Podcast: Don’t believe the “Taliban 2.0” hype, cautions journalist Ahmed Rashid

TRANSCRIPT: Don’t believe the “Taliban 2.0” hype, cautions journalist Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid:

The problem is that the Taliban ruled, but they did not govern. We don't have a Taliban policy as to what they want to do regarding humanitarian relief.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today it's been three months since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban remains firmly in control, and as the country faces a bitter winter, the United Nations says that nearly 23 million people in Afghanistan will experience food insecurity by March. Can the Taliban stave off starvation for the people it now claims to govern? And is there anything the international community can do to prevent this countdown to catastrophe without emboldening a militant group known for its human rights abuses? I speak to renowned journalist and author, Ahmed Rashid. He wrote the critically acclaimed book, Taliban Militant Islam Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia way back in the year 2000. And he says, not a lot has changed with the group since.

I also welcome back to the show Pashtana Durrani, and she was hiding in Afghanistan the last time we spoke. No longer. In October, she fled Kabul and is now thankfully in the United States. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company understands the value of service, safety and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more. This podcast is also brought to you by Walmart. At Walmart, we are committed to creating opportunities for veterans. That's why we've hired more than 250,000 since 2013, and more than 27,000 military spouses in 2020 alone. Now we're launching a program to help veterans and military spouses find employment, gain an education, and grow veteran businesses. Learn more at walmartfindafuture.com.

Ian Bremmer:

Ahmed Rashid, thanks so much for joining us today.

Ahmed Rashid:

Thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

Of course, the headlines have moved far away from Afghanistan, and that's not to the advantage of the people living there. Tell me, so far, to the extent that we can make any judgment, how you think the political situation on the ground in Afghanistan is playing out now that the Americans are well gone.

Ahmed Rashid:

Well, I think there are enormous issues. The drought, the Covid, the virus, the possible starvation, which the World Food Program is alerting people already that people could be starving in a matter of days or weeks. And the enormous reluctance of the Taliban to take on board what Western governments and the UN and other NGOs are suggesting. That they ease up on women, on education, and they show some compatibility with Western demands. The problem is that the Taliban ruled, but they did not govern. By the time the Americans went to war with the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban were already hugely discredited and generally rendered hopeless by the Afghan population who had fled. And we seemed to be repeating that whole scenario once again. And I think it's incredibly important now that the West should differentiate between recognition, which should not be on the cards for the time being and actually supporting the food crisis and preventing millions of Afghans from starving to death.

Ian Bremmer:

Is there a mechanism? We know that the Americans have frozen billions of dollars of Taliban assets. Is there a mechanism that is credible that would allow for humanitarian aid at the scale that we're talking about is necessary, that would not go through the Taliban government, that would not be siphoned away or stolen by officials that we can't trust?

Ahmed Rashid:

We've had very few visits from American officials in Kabul, and there seems to be the strongest American demand is for the Taliban to run down terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, which are still active in Afghanistan. And I don't think the US has held these kinds of nitty-gritty talks about how to get fresh money. I don't see that. That $9 billion that is lying in US accounts is unlikely to be freed, and I'm sure they're very complicated methodology which will be needed to free it. Instead, what you're looking at, potentially, is fresh money from donors who could provide it to the UN to provide food. Now of course, there are all sorts of other things that are involved. We desperately need medical aid,.Westerners need to be able to come and go freely from Afghanistan in order to run this aid program. There's been no hint of any of this so far. It's been two and a half months now, and we don't seem to have an American strategy or a policy towards how the Americans are going to react towards this humanitarian crisis.

Ian Bremmer:

You wrote the book on the Taliban back in 2000 known worldwide. If you were writing that book again today, have they changed? Have they learned anything?

Ahmed Rashid:

Well, unfortunately, again, we've falled back on this issue of governance. We thought for a long time that the Taliban would be educating and training their younger generation to become bureaucrats and handlers of civil society, but we were wrong. There are a lot of cosmetic changes, such as they use iPhones, they can take pictures, which of course, photography was banned in the earlier Taliban government. We don't have a Taliban policy as to what they want to do regarding humanitarian relief. We don't have a Taliban policy on a proper policy on education, on media, on all these very sensitive issues, which people are walking around, tiptoeing around and not wanting to face up to a Taliban decree, which will ban this newspaper or that television station.

The other thing, of course, is the factionalism within the Taliban. And for the time being, it seems, although it is very difficult to decipher exactly what's happening, but it certainly seems that the hardliners in the Taliban who don't want to make changes in their style of government or in their ideology, they're winning out at the moment. And leading the pack there are the Haqqanis. There are two Haqqanis in the cabinet, two more minor officials in the cabinet, and they are, I presume, thinking of their own future. They've got a $10 million reward for their capture or death from the Americans. They've got another bounty from the Europeans. But they are very confident because they seem to have wrapped any kind of voices of moderation from the Taliban on the knuckles, and they seem to be now basically running the show. So it's very difficult for Western governments also to deal with the issues of factionalism and division, who's on top now, who's not on top now, the months of negotiation in Qatar, the failure to cultivate a more moderate Taliban.

Ian Bremmer:

Can we at the very least say that the Taliban for now are still in charge of the whole country or do you start to see real chaos in terms of different... like in the north, for example, where it would be very hard for them to be able to impose authority where you're starting to see just lawlessness emerge again?

Ahmed Rashid:

Well, I think again, it all depends on whether humanitarian relief is going to reach the Afghan civilian population. If it just reaches the elite in the cities and just reaches the Taliban military machine and ignores the public, there will be two results. One, there'll be a massive walkout of the public as refugees in neighboring Iran, Pakistan, even Central Asia. And that will probably be stopped, because both Iran and Pakistan right now are bankrupt, basically. They have said very categorically that we cannot accept any large numbers of refugees. And that's very much... We've seen the situation in Europe, how it's getting back to us. Many Afghans having reached Eastern Europe, going through Iran and Turkey. And nobody's in the mood to have another influx of refugees coming in from Afghanistan no matter how bad the pictures of suffering are we see on the TV.

So I think that is really going to determine the next few months. Winter is coming. It is going to be a harsh winter. People are going to be dying in this winter. There's not going to be sufficient air and warm clothing, food, et cetera, to look after the refugees. Remember that the refugee crisis is acute because Iran and Pakistan are still holding refugees from the Soviet period and not counting those refugees who fled the first Taliban government 20 years ago and subsequent fighting. There's going to be a huge humanitarian crisis in the country, which the Taliban will be totally inept to be able to deal with. They won't know what to do.

Ian Bremmer:

So this is a matter of the next few months. I mean, assuming that this continues to play out as it has since the withdrawal winter, we're going to see both domestic implosion and a very significant refugee flows out of this country.

Ahmed Rashid:

So you have a situation where armed resistance on the ground has petered out for the time being. You use the word chaos, I would say there's enormous unrest at the moment. I think even in the cities regarding the women. Women have been coming out almost every day, very few, not in the tens of thousands, but almost every day women are facing enormous challenges because they have to get their jobs back and they are the earners of families in many instances. So I think we are going to see a lot of unrest and it's going to be much more easy for the opposition to organize unrest in the cities demanding food and demanding services for the population. And certainly the Taliban are going to use probably harsher and harsher methods to deal with that. And that, of course, will create its own snowballing crisis.

Ian Bremmer:

On the one hand, it's these women that are in an absolutely powerless state that are willing to effectively throw their lives in danger to get their message out. And we are hearing it. But at the other hand, the Taliban government allowing it to persist in ways that certainly wouldn't have happened when you wrote your book. And I'm wondering why you think that is?

Ahmed Rashid:

Well, certainly in the Taliban, have not resumed beating women savagely in the streets the way they did back in 2000 when they took Kabul. And any hint of any kind of protests would lead to always an automatic harsh treatment of women and anyone else who was protesting. Now, that may not be happening, but what I'm trying to say is that as hunger increases, unrest, increases and more people, not just women, but men and families come out on onto the streets demanding wheat. If you've seen some of the wheat that has come in from Iran and Pakistan being distributed, it is horrific scenes of people just throwing themselves at the truck trying to get a bag of wheat out and things like that are going to multiply. I do think it's very important that the Americans develop some kind of strategy as to how to deal with this situation

Ian Bremmer:

Because you are in Lahore, to the extent that any government, when the Taliban took over, positioned themselves as a winner, it was Pakistani Prime Minister Khan, and it was the, "Hey, this is great. We're going to work with this new Taliban government." That didn't play well in the United States. Have they moved off of that? I see that there are negotiations that are opening between Pakistan and the Taliban. I'm wondering how you think about Pakistan's role and future? You are already intimated that if there are refugees, Pakistan's going to have one of those problems and is in no position to deal with it. Give me a little bit of the Pakistan view.

Ahmed Rashid:

Well, the Pakistan, the military, the intelligence were protecting the Taliban for the last 20 years. They were housing the leadership, their families, et cetera, and allowing them to conduct their military operations inside of Afghanistan. Now, that has led to enormous protests by Afghans who blame Pakistan for everything. They blame the Americans and they blame Pakistan for everything else. Well, what we have seen since, I think there've been two major shifts in policy. The first was that yes, there was a lot of high-fives and backslapping and saying, "Well, our help with the Afghans, but the Pakistanis together have defeated the Soviets, and now we've defeated the Americans and look at this disgraceful way they pulled out," et cetera. So I mean, that was the initial reaction and that was also led to an assumption that Pakistan and its key allies, China, possibly one or two of the Arab states would quickly recognize the Taliban government.

Now that has not happened. That has not happened. And that's very important because I think what we are seeing, especially by China and by Pakistan and by Russia, that they're backtracking a bit. They understand that if they recognize the Taliban, it's going to lead to a major division in the international community. And those who want quick recognition and those who want delayed recognition, neither will benefit from it. So right now I think Pakistan is reconsidering its motives. It's not in a great hurry now. I think it's trying to urge and push the Taliban into complying with some of the West demands. And I think it's also making it clear to the Taliban that look, if you guys are met with a crisis and we don't have any money, it's not like last time when the Saudis and the UAE and the Gulf states and all fully recognized the Taliban government and backed Taliban with money and weapons and all the rest of it. This is not the case now.

So I think the mood is perhaps more productive than it was before. The fact that I think it's leading to a lot of concern here. There's a lot of writing about the fact that the decisions need to be made by the Americans. They have an obligation to help the Afghans in terms of humanitarian relief. So all of that is leading to an assumption by, I think, many Pakistanis and I think even decision makers in the military and intelligence that we can't just jump in and recognize the Taliban. We have to go along with what the international community does.

Ian Bremmer:

Before we close, talk to me just a little bit about what you think ISIS and other terrorist organizations capabilities and intentions are as it stands right now in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Rashid:

There are multiple terrorist groups active in Afghanistan. And the truth of the matter is that they have been fighting with the Taliban against the enemies and against the Americans. And these groups who are from Central Asia, Pakistan, have been extremely active and helpful to the Taliban. Many of them are living along the border with Pakistan.

Now for me, the real issue is it's very easy for the world to say, well, the Taliban have to stop all these terrorist groups. Well, the first issue is do they want to stop these terrorist groups because these terrorist groups are their allies. They've been their allies in the fight against the Americans. And if they suddenly tell these groups to stop it, go home, go retire, whatever, there's a big chance that these groups will turn against the Taliban, just like ISIS has turned against the Taliban. So that's the first, I think, really important issue.

And secondly, what do the Taliban do with these people, even if they would be willing to wrap them up, what do they do? Do they kill them? Do they put them in jail? Do they punish them? Do they send them back to their own home countries? Which of course, any one of these steps would create acute problems for the Taliban and acute problems for the international community because there's no sort of guideline. Afghanistan is basically occupied by large numbers of terrorist groups.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, Ahmed Rashid, we didn't resolve it. Not that I thought we were going to, but I really appreciate you joining us today and I know that you've made us all a little bit smarter on what's happening on the ground.

Ahmed Rashid:

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

And now to education activist Pashtana Durrani, who I caught up with a few weeks after she touched down here in the United States. We had last spoken in August amidst the chaos of US withdrawal when Pashtana was in hiding from the Taliban. Since then, she's become a visiting fellow at Wellesley College and is still working desperately to ensure Afghan women and girls can continue to learn.

And I welcome back to the show, Pashtana Durrani. Good to see you.

Pashtana Durrani:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

When I spoke to you, you were hiding and it was stressful as heck even to talk to you. I couldn't imagine what it would be like for you in that environment. How'd you get out?

Pashtana Durrani:

I had people, I had friends and I had amazing people who followed up with me who took care of me and basically, everything I owe to them. My university helped me. I had the same time a friend of mine who actually works with the military, she was following up with my work and everything, and she was the one who got me out. And then she got me to Pakistan. I got my visa in Pakistan, and then I'm here as a student on G1 as a researcher. So yeah, it was pretty much, legally I went and boarded a plane for Pakistan, Islamabad through an NGO, and then they helped me get to Pakistan and then through Pakistan, I got to the U.S.

Ian Bremmer:

So you've resettled now in my country and I'd love to hear how it's going.

Pashtana Durrani:

It's going pretty well. I'm still working on everything that I was working when we last talked, but at the same time, I am now a visiting fellow at Wellesley. I am working, I'm researching at Cheever House in Wellesley, so that's pretty exciting for me. I'm continuing my education. I just got to meet the president of my university and they hosted me recently, and I'm glad that I get to work and I get to go to my school. So that's the highlight of my life right now.

Ian Bremmer:

What kind of news are you getting out of the country right now?

Pashtana Durrani:

We just launched an emergency response for the children who are starving, who are going through malnutrition and starvation. And most of the cases that we hear are humanitarian crises, but also at the same time, the children are the ones who are starving more, who are malnourished more. Women are the second ones who are on that list. And at the same time, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan are onwards and the schools are still not open. Women are still barred from working. That's the highlights I get every day from talking to my team.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, they're claiming of course, the Taliban government that they're going to allow women to go to school, that this is a reformed government. How much do you buy that? How much do you see any evidence that they are are actually trying to in any way reform?

Pashtana Durrani:

I will believe them when they open schools for girls. I will believe them when they open working spaces for girls. I'll believe them when they actually do the... walk the talk instead of them claiming whatever they do. For me, it's more important every time they claim that that's not happening and we are reformed, show me the reforms so that I can believe you. I don't believe talks. I believe actions.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, are you saying that no women are attending schools in Afghanistan right now?

Pashtana Durrani:

So from grade one to grade six, the schools are open, but at the same time, there is a huge problem of salaries that the teachers are facing right now. At the same time, from class seven to class 12, the schools are still closed, teachers are not teaching, girls are not attending. So that's a huge part of Afghanistan that's sitting at home. That's 50% of the workforce. But also at the same time, 50% of the academic force that's at home.

Ian Bremmer:

The Americans are moving on and it's hard to keep attention to Afghanistan. What do you want the Americans to know? What would you like them to still focus on over the coming months?

Pashtana Durrani:

The only thing I'm going to ask the Americans right now, whoever is watching this. Imagine everything you have worked for tomorrow, another government comes and takes over everything that you have worked for. Your jobs, your children's education, your women who are working in the workplace. That's a long-term thing. Would you be okay with it? If you're not okay with it happening to you, why are you so okay with it happening to Afghanistan? That's the first thing. And you have a very strong passport. You have a very strong government. Why don't you ask your representatives? Why don't you ask them when all that taxpayers' money went to Afghanistan, where are the results? Why are people still starving? Why are children still starving? Why are women still being punished? Why are people still being punished for just being Afghans?

Ian Bremmer:

You know, Pashtana, on the one hand, I'm really delighted to see you safe here in the United States. And on the other hand, I'm sorry, because it wasn't your choice to leave your country. It was forced upon you. Do you think that this will be a place that you can call home?

Pashtana Durrani:

I'm definitely going to use this opportunity as a person who would grow, who would learn more. Of course, embrace this place as a second home. That's something we as humans do. We migrate and we get everything we could learn from the second home. But at the same time, I do hope to go back to my home and make sure that whatever I have learned here, and make sure that I bring the best of that learning back to Afghanistan because those are the people who need it the most.

Ian Bremmer:

That's Pashtana Durrani. Thanks so much for joining me.

Pashtana Durrani:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out @gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter, Signal.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company understands the value of service, safety, and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

This podcast is also brought to you by Walmart. At Walmart, we are committed to creating opportunities for veterans. That's why we've hired more than 250,000 since 2013 and more than 27,000 military spouses in 2020 alone. Now we're launching a program to help veterans and military spouses find employment, gain an education, and grow veteran businesses. Learn more at walmartfindafuture.com.

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