One of the first public pieces by the new Quincy Institute was just published in the New Republic and it is worth a read. Adam Wunische is a research fellow with the Institute and a PhD candidate at Boston College. He served two deployments to Afghanistan while serving in the U.S. Army. “The Real Costs of the War in Afghanistan” documents an issue which was a key focus of my book “WAR: The Afterparty.”

This young Afghan girl approached me on the street each day to sell me old Dari language children’s magazines. It was only on my final day in Kabul that she told me her name.

I spent a month in Kabul in December 2014, the month the U.S. withdrew all but a few thousand of its troops. Among the numerous interviews in the Afghanistan chapter is this one with a 25-year Middle East/ Afghanistan contractor which explores the question, how long does the U.S. stay to fulfill its moral and military obligations to Afghanistan?

From “WAR: The Afterparty” Chapter Six: “Without Peace, There is Nothing.”

Staying with Farshid begat my meeting with Mr. E, a long-time American contractor who prefers to be anonymous, which begat my meeting with Will Everett.

Will, a former NPR (U.S. national public radio) reporter, arrives at the Kabul Serena Hotel lobby, where he identifies me, a westerner pecking away on a MacBook Air. The other people in the lobby are either behind the reception counter or carrying automatic weapons. Will works for Roots for Peace, an NGO that clears land mines and provides farming resources such as seedlings, fertilizer, tools, and training to increase crop yields. “Mines to Vines.”

I’ve been here once before, during an ill-advised late night walk that ended up in a cul-de-sac surrounded by snarling dogs and barbed wire fences. As the sun was setting with the call to prayer beckoning from the Wazir Abdul Khan mosque, I walked past the Lycée Esteqlal and ducked into the Serena. I stayed for dinner even though the hotel was a Taliban target earlier in the year. My elderly waiter casually mentioned that he served two of the fellows involved. They were young and well-mannered. After excusing themselves for the rest room, they returned spraying automatic gunfire through the restaurant. The waiter, unharmed, was back at work the next day.

Ghafar Haidary, a former mujaheddin who fought the Soviets with sticks after their invasion of Herat, shows me the proper way to wear a traditional Afghan pakol after one of our encounters.

Mr. E arrives and the three of us dine at the Asian fusion restaurant Wild Rice, sharing a savory spread of Nasi Goreng, Teriyaki Chicken and Sweet and Sour Fish. Will suggests a possible trip to Mazar-i-Sharif. I mention my interest in the Panjshir Valley. He promises to keep me posted on his plans. And he mentions his neighborhood swimming pool, which sounds splendid. I need a place to work out. Near the City Center mall, there is a huge banner promoting a gym on the second floor. When I climbed the stairs to check it out, there was only rubble, and a fellow with a gun telling me to get lost.

Mr. E’s bottom-line assessment after 12 years in country about whether the trillion dollars spent and blood spilt was worth the effort is discouraging.

It absolutely wasn’t worth the effort. I hate to agree with Donald Rumsfeld, but coming in with a small footprint and leaving as quickly as possible would have been preferable. It would have left the Afghans to their own devices and let them figure out how to take care of themselves. The same situation that they have to face eventually anyway.

In the meantime, a corrupt apparatus was developed which happens all the time after our entries into these countries and it just severely dislocated many, many things in the country. Rather than being liberators we became occupiers.

What was the U.S. mission originally?

Revenge. So close to 9-11. And then we didn’t want to leave Afghanistan to its own devices, because that was too dangerous, as it might slip back to the same condition it was in before. So then we got into nation building, digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper, and one thing led to another. It’s now time to get out.

To elicit further Mr. E. insights, I related how I was in Mohammed’s carpet shop the other day and there was an older gentleman present, well-dressed, excellent English, a successful merchant from a nearby province. His son is a college student in Texas, working on Rand Paul’s presidential campaign. He said two things to me. One, our problem was we put black people in the White House. Two, he said, “You American people, if you start something, you have to finish it.”

Still tweaked from his first comment, I pointed out that the U.S. has been in Afghanistan 13 years, three times longer than World War Two. My question to him was how much longer should the U.S. stay? His response was, at least another 10 years.

I countered by asking, “Where is it written that United States taxpayers need to underwrite 25 years of Afghans trying to figure out their future, assuming we are providing security you want and development that is meaningful?” Mr. E responds,

I think the media construct was an assumption that we shouldn’t have departed the first time. And that led to these unfortunate consequences and eventually to 9/11 and now we are here to do things in a proper way. And that was just a sort of common denominator media understanding of Afghanistan.

We don’t think in terms of how long that might take. We get involved, get excited as the military parade passes by with all the boys in their finery and nice uniforms. In the same way as with the aid juggernaut coming into town. Change is happening, hospitals, girls educated and aren’t we exceptional because we are helping these people?

A lot of good has been done in Afghanistan, but it’s a hole without a bottom. You could have put in five trillion dollars and you would still have desperately poor people.

But is that really central to the U.S. as it’s falling apart? Probably not.

Also, we traumatized a good portion of our youth in uniform. We train them to be killers and they see horrible things and they go back and they are members of our society.

We have remote control warfare and we develop a national case of bad karma. We are not aware of what we are doing to other people and what we are doing to ourselves. We celebrate soldiers as heroes when they are more than likely just a kid from a small town in Arkansas who didn’t have a job.

It’s part of the uncalculated consequences whenever we make these interventions. It’s multi-dimensional, the blowback that we generate. It’s happened before and before and before and we still act surprised.

In Chalmers Johnson’s book on blowback, he says, blowback is not just what comes back to you, it is when your country is doing things you are not aware of, so that when it does come back to you, you’re mystified by it.^[i]

That’s a good explanation. It’s awfully complex. The military mission was ill-conceived in the expansion of NATO outside of Kabul. It transformed us into occupiers, inevitably. So that the people resisting it became mujahedin, holy warriors. That didn’t happen until we expanded outside of Kabul. Many people warned about that, and it was still done. As a bit of insurgency ramped up outside, the idea was, we clamped down on difficulties in Kabul pretty well with NATO, why don’t we do it all over the country? And there was a lot of dissension saying this is going to have consequences. And then we had to justify that, or disguise the military presence, the nature of occupation, with economic assistance. So that ramped up the economic assistance.

^[i]Johnson, C. (2004). Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (American Empire Project). New York: Holt Paperbacks.

You can order the book on Amazon in paperback or ebook.

And do check out the Quincy Institute. A new, rather extraordinary partnership of progressive billionaire George Soros and right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, led by one of America’s foremost foreign policy thinkers Andrew Bacevich. From their website:

The foreign policy of the United States has become detached from any defensible conception of U.S. interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity of humankind. Political leaders have increasingly deployed the military in a costly, counterproductive, and indiscriminate manner, normalizing war and treating armed dominance as an end in itself…

The Quincy Institute is an action-oriented think tank that will lay the foundation for a new foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement and military restraint. The current moment presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring together like-minded progressives and conservatives and set U.S. foreign policy on a sensible and humane footing. Our country’s current circumstances demand it.

Trying on Kurdish and Arab scarves in chilly Erbil, Iraq with my guide and friend Samir Barznjy

I completed my research for “WAR: The Afterparty” with a trip to Iraq in January. While I found most of my lodging for my round the world journey through Expedia, Airbnb and Lonely Planet, I came across generous Couchsurfing hosts in Afghanistan and Vietnam. And that’s where I encountered Samir Barznjy, a 31-year old surgeon and businessman in Erbil, the Kurdish region of Iraq. He is visiting the U.S. this week and my old cable TV colleagues are hosting him for lodging and meals in Denver. Samir drove me through the region, from Halabja, site of the chemical bombardment n 1988, to the Citadel, the oldest continually occupied habitat in the world and to the ISIS front lines outside of Mosul. In honor of Samir’s visit to the States, and as Iraqi, Kurdish and U.S. forces mass to retake Mosul from ISIS, please enjoy the recounting of our visit to an Iraqi Army base from “WAR: The Afterparty.”

“There Is No State”

ISIS destroyed the bridge on our right so we went over the Peshmerga-built replacement to get to the army base.

The ride from Erbil to the Iraqi Army base where Fakhradin’s brother serves takes less than an hour. Samir closely controls what sounds float out of the car radio while Fakhradin provides ongoing narration from the rear as we pass each military checkpoint. He points to a small village visible from my right side window. The former residents were no longer interested in being in the middle of periodic skirmishes.

That town is ISIS, abandoned, empty. Twenty days ago, Daesh came through these homes and Peshmerga fought them with the air force, and they retreated.

As we approach the Tigris River’s Greater Zab tributary, separating Erbil’s suburbs from Mosul’s provincial towns, Fakhradin points out a bridge blown up by Daesh and the smaller one which we will cross, built by Peshmerga.

Samir is in a jovial mood. “We are now past the last Peshmerga checkpoint,” he smiles, adding, “We thought we would bring you as a small gift for ISIS.” Funny.

Barznjy, Fakhradin, Gruber, Captain Shamsadin

“This is group number five in Iraqi Army, but they are all Kurdish,” Samir translates as we pass through Army security. Captain Shamsadin, Fakhradin’s brother, greets us in the base parking lot, a collection of buildings spread over a few hundred meters. Fakhradin wears Peshmerga fatigues, the others standard Army issue.

Shamsadin was born in 1979, the year of Saddam Hussein’s ascent to power, and attended the military academy in Kurdistan. After graduation, he joined a Kurdish group in the Iraqi army, becoming Peshmerga when Kurdistan fought for its autonomy from the Iraqi government in 1991. He fought with Peshmerga and U.S. forces in Mosul and Baghdad for the “liberation in 2003.” When the post-Saddam Iraqi Army was formed, he officially rejoined its Kurdish unit.

I confess to Samir that the distinction is confusing. Samir explains,

Iraqi Army Kurds report to Kurdish leaders. And they have told the Iraqi army, you are not permitted to enter Kurdistan. If you do, bad things will happen.

Shamsadin adds, for effect, “We will turn our guns towards the Iraqi army.”

I ask the Captain what was going through his mind when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

In the beginning, most Iraqi people think it will be a good thing for the U.S. to destroy Saddam, the Army and the Ba’athist Party. It was positive for us Kurds, negative for the south and middle of Iraq. Religious men found that some American soldiers had bad attitudes toward the people of Iraq, they used bad language, they hit people, took them away.

Samir adds that there were many reports of sexual harassment by U.S. soldiers, in addition to widely publicized incidents of torture of prisoners by U.S. guards in Iraqi prisons.

Did Shamsadin have mixed feelings fighting with a foreign army against Iraqis?

No, we used to fight Saddam, a dictator who used to oppress my people, destroyed our villages and killed our people with chemical bombardments.

What about the decision to fire the Army and members of the Ba’ath party?

My personal view is that it was a bad thing. Even the military forces did not like Saddam Hussein. When U.S. troops came, they did not fight and handed themselves over to U.S. soldiers. They liked democracy. Why did they send these soldiers home?

We move to Shamsadin’s bedroom to talk further. A uniformed soldier serves tea in a paper cup; it’s very sweet and very hot. A pile of books is stacked by the bed; an automatic weapon leans against the wall. The room sports two portable heaters, one gas-fired, one electric, two metal lockers, a small white fridge and a TV. A rug covers part of the tiled floor. There are two clocks, one wall-mounted, another propped up on the fridge. I’m guessing the green can of Pringles is sour cream and onion. Shamsadin continues.

Mass graves outside the Halabja memorial for the 5,000 dead and 20,000 injured in the 1988 chemical bombardment.

Most soldiers did not fight America. When they lost connection with high-level officers, they left the military bases and went back home. Only two groups fought: at Baghdad International Airport, relatives of Saddam Hussein. And special forces at Saddam residences. Only these two groups.

To what degree are Islamic State officers, leaders and soldiers connected to that event?

The captain folds his arms. His temperament is serene, polite, even gentle. Everyone I meet on the base seems relaxed and confident.

The number one reason for the creation of a terror group was, in Iraq in 2003, high-level colonels were sent home, lost their jobs and money and lost their dignity, became taxi drivers, sold things on the road. Because of this, they joined the terror groups and many years after that they created Daesh. The number one reason for terrorist group is sending these solders home.

The Iraqi Army base auto repair shop. During the ISIS assault three weeks before, a fighter sprayed graffiti which Samir translates as, “Only for cars of the Islamic State.” Most ISIS attackers were later killed by a U.S. airstrike.

In Mosul, most of the wealthy were in the Army. After losing money, job, dignity, they sought an alternative to be back in a higher position. A lot of them went to the military academy, they were military engineers, so they were very experienced.

What was your experience in fighting ISIS in Mosul?

One week before ISIS came to Mosul, we had news that there is a group well-trained in Syria and they wanted to occupy Mosul province. They will come to break out 4,500 terrorists in prisons. They occupied two quarters, I was there fighting. If not for armored vehicles, we would have been killed. These groups, when they came, had new models of HILUX trucks. While Iraqi army had old-fashioned Hummers from the Americans. They’re called Egyptian Hummers. Not good because the weather is too hot for the vehicles. A lot were broken. We were obliged to use these old-fashioned Hummers because they were armored and terrorist groups used bombs. There were 1,500 Daesh fighters. The Iraqi army had much more than that, including army, civil police, anti-terror groups.

Later over shisha and tea, Samir relates the story that Kurdish President Barzani called Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, and told him we must do something to protect Mosul before Daesh attacks it. Barzani was Peshmerga since he was 13 years old, fighting in the mountains with his father (Mullah Mustafa Barzani, founder of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, in 1946). Maliki replied that you have nothing to do with Mosul. Take care of Kurdistan and leave Mosul for us. He called him again, three months later. Same answer.

Why could they not hold Mosul? Conspiracy theories I heard said Maliki ordered his leaders to abandon his troops. Shamsadin says he also wondered, was this Maliki’s order, how to find the exact cause?

When Daesh came to Mosul, they occupied only one or two quarters; then there was a meeting with high level officials in the Iraqi Army and they said at 4 a.m. they will go to attack Daesh and we will take them out. All of a sudden, at 2 a.m., the two most high-level leaders fled Mosul. After that, the low level leaders fled, then the others.

Lunch is served at the army canteen for me, Samir and Fakhradin.

This is usual for Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was captured, a lot of small groups were fighting. But when they relayed that he was captured, they left their guns and did nothing. In Mosul, the same thing. Two commanders, left, then the others; one of the groups of the Iraqi army stayed and fought, and were brave, but only one group.

“Those were the Kurdish troops,” Samir interjects.

Fakhradin asks his brother for something. The captain pulls a roller suitcase from under the bed. He pulls out what looks like an ammo clip and gives it to his brother. It turns out to be a mobile device charger which Fakhradin uses to recharge his brother’s phone.

It is also unbelievable and strange for us. We were ready to fight and all of a sudden they fled. We didn’t believe it when we first heard.

In this region there is one group of Iraqi army which is totally Kurdish. Usually, little collaboration, but when Daesh came to Mosul, only this group remained and they joined Peshmerga to fight. Because of this, they can keep the territories (the area between Erbil and Mosul we drove through).

Here on the front line, you see them first hand, you fought them. What is the solution for defeating the Islamic State?

Fakhradin raises the wooden slat blinders and puts aside the yellow daisy curtains, allowing sunlight to stream into the room. The lower left windowpane is cracked. A tree and a sand-colored building are visible, perhaps 50 meters away.

You, as an American, you know better than us, Sunni and Shia will never collaborate with each other. Maybe they talk on TV or in newspapers, but only talk, and nothing will happen in reality. Iraqi people have lost their dignity, this is the main reason Shia and Sunni will never unite. Even if you want to try to keep it united, any simple thing may make it explode, so it will be only temporary.

This civil war that happened in 2007 in the middle and south of Iraq, a lot of people died and were injured and left a lot of scars in their minds and they will never forget this. So they will never unite. A lot of collaboration between great countries against Daesh, but as we know there is only one in reality, Peshmerga, that on the ground in reality fights Daesh. A lot of countries that says we are allies but in reality they don’t fight. Maybe they are helping Daesh in other ways.

If you and Syrian Kurds get all you need, the Islamic State is finished?

With the support of air force, it will be like a piece of cake.

Shamsadin excuses himself to make a phone call. He says the area commander would like to meet me.

The four of us head to lunch in one of the barracks. Plate after plate is put in front of us, chicken, beans in a tomato-base sauce, vegetables, Kurdish flatbread, hot tea and soft drinks. As soon as I polish off one bowl, another is put in front of me. “I can’t . . .” is ignored.

A tour of the front lines

After lunch, Samir and the captain casually mention that it’s time for Friday afternoon prayers and we walk back to Shamsadin’s bedroom/ office/ meeting room. A green prayer mat is unrolled next to the bed, and, one at a time, they perform their prayers. I am curious how comfortable they seem with this Jewish American civilian stranger sitting and watching.

When prayers are completed, we load into a car for a short ride of a few hundred meters to the sandbag and gun-laden line of defense. The constant refrain of Kurds that their weapons are old, that they are under-equipped is plainly true. We tour the bunkers as accounts of a recent attack is related. Shamsadin pointed to places where Daesh fighters penetrated the perimeter, and where U.S. air strikes incinerated 85 of them. A building with a “Motopool” sign in English and Kurdish has Arabic graffiti sprayed across the front wall. Samir translates: “Only For Vehicles of the Islamic State.” Not anymore.

“With binoculars, we can see the Daesh flags there,” Samir translates guidance from a soldier. A small column of white smoke appears, perhaps two kilometers to our right. A second appears, closer, this time 10 o’clock to our left. Samir asks if I know what that is. I have no idea, maybe small fires, maybe even the results of an air strike. “ISIS,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Iraqi Army Major Luqman Chaw Sheen meets us outside of a larger building housing his office. Chaw Sheen translates as “Blue Eyes,” a nickname, not a family name. He is the Commander of the front line base. He is older and more war-weary than his younger charges.

He understands why many Sunnis have embraced Daesh.

If I am a Sunni who doesn’t want Daesh, what do I do? What is my alternative? Daesh is their only answer. The way to destroy or weaken Daesh is for Sunni people to fight them.

A lot of Sunni IDP (internally displaced persons) live in Kurdistan provinces and they fled Daesh. The problem is that when Iraq was ruled by Sunni, they were very bad toward the Shia and Kurds. Now all political rules are under Shia, they have in their mind to get revenge against Sunni. And they will continue to the end.

A lot of former Iraqi officers joined Daesh with a lot of jihadis from Pakistan, Afghanistan. They have been deceived by religion. Seventy percent of Iraqi officers were from Mosul. They are experts in making rockets and bombs. They say you cannot find this experience now in the Iraqi army.

——————

Read Part One of the interview at http://briangruber.tumblr.com/post/109933161004/kabuls-white-hat-hacker-on-afghan-cybersecurity

“X” is a cybersecurity and programming staffer in the Afghan government. We agreed to meet for pizza near Shar-e-Naw Park and to keep his identity anonymous in the interview. He is known in Kabul IT circles as a ‘White Hat Hacker.’ This interview was transcribed by Afterparty editor Anaka Allen.

Brian: So what about your personal stance as an Afghan and patriot and and educated smart guy who could probably find great opportunity elsewhere. US forces leaving, Taliban wants to take control again. What do you see for 2015, how worried are you about your own security and the security of the country? Putting network stuff aside.

WHH: Well as I told you the other day, in Kabul everyday something is happening. And the day after that something else happens. (A teenager blew himself up at a school play at Kabul’s Lycee Esqetlal school).

BG: A few days before the suicide bombing, I went by there and took pictures. It’s very centrally located.

WHH: Security is our every worry.

BG: How worried are you that it will get much worse and that the Taliban can take over the country again?

WHH: Well if the system goes like this, like now, definitely there may be some side effects. But, they are not powerful so much that they would take over Afghanistan.

BG: Cause a lot of people are sick of what they saw when they took over. My sense is that there was civil war, fighting and finally here’s these nice Islamic fellows who just want to teach the Quran and create peace, so there was some maybe suspicion but people said, hey, give them a chance. And then they saw these guys are fucking the worst.

WHH: It’s not about Islam. In America we have Muslims, in India we have Muslims, in France we have Muslims. They are living peacefully. It’s a political game. It’s not Islam. They are Pakistani far-side groups. They have support of other countries. It’s not about Islam, they’re just using Islam.

BG: What percentage of Taliban fighters, activists, genuinely believe they are conducting a holy jihad, they are God’s chosen force.

WHH: The people who are on the lower level. Uneducated. The ones who bomb these things, they’re injected with some kind of material. They don’t know what they’re doing.

BG: I mean come on, 16 years old.

WHH: If you check his blood, in a lab, check it out, there might be some kind of chemical.

BG: Some kind of methamphetamine, something, drugs.

WHH: I don’t know, something.

BG: Someone said to me yesterday, the guy has got to be Pakistani or educated at the madrassas there, because an Afghan would not do that.

WHH: Might be true. But our intelligence is not quite good.

BG: Why do you think the United States allows an ally to work against its interests that aggressively over many years? Is it fear of nuclear weapons control? Is it that we need Pakistan for an ally? I’m reading one book by Steve Coll called Ghost Wars. He’s writing about the Pakistan covert involvement with the Taliban 15 years ago. With the United States pushing all this money through ISI, through Pakistan. So why do you think the U.S. puts up with that?

WHH: In the first, there were Russians in Afghanistan. I guess the US created this project.

BG: Cold War.

WHH: Cold War. Created Al Qaeda to fight the Russians.

BG: Created a monster.

WHH: But then this monster went rogue. America wasn’t able to control it anymore. Because they were uneducated people. Suddenly they changed their decision and said I’m not following your orders anymore.

BG: So what you said is what I hear uniformly, which is that Taliban are too weak and too despised by too many people to take over all of Afghanistan again. Having said that, is the threat that they will simply destabilize and create misery for a long time?

WHH: The big problem in Afghanistan is that it’s a house that doesn’t have walls around it. So they can destabilize sometimes, create some kind of incident which would show that Afghanistan is destabilized, but it won’t be critical.

BG: Among your friends, people your age, level of education, professionals, what’s the attitude towards this 13 year occupation? I mean certainly no one wants to be occupied, no one wants foreign military in their country, historically Afghans don’t like foreign military. Occasionally, there is a civilian killing, there’s frustrations with not enough money going to poor people, and to average Afghans. So in your community, your social network, what’s peoples’ attitudes towards these 13 years of occupation or intervention? Good things? Stay longer? Americans go home? Thank you very much for what you’ve done, now go home?

WHH: I would say like we have some improvements. We’re thankful now. We still need some support. I’m not saying only Afghans are dying, Americans are also dying here. They have parents, they have family.  I will just tell you a small answer. NSA is able to create like a (unclear). There are some other agencies behind these people, the Islamic radical people, that America cannot fight that country directly. Like Pakistan…it will create like an international mess. So it is like chess, it’s like an international game. That’s not part of Islam.

If you’re the guy leading the Islamic groups, you are everyday sending e-mail…you can find his router in like a millisecond. You don’t need to send a force to him, you can get him with a drone. But, you cannot do it because there are some kind of supports behind him.

BG: You’re saying, if the United States NSA is so strong and so smart, that they can get through.

WHH: I believe the NSA can crack anything in the world. Why? You didn’t ask me why.

BG: Why?

WHH: If you’re creating something, you are the owner, you know everything about it. The internet was created by DARPA…defense project right? They can crack anything.

BG: Yea, that’s a nice advantage to have. From a hypothetical point of view, what you say makes sense to me. Now I’m trying to drill down to the specifics. So you think the United States can’t go to Pakistan and say, “Hey motherfucker, our soldiers are dying, you’re destabilizing the world, we’re giving you all this money, time to come to some agreement…”

WHH: I believe they can. America can do that. But something bigger will happen if they go there and tell them, “Hey motherfucker, don’t do that.”…but some powerful countries…they would start by saying, “Don’t touch our friends,” then at the end what would happen? World War III would happen. That’s why I guess America is avoiding to make this bigger.

BG: Because Afghanistan’s important, but World War III is more important. Afghanistan security at this restaurant is important, but avoiding Pakistani nuclear weapons hitting New York is more important….

WHH: But I hope there would be politicals talking with them so they could solve it by talking with each other.

BG: Well, they’ve been talking a long time. How long do you need to talk? [Laughs]

What do you think is the state of the Afghan army and police force? Do you think that they are going to do a credible job next year of keeping security in the country?

WHH: Well, you don’t only need troops to do the job. You need to have some accessories like you need good guns and good armor. You need good surveillance. Surveillance first to find out what the enemy is doing.

BG: Which I think the general sense is, the United States is not going to stop providing that, so I think surveillance, hardware…

WHH: United States has given them everything, but there is not capacity. I’m telling you for 13 years America is trying to make us something, but the middleware is trying to kill it.

BG: And by middleware, you mean middle people.

WHH: So Americans try and America is giving money.

BG: Do you have friends or people you know who have a really different attitude than you, and they’re saying, “American imperialists, infidels occupying our country, get them out of here, we want them gone completely, we can do fine on our own?” Do you have any friends who have that point of view?

WHH: No, because my friends that I talk to are educated.

BG: So educated professional people do not have that point of view? Like I told you this guy from Herat, 65 years old, former mujaheddin, really wonderful smart guy, but probably uneducated, certainly doesn’t have the modern education that you do. He says that it’s time for Americans to go, we can actually do better with security without the United States, and he says the United States is behind the Taliban. The first part you probably wouldn’t agree with, the second part is, he said, “America is behind the Taliban,” which I found too strong a statement without context, because, he said, “If America really wanted to find the Taliban, really wanted to shut down the Taliban they could do it overnight. They’re providing them with funding.” And I thought, really? The United States is directly funding the Taliban? I can’t imagine any strategy that would make sense to drive that.

WHH: I wouldn’t exactly agree with him. I guess the other parties put in Taliban, but because America cannot fight with them directly, that’s why these guys are not fighting with them.

BG: What was your impression of Massoud? Do you think Massoud would have been a good leader?

WHH: He was a great leader.

BG: Heroic guy.

WHH: He was not corrupted…he was a good leader.

BG: I stayed up one night studying Massoud. It’s an incredible story, of course, tragic. Incredible personality, and I don’t know if it’s true, but the things he wrote about his vision for Afghan culture…about women’s rights, freedom of speech, open culture…he was a bright guy.

WHH: They killed him.

BG: Two days before 9/11.

WHH: Everything is a plan.

BG: My understanding is, because Bin Laden knew that he needed Mullah Omar’s protection, then he’s going to say, “I’m going to do this for you, and then you protect me.” Do you think that was the quid pro quo, or no?

WHH: I don’t know. I’m not going to say directly. [laughs]

I worked with Shahid Butt at Charter Cable years ago, a smart, congenial fellow and accomplished marketer. As I posted interviews from my swing through the Islamic world, and pointed remarks about Pakistan’s role in the emergence of the Taliban, he offered some unique insights. I talked with Shahid over Skype one night from my guesthouse room in Kabul. We began by talking about Pakistan’s role in supporting the mujeheddin jihad against the Soviet invasion in the 1980’s. The interview was transcribed by “War: The Afterparty” book project editor and intern Anaka Allen.

Shahid: In Pakistan right around that time, you could rent AK47s by the hour, there were just so many weapons. There was a military parade in one of the Arab countries; I think it may have been Qatar. As part of that military parade there was these weapons that were on display and as the U.S. was there, you know they were invited.

Brian: Sure. And they were like, those are our fucking weapons. [laughs]

S: And they were trying to figure out where did these come from? And they realized, oh shit, this is stuff that was supposed to go to Pakistan to go over next door to fight the Soviets. And when they found that trail, all of a sudden in Rawalpindi, there was a huge explosion where the munitions dump, in the garrison where people were living. This had to be, Brian, in 1981, yeah. And so people were just syphoning off weapons and selling them to anybody else.

B: You put that many weapons out in the world over so many years, and so many conflicts and the world just becomes a much more violent place.

S: WWII was the only war after which the factories that were converted to make wartime stuff, didn’t go back to making what they were making before. So, now you have this huge production capacity making stuff and if you want to keep people employed you have to sell the stuff and then they have to use the stuff; that’s why we will have wars, otherwise it’s jobs.

Here’s what so bizarre for someone like me, and you know, being a marketing guy, I try to break it down, I try to re-orient the issue. As I see it, we have a branding problem. Because if you look at the brand of Pakistan, the white part of the flag was put there on purpose, I think it’s two-fifths of the flag, to represent that there are minorities in the country who are equal citizens. And what we have basically done is, we fuck with all kinds of — pick a minority, we fuck with it now. So that’s off-brand. If you look at our version of the declaration of independence, I think there’s 230 words in there, and 40% of the words talk about protecting minorities and, again, we’re fucking that up. So, you got that issue off-brand. Second, if you say that the country was created to help the Muslims of India achieve economic prosperity, it was an economic need for a group of people, it wasn’t a religious need. And we’ve moved off of that and become this Islamic state, which is not what we’re supposed to have been. We were supposed to have been a place where the Muslims of India could have economic equality and prosperity and get access to jobs and bank loans and all that kind of stuff, education, so we fuck that up. The third thing is, if you even do convert their thinking to, hey, we’re an Islamic state, the concepts of Islam, you know we’re supposed to, let’s say, follow the teachings of the prophet. The prophet married a business woman, right? An educated, working woman, and if that’s supposed to be who we’re emulating then what the fuck? [laughs] Why do more women not have opportunity to go to school, to work in the workplace? So, we’re off target there.

B: Is that a more of a cultural, national thing than a theological thing?

S: You look at Saudi Arabia, they’re the worse at it. Because at least we’ve had a prime minister who is a woman, at least we’ve had women in parliament. Part of it is cultural, pre-Islam, and part of it is another way to keep minorities down. Women are minorities, let’s keep them down. Number two, if you look at the religion, the first interaction, according to tradition, that the prophet had with Gabriel; the first words that were said to the prophet were, “Read.” And the prophet said, “I can’t read.” The angel Gabriel again said, “Read.” And the prophet said, “I can’t.” So this went back and forth a couple of times and then he was inspired with the ability to read. And again the tradition is supposed to reinforce how important education is and if you look at our federal budget, and the amount of money we put towards education, it’s totally contradictory to the concept of how important education should be in the religion. So, on so many different levels we have missed our brand, we’re just off-brand, and that’s what’s causing some of these problems. And now, this blasphemy law that we have, where if I have a beef with my neighbor, I can go down to the police station, and say, “I heard him say something bad about the prophet,” and the cops have to come up and arrest me.

B: I heard a lot of stories of NATO and coalition troops in Afghanistan selecting certain people as partners, and those people would accuse neighbors or friends as a way to revenge or a competitive business advantage.

S: Exactly! And so the correlation to what you’re writing about, even though the U.S. didn’t directly attack Pakistan, the impact of the Soviet-era U.S. involvement and then how right away, right after the Soviets pulled back, all the funding stopped. Right, Charlie Wilson couldn’t even get a billion dollars anymore, or even 100 million dollars. It just stopped. So you have this country now, completely decimated, no money, the only infrastructure, the only crop that they have is poppy. And then the Afghans, I love those people, but they are brutal to each other as well. They just massacred each other. And then what happened in Pakistan is the blowback of the mujaheddin, the weapons, the drug trade. We may as well have been attacked.

B: Don’t you also acknowledge that there was some opportunism there, where, both at the time of the mujaheddin and then during the rise of the Taliban, there were people in the ISI and the Pakistani military and one or two of your leaders, who saw it as an opportunity to not only make some money, but to dominate Afghan politics and to use that conflict to their own advantage?

S: So, two things. What happens is, so you have a leader like, let’s say Zia with the Soviet problem, and then Musharraf with the 9/11 problem, who, both unpopular, both overthrowing a civilian government, now have lucked into the fact that the U.S. needs Pakistan’s help to go into Afghanistan. And so, these two leaders and their top-level ISI staff or generals, they all did whatever they could to stay in power. It’s all a matter of a few people staying in power. So if that means we fuck up the country with all these weapons, so be it, but we will stay in power. So that clearly happened, there was opportunism there. And then I read somewhere recently that the reason why the Pakistanis are so pro-Taliban in Afghanistan, or the ISI has been, is because they’re Pashto-speaking, we are Pashto-speaking, and the Indians were supporting the Uzbeks and Tajiks from the north. And since they were funding those guys, we felt we had to counterbalance that, who knows what came first, but there was a counterbalance to the support of the other ethnic groups to the north that the Indians were supporting. So to keep India’s control out of the western border, we needed to have the Taliban on our side.

B: Right, it’s a messy situation. What’s your sense of that whole border area with Waziristan and the whole Pashtun area? Is this another situation where Western powers like the British carved up things illicitly and illogically, and you basically have a nation or a tribe of people that, as I understand it, are ⅔ in Pakistan and ⅓ in Afghanistan, and that ultimately, those borders are so porous and the rule of law there is so thin, that you have this perpetual political issue that has been going on for a long time?

S: You have to go find the exact data point, but I think that the British guy who helped create the borders of Pakistan and India, for the new countries, I think he got there, he created the borders, never having been there before, and within 6 weeks he created these borders, and this is without Google. He did not know what he was doing. And so that is exactly why you have these tribes split by a line created by England. That’s exactly what happened.

B: And by the way, why would he know what he was doing? How in the world can any Brit understand 500 years of history and what’s happening in tribes where no Brit has ever walked the earth?

S: There were British folks there for a couple hundred years, right. So, there could be some people who knew, or provided input, but, I don’t think they were used.

B: I’m asking a lot of questions certain provocative passages in the Quran and certain provocative behaviors on the part of groups that are claiming them to be true believers, from the Islamic State to the Taliban, etc. Every Afghan I meet says Islam is a religion of peace, here is the way it teaches me, I don’t want to hurt a fly, here’s all the specific ways that our religion respects other religions and people and forbids bad behavior.

S: I think you have to put a lot of this stuff, in the Quran, into some kind of historical context. Yeah, there were some brutal, bloody battles, but if you look at it in context of what else is going on during those times, this was pretty mild. And, I think you can read the bible, and come up with how violent it is. You can read the Quran and come up with how violent it is. But at the end of the day, that’s not really the teaching, they’re just some stories that happened along the way. The teachings are very similar: peace, don’t hurt your neighbor, that kind of stuff. So the teachings are all really really similar. My father always used to joke, Do you ever wonder why Judaism, Christianity, Islam all came to that little strip of land in the Middle East? And I said, “No Pops, why?” He goes, “They’re the ones that need the most help.” [laughs] But the teachings are all so similar. People, throughout history I’m sure, have taken religion out of context to kill other people and to create fear. It’s just humans being humans.

Another interesting thing that I always try to struggle with is, when the prophet was dying, and he was trying to choose his successor, he could have chosen someone who was his relative, but he did not. He chose someone who was well-experienced, was older, and the learning from there is, leadership is not hereditary. Leadership is based on ability. But, when you look at all of these kingdoms, they are totally repugnant to that teaching. And even when you look at Pakistani politics, the political parties are not really parties. They are family club mafias, really. They keep on passing down from one to the other…it’s a mafia. Again, totally repugnant to that example that we were supposed to follow.

While in Kabul doing research for “War: The Afterparty,” I was approached via Facebook by “X,” a cybersecurity expert and programming staffer in the Afghan government. We agreed to meet for pizza near Shar-e-Naw Park and to keep his identity anonymous in the interview. When I mentioned our meeting to the head of a prominent national IT company, he said, “Oh, the white hat hacker?” The name stuck. This interview was transcribed by Afterparty editor Anaka Allen.

WHH: I am a computer forensics guy. I do computer investigation for the government.

BG: Who would be the main targets for cyber crime here?

WHH: For now, as I see it, our government doesn’t care about cyber crime.

BG: ’Cause they have other things to worry about.

WHH: No. They don’t know the importance of cybercrime. They say we need physical security first, but our physical security depends on cyber security. For example, our cabinet is doing planning, strategy. If your cyber is not secure, someone can get that data and give it to your enemies. An enemy that knows your plan, you cannot defeat him.

BG: Are you hopeful for Afghanistan’s security next year, with most Western security gone?

WHH: Well, I have good friends in ISAF that are cyber security specialist guys. They are really trying to help us build something. So I am hopeful.

BG: So, having the United States/ coalition expertise over the last 13 years, did that create some window of opportunity to develop certain things for the country?

WHH: Well, since the beginning, I saw them trying to do something for Afghanistan, there are people who don’t want to work, they don’t want to improve.

For example, your guys provide an advisor to a government guy at a senior management level. And I’m the guy who works at the lower level but I have a supervisor above me. You are giving me some standard materials, and I’m making a framework. But once this framework reaches to my management level, they’re saying, “You’re wasting your time.” See, there are people in the middle level who don’t want to work for their country. So, ISAF is trying, I am trying, but in the middle there are people who don’t want to work.

BG: So we gotta get rid of the old people [laughter]. Or the generation that doesn’t get it.

WHH: The generation that’s corrupted. Do you know how much money is coming every year to Afghanistan? That’s like uncountable.

BG: Uncountable. At one point, more than the national GDP, right?

WHH: That’s too much. Where does it go?

BG: You tell me, where does it go?

WHH: I’m telling you the middleware people are corrupted. They’re taking bribes, they’re not honest.

In a network, there are PCs connected to each other, then these PCs are infected by a virus. If you want to control the situation, you need to reinstall the PCs, you need to install the firewall for them. You need to monitor them continuously. You have to make the system clean. For example, we went to audit, the minister of finance has a system that collects taxes from the people. The problem is sometimes the people who are responsible for the entry in the system, they’re not registering these to the system. So the system will not work. You have to do some background check on the guy, if you’re hiring him for the job. So my idea, if someone wants to make Afghanistan a better place, you have to first make the system.

BG: And how do you do that?

WHH: For example, we have in Afghanistan, 26 ministries. You design everything for them, a single system. You give them their part. We have a system, one database, one part belongs to the minister of finance, another part to MOI, MOD and you’re doing a bit of specification for everyone. This ministry has rights to do this, this ministry has rights to this. And then they have to put their entries, and this whole system should be monitored by another agency which is like a national security agency, like NSA in America. So, if anyone is corrupting things, illegal things here, they will know this.

BG: So how much of what you’re describing is being built now? Nothing?

WHH: Nothing.

BG: Do you think Ghani and Abdullah, of course they’re not IT people, do you think they get the need for these kinds of controls?

WHH: Well maybe they want to, but as I told you…

BG: There’s mid-level people who are either incompetent or corrupt. Is that what you are saying?

WHH: The middleware people will not allow us to give the information to Ghani.

BG: ‘Will not allow us,’ that’s a strong statement. But is it because of incompetence or corruption?

WHH: I think that it’s some kind of politics, because maybe these middleware guys working for another country and doesn’t want our government to improve.

BG: So you think they are, in effect, treasonous…

WHH: Exactly.

BG: Another strong statement. Because they have either some philosophical and cultural allegiance to Iran, Pakistan, Russia or wherever, or they are actually being paid?

WHH: Being paid.

BG: That’s a serious problem. And you better be careful how aggressive you are…

WHH: Well I’m not telling these things to everyone. I’m just telling you because you would be conveying this message to the outside world. People need to hear, all the Americans are not here, but they need to know what’s going on here. We are using their money, but we are not getting their money, it’s middleware.

BG: When you say “middleware” is that sort of like a metaphor for the middle management people?

WHH: Yeah. Well what I’m trying to tell you, in conclusion, if the system is computerized, there would be less corruption.

BG: So technology is the answer at some level. One of the answers.

WHH: Yes. You have to use technology to make it right.

A lot of the old leftie conspiracy theories that used to impress our girlfriends in high school turned out to be true, with a little help from the Freedom of Information Act. I visited the Gulf of Tonkin this week as I worked my way down the Vietnam Coast from Hanoi.

The incident that got LBJ to go on national TV to ask Congress and the American people to support the acceleration of the Vietnam War never happened.

On August 4th, 1964, the USS Maddox reported that it was under attack from North Vietnamese patrol boats. James Stockdale, the American pilot who would become a Vice Admiral, serve time in the famous Hanoi Hilton (Hoa Lo) prison and run for vice president on Ross Perot’s ticket, was flying over the Gulf that day. Years later, Stockdale admitted that he “had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there…. There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.” His superiors told him to keep that information to himself. Secretary of Defense at the time Robert McNamara admitted in the masterful Errol Morris doc ‘Fog of War‘, “It was just confusion, and events afterwards showed that our judgment that we’d been attacked that day was wrong. It didn’t happen.” President Johnson later said, “”For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”

Not that it mattered. The Johnson administration was looking for a pretext to justify escalation, and was repeatedly sending warships and aircraft into the Gulf as both provocation and in active support of South Vietnamese military operations. After the phantom attack, coastal cities were bombed.

McNamara: We introduced what was called “Rolling Thunder,” which over the years became a very, very heavy bombing program. Two to three times as many bombs as were dropped on Western Europe during all of World War II.

I visited Vinh, which was destroyed by the bombing. You see a stark difference between the beautiful old imperial and colonial towns like Hue and Hoi An, and cities like Vinh rebuilt with East German and Soviet aid. The French destroyed Vinh in their battle against the Viet Minh in the late forties, early fifties, the US in the sixties.

—————-

An Afterparty project backer took offense at one of the reasons I gave for Vietnamese forgiveness and their uniformly kind treatment of American visitors. That is, that they won the war. In Joseph Galloway’s 1999 New York Times book review of the Naval Institute Press’ “The Wrong War: Why We Lost In Vietnam,” he writes:

(Jeffrey) Record, who served a tour as a civilian State Department adviser in the Mekong Delta and was later a legislative assistant to Senators Sam Nunn and Lloyd Bentsen, declares at the outset that in his view the main causes of the American defeat in Vietnam were a misinterpretation of both the significance and nature of the struggle; an underestimation of the enemy’s tenacity and fighting power; an overestimation of United States political stamina and military effectiveness; and the absence of a politically competitive South Vietnam.

Record goes on to quote Gen. Colin Powell, a two-tour Vietnam veteran: ”Our political leaders led us into a war for the one-size-fits-all rationale of anti-Communism, which was only a partial fit in Vietnam, where the war had its own historical roots in nationalism, anticolonialism and civil strife.”

I am visiting numerous museums as I roll south. The inspiring and horrifying Land Mine Action Center (over 40,000 killed and 60,000 maimed from mostly US unexploded ordinance, since the end of the war, or 10x our 9/11 casualties), the Ho Chi Minh Museum, Hoa Lo prison, the DMZ facilities, the Citadel in Hue, the military museums. Exhibits documenting a thousand years of struggles for independence from the Chinese, then the French, then the Japanese and the puppet Vichy regime, then the French again, then the United States.

McNamara, again from ‘The Fog of War:’ Kennedy announced we were going to pull out all of our military advisors by the end of ’65 and we were going to take 1000 out by the end of ’63 and we did. But, there was a coup in South Vietnam. Diem was overthrown and he and his brother were killed. I was present with the President when together we received information of that coup. I’ve never seen him more upset. He totally blanched. President Kenndy and I had tremendous problems with Diem, but my God, he was the authority, he was the head of state. And he was overthrown by a military coup. And Kennedy knew and I knew, that to some degree, the U.S. government was responsible for that.

—————-

The farmer, the mother, the teacher fighting American forces in the rice paddies knew and cared little about Das Kapital or The Communist Manifesto. They had been fighting foreign invaders for decades, for centuries, for millennia, and they were ready to fight to the last man or woman.

McNamara, quite a reviled figure during the Vietnam War, but a man capable of extraordinary introspection, went to Vietnam in the nineties. He tells this story:

The former Foreign Minister of Vietnam, a wonderful man named Thach said, “You’re totally wrong. We were fighting for our independence. You were fighting to enslave us.” We almost came to blows. That was noon on the first day.

“Do you mean to say it was not a tragedy for you, when you lost 3 million 4 hundred thousand Vietnamese killed, which on our population base is the equivalent of 27 million Americans? What did you accomplish? ….”

“Mr. McNamara, You must never have read a history book. If you’d had, you’d know we weren’t pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. McNamara, didn’t you know that? Don’t you understand that we have been fighting the Chinese for 1000 years? We were fighting for our independence. And we would fight to the last man. And we were determined to do so. And no amount of bombing, no amount of U.S. pressure would ever have stopped us.”

French colonialists and companies undermined Vietnam’s subsistence economy by forcibly expropriating vast amounts of land and reorganizing farmers into large plantations. By the 1930’s, French Indochina was producing sixty thousand tons of rubber annually, five per cent of world production. Vietnamese worked  long hours in debilitating conditions for slave wages. Malnutrition and malaria were common on the plantations. In the years between the two world wars, one Michelin-owned plantation recorded seventeen thousand worker deaths. Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh was in Paris studying revolutionary philosophies in vogue in French cafes and universities. He wasn’t there because he got off on Engels. He was there to adopt a framework for leading his people out of the humiliating repression of French colonial capitalism. He was a nationalist, returning to drive out the French and Japanese. Working alongside the American OSS, moving American leaders like FDR to furiously insist the U.S. support Vietnamese independence and oppose French colonialism, much as the U.S. opposed British colonialism post-WWII. Ho began his independence address to a half million newly liberated Vietnamese in Hanoi with the words of the American Declaration of Independence.

As with radical Islamists who know fuck-all about the Koran, but have had brothers, neighbors and uncles killed by western bullets, missiles, bombs, drones, there was a history of grievance that American leaders ignored. Walking Vietnamese streets in Hanoi, Vinh, Dong Ha, Hue and Hoi An, I see rare signs of Marxist-Leninist triumphalism. The occasional billboard, a tribute to military heroes, the iconic flag, a rare photo of Marx on a shop wall, a statue of Lenin in a park. Young people have accepted that they can talk whatever shit they want with their friends, but will be visited by the state police if they get too public with their discontent. There is too much state control of industry, but a growing, mostly market-driven economy. It is a young country that is eager to move on, feeds on American culture and technology and, considers the Chinese (manufacturer of cheap American consumer goods, produced by underpaid, exploited laborers) their biggest threat.

Finally, this, from Galloway.

In the end it all boils down to one question: Could we have won a military victory in Vietnam? Record’s answer is: Yes, but not at any price even remotely acceptable to the American people. One thoughtful former infantry battalion commander told me he had reflected long and hard about what would have resulted from unlimited war, including an invasion of North Vietnam: ”We could have won a military victory without question. But today my sons and yours would still be garrisoning Vietnam and fighting and dying in an unending guerrilla war.” The war was ours to lose, and we did; it was for the South Vietnamese to win, and they could not.