Meet The Author: Jon Lee Anderson

[music] We are grateful to our friends at Northshshire Books and Monroe Street Books for their underwriting of this program. Northshshire Books has outlets in Manchester, Vermont, [music] and Saratoga Springs. and Monroe Street Books is on Route 7 just north of Mberry. Both are wonderful independent [music] bookstores and we thank them. Hello, I'm Lewis Meyers and welcome to Meet the Author where I am truly honored today to have with us from his home in Dorset, England via Zoom, Mr. John Lee Anderson. Mr. Anderson is an American author and journalist who began his career in the early 1980s reporting on Central America's civil wars. Uh he spent three years in Cuba and wrote a biography of Che Guavara. As a New Yorker staff writer, I've been reading him for many many years, his long form. uh since 1998 he has reported from Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, Angola, Congo, Liberia, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Sri Lanka and many other countries. Uh he has gone where angels fear to tread. Mr. Anderson has profiled a number of international public figures. Uh he has won several awards for his reporting including the prestigious George Poke award, the Maria Moors Kitt, and several Overseas Press Club awards among others. So I'm truly uh grateful and honored to have Mr. Anderson with us today. >> Thank you, Luis. Lovely to be with you. >> We're going to be talking predominantly today about Mr. Anderson's book uh to lose a war uh the fall and rise of the Taliban. Uh this came out several years ago after the United States left Afghanistan. It's a compilation of a number of his long- form reporting from Afghanistan over over 20 years period. It includes a new preface and an afterward uh looking at the events that took place as the United States left. So, we're going to talk predominantly about Afghanistan, but I want to step back and ask you more general question about what led you to become a foreign correspondent for uh covering foreign wars and other issues. Uh I know that uh looking at Wikipedia that you uh growing up traveled uh you and your family of origin were in in many places around the world. Can you tell us about a little bit about your early years? >> Sure. Yes. I mean, [clears throat] well, I was about to say I think it had a lot to do with my childhood. My father was a was [clears throat] a a US foreign service officer um agricultural specialist, I think, uh as opposed to a CIA agent supposedly. My mother was a children's book author. They were pretty progressive people as well. Um and we traveled the world. Um, I lived very little in the United States. I'm one of five kids. They also adopted kids from different cultures. So, we were also a multicultural family. Um, we lived in Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Colombia, um, and and England. And then when I was a teenager, I started seeking [snorts] independence myself. and they allowed me to live for a year in Liberia with an uncle and travel in Africa. Later I I did the same in Central America as a young teenager. And so, you know, I I guess I I sort of ran with what was the family pathology, which was feeling like the world was something that that I belonged in. I didn't feel comfortable in the United States. uh the first year we came back to live in the United States uh that it coincided with the murders first of Martin Luther King and then of Robert F. Kennedy. Both of them were figures of veneration in my family's household. So it was it was with a real feeling of tragedy that not long after RFK's death, we we then moved abroad again to Indonesia and I really didn't want to return to the United States. Um and it be it set off a kind of pattern of behavior uh in which I ran away when we returned and thus my family's solution was to send me to West Africa with an uncle. That in turn set off its own pathology because I didn't want to come back and I wanted to replicate that that experience again and again. And but long story short by the time I was 17 or 18 I had a kind of twin mission. One was to to experience the original world as much as I could um through as I saw it adventure. um I wanted to be a kind of an explorer and I wanted to witness history in my time and and I think the convergence of those two interests there's overriding interest of mine together with um to some degree my parents restraining hands but also facilitating hands and in the case of my mother encouraging me to be creative to try to write led me eventually to becoming a reporter and which you know allowed me to eventually you know make a living doing what I wanted to do which was to to live life to the max. >> You most you most certainly have and we're going to talk about that that some of those experiences. Um did you I mean it's remarkable that you were traveling on your own as a young teenager through Central America. Did you have much in the way of formal schooling? >> Oh yeah. you know, I I went to, I think, 11 schools. Um um one time I was in three schools in one year. You can see that my my my educational upbringing was pretty fraught in that sense. Um I was always the new guy, you know. I had I had to to get used to I had to be very adaptive and to change frequently. Um I usually went to international schools although my parents were great believers in immersion and local culture and at times they put us in local schools as well. So at various moments I was um thrust into different linguistic environments. Mandarin speakers, Swahili, um Spanish, Bahasa. Um, the only one that really stuck with me, um, because I sought it out again was Spanish. Um, but, um, you know, I had I had formally speaking the usual education, but it was a bit, um, you know, it wasn't the usual one. Um, and I didn't finish high school. Um, which doesn't mean to say I dropped out. I I was moved into the English system. And then um so in a sense I don't have a high school diploma. And then after a couple of years in Central America, my family sort of forced me to go to college and I and I did two years in college before going off to lead expeditions in South America. So and I never returned. So I I'm probably the least educated New Yorker writer that exists. >> That that that may well be true. and but uh and you wear that proudly. Um you live in Dorset, England now, I should have mentioned, with your wife and you have three grown children. Dorset, England, I guess, is more settled and less perhaps less violent place than many places in the world you've uh found yourself. Uh what is it like to be living in a somewhat calmer environment? >> Yeah. Well, I guess it's sort of equivalent to Vermont, but without the guns. >> [laughter] >> Um, you know, Dorset is a place that my family came to live in when I was 15. And again, it was a completely foreign environment. I we were the only outsiders in the little town where we moved to along this coast, a place called Lamri Reges, just down the coast from where I live today, Bridport. But the woman who I eventually married was my sweetheart at the time. and we bu we sought each each other out despite the fact that I moved on after 2 years. My family effectively broke up when I was in England. Um she and I sought each other out over the years and I eventually hunted her down and married her and so we started out in London then Oxford. Sure. Oxford and um later went to Cuba and Spain. But um around the time our children were um you know 7 n and 11 we realized that they were they had been entirely educated in spanglish in Spanish sorry and were speaking a kind of spanglish. So we thought we would come to England because it was closer from Spain to give them an experimental year in you know in in our language and it coincided with 911. I went off to Afghanistan, didn't come back for months, and basically we just ended up staying. Um I don't have a kind of embargo against the US. I I go there often. Um, I even went and sort of set up shop there in Trump's first term out of a feeling that I was an expat and I'd never had that feeling before and out of a sense of alarm that my, you know, my native country was um, succumbing to kind of desperatism. Um, and I actually, you know, maintained a household there and here for two years, but that wasn't very practical. So, you know, I go through it a lot. I have a brother and a sister who live in the States, another in France. So, you know, we we I go there frequently. Um but yes, um Britain is although I'm not a Brit is the place I live and it's definitely a sanctuary from the world I usually report on. >> Sanctuaries are are probably much needed. And let's talk about your career as a foreign correspondent. It's clear from everything you've just said that it's understandable how you may have become a for correspondent. You probably weren't going to be sitting at a desk covering the labor department somewhere. But um what kind of people, if you could characterize, become foreign correspondents? >> It's a good question. And to be I'm not sure I've ever been asked that, but it's a good question. I think roughly they fit into if thinking of Americans but maybe it applies to other nationalities they fit into probably a couple of broad categories. There are there are the kind of corporate journalists, institutionalists who a bit like people who go and work for the State Department, you know, who who have learned their craft and then are hired because they're good, because they're smart, or because they went to the right school. Maybe a combination of all of the above. And they work for one of the major media institutions, whether newspaper, television, or radio. And um and some fall into foreign correspondentship by fluke because they got sent on a you know a major story somewhere and but there's a fair number of them that that have it in their bones to be foreign correspondents that want to cover a bit like I was saying I did to be there in the first line of history you know and and witnessing of the history of their time. Um there's a certain amount of glamour of course that comes with it. This that that seduces people as well. This idea that you know you can gallivant around the world wearing a scarf and with a retinue of um you know of people at your becking call. The the idea of a dangerous life is somehow romantic. It's been written up in books, you know, Boys on Adventures since for a couple of centuries now. And it's also the stuff of movies. So, I think, you know, again, I've I've sort of diverged, but I've said kind of people who are just doing the job and some do the White House, um, some do the Labor Department like you said, and some, you know, are drawn to the idea of the international um the international arena. And then there's some who who go in it for the glamour. You know, there's always people who say, "Are you an adrenaline junkie?" And I would say I'm not. But I do like to live life. I like to know that I'm living it. I don't want to feel overly coddled or or particularly comfortable. Um it's boring to me. I feel like one stagnates if things are just a bit too easy. And then there's another category, uh, Luis, I would say, who are sort of freelancers. People who do this because they really are adventurers. They want to just live their lives. They're a bit like if if you were comparing them to horses, they're like wild mustangs. They they just want to be out there on the free range. And if I if I had to total up that sort of crowd, I would call them the tribe. They're people I know. I've been run we run into each other in conflicts occasionally in conferences but usually it's in some conflict over the over the years over over dozens of years in some cases the same people and it's a handful it's not many some have died um there's been some attrition um but there's a handful more than a handful there's about three or four or five handfuls of these people from various nationalities who who thrilled thrilled to be at the cutting edge of history. Damn the consequences and um and and want and that's the life they want to live. I you know is it comparable to say people who do other dangerous things like firefighting or maybe Formula 1 drivers you know maybe maybe there's something in it but usually they're they're more idiosyncratic than that they are people with a a large sense of history they have a romantic attachment to history I think and to life and Um, and yeah, it's it's the life they want to live. >> A movie, and I don't know if you saw it, uh, called A Private War about Marie Culvin, who you may have known. Um, uh, Marie Culvin was actually an American who was one of the chief foreign correspondent for the London Times, won a number of awards. Um, went to cover the war. She was lost an eye in Sri Lanka to gunfire where or shrapnel where you were as well. She was in Iraq. uh and then went to Syria with the in 2012 during the uh the uh spring uprisings um and uh Bashier al-Assad's military intelligence tracked her down in Holmes and had her and killed her. U and the movie I thought uh Rosman Pike plays her Marie Coven incredibly well um displays a a woman who had multiple motivations. I think there is uh clearly what you've just said wants to be on this the immediiacy of history. Uh there was certainly some adrenaline. There was competitiveness with her other journalists out there and then there was a desire to help people and ultimately according to the movie that may have led to her death. She would not leave people who were trapped in the bombing at homes. Um, so it was a whole mixture of of uh of motivations and I suspect from what you've just said that that that is not uncommon. >> No, I mean I knew Marie not well. We met a few times in different places and I respected her hugely. She was very brave, a bit crazy brave if you know what I mean. Um, I think those of us who didn't know her knew that that was an aspect to her. She took chances beyond the the normal. Um, you know, I know that it sounds to the average person probably nuts that you go off to a war zone and to be in a country where there is war may seem dangerous enough, but once you're there, for most of us, there are ways to be safer. There's ways to protect yourself. There are roads you don't go down, places you don't stay. you know, you have a six sense about what could be a fatal decision or not at the best of times. And Marie continuously put herself into uh imminent harm's way in a way that other people didn't. When she died, um I was not surprised and I say this, you know, with respect, of course, because as I say, she is someone I respected and I liked. I happened to be I had flown to Beirut two days before with other friends because another friend of ours, Anthony Shadid of the New York Times had just died leaving Syria where he had been with rebel forces and our friend Tyler Hicks had basically carried him out. He died of an asthma attack. It was a real tragedy. We attended his funeral and literally the next morning we're in a hotel feeling, you know, in mourning and watched Syrian television to see that Marie and another young lad that I also knew, Renee Ashlik, had just been killed in homes. And it was a terrible, it was terrible. And it was just the beginning in a way of a whole string of deaths, some of them more brutal than others, including friends that were executed by ISIS that happened in those years. Um, and that caused some of the attrition I was talking about. Um, Marie Marie, you know, was there's it's not surprising that there's a movie made of her. she, you know, she took very little care of for herself and had a great deal of luck um and and was, you know, a larger than-l life person. And yes, the tribe is made up of people like that. >> The one time we have met, and I'm sure you don't remember this, but but uh it was about 20ome years ago in Washington DC at the wonderful independent bookstore, Politics and Pros, and I think you were doing a reading. I can't remember which book, but I the question I asked on that time was, "What was the scariest situation for you when you were out in the field?" And I remember your all these years I've remembered what you said. You said a teenager holding an AK-47. >> Yeah, that's one of them. Yeah, kids with guns, you know, they're dangerous. Um, once I asked a Nicaraguan Contra gerilla, well, he was telling me actually about how they were targeting people in v villages held then by the the then Sandinista government for execution. And he explained that you know they were looking for certain types of people the the mayors or head people in the village school teachers those who had acquired the advers the enemy's ideology and it was a moment of cander and I said well how how do you kill them and he said we use the 14y olds and I said what do you mean he says yeah we that we make them dig their graves and they usually beat them to death and I said oh my god that's horrific how why why do you use the kids youngest recruits? and they said because they haven't earned a conscience yet and that always stayed with me and later on you know in Africa where you had the the whole phenomena not only Africa but the many of the child soldiers that began you know the kind of savagery of conflicts like Liberia or Sierra Leone and others where this phenomena of the boy the child soldier around the world the implacable young killer really became a phenomenon on in the 80s and 90s and and until today. And of course, I have run into them over the years here and there. And they are definitely the most dangerous of all because, you know, very often they've been brutalized um into becoming killers and they're they're in a kind of fever. Sometimes they're also drugged. So yeah, the the younger they are, the more dangerous it is because as that man said to me so many years ago, they haven't yet learned to have a conscience. Let's talk about Afghanistan because that obviously was the book the most recent book. Um uh all of the way the book goes is you start with before you do the preface and then you start with your earliest dispatches from around the time of 2001 when the United States became involved there again and uh and to the withdrawal in 2021 exactly five years ago tomorrow I believe. Um, >> and it's depress illuminating and depressing uh to read the uh the uh progression or lack thereof of United States involvement. Um what was your first I think you went there shortly after 911 uh and you begin talking about um uh some of the leading figures in Afghanistan at that time um and how what was happening. Uh tell us about those early times. Did you sense any at the time do you think you had any feeling that the United States involvement could make a difference? It's you know it's such a good question. Um just to remind you that I also had been in Afghanistan 11 12 years before as the Soviets were pulling out at the end of their 10-year war in which you know couple of million of millions of Afghans died and you had the rise of the jihadis supported by the Americans, Pakistanis and Saudis that included you know some of bin Laden eventually um began to pour into that place as a battleground. I went there on two extended trips in 88 and ' 89 and um so I had a sense of this country but from the battlefield and then I went away and of course the world turned away as Afghanistan succumbed to civil war, the rise of the Taliban, 9/11 and then we came back. I felt on the day the twin towers were knocked that were you know attacked. I was sitting in Spain and felt that I knew that it was probably Osama bin Laden based on some of his actions and statements and and I told the New Yorker I felt I should go to Afghanistan that I was sure that we were going to go to war there and sure enough we did. They said yes go and I went. this time um in a very different circumstances to 12 years before. Um now it's interesting because I went with the apocalyptic phenomenon that had been the attack on New York and Washington in my head like so many other people. I had this idea of Afghanistan in the grips of these irudentist jihadi Taliban and their friends al-Qaeda who had pulled this off. And I came in from the north where some warlords um who had been seeking western backing now now began to acquire it and began to fight against the Taliban from their little spur of territory they controlled on the northern border. And with CI help and B-52 bombing from the United States, bombing the troop concentrations, the cities in Afghanistan began to fall as the Taliban essentially disappeared. They didn't sort of fight to the end, but they disappeared along the way in these battles that where I was sort of watching them take place and then moving on to the next place. It was very sketchy. There was a sense even behind anti-Taliban lines of a kind of swirling anti-western quasi jihadist sentiment. I had a number of encounters with fighters in the field. You didn't know where they were coming from, but they were hostile. And in each of these cases, I managed to come out of it okay. But there was a sense that you couldn't trust anyone, that you had to watch your back, and that this was a kind of roing landscape in terms of its xenophobia. The fact that this was a a land of that had only known warfare that knew outsiders as as infidels or something else. Um, and even when we got to Kabul, the capital, which was, you know, quote unquote, liberated by the Americans, there was still a sense of a kind of feral sense, especially in the outskirts. Um, and so, you know, I sought out some of the warlords that were now siding with the West in this onward battle to finish off the Taliban and reshape or reconquer Afghanistan. And it was a real mixed bag. you know, one of them who had now sided apparently with the West and whom the Americans were allowing to con control a huge territory on the outskirts of Kabul was in fact a former mentor of Osama bin Laden. And he seemed to me in our encounters to be an uncon unreonstructed jihadist, very hostile. Um, so this began to show up in my pieces, the pieces I wrote for The New Yorker. I wouldn't ever say in those days in 2001 and two and so on that I thought that it was a doomed mission. I believed that the West would prevail. How could it not? You know, this was it was both a a righteous police action initially and it was right for Afghanistan that these jihadis, you know, be be vanquished. That was certainly how I felt as a westerner. Um, and and yet my experiences in the field, which again begin to pepper my my my chronicles of what I'm seeing, show a a s they're seated with doubt. And um although I I would I would say now as I would have said you know a year ago when I brought the book out that I didn't I could not be clairvoyant and p predict what happened. Um, in those early years, I was concerned about what seemed to be a lack of application, a lack of interest, a lack of curiosity by the West of of of and of the Americans who led the whole experience of truly engaging with Afghanistan. And within a year and a half, of course, we were diverted by the Iraq war. And I went there. Um, I had this sense that the Taliban had not gone very far. And sure enough, you know, I was there a lot in 2001 and two. Then in 2002 and three and four and five, I was in Iraq. The first time I come back is in 2005. And by then, the Taliban are coming back. And from then on, it becomes this inexorable story of their comeback. By 2010, I was predicting their eventual victory. I didn't I couldn't quite see how it would happen. But everywhere I went in Afghanistan, it it was closing down. You really couldn't watch your had to watch your back then. The warlords that were supposedly allied with the Americans were sometimes doing double duty were were two-etiming them. I had a couple of experiences that where, you know, we were attacked in the field by people that were supposedly allied with the Americans. You you really couldn't trust. I'm not talking about the average Afghans, but the the authority figures in these regions where the Taliban clearly had formed what everybody was referring to as a shadow government. >> You know, in the book there are some >> some of the chapters or some of the pieces. I mean, you were not uh there with your trench coat somewhere in a in Kabul's relatively safe place. You were embedded with small units of Marines outside the wire. You were being shot at. and you know bombs and bullets don't usually differentiate between the Marines and the and the journalists. So there were some really um very scary moments to read in the book um for you and as well as for the others. One of the unusual things it seems to me about the Afghan fighting which perplexed and disturbed Americans was this idea of switching sides. And you just touched on a little bit, but that in other wars uh I mean the Afghans uh sometimes were incredibly brutal to their opponents. Uh at other times they would say come on over and lay down your arms and you can fight with us. and and the whole masses of soldiers would do that which is not thought to be the American way and and we haven't seen that in other even in Iraq it wasn't that way the Shia and the uh uh Sunnis were not uh fighting for each other at that point. So how did Americans deal with this situation where one day you they might be fighting with you and the next day against you? >> Well yes eventually it became a real issue in the beginning of course the Americans weren't really on the ground. they were bombing. There were CIA officers, you know, operating or in special forces kind of behind the scenes with warlords and those warlords were moving people around and getting making deals with people on the other side to join them and that kind of thing. You know, I I noticed all of this, but when it when I really was clarified for me was rereading Makaveli's The Prince oh probably seven or eight years ago. I had read it as a as a teenager I think and then I reread it and what's fascinating is that the kind of warrior logic amoral logic of war that Makaveli describes uh taking place in medieval Italy is exactly what I I had seen and I have always seen in Afghanistan. It's not about right or wrong. It's not about even who you're with. It's about winning. It's about how you prevail. If you must betray someone in order to prevail, it's what you do. There was there was one warlord in particular in medieval Italy that Makavei was, you know, reserved special praise for. And this was a man who betrayed his allies, killed, you know, thousands, but ultimately became out as top dog. And that was to be admired. And in a sense, that is the that's ultimate warfare. That is war in Afghanistan. That's how it's played. There are differences between clans, families, you know, history, true enemies, that kind of thing. Even ideology. But this more ancient form of warfare in which might makes right is really the one that um played out on the ground. And I think it did beevil the Americans once more American troops and then NATO allies began pouring into the country by the tens of thousands. You know, they had different experiences around the country. Um, and it was it was largely kept hermetic, but if you were there, you you would find out things about h how the Brits were fairing in their area or the Germans or the Americans for that matter. And by the by 2008 and n and and and and beyond that there was increasing numbers of what they call I think it were called green on blueue attacks or green on green attacks. What were those? That was attacks murders of American, Canadian, British, German soldiers and officers by their allies in uniform Afghans. Now, were those Taliban in disguise in some cases? Yes. Or were they simply um Afghan nationalists who couldn't bear any longer to be ordered around by um you know by by a foreign national who they saw as an imperial invader. Maybe a combination of all of them. But there were hundreds of those attacks and I think significantly more than any other modern conflict. So by by 2010 111 I remember going to a base in in the eastern Afghanistan small what they called a combat outpost where there was a small group of young American soldiers led by a captain a young guy you know educated well-intended and it turned out that the Afghans who with whom they were supposed to share this space that they couldn't talk to each other there was almost a they had almost been a murder And it had to do with one of the Americans had um one of the Afghans had a cat and the and he had I think he had shot on the American sleeping bag something like that. The American wanted to kill the cat and as a result they nearly came to blows and when I say blows it it became a real issue and there was a real worry that one someone would be murdered and what during the days I was with them I was the only person who could move between the two sides within a base the Taliban were out there al-Qaeda was there but within the base it would you could cut the air with a knife and when we went out on patrol there was a the Americans believed that the scouts they had had somehow betrayed them and were in league with the Taliban. You there was complete lack of trust. And that was the piece I wrote, I think early 2011, where, you know, the the the subtitle was, you know, is it time to leave Afghanistan? And I did predict that the Taliban were inevitably going to retake the country because the Americans were nowhere. You know, they were cooped up in these little bases or big bases, they moved around in in helicopters and whenever you moved through towns or villages or on the roads with them in these armored vehicles, you could see the looks they got. You know, it it felt like being with Martians um who'd invaded planet Earth. >> And you you you talk about this in the book. It is a gigantic country geographically. It is one of the poorest and most illiterate countries in the world. Uh different than for example Iraq and Iran which have had you know very educated population in many many parts of those countries. Um and foreign invaders whether they be British or or Soviets and now the Americans have uh constantly been repeatedly been thrust out. uh and there is basic feeling that uh insular feeling in in Afghanistan that it's not part of the larger world uh and that uh anyone who comes in is is seen as an invader I suppose. Um there's another country you mentioned peripherally Pakistan which uh clearly was aiding the Taliban uh for many years and uh now is paying a price for that. But um that's right. >> We we flooded Pakistan with money and pro uh and and arms and much of that was being funneled to the Taliban. Uh why did we keep doing that? >> It's such a good question. you know, um, look, this was something from the very early days in Afghan in the war, you know, when we all went up to Tora to where the special forces were supposedly having going to get Osama bin Laden to Tora and the the mountain range bordering Pakistan. Well, he got away. And it was pretty clear from everything the the few reporters that were around could tell was that he had gotten away with the support of some local warlords. This had been an area where he'd made strong over many years and and and with the Pakistani authorities. He was now inside Pakistan. And you would over the years you would talk to American diplomats or others and say why, you know, why aren't we going after the the jihadis, you know, bin Laden and other groups that were allied with the Taliban in Pakistan? Um, and there was never an effective answer, but my understanding evolved uh to the following extent. The United States was very aware that Pakistan on the one hand was an ally and and yet on the other hand was an adversarial country and that it part of its intelligence and military services supported this anti-western jihad that had attacked us and continued to and in fact sometimes bombed or murdered Americans in Pakistan, not just in Afghanistan. Um but they engaged with the part of the state where they had you know um ambassadors wearing suits and ties much like you're wearing today uh Louis or um those military men that they believed were on the west side but it was this kind of schizophrenic culture uh schizophrenic society that they had to tread carefully with because after all Pakistan had become a nuclear state. In fact, the man who had given North Korea, Libya, Iraq um and um the nuclear knowhow was nonetheless than um than a nuclear scientist in Pakistan who under American pressure was being held in a kind of house arrest but never truly imprisoned for what he had done. So this nuclear proliferation we we've also seen over the years and which led you know uh Bush and others to talk about weapons of mass destruction and of course um actually you know a lot of it can be laid at Pakistan's door. So I think you know history will be full of analysts trying to figure out if we could have done things differently with Pakistan. The fact of the matter is we never dealt with the source of the problem which was the jihadist support from within Pakistan itself and um tried to deal with the symptoms um or exercise pressure on the tame part of the Pakistani state that was not pro pro- jihadist. But Pakistan since its inception has practiced what a few countries um o over the years have practiced which is what they call strategic depth which is you know it's a very neurotic country. It was carved out of India out of the Raj for as a Muslim state and in the years since then it has supported terror and terror groups in its surrounding neighbors because it feels weak in order to protect itself. So rather than engaging positively in its neighbors uh territory, it weakens them through terror in the case of Kashmir um and you know in the case of the Taliban in in Afghanistan and like you said the chickens have kind of come home to roost because as as always with these groups there's there's more radical Taliban who formed in an ISIS breakaway and and and there's also a an original an originally um Pakistani intelligenceformed group that is also a kind of Pakistani Taliban that wants to convert Pakistan itself and it's receiving support from the Taliban and Afghanistan. So yeah, it's it's created so many Frankensteines that Pakistan is at risk of of succumbing to its own uh the monsters. >> Step back for a minute. We we've only we've got about 10 minutes. I do want to step back for a minute. In the book, you obviously been in so many situations both in Afghanistan and around the world where your life was at risk. You saw horrific things around you. um among people yourself and others who do what you do, is there a form of things that you carry home in the sense of if not PTSD, just sort of the things that you carry. >> Um I've always well [clears throat] um I think I've got that under control. I say that, you know, with with with in a kind of qualified way because I recognize that I've been I've gone through what I would call dark periods before. How did they manifest themselves? Usually with a hot temper. I tried never to bring that home. I I mostly didn't. But I would have altercations and rude with waiters or people in airports or in shops that I felt were being rude to me. And I I later on now of course I recognize that as a kind of PTSD. When you emerge from a environment where it's all about life and death, regular society can seem really frivolous and um rudeness can be misinterpreted. I think it's similar for people that come out of prison. You know this idea that you you you must show respect and if you don't it's a life or death situation. Um, so I I learned to be careful about that. And this usually would kick in when I'd been in say usually Iraq for several months. Afghanistan too, but Iraq was particularly fraught there. Um, every day one was in Iraq for a long period of time. One's life was at risk and you were very aware of it. So um it was difficult not to have some kind of consequence. What a number of us did, I'm talking about fellow reporters, was we would come out usually through Jordan, which we called kind of joularly the kingdom of boredom because nothing happens there. And we would stay for two or three days in a hotel in Aman and you know sort of hang out, have meals, get ourselves cleaned up and just sort of diffuse and then go home. And it was something we did without really planning it or talking about it. But I recognized eventually that, you know, instinctively we were trying not to carry baggage home. Um, I have a family and my kids were growing up. They were pretty young when I was going through all of this. So, also, you know, you you don't tell them everything. I would get on a satphone and talk with them every day that I could, but I'd usually try to make it a conversation about their daily lives rather than mine, you know. And I think that's also for me that was healthy that was cubrious to be connected with the kids and my wife and you know be in touch with what really was important in my life which was my family. >> Well, you were fortunate to have them. I'm sure for those who don't have those kind of anchors, it might have been even more difficult. >> That's right. the um I mean you do talk in the book at the last chapters about the American withdrawal which became five years ago tomorrow as we've mentioned um we won't we don't have time to go into that either Donald Trump or Joe Biden's decisions regarding that but what we do know is that a lot of people were left behind some managed to come out Afghans who had helped America a lot were left behind obviously the women and girls in Afghanistan are struggling terribly at this point Um, we have a pretty robust Afghan refugees resettlement program here in Vermont, proud to say. But for individuals who would like to help people in in Afghanistan, um, is there any particular organizations you would recommend or or ways that they can be involved where they feel they they really are their money or contributions would be of real value? Gosh, I mean, right off the top of my head, Luis, no, I don't because because I'm I'm aware, you know, I'm in touch with Afghans who to this day are trying to get out and desperate to leave or because of their children or girls or whatever. And it's been a real problem um in not least because of the anti-immigration uh temperament and policies enacted by the Trump regime. um and they've been particularly hostile towards Afghans but Muslims generally. Um it's it's a problem. Um I believe that there are some uh organizations that particularly help women. I'll follow up with you so that maybe you can um uh publish them when this comes out. But I'm unclear uh exactly at this point. It's also an issue of of of what's public because my understanding is that you know there's a kind of very very xenophobic tyrannical part of the Taliban that have decreed these strictures against women and then there's a a group that is allowing them to have underground schools and so on. It's unclear to me how public um one can be about this if you know what I'm trying to say. >> Yeah. But there are there are NOS's there are people who do work and and try to get books and funds and so on to uh basically women and girls who have no choice but to stay there and are trying to be educated despite their confinement. >> If you were the United States president today knowing what we know and knowing all that you know about Afghanistan what what would you do right now in regards to Afghanistan? Look, I would engage with the Taliban. I say that with caution, but I would engage. It's a it's a it's a fatal comple. They control the country. The country is not at war at the moment. They have committed all kinds of uh criminal acts and they have been tyrannical, but they are not a monolith. And we have learned to our great regret and to the world's great regret not to ignore Afghanistan as we have in the past. It's not a problem that will go away if we turn our backs on it. >> That billions of dollars in assets are being held. >> Well, yeah. I mean, look, I I I wouldn't go so far as to say that the billions of dollars in assets that are held should be dispersed to the Taliban. At the very least, I think we need to begin a conversation. >> Well, conversation is what you've had throughout your career in so many places in the world while you were dodging bullets. You still managed to hold conversations, which is uh uh should a I feel should uh you should have received every literary award there is. But um I want to thank you. I want to wish you safety and in all of your future ventures. Uh we really appreciate you being here with us today on Meet the Author. >> And the book again is >> to lose a war, the fall and rise of tal of the Taliban by John Lee Anderson. Um if you want to know about Afghanistan, this is the book [music] to read. So, thank you for being with us and thank you for being with us to our audience and please join us next time [music] on Meet the Author. [music]