Afghanistan: Endless War?

Panelists look at America's longest war and examine strategies for how to bring it to an end.
Council on Foreign Relations | 12 April 2018
www.cfr.org/event/afghanistan-endless-war

Speakers
Alyssa Ayres - Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations; Author, Our Times Has
Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World
Carlotta Gall - Istanbul Bureau Chief, New York Times
Cameron P. Munter - Chief Executive Officer and President, East-West Institute; Former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan
(2010-2012)

Presider
Barney Rubin -Senior Fellow and Associate Director, Center on International Cooperation, NYU; Former Senior
Adviser to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. Department of State

RUBIN: Good morning. Welcome to this second session
of today’s meeting on—what is it called—the Future of
the Middle East, the Middle East Symposium. I’m Barney
Rubin. You know—you have the names of everyone on
the panel. Before I go—I just wanted to mention that
Alyssa Ayres is currently in the middle of a book tour for
her book, Our Time Has Come. What’s the subtitle?
AYERS: How India is Making its Place in the World.
RUBIN: Yes.
AYERS: Thank you. (Laughter.)
RUBIN: And Carlotta Gall is far from being in the middle
of a book tour but had a book a few years ago which is
still quite relevant to the discussions that we’ll be having
on this panel called, The Wrong Enemy. And what is the
subtitle?
GALL: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014.
RUBIN: Oh, you don’t mention the wrong enemy—or
you don’t mention the right enemy in the title.
GALL: No.
RUBIN: OK. OK. (Laughs.) And Cameron is much too
busy.
MUNTER: Well, no, I just sign too many nondisclosure
agreements. (Laughter.)
RUBIN: That’s true, yeah. OK, so first—in discussing this,
first we all agree that I would make a little comment at
the beginning about the regional framing of this discus-
sion because, as I said, this is a symposium—it’s entitled
Symposium on the Middle East. But we are not talking
about the Middle East. It seems that more accurately it
would be called a Symposium on the CENTCOM area of
operations. And in fact, part of the region that we will be
talking about does not even appear on the map which is
on the back, that is India, because India is not part of the
CENTCOM area of operations. Parts of Afghanistan and
Pakistan are also cut off.
And of course, part of the framing of the way the
United States went into Afghanistan in 2001 had to do
with the Middle East. Namely, the United States was
attacked by an Arab-led organization whose leadership
was in Afghanistan. But in fact, those Arabs left rather
quickly. And we are now in an area that is between
Central Asia, South Asia, has increasing economic links to
China, and is much more—and which terrorism issue is
embedded within a much broader set of geopolitical
considerations that we—that have changed a great deal
since we originally went in. And we have had difficulty
adjusting our framing of the problem to those rapidly
changing situations, in which two big phenomena are the
rapid economic growth of China and India, and their
effect on the surrounding region.
So we discussed—there are a number of issues we
want to get to. But first, the last panel was about Iran. So
I wanted to use that as an entry point and ask Alyssa,
whose work is mainly on India, to start off by comment-
ing on whether the Trump administration’s so-called
South Asia policy for Afghanistan might be on a collision
course with its policy toward Iran.
AYERS: There’s a one-word answer to that, which is yes.
Let me give a 30 second background on what the Trump
South Asia strategy is, because I’m not sure everybody
has tracked this closely. In August of 2017, the president
gave a speech announcing a new strategy for how we
would pursue a success in Afghanistan. One of the things
the president said, that had never really been said as
explicitly at the presidential level before—this had been
said at lower levels of the U.S. government—was that
the United States would look to India for help and would
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welcome further Indian assistance on development and
trade with Afghanistan. And of course, India has been
one of Afghanistan’s largest development partners over
the past decade and a half. It’s the number five bilateral
donor, if you want to rank it that way. So this was not
necessarily a new development, but the fact that the
president said this was a little bit new.
What the president also said was that the United
States would be looking for Pakistan to crackdown fur-
ther on terrorism. We are now seeing the effects of this
strategy being put in place. The administration has now
suspended security assistance to Pakistan, while contin-
uing to encourage deeper Indian economic activity and
support to Afghanistan. Well, how can India do that?
India doesn’t have overland access and supply chains—
supply lines into Afghanistan directly, because Pakistan
does not allow India access to Afghanistan through its
territory. India has developed a relationship—it has had a
long-standing relationship with Iran and has developed a
logistics cooperation agreement with Iran in developing
the Chabahar Port. We don’t have our maps here, but
it’s sort of right on the Persian Gulf.
In any case, the first—
RUBIN: No, it’s not—the whole point is it’s not on the
Persian Gulf.
AYERS: Apologies.
RUBIN: It’s on the Arabian Sea.
AYERS: On the Arabian Sea, sorry. But you can see it on
the map. In any case, the first major wheat shipment has
successfully gone through this Chabahar Port. India is the
country that helped develop the ring road in Afghanistan
that allows overland road links to this port in Iran. So
this really does create an alternative supply link corridor,
an alternative to the supply chain links through Pakistan.
Now, the question you asked was whether we’re on
a collision course with the South Asia strategy and our
Iran strategy. If the JCPOA blows up, there is a big chal-
lenge then with what happens next. If certain forms of
sanctions are imposed, will any logistics or support trav-
eling through Iran be subject to that? I think there are a
lot of questions that suddenly come up from thinking
about what could happen with the U.S.-Iran strategy. And
we’re not often talking as much about how that will
impact what we are seeking to accomplish in Afghanistan.
RUBIN: And of course, right now there’s a major—
there’s an agreement among India, Iran, Afghanistan, and
Japan to enlarge the capacity of the port at Chabahar so
that it can serve this role. And for that, they need to get
tenders from companies and so on, who are reluctant to
put them forward.
Now, of course, the origin of—well, the reason that
the administration is trying to increase the role of Iran in
Afghanistan is partially to enlarge Afghanistan’s freedom
of maneuver with respect to Pakistan, on which it has
been extraordinarily dependent because of its depen-
dence as a landlocked country on the outlet to the Port
of Karachi. And that has created a very complex situation
for the United States and for Afghanistan with respect to
Pakistan.
The title of this panel is The Endless War, which I
guess is challenging us to come up with ways that it might
not be endless. But I wonder if I could turn to the two of
you, both of you have lived in, reported from, done a lot
of work on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cameron, of
course, was the ambassador to Pakistan. To just say a
few words about how the current strategy might affect
Pakistan behavior, what affect that might have on Afghan-
istan. And I’ll just start. I’ll just from—with Carlotta and
then to Cameron.
GALL: I wrote a whole book about how Pakistan was
driving the war in Afghanistan, supporting the Taliban. I
reported that for 10 years and I saw it firsthand. It was
always something that was deniable, but it’s very much
there and it’s still going on. And I am one of the people
who believe that you have to change Pakistan before you
can make peace in Afghanistan. And if you’re going to
make peace with the Taliban, you actually have to make
peace with Pakistan first. So it’s critical to the future of
Afghanistan.
They’re still supporting and driving the war. They’re
still providing safe haven to the Taliban. And what we’ve
seen in the last few years is they’re pushing to the north
using the ethnic minorities, who’ve always been tradi--
tionally in Iran’s field of relations rather than Pakistan.
Pakistan has been encouraging links and commanders—
Taliban commanders in the north to be more and more
active. So that is—if anything, it shows Pakistan is not
giving up. It’s actually accelerating its commitment to a
Taliban victory in Afghanistan.
So I think you have to—you have to, I think, con-
tinue what is—what is going on, supporting the Afghan
government. But you have to address Pakistan’s aims for
the region. And I think you have to tackle the problem of
the military control of foreign policy and security policy
in Pakistan. There’s a civilian government, but the military
calls the shots. So you have to address Pakistan which, as
Cameron knows, is a much bigger country than Afghani-
stan in population and size, and much more problematic.
It has nuclear weapons and so on.
I might hand it over to you.
RUBIN: Well, let me just—Carlotta, you mentioned
the—of course, the relationship of the internal politics of
Pakistan to its foreign policy, in particular the military—
the military control of security policy. I just wanted to
note here that we were discussing before, there’s a very
important movement in Pakistan that has just started,
that hasn’t gotten much attention here, the so-called
PTM, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, which is a grass-
roots—some people call it the Pashtun spring—a non-
violent movement of Pashtuns against the military
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domination of their area. Now, I don’t—let’s not—I
hope we’ll have time to get back to that later. But first—
GALL: OK.
MUNTER: Yeah. Let’s turn to that then, because I think
it’s an important part of what I’ll lead to. Carlotta will be
surprised when I say I agree with everything she says.
We have not always agreed on everything in the past.
But it is true, A, that without some sort of better under-
standing of Pakistan, you’re not going to get past the
impasse—which, I suppose, might be bearable for a long
time—that we have in Afghanistan. So two quick points.
One is, because we have chosen—and looking less at the
internal dynamics and more at the American policy and
approach. Because we’ve chosen to see Pakistan through
the lens of the counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan, it
has made us look, rightly, at Pakistan’s bad behavior,
especially in the tribal areas, the bad behavior of the ISI.
Those of you who have read Steve Coll’s new book will
read this in exhaustive detail. And it’s very well-docu-
mented.
But what that’s done is it’s distorted, I believe for
America, the ability to try to do what I think Carlotta—I
assume, Carlotta and certainly I would call for, which is a
broader aperture, a broader understanding of Pakistan
and what is possible in Pakistan, and how to encourage
change there. And rather, it’s been much more tactical,
how do we try to cut off those people who are trying to
attack, say, American or NATO troops in Afghanistan?
Once you get to that tactical level, once the main link of
American commitment, say, to Afghanistan is defined in,
I’ll use the term, military terms—tactical, military terms,
it becomes much more difficult to engage. People like
Richard Holbrooke—Barney worked for Richard, et
cetera—tried, and for a lot of reasons, with mixed suc-
cess, to have more of a holistic approach to Pakistan.
And I think when we hear about the democracy move-
ments there, the Pashtun movement, there may be other
ways of going about it.
So first, the cry by the president, you know, to say
we are so frustrated we’re going to cut off aid to Paki-
stan, is probably not wrong. But one would like to see
the second half of this, rather than policy by frustration,
you’d like to say therefor we’re going to commit our-
selves to understanding why it is that these people have
been so difficult, why it is that we failed every time, and
through ups and downs, since 1948, that we’ve had these
narratives that have been dysfunctional with Pakistan.
Not to give up on that and simply walk away and say
we’re going to cut off assistance, because then you’re not
going to get to the solution. You do have to approach
Pakistan.
The second point that I would add is that you don’t
do this without having some sort of attention to China.
And China is now seen rightly, to an extent, by some
Pakistanis as the focus of how they might—they being
both the civilian government, the business community,
and the military in Pakistan—how they might move
forward, having not been able to address some of the
more fundamental reforms, whether it’s fiscal reform or
land reform or other kinds of issues that might make
Pakistan a more vibrant country that has more ties and
attractiveness to its Indian neighbors, et cetera. They
haven’t done that.
They’re now looking to China, and the Chinese
investment in the Chinese-Pakistan economic corridor as
a possible way of getting ahead. Whether or not that’s
possible, I would imagine—again, from an American poli-
cy point of view—it would be wise to get out of the rut
of a bilateral relationship with Pakistan, how do we deal
with Pakistan, or Pakistan seen merely through the coun-
terterrorism lens from Afghanistan, and try to mix it into
the discussion with have with the Chinese about whether
there is a strategic vision that American and China,
believe it or not, might share in the region, that could
then have a salutary effect on reform in Pakistan as well.
RUBIN: Well, thanks. Thank you for bringing up China.
As I mentioned, the growth of China and also of India in
the past 15 years, since we’ve been there, has really
changed the strategic environments in ways we have not
fully taken into account, in particular in our relations with
Pakistan, as you—I agree with you, we cannot deal with
Pakistan solely bilaterally, as if we were Pakistan’s most
important partner, which we very well may not be any-
more. You mentioned possible convergence of interest
being U.S. and China. However, the administration has
also developed another—a concept which I do not claim
to fully understand, but the concept of the Indo-Pacific,
which is related to its South Asia policy in Afghanistan.
And I wonder, Alyssa, if you could a little bit about
how India sees the changing environment, the role of
China. India and China, according to their officials—for
instance, after the strategic dialogue last year said there
was remarkable convergence on certain issues between
India and China on Afghanistan. What’s the balance
between some common interests and competition in
China-India relations, with respect to Afghanistan?
AYERS: I think there’s quite a bit of both competition as
well as areas of cooperation. The cooperation tends to
be more in a multilateral space. The competition tends to
be when you look at some of the security questions. The
Indo-Pacific concept is still, I think, being formulated. The
most detailed description we have had about this frame-
work for thinking about the region was perhaps one of
his only foreign policy speeches, a speech that former
Secretary of State Tillerson delivered last November, I
think it was, in D.C.
RUBIN: He was not former secretary of state at the
time.
AYERS: At the time. (Laughter.) At the time he was the
secretary of state. And he gave this speech, which I found
fascinating. He gave a speech that really detailed the
importance of partnering more deeply with India in this
 4
larger space and thinking of this larger geography. When
you talk about the Indo-Pacific, it really puts the focus on
the maritime space as opposed to thinking about just the
Asia-Pacific, or as opposed to thinking about just the
Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean region. That kind of
suggests there’s two pieces quashed together. But when
you talk about an Indo-Pacific, which is a term that the
Japanese use, the Australians use, this term is in use in
India as well, when you talk about an Indo-Pacific, it kind
of unites a much larger geographic framework. So I think
that was the idea.
The Tillerson speech spoke quite a bit about China’s
Belt and Road investments, and that India and the United
States needed to work together more deeply to develop
alternative financing, alternative types of investment
structures that would be transparent and that wouldn’t
lead necessarily to debt traps or, what he called in his
speech, predatory economics. So I think that gives sort of
one hook for what we think the administration will be
further developing with this. Now, of course, the issue
with China and its investments in Pakistan now, with the
China-Pakistan economic corridor, this is now, I think,
declared a $62 billion set of investments. I’m not sure if
all materialize but, hey, if half materialize this is a huge
amount of infrastructure investment. It’s also not clear
when some of those loans become due, what that will
mean for Pakistan’s solvency, what that will mean for
larger questions along these lines. So these are the kinds
of issues that I imagine are a part of the Indo-Pacific
framework, should it become more fully developed. But
we haven’t heard yet that much about what else the
Indo-Pacific is supposed to do and supposed to
encompass.
RUBIN: Right. Well, of course, the Chinese Belt and
Road initiative is in many respects similar, even in
nomenclature, to the New Silk Road policy that we had
declared when Cameron and I were in the government,
which was an attempt to strengthen Afghanistan econo-
mically through regional connectivity. The difference is,
we didn’t put any money behind it, and the Chinese are
putting tens of billions of dollars behind it. And if we
don’t—I’ll just comment—if we don’t put money behind
this Indo-Pacific concept, it will go the way of the New
Silk Road.
AYERS: Same story.
RUBIN: Yes. Now, one point—you know, again, the
panel is titled Endless War, as if we were going to talk
about a political settlement of the war or a military
victory or how to end it. It may seem that we’re not
talking about that, but actually we are because the war in
Afghanistan is not only—or perhaps not even mainly a
fight between the Afghan government and the Taliban,
neither of which could finance or organize a war without
tremendous external support. And part of the difficulty
of ending a war there is the large number of external
actors and multiple interests that are involved. And
we’ve brought in, as we discussed, China, India, the
United States, Iran, haven’t mentioned Russia yet, which
is, again, asserting itself more.
Another problem—another challenge, let’s put it, is
that aside the multiplicity of actors, we, the United
States, have a multiplicity of goals. And in particular, the
original strategic reason for increasing our involvement in
Afghanistan from $100 million of humanitarian assistance
to $100 billion a year of military operations and state
building, was counterterrorism. At the same time, there’s
always a tension between—or, there can be a tension
between the counterterrorism objectives and larger dip-
lomatic goals, or diplomatic, economic, geoeconomic
goals, which as you see can be quite complex in this
region. I wanted to ask both the two of you, in particular,
with your experience in Pakistan. But let me start with
Cameron. In your experience as ambassador and else-
where, how successful have we been in embedding coun-
terterrorism policy within a larger strategic framework?
MUNTER: Not very, I don’t think. We’ve tried to have
our efforts to get Pakistan—there are words that people
use such as change their calculus, make them act differ-
ently. But we’ve done it in such a way that we’ve tried to
put it on the context of change their calculus, so they will
fight the people we want them to fight. If, I would argue,
you want to get a very troubled and difficult country to
do that, you have to spend an enormous amount of time
trying to figure out what the goals of that country are.
And I’m not sure we’ve done a great job of that. Now,
that may sound a little bit touchy-feely. Five years, 10
years-worth of, you know, sitting down and figuring out
what the different groups are.
Are there, for example, divisions within the Pakistani
military between the traditionalists who seen India as the
existential threat, and those in the officer corps who may
have a better understanding of the threat that jihadis
pose to the secular state? Or is there hope for the civil-
ian leadership in Pakistan to pay taxes? I mean, an idea
that if I ever do write a book I want to put in is that basi-
cally Pakistan what happens when the Confederates win
the Civil War. Pakistan is a country that splits off from
another country, has a slave-based cotton economy, and
has a military cast that runs things.
So, you know, are there in this caricature, the socio-
logy of Pakistan, are there people with whom you can
work to try to reach America’s stated goals of peace,
prosperity, et cetera? I don’t think we ever made the
effort to articulate what those broader goals were. But
rather, we were led by our need to fight a counterter-
rorism fight and were unable to do so. One of the nice
things that may be happening now is with Pakistan fatigue
in Washington, it may take a little bit of the spotlight off
of the region and allow people to come up with longer-
term, more deeper efforts to try to understand both the
long-term interests of the United States based on what’s
possible in countries like Pakistan, and in addition Afghan-
istan.
 5
RUBIN: Carlotta, let me—I’ll ask you to comment on
that too. But in particular, maybe you can comment on
that counterterrorism itself is multidimensional, because
the boundaries between terrorism and other types of
violent activity are not clear, and there are many differ-
ent groups with differing goals. In fact, one of the chal-
lenges we have had in Pakistan is that the Pakistani state,
the ISI in particular, does have an active and sometimes
effective counterterrorism wing, as well as having an
active and sometimes effective pro-terrorism wing, which
is Directorate S, the title of Steve’s book. And there are
different parts of our intelligence agencies, depending on
whom they count on for—depending on what their tasks
are, therefore, in my experience, have different—very
different attitudes toward their Pakistani counterparts. I
wonder if you could comment on the contradictions of
counterterrorism in Pakistan.
GALL: Yeah. Well, they’re divided. And one thing that
came—I came across last year, I was in Afghanistan
researching the drone strike that killed the leader of the
Taliban, Akhtar Sheikh Mansour. And he—apparently at
his funeral in Quetta, in Pakistan, a group of bearded
men, clearly Pakistani special forces, turned up in tears,
gave a lot of money, and expressed great condolences.
And suggested that apparently there had been a betrayal.
It’s—
RUBIN: You mean by Pakistan.
GALL: By Pakistan. So it suggests that within the Pakistani
counterterrorism operations, there are pro-U.S. groups
that are trying to ring down people like the head of the
Taliban, but also a strong element who are very suppor-
tive and working with the Taliban. It’s just one of the
many stories you come across that you can’t indepen-
dently verify, but I think give you a glimpse of the divi-
sions. And Steve Coll looks at this in his recent book,
that the American effort to work with the Pakistanis was
partly to be able to find people who are sympathetic to
American’s counterterrorism aims, while fully well know-
ing that the Pakistani main drift of the Directorate S,
which was the Afghan arm of their intelligence service,
was supporting the Taliban, and working against Ameri-
ca’s interests in Afghanistan.
So they are very divided. And that’s been clear to a
lot of us. The other thing that’s very clear, which all
Pakistanis in the region and Afghans will tell you, is the
Pakistanis use a good Taliban and a bad Taliban descrip-
tion for the people that they support and the people that
they’re fighting. So that the bad Taliban are the ones that
fight against the Pakistani state. The good Taliban are the
ones that Pakistan supports to go and fight in Afghanistan
against American and Afghan forces, and the international
community. That still remains very much a division.
And what’s most interesting is this Pashtun move-
ment we heard about—we talked about a little earlier.
It’s a grassroots, peaceful, local uprising, led by some
students. It’s growing in force. It’s bringing in huge rallies
of thousands—tens of thousands of people everywhere
they’re going. It’s been going since January. It really is a
Pashtun awakening moment, or an uprising. It’s peaceful.
It’s constitutional. But they’re asking for their human
rights. They’re asking for detained people to be released.
They’re asking for land mines to be raised, and so on.
But one thing they’re also very strong on is an end
to the Pakistani military campaign of supporting good
Taliban and fighting bad Taliban, because they’re saying
that the Pashtun public are getting killed in this very, very
dirty war. And the stories that are coming out in this
movement are phenomenal, and things that I didn’t even
know, where people are talking about the torture, the
detentions, the disappearances of their people, led by the
military. But they’re very strong on we’ve got to end
support of the—of the Taliban who are fighting in
Afghanistan.
So it’s a fascinating moment. I think it’s a moment for
the international community to show support to the
Pashtun people, because it’s a peaceful democratic move-
ment. And I think it’s the one chink that, perhaps, could
start a shift in the Pakistani military attitude to their own
people that they’ve been using and abusing for so long.
RUBIN: Well, if I—we’ll turn to questions first. But I—of
course, the panel is supposed to be about Afghanistan.
And I purposely broadened the aperture to talk about
the region so that—to appreciate the context. But we
should say a few words about Afghanistan itself before
turning to the questions, which I expect to be about
Afghanistan.
So let me—I guess I should ask Carlotta this,
because you were the New York Times correspondent
in Afghanistan for many years. And I often had lunch at
your house at that time. (Laughter.) How do you—how
do you evaluate—there are very radical different evalua-
tions of the internal situation in Afghanistan. On the one
hand, there is the narrative of tremendous progress. And
on the other hand, there is the narrative of we’ve accom-
plished nothing. There’s a narrative of national unity and
there’s a narrative of the national—you know, divisions
in the National Unity Government, ethnic conflict, and so
on. Could you—I know we don’t have very much time,
but could you just say a few words about that? Maybe if
the other two of you want to comment on it, then we’ll
do that and then we’ll turn to questions.
GALL: It’s a very rough time. But I remember after 9/11
talking to—way back in 2001 or ’2—saying I felt that the
American intervention was the best thing that had hap-
pened in Afghanistan in the 20 years then that I’d been
following. And I still believe that. I think, you know, the
Taliban was a terrible time. The Russian invasion, which I
covered as a student, was the most appalling scorched-
earth campaign. The rise of militancy in the 1990s and
the civil war was also dreadful. And so I still think that
the American intervention has been good for Afghani-
stan. It’s been—it’s been bloody. It’s been very tough.
But it has given them a chance. And a lot of them are
 6
embracing that chance. A lot of them—you know, kids
who are just coming out of school, who joined us and
have now got degrees, who are independent journalists
who are going on to take Ph.D.’s, I mean it’s just pheno-
menal to see that—the opportunity that’s been offered
to a lot of Afghans. And they’re grabbing it and they’re
taking it further.
I think since 2014, with the drawdown of troops, it’s
been very shaky. The divisions politically are very difficult.
Dr. Abdullah, who’s the CEO or the so-called prime
minister, who has to—who had to share power with
Ashraf Ghani, the president, he’s—it’s interesting, he
worked throughout the jihad against the Russians, against
the Taliban. He says that this period of sharing power has
been the hardest of his life. So, you know, sharing power
in Afghanistan is very difficult. (Laughs.) They’ve had a
tremendous attack from the Pakistani-led Taliban the last
few years. You’ve probably seen in the news the dreadful
bombings in Kabul. But they’re holding the line, I feel.
And I think they can. I think it’s going to continue to
be incredibly difficult. There’s a lot of Afghans who are
leaving the country. They’re voting with their feet. But I
think they can—they do have a vision. They do have a
future. They do want a normal life. And interestingly, the
Pashtuns in the south, in Helmand, one of the worst
provinces, have started a peaceful movement matching
the Pakistani movement. That’s an amazing sign, because
that’s a sign that they’re rejecting the Taliban and vio-
lence, and they want peaceful, you know, democratic
progress. So I’m still very hopeful, but I think it’s still very
tough. Afghanistan is incredibly tough. It’s a cruel place.
It’s—but I think it’s worth sticking with because the
alternative is unconscionable. And I think I see that
enough Afghans are embracing a better way. And I think
that’s the future.
RUBIN: OK. Cameron.
MUNTER: And just I would hope that if that is true—and
I think Carlotta knows this a lot better than a lot of us
who have not been—I’ve not been in Afghanistan in the
last four or five years. It would be a shame if that pat-
tern—let’s say it’s a kind of stasis or whatever that is—if
that weren’t matched by another effort to try to get at
the Pakistan issue, so that the hold—if you hold the line
in Afghanistan, you might come to a broader answer to
bigger questions. But simply to turn your back on
Pakistan and hold the line, to me seems to be sterile.
AYERS: Thirty seconds. I’m very worried that if we over-
militarize what we think the challenge is in Afghanistan,
we will lose the opportunity to have a much more invig-
orated and active diplomatic strategy. I don’t know what
our diplomatic strategy is today. I haven’t heard that arti-
culated from the administration. I learned from you that
the Istanbul process is now meeting once a year, instead
of its earlier more highly active level of engagement with
many countries, different working groups, a lot of
engagement. We need to have some way that our diplo-
macy takes the foreground, and the military aspect is
there to try to provide a stable environment for a diplo-
matic strategy.
RUBIN: Well, thank you. I won’t—it’s a ministerial once
a year. There are other meetings.
AYERS: OK. (Laughter.)
RUBIN: But first, it’s time. Let me invite members to join
the conversation by asking questions. Here are the usual
instructions. Well, in this case, reminder that this meet-
ing is on the record, and I presume it’s being webcast as
well—or, at least, it will be recorded for the website. I
will call on you. Then wait for the microphone. Speak
directly into it. Very important: Stand, state your name
and affiliation, and then ask a concise question. And of
course, I would encourage you to ask questions on all
the subjects that you probably expected to hear about,
like prospects of a political settlement in Afghanistan,
whether we should stay there or not, and so on. So,
please.
Yes, in the rear. Craig.
Q: Craig Charney, Charney Research.
Thanks, Barney. There are a couple of things I’m curious
about. One is this: China has recently proposed extend-
ing the China-Pakistan economic core to Afghanistan.
Does this offer some prospects, perhaps, of laying the
economic foundations for peace? On the more pessimis-
tic side—this is for Carlotta—there’s long been a faction
of the Pakistan military aligned with the jihadis which has
tried to be—act as a spoiler whenever there’s a move
for peace, most notably, for example, with the Mumbai
attack and the assassinations—assassination of Benazir
Bhutto and many others. Do they not have an effective
veto over moves away from the jihadi nexus?
RUBIN: Well, that was two questions.
Q: It was. (Laughter.)
RUBIN: Well, Cameron, do you want to talk about the
one?
MUNTER: Just very briefly on the first one. The answer
is yes. I think that if China is not only seeing this as a
technical move to expand the Belt and Road initiative,
but also engages and can, we’d like to think, like-minded
people like the Americans into a diplomatic solution, that
might be the basis of what I think Alyssa’s calling for.
That is, very concrete notions how you link Afghanistan
and Pakistan, and the diplomatic framework that might be
necessary for us. So I can say: Go for it. And I hope that
the Americans can be supportive. And Americans and
other friends of Afghanistan and Pakistan can be sup-
portive.
 7
RUBIN: I’d just say a word about that, and then come
back to you, Carlotta, about the spoiler question. The
problem of peace and stability in Afghanistan has many
different aspects. Part of it, which is the one we focus on
the most, is trying to end the fighting in the short run,
get to a ceasefire and so on, which is complex enough.
But that involves Pakistan, the Taliban, Afghan govern-
ment, the United States. But another equally if not more
difficult problem would be sustaining and implementing
any such agreement in a country with such a high level of
poverty and external dependence. And it’s—China has
been trying to use its influence to influence the former,
but in particular the investments that China and India
may be making in the region will be absolutely necessary
for sustaining any peace process in Afghanistan—which is
going to be a long process.
Now, yes.
GALL: In very short, yes. I think the Pakistani military is
well-capable of pushing back and of stopping any move-
ment. I’m sort of waiting for them to start assassinating
people on this Pashtun movement or at least divide it.
They’re brilliant at that. They’ve interfered in every
political—every election that I’ve followed. And now
they openly admit to that. Musharraf admitted to effect-
ing—you know, controlling the elections when he was in
power. So I think that’s evident—self-evident. What
happens, though, eventually in some countries is they do
get rid of their military. So that’s what I think is inevitable
as Pakistan progresses and develops and wants more
economic decisions. And so I think it’s coming, but I
don’t think it’ll be easy and don’t think it’ll be swift.
RUBIN: OK. Yes, Pat.
Q: Pat Rosenfield, the Rockefeller Archive Center.
I would like to pick up on Ambassador Munter’s point
about touchy-feely issues, because what’s really refresh--
ing about this excellent panel is the willingness to talk
about a few touchy-feely issues, such as grassroots
movements. And I wanted to ask about the strength of
the NGO communities, which have been so strong in
Afghanistan, and we know is strong in India and Pakistan,
and the role that they will pay as a coordinated peace
movement in the region. Not just an Arab Spring, but
really in terms of development and sustainable develop-
ment, sustaining any peace initiatives but also prompting
them. And they’re also linked with U.S. NGOs and global
NGOs. So I’m just wondering to hear a little bit more
about what might be the third force movement for peace
in this region.
GALL: I would say 100 percent the NGOs are important.
And you just have to look at the Cabinet in Afghanistan
to realize that many of the best ministers came up
through the NGO community. And right from way back
when they were just refugees in Pakistan or wherever.
So critically important. But actually, I also have a personal
connection here. My sister is an NGO worker and my
brother-in-law, in Afghanistan. And they have been telling
me recently how difficult it is. It’s now so dangerous in
Kabul to drive around. It’s increasingly difficult for NGOs
to work in the provinces, because the Taliban is there
but also very ruthless ISIS elements and so on. We’ve
seen even the International Red Cross having an assassin-
ation in one of their own centers in Mazar-e-Sharif. So
they may begin to pull out. So it’s actually a very difficult
time, but I would say it’s proof that NGOs are critically
important to the development of the country and we
should still keep supporting them or helping them do
their work because I think they’re a vital element of
the—of the country.
RUBIN: Yeah, Cameron.
MUNTER: For those—for those who know Anatol
Lieven’s book from 2010 called “Pakistan: A Hard
Country,” it’s got the theme basically that, you know,
you have a very weak government and a very strong
society, and by strong society it’s not necessarily a nice
society in all cases but it’s a strong set of—a web of
relationships, some of which are the nonprofit sector,
some of which are religious, some of which are ethnic,
but that keep things going.
I would argue that in the fashioning of a new diplo-
matic approach that we might be wise, a country that has
our own very strong notions of civil society, to play that
card a little more actively rather than just having, you
know, as they—you know, Clemenceau said, you know,
war is too important to be left to the generals.
So I would say, as a recovering diplomat, diplomacy
is too important to be left to the diplomats, right—that
the diplomats ought to be even more those people in
business, those people at universities, those people in
NGOs. A link of the United States engagement and part
of a broader policy ought to have an element of that, and
I think that’s what you're hinting at. It’s certainly what I
think Carlotta believes in, too.
RUBIN: For the sake of transparency, I should mention
that since Cameron and I have left government we have
both been engaged in that nongovernmental diplomatic
activity. So this could be seen as a fundraising pitch.
(Laughter.) But Alyssa, do you want to add anything to
that?
AYRES: No.
RUBIN: OK. Yes. Yes, sir. There.
Q: Steven Brackman (sp) of Bank of America and Merrill
Lynch.
I want to ask you a bit more about the Indo-Pacific eco-
nomic motives for China to be involved there. If they
have loans that go for 16 percent or even more, it may
 8
never be paid back by some countries. What is the long-
term vision that China has for the Indo-Pacific, also spe-
cifically for Afghanistan and Pakistan? What does it look
like, say, 25 years from now when some of those loans
are not paid back? Thank you.
RUBIN: Thank you. Well, first, just to clarify, Indo-Pacific
is an American term which China has not adopted, and
perhaps I will just say one thing because I actually discuss-
ed this question of loans not being paid back with the
Chinese. I’m trying to remember if this is one of the
meetings where you were present or not, Cam.
At any rate, the Chinese do not know that the loans
are not going to be paid back and they—however, they
prefer to keep Pakistan in a state of dependency by being
in debt to them than to simply write them off or treat
them as grants. So they feel that it gives them more
influence to have—to still have those loans on the books.
But I wonder if you wanted to comment on any of that.
Do you want to say anything about the Indo-Pacific or—
MUNTER: And only that Sri Lanka is held up as the—
AYRES: Yeah.
MUNTER: —as the example that people use that you
could have the kind of repo man problem of China giving
these loans and the inability of these countries with their
weak fiscal structures to pay them back. Yeah, it’s a real
danger. But, Barney, I’ve actually never heard the Chinese
say what they apparently told you.
AYRES: The Sri Lanka example—the outcome of Sri
Lanka’s inability to meet their interest payments on the
loans to build the port at Hambantota—the result of this
was that essentially they have traded off this debt to
the—to the Chinese for the Chinese to have an equity
stake in the management of that port now for the next
99 years.
So many people look at this and say, well, what is the
gambit here—is this a kind of way to eventually be able
to negotiate greater equity outposts across this kind of
larger maritime space. I don't know what will happen in
Pakistan. Pakistan is a long-standing friend and partner of
China. So this relationship, in a sense, you could almost
argue that it predated or was an initial test case of the
Belt and Road—I mean, the Karakoram Highway, as an
example.
So I don’t exactly know what the final strategy is for
the Chinese with the China-Pakistan economic corridor
other than to say that I think they see that as potentially
another means through which they could better link their
own western provinces to ocean access. It would require
some more difficult overland logistics. But that is some-
thing that we have heard is a priority for them.
RUBIN: Masuda.
Q: Masuda Sultan, Insight Group.
Given that I have the opportunity to ask the experts on
Afghanistan who are up there, the Taliban recently
published an open letter to the American people, which
I’m sure you all know about. My Afghan friends always
say that Pakistan essentially controls the Taliban, which at
this point, if they’re asking to speak to the U.S. directly,
what impediments do you see to that and why isn’t that
happening, or is it happening?
RUBIN: Well, I just—
GALL: It’s for you. Yeah.
RUBIN: I can answer that question. Well, not only did
the Taliban write an open letter to the American people
but, as you may know, I answered it, and I wrote an open
letter to the Taliban as well in response, and then they
responded to that.
The question of—here’s how I evaluate the relation-
ship between Pakistan and the Taliban. Pakistan does not
control the Taliban, you know, like a robot or something,
and if you look at Pakistan, they have very little control
over a lot of things in Pakistan, including Pakistanis, let
alone Afghans.
But what they can do is they can—they can stop the
Afghan Taliban from doing things that they believe to be
against the interests of Pakistan. OK. So the way one
Taliban interlocutor described it, not to me but to an
Afghan government interlocutor, is he said the Pakistanis
have us in a box. As long as we stay in the box we can do
whatever we want. But the moment we get out of the
box, then they arrest or kill us.
Now, so they can write that letter. It doesn’t have to
be dictated to them by, you know, the ISI and, in fact,
you know, this phenomenon of the younger generation in
Afghanistan is not limited to the government side. You
also find this younger generation on the Taliban side—
people who are more educated, media savvy, and so on.
The difficulty is if you engage—when you engage with
them, can they actually implement something if Pakistan
doesn’t want them to do it, and the answer is probably
no.
So it’s a—on the other hand, Pakistan can’t make
them do something that they really don’t want to do so
it’s—which makes it a very complex problem. As far as
your question about the obstacle to—there’s an obstacle
now about the modalities—the involvement with the
United States and Afghan government in the negotiations.
That was your question. The Afghan government-U.S.
position is Taliban should talk to the Afghan government.
The Taliban position is they want to talk to the United
States.
Well, this is—this is a standard problem in every
case of an insurgency and with international powers
involved. It was the same, you know—and there are
certain standard ways of solving it if you want to solve it.
That is, you have everybody in the room at the same
time. You don’t put labels. You know, you have a media-
 9
tor go around and get people’s ideas until they find a way
around it.
On the other hand, if you don’t really want to solve
it, there’s no way to do it. So, I mean, at this point, I’m
not sure that there is sufficient will or commitment on
anyone’s part except possibly the Afghan government, I
would say—but they don’t have the capacity to solve this
by themselves—to overcome these obstacles. I can see a
way to do it. But, on the other hand, all we would be
talking about is having a first meeting, which is a long way
from ending this endless war.
Yes.
Q: Ara Karavori (ph), U.S. Central Command.
I’d like to ask the panel if you could comment on the
opportunity both in the security sector and the econo-
mic sector for the Central Asian states in their role in
Afghanistan.
RUBIN: That's a very good question. I’m not sure we
have exactly the right panel to answer it but—(laughter).
AYRES: I haven’t worked on this.
RUBIN: Well, I can say a few words on it. First, just to
put it, the general framework is Afghanistan is a landlock-
ed country. To get there, you have to go through Paki-
stan, Iran, or Central Asia. To get to Central Asia, you
have to go through Russia or China. OK. Now, the bor-
der with Central Asia was closed during the Soviet—was
closed during the Soviet period, at least in one direction.
At this point, there’s a very major change going on in
Central Asia right now, which I’m sure you are aware
of—I’ll just mention it for others—which is the change of
leadership in Uzbekistan has led to a very rapid reorien-
tation of Uzbekistan’s foreign and security policy, which
is extremely important because Uzbekistan was develop-
ed as the logistical node of Central Asia under the Soviet
Union and that hardware is still in place.
The logistical links between Central Asia and Afghan-
istan primarily run through Uzbekistan. The railroad that
China has started from the Pacific Coast through Central
Asia with a branch line down to northern Afghanistan
runs through Uzbekistan because that’s where the rail-
head is. So the economic potential is very strong and
because, I would say, the political inhibitions and down-
sides of dealing with Central Asia are less than dealing
with Iran or Pakistan, the Afghan government is actively
trying to open those.
However, it doesn’t present as much of an oppor-
tunity for the United States because we can’t get to
Central Asia except through Russia. In 2011, when
Pakistan suspended our land transit because of various
incidents that occurred, including the capture—the killing
of Osama bin Laden—that we managed to supply our
forces, one, through the air routes but also through the
development of the Northern Distribution Network.
But that relied on Russian railroads, which we have
now put under sanctions—not just Russia generally but
the Russian railroads that we used for that network. I’m
not saying the sanctions are wrong. There are very good
reasons for doing that. But it means that we—it would
be impossible for us to use them in the same way.
So it’s hard for—to use Central Asia—to some
extent now they’re talking about going through the
Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan, and so on. That’s a route which
is potentially there, but I think the logistics of it are
extremely underdeveloped at this time. But I know that
there’s a lot of interest and excitement in Afghanistan
about the new possibilities in Central Asia, in particular
because of the changes in Uzbekistan.
MUNTER: One comment on that. If, in fact, we imagine
that things don’t change, that Afghanistan remains stable
but that proper reforms are not carried out, it’s probably
not realistic to think that the Belt and Road Initiative
won’t have enormous impact on Central Asia.
So at the very least, even if there’s not an active
today/tomorrow impact from Central Asia or role for
Central Asia, the changing background in Central Asia
would mean that a not frozen but a kind of a stable stasis
in Afghanistan would in 10 years, 15 years be affected by
what the Chinese are going to do in Central Asia. So
those of you in CENTCOM, I hope you keep your eye
on it.
RUBIN: If I may permit myself one other remark, also I
want to mention—say just a word about the Russian
aspect. I’ve been involved in a number of track IIs with
Russians recently as well as years with Chinese and
Iranians and others about Afghanistan. Russian interest in
Afghanistan is focused on northern Afghanistan and the
border with Central Asia.
They now cite the return of Islamic State fighters of
Central Asian origin from Syria to northern Afghanistan
or from Pakistan to northern Afghanistan as a major
security threat that we are not adequately dealing with,
that the government of Afghanistan cannot deal with, and
they even accuse us, rather bizarrely, of supporting some
of these Islamic State groups, although recently we killed
the leadership of the group that we were supposedly
supporting.
But, however, but Russia has become much more
active and in part is trying to use that, the alleged threat
of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, to persuade the
Central Asian states to renew their security relations
with Russia as well. That’s just a very—a big headline
about another complex part of this game.
GALL: I think—I think there is some militant activity,
though, up there.
RUBIN: Oh, yeah.
GALL: It’s always played down and I think it’s actually
very serious, and you see the madrassas in Pakistan are
 10
still full of people from Central Asia and from northern
Afghanistan and they’re trained up, they’re sent back, and
they become very active. And so there’s definitely still an
Islamist agenda to expand into Central Asia, and China,
of course, has got its own problem in Xinjiang in the
western—and those people were trained in Pakistan.
So it’s actually still a place of foment and the Afghan
Taliban that I’ve talked to always talk about the mineral
deposits, which they know China is interested in, whe-
ther it’s the copper in Afghanistan or the various mines
in Central Asia, and they have an aim on it as well. And it
might be all talk, but I think it’s definitely from all sides
seen as an area of potential interest and expansion. So I
think you’re going to see it heating up in the next decade
or so, definitely.
RUBIN: Mmm hmm. Yes, please.
Q: Dick McCormack, CSIS.
There have been media reports that the Russians are
actually providing military support weapons to the
Taliban. Are these reports accurate?
RUBIN: Well, I think you should address your question
to the representatives of CENTCOM. (Laughter.) Would
be in a better position to answer it except that they
can’t.
GALL: We think it is true. I mean, there are reporters
who’ve actually had Taliban admit to it. The military, in
fact, in Afghanistan when you ask them they say—they
fudge it. But off the record, they’ll admit that it is going
on, and it’s exactly as Barney said. It’s the Russians saying,
we’ve got to support the Taliban to fight ISIS, and ISIS is
up there but it’s not really a huge operation. So it’s seen
as Russia’s attempt to disrupt or engage the Taliban just
to have a stake or, you know, a gang in the fight.
But they—I think they are helping and we—I
uncovered, as well, Russia was helping through Iran in
western Afghanistan, having growing relations with the
Taliban. So I think it is happening. You have to talk to
Russia to actually know why.
RUBIN: Well, I have talked to Russia and they say it’s all
nonsense. But let me just—just to clarify, sometimes it is
summarized as Russia is supporting the Taliban. That
gives a false impression, to quote Oscar Wilde about
pretending to be a dentist when you aren’t one. Russia is
not supporting—Russia and Iran may be providing some
assistance to the Taliban. They’re not supporting the
Taliban against the Afghan government because they
want them to replace the Afghan government.
They do not. They are giving some tactical assistance
to Taliban and other commanders in certain regions of
the country, one, they say, because of their border
security. An interesting statement I had from one Russian
who’s close to—is involved with the military is that they
do have relations with—direct relations with command-
ers in northern Afghanistan. But they say they’re not
Taliban, they’re warlords, and we’re doing it for border
security.
Second, they might want Afghanistan to be stable but
they don’t want an American military base in Afghanistan
to be stable. So their question is, is the stability of
Afghanistan for the sake of the region or is it so the
United States can have an outpost to project its power
into the region. Until that is clarified, we won’t get an
end to the endless war.
I guess we have time for one more question so let
me make sure—OK, Ali, please.
Q: Hi. I wish I was there. (Laughter.) This is Ali—Ali
Mohammad (sp). I used to work for Afghan government
on counterterrorism issues.
I’ll make—it’s a comment. I used to—we used to talk
with Central Asians and one of the things that Central
Asians were telling us that for God’s sake, deal with
the—this threat of ISIS because the Russians are every
day knocking your doors, that their tanks are coming—
we need to expand into Central Asia—just, you know, an
excuse to get there to Central Asia.
And, of course, on the issue of Taliban, yeah, the
BBC report that recently came out on—in October 2017
was that there was a Talib commander in Helmand
having Dragunov sniper in his back. So when we—it’s
like, Dragunov, you have to have proper training to use a
Dragunov sniper. It’s not like AK-47.
So yeah, the Russians and the Iranians they’re jointly
training the Taliban in Zahedan, in Mashhad. They have
bases and everything. But to clarify that, the Russian
agenda is to show to the Americans or to the Central
Asians that things are bad here and we need to expand
into Central Asia in order to counter China and the
Indian and—Indians because of the economic projects in
Central Asia. So this is—this is something that we were
told by the—by our counterparts. Yeah. Thank you.
RUBIN: OK. Well, thank you. As you said, that’s a com-
ment. I’ll just offer anyone here who would like to make
any brief response to that or closing comments at all.
GALL: I would just agree. I mean, I think—
RUBIN: OK. Thank you. Well, in that case, what am I
supposed to say? Oh, I invite everyone to join the coffee
reception outside and the third—(applause)—the third
session will begin promptly at 11:30 and it is on “U.S.
Interests in the Central Region: Is Washington Over-
invested?”
Thank you. (Applause.)
(END)