VFW Commission Hearing

The Afghanistan War Commission is a legislative commission established by the U.S. Congress on a bipartisan basis in December 2021 to conduct a comprehensive review of key decisions related to U.S. military, intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021. We are committed to pursue the answers and lessons of the 20-year Afghanistan war that Americans deserve.

Also see: Chairman McCaul Questions Secretary Blinken on Afghanistan Withdrawal: “You Took No Step to Answer the Cries for Help

Committee on Foreign Affairs (.gov) https://foreignaffairs.house.gov › Press Releases Dec 11, 2024 — WASHINGTON — Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman questioned Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a full committee hearing on the ...

yeah

good morning everyone uh I would like to call the meeting to order and welcome

you to the first public hearing of the Afghanistan war commission I'm shamila

chodri the co-chair of the commission joined today by my co-chair Dr Colin

Jackson everyone we made it it's been quite a journey right I think we need a round of applause um Pat ourselves on

the [Applause] back I want to welcome our fellow

Commissioners the distinguished Witnesses and our public audience which is joining us both in person and online

I'm deeply grateful to our hosts today the Veterans of Foreign Wars um who are

graciously um hosting us in this very historic building in their Washington DC

offices it's such a fitting venue for our discussions on the US war in

Afghanistan the veterans community was at the Forefront of encouraging the US

government to have a commission exactly of this nature so we owe them a great debt of

gratitude Congress established the Afghanistan war commission to assess the entire 20-year War to identify lessons

and to make recommend commendations to ensure informed National Security decisions in the

future we're charged to work independently objectively and in a

nonpartisan manner we have 16 bipartisan appointed

Commissioners who bring diverse experience deep subject matter expertise

and dedication to this T to this task I'm deeply grateful to them as well

Colin and I have learned a great deal from all of you in the past year and we

look forward to your partnership moving forward we can't do this without you it's a privilege to serve alongside

you today We Make History there's no other way to say it never before has the

United States commissioned such a wide ranging and independent legislative

assessment of its own decision- making in the aftermath of a conflict

the scope and the Mandate are very ambitious but the task is even more

significant because it takes place in the immense shadow of all who sacrificed

and served many of you are here today to the hundreds and thousands of

you service members diplomats Aid workers Intelligence Officers

contractors and volunteers this commission honors your commitments to defend us interests

today we also remember why the War Began on September 11th

2001 terrorist attacked our nation compelling us to act to prevent another

such tragedy many responded to the call to serve and defend our

nation now our directive is to reflect learn and

heal I want to thank the the bipartisan I want to thank the members of Congress

for their bipartisan support uh in establishing this commission they have

been at the Forefront of this Clarion call for understanding since convening less than

a year ago we have made significant progress we've hired a professional

staff today would not be possible without them I want to thank them directly for their their work we've held

regular meetings with Scholars with the Afghan American Community with veterans and

other stakeholders we've also drafted a very impressive research plan that will

answer the key questions that we all have about the war and we've started the

hard work of obtaining information from the executive branch and we will

continue to do so over the course of the next two years we've also started traveling

around the world to gather perspectives we've been to the Middle East the United

Nations and NATO headquarters and I think it's quite significant that we

started our Outreach last fall with a poignant visit to the 911 Memorial in

New York it was a very painful experience a reminder of the tragedy

that has guided us for the past two decades but it was a necessary

one now over the next two years we will will examine thousands of

government documents we will interview key figures and foreign partners and

host additional public hearings such as the one we are hosting today they will

all feature different perspectives and voices all aimed at understanding the

past and improving future actions and I want to be very clear about this if you

are part of the war in Afghanistan and if you have something to say we will make time for you

this story is indeed an American one but it also resonates

globally pursuing our national security objectives didn't occur in a vacuum we

were not acting alone we labored alongside our Afghan allies and millions of Afghans were

impacted by the war many lost their homes their livelihoods and their lives

but we also know that many gained new opportunities and new self-determination and New

Hope we worked with NATO and other partners to counter the terrorism threat

emanating from Afghanistan while there was a lot of collaboration and

cooperation there was also quite a bit of dissent and critique of US policy and

the role that the United States played in Afghanistan and our choices not all of those views were

favorable in this process we commit to an honest

and unflinching process that understands US policies in that Global context we

will examine foreign perspectives and actions in order to understand the whole

picture you have our commitment for that at the same time this project must

also do another very difficult thing which is to address the critiques and

impact of the war here at home in the United States there

were many conversations in our living rooms on college campuses and

newsrooms in which US policies were also

analyzed and critiqued we have to talk about those

views much of our homeland security policies in the post 911 era did have

societal impacts on diaspora communities in the United States and others to the extent

that these issues overlapped with us decision-making in Afghanistan we

believe they have a place in this story for so many of us the war still

lingers in our minds we carry the moral physical and

emotional injuries in our daily lives I know this because I've spent the last

two years talking to many of you and others who have shared their stories one

onone and I'm grateful for your honesty and your openness one thing I learned is that

closure may not be possible for everyone but we do need a space for

civic discourse all the more so now in the United

States it's for our Collective Health as Neighbors

as a republic and also as Global Citizens that's why Colin and I took on

this project that's why our team is working so hard that's why we have all these Commissioners here today we want

to keep this conversation going with all of you and I know you all have a lot to share so I hope you will continue to

join us in this historic opportunity so let me talk a little bit

about the audience we're trying to reach I think this this is really important and it makes us pretty unique we have a

broad reach and focus and so it makes a lot of sense that our final report which

is due in August 2026 also reaches a global

audience it should be read by Future and fall and current policy makers but it

also needs to be read by anyone who cares about the United States and it's

changing role in the world and indeed it is changing and finally on a personal note

I hope that one day my own children now 12 and 9 years old will find this report

on the Shelf of a high school classroom and we'll want to read it my

daughter is here today so I'm just putting you I'm putting you on the spot you will have to read this report

Lea um I want her to appreciate the personal and professional sacrifices that we all

made to serve and defend and I want our children to

understand Afghanistan and its people with deep empathy openness and

gratitude and finally I want the Next Generation to admire the rigor and honesty with which

we looked in the mirror and pushed ourselves to admit our mistakes and to

do better next time and indeed we will so with that I'd like to thank you

again for your time and your attention today and again recognize the professional staff of the

Afghanistan war commission this would not be possible without them and turn it over to my co-chair Dr Colin

Jackson thank you shamila uh thank you to all the Commissioners who were joining us here in person or online and

to the uh expert wh wies and the guests who have joined uh it is a genuine

privilege to serve uh with you shamila as a co-chair of the Afghanistan war commission and with each of our

distinguished fellow Commissioners ours is indeed an historic

calling this is the first time that Congress has called for a comprehensive in-depth study of an American war it is

a credit to the Congress and to the American democracy that they have tasked the commission to embark on a critical

self-examination of the US intervention in its entirety in practice this will mean

taking a hard look at ourselves at what we did right and what

we did wrong this is a heavy responsibility and one that we all take

very seriously as shamila noted it is fitting that we convene our first public

hearing at the headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars 800,000 US service members served

in Afghanistan many of those service members returned to Afghanistan multiple times over the course of the war for

every service member who deployed a family was left behind uh to do the best

in their absence close to 21,000 service members were

wounded and an unknown and likely larger number returned with unseen

scars 2,238 service members did not return at

all tens of thousands of us Aid workers Foreign Service officers Intelligence

Officers contractors and volunteers served in Afghanistan as well laboring

alongside our Afghan and NATO allies to secure the country while the casualties they

suffered were smaller in number they were no less searing and the costs no less

personal and while the American intervention brought new opportunities to many Afghans over 20 years many of

those same Afghans ultimately lost their homes their livelihoods and their lives

for all these groups Afghanistan was in a very real sense a generational

War all those who served whatever their role will be indelibly imprinted by the

experience of the struggle and its aftermath in another sense the work of

the Afghanistan war Commission is explicitly intergenerational what the commission

seeks to do is to derive insight and recommendations from the sacrifices and Investments of Our Generation in

Afghanistan and offer them to a younger generation of Americans who may be called upon in a future

intervention we seek to do something simple but very hard to extract

foresight from hindsight if we do our job well

then we can draw meaning from those sacrifices of those who served and give insight and tools to those who may

follow us to learn from Afghanistan we need to ask hard questions especially probing

the key decisions in the war how they were made and why institutions and individuals are

accountable we will be unflinching in our pursuit of answers to the questions that have been posed to us following the

facts without fear or Fai only by being honest about the past

uncomfortable though that may be can we hope to improve the understanding and the performance of future generations of

citizens and decision makers while accountability is centrally

important our focus is less on assigning credit or blame for the war a war that

spanned four presidential administrations and 11 congresses than on extracting and

applying its lessons what can we learn from our experience in

Afghanistan over 20 years across all lines of government effort to improve

the the performance of a future generation in an as yet unknown us

intervention abroad that is the essential question animating this

inquiry today's hearing is the first in a series of hearings that we see as integral and complimentary to the

research on which we have already embarked mared these inaugural panels are designed to help our commissioners

and the American people consider the central question of what we can reasonably learn and apply from the war

in Afghanistan some might argue that the self-evident lesson of the war in

Afghanistan is quite simple never again however earnestly we may seek to

avoid foreign entanglement such distaste for intervention is an imperfect Shield

against the future we did not enter Afghanistan in search of a 20-year

commitment we entered in response to what was seen as a profound and open-ended threat to the American

Homeland a future generation may find itself in similar

Straits we owe it to this nation to this nation to arm that future

generation with the hard one insights of Afghanistan our first panel sets the

stage for our in qu quiry by helping us better understand the value of a rigorous independent

examination uh like that the Afghanistan war commission is undertaking we will hear from

distinguished historians and experts uh about prior efforts to draw

lessons from history throughout our work we will ask witnesses to challenge our

assumptions in pursuit of a thoroughly balanced understanding of the war our second panel takes us back to

the early days the Afghanistan war and before it is our contention that we

cannot understand the shocking conclusion of the war without first understanding its very beginning we seek

to recall the origins of the terror threat that culminated in the Attacks of September

11th and to connect the story told by the 911 Commission to the early decisions and episodes of the US war in

Afghanistan what we learned today from our panelists will contribute to the opening chapters of our final

report in closing I would emphasize that many of us take this responsibility

personally I witnessed war from the field the planning rooms from Washington

and from the negotiation table many of us here today Commissioners Witnesses

honored guests dedicated our careers to the war effort and are committed to see it through to a meaningful

conclusion while I served in uniform in Afghanistan I see it now now as a father

of one army officer and a second aspiring Cadet we owe the generation that served

in Afghanistan and the generation that will serve somewhere else a full objective rigorous

unvarnished and unflinching account of our performance as a government and a

military the lessons we learn from Afghanistan will be the ultimate Legacy that our generation leaves a legacy that

God Ides generations of Americans to come thank you thank you

Colin we will now begin our first panel the purpose of this panel is to

underscore the critical importance of retrospective analysis of the Afghanistan war for policy makers

military personnel peacebuilders Afghans and the American public it also sets the

stage for our broad retrospective mandate in future hearings you will see

us elaborate on the themes of the war and look at it in a historical context

we thought it would be appropriate to start today with looking at the very

beginning so this panel will speak to the need for an unflinching and rigorous approach that Colin has has outlined to

un uncover key insights and lessons especially from those who served and

sacrificed so now I'm going to read the biography of our distinguished guests um first I'd like to recognize and welcome

uh Ambassador Ronald E Newman who's asking me to keep his bio short it's

quite [Laughter]

impressive um he's formerly a deputy assistant Secretary of State he served

three times as a US ambassador he was in Algeria and Bahrain and then was in

Afghanistan from July 20 5 to April 2007 I will say if you've ever worked on

Afghanistan if you continue to care about this country you know Ambassador Newman he continues to stay engaged and

we're very grateful for your service he's a career member of the senior Foreign Service served in Baghdad as

well uh with the Coalition provisional Authority you really want me to shorten

this I can tell all right well I think one thing that's that's fitting in your bio is

that you also served as an infantry officer in vietn am and it was your

experience of the war in Vietnam and Afghanistan that compelled us to bring you here today you're very thoughtful on

these topics so thank you for joining us Ambassador Newman uh I would like to recognize Dr Alexis albian who has been

a very generous and um Sage adviser to our um commission since the very early

days um she most recently served as the lead curator at the International Spy Museum and in previous roles um she she

was a staff member on the 911 Commission um and so we've been learning a great deal from Dr albian in that regard she

investigated US counterterrorism policy while on the commission um and testified before uh um the commission and the

public on staff findings and she was a key drafter of the commission's final report following on from that work she's

um also served in executive and legislative branches on the implementation of the 911 Commission

recommendations um and she has also worked um and served at the World Bank

um and in the Department of State so welcome to Dr Alexis albian as well I'll

recognize uh Colin to introduce the other two speakers thank you shamila uh I'd

recognize uh now uh Dr Helma kazm uh who is an oral historian and project manager

at the Hooper institution of Stanford University uh she is currently building an incredibly impressive oral history

archive uh on Afghanistan and the Afghanistan war Dr Kum is also a

post-doctoral fellow at the United uh University of California Santa Cruz

where she is producing a documentary um about women's struggles in uh Afghanistan against the Taliban regime

before that she spent 17 years as a journalist and filmmaker uh including a decade uh reporting on the Afghanistan

war and rebuilding efforts so thank you for joining us and then uh our our

second guest uh online here joining us uh Dr ner nadri uh is a senior fellow

with the Wilson Center and is a fellow uh with the Hoover institution of Stanford his background spans Civil

Society private sector institution building government and research he is

an internationally known advocate for human rights and Justice and has firsthand experience uh in the

negotiating of Peace Mr nadri has served as a commissioner uh of the independent

Human Rights Commission chairman of the Civil Service Commission and Senior adviser to the Afghan president on

strategic Affairs and human rights Madam chair I I yield

back thank you Colin Ambassador Newman you are recognized for your opening statement please thank you Madame

chairwoman Mr chairman I honored to appear before you today after serving in

four Wars I am keenly interested in we we can learn it is important to

remember that memory alone can distort events over time when I wrote my book on

Afghanistan I had access to many personal letters written close to the events and frequently I found my

memories had changed over time things I thought I understood at one point turned

out to represent things I learned later thus while drawing on Recollections is

really valuable it should be balanced by factchecking contemporary records you have to deal with a tendency

to extract simple answers from a complex 20-year history this is pernicious such

bumper stickers of policy lead to misunderstanding in the future not learning our failure to utilize well the

early years of our time in Afghanistan are said to have been heavily influenced by a belief that we were too involved in

nation building in Bosnia if that is true we paid a heavy price in time lost

when we could have Consolidated the political rebuilding when there was little violence an important area which

I hope you will look at is the difference between policy and implementation in my experience when

things are not going well Washington reverts to a policy review yet such policy reviews rarely raise the question

of whether the problem is in the policy itself the strategy or the execution of

policy by my count we had 10 different policies in our 20 years in Afghanistan

the average life of each policy was two years policy changes from Washington

were particularly problematic when they occurred without support or sometimes even consultation with host government

officials you need to be realistic about what was politic Al possible at a

specific time not inviting the Taliban to the bond peace Pro process conference peace

proess conference is an often cited mistake much of the bond conference was

devoted to a division of power in the forthcoming interim government how

realistic is it to think one could have injected the Taliban into that mix I am

not trying to answer this question but rather to illustrate the need to play place a listen lesson learned within a

realistic understanding of possibility without that there is no lesson only an observation that it would

have been nice if the world had been different you asked me to recollect on

lessons that might be drawn in common from Vietnam and Afghanistan perhaps the overarching one

is that almost no valid lessons were carried over from one war to the

next for example a clear problem in Vietnam was the short tour there was no

regular transfer of knowledge I saw that in my own combat tour but it was true at

more senior levels in Afghanistan the short tours of senior officers and

Generals were devastating the institutional equivalent of a frontal lobotomy if one carried away only one

lesson from Vietnam and Afghanistan I should I believe it should be the need

for longer tours for senior military and civilian officials the short tour was

not only devastating to continuity of planning and execution but also to

building support among host government officials after they've experienced several changing plans and priorities

and often the abandonment of previous plans host officials tend to become skeptical of any American idea this is

detrimental to effective implementation of any idea Vietnam and Afghanistan were

both marked by highly unrealistic assumptions about whether the means employed and the time allocated for

Success were likely to reach the desired result Taiwan Korea and Greece all went

from kleptocratic autocracies to functioning States and each took 20 to

30 years or more to get there were such experiences ever drawn on in considering

what was likely to be required to bring about similar changes in Afghanistan

were assumptions examined closely were they artificially limited by the time the policy makers thought they had to

give in this connection you may find it useful to consider whether the American

propensity to try to shorten a required time frame with more funding always

makes sense another comparison between Vietnam and Afghanistan is the vexing problem of

how to work with local leaders when they do not meet our sense of what is needed

I hope you will seek a balance between the responsibility for American actions

and those of our Afghan host neither worked in a vacuum each was heavily

influenced by perceptions and misperceptions of the other responsibility will have to be judged in

a difficult Matrix of looking at both sides how much responsibility to take

and how much to leave with local leaders is not easily resolved but the problem is of long standing in Vietnam and

Afghanistan our default reaction to problems of local Effectiveness was to

try to develop our own policy and convince the leaders local leaders to accept it or simply to do it

ourselves in Afghanistan the 2009 policy review led to a large surge of money and

District support teams as well as troops ambitious plans were developed

for local progress there was little in by Afghans and less capacity to take

over what we were building the effort was largely wasted but if our efforts to craft

policies without local acceptance largely failed if our repeated almost

knee-jerk response to local incapacity is to keep making such plans and if

local incapacity is real how are we to stem this cycle what is the lesson for

the future I do not know if there is an answer yet I hope it is a problem on

which you will reflect it has large strategic implications for the future

and yet it remains essentially unaddressed either in political science uh Theory or as much in policy I want to

thank you for again giving me the opportunity to reflect on the experiences of two Wars and the chance

to suggest some things that you may want to look at your task is hideously difficult

you may only succeed in raising confusion to a higher level of

detail but I wish you luck and of course I will be happy to return for a more detailed discussion of my own period as

Ambassador thank you thank you Ambassador this project has been called many things not hideous

yet but I will add that to the

list I am just happy that we got here today this is quite momentous so but thank you thank you for your insights Dr

albian you are now recognized for your testimony

please chairpersons chadri and Jackson members of the commission thank you for

the opportunity to appear before you regarding your review of key decisions related to the war in

Afghanistan you have taken on an immense and important and apparently hideous

task I'm a historian I've researched and written about intelligence history as a scholar

and a museum curator but I've had the opportunity to play my own very very modest role in intelligence history as a

staff member of the 911 Commission investigating US counterterrorism policy leading up to and following the terror

attacks focusing on the CIA and after the commission uh continuing to work

with the Commissioners to ensure the implementation of the recommendations of the report and I also served in the

office of counterterrorism at the US Department of State as a historian uh my career has

bridged both academic and policy worlds and if there's a common theme running across both it's the challenge of

telling an accurate and compelling story to audiences inside and outside

government about something incredibly complicated and you have the same

challenge a comprehensive review of key decisions involved in this nation's longest war is a formidable t task but

necessary and important and I'd like to briefly explain why and offer some words of advice and

encouragement this commission has a unique opportunity to provide a holistic

perspective of us involvement in the war it's an opportunity to to tell an

authoritative history a foundational history there have been many books

already written about the war and there will be many more no doubt there will also be more more facts that emerge

after you deliver your report more documents more voices providing additional information and New

Perspectives this commission's report will not be the last word on the war in

Afghanistan but by producing a reliable an authoritative account your report can

perhaps be a starting point for anyone who wants to understand this critical part of our nation's

history you have the opportunity to do this because this commission is independent

and nonpartisan essential factors if the American people are to accept your findings as

authoritative and you can do this because the commission has strong authorities to access the necessary

documents and people across the government essential if the American people are to accept your findings as

fact-based to write a foundational history that Foundation must be Rock

Solid it must be supported by rigorous historical research and analysis based

on the available facts you must get the story right that task alone is not easy

especially when you're dealing with events that cover a period of 20 years some of the most important areas

of inquiry will involve looking at how decisions get made in government you will need to look across and within

departments and agencies to understand the range of perspectives at different levels of the decision-making process

let me give you an example from my own investigation of the CIA on the 911

Commission a quick a key question I needed to answer was did the US

government ever have the opportunity and the authority to kill Osama Bin Laden before

911 I found entirely different answers to that question from people in different parts of government even from

within the same agency the issue of authorities was particularly tricky because as I

discovered the same word can mean different things to different people to get to the bottom of it involved hunting

down some of the most sensitive documents in the government and then finding out what they meant to people

all along the decision-making chain from the lawyers who drafted the authorities to the president who signed them to the

people tasked with carrying them out I'd suggest that your investigation will similarly be less a linear process

and more an iterative one recreating what happened based on documents using

interviews to fill in those gaps returning to the archives to verify witness statements and then sometimes

going back to Witnesses again and again getting the story right is only

your first task you'll then need to relate it as clearly and comprehensively as possible draw Lessons Learned and

make recommendations based upon your fact finding from the very start of their

investigation the 911 Comm Commissioners envisioned a report that would be a foundational historical account of

911 they believe strongly that every fact and conclusion had to be easily

referenced to its source it's the reason why the report has over a 100 pages of

endnotes they also knew that the weight of their conclusions and recommendations would be measured by how directly they

emerged from the facts of the 9/11 story itself one of the most impactful

recommendations of the Comm mission was the creation of a Director of National Intelligence or dni that was not a new

idea but the 9911 story provided a clear argument for stronger leadership at the

top of the intelligence Community an argument that the Commissioners believed could overcome resistance to change and

challenges to Authority and budgets and they turned out to be right it's worth noting that not all the

911 commission's conclusions Point towards changes in government processes or structures that required rethinking

or legislation some aimed to help readers understand the nature of the terrorist

threat and counterterrorism strategy one recommendation for example put forward the need to identify current

and potential terrorist sanctuaries something the US government was already doing that recommendation came right out

of the 9/11 story and tried to help readers connect history with current

Global counterterrorism strategy your own recommendations will have the greater impact if they flow directly

from the facts of the story that you tell about the war in Afghanistan but I urge you to not just look at the past a

past that will not be replicated but to think about how the story you tell can help readers better understand the

present and of course be applied to the future I hope these remarks have been

interesting and useful to you and can help provide some framework for the investigation you're

undertaking your commission's work is important as with the 911 Commission you're telling the history of an event

that has touched many lives that gives you a great responsibility to ensure that you get the story right but it also

provides an opportunity for you to reach many people by writing an authoritative history that can serve as a foundation

for people's understanding of the war in Afghanistan and for the books and studies that are still to come I'm

grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today and I'm of course happy to answer any questions that you might

have thank you thank you Dr albian Dr Kim you are

now recognized for your testimony please um good morning

everyone co-chairs chat and Jackson and Commissioners ladies and gentlemen I'm honored to be here in front of you for

the aanan war commission's first public hearing if I may I'll start with with a

personal story my family left Afghanistan in late 1979 right before

Soviet troops rolled into Afghanistan my father the chair of the faculty of Economics at kabo University and my

mother a bank executive at the National Bank opposed the communist regime as many avons did and that took over

Afghanistan in the spring of 1978 as a result my father was tortured

and imprisoned in the notorious pchi prison for 18 months thousands of

innocent avons were tortured and killed in that prison the adjoining Killing Fields behind the prison and many other

jails and facilities in Afghanistan during the Communist period when we moved to the US in 1980 my family was

traumatized and unfamiliar with life in the United States as are most avons I've

met who have arrived after subsequent periods of fighting and since the collapse of the Avan Republic on August

15th 2021 however there has there there is no comprehensive Archive of aan

voices who could speak to the arduous Journeys they had faced and the history they have witnessed voices that could

express the emotion and events of people who were Central to the C Cold War and

geopolitics after that it was not until March 20 2002 that

I went back to cabble um to take part in the emergency ly JGA the historical

moment in which Afghanistan's future could be determined much by

avans um that I learned more about the country and learned about the diversity

of voices that avans had and expressed that is why when on August 15 2021 as

the era of the afan Republic and the US afan war came to an end it was clear to me that documenting this period would be

a great service to avans US veterans of the Avan War family of US service

members who had died in Afghanistan and those who cared deeply about Afghanistan's people and history I knew

the status of archives about Afghanistan and during my doctoral research on the history of women in Afghanistan I used

oral histories as a primary methodology because of the lack of archives and documentation about the lives of women

as I Was preparing to build an archive on my own knowing the Gap that existed

um after August 2021 I heard about the initiative that General HR McMaster

senior fellow at the Hoover institution started at Stanford University as a trained historian in a season combat

soldier who had served in Afghanistan McMaster was keenly aware that recording

individual histories was going to be critical to investigating the truth as a result I joined the Hoover avanan team

as the oral historian and manager in April 2022 and since then I've conducted more

than 120 oral history interviews culminating in more than 350 hours of

recordings with afans and Americans who lived and worked in Afghanistan from

2001 until 2021 we've also done a subset of oral histories inside Afghanistan to

capture the emotion and sentiment of those who couldn't leave or wanted to

stay I traveled to many countries looking for and finding people

who would be essential to this history I've traveled so much I don't think my children even recognize me anymore they

say who's the lady who's back today so I can't go into too much detail of who is in the archive but I assure

you that this archive will be important to your work you'll find people who will tell you the stories that matter the

moments that are critical to in in this during this war there was plenty of physical

documentation during the time of the Avon Republic but with the collapse of the Republic the rushed withdrawal of

the US forces and the sudden takeover by the Taliban it wasn't clear what documentation would remain to tell the

complex story of this period over the last 2 and a half years I've learned though some documents still exist but

computers and hard drives were smashed and destroyed in many governmental offices intelligence documents Personnel

files contracts official memos and many other artifacts of that period were

destroyed out of fear that the Taliban would get a hold of them people frantically burned documents ID cards

credentials which connected them to us or foreign projects and organizations one Afghan journalist told

me he buried his piter prize in his backyard because he was afraid the

Taliban would find it within hours of the Afghan president leaving the country and the Taliban taking over Afghans were

shedding the identities that they had cherished on the one hand but could get them killed on the other the oral

history interviews I'm collecting are detailing at times Moment by moment the

unraveling of the hopes and dreams of millions of avans and the decisions that led to the collapse of the

Republic excuse me but documents tell part of the story placing individuals in the course of history and understanding

documents and artifacts in relation to the lived experiences of those who were

leaders decision makers and people at various cross-sections of Avan society and politics creates a more nuanced and

useful history of the period in the interviews I conduct for the hover avistan oral history archive I go beyond

the general timelines and this is important probably for your work as well each person has their own mini timelines

and events that they saw and witnessed that led to big events such as the 2004

constitutional La Jura or the 2009 presidential elections these personal

timelines of people and key positions when paired with documents in other archives have the potential of revealing

critical moments During the period of the Republic that things could have gone differently and now help us understand

more than simple or general Lessons Learned with avans I conduct life

histories which are longer than regular oral histories in order to understand

why certain decisions were made in choices that shaped the events in Afghanistan it is important to

understand the context of their lives the patterns are being affected by War displacement poverty and long periods of

uncertainty become painfully visible my longest life history interview for the collection is 10 and 1 half hours and in

three parts most interviews average four hours this has been an investment on my part and resources at Hoover because

this is a tremendous amount of content to transcribe translate and archive I've learned so much about the specific

moments and people who could have changed the course of the US war in the Afghan Republic as an oral historian I

create the openings in which a narrator or interviewee walks through during the interview I linger during life moments

or periods when where more details are needed the truth starts out as simple facts moments Memories by individuals

that are then stitched together to create the picture of a meeting a person or event I call this the Pyramid of

truth I ask interviewees what some of their earliest childhood memories are in Afghanistan or oftentimes in a refugee

camp it's telling and interesting to see what people choose to share I asked them to take me back to the moment draw the

scene who was was there where were you sitting what did people say what did you say at that moment and do exactly what

were you thinking at the moment the oral histories are record of affect as much

as they are details of places and events in early 2022 when I started interviewing I felt that there was a

deep sense of distrust among avans because of the sudden changes in the country and the fear of finger pointing

and blame I suspect that you will come across that as well that environment of

distrust has improved as more details have been released through news reports

Congressional hearings social media and investigations with oral histories life

histories I found that there I found there to be more interest because there's a sense of understanding that

the histography of avistan has been disrupted too often and in Awareness that there hasn't been sufficient

documentation of important voices especially avons thank you for allowing me to share my work with you

thank you very much Dr kazm I'd like to now recognize Mr nadie who is joining us

online um you are now recognized for your testimony please go

ahead thank you very much Madam chair Mr chairman Commissioners ladies and

gentlemen as an afan deeply connected to the history and future of my country I'm

grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts on why a review of the war in Afghanistan is crucial

same way as it is for the United State for the afans too and how the war has affected our national Inspirations the

Afghans National aspiration for a better future for two decades Afghanistan's

political social and economic lives were closely tied to the decisions made by the United States the war and the

partnership left an indelible mark on our country the tragedy of 911 brought

to light the longlasting pain of millions of afans who had been neglected

for too long afans the victims of Cold War rivalry and poor National leadership

found relief in the presence of US forces in their country in November

2001 the end of the taliban's first rule and the subsequent support from the United States transformed millions of

lives however the war also brought pain Despair and and lost opport unities

looking back over the past two decades we see a fascinating story of success

and failure from which we can draw critical lessons the story of aan women

claim reclaiming and expanding their rights denied by the Taliban was a

highlight of that period the rapid integration of women's right and human rights into Afghanistan's social

political and legislative discourses is an encouraging lesson learned to be

replicated out places Advocates of a democratic system in Afghanistan found

allies in the United States and international Partners their tearless advocacy resulted in constitutional

guarantees including freedom of media and speech and help develop an active Civil Society the rapid expansion of

public service for example from few than 30,000 teachers in 2002 to over

256,000 in 20 21 with over 50% of female

representation was a testament to the success of institutional building by 2020 a vibrant Dynamic and hopeful post

2001 generation educated both in Afghanistan and ruler Urban and also

abroad began entering the workforce equipped with knowledge and

technology and aware of the global happenings they aspired to a better future for their country

however the war also brought significant pain the Quest for Revenge post 911 and

the counterterrorism strategies that relaxed Rules of Engagement caused unnecessary suffering

among afan civilians especially in ruler areas homes and Villages were destroyed

and many civilians lost their life the US and its allies held to high standard

by afans at times fell short in their conduct the strategy of arrests and

indefinite detention often without due processes undermine the goals of establishing the rule of law and access

to Justice one one of the key objectives of both afans and International Community at the time misunderstandings

such as the case of a 68 years old detained for a long time in background

pris because a translator misinterpret interpreted his words highlights the

profound consequences of rushed actions prioritizing short-term fighting season

bound military objectives over long-term governance and development led to missed

opportunities the failure to adopt lessons from po past experiences like

the one Ambassador Newman talked about Vietnam War resulted in 20 times over

yearly strategies that diverted attention from sustainable development

and longer term stability additionally the policy of pushing against demands for justice and accountability for past

crimes empowered Bad actors and gave rise to corruption disillusioning many

outs this approach based on a flawed assumption about the benefits of empowering Bad actors undermined

long-term goals of strengthening State institutions there are many questions

about the impact of negotiations between the United States and the Taliban

particularly the ABS of the afan government and the public messaging of the team of the negotiation that

elevated the Taliban to their status of a credible actor contributing to the collapse of the afan Republic

transparency is owed to afans regarding the decisions and actions taken during that process understanding the root

causes of this momental failure by the afan leaders and also by the US is

essential for afans both in the country and in the diaspora to heal and move

forward the taliban's campaign of fear violence and disregard for lives of afans is well documented this combined

with the proxy wars conducted by the regional actors like Pakistan and others must be in an un Inseparable part of the

assessment of the context in which afans and our allies were operating at the time the failure to prevent or mitigate

their double standards and deception was likely one of the most significant

diplomatic failure of the last two decades that warranting further study

the commission's work can help families of War crime War victims and those who

paid the ultimate sacrifices to understand what happened and why that

after two decades and despite all the sacrifices they ended up under the same brutal regime

that that that they were living before the collapse of the Republic generated

Shar and grief within the afan populace leaving them traumatized and angry at

their own political leaders for their profound failure they also embraced The

View that their lives and Faith once again did not matter while decisions were made in Washington DC afans will

eagerly look for an objective fair and transparent examination of this end game

I also urge the Comm to also review two additional areas as they look into this

momentous uh uh uh work uh and and undertaken first examine the role of

diplomats in managing complex relations with the partners both president Kai and president rany began as Co close allies

of the United States but within a term in office they The Divide and distrust

between them and the US grew how key diplomats managing this these difficult

relations in a very complex situation manage their relationship that led to

this level of distrust and this may educate future similar situations and

diplomats second explore where and whether there was only one path to

withdrawing the US forces from Afghanistan which involved negotiating with the Taliban through the

controversial do deal or could the US leave uh and withraw its forces securely

without undermining the partner it supported for two decades through significant investment of blood and

resources in conclusion I believe this commission's work is the least we can do

to honor the sacrifices of over 100,000 aan men and women in uniform who lost

their life and thousands of us and Coalition Partners who made ultimate sacrifices and the dreams of millions of

afans who are now living under a brutal aparti regime I wish you patience

foresightedness and as you compile there's very painful but very necessary story I thank you and I look forward to

the questions thank you very much Mr naad for your insights so we will now begin

um the question and discussion portion of the hearing and I just um I'll take

the co-chairs prerogative to ask a few questions first but I want to make an observation um

of the what the four Witnesses shared um never in my wildest dreams could I have

imagined such a rich foreign policy discussion uh that involved historians

former diplomats retired Intelligence Officers military generals members of the diaspora and I

think that um this sets the right tone for how we want to interrogate the key

questions of the war we're not looking at each of these perspectives in isolation we're trying to hear you in

your from your position of hindsight and retrospection but we're also trying to build the connective tissue between

these different experiences this is what's going to be most difficult about this project and so for the audience

today and for the Commissioners and we've talked about this I I I want all of us to push ourselves a little bit to

find that connective tissue and we'll continue to do that over the the course of the next two years um my first

question is to Ambassador Newman um I want to zoom out a little bit on this issue of blame uh which is one that

keeps coming up in our conversations all of the uh Witnesses um mentioned it we

get asked a lot about this project and in in particular are we going to

recognize the failures of particular leaders um or in another way will this

project name and shame um I like to think of it as um a Sunshine project

where we share information about us policy decision-making that hasn't been

made available to the public but um but there were individuals involved there were leaders that um made decisions um

and that put their signature on policies a foreign policy does not have a good

track record of holding leaders accountable um or responsible um if you

will in the same way as say in the private sector where you have a CEO who didn't make his or her numbers and has

to answer to a board and then gets flipped and a new person comes in we vote presidents in and out but we can't

do that for generals or diplomats or Aid workers this is a very sensitive topic

it's controversial but I think we should start with this I would love to hear your perspective on this given your Arc

of experience from Vietnam to Afghanistan boy that's broad uh

as you delve into that I think you may find yourself reflecting on ovon Bismark

comment that the two things people should never allow you should never allow people to see are the making of

policy and sausage because each is disgusting um there are there are an

awful lot of different influences that come to bear on policy

decisions uh and you know extracting

extracting responsibility is going to be very difficult I mean ultimately presidents are

responsible you will need to look very closely at not just the decisions presidents made but the questions they

asked in formulating their answers um I don't have an easy answer

to this there there are also some problems in our structure uh you know we don't have a

way of having one person responsible on the ground we I often do teaser question

when I'm talking to classes sometimes where's the first place that the responsibility for action on the ground

comes together the answer of course is the president of the United States there is no earlier place where the lines of

communication cross um we have had actually and I mentioned

that in my written testimony an experience where we did have a unified chain of command lower down in courts

and nobody's ever been able to explain to me how we had it um but in any

event there so we have both structural problems and individual problems um and

in some cases there may not be a clear place of responsibility so the the

question may be in some cases did the delegation for the conduct of a decision

carry clarity was the dis was the delegation of

authority uh both clear and used the particular problem with this is for

instance military works by creating mission statements mission statements are not reviewed by civilians um I had

an experience in Iraq I won't go into detail here where the the fact that Washington had a different understanding

of a military Mission from the mission statement led to repeated confusions uh

um until we straightened it out which was difficult because we weren't as civilians allowed to tamper with it um

so you got multiple levels I don't know that I'm helping you answer that

question except that that you probably have to come at it from a variety of ways the questions which were asked

whether the answers particularly whether the answers were tested against a

reasonable expectation of success that I think is a repeated problem in our

government I God knows how many action memos I've seen and my colleagues have

seen um which have a are called a strategy and have a list of

actions but they don't have any anal analysis of whether the actions are

sufficient to achieve the objective and you know my my favorite joke is that if I want to go to the Moon

I can jump up and down 50% of my actions are going in the right direction I'm never going to get lift off um so there

needs to be an action of whether the whether the actions cumulatively will get you to the

objective um anyway that's a long enough answer and I know our time is short no

it's it's a difficult answer but it's I see it more as a a theme that we have to

lay out honestly in the beginning I I'm not sure we're going to find an answer

to it um just a quick followup for you Ambassador Newman let let's be more

specific spefic now about Afghanistan and thinking about um you you alluded to

this kind of a chain of command and um you know the president is in charge the way that the US government structured

its engagement in Afghanistan can you outline kind of the

the complexity of the different chains of command and the different kinds of

authority figures that were involved and I think that then will illuminate a

deeper discussion about accountability

well I think there are different things one is the chain chains of command on

the ground remember that National level counterterrorist forces were not brought under the command of the command and

direction of the commander on the ground until General mccristal was assigned you

frequently had operations conducted without coordination with the ground commanders

just within the military command and then you have the issue that the overall

overarching structure of coordination is personality dependent and

so sometimes it works great you know what it's like a little

like the uh uh Through the Looking Glass about

Alice when she was good she was very very good and when she was bad she was hard um so I've seen I've seen some

truly awful conflicts between generals and

ambassadors um there was a period in Afghanistan where it was very

strained uh where you had senior Personnel on each side bad mouthing the

other command in meetings where the other command was present which was

obviously going to be radi back with great Good Feeling um and you had

periods you've got Ambassador Crocker and where the command was celebrated for

the cooperation both in Iraq and in Afghanistan we have no I guess what I

would leave you with is we have never had a structural way of dealing with a bad

relationship um the the only person that can referee a bad relationship is the

president and I've never seen a cabinet agency willing to discipline its own side of

the problem if there's a difference and nobody ever tells them you guys have to

play together or I'm going to fire you or you or whatever it's you know left to be sorted out in the

sandbox thank you Ambassador I'd like to now recognize my co-chair uh co-chair

Jackson for his questions and we are um each commissioner will have seven

minutes to um speak with the witnesses so I ask that we respect that

time thank you shilot um my first question goes to Mr nadri uh in your

opening statement you made reference to one of the more controversial aspects of the war in Afghanistan which was the

relationship between the war and and Pakistan um you highlighted the need to

examine the role of Pakistani support uh for the Afghan Taliban from your point

of view uh what are the most important things for us to examine as a commission on this and what in your opinion might

have been done differently uh from the American point of view well thank you very much uh uh Mr

chairman well uh the the important aspect of Pakistan to be uh to be looked

at it uh uh one it was the to look at

the 20 years in at least three phases the first phase which there was a level of Effectiveness in

implementation uh of of overall policy in the region and that was not only with

Pakistan but there was some level of cooperation with uh Russia but also Iran

was behaving okay uh uh at least uh there was a common ground in in there

but Pakistan itself and the regime at the beginning that president mhar at the beginning did look to see for the

success or somehow cooperate for the success of the overall uh uh objective of the mission but immediately as the

first five years have gone they have changed their their way of looking at

the issues so diplomatic and Aid were the two uh tools that the United State

from where I was sitting and seeing was trying to use uh with Pakistan to change

and meant there uh approach and attitude time and again especially when

we enter to the third phase where there was this discussion about after 2014

when the US forces was withdrawing The Leverage of diplomatic leverage have gone down but the eight uh leverage uh

uh continue to remain significant no review of which part of this uh

diplomatic effort worked and how deceptions were carried out the intelligence information was uh to a

level that could cerse or at least change the behavior of Pakistan was not Beed into the Diplomatic work because

there were also some conflicting interest and Pakistan being a nuclear

power uh you don't want to upset them further you you need uh uh to to have a

route for logistic support but those were at the first phase two facts but

there was strong word words diplomatically but also clear uh uh uh uh uh uh measures in terms of

intelligence but also in terms of Aid was carried out and I think looking in all of those aspects would would have

been uh uh much much more uh different the Talib uh the Taliban relation with

Pakistan was so obvious the sanctuary was so obvious and it became one of the

critical point of disagreement between the leaders and uh with the United

States uh uh uh actors on the region and also with the United States leaders what

kind of measures the US will be taken against against Pakistan uh and and

that's why a review of tools of diplomatic application and Aid uh need

to be uh uh properly done to see uh if those are the two important and

effective uh tools to apply in those situation because in every cycle

pakistanis could manage to come to visit to to uh Washington and be at the at the

White House and it was a critical and important uh leverage that was not

properly in my view used throughout and that probably is something that

downplaying or underestimating the level of Leverage the United States have had

and have in this situation with an on and off partners across the the globe

which are mostly based on shortterm interest rather than on

values thank you uh one uh follow-up question on a slightly different part of

your statement um you made the observation that there may have been another way for the United States to

disengage from Afghanistan at the end that did not involve undermining the host country uh can you expand a little

bit on on that very interesting statement uh one uh has been uh a

foundation for the uh US forces presence especially post 2004 in Afghanistan was

the bilat the first the sofa and then uh later on uh uh it was the bilateral

security agreement 2014 that was that was signed and it had clear terms based

on which that was explaining how uh uh reduction of troops and also withdrawal

would happen now the key concern in negotiation with the key argument in negotiating with the Taliban was to

protect the forces as they withdraw however that the the US forces

had the support of not only the Afghan National Army which there was uh uh

green and blue occasionally happening and that was a fear that you can't trust them but there was over 50,000 what they

call the the uh these these forces in different battalions called the the zero

uh uh forces 01 03 uh uh those were trained hired uh vetted and work closely

by uh uh uh the agency and also the rest of the special forces of the United

States they were the the the outer they were the protector of the outer uh build

of security for every us uh uh B for most of the US bases and they were the

most trusted and the cooperation between them most of them were now evacuated to the United

States a evacuation without legitimizing the Taliban for them to claim that they

have beat the United States and uh made it to leave the country could have been

a proper carefully planning of withdrawal using for security the proper

Arrangement that was already on ground and was provided even to the last day that the Peters of the Kabal airport to

the chaotic uh evacuation was protected by those forces to the last days and and

most of them then were were evacuated too so there was one at least that that

one could uh could look at it uh uh properly to to extract the forces uh

without relying on a a a deal that did not create a foundation for lasting

peace and then lead it to the catastrophe that we were all uh witness

of thank you Mr nadri I seed back my time thank you Colin um I just want to

ask Commissioners to when you address the witness please um specify whether uh

your witness is on Zoom or in the room U just to help with the the coverage all right um so I'd like to recognize

commissioner Bob Ashley uh you have seven minutes thank you and uh thanks for our

Witnesses today um the gravity of what we face over the next couple years is

not lost on anybody on this commission and me personally everybody has a

different experience and some of them are common um I was was thinking about my comments open here this morning I

thought okay I was in Afghanistan 2003 2004 2009 2010 all of 12 13 and back in

19 all in different capacities over time and one of the things that struck

me the most was anytime I got out of Cobble out into the village and I saw the

kids as a parent as a

grandfather and that really drove we have to we have to get this right for those generations and seeing

those kids and really the parents that want the best for their children going

forward for my family for all the time that I spent away

and for the jobs that I had the roles of the missions on those deployments really

most consequential for me was as a casualty assistance

officer Colin made mention of 2238 of our teammates that didn't come

home in 2005 I got a phone call to let me know that I was going to be the casualty assistance officer for a

family of a lieutenant that was killed in 36 years in the military the

most important thing I did was that that role in helping that family so for our gold star families as

well this is so critical with that having been said um

Dr Kaz my first question is for you so I I'm a career intelligence officer but as

a general that you you're meant to be a general that you take a broad perspective but as a a member of the intelligence

Community you know fundamentally you want to understand the fabric of the nation and where you're deploying and

help those senior decision leaders understand that that's one of the biggest challenges we have what did we

misunderstand about the Afghan people because you've been deeply involved in the narratives the stories the work that

you've done help us understand what did we miss about that and what's a maybe a framework we should think about going

forward thank you commissioner I'll reflect on

uh mostly the interviews that I've done um

key Intelligence Officers of the NDS of the national director of security of of

hastan and what they've shared with me um in general I think some something

that sticks with me is I recently was overseas in um the United Arab Emirates and I met with several

um I interviewed several people who were commanders of the Jihad so you know before 9/11 and I think those interviews

stay with me especially as life histories because there there if we talk

about blame there's a part of the blame that's put on former commanders the

Jihadi commanders who ended up staying and and being part of the government and

understanding their life histories understanding where they sacrificed but

where they also were not recognized and where they also made mistakes and so I

ask some of them at the end and mostly what are your deepest regrets and I think the answers to some of those are

very important and very telling because um this is just one group that we didn't

understand well enough and we empowered we the US government the US military um

didn't understand their life histories didn't understand their um their

contributions their significance but also their deficiencies um in being part of the

future government um and the power plays that they knew how to do and how that

would affect um the future government because if we look at all the problems

of the Republic it was also a um disconnect between leaders of various periods and I think that history wasn't

recognized when the um when the original operations forces that went in in

October of 2021 and then the um operations that were started I've

interviewed people who were Central to those groups and who received the first

Americans coming into Afghanistan to start the the planning of um the attacks

on the Taliban um they've explained to me the moments that Americans arrived what they asked what they knew what they

didn't know how these Afghans felt and those moments are very telling um and there is a deep lack of understanding of

what the deficiency of those individuals and what the needs were of those individuals at that

time may I respond to a previous question is that possible or should we move on please go ahead okay I'm sorry

I'm just goingon to mention something because I've interviewed some of the top generals the US generals um so far um in

in my oral histories I think there was a big communication and disconnect between Washington and couble and the US

generals do uh an amazing job of describing the moments that mattered to them um and several ambassadors in US

ambassadors to aanan and US generals who were prominent in aanan talk about these two letters the p and the m p being

political and M being military and they talk about moments where the P was capitalized or the M was capitalized and

when big p mattered and Little M mattered or vice versa when Big M mattered and little p and there seems to

be a disconnect of you know or uh not clear where that designation of big p or

Big M uh came in so that was important and then um one example that they gave

on Pakistan was the lack of Border presence this is to the second question lack of Border patrolling a lack of

understanding that a border force was essential in order to keep this um the

insurgents out and many generals expressed to me that they went to DC at

different times and presented on the problems with Pakistan and they weren't listened to so I found those moments

very important and very telling thank you thank you uh Bob you have a couple

minutes left I'm going to give you your time if you please yeah I do have a follow on question is we've had the

conversation this jly for Dr albian and principally for the Ambassador um we talked about

complexity I think of this is kind of you know the different segments of the policy and all the things all the facets

it's like solving a Rubik's Cube but somebody walks in and goes I've solved the green part but they're totally

oblivious to red orange the other sections of it um and one of your

comments that really that struck with me was the evolution of your thought on Lessons Learned over time and so my

question is because we look at Ukraine into China we look at Vietnam into

Afghanistan what are the pitfalls as we think about how we pull lessons out you

know there's the old Mark Twain quote that history doesn't repeat itself but it Rhymes but there there is a there's a

risk also in things that we bring forth yeah I I mean that's absolutely

true and I don't know that there's a short answer to that or maybe a total one I mean one of the great successes of

the first Bush Administration in the Iraq War was drawing on a lesson of

Vietnam and of Korea of no Mission creep but no Mission creep left you Saddam

Hussein in 10 years of containment so I you know there there's no there is no

golden answer um I think Lessons Learned are

hugely useful if they are used as a kind of contrast and compare they are not lessons if they are

not useful if you try to use them as cookie cutters and so give you one example in

Afghanistan you often had people who had served in Iraq if they used Iraqi exper I mean my

observation if they used Iraqi experience as sort of it was this way

how is it here it could be a catapult to learning faster if they used it as this

is the way we did it in Iraq and we should do it that way here if was an obstacle so in either case you had a

lesson but what do you do with it Dr Al yeah Dr Al I want to give you a

chance to respond yeah I think what the Ambassador said makes a lot of sense and and it's this point that of not you know

not fighting the same War right again and so I think that's the importance of drawing lessons that are not just

applicable to the past but actually thinking about about the present

actually um lessons that can be applied to new circumstances how even you know

today how could they be directly relevant to what's going on today with an eye to the future we don't know what

the future is going to hold um so that's especially difficult but I think just

getting out of this idea of lessons learned that are only applicable to a

past situation um and you know I think if

your if your report and your your history and your investigation is

comprehensive and thorough then you know Lessons Learned will be drawn by others

as well not just what you decide to draw out but others can come back and with

new situations and say well what can we learn from this incredibly comprehensive report so I think there's a job for you

to do but also recognizing that again if your you know if your report is really

authoritative then you are providing um a history there that others

can take from thank you I would like to recognize

commissioner Ryan Crocker you have seven minutes thank you madam chairwoman uh

and my thanks to our Witnesses for giving this commission a very useful

public launch I'd like to recognize two of our distinguished guests here today

Ambassador Patterson and Ambassador Rafel and I would like to uh say what a privilege it is to be here at the VFW

headquarters one of the great honors of my life was to as a civilian having

received the vfw's Eisenhower award uh the witness have made clear

what I think we already knew but they have underscored the magnitude of the task before this commission it's

enormous complexity its range um and with that task comes also

enormous obligations on this commission and all of its Commissioners uh we have an obligation to the American

people we have a special obligation to the veterans the hundreds of thousands who served in uniform in

Afghanistan we have an obligation to the civilians under chief of mission Authority who served in the thousands as

well as civilians who served in other capacities we have a special obligation

that we can never meet to those who did not return to those killed in

Afghanistan I stood at many of their ramp ceremonies at bogram I'm Associated now with the Gold

Star Family Association in the Inland Northwest for them that war will never

be over we have an obligation to those who our Afghan allies who serve bravely with

us um every week at International security assistance Force Headquarters

there was a ceremony to memorialize those who had been killed the previous

week um every single week the name or names of American

killed in action were read by an American officer less frequently

Coalition officers would read the names of their dead the last speaker was

always an Afghan officer he didn't read names he just said a number number 110

126 85 those are the number of Afghan Security Forces Personnel killed that

week so the notion that Afghans were not willing and ready to die for their

country is frankly

obscene we owe we owe our efforts to

um other Afghan allies those who served with our forces and at our

Embassy the special immigrant Visa eligible individuals who we left behind

by their tens of thousands we uh I think Dr albian framed

it nicely in her conversation on the 911 Commission in a very real sense we are

the successor to the 911 Commission the 911 Commission

examined how 911 happened and the steps we should take to address address it we

are looking at a vast span of time to

tell the story of what happened next and that will be a long and complex

story uh and as my colleagues have already said and the witnesses uh we owe

that to the Future Generations because as Ambassador Newman has pointed out we will do this

again um so I I have a several questions first for Ambassador Newman spoke of um

strategic patience I would term it both in the individual level longer tours

particularly by senior officers military and civilian but also National strategic

patients Korea Japan a 20 or 30e span we have enormous qualities as Americans but

quite frankly strategic patience is not one of them uh based on your experience your

observations U what uh what would you suggest we focus on in terms of future

recommendations um you we've many of us have experienced Iraq as well as

Afghanistan you allude to the first Gulf War which followed a very different

trajectory our national absence of strategic patients to what extent should that be a factor in early decision

making Ambassador Crocker I think that's an excellent question because the fact

is you're right we're not good at strategic patience we can we can live live a long time without doing anything

about an issue we can decide to do something about it we can almost never decide not to do something

um I think I was thinking about that issue actually walking up from the Metro

this morning I think it this is a very tentative answer

but one thing is to recognize that we probably cannot succeed in many of our

large objectives over the time we're going to give to them which would mean

that you would have to have the honesty and the realism to say to the American

people early on that your goals are going to be much more limited you're not

going to clean it up you're not going to leave you may decide you're not going to leave a

stable situation behind you or you may decide that you're because it's unstable you're going to

leave something where you're backing a force that'll be situationally dependent

but we have in my experience and your experience is even vaster um very little

political willingness to give nuanced answers that are really

messy because they're so easy to attack I mean you know it's easy to attack with

a club and it's hard to defend with feeble grade Nuance but if you're going

if you can't have strategic patience then you have to have lesser

goals the other alternative is to say to to be more honest with Americans about

potential of failure uh I've often thought that in Aid

projects if we talked about the likelihood of failure and explained in

advance that we expected a certain measure of failure and how we were proposed to learn from failure we might

be able to utilize it but since we we don't if you say that later then it's an

excuse it has no credibility you know you could might as well try dribbling

your basket ball on the freeway um but you might be able to explain in advance

the the chance of not just that a problem is difficult we say that all the time difficult means parts of this are

going to fail and we're going to have to come back to you with honesty to talk about which parts are failures and what we're going

to do about it that's not the way we handle our discourse I don't know if it is possible politically but I think

either we have to have that kind of discourse or we have to have the willingness to recognize that

we lack patience and set lower goals because I agree with you we're not likely to find the

patience uh Madam Madam chairwoman I have reached my time limit would I have

the latitude to ask one quick question of Dr km

absolutely uh first I'm very pleased that we have two historians for this first panel the The Sweep of history is

essential to an understanding of the present and any hope for making sensible recommendations to the Future uh history

has many aspects your oral history is Dr km I find uh uh a huge contribution to

an understanding of Afghan and American perspectives do you know if anyone has

uh done or attempted to do oral history say of Pakistan

pakistanis uh and their perspectives on the war in

Afghanistan I don't know of anyone mostly I I think I would know if someone

was doing that because usually we the oral historian Community is very small and um I I don't know of any project I

think that's a very uh good idea a great opportunity for your next

PhD candidate sir thank you thank you commissioner Crocker I

would like to recognize commissioner Dan feda you have seven minutes please go ahead great thank you uh co-chairs and

fellow Commissioners it's an honor to be here with you today at the Afghan war commission's first public hearing thank

you to our Witnesses who've agreed to join us uh today as our co-chair said this commission was established a few

years ago as part of the fy22 National Defense authorization act it took some time to assemble the Commissioners and

to get our budget but here we are um as all the Commissioners have said ahead of time it is a heavy task that we have and

I'm honored to be part of this commission thank you to Congress for establishing it as well the impact of 20

years of war in Afghanistan are still being felt around the world and here in the United States I'm honored to have

been appointed by Senator Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Senator Jim Rish of Idaho so I could be

part of this historic Endeavor to be able to do my part to bring some context Clarity and closure to our fellow

Americans both who served and those who supported the many that served like our

fellow Commissioners I too have history working with the war having worked Afghanistan issues through a variety of

governmental non-governmental and private sector capacities from 2002 to 2015 I was one of the senior DOD leaders

who worked with our NATO all I to make the case why we needed to work and fight together in

Afghanistan America's allies and partners were critical in being able to hold the ground in Afghanistan as a

commissioner it's sorry as a commission it is important we look at what roles the Allies played in helping to shape

the war strategy and whether Allied contributions were sufficiently managed and coordinated with the world increasingly

becoming more and more dangerous understanding what lessons can be drawn as Ambassador Newman has walked us down

a paast from Allied participation in Afghanistan for future Coalition Warfare will be vital in the development of

strategic plans and operational Readiness for a long time Afghanistan was the underfunded War Lots was done by

contractors our forces our allies and the Afghan National Security Forces to help bring peace and stability to

Afghanistan training the ansf to assume the majority of security operations in that country was the Allies Exit Plan I

can tell you for a fact that was the Allies exit plan as a commissioner I tend to offer some insights and

perspectives on this important undertaking but I also want to examine and understand why our efforts in this

regard failed to be realized what prevented the ansf from being able to take control of defending their country

we did more than a decad worth of formal training and assistance uh yet the ansf

failed to hold and crumbled quickly nearly three years ago ultimately we have to ask ourselves whether the US and

Allied Exit Plan truly was ever achievable more Broad the commission needs to ask and probe as to whether

certain actions and decisions during the past 20 years of war in Afghanistan could have altered the outcome

positively I know our co-chairs have set out a robust agenda for us to do that and I look forward with my fellow

Commissioners in digging in we must have an honest examination and discussion about what needs to be done differently

in a future scenario to avoid the same outcome we faced in Afghanistan many Americans don't

question why we went to Afghanistan but many don't understand why we stayed so long our charge here is to help our

fellow citizens process the war and to help bring some closure to those in this

nation I spent a lot of time lecturing to undergrad students around the United States and nearly every class tells me

America should be out of the Democracy promotion business we don't do it well they tell

me we don't know what it feels like to win and they hold up Afghanistan as the

example we cannot Remain the beacon to the world if we cannot honestly get to the core of what went right and wrong in

the Afghanistan war as I look at as I look across the commissioner's table I'm

humbled by who is here what they accomplished as well as what they have sacrificed for their countrymen and the Afghan people I'm appreciative of the

approach our co-chairs have adopted in ensuring politics do not enter into the work we are undertaking and will

accomplish during the work of this commission I hope we can truly provide answers for the American people offer

some lessons learned and make recommendations for how to improve our efforts in a future conflict thank you

to Congress for giving us this responsibility thank you to our co-chairs for leading us and thank you to those who served and sacrific to

ensure another 911 style attack has never happened again and with that I close my opening statement and uh to the

witnesses I would just like to say thank you all for being here um I appreciate all the insights of which you are

providing and certainly Ambassador Newman the time that you've spent down range and also Ambassador Crocker and

Ambassador Patterson as well uh old colleagues and Friends Dr kazm I applaud

you for what you're doing and the passion that you bring to this uh we desperately need voices captured I have

a colleague at csis where Dr Jones and I spend time um who just last week wrote

said storytelling changes stories and stories change lives and I think what

you're able to capture and the stories and the narratives that are being told are absolutely essential in order to

make sure the people of Afghanistan and those that say served and sacrificed

have their voices heard and understand the context behind that so thank you for Ambassador Newman uh I agree with you

too many uh policy uh strategy reviews we had seven commanders of isaf between

' 06 and 14 seven each of them did their own review so not only you had the

political reviews back home but you had the military reviews I'm not saying reviews aren't necessary but I'm saying

there wasn't any continuity right when each Commander came in and so my question for you Ambassador Newman uh

you just talked about uh the importance of honesty and accountability uh I am curious if we can just shift it slightly

when it comes to democracy promotion and what I'm hearing from the youth and arguably not having closure on this

issue of Afghanistan is affecting America's ability to or America's willingness to want to promote democracy

and freedom abroad what are the lessons learned and observed and should be applied when we look at Afghanistan

democracy promotion thank you well thank thank you commissioner f i i by the way

get the same question often from students and uh you know part of my

first response to that is look making democracy was never a primary goal it

was an instrument of the part of the goal was how do you build a government you can walk away

from and so you then you have to say well if you don't like that what did you

like instead the muah in years of blood um I think so I I think democracy is

unfortunately going to have a continuing applicability to stability although we

may not often get there but I think we have a very poor track record of

understanding what it takes to build democracy now I I find that the organizations like iri and ndi that are

dedicated to democracy building have a much longer range incremental sort of

generational view of what needs to be done human rights

organizations are much more about you should not do X today um and the US

government has shown overwhelmingly a propensity to want to rush the issue in

a way that it cannot be rushed and to build democracy from the top down which is remarkably unsuccessful and it

reinforces the negative so when you especially when you have

issues of security so I think one I don't think one can deal or should deal

with the question broadly I think one's going to have to deal with it in some detail just two quick things Afghanistan

we selected quite possibly the worst possible basis for parliamentary

election with a single non-transferable vote by provinces which was a incredible

invitation to fraud in a country people by very creative people um very you know

to win the presidency you had to have Industrial Level fraud but to win a parliamentary seat you might have very

minor fraud of a few hundred votes um in a process which was not

transparent I found that my you know these are all subjective observations

but mine is that if you talk to Afghans General izing about democracy they had a

lot of reservations if you talked about Fair elections that was a different

answer um and then you have but then you had to deal with issues of communities

so in the first parliamentary election when the Internationals still had a role we could take people off that was UN Le

we could take people off the ballot for uh war crimes and for having illegal

militias well the first half was useless because there had been no judicial process so there was no basis you you

had lots of common belief but you had no basis you could point at to say this is a crime the militias you could though

and people were removed but in cases you found if that was the only candidate of

a particular tribe on the provincial ballot then the reaction was wait a

minute you're acting politically against my tribe not you're applying the rules for which

Americans by the way have enormous respect and absolute mystification that other cultures that haven't lived with

30 years might feel differently about them so the all I'm trying to get at with that long I'm for too long an

answer for our time it is that this has to be done very carefully that when we

have at least don't rush to elections uh I think that has been a that was a

disaster in Iraq it kept the the sunnis decided to stay out and recognized

within six months that it was a Mist three months that it was a mistake in Afghanistan as security got worse it

drove people back on support for leaders who had sometimes very bloody Commander

Pass but if that's where you get security you go back it that wasn't

locked in the first parliamentary election one of the startling things we saw was that these various leaders had

much less support than we had anticipated MW got very few deputies um

and others but as security conditions worsened it drove people back on people

who could support them and so that we didn't we didn't do what was necessary

how much could be done is realistic question but we never had the district elections that were part of the

Constitution um so it's going to have to be I'm sorry it's a very long answer too long I

apologize but it's going to have to be dealt with in a lot of detail and not in

Broad Strokes thank thank you Ambassador Newman and the um comparative analysis

with Iraq and Afghanistan is extremely helpful um we are at time I'd like to uh

turn to um and recognize commissioner Luke hardig

thank you madam chairwoman um it's a great honor to be here I'm deeply appreciative to Congress for uh creating

this commission I'm deeply appreciative to my fellow Commissioners we've been meeting now for a year um and the

seriousness of the discussion um the willingness to search for what's right for the truth to put politics uh to the

side is the highest ideals I think of what Congress sought when they created this commission I'm touched by the very

poignant comments that my Commissioners have made about the solemn Duty that we have um to our service members who lost

their lives and those who came home um to our Frontline civilians uh to the

American people more broadly to our Afghan friends and allies it's powerful and it reminds us of why we're here

doing this work this was a conflict that was often referred to as the Forever War

and with that comes a lot of associations um both for what it meant on the ground but also what it meant for

our democracy and I think we're grappling with a lot of that still um I think even a lot of the current reduced

trust we see in our institutions can be traced back in some way to the concept of Forever War and so it's it's

important that we get this work right to understand what happened in Afghanistan but also to rationalize it within our

broader Society we have an excellent panel of witnesses here today I'm so grateful to everybody for your

incredible work and for taking the time to appear with us I think going forward I think there's a few things that we got

to get right um we certainly have to paint a comprehensive narrative and I'm

so grateful that Dr km for example and Dr alvan and others have emphasized the importance of that really 360 Narrative

of of what happened I think we also have to be very clear about what are the things that are um truly the Temptation

is to focus on the technical challenges what didn't we get right if the troop surge had been longer if we' done this

better would we have been successful and I'm very interested in what were the Adaptive challenges that went beyond

those technical challenges that uh were maybe a failure to think about it in the right way um and to set realistic uh

goals and finally I'm overcome by just a sense of humility we are a commission of

16 Commissioners 40ish or so staff right um it's a substantial effort and yet

this war went on for 20 years and involves so many different people from very I countries and we should be humble

about what role we play um and we should be thinking about this as uh setting a

stage and a foundation um for others to inquire about the war and to reach their own conclusions um based off of their uh

their experiences and perspectives so it's with that in mind that I actually want to put my first question to Dr

albian he spoke um very well in your your opening statement about how you've

thought about your work as a historian and setting um your work up for future Scholars um to assess it um I wonder as

you look at our mandate our RIT which is certainly different by the nature of the the challenge that we're examining from

9911 um how you would think about doing that what would be the types of things you would encourage us to do so that our

work is optimally set up as a foundation um for not just a good narrative from us

but for future Scholars to assess it in their own way well I would think the most

important thing for that would actually be um making I

would I would hope that there are a lot of footnotes in your report um from a

historian's point of view being able to see you know where this piece of

information came from where that comment came from is so essential even if um

those supporting documents and uh and interviews aren't available yet um that

certainly was the case with the 9911 commission um uh but there was a a very

large effort after the commission ended to actually um uh put all all that

research together and it's all in the National Archives some of it won't be available for many many years but it is

being released um gradually and that is that is gold for historians to be able

to go back to the sources um and to have everything being sourced as as carefully

and as um comprehensively as possible that is essential and and I also I think

not just for historians for anybody reading that um that account I know this

is just me but I pick up a book and if it's got footnotes I take it seriously in a way that I don't necessarily with

other other books so I think that's that is really essential um but you know I

think it's going you've got such a a gigantic task 20 years you're not going to be

able to cover everything I think that's just needs to be said um but um you know

to there are certain things that you I think some one of our commissioners put

it very carefully you need to answer those those big questions which which frankly your your readers just most

people need to know why did the war go on for so long I think that's absolutely um necessary to so that

people coming away from that get get a sense of why it happened but um you know

I think VI are you may be able to at least provide some information that will

allow uh future historians and Scholars to to take areas which you haven't

developed so much and develop them further in very specific directions so

maybe there are nich issues or something like that that you won't be able to go into in the depth that you might want to

if you had more time um but you can at least you know hint to you know this is an area that needs more that that that

needs more development but but provide some of the questions and the framework for that so I think you have to be very

clear in what you're actually doing and what you're not doing for future Scholars to take that

forward that's one more question um I'm going to go to Dr naderi on the screen

um or sorry Mr naderi on the screen um very much appreciate your opening statement as well uh you were quite

critical of the Doha agreement and all that came out of that and you noted that we should have explored other paths that

wouldn't have undermined our Afghan Partners I'd love for you to just elaborate a little bit on that what what what would that have looked like in your

mind um that we should have done there well thank you very much uh

quickly uh few points there the first one that as the mission was uh uh for

for the entire process of reconciliation was announced it was the idea to get the

two parties that were fighting with each other specifically post 2016 which majority of Afghan fights

were carried out by the Afghan forces that and the Taliban to sit together the

role of the United State was first as secretary Pompeo at that time said was

to get the two side to reconcile quickly that path were

abandoned and it become a a a one-sided narrow objective of withdrawing the

forces now Afghans could understand that the United States can make a decision

and want to make a decision to withdraw the forces there were two elements that were missing first there were no

discussion with the Afghan Partners to see what are the alternative ways to

withdraw the forces is it only to negotiate with the

Talib with the singular objective of extracting the forces as it become uh uh

that singular objective or there were other ways that you could uh extract the

forces without talking with the Taliban and as I said before a safe and secure

withdrawal was possible within the tools and instruments that created by the

United States itself with within the 20 years of war and it could have enabled

the United States forces to withdraw both from the places that were a degree

of had a degree of difficulties in terms of uh uh uh being at the heated front

and there was uh uh the the the helmet sh uh uh uh sh up air base and the

Kandahar but the rest were in backr and in cabul uh that they they could be

protected uh and and there were lessons some of them negatively that could be rectified

from the U uh from the uh USSR withdrawal from Afghanistan but some of them there were local agreements that

were made that made possible safe and secure uh extraction of the forces at

the time but at this moment on in 2018 2019 2020 one there were 300,000 Advan

forces some yeah there was risk that green on Blue could have uh happened but

there was also over 50,000 Special Operation Forces trained by the United

States worked and fought together so closely and uh they were mostly trusted

by their camarades uh in the US uh Special Forces and uh us uh uh uh uh uh

soldiers and and officers plus that that uh the exact number uh of of over 40

,000 additional paramilitary forces that were trained that were recruited Ved

trained by the agency and other uh entities of the United States military forces that they could provide the

needed security for withdrawal and then especially once engaged to for the

objective of peace and halfway through it was clear that the Taliban was not

willing to make commitments clearly on paper on some of the future some of the

secondary objectives of the process which was the Peace uh uh then that

moment the process could have been halted the leverage could have been used of the US forces on ground and then the

extraction could have been or the withdrawal of the forces could have been made in a different way uh uh uh rather

than uh giving the credibility and the slogan to the Taliban that they have

defeated the United State and therefore they they have facilitate the United States leaving the forces but also there

were commanders of the Taliban on ground that they were celebrating if there was a decision to withdraw even without a an

agreement with them so they would have made uh uh uh uh possible also to not

attack there was yes some of these are assumptions but some of these are based on hard evidence and intelligence that

at the time that we were reviewing so not enough time was spent to discuss

with the local partner with the afan government to to to to find out other

possibilities of the uh of the withdrawal one key element there was

that there was an absence of transparency in frankly telling the afan government that we're leaving and this

is the singular objective and once that that happened later in the process not at the at the beginning of it and

therefore the conversation was not that much uh uh focused on what could be done

differently instead of just a narrow focus in Doha and

negotiating with the talb would you permit me a just a very

tiny comment there was an alternative and you asked about alternative the negotiation could have

been with the Afghan government about how we're going to leave and what we're going to leave behind and how we're

going to strengthen that would have recognized that the war was likely to go on we were not going to leave a peace it would have

also left the Afghan government responsible for the conduct of relations and the war afterwards that was not the

we never had that choice but we could have so I I want to thank Mr naad for

your comments and Ambassador Newman as well it just reflects the richness of that particular topic which we will

return to um in great detail and depth um so and thank you uh we're at time I'd

like like to now recognize uh remotely joining us is commissioner Andrew Wilder

please go ahead thank you sha um I'd like to begin by saying what a privilege it is to serve with my distinguished

colleagues on this commission and as they have already noted it's an extremely daunting task we've been

assigned uh but also one that I believe is incredibly important um and as others

have noted for me it's also a very personal one as it was in July 1986 nearly 30 8 years ago this week uh

that I arrived in Pakistan's beluchistan Province bordering Afghanistan to start

work for an American NGO providing humanitarian assistance to Afghans I spent most of the next four

decades working in or on Afghanistan as a humanitarian Aid worker then as a

researcher and academic and since 2010 trying to reduce conflict and support

ult ultimately unsuccessfully uh to achieve a sustainable settlement in

Afghanistan like many friends of Afghanistan I'm discouraged to see the country where it is today after all the

efforts and sacrifices of so many to build a better Afghanistan I agreed to serve as a

commissioner in the sincere hope that a Critical examination of successes and failures in Afghanistan will lead to

lessons being learned and not simply observed and that future policies

implementations and outcomes will be improved as as a result um I'd like to thank the

witnesses for taking time to join us today and for your insightful and informative testimonies I have many

questions uh but I'll direct two related questions to Mr ner naie who I've had the privilege of knowing and benefiting

from his insights and expertise for more than two decades uh first Ambassador

Newman in his testimony highlighted the challenges the US had in working with

the offgun government and that the US default reaction when faced with local

partner problems was to try to develop our own policy and convince locals to accept it or simply to do it ourselves

or he noted in some cases we tried to replace leaders we didn't like um your

testimony noted that both presidents carai and gani started off as close allies of the US but over time distrust

in divisions grew you work closely with both offgun presidents what do you think were the main

contributing factors to the sharp deterioration in relations between the US and carai and later gani and what

lessons you think can be learned from these and then let me ask the second related question now which is that you

mentioned in your testimony that there were missed opportunities due to short-term military objectives being

prior prioritized over longer term governance objectives uh to what extent

was that a factor exac erting tensions between the US and Afghan leaders and

what were some of the other important consequences of the tensions between military and political objectives thank

you well thank you very much uh Andrew uh very great to see you um on on Cai I

I would uh divide it in at least four areas where uh it have uh contributed to

that sense of uh distrust uh first and primarily it was

it begin with the civilian casualty uh and that specifically because it was

happening at the heart of President Kai's own constituency kaha or Gan and Helmand and therefore it was distinction

between a military objective uh uh that the the uh uh that the military forces

were carrying out and his own political objective in there the second one was

uh basically the media leaks uh uh about the disagreements uh that that he had

with with the US uh uh uh uh officials especially on ground uh and and once

these reports coupled with the reports about his brothers uh uh involvement in

abuses of power and Corruption have began to surface and that also he found

it unbelievable uh of this level of uh negative uh negative stories and

coverage in media in compare to what he was celebrated for me for the first few

years uh in in the media H as as as the best guy and and as and all of that

positive uh uh coverage of him so that it created this sense of conspiracy that

he would believe that I was that great guy why I'm now this bad guy that all

the time the media is talking and also this lack of understanding of how uh the

media landscape Works in in the United States that's believe that media is an

entity or Associated of the government if not directly but through the Leakes uh it was was feeding into this sense of

distrust and and and the last one which made him very much convinced that there

is a higher degree of distrust is that that the way late Ambassador Richard

Holbrook carried out his mission and going publicly uh uh showing his dislike

of stating about his dislike of the sitting president who's running uh again

for office uh uh and during the elections the dispute and disagreement there and that have become the

foundation for further further uh disagreement but what he and rany uh

shared uh uh uh uh for a long time was was this sense of inaction against

Pakistan where they believe that the sanctuaries do exist in Pakistan there is known intelligence of us uh uh uh

agencies itself but also Afghan agencies but united state is not getting tough

and does not Curry operations against the afan Taliban in uh in uh uh in

Pakistan with rany it began by meeting the very Junior us officials himself

visiting Junior diplomats visiting Afghanistan he would meet them himself I once asked him why he's meeting a a a

junior diplomats that does not require his time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs need to deal with that and he was like

in a belief that he needs to menend relation with the United States that was damaged during President Kai and so he

was invested as he was calling so much uh uh uh proudly this F foundational

partnership but then his lack of understanding and exaggerated love of

knowledge that he was believing that he is informed about how us system operates

and based on that he had this sense of confidence that he would meant any relation that are in in in Washington so

he was a a kind of uh believing himself or overb believing himself and then was

feeding misinformation and then especially what changed him was uh once the peace process began he was

continuously feeling sidelined with that and he was fearing that there was no

transparency and based on that lack of transparency he is being gave this uh uh

this difficult uh uh situation that he would lose power so his overconfidence

on himself and relying on on just one person to deal with everybody in the

United States and change the course was a key factor when he realized he can do

that then that that also uh made him very much uh uh uh distrusting so that

lack of transparency that that he was expecting that was not there and it was

because us was fearing some of the diplomats if sh if you share everything with him he's going to use it again so

that inability and last point I I would say is this personal ego I would say on

both side overtaken the mission of those who were task to manage these difficult

relation but also the Mandate of a leader who was responsible for his own

nation that personal ego and personal aspect of those in charge have been very

much at display in both of these individuals and the relation with the us but leading to your second question on

the on the issue of the the this this conflict between political and military issues have had a significant role

especially in the first president but also on the second one because they were insist on certain approaches of the

military operations for example certain strong men on the ground were uh uh uh

uh for example in Kandahar were supported backed and provided for against the in against the will or

expectation of the of of the setting president in Cabell the military was insisting on that the political arm of

the US which is mostly the US Embassy was not pressing a change according to a

consultative process or Frank conversation with the leaders of the country to see what is good or what is

bad for institution building and for stability in Afghanistan so that conflict always contributed to this uh

uh difficult relation uh uh between the United States and and and these presidents thank you Mr naie we are at

time and I would like to now recognize commissioner Seth Jones please go ahead

thank you very much I want to first by actually thanking Congress for setting this commission up and doing it in a

fashion that I think it is very important for Americans to understand that it was done in a bipartisan fashion

both Republicans and Democrats got an equal number of votes in who was a

commissioner and I and what that means I think is that this commission um is

bipartisan in its nature but I think even in the work that the commission has

been doing so far it's also importantly non partisan and that is uh the work

that has already started the research analysis interviews is committed to

understanding key decisions and other aspects of what happened so I think the

bipartisan and even the nonpartisan component of this make it very important

and my hope and I think the hope of all the Commissioners involved and the members that appointed them is that what

results from this is a trustworthy document um in addition um I want to

also emphasize the important aspect of the commission's work in helping develop

a series of lessons not just identified but hopefully learned uh and recommend

recommendations for the way forward I think as I look at this there will be

times ahead if we look at the last 20 years Somalia Haiti Iraq Yemen Libya the

Balkans there will be times ahead where the US government and its allies and partners

have to make decisions should there be an intervention if not then not if so

how and this commission can help inform um at least based on the offun

experience what primary issues to think about

I as many many of um uh many of my fellow Commissioners have done the same

I have helped Barry friends um US soldiers Afghans

that I have served with and NATO NATO soldiers that I have served with that

have uh sacrificed their lives as mothers or

Fathers as Sons or daughters and this commission has much to to be thankful

for for those that served um let me just turn to to uh questions um I have uh uh

my first question is directed both at uh Ambassador Newman and to Dr km and the

this it picks up on the uh two of the items that were in Ambassador Newman's

testimony and I'm wondering um as we look at policy choices uh that were done I mean this

commission will look in part at decisions policy choices are all about choosing between options in many cases

suboptimal options um so there there three items I'm curious uh if you could spend a

little bit more time unpacking what were Alternatives um and I realize these are

these are very difficult questions to a to answer you mentioned one was length of Tours I'm curious from your

standpoint what reasonably speaking uh your thoughts are on Alternatives and I

think Ambassador Newman from you it's an important um question for you because you're not sitting here as a general

officer involved you're sitting here as an ambassador but with a very important perspective on that um and and an

outsider in that sense uh the second is sanctuary which you mentioned what were

Alternatives uh for dealing with a sanctuary um we had as you mentioned in your

testimony uh similar uh issues in the Vietnam context as well so what were

Alternatives in dealing with a sanctuary particularly in Pakistan and then third which you didn't mention but um I'm sort

of interested is is size of the footprint uh which um uh there were

various debates about whether the US footprint should be small which is the way it started or grow you did mention

the surge I was there in Afghanistan during The Surge um so on length

Sanctuary footprint and I'm interested in um Dr km to what degree those issues

have come up and you've heard in terms of voices of the what were other options

available so I'll start with investor Newman

wow at length of tour I think one needs to step back and say what is it you're

trying to achieve what you're trying to achieve is to build a learning

organization that begins to understand at least enough about the leaders and

the country so that policy is shaped by that knowledge there's a very interesting

book that I hope some of you will take a look at uh by Dr leis marage Howard at Georgetown about comparatively

successful un operations since she does a comparative study of those and one of

them that really stands out to me is the need to build a learning organization uh so then how do you

adjust that to reality well I would suggest that on the milit length you can't have everybody staying forever but

the senior commands need to have much more longevity I would suggest on the

military side that it would have made sense to plant a flag to move either a divisional or even a core headquarters

depending on the size of the your operation so that the you had a continuity of the headquarters you might

change you change commanders you will certainly change out units but you have a you have much greater continuity of

plan than the process we had where you had a new Division coming in every year

having spent half a year making its own campaign plan so but I would look at how

do you create within whatever is realistic a a learning organ

organization that both learns and that transmits knowledge um and we don't do

that very well I I also recognize we may we're getting close to time so you don't

have to answer all the questions here really quickly on S okay sanctuaries simply to put pressure on Pakistan

sufficient to have done something about the sanctuaries would probably have required us to be willing to move almost

to the edge of breaking relations and the collapse of the state Pakistan has a long long history of resisting Us San us

pressures doing just enough to get us off their back and then going back and

so we had tried pressure under mcast we never had an understanding of how hard

that was going to be the alternative was understand it's going to be like Sri Lanka it's going to be a 30-year

War uh and then footprint huge question and different at different times

a little larger footprint early on and a little more a lot more support for

institution building I think could have paid considerable dividends then you

have huge and then you get into huge issues of you know the footprints too large and it makes them makes things

horrible but the alternative is to lose the war um and I quit there thank you

we're at time I would like to recognize commissioner Chris Molino please

thanks very much uh I want to start by uh thanking the leadership of the VFW for hosting us uh on your warm reception

this morning I I can't think of a a more appropriate venue for this important inaugural event so thank you uh to

you in two and a half weeks too few Americans will remember the 13e anniversary of the deadliest incident

for American forces during the Afghan war August 6 2011 a US helicopter Colin

Extortion 17 was shot down by the Taliban resulting in the deaths of 30 US

service members 17 Navy Seals seven nightstalkers seven Afghan Commandos and

one Afghan interpreter the price of freedom is crushing and I'm grateful to contribute to the solemn goal of

learning from our 20-year war and ensuring that we do not repeat our past

mistakes three consecutive generations of Molinos have served in uniform totaling more than 159 months of combat

service two purple hearts my brother's still on active duty today continuing 118 years of active military

service in just two generations of my family the consequences of this commission's endeavor are deeply

personal for me not only as a Molino but as an American so my first question goes to Dr

Alon I'm grateful for your role with the 911 Commission and your familiarity with the recommendation to establish the dni

my question is about the intended role of the dni versus the current construct you know originally intended to C

calized intelligence efforts and to improve coordination across various Intel agencies the dni structure not

necessarily the person uh is is often cited as a duplication of efforts with existing agencies and risks political

influence uh the individual risks uh political influence which results in stove piping uh within the IC so do do

the Intel failures throughout the war in Afghanistan reveal structural issues uh underestimation of the Taliban

resistance misjudgment of the Afghan government stability inaccurate assessments of Afghan Security Forces

misinterpretation of the Taliban peace negotiations uh and inaccurate predictions of the taliban's advance are

all things that that kind of shape my um academic sort of struggle with what was

intended versus what we have uh today so over to

you I think you're asking something that is beyond my purview I am I am no expert on on on The

Afghan war and uh I won't pretend to be so I I I don't think I'm in a position

to authoritatively answer your question um and uh and I think this is part of

what you need to investigate um I can only say that um you know there

obviously as you say there's a difference between recommending something and then implementing it and then actually does it turn out to serve

the purpose that you intended it to do and um I guess I would say

that that that job is is one that needs to be done probably by Congress um the

dni was part of establishing the DNA was part of the intelligence Reform Bill and

I'm not sure if this is the case but I would hope that uh some monitoring of of that would be part of the legislation so

I I cannot speak to I'm afraid uh that the degree to which that implementation

has has been has has done what it was supposed to do and certainly with

respect to Afghanistan um but I think that that is a valid question to make

sure that recommendations of that kind actually do what they're supposed to

do no I I I appreciate the response um as I look at the original uh fun funding

and and numbers that went toward the dni uh and the growth that's occurred over the years and then again the the the

things that we point to and the criticism that we read about uh the intelligence Community throughout the

Afghan conflict I do agree that it's an important thing to unpack and and I'm grateful you know again for your uh your

your work in the in documenting the history of it your participation in the recommendation I'll I'll yield back to

the rest of my time thank you very much I'd like to recognize commissioner deali

mapa please thank you good afternoon everyone

thank you to the VFW to the co-chairs our staff and my fellow Commissioners

and especially to our Witnesses and everyone who is tuning in uh I made my

first trip to Afghanistan in 2004 as a graduate student and returned regularly

over the next 17 years my last visit was in the summer of 2021 just weeks before

the collapse of the Afghan Republic um having devoted my adult life to studying

this remarkable country in its people it was an enormous privilege to be asked by Senator Jack Reed to serve on this

commission um I a professor in my day job and I have taught many brilliant

Afghan students American veterans journalists aidw workers diplomats and

all of them gave and gained and lost much over the last two decades so I take

it as a sacred obligation to remember and reflect the lessons they have taught me here as importantly I believe this

commission owes the American people and the Afghan people an honest detailed and

legible account of a war that shaped our two Nations and many more in such

profound terms Afghanistan is an extraordinary country so full of paradoxes and

complexities and I hope to be occup occupied by many of those for years to

come as a scholar it has been the great gift of my life to be a student in and

of that place and I am so grateful to be able to translate that commitment into

our Collective effort to understand America's longest war and consider as

shamila said how we might learn to be and do better in the future um I would

like to ask a question to Mr nadie on Zoom NAD it's good to see you wish it was in

person um you point to a number of the remarkable changes that Afghans

experienced over the last two decades and your own career as an activist and an advocate and a senior official

reflect many of them I think you also importantly highlight the suffering of

many on account of the often brutal war on terror I wonder if you can reflect

for us today a bit more on the choices made by the Afghan Republic's leadership

that contributed to its ultimate collapse some of those choices were the

product of constraints imposed by the United States and its allies and our commission will grapple a great deal

with that but how do you think the commission should reflect on Afghan

political agency and decision making in our

review thank you very much deali for the very very important question

uh I'm very good to see you uh unfortunately not being in the room and does not gave that feeling of of uh uh

both uh the emotions and and the and the the warmth of the rest of the colleague

uh you're you're right um as Ambassador Newman said the

decisions and and whatever happened in Afghanistan did not happen in vacuum and it happened having Afghan leaders and an

political class there a significant role

most of the time as an afan I put a responsibility of things that have gone

wrong more to our own leaders rather than to our partners not because there

was not the role of partners that those things have happened the constraint that was oppos imposed by the partners that

things could not be worked out the way it worked but because it was it is the

country that they claim to be the leader of it it's it was our own country it is

our own country and our responsibility was much more greater to do it better

our leaders have been divided they have not

had a clear understanding of how the world around them is shaping itself most of

them the two presidents and most of the the rest of the political class

in 2020 was their thinking remain in 2021

to 2010 the threat from counter terrorism the threat of terrorism and the

counterterrorism objective as the key uh uh uh or or the center of US National

Security considered to continue remain to them into 2020 uh uh uh as as they

were looking into the issues while the world the threat have gone to a different ways the the issues of the the

big Power was missing from their perspective and they have exaggerated

the amount of importance of Afghanistan in the center of that Global uh uh uh uh

uh uh uh political uh uh competition and and Military uh uh strategies and taking

those the choices they have made were at most of the time less informed partially influenced by

lack of transparency in the partners who would come and discuss but not clearly say that this is one two three things

explicitly that we want to share with you and this is the way we are going that lack of transparency have kept them

to be hopeful that the United State continues to remain engaged in Afghanistan and therefore the democratic

government government in place will be the better choice a second issue certainly was their

inability to connect with the realities on ground because they lacked political

parties to inform them from bottom up that what is happening in reality on

ground our systems were failing to provide right and clearly informed and

factual information without censoring to the leaders so that they could

understand what was really really happening for example the choices that were made in the last year uh of of uh

uh uh the Republic for example in terms of military decisions the the changes in

the military chain of command the restructuring of military command bringing it under the National Security

advisor office and making inexperienced person as the Zar of the security was

absolutely a a a choice that affected the the consequences that affected what

what have happened and the end game the choices about the peace process that was

that was misinformed uh uh frontloading the problems on the issues of how the a

peace would play out itself was creating an an understanding among the afans and

international partners that it's an obstacle creation rather than cooperation miscommunicating or not

being able to to communicate choosing right ways of communicating with the public about the risks of uh a a rushed

peace process and what the afans need to do instead saying that I as one person is I'm going to deal with the issues and

I'm going to correct it have uh uh really affected the end result and on on

top of that and it's throughout the the process in 2008 the institutions of Elections commission that was not

properly uh uh safeguarded against the corruption and based on experience that were not

strengthened and hardened to create the kind of legitimacy that Afghanistan needed was also a wrong choice that

contributed to the end result I could go on and on for a long list of issues that we have made blunders in missing the

opportunities uh our leaders have have have have focused on short-term rather than than having the force cited for the

long term but let me add one point that was discussed that democracy uh is not

to be uh exported to a country Afghanistan and Afghans did not waited

for democracy to come for them there was struggles as you know deali and those who have studied there have been

movements and and afans who fought for and struggled for

and desired a representative form of government they don't like a leader for

lifetime to be in charge of them but the sequence of it the way it was put in

place before braking rule of law and it was forced to Showcase a democratic uh uh achievement by our partners have have

really ended up creating a situation of a failure to the students who ask that

exporting democracy is a wrong thing yes I would agree but supporting allies who

themselves want to promote democracy is a good thing and United States shall not abandon that part because of what have

happened in Afghanistan there are still people in Afghanistan that they did desire and they want to see a democratic

State uh be in place an election that's credible to choose their leader uh their

human rights to be to be preserved those are not important and I have seen it in the rule of Afghanistan I've I've been

all my life in the ruler Afghanistan and in the urban and I've heard it from people in different worlds but but but

certainly the same objective thank you very much Mr naad um I would like to Now to turn to my

co-chair uh for some uh final observations of this

panel so first uh to renew this thanks uh to the VFW for hosting us uh to my

Commissioners for joining this effort which is sobering in its importance uh

and scope um but I would also say this is very much the beginning of a series of

public engagements between the commission and uh expert Witnesses uh and various stakeholders from the

war um I I emerge from this first panel never more

convinced of the importance of our task of the Rarity with which the government

actually examines its own performance I I'm looking here at Dr alvan Who's one of the rare examples of a uh a veteran

of such introspection on the 911 Commission and I'm also more convinced

than ever that the imperative that that drives us here is learning that this is this transfer of insight however we may

glean it to to a future set of decision makers who will be in equally difficult

situations I've never been more proud uh to be a part of the commission

and its work and I certainly have never been more humbled by the magnitude of

the task its significance and its solemnity so thank you to the witnesses our guests the BFW my

Commissioners uh a job well done thank you Colin um I'd just like to

underscore two points one is that um all of the speakers today at one point or

another referred to Pakistan the Commissioners have brought it up and I I wanted to underscore that the Mandate as

written by Congress requests this commission to look at the role of

Pakistan in the war it requests this commission to um delve into the

Pakistani perspectives uh which you remind me of the the question that

Ambassador Crocker commissioner Crocker um asked about Pakistani oral histories

um it asks us to expand our focus and look at other Regional actors that were

involved too so um I greatly appreciate that the topic um emerged in our first

discussion because it will be part of the entire discussion and we commit to

having a fact-based and object jective assessment of uh of the role of Pakistan

in the war it's the reason why we are honored to have Ambassador Anne Patterson and Ambassador Robin Rael with

us today I asked them to join us because they've been um advisers and guides uh

for this commission uh for the past year in helping us understand the

connectivity between the United States Pakistan and Afghanistan our three countries have been intertwined for not

just one war two Wars and many other issues in between and we would be remiss

if we didn't analyze it properly so um that is one thing I really wanted to

emphasize to our audience the second is just um an appreciation to my fellow

Commissioners uh for your openness and your honesty of the emotional aspect of

this project um we all recognize that it's a solemn um set of issues and it's

a a solemn experience um and that there is um a tragedy associated with it but

we don't always talk directly about our emotions in the work of and the practice

of policy and that's what will make this project stand out from all of the others and I'm struck by Dr Kim's testimony

which connected the personal with the political and As Americans I feel that

we often analyze others this way but we never look at ourselves in connecting

the personal and the political and so I um encourage all of us to follow in Dr

Kim's example and think of our own stories as we work on this project it also reminds me of the need to pursue a

trauma informed approach to our interviews as we speak with Afghans and

also Americans that served um and that we treat this project with as much

empathy as possible possible so with with that um I would like to thank all of our Witnesses for our first panel we

will welcome you back anytime and look forward to continued engagement we will now take a two-minute pause while we

switch out our panels thank

you

we'd like we'd like to get started everyone please be

seated we will now begin our second panel the purpose of this panel is to

demonstrate the commission commitment to objective and rigorous inquiry into the

war's context and First Steps provided by senior figures who were present at

the time the discussion will speak to the origins of the terror threat that

culminated in the attacks on September 11th 2001 the sequence of events that

followed and the early decisions of the US war in Afghanistan we will now read the

biographies of our seven second set of distinguished guests and I recognize my distinguished co-chair for his introd

introduction of Dr Vickers thank you Shila um Dr Mike

Vickers is uh joining us here today as an expert witness uh his uh bio reads

like no other bio I've ever been exposed to he has had a career as a special

operator in the military a CIA operations officer a national security policy maker an intelligence community

leader uh just just to start uh his experiences span the last two decades of

the Cold War through a decade and a half of our war with Al-Qaeda its allies and its offshoots as the assistant secretary

of defense for Special Operations low intensity conflict uh and the under secretary of defense for intelligence uh

2007 to uh 2015 he conceived and led the largest expansion of Special Operations

forces in our nation's history and oversaw several other major capability Investments ranging from Next Generation

longrange strike to undive Warfare he was a key operational strategist for the campaign to dismantle

and defeat core Al-Qaeda and played a major role uh in policy and in planning

in the operation that killed Osama Ben Laden uh during the decade and a half that spanned the operational phase of

his career he served as Special Operations weapons and engineer Sergeant uh as the commander of a classified

counterterrorism unit and as a CIA operations officer as a CIA operations

officer he played key roles in the Invasion of Grenada the US government's operational response to the Beirut

bombings the CT effort to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan uh his contributions were

chronicled in in the film and New York Times bestseller Charlie Wilson's War and he has just published his own

remarkable book uh detailing um his own personal experiences across the span so

we could literally have no one better qualified uh to address the set of issues what preceded 911 the connection

between that and and what followed in the 20 years I yield back thank you

Colin I would like to also recognize Dr Noah Coburn who is joining us remotely

he is Provost and vice president for academics at The Evergreen State College

he is trained as a sociocultural anthropologist and focuses on political structures and violence in the middle

east and south Asia he has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan kyrgistan usbekistan

Nepal India and turkey his most recent book the last days of the afan Republic

a doomed evacuation 20 years in the making which is co-authored with arsalan

nuuri looks at how American policies led to the collapse of the Afghan government

in 2021 his 2011 book Bazar politics power

and pottery in an afan Market Town based on 18 months of research on how a single

Town worked together to maintain peace even while the Insurgency grew rapidly in neighboring districts it was the

first fulllength ethnography published on Afghanistan in over 20 years he's Alo

also the author of numerous additional works on Afghanistan Dr Vickers you are

recognized thank you uh co-chair charry and Jackson Commissioners thank you for

the opportunity to share my thoughts on the Afghanistan war I would like to make three points in my

opening statement most of what I'm about to say is drawn from my recently published Memoirs by all means available

so I refer you to it if you'd like additional context and details my first point is that it's important to remember

that large scale us involvement in Afghanistan began decades before the 911

attacks during the last decade of the Cold War we waged the largest and most

successful covert Action Program in American history to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and help bring an end

to the Cold War it was the only War the Red Army ever lost the Afghan people

suffered 1 million dead and saw one-third of the country's population displaced as a result of the Soviet

occupation but they continued to resist until they won there are significant lessons in the

US experience for how to achieve escalation dominance and Prevail in proxy war against a great power uh

adversary and unfortunately there are also lessons on how to lose the peace after you've

won the war after our decisive Victory we disengaged from the region a brutal

Civil War followed which led to the Takeover of most of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the use of Afghanistan's

territory as a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda prior to 911 we treated

Al-Qaeda as just another terrorist group and pursued a reactive counterterrorism strategy that did not not deny Sanctuary

to our enemy simply put Al-Qaeda was at war with us but we weren't at war with

them after the 911 attacks we shifted to a proactive counterterrorism strategy

that did deny Sanctuary to AQ and It ultimately led to the group's operational

defeat my second point is that the brilliant unconventional campaign that the US conducted during the fall of 2001

was only the initial campaign of what uh would turn out to be a very long War

across multiple theaters against Al-Qaeda its allies and offshoots a war

that began in Afghanistan would spread to four kinetic theaters Pakistan

Afghanistan Syria Iraq Yemen Somalia and North Africa and would include multiple

non-kinetic counterterrorism operations in several other theaters after al-qaeda's senior

leadership escaped to Pakistan at the the end of 2001 the counterterrorism

fight became largely operationally and geographically distinct from the

counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan from 2004 onwards Afghanistan became

primarily a platform for the counterterrorism fight in the Pakistan Afghanistan theater rather than a

Battleground in the war with Al-Qaeda through a series of policy and

capability innovations that I describe in my Memoirs our Conor terrorism strategy was transformed to reflect this

reality as a result we were able to deny Al-Qaeda and its Safe Haven providers

any Sanctuary dismantle core Al-Qaeda and prevent another 911 attack let me

now turn to our 19-year war with the Taliban and start with the obvious while we won our Wars with

Al-Qaeda and its offshoots we lost our war with the Taliban one reason was that

we couldn't solve the Pakistan Sanctuary problem problem we could largely deny Al-Qaeda any Sanctuary after the group

relocated in Pakistan but we couldn't deny the Taliban Sanctuary there

Pakistan's Army leadership mostly supported our efforts to disrupt dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda but it saw

the Taliban as a strategic instrument it could use to create a government favorable to its interests in

Afghanistan the pakistanis played a double game part open Ally part covert

enemy to be sure our counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan was not without

its faults we succumbed to Mission creep and strategic overreach in our nation

building efforts and did not remain focused on the reason we went into Afghanistan in the in the first place to

overthrow the Taliban regime defeat Al-Qaeda and prevent another 911 attack

we started way too late to build credible Afghan security forces and wasted substantial funds on building the

wrong Security Forces as as a result we transitioned security responsibility to the Afghan government much later than we

should have but the real reason we lost is that two American Presidents decided

that defeat was preferable to continued support for the Afghan government and indirect conflict with the Taliban this

was a protracted war in which we had an asymmetric advantage and escalation

dominance and were after 2015 suffering very few casualties the Paradox of our

war with the Taliban is that while we couldn't win in a short period of time with

150,000 us and Coalition troops we couldn't lose with a few thousand advisers as long as we provided support

for the Afghan government and used our air power and extremist to prevent the Taliban from massing and taking over the

cities we instead chose to defeat ourselves so in some the Afghanistan war

is full of lessons on effective and ineffective covert action

counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies the importance as commissioner Crocker mentioned of

strategic patience and persistence and the importance of standing by our allies

and partners I wish you all the best as you proceed with your work thank you Dr Vickers I would like

to now recognize Dr Coburn for his testimony please go ahead thank

you I want to start by thanking the commission for the invitation to be here today as well as their willingness to

take on this critical and really challenging piece of work I think it's important to remember those images of

the Taliban marching into Cabell in August 2021 while many were shocked at how

quickly the Afghan Army and government fell there was no great popular Uprising in support of the Taliban either the

Taliban did not win as much as the Afghan government with all its International backing became an empty

husk that crumbled away this was the result of a government in International community's failure to build legitimacy

the empowering of Afghan leaders who undermined the government and was until the latest stages I believe avoidable to

understand the trajectory I think it's important to return to those early days of the US presence in Afghanistan when

there was a great deal of polit of optimism both political and economic among policy makers and Afghans

themselves this was certainly the case when I first arrived in isth a small Market town about 45 minutes West to

bogram Airbase in 2005 the Taliban had leveled most of the town in 1997 and

over the almost two years I spent there people were Building Homes opening businesses and getting married the

international presence was welcomed and upcoming elections were viewed with some

curiosity attitudes towards the US changed dramatically in the decade that followed as Afghan commanders and other

politicians bought up gardens around the town the economy increasingly revolved around a small set of power Brokers ERS

who enriched themselves largely through contracts on b a base or through other International connections the town never

embraced the tban but there was more and more sympathy for anti-government groups and disillusionment with International

presence as I went on to work for the United States Institute of Peace the Afghan research and evaluation unit and

a series of other organizations I got the opportunity to travel across the country and observe how variations of

this pattern repeated itself almost everywhere certainly there were areas where the Taliban had deeper roots and

allies but the Taliban victory was not due to affinity for their ideology but the erosion of faith in the government

and the international communities ability to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans Ambassador Newman Pro previously

spoke to the multiplicity of US policies over the course of the 20-year War one of the issues with these policies was

their siloed nature cter terrorism and later counterinsurgency operations and

priorities were built without enough consultation with other us funded development governance and human rights

initiatives in many cases these projects actually undermined each other at the

same time Afghans did not perceive the distinction between coin development and government projects they were all part

of the same political economic shifts that were reshaping the country this was particularly true during The Surge year

when the amount of money being spent and the speed needed to spend it increased while the US government insisted it was

not nation building throughout the war many of its policies suggested otherwise the Afghan public this left Afghans

confused and politically uncertain this was highlighted to me by a voter in PTI

in 2009 who asked me who I thought he should vote for should he trust one of

the government bureaucrats who is attempting to build a state that might eventually bring some resources to the area or a commander who had stolen his

land but it would at least provide him with some protection from the Taliban later more and more Afghan communities

confronting civilian casualties by the international forces and the Afghan government's failure to provide

resources turned to anti-government groups who could at least provide them with some sort of stability fueling this process Afghan

communities watched coin funds taken by commanders that undermine both governance and human rights and

massively poorly and poorly designed and poorly overseen development projects

that enriched International contractors and Afghan Elites but did little to improve development indicators the

elections of 2009 were a Turning Point with a drastic increase in fraud and Corruption which would Mar all elections

in Afghanistan that followed the US backed settlement between ham carai and abdulah Abdullah that finally resolved

the election prevented violence in the short term But ultimately was seen by Afghans

as evidence that the US was not truly committed to democratic country practices in the

country frustration with the failure of the Afghan government to build legitimacy and local capacity resulted

in policy makers making the same mistakes again and again take for instance the conception of local

governance as envisioned in the 2004 Constitution through district and Village councils the government in a box

Approach at the height of the counterinsurgency and most recently the world bank backed citizens Charter

program on a policy level these programs looked very different were led by different organizations but locally each

envisioned new centrally imposed local governance structures that would theoretically build legitimacy

instead each of these proved not just impossible to implement but when they were partially implemented created

government interference not desired by many Afghans while providing resources that were monopolized by commanders and

other power Brokers indirectly fueling anti-government groups related to the siloing of these

policies I hope the commission also takes time to review the size and scope of Contracting that went on during the

Afghan war the shortcoming of contractors were

most visible on the military side where contractors managed everything from police training to fuel delivery but

development governments and human rights projects were all largely contracted out as well meaning the government had

little direct control over how money was spent and profit was prioritized over ensuring that the outcomes actually help

us and Afghan government efforts in many efforts any instances it would have been

far more effective to spend less money well than the waste and Distortion of the Afghan economy that create

Contracting created for Afghan from Afghan doctors who left hospitals to work as translators to a real estate

boom on Stolen land near the US Embassy and traffic jams caused by Armored Cars

Contracting money did not create sustainable economic growth as much as it created an economic

free-for-all does not seem coincidental to me that the US's longest war to date is also the war that relied the most on

Contracting some reflecting back on The Afghan war have suggested that we didn't know

and that for some reason US government could never really understand Afghan politics or culture I would strongly

resist this urge counter evidence is well represented on this commission

Andrew Wilder's report on the relationship between Aid and security anango Paul's reporting on US military

operations empowered anti-government actors and deali mukad paya's work on

the provincial Governors were alltimely well-informed critiques of US policy which were widely read but ly

incorporated into policy decisions I believe it's worth the commission's time to ask how did so many people know there

were structural failing with the US government's approach but why was it so unable to change course at inflection

point after inflection point earlier lessons were not learned opportunities were missed and a self-defeating cycle

of overly ambitious overly funded overly militarized approaches continued ultimately it was the US military

personnel Frontline civilians and ordinary Afghans Who Bore the burden of these shortcomings and I appreciate the

commission's careful inquiry into these areas thank you thank you Dr Coburn I would like to

recognize commissioner hardig to begin questions thanks so much appreciate it

thank you so much for to both of these witnesses as well Dr Coburn Dr Vickers um incredible work incredibly um

informative for our efforts um Dr Vickers is a former boss and mentor of mine so it's a particular honor to get

to question him today um I your your book laid out in really

compelling detail uh the wins of our counterterrorism campaign what might arguably be the closest thing that we

can point to as success in our 20-year War I wonder if you think about um that

campaign and what our CT landscape might look like going forward what do you think are the couple of biggest lessons

and takeaways for policy makers so one is when you're

facing a a group like Al-Qaeda that has

Global reach and Global geopolitical Ambitions you have to treat it differently from other terrorist groups

uh you know and so the prism that we looked at terrorism through through before 911 was really one of episodic

security incidents to which a reactive counterterrorism policy uh was appropriate and we had capabilities for

that effect um that's not appropriate uh in the case of a

a protracted counterterrorism War where your Homeland is at risk uh because of

globalization and and other things so you have to take a lot of different measures expand the aperture of what you

do across your government and and security landscape to to deal with that

um and turning operationally then um the

important thing is denying Sanctuary every time in the last 20 years when we've given these groups Sanctuary the

threat to the United States has gone way up so before 911 and then the period

when Al-Qaeda relocated into the Afghanistan Pakistan border region the

federally administered tribal areas the the threat you know we had the transatlantic airliner plot in 2006

attempt to blow up 10 airliners over the Atlantic um and then um as Al-Qaeda grew

in Yemen um for a period of time and then uh al-Qaeda in Syria and so in each

case when we gave these groups a couple couple years uh to plot and train the threat went way up and and so so one

there's the need to deny Sanctuary certainly if you can um and then to have

a protracted campaign that deals with that and then there's defensive measures too so hardening our defenses you know

we we had strategic warning that uh the aviation sector was a likely Target uh

that symbols of us power uh the US capital Wall Street and the Pentagon could be attacked but not itical warning

but in the face of that you you know you can't defend everywhere all the time but you can Harden your defenses uh both by

expanding the FBI which we did after 911 and by you know hard uh hardening uh

cockpit doors and other other things that that made a made a big difference as well as screening and watch list and

others so combination of offense defense Deni sanctuary and recognizing the

nature of your adversary and then staying focused on what's achievable Ambassador Newman talked aled about this

earlier but our Vital interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan really came

down to two U one of them was to prevent another 911 attack and the other was not

to have Pakistan's nuclear weapons get loose and in the hands of some really bad actor uh terrorist group or others

um and so that um focus on U you know

realistic and achievable objective is important because this kind of

uh War and the series of campaigns that's necessary could go on for for decades you know as Insurgent you know

if you look at this as a global Insurgency or at least a multi- theater Insurgency rather than Insurgency in one

country they last a long time just one one quick follow-up question um you also

talked in your book quite a bit about just the incredible efforts that our operators and our policy makers went to

uh to prevent civilian casualties and indeed this was something that you and I worked on together I'm a really important uh effort and yet so much of

the public narrative about RCT campaign does focus on things like civilian casualties you know some of the the

partners that we worked with that were less than adhering to our same standards um you know unjust detentions things

like that I wonder how you think about um those downsides in terms of what you

did as a policy maker to try to mitigate them and in some cases just mitigate the

perception of them because I think we know that they're not always entirely true as well yeah so it's a twofold problem as

you say one to try to limit them to the greatest extent possible and then to deal with the perceptions that often

don't match um reality so you know the standards um for operations where

Al-Qaeda largely went after 911 into areas where we didn't have active us armed hostilities outside of Afghanistan

and Iraq so Pakistan border region Yemen elsewhere um the standards for uh

kinetic strength what were near certainty near certainty that the target was who you thought it was and near

certainty that there was Zero collateral damage now that doesn't mean Perfection you know you you may

miss a hostage could be hidden That You Don't See but in your planning your

operations you have to make sure that if a child suddenly darted in at the last minute you could do what we call shift

Cold Move the weapon to a safe spot so that you're you're you know you're minimizing to the largest extent

possible possible um now in war zones U those standards are a little lower

because there's just a lot more combat going on and it's reasonable certainty and so the combination of using air

power and then um raids um you know did

lead to more civilian casualties than we would like even with Precision strike

forces you know doing the raids what helped there um and it took us about a decade to do this was one using more

partner forces uh to do it but and we should have done that sooner but also doing callouts you know in a lot of

cases and and that meant we could achieve our objective without you know kinetic action and so again it doesn't

reduce it to zero but it but it helps a lot and then the trouble you know with

reporting is that there it's all over the place you know the US government has its statistics which generally are

pretty darn accurate uh but other groups had some that were very very different

and and uh you know it depends who you talk to and and others again I'm confident in the US government

statistics not to be perfect but to be quite accurate but uh uh you know others

had different perceptions and that shapes The

Narrative thank you very much Dr Vickers um I will take the opportunity to ask

you a question um what one thing I very much appreciate about your testimony and

your book the work that you've done is that you are rooting the war of the past 20 years in

a deeply historical context that goes back to the Cold War it's not a narrative that um is part of the

American popular Consciousness when we think of the war in Afghanistan so I think that's uh very important it's a

good model for us as we do our work that um we must consider kind of the past is

prologue Dynamic and so my question is a little bit about that um given that that we

disengaged uh at the end of the Cold War from Afghanistan from Pakistan after

what was tactically a very successful engagement um how are we equipped to

respond uh to the need when 911 happened did we have the can you talk a little

bit about the relationship that the United States had the insights into both

Afghanistan and Pakistan not just in terms of CT capabilities but also diplomatically

because I think that diplomatic reinforces the ability of CT so they're

connected I would love to hear you elaborate on that please sure so um you

know after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan uh you know 1989 was this

miraculous year where you had to follow the Berlin wall and liberation of Eastern Europe and US attention you know

turned toward Europe to consolidate the reunification ation of Germany and and other things um and then we had

legislative uh impairments a thing called the Pressler amendment in Afghanistan that once a president

couldn't President George H W bush in this case couldn't certify that Pakistan wasn't past the point of no return on

its nuclear weapons we had to cut off Aid to Pakistan uh and that led while we

didn't disengage completely from Pakistan it led to what the pakistanis called a trust deficit for 12 years up

to 911 we really had a minimal uh relationship and you know

we our interests weren't always aligned or the Tactical operational level in the

1980s but they were much closer against Pakistan and the United States uh with

the covert war in Afghanistan than they ever were after 911 you know we tried to

replicate that with all sort you know we tried love we tried some threats and other things we could never make it

really work in in the same way um and then with Afghanistan you know was more

of a disengagement we you know we could maintain some intelligence and uh you

know and some um diplomatic actions but essentially we were more building from

scratch in the years right before 911 uh when we sent people in to estab

reestablish contact with some of our former commanders and then um um right

after and so we were building from a very low base to you know develop knowledge that we had essentially lost

over over a decade thank you I'd like to turn to

co-chair Jackson thank you scha um I guess one of my questions which is

you have a a hook in your testimony Dr bickers on uh this term escalation

dominance I wish uh sort of first you could explain what that means to a non-sp specialist audience I think it's

a compelling part of your argument the second is a larger question which is related to the sort of work the 911

Commission did which is making an Arcane set of topics legible to um a non-sp

specialist audience so you say that the war against Al-Qaeda starts in Afghanistan and then spreads to these

four separate theaters can you walk us through just in generalities why that spread occurred how the center of

gravity the problem shifted over time um sure so um first you know the

idea of escalation dominance is something that comes from the new nuclear strategy literature thankfully

no one was ever able to achieve it even though both sides tried in the Cold War a lot um but I tried to apply it um in

my Memoir to you know why we could win in Afghanistan against extremely

difficult odds in the 1980s and Los in Syria you know what was the different difference about the conduct of the

campaigns that let you win in one case and lose in another or why were we effective in some of our counterterror

is campaigns Pakistan and it took longer in Yemen or other places to do it with

the you know the same government the same tools and it's it's where you can get an advantage over your adversary

that can bring about their defeat and they can't respond now that doesn't mean you know that it its escalation

dominance at a certain level of the conflict you know with the Soviets for instance they had options to invade

Pakistan or use nuclear weapons or others but they were generally deterred from doing that and so at the level of

their occupation of Afghanistan and our support for the Afghan resistance by a

series of actions where we you know essentially increased our commitment to Afghanistan by a factor of 12 in in 12

months um we and gorbachov did a surge at the time we won that battle of the

surges and so that's how I use the concept and then to talk about the metastization of

al-Qaeda um up until um 911 and and a little bit after that Al-Qaeda was a

single organization with operatives around the world but but one organization that you know was command

and controlled out of its sanctuary in Afghanistan and then beginning with the US invasion of Iraq uh a local group

became al-Qaeda in Iraq its first affiliate um a uh al-Qaeda in Yemen was

established in 2006 you know and part of this is conditions in the Islamic world that led to the growth of these groups

groups and connections you know among them and Communications um and then uh in 2009

al-Qaeda in Yemen and Al al-Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia merged and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula a a

salafist group in in North Africa became al-Qaeda in the Islamic mreb uh after

2006 or seven uh El shabab and Somalia declared allegiance to al-Qaeda in

2012 um al-Qaeda in Syria was established um under various names

with the beginning of the Syrian Civil War uh and then uh the only and then

al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent was established by Iman Al zahari the Amir

of uh al-Qaeda in 2014 and so taking advantage essentially of conditions in

these various areas and sending emissaries um was how they expanded but

you know it's one of al-qaeda's success in the Islamic State as well uh in being

able to spread their reach after 911 so uh one quick followup so how how should

we think post metastasizing about the significance of Afghanistan distinct from these new theaters because I think

that's one of the questions for an educated lay audience that is elusive yeah so um cor

alqaeda um remained in the uh Afghanistan Pakistan border region a few

leaders a led to Iran some are still there uh after 9/11 um uh but most went

to to Pakistan and so that be that remained the most dangerous threat up

until 2012 2013 between 2008 and 2012 under a new

counterterrorism strategy we really decimated core Al-Qaeda and then the uh

greatest threat to the American Homeland uh became Al-Qaeda and Yemen for a few years and then Al-Qaeda and Syria and

you know we took actions against against them as well but um um the Afghan

Pakistan Afghanistan theater um remained you know and that's where the senior leaders were um so it it remained the

the principle theater uh strategically if not

operationally thank you very much Dr Vickers I'd like to now recognize commissioner Bob Taft who is joining us

remotely for his time thank you thank you very much I am

very honored to serve as a member of this commission as a appointee of Ohio

Congressman Mike Turner I was serving as governor of Ohio uh on September 11

2001 and almost overnight uh our agenda turned over to the topic of Homeland

Security over a 20-year period thousands of Ohioans served in Afghanistan tragically too many losing

their lives or sustaining life-changing injuries so from that standpoint all

Ohioans and of course all Americans as well really deserve a credible independent assessment of US policy in

Afghanistan and that's what I believe that this commission will be able to provide of course our work and our

recommendations will be even more important uh to protect uh the future National Security of our country uh so I

really uh appreciate the honor to be able to serve I want to thank both of

our very distinguished Witnesses I do have one question for Dr Coburn uh and

Dr Coburn you suggest that the failure to build legitimacy of Afghanistan government

institutions was a serious a failure and that it was avoidable so my question

would be from looking at the conflict from the early stages of us involvement

what could have been done differently to build greater a greater level of government legitimacy uh at both the

local and at the national levels thank you and I I think that's a

really important question and I would say

that the ultimate legitimacy of the Afghan government lay in the hands of the Afghan Elite that created the

government that being said I think US policy did a lot to undermine and shall

we say distort uh priorities for Afghan leaders listening to Dr Vickers I think

one of the the strong contrasts between the muja Aden period when they're fighting against the Soviets was the

leaders during that period that we were supplying weapons to wanted to win they wanted the same outcome that we did

increasingly over the course of 20 years in Afghanistan a a lot of the leaders were profiting from the war and didn't

necessarily want the war to end and certainly didn't want um the US uh money

coming in to slow down so and I look at this primarily on a a local level but I

think this works for National level Elites as well so just to give you one um small area where the US did spend

some money particularly counterinsurgency funds looking at how local leaders do dispute resolution um

dispute resolution is really important in areas without a strong government process so what you do is you bring it

to a leader who has a certain reputation he um uh resolves the issue because the

community respects that leader they enforce the resolution um and his reputation grows so he is incentivized

to make sure that this dispute remains resolved so there sort of a circle process where the the community supports

the leader the leader grows the supports leader he grows the alternative though

is if that leader has an alternative source of power like international funds

or International weapons all of a sudden that leader is no longer responsive to the people that he is living amongst so

what we saw was we saw many Afghan leaders who I think would have been more

um listening to their constituencies and ordinary Afghans in their communities um

who ultimately turned away from them um and let me just tie this to a couple of issues that were brought uh forward

earlier um but one of the issues in US policy here was the total lack of uh the

total ambiguity around a time frame how long was the US going to be in Afghanistan when were we gonna leave

because if you are an Afghan leader particularly one of these former muad deine leaders if you think that um the

afan the US is truly going to be there for the next 30 Years supporting a democratic process you're going to

invest in that and try to become a part of it if you think they might leave tomorrow you're more incentivized to

grab as many resources as you can in the short term and because it was always ambiguous leaders again and again were

incentivized to grab the cash and just take what they could today because who knows what would be there tomorrow why

should I be invested in in a structure that I'm not con as convinced will be

there thank you Dr Coburn commissioner Taft uh you have a

couple of extra minutes would you like to use your time or yield it please I I'll save my time thank

you I'd like to recognize commissioner Jeremy bash who is joining us

remotely thank you to the co-chairs and to fellow Commissioners and today I want to offer some comments and questions on

behalf of myself as well as my co-commissioner Michael Allen whose travel to this hearing got up bended by

the flight cancellations overnight um but together we both agree that the work here must be rigorously bipartisan and

nonpartisan and to date it has been uh I visited Afghanistan many times between

2005 and 2013 during my service on the staff of the house intelligence committee at CIA and at DOD and I was

part of the leadership team at CIA that oversaw the operations against alqaeda senior leaders including the operation

against Osama Bin Laden and I want to thank ranking member Adam Smith uh from the Hask for appointing me to

serve on this commission but I think most consequentially for me and personally for me I sat at the right elbow of a CIA

director and a secretary of defense as he signed the deployment orders sending our men and women into Harm's Way to

Afghanistan and I stood with him at do and at Arlington Cemetery to welcome home our fallen heroes including the

special operators referenced earlier by commissioner Molino and I want to pay particular tribute to the civilians

including to the CIA officers the seven CIA officers who died on December 30th

2009 in host Afghanistan at Chapman base to Jennifer to Liz to Darren to Harold

to Scott to danne and to Jeremy and to their families we can never repay the

dead of gratitude we owe you and I want to just uh pose this thought and

question to my longtime friend and colleague Dr Vickers because I think you really kind of put your finger right on

the essence of the hard problem here at the the heart of the commission's work is a very difficult question how does

the United States use its instruments of National Power to deny Safe Haven to

terrorists that threaten the United States and our interests and our citizens and our allies without having

to physically occupy that territory and without having to fund train and equip

and secure a government that may itself be threatened by violence how do we help a government

crack down on violence while at the same time expand that government's popular

support from its citizenry so that we can leave and can you conduct effective counter counterterrorism operations from

Over the Horizon platforms without physical occupation of territory that I think is one of the questions at the

very heart of this commission's inquiry and I want to ask Dr Vickers just to reflect on that U what is the

distinction between being physically present on the ground and being able to do things from a distance from standoff

from Over the Horizon with that I'll ask the question and then go back on you thank

you um hi Jeremy so um one there's the tension between um

you know small footprint and large footprint operations and you know what's

important for strategists to remember is there's a political context to this you

know the more U you raise the stakes you you know you have a large footprint approach um the

more you ex the American people and political leaders are going to expect results in the near term and so if you

think you're going to have to sustain this over a long time you have to have a sustainable strategy and and part of

that is you know focusing on our objectives as I said and then being

engaged with the government through Aid and others but not you know as um uh my

colleague mentioned about you know the dangers that come with large flows of money over period of times and the

disincentives um um that that come with that um you know since terrorism has

become a global problem building a Global counterterrorism Network is an important instrument of ours of shared

instrum instruments to disrupt a lot of these plots before they get kinetic you know and then to to to capture them and

that that mainly involves us with intelligence sharing and working with a local security partner and then in areas

where you do have these sanctuaries assuming we have the capacity to do very

precise uh surveillance and then strike if necessary uh to have that capability

and and being um willing to use it in sufficient sufficient scale to your

question about uh well so then democracy I agree is a multigenerational project I

think one of the mistakes we made after 911 is thinking that we had to transform the Middle East to achieve our

counterterrorism objectives and you know one it wasn't achievable and two it wasn't necessary and uh you know

democracy is a good thing but it's not something you're going to implement in a in a in a fairly short period of time

that will stand the test of scrutiny regarding Over the Horizon operations um you know in the latter

years of the Obama Administration as as you may remember we developed capabilities in the event that we would

need them uh to do the Over the Horizon but over time they degrade you know it's

always better to be closer in it's always better to have a host country partner uh you know and we lost all that

in Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power you know we lost all the Afghan forces that we trained that we could use

um uh to help achieve our objectives as well as their objectives and are now relying on um you know the ability to

strike remotely and intelligence that will degrade over time and intelligence as you know is something you also gain a

lot from your host country partner and uh as well as what you contribute yourself so you know it's a gap filler

in the near term it's it's not the ideal situation thank you I yeld

back thank you I'd like to now recognize commissioner Ashley so first let me go back and say I

was remiss in not thanking the VFW not only for hosting us but really for what you do for all our veterans and also to

acknowledge uh Senator Warner's leadership and the Senate oversight committee and for the appointment and the opportunity to be part of this

commission so for Dr Victor thanks for being with us um know as well too thanks

uh for our Witnesses my question is for Dr Victors but first a little bit of testimonial uh several months ago I

asked him to talk to some of the young captains out of Fort wuka and I know he's a busy guy and he did a couple of sessions so um you know passing that on

paying a for your leadership and experience fascinating book as Colin talked about not only your story from

your time as a as a greenb but uh really a firsthand view of what you saw over

several decades and then Rel a story which you may or may not remember um but I

remember it vividly when you came to see me I think I had been the isaf J2 for about two weeks and you came in and I

had all these slides and I was going to lay all the ISR and everything we were doing and you asked me a really hard

question are we winning and so it made me think about what we've talked about

today which is the fundamental things that we need to understand and the questions that we have to ask as we go

into these conflicts you probably remember because it was a very unsatisfying answer which

I still remember that experience but let me move on to my question

today um you don't have to you don't have to nod or acknowledge that

um best CIA face on here and there we go so the answer was it was a very unsatisfying answer

when you think about your time as the under secretary for Intel and we look at the intelligence reform the terrorist prevention act the

D the 911 Commission we came out with a with the dni as as you look at what you wanted to

achieve as a senior intelligence you know as the under secretary with the defense department what are your

takeaways in the war in Afghanistan of what we did well what and and is there

any structural changes that we should be thinking about going forward

um so in terms of uh Afghanistan uh and the the 20-year uh

engagement there I think you know what we what we did well was um prevent

another 911 attack from emanating from the Pakistan Afghanistan border region

um and um you know what we what we did

terribly was you know lots of things along the way but at the end the the biggest sin was um abandoning the Afghan

government as our previous panel talked about excluding them from U the talks uh

but then also thinking you know like like I'll be very blunt you know the

idea that handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban which uh reportedly our top leaders were

warned about um doesn't sound like a great idea to me even 20 years after

after 911 and uh and particularly when you can maintain a government there at

at fairly minimal whatever we had done in the past by 2020 where you know we

had only um a few thousand troops there and an embassy presence and we could have sustained that and um so I think

that was the you know the thing that we we did and you know lots of things along the way I try to explain in my book but

that's the big one um in terms of structural reforms you know a lot of the US government right now is focused on

great power competition in China and Russia and the economic and and particularly technological competition

and you know how if if you imagine yourself like this is 1947 again how do

I fashion the US government to deal with this new challenge that we have of a of a new Cold War I think you know on the

counterterrorism side the big danger is that we go back to pre- 911 both in

policy and in cutting back the capabilities too much you know some of

our uh if you look at a lot of things that led up to 911 and the big one is

not denying sanctuary and understanding this group well enough but we also had

capability capacity uh policy and legal shortfalls

that contributed to that you know we um um we didn't have uh enough Special

Operations forces for the wars we found ourselves in Iraq Afghanistan istan and then the global fight against Al-Qaeda

so we had to expand that and that took us a decade after 911 we hardly had you know we had uh experimental Predator

aircraft uh that weren't armed uh you know we got to look at Osama Bin Laden in 2000 September end of September 2000

and couldn't shoot him uh and so we Rec we remedied that afterwards but then it

took a decade plus to build up a sufficient Fleet um the FBI was transformed after 911 and that took time

you know policy changes in CT um the legal domestic intelligence divide so

lots of those had to be addressed and I think successfully were and the challenges ma maintaining it you know

the I used to get really frustrated in Department of Defense strategic reviews when someone would say you know some

some Eager Beaver on the joint staff would say all right what is it is it going to be China or Al-Qaeda and I said

why would I choose that you know I mean you I've got they're both threats to the United States so you know it's like

nuclear weapons and conventional forces no I kind of need both you know so um saw any of

that thank you I'd like to recognize commissioner

Crocker uh thank you uh Dr Vickers you spoke of the

importance of History a point that was emphasized by the previous panel I think very

effectively um the the rid of this commission extends for 20 years that is

a it's an entire generation uh we had service members who

fought in Afghanistan who had no living memory of 911 but as vast as that time

is uh history didn't begin in 2001 and it didn't end in

2021 uh you referred so an appreciation of history as you've emphasized I think is very important uh you mentioned uh

the Cold War era the fight against the Soviets the Pakistani role and you mentioned the Pressler

Amendment um I seem to recollect that the Pressler Amendment became law in 1985 is that correct it did but it uh I

it it wasn't um uh implemented until 1990 meaning you know the president each

year the president had to certify because of the law and we were very aware of this at CIA at the time um

without going into details but uh um 1990 is when it got triggered right and uh just help me with

my Recollections here I haven't looked at this in quite some time in the period between 1985 and 1990 during the active

phase of the anti-soviet Jihad in which Pakistan was a critical Ally I I think I

recall that um the administration got a waiver to the provision of the Pressler

Amendment so that it did not go into effect during the war itself uh that may be true I don't I

don't recall that I mean I I you know the the the key dates um for me was you

know monitoring the program and when you wouldn't be able to get a waiver I I just don't recall that and then 1990

when it was triggered right and in 1990 of course it went into effect after the anti-soviet Jihad was over and one and

in which as the Pakistani narrative goes the United States no longer needed them as a critical Ally so again as the

Pakistani narrative goes they went from the most Allied of allies to the most sanctioned of adversaries literally

overnight uh and again I think it is critical to bear that in mind as the Pakistani version of History goes that

from 85 up until 1990 the presser amendment was held in abeyance because of their critical role and I would just

ask if you see any dots to connect in your testimony between uh the um the close Pakistani Alliance

in the Cold War era and the way it ended with the sanctions imposed by the

presser Amendment to the later part of your testimony in which you note that

uh Pakistan saw the Taliban as a strategic instrument it could use to create a government favorable to his

interest in Afghanistan the pakistanis played a double game part open Ally part covert enemy so do you see any

connections between the Pakistani version of the history of the Pressler Amendment and the way it ended the

alliance and their decisions Vis the Taliban thank you yeah it's a fantastic

question and you're really making me um think and reach back into cobs of history but

um you know I I do in a sense that a big lesson you know besides

the um lack of reliability uh the Pakistani a big

lesson the pakistanis took from the end of the Cold War when they were a Frontline State Ally that could be

invaded by the Soviets uh and they worried about it and we worried about it you know the big lesson they took is

that the US was ephemeral that it would be there for a while and when it didn't see its interest anymore it would you

know tone it down and go back and that carried forward uh after 9/11 that same

mindset about how much they would cooperate with us um and were sympathetic to their new problems which

you know then became um more India uh again and so they looked at a

lot of Afghanistan through the lens of India every time India opened a consulate somewhere had Aid you know

they they didn't like it and they wanted the Afghan government to get rid of it um

um but also so um in thinking that we would leave the comment was made earlier

I think by uh commissioner hardig about um uh or no actually Dr curn I think

made the point about you know are do you think you're leaving soon or staying for the long term pakistanis thought we were

on the way out in 2003 when we uh went to Iraq and not surprisingly that's when

they kind of uh took the muzzle off the Taliban a little bit you know they had they had given him Sanctuary after 911

the hanis had started acting up in 2002 a bit but really 2003 is when they

really started unleashing and supporting the Taliban because they thought we were leaving and they wanted a government

favorable to their interest and they were able to get away with this despite large us a and other things during that

decade but I think you're right in terms of the Strategic mindset of these guys

aren't staying here and so we have to protect our interests even if it means opposing their interest from time you

know from time to time uh and that's what made him such a peculiar Ally for us you know that on the one hand we

needed him for counterterrorism and we wanted a stable government so we didn't have loose nukes uh but they were

sponsoring people who were killing Americans and we have no other Ally like that in the world that does both of

those things at the same time so uh thank you again the U the lessons

of History uh I I just have a bit of time left I would like to put a question

to Dr Coburn Dr Coburn uh in your testimony you note the um uh the size

and scope of Contracting during uh the U Afghanistan War I particularly focused

on the civilian side uh the role of usaid it is said that um during um the

Vietnam war that usaid had more uh officers in the cords program than they

had globally at the time of Afghanistan um I you you talk a bit

about the problem of corruption and Contracting but I'm wondering if you could just drill down briefly on the uh

uh the developmental cost that you see in uh handling our uh development

portfolio through contractors Vice through usaid directly thanks for that question and I

I think you're hitting on a key point and I think sometimes the examples we look at are the most spectacular ones

where we see this corruption that happens I would argue that there's actually even deeper structural flaws I

I just to give you an example from uh something I've been thinking about recently I've working at a college and

we're overseeing a overhaul of say something like our student registration

process there's two ways to do this I can go to the office that does

registration and ask them how they might do this and they'll say well this is going to be difficult we do this we do

that I could also go online and quickly find a dozen different contractors who

tell me that I definitely need to do this they'll do it quickly they'll do it perfectly um all for a price so I think

what one of the issues that we've heard constantly is that there were real

challenges um getting information back to Washington and on the usaid side I

think one of the issues was usaid with its Contracting model models was Contracting out to development groups

that would say oh we can do that this is great just do this everyone will be happy and weren't getting those reports

back that really described the actual situation on the ground and some of this

wasn't malicious it's just the way the Contracting process is set up in some ways but it was just one further uh

Distortion and a um there was not enough acknowledgement that contractors simply

don't have the same incent inve to do as good a job that is connected to the actual strategies of the overall

government um policy than um if you were to do it effectively inhouse um and I

think that's most glaring on the usaid side but I've I've heard similar points made on on Military side as

well thank you madam chairwoman thank you I'd like to recognize commissioner

feta great uh thank you uh I'm GNA stay with Dr Coburn and pardon me if I don't look at the screen because all these

cameras confuse me so I'm going to look somewhere over here so uh Dr cobber and I found your

written and verbal comments uh interesting and thought-provoking and I think uh the question just posed by

commissioner Crocker um is a is a good lead for what I want to talk about

um in your comments you talk about uh

contractors uh perhaps uh not being as efficient or as motivated um as uh the

our uniform forces and those that wear a US Government badge um you also comment

that there was a the Afghanistan war and you could argue Iraq 2 had the most

amount of contractors ever um you reference World War II and you reference

Vietnam the reality is is following the first Gulf War and then with the Clinton

draw down we downsized and we decided we were going to Outsource that kind of

capability so as secretary Rumsfeld would say you go to the uh war with the

military you have not the one you wish you had right um and so I think that

becomes an important factor as to why so many contractors were deployed and I'm sure uh secretary Vickers and others

will and dror Jones will support the comment that when you

had the simultaneous Wars of r back in Afghanistan you needed as many uh uniformed trigger puller uh folks as

possible and so the Contracting Community plays a very important role um so I I wanted to put that out second I

do believe uh based on your written testimony that there's a d uh dangerous inference you make uh when you say it

does not seem coincidental to me that the US's longest war to date is also the

one that had the most Contracting I just think

that is a dangerous infer inference in that it almost sounds like the war was

dragged out for war profiteering and so I perhaps you can respond to that and then third I think as this commission

today and as us as Commissioners have acknowledged um the Contracting

Community also lost lives many former military many former

uh fsos Aid and development Community workers teachers and others decid to go

down range to use that term in order to help in order to make a difference in order to train in order to provide security uh they lost their lives like

many of us know some of those folks and so it wasn't for profit uh was it was

there was there bad profits made I am sure but I'm sure that exists in every Walk of Life and my point here is I

think that those that went it isn't a zero some whether it was good or bad people lost their lives trying to do the right thing and so I just ask that um uh

you bear that into mind uh into your commentary uh and for uh secretary Vickers uh thanks it's good to see you

again it's been a while appreciate all you did I'd just be curious um as we were talking about resourcing others how

and then your comments about we lost sort of the narrative uh we had strategic overreach how much did the

simultaneity of Iraq and Afghanistan play into this thank

you so let's go to Dr Vickers first and then we'll go to uh Dr Dr Coburn please

uh so just briefly um um you know the as I say the the

simultaneity of Iraq and Afghanistan caused us to have to expand um the Army

and Marine Corps significantly in 2006 uh to meet the demands of rotational

forces uh to as you know as Afghanistan was starting to grow and Iraq was very big from the beginning um and uh but

it's other effects subtler effects were important the effect on the pakistanis that we were leaving that theater um um

and um and then also the difficulty that we had in Iraq you know caused a period

of time that um uh Afghanistan looked like the good war in US politics and

Iraq the bad war and then that flipped over time and you know the thing you have to be careful about I think as a

policy maker national security policy maker is you know as I said is that um

when you set really ambitious objectives uh uh you better be sure I think

Ambassador Newman talked about that you know you better test them that you know you can actually achieve this thing

because otherwise it's going to politically sour on you at some point and you know if you think you're going to have to sustain something for decades

you're better off with a a smaller approach you know and that's you know for instance that's what we did you know

I hate this term Forever War I think it's corrupted us politics and in 20 20

Afghan from 2015 on Afghanistan had largely been handed over to the Afghan

government for security responsibility you know we helped the Colombians for

half a century against uh Insurgent groups in Colombia never had direct US forces involved but assistants and

advisors and it largely worked so I you know the the the simultaneity took us

you know constrained resources on Afghanistan for quite a while there's no question of that but uh there were many

other effects as well and and the big problem was just the concept that underlied it which is you have to

transform the Middle East into into a bunch of democracies to eliminate the terrorism problem which is just a bad

strategic assumption thank you Dr Coburn please go ahead yeah just

briefly um I I I want to make clear that I think in my written statement I was referring to Contracting not contractors

um I think the companies and individuals here who I think oftentimes worked in

good faith and had many of the same goals as the US government were responding to um policies by the

government and incentives but I think the role of contractors and how

decisions were made should be explored for example during The Surge there was

the rapid setup of Ford operating bases and other output posts all over

Afghanistan stood up very very quickly the question of how to supply these

bases was not taken into consider was taken into consideration through contractors the military said we don't

have the capacity to supply them so but there are these Contracting groups often

times run by o local Afghan militias who will supply them um and I interviewed

quite a few members of these and when you're now paying a local Afghan group

to supply fuel to a base then they're concerned about um an

attack by the Taliban and by the way they have backd door connections to the Taliban then they're gonna just pay off

the Taliban not to attack those fuel deliveries and this is how we get sort of seepage of us funds to the Taliban

was through these Afghan contractors that were subcontracting from other contractors I think if the US had said

okay we want to roll out a series of bases and we are going to supply them ourselves we would have made decisions really differently and would have been

much more strategic about where they were and the number of them um so it enabled um other forms um and incentives

for uh folks that were supposed to be our

allies thank you uh I recognize commissioner Jones thank you very much um my first

question to Dr Vickers is I wonder if you

can talk about why Americans from a kind of terrorism perspective should care

about Afghanistan take us back to those early post 911

period what do you how would you characterize the threat to the US Homeland emanating from Afghanistan and

over the next several years you mentioned the transatlantic plot uh that the um that was disrupted in the UK with

MI5 and police arrests with direct help from the United States States 2009 we

get Naji bazazi arrested an Al-Qaeda plot in the United States not an Al-Qaeda inspired but a directed plot

2010 uh the Time Square bomber fisal Shazad who had been trained in the

Afghan Pakistan border regions how serious was the threat

emanating to the United States from Afghanistan and and Pakistan for for for

that matter and and why should we have then cared

um so first um uh you know 911 resulted

in more casualties in Pearl Harbor and so it you know it was a granddaddy of of

terrorist attacks um and you know the threat was high pre 911 as um Al-Qaeda

had a sanctuary for five years prior you know to build up and attract jihadists

to to the region and then as they resettled in the p in the Pakistan Afghanistan border region um the same

thing largely occurred and you know you mentioned the transatlantic airliner plot but there were there were other um

threats to to the American Homeland and until we really started uh disrupting

and dismantling um that group in that Sanctuary 2008 to 2012 then after that

the the threat went down and so you know why should you care because mass casualty terrorism is a is a real threat

that uh and you know and there all sorts of foreign policy consequences as well as uh human consequences when you're

wrong about that you know as people say they got to be right one once we got to be right all the time and um and you

know and so you have to take it seriously as a national security threat to make sure you've got the intelligence

apparatus and the foreign partners and the you know the instruments that and it doesn't require a big commitment on the

US part it just requires uh a commitment and you know certain specialized things

and um so and then you know on Afghanistan I mean besides you know

generically abandoning an ally who fought with us for 20 years and all the Strategic reasons why we're better off

with an ally than having our enemy uh in power you know given that I'm an old guy a cold warrier you know I also think

they really help that country that no one thinks about helped us win the Cold War and they suffered greatly in helping

us win that and you know so if we screwed up after the end of the Cold War

we had a chance to make it right after 9/11 and then screwed it up again but it is your judgment that even after 911 the

threat to the US Homeland remained serious for roughly a decade at

least yes yes it it did for at least at least a decade and you know it took him

a little period of time between 01 and 03 there were attack uh plots from other areas as well um but the threat Rose

steadily um um during that period and then it increased in Yemen and and Syria the threat to the Homeland and to Europe

as well in the decade that follow and the conditions are still there that that threat could rise again you know it's

not it's not eradicated forever thank you uh wanted to follow up with um uh a

question that both came out of your testimony and your response to

remarks uh which is in a sense gets to the footprint issue um even in in your

book um there is a lot there about the

utility of Special Operations forces and um ISR assets including

orbits the question that sort of comes out about that as you reflect um as you

reflect based on your time not just um in involved in the war in Afghanistan

but also thinking retrospectively about it would the US have been better off in

your judgment with a much smaller sustainable footprint uh that was geared

towards on the military side Special Operations types of forces for train

advise assist and other kinds of actions rather than a large conventional

footprint yes I think so if you look at it in in in two aspects you know right

after 911 um uh as President Bush looked for

options uh uh to go to go to Afghanistan the initial DOD response was what we had

done in response to the um Embassy bombings in East Africa cruise missile strike or a little more ambitious air

strike and then a massive invasion of Afghanistan that would take six to nine months to build up forces in Pakistan

and and you know President Bush wisely said I want to do something now and I want to do it smaller and I don't want

you know any of those options and so that's how you got essentially the CIA Le option that Central Command uh folded

in on and proved very effective um uh at least in overthrowing the Taliban and

displacing Al-Qaeda um and and then as I mentioned

if you if you look at it you know the surge in Afghanistan was partially was motivated by the

deteriorating security threat but also the idea that we could replicate what we did in Iraq Ambassador Crocker and

General Petraeus you know the extraordinary success we had in a short period of time and Afghanistan wasn't Iraq you know we could as Bob my boss

Bob Gates said you know we could push the Taliban back to maybe 2006 2005

levels of violence but we couldn't eliminate them as long as they had the Pakistan sanctuary and conditions in

Afghanistan and so this was going to be a long war and then you know the trouble is you can only keep those big forces

there so long and then it creates this mentality that you know Forever War

seems to me to have a concept that you know of The Surge and and and you know

rather than that we had transitioned to the Afghans after 2015 so you know it

just it it you know it's it's more effective in operationally in the short

run when you but uh but you you have to be wise I think about you know whether it

can really achieve decisiveness in the long run or you're better off with a persistent but smaller

approach thank you I'm going to congratulate commissioner Jones for getting in the most questions within the

appropriate time frame no one has done that yet gold star

okay um let me recognize um commissioner Molino you have the floor thanks and and

thanks to Dr Coburn and and Dr Vickers for being here it's good to see you again um counterterrorism efforts are

often colloquially referred to as mowing the grass uh a never-ending tedious

requirement uh and I hate the analogy it's too simplistic uh and I think if there's anything we learn from the war

in Afghanistan it's that terrorism is complex and it's nuanced it's Nu nuanced work um the other thing about the mowing

the grass analogy is uh that I think it offers a single solution a uniquely military solution and this commi

commission is intentionally considering the efforts of all departments and agencies involved so I think the analog

is actually improved and I'm going to show my cards here being a little bit of a grass nerd um by considering what it

takes to grow and establish an award-winning lawn right proper watering ating overseeding fertilizing awareness

of germination temperatures if you really want to be nerdy about it uh for your particular kind of grass and and when necessary targeted weed killing or

weed removal um in your book you talk about the need for uh a flexible strategy that

can respond to changing tactics and Geographic shifts of terrorist organizations so I'd like you to uh

offer just just some words of advice to uh upand cominging you know future

policy makers operators analysts how should they be thinking about preparing for the terrorism threats of the

future or or we can talk more on grass yeah well I happy to have your M mine

I'll tell you that um um so you know as I

said counterterrorism when you think about appropriate strategies you need a you know mix of offense and defense and

sustained uh campaigns to deal with the if if you see it as a global threat like

Al-Qaeda and and and Isis um but you know it starts with a network of

Partners foreign partners around the world and then um and then good intelligence you know and that's

what you know to get away from the mowing the grass but that helps you mow the grass a lot before things get too

bad and then you need a capability um to deal with those

sanctuaries in the most effective way possible or you know if

but you know what you you know what we say with C with counterterrorism is you're buying time for other things you

know so people don't like the term mowing the grass because it sounds like I'm going to be doing this forever you know if you carry the analogy too

literally but it's also buying time for you to build up local security forces

that can handle more and more of the threat and um uh and you know and do other things that that deal with that

and that just takes takes time so we're not you know the phrase as you said also

is is kind of um rejected that well if I just do this surge I'll win the war and

I won't have to mow This Grass anymore um well you know it it it doesn't work

that way in in in some conditions and so um you know you are you are stuck with

you know what I said which is you're in a long-term intelligence War you're in a war that you've got to make sure you

have partners and then you've got appropriate instruments to deal with this and you don't want to overcommit

because that can cause you to lose you know in other words you know when we overcommit we we you know we tend to

lose we may we may have eliminated the grass for a while or Darner eliminated it but then you know it grows back even

bigger because we're gone no thank thanks for the response I

think um maybe a challenge to the research team that we'll look at uh testimony and

and you know the various things that we uncovered through the work over over the period to the commission um something

for them to consider is that if you simply mow and you don't employ the other instruments of US National Power

what you end up with is a yard Full Of Weeds and if you mow them really short and it looks really green and wow like

it looks like we've done a really good job but what you actually have is a massive terrorism problem that you're

just holding a bay and so I I appreciate your comment about uh intelligence

assets I appreciate your previous comments about the need for Access and placement uh in order to drive very

targeted um very targeted operations that that do that weed removal so again

forgive me on the uh on the analogy I'll give you a chance to respond so it's a good one and it really gets its strategy in a sense that um you know if you look

at Al-Qaeda now and Isis to a second a larger lesser extent um we've mowed

those weeds down to where there aren't that many of them but the conditions that give rise to them are still there

and you know the essence of counterterrorist is M strategy ideally is disrupt threats and then when you've

got a serious group problem a sanctuary dismantle and defeat it but you've only

operationally defeated it you know unless so what the the part that people Miss is you have to prevent their

reconstitution and you have to do it in multiple places and we can't do that as a government we depend on our foreign

Partners to do that you know to to eliminate these ungoverned spaces and that's lots of other instruments of

power that um you know so that's why I say it buys time and it you know maybe

mitigates a threat but it it it it's an operational level solution not a strategic solution yeah no absolutely

and uh thank you to uh to Dr cobber and I'll turn briefly on on Zoom I think you

make a very important point that relates to this in terms of where we invest and how much or maybe how little near the

end of your written testimony um you make a point it's essentially about the inverse relationship between us

intervention and success in certain Geographic and operational efforts in in a sense success is Success often

occurred in areas with less political and financial intervention I just wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to

that use the education model uh specifically but are there other areas we should be looking at in that

context yeah I think and importantly tied to this conversation is who were

the allies that we had in Afghanistan that we did not support did not develop

that could have helped us in this wider Mission and I think the example you point to that I have in my written

testimony that I didn't have time to discuss was the higher ed system and I think it's really worth the commission's

time to look at a few of the things what did what was effective in Afghanistan over those 20 years and in 2001 there

were a couple of crumbling universities in Afghanistan and by 2021 there were 39

public institutions 128 private ones 400,000 students a quarter of them were women um that's a real success it's not

actually a mer place where the US government relatively threw a ton of money a lot of that money was actually

private a lot of those universities were private actually um and it created this growing educated class that I think ner

naie spoke to most articulately um this was a long slow process but that was um

gaining traction however we continued to um allow the

elite from that earlier Commander period to ultimately have the final say in the

government so those educated class increasingly became bureaucrats low-level officials but were never put

and able to get into those positions of power um and I think that's uh it was a

real loss for uh us and in many ways it's that generation of Afghan that were

most abandoned when we pulled out in 2021 and the Taliban returned thank you both for your

thoughtful responses I'm I'm over on time M chair thank thank you I'd like to recognize commissioner

mapya thank you so much to both of our Witnesses what a rich amount of

expertise here um Professor Coburn I'm going to start with you as a scholar you

have spent your time studying the intersection of Western intervention and the Afghan political economy and for the

Commissioners and our staff I think your book Bazaar politics is the best book that's been written on this at this

intersection um our mandate as a commission orients our research process

towards key American decisions and I'm wondering how you would advise us to

think about the relationship between us decision making and Afghan politics

economics and state Society relations in terms of how we think about doing uh

this work and for Dr Vickers I'm I'm

going to belabor the lawn analogy for a moment and say the first question that I

have is who owns the lawn which I think is is where you were going in your in

your last remark so I wonder if you can reflect for me this is a very fundamental question for this commission

do you think at a theoretical level the projects of counterterrorism and stateb building

forget democracy but just State Building were ever actually compatible how was the Afghan State ever

to establish itself as a sovereign power again even if we set aside a internally

legitimate just as a sovereign state when the US and a number of other foreign actors maintained the Perpetual

license to this day to use force in inside its

territory um so that's one of the features of of of counter terrorism um

that these ungoverned spaces where uh a government may not have a RIT so that's

part of Yemen Somalia North Africa Afghanistan Pakistan border region um

you know the US feels it has to protect its interests uh would prefer to do it through a government but in some cases a

government has no RIT there um you know is unwilling and incapable of of of

doing something um but it's you know as you said it's not a long-term solution

in a sense that you know the goal of strategy is to have the local government build up enough capacity uh to eliminate

those ungoverned spaces otherwise you are in a you know Perpetual even if it's

a small counterterrorism fight you're in that forever there's there's no exits so

ultimately to the question of who owns the grass it's the it's the local government and you don't want to do things that undermine them on that you

know it may take a long time you know you may be you know you're unrealistic if you think I can do this in just a few

years um so you need decades Long Engagement if that required to protect

your interest but ultim you know you don't want to undermine them by saying you know get out of the way I'm going to do it myself uh you every time we've

tried that it hasn't led to good outcomes

to uh related points I think in in response to your question um the first

is linked back to my previous point about um the the growing Urban uh

educated class as a missed opportunity for us to build allies another group were um more local Regional Elite um who

are not involved highly in the bond process um but be were pulled into the

political process over the next we say five years and this is really sort of setting the stage in those early years

um and just as a quick little story um the local commander in my town um he was

sort of a smalltime commander he had fought against the Soviets um he was Loosely allied with carai um early on in

the carai government he had uh taken his weapons uh turned in most of them but

not all of them as he would say carzi allowed him to keep some for his own protection um and carai and essentially

gave him he said a Toyota dealership um but he found selling Toyotas beneath him

so he made his son do that um and in 2005 2006 he was basically in retirement

um by 2009 however he was running for parliament in part because he had been

pressured by a lot of his allies that listen um in 2005 he was still worried

about getting prosecuted for war crimes or enemies coming after him he was unsure what the US was going to do by

2009 it was sort of clear to him that he was probably safe and a lot of his allies were saying we need to make some

money we need to get into this game over here where everyone's trading deals and so by 2009 he had been pulled firmly

away from um some of these processes um or some pulled into processes like

elections which were perceived as um from the Afghan Public's point of you uh

a corrupt way of getting into government and getting a hold of some of these

government resources and this is tied to my previous point that it

was the unthoughtful uh interference in Afghan

elections um comments by Holbrook um the way that John kery um so publicly

negotiated that deal between carai and Abdullah that really eroded the US's

ability to have any credibility around uh elections being what we said said

they were and that this is purely an afghan-led process and I think what this meant was Afghans all watch this

ordinary Afghans sort of watch this firsthand um and oftentimes I think they

gave the US government and the International Community much more credit in than they deserved they assumed that

the US government was somehow doing some of these things intentionally even even when uh it was uh unintentional um and

you would often hear and I know you've heard many times you know the Taliban are a bunch of rural Fighters the US is

the most sophisticated military in the world how could the US not defeat the Taliban um and that many was evident

many Afghans was evidence that the US somehow wanted to be there um and was intentionally losing the war and using

that as escape to um keep a toe hold in Afghanistan and all of that just further

mind our legitimacy but also the legitimacy of our Afghan

Partners thank you very much Dr Coburn uh I recognize Dr Jackson for an

additional question and then some closing remarks thank you shamila um one last

question for Dr Vickers um you had alluded in your statement in an interesting way that we were late to

build local security forces that we needed to be able to lead uh and that ultimately we built the

wrong kind of security forces when we said about it your biography as some know here in the room included designing

uh a surrogate force uh for the MOJ hadine to some extent arming them if you

think we built the wrong kind of security forces for the Afghans or providing them with the wrong tools of

the wrong structure what would the right structure of look like in your opinion yeah it's a great question so um uh

early on uh you know in the pre previous panel talked about the tensions between

um institution building and and security you know that certainly were present there but early on um you know our aim

was to build small essentially affordable Afghan security forces and

centralized as part of a centralized state so one the force was too small for the threat for us to leave and second

you know Afghanistan is not inherently a centralized State and so trying to recruit people and this problem

persisted to join the Army and leave your village and we're going to send you to another part of the country that's

the size of Texas well you might as well be sending them to the Moon you know they don't and you know jumping isn't

going to get there but you know we were trying and and you know so it was a very flawed strategy from the beginning and

then the other thing you know the tensions about the militias and the Warlords and oh bad and everything but

again it gets back to this local centralized of how you have stability uh

in Afghanistan that goes you know historically as Ambassador Crocker mentioned and so one of the more

effective things we did um and uh commissioner Jones worked on this a lot

was the Afghan local police and Village stability operations and and you know it was a lot more cost effective the

Taliban feared it more than a lot of other things why because they were local forces defending their Village and they

were denying as we built more of them they were denying more of the rural areas now there were problems with that

too but I think a mix of more Village Defense Forces and an army big enough to

hold the the the cities um and then Special Operations forces to do raids

essentially would have been a better approach we were also late on um uh

giving the Afghan and uh an air an air force to move their forces around and

you know that's very expensive and everything but you know if you're ever going to leave again it's a country the size of Texas you know they got to be

able to move places to uh nip nip some of these threats in the way that that we

did as well and so you know I think our security assist you know and and again you know what do we do we create core

structures well it looks like us you know and it's just so um it it still

would have been costly just not as costly and I think it would have been more effective had we had we had a better mix and and started

early and then transitioned earlier thank you

um I'm now going to offer just some last framing thoughts uh more for the

audience uh than for the Commissioners who are aware of this um as several of the witnesses have alluded uh to uh Dr

albian Ambassador Newman our greatest challenge in some ways is narrowing the scope of the things we can accomplish

within the time we're given uh we're very uh cognizant of that uh but one of

the key decisions we made based on the Congressional legislation was to focus primarily as a unit of analysis on key

US Government decisions uh this acknowledges the point that uh deali made earlier that we can't think about

those fully without thinking about Afghan reactions but that said the the unit of analysis is US Government

decisions so a fair question for the audience and for for interested citizens is well what decisions are you going to

look at uh the easy answer is we're going to consider a much larger set of

decisions than we can possibly cover in detail and there will be a very difficult winnowing process uh the

second point is that those decisions May ironically fall not just uh in the

Washington area or in Brussels uh but often a series of decisions that are either labeled

theater decisions or implementation decisions reside at the country team or

uh US forces Afghanistan level so just to give a sampling at the at the macro

policy level we will certainly look at the US decision to invade Afghanistan in the wake of 911 what other Alternatives

were considered if any uh how wide was the the range of options the second uh

obvious uh point of interest will be the decision to Surge forces in Afghanistan um there are a whole host of

nested decisions within that how big a surge how long whether to remove it when

um a third set of decisions uh relate to negotiations with the Taliban uh should

we negotiate with them if so should we uh negotiate without the Afghan government uh present uh these were

profound decisions that had uh outsized impacts and finally a series of decisions about us withdrawal under what

circumstances would we withdraw uh would we withdraw and leave an enduring presence of some sort of uh small force

of us and counterterrorism forces uh and the like but this gives a sampling of

the very macro level leaving you with a point that for every one of these uh

subordinate elements in country were often making very very difficult implementation decisions how to follow

this broad policy towards something that could actually be tangible um decisions like the ones uh I asked Dr Vickers

about how do you design uh the security forces of the Afghans or how do you

support their design thereof um strategic choices by US military

commanders as to whether to pursue largely enemy Centric um strategies inside of Afghanistan or largely

population Centric strategies and we see oscillation over time on that these are not just military decisions in the

development field there were corresponding decisions about what to develop why and to what effect so this

gives you a sense both of the the sprawl of potential decisions we could we could analyze and the winnowing that we're

we're going to have to engage in but I just wanted to offer that uh as a closing comment um and last and on on a

more uh personal note but I I think also General to this point of the importance of bipartisanship uh I was appointed by

uh Senator Jim inhoff uh Republican of Oklahoma longtime uh Senate armed

services committee chair and ranking member um he passed away on July 9th uh

and uh we hope that the the work that we do as a group not me as an individual will reflect positively on a on a great

public servant and one who I think cherished his relationships across the aisle to people like Senator Jack Reed

um it is that kind of teamwork that created this commission and it's that kind of teamwork that will get it across the finish

line thank you Colin and I'll add that um I was appointed uh as commissioner

and asked to be co-chair by then speaker Nancy Pelosi and um when offered the

opportunity I couldn't think of saying no I had to say yes just because of the personal and

professional um involvement of myself and so many of my colleagues but also

because of the challenge posed by having

truly B bipartisan conversations and commissioner Jones you talked about this

a little bit earlier on that we are bipartisan in our composition but our work is nonpartisan our staff is

nonpartisan but let me just emphasize something about this bipartisanship theme that is very much

part of our American life these days that I've learned through this appointment we think it's about politics

we think it's about this side or that side and it may be in certain settings but in our context it's become very much

about listening and giving each other some space to air whether they be uh

memories of the war grievances debates disagreements we have

to have space for those difficult conversations and um I've learned to be

uh immensely more patient um through this process and um it's been an honor

to work with the Commissioners um in this learning process about this theme of bipartisanship which is so critical

uh for the future of our country as well um and it's been a joy to work with Colin we've become great friends and I

think um uh we come from very different backgrounds but uh where we intersect is

um kind of our commitment to US national interests and that's reflected in all of our commissioners as well um just a few

closing points that I wanted to share with the audience I know our commissioners know this already um but

the decision examples that Colin shared with you they are very USG heavy right

they're us they're US government policy decisions and we're choosing them as our

organizing principle because that is what Congress wants us to evaluate but as I said in my opening statement and I

will emphasize now that the US decisions did not happen in a vacuum they're part

of a global Regional ecosystem that involved equally important and impactful

Decisions by Foreign governments um and also non State actors not just

terrorists or Insurgent groups but Civil Society public sentiment and we will

gather all of those and look at them critically they're not ornamental to our process it may sound that they're

ornamental because this task is immense and we want to throw everything in there but we're not looking at it like that we

are going to take the two years that we've been given to truly integrate as much as possible within the scope that

we are able to manage so that's our commitment to all of you today um and

with that let me just thank everyone for their time the witnesses our special guests you've given us a lot today and

we will keep you involved in this important work I also want to thank our hosts the Veterans of Foreign Wars it

wouldn't have been a success today without your partnership we look forward to having you join us for another

session that is veteran specific we hope at later this year this hearing is now adjourned thank you very much

for

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