Full Comment - Global terrorism gets a new lease on life in Afghanistan

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Anthony Fury. Welcome to the latest episode of Full Comment.

00:00:09.380 Terrorism has thankfully dropped from the list of many people's top concerns in recent years.

00:00:14.020 Can we now breathe a sigh of relief? Or will terror attacks ramp up again after the U.S.

00:00:18.860 withdrawal from Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban? Is this a terror breeding

00:00:23.560 ground just waiting to happen? There are few people in English language media better versed

00:00:27.740 in these topics than Peter Bergen. He's the vice president at the think tank New America,

00:00:32.160 a national security analyst at CNN, and the author of a number of books, including The Osama bin

00:00:36.780 Laden I Know. Oh, how's that one for a headline? His new book just out now is the authoritative

00:00:41.440 biography, The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. That includes some important information that

00:00:46.860 you need to know. Peter Bergen joins us now. Peter, welcome to the program.

00:00:51.700 Thank you. Thank you.

00:00:52.740 Yeah, great to have you on. I got to get your thoughts on, of course, what happened just a

00:00:57.060 couple weeks ago in Afghanistan. The fall of Afghanistan, at least in the way we saw it

00:01:02.300 happen. I know that the withdrawal of U.S. forces was planned and agreed upon, but what

00:01:06.860 did you think when you were watching it unfold live in the way it did?

00:01:12.140 Well, you know, I mean, unfortunately, it was a somewhat predictable disaster. I mean, as soon

00:01:19.780 as President Biden said we were going to leave, we the United States, then 3,500 American troops

00:01:27.740 started withdrawing. Then 7,000 Allied troops, including NATO, mostly NATO troops also left,

00:01:35.960 and 16,000 contractors, including 6,000 American contractors, some of whom were keeping the Afghan

00:01:42.180 air force in the air, which provides medevac and also close air support to the Afghan army.

00:01:48.060 All that sort of got pulled at the same time, creating a crisis of confidence that was amplified

00:01:53.520 by President Ghani fleeing the country. And lots of people lay down their arms, not because they're

00:01:59.420 weak, but because Afghanistan has gone through multiple wars in the last 43 years, and people want to 0.66

00:02:09.380 kind of retain their heads on their shoulders and don't want to die with a new regime that was sweeping

00:02:16.300 into power. Will that, is it a threat to, you know, U.S. interests, Canadian interests, Western interests?

00:02:23.460 I think it is. We saw in Canada attacks carried out by people inspired by ISIS when ISIS was at its

00:02:31.260 height and declared its caliphate. And I think we'll see the same thing in Canada, the United States,

00:02:37.000 and also in Europe. Canada and the United States, of course, quite, you know, we're protected by our

00:02:43.320 distance from Afghanistan. It's hard to get there. But Europe isn't. And certainly we saw when Iraq was 1.00

00:02:49.780 at, when ISIS was at its height, that, you know, a number of Europeans, 6,000 is the number, went to get

00:02:57.980 training in Iraq and Syria from ISIS, and some of them came back and carried out attacks in Paris and

00:03:04.460 Brussels and elsewhere. And we can see that again with Afghanistan fairly easily. I mean, there are 0.99

00:03:12.100 differences between the Taliban declaring its emirate and ISIS declaring its caliphate. But the

00:03:17.680 differences are less important than the similarities. And the jihadist movement is going to

00:03:21.520 being given another huge breath of life by this development.

00:03:27.500 So what do we need to know and understand in terms of the bigger context when the Taliban says,

00:03:31.940 as some of their spokespeople have said, oh, no, we're just going to be the government now. And

00:03:35.900 we're even going to look for standing in different international bodies. And we want to do diplomacy and

00:03:40.820 so forth. We'll do trade. It'll be great. Oh, remember, we ran the country before, you know,

00:03:44.440 we're just going to be a government here. I mean, in what sort of, how much of a helping of grain of

00:03:50.200 salt should be, you know, afforded to those statements?

00:03:53.560 I mean, I think a mountain of salt should be taken with that. Let's just look at the people

00:03:57.200 they just appointed as the acting government. I think that acting government, by the way,

00:04:01.120 will be the government is that the word acting in front of that is merely a sop to the international

00:04:07.000 community. The minister of the interior is Siraj Akhani, who's the architect of the Taliban's military

00:04:12.520 victory. And he is described by the United Nations as a leader of al-Qaeda on the leadership council.

00:04:17.920 So, I mean, the group was supposed to separate al-Qaeda from al-Qaeda. And here they put,

00:04:23.080 as one of the most important cabinet posts, somebody who the UN describes as a leader of al-Qaeda. So,

00:04:29.060 I mean, I think that sort of speaks for itself. And we're going to see, I think, in coming weeks,

00:04:35.000 you know, continued tightening of Taliban social policies. I saw just today that something like more

00:04:41.440 than 150 independent Afghan media outlets have closed. Not all media outlets will close. The

00:04:48.120 Taliban tolerated Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera, when they were in power the last time.

00:04:54.700 They themselves have a very robust media presence that they did not have when they were in power the

00:04:58.760 last time. Of course, they banned television when they were in power the last time. There was no

00:05:02.960 internet in Afghanistan. There was no phone service when they were in power the last time. They're going to 0.99

00:05:08.600 adeptly use television and the internet for their own propaganda purposes. But in terms of their

00:05:14.220 social project, I think it's going to be very similar to where we were before. And they don't

00:05:19.180 really, you know, sure. I mean, it's a case of sort of projecting our own kind of mirror imaging on

00:05:26.460 the Taliban to say, well, yeah, they want international recognition. Of course they do. But they can also

00:05:31.240 live without it. When they were in power last time, only three countries recognized them. The UN had

00:05:35.600 sanctions on them. The US had sanctions on them. And they survived fine. And today they are sitting

00:05:40.180 on the poppy and opium trade, which is billions of dollars. And they're also sitting on 38 million

00:05:45.380 Afghans who they can tax and extort at will. So I don't think money, which is not their main 1.00

00:05:51.000 consideration anyway, is really a problem for them going forward, even if the international community

00:05:56.320 and most countries don't recognize them. What does the Taliban want?

00:06:02.900 They want to establish a regime and a society that rules by their understanding of Sharia.

00:06:10.300 And their understanding of Sharia is, you know, not a mainstream view. I mean, it puts women in, 0.99

00:06:17.700 women in the public sphere will be mostly gone, except in very specific jobs like female doctors can 1.00

00:06:23.300 treat female patients, because of course, male doctors can't treat female patients. Women can 1.00

00:06:28.680 teach girls in schools, but girls will no longer be able to go to school once they get to the age of

00:06:32.820 puberty. So that's what they want. They want to, these are the values of rural Pashtuns, which is, 0.60

00:06:40.140 you know, Pashtuns are the largest ethnic minority, but not a majority in Afghanistan. And they want to 1.00

00:06:47.860 basically impose those rules on their theocratic order on the population. And there's plenty of

00:06:55.080 ethnic groups in Afghanistan, Tajiks, Uzbeks, or Tsarists who don't share their views. By the way,

00:07:00.640 it's pretty striking to me, this cabinet that was appointed by the Taliban includes, I think,

00:07:06.840 only, it's entirely, almost entirely, 98% from the Pashtun group that the Taliban originates from.

00:07:14.760 So there's no intent to an inclusive government, there was a lot of discussion about an inclusive

00:07:18.900 government, they didn't include anybody from the previous government. So I think that the choice

00:07:25.140 of who's actually going to govern kind of tells you where they're going to go.

00:07:29.120 Now, Peter, I know you've written before in your books about what happens when various embassies

00:07:32.500 close, Western embassies closing in those countries, or CIA offices decide, okay, it's not safe for us,

00:07:37.360 and they pull out from there and so forth. Are we going to have the eyes and ears on the ground

00:07:41.920 to get the appropriate intelligence and information about what's actually happening

00:07:46.540 and involving in Taliban, in Afghanistan?

00:07:49.700 Well, look at this strike that was supposedly an ISIS-K target that various news organizations,

00:07:56.100 the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN have all, I think, fairly convincingly demonstrated

00:08:00.840 it wasn't an ISIS-K target. And that was why we still had, you know,

00:08:04.920 the United States was still present in the country. So that target killed, it seems like,

00:08:13.840 a contractor who was working occasionally with the United States and his family. And that was

00:08:19.200 right now, where we still have some sort of intelligence information that isn't super dated.

00:08:26.540 Let's look out six months from now. Yes, the United States can gather signals intelligence

00:08:32.500 from people's phones and computers, and that's all useful. But in terms of targeting a particular

00:08:39.740 person or persons, you still really need people on the ground to tell you that's the right person,

00:08:44.460 or this person really is an ISIS, or they're not. And that capacity is completely gone.

00:08:49.520 Which reminds me of when we closed, the United States closed its embassy in Afghanistan in 1989,

00:08:53.440 when we were completely blind to the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

00:08:56.740 As a result of that. And so, you know, pulling out of places like Afghanistan, you know, from a short 0.96

00:09:03.900 term sort of security point of view, of course, it's easy to make that argument. But from a longer

00:09:08.820 term point of view, it's, you don't really know what's going on. Peter, you were a part of a team

00:09:14.820 that went to the Middle East to interview Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, to sit down with him and get his

00:09:22.680 thoughts on who are you? What are you doing? This was, of course, in advance of 9-11. Is that sort

00:09:27.800 of stuff going to be possible now with other figures and questions about who are these people?

00:09:33.900 What are they doing? What are they planning?

00:09:36.760 We went to Afghanistan in 1997 to interview him. But, you know, that right now, groups like al-Qaeda

00:09:42.880 don't really need to be, I mean, they're not really looking for interviews. They don't need one because

00:09:47.080 at the time, you know, CNN was sort of the Twitter of the time in terms of a revolutionary new

00:09:52.780 technology to some degree. Now, you know, if you want to make a statement, you put it on Twitter, you

00:09:57.960 don't need a, I mean, you lose something, of course, the world loses something from not having live

00:10:05.760 journalists interviewing directly these leaders of these jihadist groups. But clearly, there's a lot of now a lot

00:10:11.520 of danger involved in that because these groups have kidnapped any number of journalists or murdered

00:10:16.960 them over the years.

00:10:18.120 Wasn't it dangerous back then for you to do what you did or was it different then?

00:10:22.120 I don't think it was because, I mean, I sort of, they had invited us and, you know, they murdered Danny

00:10:28.320 Pearl, the Wall Street journalist reporter, four years later. So that was really the first time these

00:10:35.800 groups had murdered a journalist. And so the rules kind of changed in the interim. And I didn't think

00:10:43.460 that we were in danger. We weren't in danger. They invited us, you know, it was, obviously, it was

00:10:48.780 Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. It wasn't, you know, visiting him in Sweden. But it, you know, there was

00:10:55.420 perhaps some risk, but I don't think there were any, I don't think they had any intent of injuring us

00:11:00.400 or doing it. And they didn't.

00:11:03.300 What was Bin Laden like when you met him?

00:11:06.460 You know, he was very serious and kind of low-key and didn't raise his voice. He spoke in a kind of

00:11:11.820 monotone. He was very thin, very tall, six foot four. He carried himself like a cleric. He wasn't

00:11:19.560 a table-thumping revolutionary. He, you know, his words are full of anger against the United States,

00:11:26.680 but he delivered it all in a very kind of poised, you know, kind of low, he didn't bang his fist on

00:11:33.740 the table or kind of emote very much. And we were with him for just over an hour and he left and he

00:11:39.460 went, you know, disappeared into the night. He was, they were very concerned that, I don't know,

00:11:44.980 they had a lot of concerns about his personal security being around these three Westerners.

00:11:50.580 You know, it's interesting. In the beginning of your book, you, of course, chart his younger years,

00:11:53.980 his family, very wealthy from construction and various other industries they were working on.

00:11:59.200 And Osama Bin Laden, I guess, had the ability to just access wealth, play the game and live a very, 0.90

00:12:05.560 I mean, I guess his family were observant Muslims, but they certainly weren't extreme in the way that

00:12:10.560 he was. And you think, oh, you know, this must be a case of the apple not falling far from the tree.

00:12:15.340 But as you relate it, Bin Laden was actually a bit of the black sheep in terms of he was the guy

00:12:20.080 who said, no, we got to get super extreme here. Yeah, Bin Laden, you know, he's got 54 siblings,

00:12:25.820 none of whom went, chose his path. So that's an interesting question why he did. I don't,

00:12:32.100 you know, I lay out in the book a kind of process of radicalization. His, his mother was an Alawite,

00:12:39.180 is an Alawite, which is a heretical form of Sheism, if you're an Orthodox Sunni, like the Bin Laden 1.00

00:12:43.540 family was. So she was, I know she was only married to Bin Laden's father for two years before

00:12:48.680 they divorced. Bin Laden was the only child of that union. His father died in a plane crash when he

00:12:53.480 was 10. That seemed to have had a big effect on him, even though he barely knew his father.

00:12:58.820 And he turned to Islam, he memorized the Quran. By the time he's a teenager, he's a very religious

00:13:04.240 teenager praying twice, fasting twice a week and praying an extra set of prayers at night. And,

00:13:10.300 you know, I think that may have been one way of him trying to sort of become, you know,

00:13:15.760 something more important than, than he was in a sense, you know, the one, he became this very

00:13:21.180 religious person. The Soviets invade Afghanistan, he goes to support the effort there, taking money 0.82

00:13:29.640 to the Afghan groups, fighting the Soviets. And then in 1987, he sets up his own base called Al-Qaeda

00:13:34.720 in Arabic, in Afghanistan, from which he fights the Soviets. He, from that base, grew Al-Qaeda, 0.93

00:13:41.880 the organization. And two years later, US troops go to Saudi Arabia to protect it from a possible

00:13:48.400 invasion by Saddam Hussein. That turns him really, he's already anti-American, that really turns him

00:13:54.500 against the United States. So, you know, all this was a sort of process of radicalization that took

00:13:59.760 place over the decades. None, none of it was inevitable. There were points where Bin Laden 0.98

00:14:04.940 could have gone, taken a different route. And, you know, people try to persuade him not to set up

00:14:10.140 Al-Qaeda. Others, like Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was killed by Saudi officials in

00:14:15.740 Istanbul in 2018, told him in Sudan, you know, you do an interview with me and you can,

00:14:21.640 renouncing violence, you probably can go back to the Saudi kingdom. He was then in exile in Sudan.

00:14:25.460 That didn't happen. And, you know, by the time he gets to Afghanistan in 1996, Bin Laden has 0.93

00:14:31.640 dropped any pretenses that he's just a wealthy businessman in Sudan. And he starts issuing

00:14:36.560 public statements calling for war against the United States.

00:14:41.600 You know, it's interesting when you detail the different disagreements he had with other sort of

00:14:47.340 terrorists in his league or involved in other groups, and they would sort of bicker over what

00:14:52.500 actually the objectives should be. And Bin Laden was always really focused on, we got to drive the 0.94

00:14:56.880 U.S. out, we got to attack the U.S. Whereas others are saying, well, no, we, you know, we've just got

00:15:00.780 to overthrow this one particular regime in this one Muslim country and so forth. But he was sort of

00:15:04.800 singularly, no, guys, we really got to focus on the U.S. angle.

00:15:08.780 Yeah, that was Bin Laden's big sort of strategic innovation. There were lots of jihadist groups in 0.87

00:15:12.380 Afghanistan who were interested in overthrowing their own government. Same in Al-Zawahari,

00:15:16.820 he runs the group now, not very well. He's an Egyptian who wanted to overthrow the government of

00:15:22.240 Egypt. Bin Laden really said, you know, let's focus on the United States. And it had the useful 1.00

00:15:28.120 effect of uniting all these different groups from around the Muslim world that were interested in

00:15:31.800 violent jihad around one common enemy. And Bin Laden had a theory of the case that we, you know,

00:15:37.380 attack the United States, the United States will pull out of the Middle East, and these regimes that 1.00

00:15:41.080 we don't like will fall. Of course, that didn't happen. The United States was attacked by Al-Qaeda, 0.74

00:15:46.260 Bin Laden's men on 9-11. And instead of pulling out of the Middle East, got more involved in the 0.74

00:15:51.940 Middle East than at any time in its history. So the whole thing backfired spectacularly for Bin Laden,

00:15:57.200 but it was his big idea. And, you know, I think Bin Laden's one of the few people you can say really 0.69

00:16:02.200 changed history. He certainly redirected the course of American foreign policy for two decades of the first

00:16:09.060 two decades of the 21st century, which also redirected allies' foreign policy and changed

00:16:15.100 the Middle East in all sorts of unexpected ways, but not in the ways that Bin Laden hoped it would.

00:16:19.780 There's certainly been a lot of debate about the lead up to 9-11, what was known, what could have

00:16:25.700 been done to prevent it. Obviously, a lot of conspiracy theories filling the void. You really

00:16:30.120 detail the people working for the CIA, the number of years, months they spent tracking Bin Laden, what they

00:16:35.620 did know, what they didn't know, and the warnings that they gave to their higher ops. And that made

00:16:40.080 it up to various, you know, to the Clinton administration and to the Bush administration.

00:16:44.400 Can you separate fact from fiction for us in terms of, you know, what exactly did they know

00:16:48.880 about 9-11? How could they or could they not have prevented it? 0.99

00:16:52.760 Well, the CIA did a good job of what it's supposed to do, which is provide policymakers with strategic

00:16:57.280 warning. During the spring and summer of 2001, there was a bunch of memos went to the Bush

00:17:03.860 administration saying that Bin Laden is planning something and it seems to be imminent. And the

00:17:08.080 volume of these warnings was pretty large. The problem was the Bush administration just

00:17:16.440 didn't absorb any of this and was not concerned with these issues, and was concerned with Iraq.

00:17:23.100 This was a threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The CIA made a mistake in the sense that it didn't 0.92

00:17:29.720 alert the FBI to two al-Qaeda members who were living in the United States who turned out to be

00:17:33.640 two of the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon on 9-11. And those two hijackers were known to be

00:17:42.300 living in the United States in San Diego. And that fact was known to the CIA to about 50 or 60 officers

00:17:49.780 who saw these cables. And so, you know, the ball was dropped and they never informed the FBI.

00:17:55.500 So they were from a tactical point of view, the CIA made a big mistake on that front. But from an

00:18:00.520 overall strategic point of view, they did a very good job of warning the Bush administration

00:18:04.220 about the threat from Bin Laden. It was simply ignored.

00:18:08.920 But the sort of generalized threat, I mean, there was no, okay, this guy,

00:18:12.300 this specific event on this day. There was not even a hint of that sort of specifics, correct?

00:18:18.300 No, but intelligence estimates don't usually work that way. I mean, it's very rare that you have

00:18:23.180 like sort of specific time and place for, you know, the way that the CIA issues, they're called

00:18:29.000 estimates, interestingly, you know, they estimate with high levels of probability or medium or low

00:18:34.100 levels of probability. They're not, it's not a crystal ball exercise where X is going to happen

00:18:38.920 on Y day. It's more like this is, and this actually gets to the whole question of Afghanistan

00:18:43.500 today. You know, the CIA, the intelligence community in the United States said that government

00:18:49.580 could fall as soon as 30 to 90 days in Afghanistan after the US withdrew. You know,

00:18:55.600 it turned out to be 11 days. Well, you know, the difference between 30 days and 11 days is not very

00:18:59.060 big. So I mean, the point is, is what is the, the CIA's job is to provide strategic warning to

00:19:05.580 policymakers who then make the decision about what the policy is. And usually it's, you know,

00:19:11.680 it's a general sense of like what, what may happen in these circumstances. It's not a prediction

00:19:16.260 of what will happen. What was the relationship between bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Now

00:19:23.180 they certainly communicated, they certainly shielded him, but in what way was the Taliban

00:19:28.400 involved in Al Qaeda's machinations? Well, pre 9-11, the, you know, there were a lot, a number of

00:19:34.260 people in the Taliban who really disliked bin Laden, hoped that he would leave. You know, they were 0.75

00:19:39.540 particularly focused. This group was particularly in the foreign ministry of the Taliban who was interested

00:19:44.440 in international recognition. And they, you know, they were kind of lobbying for bin Laden to leave

00:19:50.760 or leave of his own accord or get pushed out. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban at the time,

00:19:56.120 ultimately never made that call. Bin Laden would always sort of use religious arguments with him to

00:20:01.320 say that it was important that he continued to live in Afghanistan and fight the quote unquote infidels. 1.00

00:20:07.480 And then over time, you know, the relationship between the Taliban and Al Qaeda continued. And

00:20:13.160 the documents that I use for the book, which were found in Abbottabad show a warm and cordial

00:20:18.120 relationship 10 years after 9-11. Bin Laden is writing letters to Mullah Omar. Other leaders of the

00:20:24.840 Taliban are recipients of letters from Al Qaeda leaders. Al Qaeda leaders are communicating with

00:20:32.280 the Pakistani Taliban, which is an element of the Taliban. They are communicating with the

00:20:36.680 Haqqani network, which is a key part of the Taliban. They're funding the Haqqani network,

00:20:44.200 interestingly. And so, and then fast forward to today, the UN says that Al Qaeda and the Taliban

00:20:49.720 remain closely aligned. And of course, anybody listening to this can look up Siraj Haqqani,

00:20:56.360 who's now the Minister of the Interior. And he's described as being a leader of Al Qaeda and the

00:21:01.320 Minister of the Interior in Afghanistan is a bit like the head of Department of Homeland Security

00:21:06.840 and the FBI rolled into one in the United States. So this is kind of arguably one of the most,

00:21:12.520 it is one of the most important posts in the Afghan government. It's held by somebody who's described

00:21:16.520 as a leader of Al Qaeda. So I think that all sort of speaks for itself. Yeah, it really doesn't bode

00:21:20.920 well for any sort of future terror plots or what have you that want to sort of take root in Afghanistan,

00:21:28.200 aimed at the West or aimed at wherever. I mean, is it just going to be a situation in Afghanistan

00:21:33.400 where the Taliban, you know, any sort of terror group that shows up there and sort of plants roots,

00:21:39.560 as long as they're not directly contradicting the Taliban's goals, they'll turn a blind eye to them,

00:21:43.880 they'll shield them, they'll let them do their thing? I think so. I mean, I don't see any reason

00:21:49.240 why that wouldn't be the case. And what are the groups that we have to worry about now? Because

00:21:54.920 some are on the rise, some are on the decline. What are the ones you're really paying attention

00:21:59.080 to right now? Well, there's an ISIS group in Afghanistan called ISIS Khorasan, which has

00:22:05.800 been at war with the Taliban. They're relatively small. There's Al Qaeda, which I think is going

00:22:10.760 to stage a renaissance, but there are other groups in Afghanistan. Some of them are not directed at the

00:22:15.160 West. There's Lashkar Taiba, which is a group that is interested in attacking India. There's the Islamic 1.00

00:22:20.840 movement of Uzbekistan, which is interested in overthrowing the government of Uzbekistan.

00:22:25.160 So there are a number of groups there. And I mean, they're clearly going to enjoy, at a minimum,

00:22:30.520 I think, tolerance by the Taliban going forward. And these groups, you know, they're never stronger 0.85

00:22:36.520 themselves. But if they have a post-government that is favourable, they can regroup and train people.

00:22:42.040 And, you know, we've seen this movie before. So that's what I anticipate happening in Afghanistan.

00:22:47.240 Here in Canada, we had about 400 young people who either went abroad or attempted to go abroad

00:22:52.920 to Iraq or Syria to heed the call from ISIS and to get involved in some way or another. And I know

00:22:58.360 the numbers are varying in other countries and much higher in many other countries. That seems,

00:23:02.200 thankfully, to have waned right now. But are we going to see a situation like that again, where people

00:23:08.840 view this region as a place to go that, you know, inspires the, whatever you want to call it,

00:23:14.200 the terror inclination in them? Yeah, I think the short answer is yes. Because I mean, the reason

00:23:19.000 that those 400 Canadians either travelled or attempted to travel to Iraq and Syria was because

00:23:24.920 of the excitement around the declaration of the caliphate, which is a geographical entity that,

00:23:30.440 you know, controlled 8 million subjects and territory the size of Portugal. And that was a very inspiring

00:23:36.760 thing for some, for some young people with these ideas. When that geographical caliphate disappeared

00:23:44.200 in 2017, 2018, the foreign fighter flow from Canada or America or Europe or other Muslim countries

00:23:53.560 around the Middle East just went down to zero because no one wants to join the losing team. So I think

00:23:58.520 that we're going to see something similar with Afghanistan, maybe a little bit different. And also,

00:24:03.880 we're going to see another phenomenon, which is people not travelling but radicalising it

00:24:10.920 at home in front of their computers and going out and doing things, particularly if these groups in

00:24:15.080 Afghanistan start calling for homegrown terrorist attacks in the name of the Islamic Emirate of

00:24:20.040 Afghanistan. You know, you could see, no, you don't have to go to Afghanistan to carry out a terrorist

00:24:25.880 attack, obviously, you're going to get better trained if you do. But that's pretty difficult compared to

00:24:30.760 just simply picking up some sort of weapon and pick your country and carry out an attack in the name

00:24:37.160 of the Great Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. So my concern is that we'll also see that. 1.00

00:24:41.800 Now, I know in my introduction, I said that things seem to be in a bit of a lull,

00:24:44.760 people have let their guard down, they're less concerned about it. But is that fair? And is that

00:24:48.920 accurate? I mean, I was just thinking about the various lone wolf attacks that we've had in Canada

00:24:53.320 and the United States and so forth. But I'm not entirely clear on what's going on in the Middle East

00:24:57.640 in other parts of the world. I mean, are we in a lull right now?

00:25:01.960 Well, I mean, we have been because ISIS was defeated. And I think that had a big,

00:25:05.800 you know, the geographical defeat of the caliphate led to no longer being a particularly inspirational

00:25:12.520 group. We did, we still seen attacks in the name of ISIS, we saw one in New Zealand.

00:25:17.480 Just a couple of weeks ago, we saw one in Manhattan in Halloween 2017,

00:25:23.560 even which happened after, you know, the geographical caliphate had largely disappeared.

00:25:31.960 But, you know, now we have this new caliphate or emirate. And I think it's going to have some 1.00

00:25:40.680 similar kind of inspirational effect on those people who have these ideas. So, you know,

00:25:45.960 we're in a lull now that can change over the next two years.

00:25:49.160 Now, I know here in Canada, and it happens in other countries as well, a lot of effort and energy

00:25:54.520 has put into various institutes, university projects and so forth on de-radicalization,

00:26:00.760 countering violent extremism, they call it, trying to get to these people before they get radicalized

00:26:05.880 or trying to stop them in the path and so forth. We hear a lot about, okay, these are people who are

00:26:10.120 just sort of lost, they're looking for opportunity, that there's mental illness component involved and

00:26:14.120 so forth. What's actually going on with these young people? And what if we are potentially going to

00:26:19.640 have a surge in this, and we're going to sort of go through that whole process again? I mean,

00:26:22.440 what are the things that we need to keep in mind to stop that from happening or to limit it?

00:26:26.520 Well, the most effective intervention, I think, comes from former jihadists. I mean, 1.00

00:26:31.160 there's Mubin Sheikh, who's a Canadian who's, you know, done a lot of work in this area,

00:26:36.120 and others. You know, I think the interventions that work, and of course, you don't often,

00:26:41.720 you know, interventions that work aren't, it's like the tree that doesn't fall.

00:26:46.520 You know, it's hard to measure, but I think interventions that do work can be from clerics,

00:26:56.040 who, you know, can talk on a religious basis with people who have these ideas to say that they're

00:27:00.840 not sanctioned by Islam. That's one approach. And I think an even more effective approach is 0.72

00:27:06.520 former jihadists who went down this road, who've essentially, you know, rejected this,

00:27:12.360 can also be helpful, because that's more of a peer-to-peer kind of conversation. But, you know,

00:27:19.560 sometimes these interventions don't work. There was a woman called Shannon Connolly, who's an American

00:27:23.400 citizen from Colorado. She was 19, she tried to join ISIS, the FBI talked to her four times,

00:27:30.280 and, you know, suggested if you really want to do something for Syria, don't join ISIS,

00:27:33.800 help out a Syrian charity, which was very good advice. She ignored it and tried to get on a plane 1.00

00:27:38.920 to fly to Syria and was arrested. So the interventions can sometimes not work, but they're

00:27:46.600 certainly worth doing and they don't really cost anything to do. They're just a matter of finding

00:27:51.640 the right interlocutor who can speak with some authority with whoever is radicalizing.

00:27:56.920 A lot of people, when they saw the Taliban forces return just recently in Afghanistan,

00:28:01.800 it's like, wow, what have we been doing for the past 20 years? And I know you write about the

00:28:06.040 argument for the war in Iraq and you document, well, there really was not much of a connection

00:28:10.200 between Saddam and Bin Laden. And Bin Laden actually thought of Saddam as this atheist apostate,

00:28:14.760 so they weren't crazy about each other. Peter, have we just been treading water the past 20 years?

00:28:19.400 I mean, what's going on? We saw ISIS surge, their attacks here in the West, as we've been talking

00:28:24.920 about. So they've certainly got a few notches in their scorecard there. What's, have we made progress?

00:28:31.240 Where do we stand in all of this?

00:28:32.520 Well, I mean, in Afghanistan, I think there has been some progress, which tends to be overlooked.

00:28:37.080 I mean, look, so millions of Afghan women went to work and many millions of Afghan girls were educated

00:28:44.600 and there's a very vibrant independent press, pre-Taliban takeover. There's a high degree of,

00:28:53.160 almost everybody has a smartphone, so people are much more connected to the outside world.

00:28:58.040 It's one of the youngest populations in the world. I think 70% are under the age of 25.

00:29:02.920 Uh, so, you know, they, the society has certainly changed since the Taliban were in, 0.99

00:29:07.960 were in charge, but the Taliban now can have all the weapons and, you know,

00:29:11.560 you would be taking your life in your hands to kind of resist them at this point. And the resistance

00:29:16.760 crumbled pretty quickly. Uh, now the Taliban has, you know, it's armed with U.S. Army,

00:29:23.320 armored vehicles and U.S. mine resistant vehicles. And, you know, they've got some really good

00:29:28.680 material that they've seized as a result of the collapse of the Afghan army. And, uh, so they're

00:29:34.200 in, you know, very good shape militarily. And I don't think there's much that you can do to

00:29:37.800 dislodge them anytime soon, but I think they may, they may make some mistakes, which may change the

00:29:43.160 view of president Biden or his successor, um, about what to do. They can engage in ethnic cleansing,

00:29:49.320 as they did when they were in power. They can kill an American or dual nationals. They can kill 0.99

00:29:54.360 Western allies. Uh, they can carry out a terrorist attack in the West. It's traced back to Afghanistan. 1.00

00:30:00.520 But also these things would change the political calculus here.

00:30:02.920 Uh, we see those famous juxtaposition of images from Iran pre 1979, uh, women in jeans, long flowing 0.64

00:30:10.360 hair, walking down the street, you know, people want to go to the disco or what have you have a

00:30:14.200 beer or two here and there. And then we see the photos right after, and it's, you know, in the

00:30:17.800 full burqa and all that, and those very strict rules in Afghanistan, that it's less clear to me

00:30:23.240 what the kind of direction society would take if people were sort of completely free to choose it.

00:30:29.560 You talked about it being, you know, very tribal region, the Pashtuns and so forth. I mean,

00:30:33.480 what is your sense of, of what the people of Afghanistan want?

00:30:38.120 Well, it's a multi-ethnic society. And, you know, there are people,

00:30:42.440 you know, Kabul in the 1970s had women in, you know, short skirts and, um, yeah, but that, 0.99

00:30:50.040 you know, in the, in the provinces that was not the same at all. So, you know, I think, well,

00:30:55.560 I mean, what left to their own devices, you know, people in the cities would, you know,

00:31:00.520 dress, you know, modestly, but they wouldn't be wearing a burqa or they wouldn't be wearing a 0.97

00:31:05.720 naqab. Um, and the other ethnic groups like the Hazaras, the Tajiks and the Uzbeks mostly 0.99

00:31:13.160 reject all that as well. In the south, in the Pashtun rural areas, you know, that's pretty

00:31:18.200 routine to wear a burqa. So left to their own devices, they would look a lot like they did before 1.00

00:31:23.320 the Taliban took over. Because, you know, for all its faults, the Afghan government was freely

00:31:28.600 elected by the Afghan people. Um, it wasn't a police state, people did what they wanted, essentially.

00:31:33.880 Uh, and in the, in, in rural areas, Pashtun areas that, that they, they adopted those kinds

00:31:41.960 of social kind of customs and in other areas they didn't.

00:31:44.840 Peter, one of your books looking at the war and terror from a number of years ago is called

00:31:49.000 The Longest War. It's interesting that you could call it The Longest War, even when you wrote about

00:31:53.000 it a number of years ago, because it's still ongoing right now. Is this a war

00:31:57.320 that we stand a hope of winning? Yeah, I think win is the wrong verb. I mean, I think that we,

00:32:03.640 the, the win, defeat type things we should talk, I think a more effective verb is manage.

00:32:09.160 Right. You know, it's like a kind of semi-chronic condition, which you can, which you manage,

00:32:14.440 um, and you manage it by, you know, there's a variety of tools that you can manage it with.

00:32:18.920 You know, jihadist ideas, you're not going to get rid of every jihadist in the world.

00:32:23.480 Um, you know, but you can kind of manage the issue so that it's not a threat to your national

00:32:28.440 security. And I think that we, overall, the United States and its allies have done a pretty good job

00:32:33.640 of doing that in the past 20 years. Um, but I, I fear that with the Taliban takeover, we're in for

00:32:39.720 another cycle, um, of, of violence that emanates from this country. Um, it's not existential, uh, but it

00:32:48.600 is something. Right. So it's not existential. So we don't want to, you know,

00:32:53.240 crazy overreact to it and, Oh, let's get another big prolonged ground game going or what have you,

00:32:57.480 but we also don't want to downplay it, deny it, ignore it, or what have you. What advice then

00:33:02.600 would you give to policymakers on how to respond maturely to this evolving situation?

00:33:08.360 Well, presidents as different as president Biden, president Trump, president Obama,

00:33:12.600 and president Bush have all, all embraced, you know, some kind of elements of the same plan

00:33:17.880 with just different degrees of, uh, of how they've approached it. So, you know, the drone strikes,

00:33:23.960 special operations, special forces to advise and assist local forces, cyber warfare, you know,

00:33:30.040 all these are pretty low cost in the grand scheme of things. Um, and they are, I think they're also

00:33:35.400 politically sustainable because they don't involve a lot of American boots or allied boots on the ground.

00:33:40.760 And I, unfortunately, you know, I think that president Biden made an unforced error with

00:33:43.880 his decision on Afghanistan because the 3,500 American troops and the 7,000 NATO, mostly NATO

00:33:50.520 troops that were also there and the contractors, you know, that was enough to kind of keep a fragile

00:33:55.160 status quo, um, going and, um, you know, now the Taliban has taken over. Uh, so I, you know, I mean,

00:34:05.240 I think, I think that the lesson of that is obvious, which is with a relatively small footprint

00:34:12.120 and the right kind of policies, you can have a politically sustainable way to, to counter this.

00:34:18.280 Um, but if you just kind of wash your hands of the situation, it tends to, you know,

00:34:23.400 simply because we decide we, the United States decide that we're not going to be there. It

00:34:26.600 doesn't mean that the war doesn't continue or the situation doesn't get worse. Um, and, um,

00:34:32.440 I think that's where we are today. Peter Bergen's latest book is The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden,

00:34:38.840 a really informative read. I highly recommend it. Peter, thanks very much for joining us today.

00:34:43.000 Peter Bergen Thank you so much.

00:34:46.840 Full Common is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with

00:34:52.120 theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe to Full

00:34:56.840 Common on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can help us by

00:35:01.960 giving us a rating or a review and by telling your friends about us. Thanks for listening.

00:35:05.720 The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden

Full Comment - September 20, 2021

Global terrorism gets a new lease on life in Afghanistan

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