country uh occupying that country um like literally just burning piles of cash in that country um and and we while the war had to wrap up i think that i won't people know this i believe the war should have been done in overworth in 2011 when you know uh ben lon was killed we shouldn't stay today longer than that um you know of course that goes back to let's plan you know we got ben lon we have a plan ready to hand things over and and kind of be there as a as a backstop for for car's eye at the time right um but if this is how we treat allies who's really going to want our help at this point like honestly um you know we made a mess in iraq we made a mess in afghanistan made a mess in syria um you know and non militarily speaking we've made a mess in a lot of other countries uh you know who really wants us there at this point um another Q and A from the audience really the topic from ian do you think that in 10 years from now we will look back on the withdrawal as a turning point in post 9 11 us foreign policy or a bunch of what is characterized the past 20 years of the war on terror continue on after anyone i mean i i think this is the problem with with the united states where we gave the thumbs up when the government gave the thumbs up to go to war in afghanistan and they put it under that big umbrella of the global war on terror it allowed the united states to just unilaterally go into places uh and fight terrorism right like i you know a lot of people don't realize we are actively like taking part in embargo of yemen uh you know while 24 million people are at risk of starvation uh you know we have people fighting in the southern islands in the philippines you know we we have people all over the planet right now that are that are actively engaged in combat operations that you don't really hear about right but it's it's okay because it's under the global war on terror and until honestly we as as a country like leverage our politicians into completely eliminating that you know that title you we're still going to have this kind of american adventurism i think it's just going to take it's they'll take one mask off and put another one on and and they'll go into the next conflict you know i think i'll shift this question a little bit to more of your experience um black has sent a bunch of great questions in for us um more on the regional implications side so i'll use this time to plug we have a another panel at 130 tomorrow they'll be on focus more on regional implications um of of the one afghanistan or the withdrawal and um take over by the taliban um but he he knows she's been working with um over 300 people trying to evacuate them across the usbeck border um and he noted that no sivs are processed during the trump administration um so he's had some in process since since 2013 um how how did that affect um the work you were doing alan and are you at all optimistic about the new administration doing more he's going to be pretty pessimistic at the moment but you share thoughts hey alan i think you're just muted sorry yeah i'm not um entirely sure i understand the question but is it that i i'm optimistic that more will be done to um bring refugees out of afghanistan at this point uh yeah are you optimistic that under the new administration um that things could change that immigration policies could be updated my apologies work she yeah it's it's very hard for me to say i mean i i would like to take um secretary of state blinkin is at his word that will continue to try to help people come out on uh you know uh commercial flights um and work with the taliban to you know to get a parolees uh who've completed applications out um you know i don't know um if this is going to be a priority for the administration i know it's a priority for a lot of groups around the united states who are working with individuals um it's been a very difficult frustrating time right now um and you know there there are different ways to go about this there are land routes to get out of the country and then to apply for refugee status because those who want to come as refugees have to cross the border first um and uh you know they're it's complicated um and you know i don't think this is going to be a high priority for the administration frankly i think the highest priority for them right now is to somehow find a way to work with the sixty some thousand folks who are already here in the united states and the others who are on basis overseas um so they probably don't want to add to those numbers but um yeah i uh i'm not really sure the administration recently set the presidential determination and 125 000 uh for refugees which is what the ask was uh until the cop will fell and then we increased the ask to 200 000 so that we could bring in additional afghan refugees but that didn't happen um so um yeah i'm not really sure that i'm answering the question very well but truth of the matter is is i don't really know the answer so i think we'll finish up so we're about 11 more minutes um we'll do a few more audience community questions and again thank you everyone for joining us um so we have one question do you think the ethnic ties of some government officials with the Taliban had any effects on the sudden fall of the afghanistan army um eric if you have any knowledge on the subject or might um yeah it could have it's not something i've given a lot of thought to uh thus far but it it definitely could uh it definitely could um like we've said uh mike has said it before as well um it's a very tribal country it's it's a country that in many ways thrives on tribal and in chip bonds um and another another thing to note is it's uh it's it's a country that we've seen it certainly with the with the ana we've seen it under the Karzai regime especially but it's a country that where where corruption is is rampant um it's not limited to afghanistan we see this in uh culturally throughout a number of central asian countries southwestern asian countries um and frankly we see it all over the place and the the lack of infrastructure in afghanistan allows this this culture to to thrive um i i could i don't have knowledge of it but i could i could see that being a factor um uh relationships with you know particular individuals could play a role there but i i don't have any specific knowledge um on my second deployment when i was in the argendah brewer valley um the the primary ana unit we worked with were tagics and they had them fighting in a Pashtun area um and the reason was this was one of karzai's last things he did while he was transitioning out and ghani was coming in was to build national like that afghan that abstract afghan idea was well you're not going to fight in the places where you enlisted and trained at you're going to fight in other areas so the Pashtuns can see that the tagics are equally bought in to the idea of this this larger you know as we call it gyroa you know the the greater islamic republic of afghanistan right uh and it was not smart uh if anything it it kind of painted a bigger target on their backs because when you have an area like the argendah river which air can tell you runs right through taliban heartland they're not very happy about seeing other groups of people there um i mean i like that that's my small little micro looked you know and i hopefully that answer but i wouldn't be surprised like i'd have macro level that there might have been something to do with that and so earlier mic mentioned the drums are killed in kind of in civilians and i was in response to the nice ask attack on the airport um they killed the over a dozen um american troops and many many more afghan civilians um after the suicide bombing at the airport and just for the from the audience after a suicide bombing at the airport what measures would the us take to defeat isk will it be similar to the mention you need to be root barracks attack where they will not be a significant retaliation or will the u.s actively seek to defeat the group also to what extent uh do you guys believe that isk threatens you's interests and i guess more broadly um what are your predictions on whether terrorist groups will thrive like they did in the first paladin rule i mean honestly i don't see isis forces in afghanistan picking up steam the way they did in places like iraq or syria honestly because of how the the cultural and linguistic groups in afghanistan are you know we've already talked about how they don't work well together and when they do it's it's for short periods of time right they they they're not what you would call buddies but you know what they dislike more than each other outsiders coming into the country um you know they're very proud and very uh i don't want to say insular is the right word but they're leery of outsiders right and i mean there there's been reports that you know the taliban was even being rubbed the wrong way by al qaeda and bin ladin you know right after the attacks occurred you know so i i don't see like a big isis push into afghanistan i just only because of those cultural excuse me uh uh the cultural issues that would arise um but as far as like if we're talking about big international terrorism i mean i i hate to kind of put it bluntly like this but we're going to be dealing with this forever as long as the major industrial powers continue to prioritize monetary gain right like as long as we think that we have a a you know we have to have a footprint in this area for american interests you know we're always going to have that you know the united states isn't welcome in a lot of places i mean one of my last deployment 2012 the taliban literally controlled half the districts in the country you know and this is after you know we're 11 years in at that point right like it we're not welcome but we we try to you know force our way in and as long as we continue to do that because of american interests we're going to deal with terrorism that's you know and i maybe these groups are able to hit us here again like the perpetrators of 9-11 did you know or they're hitting our you know our military posts and like the 112 countries we have a military presence in i mean you know and anything's possible honestly but i i don't think international terrorism is going to go away uh as as an issue that america has to deal with yeah if i could just jump in and uh sort of piggyback on what uh mike had said um i think what happened with al qaeda coming in uh in the 90s into afghanistan was a very kind of specific situation where they it's almost like the taliban were granting them asylum after they had been run out of um run out of sudan so um they they weren't so much coming in and trying to take over coming in and trying to co-op them uh it was they were seeking refuge and um the the taliban were were you know sort of also shocked by what happened on 9-11 but it was through their uh the the pashtun code pashtun wali where they this was their guest they're not going to hand them over um if anyone's seen the film lone survivor where um i forget if it's marcus latrell it's the character um who uh he's he's taken in by a pashtun family it's it's it's part of that code now mastia in in pashtun wali um so i i think it's it's they're they're not analogous it's a different situation um a different time and it's specific to that time and place um another thing to consider is that um isis uh has sort of uh a fairly specific worldview and and interpretation of islam and while the taliban are you know very kind of we can look at them as being barbaric and very austere in some ways in their interpretation it's they're they're not they're not the same thing like um the islam that we see embodied by the taliban is not it's not pure it's not we're not looking straight at the text it's infused with uh with their culture with uh with their their own sort of tribal beliefs tribal practices so i think that at some point there you would see a clash between the two because um both would look at their own worldview their own philosophy as being you know the ultimate and they're not they're not one of the same thing so we just have a couple minutes left um we won't really get to all the questions but um i noticed one question was about um specific issues for women and children and uh as i mentioned to start we were trying really hard to get um afghan and women voices on every panel for this symposium and there's only part one um and we're unfortunately just able to uh due to the ongoing nature of the events in afghanistan and just um confidentiality reasons we weren't able to get um anyone on for this panel but tomorrow we have a panel at uh 1 30 p.m um on the regional implications of taliban control and then at 3 p.m um on more specifically the future for women under taliban rule um so we have um a journalist from afghanistan uh tafra huryati um anna larson who's a professor at tafs um simon royesh who founded a language academy in afghanistan and rafia zikaria who is an author attending human rights activists um so please tune in for those tomorrow and if maybe each of the panelists wants to finish up just a quick um 20 to 30 seconds maybe your hopes fears for the future of afghanistan i know it's a very short time frame for such a big question but um yeah so i'll i think i'll i'll sum up uh with an anecdote that i have from uh one of my female it's sort of in the spirit of uh these panels being uh inclusive of women's issues as well um an anecdote i have from a female instructor i had in language school um well during the reign of the taliban while she was in afghanistan walking down the street with her son maybe like 10 11 years old there was gunfire and taliban were present in the street and this woman who was like the sweetest most grandmotherly woman i've ever met um hid behind her son because it was safer for the taliban to see uh a child than it was to see a woman in the street so um i i don't know how that factors into how things bode for afghanistan but um i'm as much as i would want to be hopeful uh at this this juncture i am not um particularly hopeful of what's going to happen yeah i mean i'm i'm terrified uh for you know the friends i have that are still there uh and the friends that i i've made uh you know that are that made it to united states for their family over there um you know i don't think anybody can argue uh that the taliban is a group of good dudes right like i don't think anybody could argue that point but i will say we have to do better next time the the nation as a whole has to do better next time we completely decimated that country um and i i can honestly say i don't think they're better off for it um you know i'm with eric i don't see anything positive coming uh from afghanistan for the next few years and i could only hope that you know alan and and other people that are doing the hard work that they're doing can get as many people over as they can um and then we collectivize our our energy into forcing the government uh to to take care of the people that took care of us when we were over there i i don't know what what the future has in store for afghanistan now but i mean i think that there was a generation of afghan nationals afghan people afghan women and girls who um you know they're going to bring their experience um um they're going to live their experience through the next years and um you know hopefully you know be able to influence uh have some influence i don't know how that's going to pan out but i do know that um the women and girls who we know here in the united states um are going to get every opportunity to become advocates um and agents for their own lives and um you know there's a there's a small but very strong afghan community in new jersey it doesn't compare to parts of california or virginia other places where there's been more afghanity settlement um but uh we we are organizing now um and i say we in a in a very large sense um but uh because i'm not afghan myself but um but i i'm watching it happen and it's really impressive and there are uh looks like we lost allen um it comes back and finished up but um just really want to thank everyone um for coming out both virtually um and in person that fletcher school at tufts um i certainly learned a ton from all three panelists and thank you so much for sharing your experiences and perspectives um and again please join us tomorrow um for parts two and three of of our panel um so one thirty p.m. um we're gonna be doing a panel on visual implications and then three p.m. um panel on the impact of toddler and control on women's rights and then if you're here at tufts um you can come by the academic quad the tent by miller hall at 12 p.m. to 12.45 for um some refreshments and much from uh norcazine um in summerville but thank you so much allen eric mike and everyone for joining us have a great night


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