Picking up the pieces in Afghanistan. What now?

we're having a conversation today about picking up the pieces in afghanistan what now i'm deeply dismayed and disturbed by the fall of afghanistan to the taliban my work at csis in partnership with a lot of wonderful people in the last six years has been about sustaining a presence in afghanistan to buttress the democratically elected legitimate government in afghanistan over 20 years we've made significant progress in education including girls education human rights health infrastructure agriculture and governance we have especially made progress in women's and girls rights and education the last 20 years in 2003 less than 10 percent of afghan girls were enrolled in primary school and just six percent in secondary education in 2017 those numbers had improved to 33 and 39 respectively entire cohorts of women have gone through k through and finished university in that time i would have strongly preferred that we had left residual forces and allied forces in afghanistan until there were better conditions to leave the disorderly pull-out and events the last four months have been disheartening i have a few points i want to make before we get to our panel the first is for 20 years we have not had a major attack similar to 911 on american soil the reason for that has been the sacrifices of u.s allied and afghan troops to prevent afghanistan from becoming a training ground for terrorists as it was 20 years ago i want to thank the troops i want to thank diplomats i want to thank the folks in global development and i want to thank the folks in the intelligence community we must all so we owe them all a great debt the 20 years of peace and development are a source of pride you did not serve in vain second we have large and lasting obligations to our friends in afghanistan there are hundreds of thousands of people who are going to need to be helped in a variety of ways it is not just the people who supported us military efforts of course they should be supported but people who supported our intelligence efforts our global development efforts and our diplomacy efforts i also deeply worry about women leaders and um and folks who have stood up to try and build a different kind of afghanistan the current arrangement for visas that were using these such so-called special immigrant visas are not going to be enough we must do more and a lot more and quickly third there is going to be a very strong temptation to walk away and stop paying attention to afghanistan because this is too painful to deal with this is what happened in 1989 many of you saw charlie wilson's war if you haven't go back and see it our decision to leave in 1989 came back to bite us and stop paying attention 12 years later the u.s is going to need to be involved diplomatically and developmentally going forward we are going to have to remain engaged in the region in different ways fourth the president biden was handed a difficult hand by the trump administration that left him some very poor choices however the execution of the withdrawal by the bide administration has made the afghan situation worse it's very unfortunate to say the least i'm not going to get say further about that than that finally the international community is going to have to signal resolve what stays in afghan what happens in afghanistan is not going to stay in afghanistan this has reputational effects whether with our allies and with our adversaries our adversaries are yucking it up right now because of what has happened so we have to be very careful to dismantle the image that we are somehow weak or lack nerve there are significant questions and worries under the under people's breaths about our commitments to places like taiwan or parts of eastern europe we are going to need to find ways to signal resolve and work with our allies who are very very disappointed with us right now before we move on to our panel i would like to quickly add that this is an interactive online event and i invite you all to participate through submitting questions to our panel to submit your questions please go to our webpage at csis.org and click on the ask live questions here button we have a very thoughtful group of people who are going to help us unpack what has happened in afghanistan and what are possible next steps for the united states i'm joined by my friend mark ward who's the former country director of the international medical corps he served twice at usaid in another life in pakistan he also served in another tour of duty in humanitarian tour duty in afghanistan so tour he knows afghanistan knows pakistan knows global development really well we've ambassador michael mckinley who's a senior advisor at csis who's a former ambassador to afghanistan we have former ambassador tony wayne who's the former deputy ambassador afghanistan we're later going to be joined by my friend annie forsheimer who was a former acting deputy assistant secretary of state for afghanistan and we did two tours on the ground in afghanistan so let me ask the three of you and then when annie joins the four of you the what needs to happen in the immediate term what can the u.s do now mark let me start with you mark mark ward just unmuted right good morning everyone um yeah let's i mean if we look at right now and if we look at what we can do that's within our uh control we don't need help from anybody else and the thing that leaps to mind and a lot of you have heard me say this before is we got to do humanitarian aid and as much as possible tell the ngos that are out there who have done such terrific work to get back to work they're kind of sitting back waiting for a signal they're worried about funding i've done my best to reassure my old organization and others that they didn't worry about that given the ascendancy of the taliban we probably need to push for a license from ofac at treasury because it's going to be harder and harder for those ngos to avoid close interaction with the taliban now that they're in charge um we probably should focus in the short term on programs that we know the taliban support like medical care when i was head of imc we had to deal with the taliban regularly on access issues um but generally they were very supportive of medical care because they needed it and the communities with which they were living needed it um we can keep the other programs going like dan mentioned at the outset uh education particularly for girls um but i think in these initial days where we might be trying to build a relationship with the taliban maybe don't lead with those programs lead with things that we know they have supported over the years because we have a track record of working with them on these programs we know what they support we know what they don't support i think for us doing even more in humanitarian aid right now is kind of a twofer it's the right thing to do given the needs on the ground but it also gives us an opportunity to see whether the taliban will respect humanitarian principles and not try to control everything um our experience in the past as i said wasn't bad um on most issues uh we were able to find a way forward with commanders on the ground in the provinces where we worked in the east um and that bodes well potentially for the future um if the taliban allows humanitarian work to continue and what they've said so far is uh i'm optimistic then we have a foundation to build on to grow other programs civil society programs more education programs even the longer term development projects we'll get to see how they organize themselves to deal with humanitarian ngos that's going to be very important frankly dealing with the government in the last year or so was horrible i mean they had mounted almost a campaign against the work of the ngo so it's going to be very interesting to see um how the taliban organizes itself and then as we build that foundation as we build that relationship we can you know start discussing other needs longer term needs and explaining um whether directly or indirectly how does foreign aid work and begin to see whether there's an appetite there in the new leadership in kabul for working with us down the road and the last thing i'll say dan is not going to make me popular but being very direct because i think we do need to think about different approaches right now i would not work too much with the un agencies right now i would go directly to the big international ngos particularly those based in the u.s sadly the u.n has a bad track record at times like this for not standing up for humanitarian principles look at what happened in syria and yemen we have to challenge the taliban to play by the rules and i'm just not sure the u.n will enforce them they're just going to be interested in calling meetings after meetings we need to be sure to hold the taliban to these principles and i think going directly with our funding to the big international ngos we've got a better opportunity a better chance of holding the taliban to those principles and those organizations i think will be less likely to cave mark one question the follow-up there's these ofac rules which i think is the office of foreign asset control in the treasury department that has had it makes it difficult to operate developmentally or a humanitarian basis i think in taliban controlled territory do they need to have some kind of i'm going to describe it as an ofac fix over yeah i mentioned that at the beginning i think i mean that was always there while we were working over the last few years we cannot provide any kind of material assistance to the taliban while they remain under sanctions that's going to be harder and harder to live with now that they are in charge and they will be summoning us presumably to meetings um so i think recognizing that they are going to be part of a decision-making process or at least a consultative process and getting a license for the international ngos is all the more necessary now thanks okay ambassador mckinley what needs to happen in the media term what can the us do now so i don't uh first thank you uh for inviting me to participate and i'll echo your sentiments um it's devastating to see the scenes we're witnessing now and um i think all of our thoughts are with everybody we knew and worked with in afghanistan and our hopes that uh the evacuation efforts of the people who need to leave proceed as quickly as possible but i would like to say and that what mark has actually laid out uh many of the key immediate issues related to working inside um afghanistan i would perhaps go a step further just witnessing what groups like the norwegian refugee council are doing right now uh unicef representatives on the ground in uh western parts of the country for example they've been told by the taliban as the taliban was moving in and it seems like ancient history but it was only two to two weeks ago um to stay in place to continue doing the work they're doing we're seeing that also with ngos that uh work uh on medical questions i'm not gonna say so far so good but it is certainly an effort to uh keep at least for the time being uh international ngo presence working inside the country and as mark points out uh given the way the taliban's proceeding fairly methodically over the last three to four days in trying to establish authority in kabul and i don't want to oversell that that could change on a dime there does seem to be an avenue for not just the united states but other international actors to test this if i can slightly disagree with mark on one issue on the un he's absolutely right but we have to differentiate among the bodies within the u.n and there's some which work better than others i would suggest unhcr does uh and unicef is on the ground and uh we certainly need to continue signaling um support for those efforts but one point i thought uh the west let the side down on after doha was signed in february of 2020 was not moving quickly or signaling strongly enough financial support over the long term for afghanistan for the afghan government there was plenty of time across 2020 to do it it wasn't done uh it was much the same as always on donors conferences i think this is a moment to make sure that the resources are there for the humanitarian response and that means breaking through barriers uh like ofac licensing which can take a long time to do and uh frankly seeing whether there's uh the stomach for uh conference which does focus on uh immediate humanitarian um needs uh going forward more broadly there's the issue of what kind of influence anyone will have on uh incoming taliban government and uh perhaps we can discuss that later but i think there's very much uh space right now for uh regrouping within nato at the un among uh our allies even outreach to regional governments and if we let the time slide on that uh we're going to lose uh precious moments um to try to create a a better dispensation i won't say a new dispensation with a taliban the jury is still out on that and so as we focus on the humanitarian aspects of this and how we can assist on the ground it's absolutely critical not to become defensive and drop the ball whatever mistakes have been made we need to move forward with a strong diplomatic effort to reposition and regroup uh and i'm sure we'll get into those issues later in the conversation yeah at some point in the future september october after uh you know a bit of time has passed i think we should probably revisit sort of what lessons we can learn from that so i agree but i think now there's some immediate steps so i agree with you ambassador mckinley about everything you've said ambassador wayne what needs to happen in the immediate term and what can the us do now well happily the united states is moving into a more activist phase which is what was lacking in recent months i think there's a serious effort underway at the airport and this is just evidenced by sending out one of our former colleagues who has been ambassador in afghanistan to help manage at the airport john bass there's a tremendous amount to do just managing this flow of humanity and that means working with others including the taliban to try to make sure people can get to the airport and then we have to cut through all of the bureaucratic process around our efforts to give people visas and we need to seriously consider i think a humanitarian parole for those groups of individuals who have great reason to fear abuse mistreatment punishment by the taliban because there have been assassination campaigns going on against them and this includes journalists it includes women leaders the taliban have been saying good things in their words but we need to be skeptical and watch what they're going to do i i in this i think it's important to remember that the taliban have now really been preparing for two years here i i've not i can't say i always concluded this but i've now concluded that they use the last two years to strengthen themselves militarily to strengthen their political apparatus on the ground starting in the rural areas and to think through at their highest level what their strategy should be and i think one of the things they they realize that you see now is they know these are massive tasks they've now taken on that they've won and so they can't manage everything in the short term and so they are asking some humanitarian groups to stay they are sending out positive signals this doesn't necessarily mean that will be their practices but we should work with what we have at the moment to save lives i think it's really important to remember here that our most important enduring investment in afghanistan are is the human capital it's the the young women and men that were educated during the last 20 years that absorbed many of our values and goals and that we're really working hard for that and that's what we have to really have number one right now to preserving after our own of course our own employees our own citizens people who work directly for us but there's this grouper bigger group of a couple of generations or a generation and a half that we really need to care about i i think it is very important to work internationally with others early on on some kind of a humanitarian protection mechanism that will include signaling very clearly to the taliban what is expected of them and what the costs and benefits will be the costs if they don't obey you know obey abide by follow these procedures going forward and there there do there are going to have to be some benefits there's no question about that they are they do need money they need more than humanitarian money the previous government was dependent for 80 percent of its financing on the international community taliban is not going to be able to deliver services without retaining a lot of the previous employees and without funding from somebody i noticed one of the things that we and i'm sure others did in recent days was cut off the flow of money of dollars going to afghanistan they're going to need funding going forward that's an important piece of the leverage the other the finally what we need to do is what we've started to do which is go into high gear in diplomacy in the region and with our friends and allies there's no question that the last few days have undermined u.s credibility with friends and allies and uh created a big space for rivals to be talking about that we're weak that we're pulling back and see you better establish a better relationship with us so that vulnerability can be rebuilt but it's only going to be rebuilt with an intensive diplomatic effort extending over time focused uh on afghanistan both with regional powers with um with our our more traditional allies i think it's important that we're one of the signals we're going to have a special g7 summit the british are going to call those kind of things are really important going forward it's not the be-all and end-all but it can start making a difference as as we move ahead in the in these weeks and we really have to maintain this activist focused approach to dealing with the immediate and the medium-term challenges here thank you thank you annie thanks for joining us i want to pivot uh so there have been many folks who have said i want to hear first from you annie and then briefly from each of the others that the taliban is quote unquote different from 1996 or 2001 that this is somehow a different taliban and that we they've quote unquote changed and that we should we should take at face value some of the statements that they're saying that women will participate in society and they've made sort of a series of i won't call them friendly gestures in the last 72 hours what's your reaction to that annie my reaction is very deep skepticism it's a you know it's a creditable it's credible uh charm offensive um and it's very possible that in ways of optics they have changed somewhat but the fundamental sort of bent of this is that women are going to have all the rights that the taliban give them and that is the you know that is an unacceptable state of affairs um you know for my way of thinking if they were serious there would be an absolute protection of the media you know we don't need an international body to tell us how things are what we need is afghanistan's free media to be able to operate and we also need afghanistan's independent human rights commission to be able to operate and with those two bodies in place doesn't matter what the taliban says we will know i do think that what we're hearing is um that they're still assessing essentially what uh what they've just won and how to take control of it but that their uh you know retribution has been swift what i guess was seen in jalalabad yesterday firing directly on a crowd of people who were trying to protect the afghan flag is that they is they want demonstration effect of how terrifying they are in order to keep people from making any kind of active rebellion so this is this is the crux of it is that they um they shouldn't be believed at face value in any way shape or form mark has the taliban changed should we take at face value their statements i i agree with andy we've got to be skeptical but you know there is a track record and it's longer than the last couple of days and i go back to what i said at the outset the humanitarian ngos have had to work the taliban in provinces and districts and villages that they controlled for years and we have for the most part uh i mean there are there are always a few jerks that we had to deal with who we had to go to the leadership to try to get off our backs but most of their uh i guess you call them officials um that we had doing that we have worked with whether in kunar or nuristan or uh um you know other other provinces in the east and the north when i was with imc were reasonable and and and i guess my definition of reasonable would be they listen to their communities and that's maybe room for hope um if the communities needed what we were offering the taliban would generally back off if they were trying to interfere if they were trying to seize the the good they were trying to force the way who we gave our assistance to and not leave that up to us to determine based on need and so that if if you're looking for seeds of optimism um there is some experience there a track record over the last couple of years that they understand the needs of the communities they listen to the communities maybe that's a change i'll leave it there okay let me pivot to something else uh ambassador mckinley ambassador wayne we've talked about allies and neighbors how should we be engaging pakistan russia china the gulf states uh central asian states uzbekistan tajikistan our allies in the g7 ambassador mckinley let me turn to you thank you and allow me 30 seconds parenthetical as ambassador wayne talked about sibs and uh mark and annie and he's been uh formidable in advocating uh publicly for rapid reaction steps let's remember it's not just interpreters it's not just the professionals it's not just the politicians it's drivers it's mechanics it's cooks it's store sellers it's a universe in afghanistan that worked with us and it's not a few thousand people it's tens of thousands of people and the responsibility going forward is not just what we see at the airport uh but a much broader support and rescue effort over many months and uh one other parenthetical on the taliban changing maybe we can return to that at some point the signals and symbols have been uh interesting uh on tolo news uh a taliban official allowing himself to be interviewed by a female reporter uh we've had the reports of anas haqqani uh the next generation taliban 26 years old meeting with uh abdullah abdullah of the tajik and musha hadin uh struggle era and uh with former president karzai uh asking people to remain at work government officials to include women um i i think the skepticism everyone has expressed is uh very much required going forward annie's point about their assessing where they are is uh what we're facing right now and i wouldn't draw too much comfort yet from the positive signals on the issues of dealing with the region um i think we need to differentiate in terms of who are the actors we're concerned about pakistan has played i'm not going to call it a double game or a country that has been on the border and faced uh much of the fallout of what's happened in afghanistan over the last 40 years that said they kept their options open and it's now going to be incumbent on them given the close ties they have with the taliban leadership to try to define and use influence um to uh see if we can chart a more moderate course iran historically has not been a friend of the taliban they've been less of a friend of the united states but now the equation is strictly one of iran afghanistan's interests and how they define their relationship with the taliban going forward is going to be critical the three major outside actors of concern are china gulf states and uh russia i i i would suggest that we don't focus on afghanistan in terms of how global power relations are evolving uh with china and russia um this is uh we really ought to differentiate crises um afghanistan is not taiwan um afghanistan is not ukraine and the donbass it's uh and in this case uh the chinese and the russians can pop probably play a fairly positive role in signaling to the taliban that relationships are going to be based on how they act uh in terms of the region how they approach uh support or links to terrorist groups and how they uh frankly deal with their internal dynamics um which are serious and i would point to the russians uh in the recent weeks and lavrov i think the foreign minister this week uh warning on terrorist ties and uh saying gonna withhold recognition we're gonna wait and see where things are going and i believe uh whether the russians and the chinese move to recognize next week or not the caveats they have stated explicitly about their concerns are coming into play that should be something we should be able to work with and finally ambassador wayne's absolutely critical point on money this is a government or a system that cannot live without international assistance there is a generational change the taliban's leadership living in pakistan or gulf states or um even whether they were in other countries has seen a different way to live and they know it requires money structures systems education and uh at this moment those states are in an extraordinarily powerful position to signal that uh resource flows uh from them which are more informal and less conditioned space uh become extraordinarily conditions based depending on what the taliban uh does in power so i do think there's a world to work with right now in the region i think ambassador wayne is absolutely correct there's an effort ramping up to deal with these diplomatic realities uh but again i would suggest speed is of the essence i don't think we have two to three months to sort of figure this out things are moving very very quickly and other capitals much nearer to afghanistan than the united states are making their calculations and their decisions as we speak ambassador wayne could i ask you to talk about comment on this issue of the region regional actors and then i want to come back to this issue of what do we owe folks beyond sivs and if the only way out of dodge is the kabul airport and you ain't in kabul or you can't get to the gool airport how the hell are we going to deal with that so i'm going to come back to that so but let me first go ambassador wayne on this issue of regional actors and then i want to hear from mark ward and annie specifically on this siv and beyond siv issue master wayne well i think one of the key points building on ambassador mckinley's outstanding thoughts there is that we do need to work with a broader range of partners in international in the international community because that helps put pressure on some of the regional parties that might be a little more hesitant to get it might be hedging their bets and the more we can build international consensus with the europeans with others in the middle east with those in east asia it's going to be easier i think for for the chinese and russians and for the pakis and others to come along as we do this and similarly with the iranians who of course we don't deal with directly so we do need to involve others to talk to them in going forward and and we there is leverage i mean the russians are concerned about all the drugs coming out of afghanistan when i remember very uh very seriously conversa serious conversations with the russian ambassador in kabul talking about how the largest source of addiction in russia was heroin coming out of afghanistan that hasn't changed and we do know the chinese for better or worse are concerned about weaker extremists in afghanistan and will be concerned about uh you know ungoverned space in afghanistan so there are some cover there are some common grounds that you can build on here but the key is to i think get an international consensus on these core principles and do that quickly i mean i fully agree we need to be acting very quickly diplomatically as well as on the ground and going forward now part of this is going to be uh to go back to what mark said is going to be having a modus vendi with the the taliban and there'll be some areas where there where they'll be more cooperative than others and they're going to be some things that they really don't control they don't control i think you know and uh give me a phone call thing all their little units around kabul or in other cities yet that's part of what they're they're they're really trying to manage and assess so they're going to be bumps in this process and they're going to be uh things that that we're going to have to work through but we're going to have to be working on this this sort of multi-level process in kabul uh in the region more broadly internationally and we need to do it as a priority and just to say that was one of the reasons we are where we are it wasn't being treated as a priority by washington because they have a big other agenda i mean i understand there's a lot going on but we are in the position we're in because it was not a priority okay mark and or let me first turn to annie annie so we just produced a paper on special immigrant visas on monday my view is is i'm not sure that that there's a whole i think we're probably gonna have to go beyond special immigrant visas i saw something from capitol hill i think last night from i think 46 senators signed a statement basically saying we need to find special protections for women leaders and and others in afghanistan who aren't necessarily going to fall under the special immigrant visa program to give them some kind of protection or ability to come to the united states so annie could i ask you to talk about what do we need to be doing to meet our obligations to our afghan partners but also sort of a larger circle of folks and could you comment on this issue of what do you do if you can't get to kabul airport um you know i i think i'm not going to be in a position to comment on the getting to to the airport or not if that's a that's a fairly operational side of things i'll ask mark to do that then yes thank you but uh look i i i would say that our obligations are many but the savs is a is a circle and a more outer circle is all the people who implemented indirectly and then the people who were fellow uh workers with us on uh key issues of human rights defense and promotion of free media etc um i'll be a little against the grain and say that i don't think that that's the best way for us to spend all of our energy because there are 35 million people in the country and they're not all going to get evacuated so what about the people who are human rights defenders whose names we don't know and i think it's vital that there be some kind of mechanism that the international community insists on before recognition unama has had a civilian protection unit for a long time but it needs teeth and i would suggest that there be an additional layer of a specific watchdog which is uh deputized to report to the security council and in addition uh the afghanistan free media is the right watchdog not a bunch of foreigners and the afghanistan human rights commission so those are the entities with teeth that come from the security council pulling together which as many people have pointed out requires the us to make this a strategic priority it's doable if we choose to make it a priority so the teeth that come from the security council and the leverage of recognition and their seat at the united nation they have to accept some kind of in-country monitoring of all of these lovely promises um and yes we should evacuate of course but you know what there are a lot of people will never know their names and there are also a lot of people who are going to do tremendous good if they are alive and able to do their work within afghanistan thank you mark how do we deal with the mechanical problem of the only way out of right now is kabul airport we have to talk to the taliban um this is you know one of those things we have to try to build our relationship step by step and clearly my understanding from friends there is that they have you know deployed their forces around the airport um to use diplomatic language they're interviewing everybody that's trying to get in um and that's very very worrisome to people whose sib applications are in process but because of whatever delays i guess at state and dod uh they haven't been issued yet um and these are the people i'm most worried about as you look at that initial cadre that the siv program was designed to protect those that worked for our forces um they had they checked all the boxes they are completely eligible and they just didn't get their suv in time because this happened so quickly they are scared to death right now because and i know many and they have received threats from the taliban and their families have for years so clearly the taliban knows who they are they are on lists and they could be on list that these guys at the airport have so they're scared to death to go to the airport right now should they get that email from the embassy saying go to the airport um and so we have to have a conversation with the taliban about some kind of a corridor that anybody knows um that wants to go and i don't think there's any other way to do it we just have to be upfront about it with the taliban say this is very important to us for all the reasons that the panel has articulated and this you know should be an easy win for the taliban they don't need to send a message anymore to the other side um by killing people that used to work for us they won [Music] okay so let me suggest ambassador why do you want to comment on this siv issue well i do just want to say that in addition the people that work with us are the people that work very closely with us who are now in hiding and that includes those who resisted the taliban and fought them and how are they going to be treated and what the taliban is saying they want to have a reconciliation going forward so similarly they should be in our area of concern for a free passage and i think part of what we would talk about going forward also is working with neighbors such as pakistan and having corridors going through but that going through to pakistan but that means there needs to be a serious international refugee response mechanism ready to take care of these people because the pakistanis remember they still have over a million afghan refugees from the last time that that the taliban were in control so that's a big complex other part of this problem so ambassador olsen and i did a paper we've did several major reports over the last six years at csis on one i've did several with you ambassador wayne and several with you annie and um and so one of them was on what happens if we pull the plug and i one of the things we fear i fear two things one of them is we're gonna have massive refugee flows there's 40 million people in afghanistan we could easily have multiple millions of people leave afghanistan we have the largest global refugee and internally displaced people crisis in the world in human history right now already so add to that um and that pakistan will probably get a couple million people in that scenario and iran would probably get a couple million people in that scenario whenever i've met pakistani military i've always said to them is that a win for you guys if you get three million refugees they all kind of look at each other and like they're not super psyched about that so i'm i do think that that that's that's an issue and so i think we're going to have to engage pakistan and work with pakistan on on on afghanistan and um um regardless of some of the some of the issues let me ask you the ambassador mckinley do we should we recognize a taliban government so although i'm a former diplomat i'm going to fall back on diplomatic language on this and take my cue from the national security adviser jake sullivan yesterday and it's premature to begin considering a date for recognition so much is going to depend on the coming weeks and i would say weeks and a couple of months i don't believe we're going to be waiting six months to a year to figure out whether this is a government that's going to respect at least some basic norms let's not pretend that we're going back to seeing the freedoms that afghanistan has enjoyed over the last 20 years but as we've been discussing here there are issues uh that are absolutely central to just maintaining some uh kind of normality of life uh and annie's pointed to a couple of uh institutions which are critical and there are others and so as uh mark and ambassador wayne have laid out there's also uh metrics if i can use that term uh when we're speaking about humans and i don't like to do it but uh in terms of uh whether they do go after people who are in hiding former military former police former local government officials district officials people working with ngos and so uh the international community has the time and that includes the united states to watch work not watch uh work and try to influence this as we're going forward and at that point i think a judgment call would then have to be made on recognition if certain uh baseline criteria are met and uh i know this is very difficult uh in the context of 20 years in the context of 9 11 in the context of tens of thousands of deaths of afghans of americans of coalition partners there's a tremendous debate underway in the british parliament today on the cost of this war uh to our closest uh ally but there's also the moment and moving forward and we maintain diplomatic relations with a lot of governments that we have uh very significant not only differences with but concerns about how they govern internally and human rights issues at the fore so the time will come i think right now and the question will be asked every day probably at the white house by uh somebody in the media or from outside the media but i don't think uh we can rush to sort of trying to speculate about deadlines for recognition okay i want each of you i want you to take um one of the two questions i'm going to put on the table um so one is how do we prevent afghanistan for being a training ground for terrorists as it was before 9 11 going forward this or the other question you can take is i i would argue that what has happened in afghanistan has effects outside of the greater central asia area i'm thinking about taiwan i'm thinking about the baltic states or eastern ukraine how do we signal resolve when many of our adversaries are interpreting this as incompetence and weakness and readerlessness so but i need each somebody so you don't have to you have to agree with that interpretation but that is how our adversaries are interpreting this so mark let me start with you i'll go for option two um i think by doing everything we've just talked been talking about which is engage don't walk away engage on increasing humanitarian aid engage on corridors to get people at risk and in jeopardy out don't shy away from having a conversation um with the taliban find ways working with ofac to make that you know legal um but take on these issues um accept the fact that uh we have to deal with them um maybe you know show a little humility about that um good luck with that um and get get these issues resolved and that will signal i hope to those that are watching outside that uh while we won't admit that we made mistakes we're taking steps to try to deal with them we're not just walking away and being a leader again in humanitarian aid and looking after those who helped us over the years i think are two very positive steps in that direction and perhaps a third would be um as the other panelists have suggested some kind of an international conference to focus world attention on the needs there these are things that we could do to show to the world that um the united states still cares a lot about the afghan people annie um that was a great answer maybe i will i will say you know first of all to reinforce that i would agree with all of it maybe except for the conference i think conferences helped get us where we are today that we have to uh you know we're building as you say step by step just like you're going to open the airport again we're going to build our way back into international regard by doing credible and and uh provable acts rather than promises um you know this this is such a lesson for the united states and going forward if we continue to think of ourselves as having a central role in diplomacy i think we'll fail all over again uh it really it's beyond time for us to move beyond you know having our ourselves as the special envoy who who does everything convenes everybody this is not the right role for us i believe and have believed that we should have empowered the un uh to take that role and we we're gonna have to uh suck it up at the security council and make promises to our our adversaries because this is important this is worth it but someone else is going to have to take a leadership role until we build our way back into the confidence of the world ambassador mckinley so if i can uh just suggest on the geopolitical front uh there's a lot of talk and a lot of writing about this being a defining moment for us influence in the world end of an era end of the cold war crumbling alliances uh impact on our ability to engage i would just suggest we've been here before and uh we we can go back to 1975 in saigon uh but that's uh not the best comparison we can go back to the 70s as a whole when we were also uh an economic crisis where we had difficulties were our allies where it seemed that there were emerging powers around the world that uh uh threatened uh what we stood for and the policies we pursued and engaged in and uh we rebounded um the world's much more complex right now and i would suggest this is a defining moment for engagement in afghanistan and in the wider region around afghanistan but not necessarily for engagement around the world i think you're going to see a very significant effort to rethink the alliances we're already it's already underway in east asia with our uh korean japanese partners there's an ongoing diplomatic effort in the so-called quad which engages australia uh japan india and the united states in a response to the security uh issues of the uh indo-pacific region um i think there's gonna be a renewed focus on uh nato and uh regrouping on what nato does was out of area uh a step too far for our alliances in europe and should we return to basics which is to focus on uh security in uh europe particularly with a more aggressive russia that's uh focusing not only on the ukraine but on the baltic states on central asia intervention in the armenian azerbaijani crisis uh war there is uh i think certainly this is going to concentrate minds in terms of the importance of uh sustaining alliances go forward i would also suggest that we need to be at least a little humble in terms of the influence that the united states and our western partners can bring to bear in situations i would just point to in the last two years we haven't had much of an impact on uh behaviors of nicaragua's ortega government maduro's venezuela government china and xinjiang and hong kong saudi arabia on the murder of adnan and khashoggi and i think we could certainly draw a wider list and i've already mentioned russia so as we think through our options in responding to this crisis which is a serious uh crisis i'm not underplaying it um we also have to think through uh what's the realm of the possible and in that respect and uh the focus and the rationale for our intervention in uh after 9 11 was on uh counter terrorism and going after al qaeda uh the world of uh global terrorism has changed markedly over the last 20 years we are responding to threats in the maghreb the sahel uh to a lesser extent uh i would suggest in the levant and the arabian peninsula with a different approach which doesn't necessarily require significant deployment of u.s forces and uh that doesn't mean that we're not losing capabilities with a withdrawal from afghanistan that's absolutely true but i would suggest as the debate over intelligence failures goes forward right now i don't like the term intelligence failures intelligence is not a science uh it's humans trying to read situations on the ground sometimes you get it right sometimes you don't but it's not necessarily dependent on being on the ground so i think uh we can also be grouped to address uh the possibility of a resurgence of a terrorist space inside afghanistan sorry thank you that's right ambassador wayne okay thanks very much let me start off with the broader and get to the counterterrorism part because i did get to spend for better or worse a lot of years working on counterterrorism first ambassador mckinley is exactly right we need to be much more humble as we go forward humble and active and working with others around the world as best we can going forward no question this administration has a big domestic agenda and a big international agenda we knew it was going to be complex to try and run both of them at the same time and and this is a reminder of how complex it is third let's get back to being a little bit more partisan stop blocking all the state department appointees and other appointees we need our position staffed more than ever now to get out there and be active let's come together let's use this as a catalyst positive catalyst both in washington and then in the administration to do what they talked about wanting to do which is strengthen alliances and coalitions and partnerships for what we agree upon let's make this now much more positive and then on the specific counterterrorism agenda this is it's going to be really hard to rebuild intelligence uh to of that in that region you know for the reason of which we we've of course discouraged all the people who might have been working with us so we're going to be a long ways away it's not impossible but it's going to be a lot harder so in addition though to finding ways to maintain some kind of eyes and there to see what's really going on it is time to double down again on the principles that the international community has agreed upon for dealing with terrorists and there as as ambassador mckinley said there are some more refined ways that we're dealing with these terrorists in specific parts of the world and we should build on the best practices there but we also have a whole area of agreement that did not exist in 2001 internationally about sanctioning people who support terrorists and that we need to really look at that again and make sure everybody is committed and then keep them committed to take the promised actions if this government or if others don't abide by those rules and that's hard it's hard diplomacy and you have to really work hard to persuade people sometimes to do that but we we really do need to do that going forward thank you okay i got three questions lightning round pick one i'm hoping she will cover one myanmar's military in the wake of the february coup has met a fierce opposition from the public who had pretty much been inspired and opinionated by 10 years of democracy experience can we expect some sort of a popular response against the taliban if it proves as brutal as ever in afghanistan um so that's one question second there are deeply held concerns about what will happen now regarding the rights and expectations for safety for women girls and other vulnerable groups are there mechanisms in place for the usg to effectively consult with afghan women and vulnerable groups about how to best support their needs and priorities the usg develops policy positions in future engagement in afghanistan third over the weekend the blind administration froze afghan government reserves held in u.s banks how ambitious abroad do you expect u.s conditions to be regarding release of the funds and view of the president's limited view of u.s obligations to afghanistan so annie let me start with you everyone gets extra credit if your answer on one of these is 60 seconds or less but annie you first you know and the mechanisms to watch over women and vulnerable groups that's what i was talking about i don't think that right now there are effective mechanisms in place i also don't think that it should be only the united states that is watching this needs to be as broad as possible and that's why i go back to the security council as imperfect as it is because this is the group that actually embodies the the people the taliban is care is it cares about and so there should be a body that is empowered by the council attached to unama that is uh protecting the media and protecting the human rights defenders and reporting back to the international community to see whether the taliban is keeping to afghanistan's international obligations mark yeah i like that question too i would just go back to what we said at the outset um keep those programs going keep our support going to girls education to civil society to uh human rights and press and that gives us an opportunity to test the language maybe rhetoric let's hope not that we're getting out of the taliban these days that they're going to be easier to work with so i've been advising friends that are running ngos working with girls education don't you know don't sit back keep those programs going um and let's hope that the taliban you know does not interfere they're signaling that they won't um because women and girls are watching right now they're looking to see what we're going to do and if we sit back and wait for some kind of a signal we're doing damage so my advice is get on with those programs maybe this isn't a great time to you know grow them tenfold but keep the programs that we have going going so that the girls and women and and very brave activists in media and civil society see that the international community continues to support them um despite this takeover mark how about this issue about the freezing of assets what was the question again i was tony's going to hear that tony you'll get your ambassador wayne you'll cover that let me i'll get ambassador wayne let me go to you well i actually have helped negotiate the freeing of the assets that we'd frozen under the taliban and giving them back to the government uh in 2001 2002 was actually 2002 i believe we got it done i think it's very important that we have those assets and there should be really clear conditions tied to releasing them and that's part of what we need to develop within the us government and international consensus as much as we can get and we should encourage other people to freeze these assets if they haven't done that i mean that that's a big point of leverage going forward the taliban did not have those assets during their rule in the 1990s from the united states and it was a big boost to a new government that came in now doesn't mean we shouldn't if they meet certain conditions find a way to release them but it needs to be a tough negotiation going forward it seems to me there there are not many levers that we have on the new taliban government and this could be one going forward and just very briefly on the resistance i believe there will be resistance to the taliban it depends in part of course on what they do in the country but i think we will see resistance organized in certain areas and there are certain parts of the country where that is already being organized i am told we'll see what happens but it's been hard for many people to control afghanistan including their own governments over the years so i i think this you know protest in jalalabad the other day is just one indication i think a lot of people were just set back by the speed of what happened and i think we're going to see a lot of unhappiness displayed going forward thank you ambassador can you get the last word and i'll keep it short since i rested my welcome on the last answer the uh i will uh just uh agree completely with what ambassador wayne has said about the internal situation but add uh one element here uh the collapse of the last few weeks should not be the measure of what has happened in the country for 40 years afghanistan has been a country at war for 40 years the sacrifices of the afghan people have numbered in the millions of uh refugees and internally displaced for years and even decades at a time the absolute courage of afghan families to send their girls back to school to of afghan women to take on positions in government administration and business as uh conditions liberalized after 9 11 the courage of afghans fighting the taliban uh from uh 2004-5 on through uh 2020 we're talking about tens of thousands of deaths but it is a country that at the moment is exhausted by war um it is a country where and we didn't get into that the uh government and the military uh disappeared at a critical moment and uh but let's remember that there has been a very long struggle inside that country with very many afghans uh putting their lives on the line for that struggle thanks everybody we're gonna have to end it here i think there's a lot more to discuss thanks everyone for doing this on short notice we're gonna say goodbye now bye-bye [Music] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

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Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics

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Length: 63min 25sec (3805 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021