>> question in the back? >> senator for public policy research. what are your thoughts on how conservatives should address the changing demographics of the united states? it isn't the same as goldwater and reagan's running time. if you look at the results of the 2012 presidential election allowing for the fact that mitt romney was no conservative given by any stretch. 59% of the white vote but was wiped out in other ethnic and racial groups. how would you market conservatives to the new united states? >> that is a great question. got asked that on the lou dobbs show. there are many things we need to do. number one, above anything else, how do you get the hispanic vote? simple. run hispanics. look for the marco rubios and the ted cruz and susan martinez. we have many ethnic conservatives and we ought to showcase them and put them forward and that will go a long way toward communicating to these various minorities we are in sync with them. i am a big believer that we have got to change the rhetoric, of course, that is how we talk about people here who are here illegally but i think these people for the post part with rare exexceptions don't want to come here but their economy is disastrous and they are governed by a socialist or marxist and whatever we can do within the constitution to help these people get a free market rule of law established in their own country, their economy is going to improve. we are seeing viewer mexicans coming over because their economy is improving. and they are instituting free market reform in mexico. and so we have got to -- i don't care how high you build a fence. we have to go to the root cause of my why are coming. they don't want to come except their economy is so terrible. but another problem is that for the most part the people who americans are seeing as republicans don't know how to talk to who are a part of the country class versus the ruling class. the ruling class doesn't know low to talk to average americans -- how -- and when we but the ted cruz and the rand paul and the mike pence and scott walker they will communicate nicely our views and values to unmarried women, hispanics, asians. and as lang long as the message is going through the boehners and the eric cantstoretocantors world we will have issues. people don't have issues with our message it is the messenger. >> i am always pleased to learn something here and now smarn between the lines of the 44th federalist paper it is it is the primaries, stupid. i learned madison knew what he was talking about. we have copies available in the foyer for purchase and our guest is up here glad to sign them and carry on the conversation further. thank you very much. we are adjourned. >> visit booktv.org to watch the titles you see here. type the title or author in the search page and click search. and you can share anything by collecting share and selecting the format. booktv.org. >> next, we look at the political life of afghanistan with our selected author. this is just over an hour and half. >> it is pleasure to be back here at columbia and particularly in this room where i might mention that 17 years ago in january 1997 i chaired a meeting which was opened by then dean lisa anderson who is president of the american university in cairo. a meeting where we had a dialogue with the first delegation of the taliban who came to the united states. they came to new york 3-4 months after they took control of kabul to ask for afghanistan's un seat not realizing that wasn't within the power of the secretary general. of the people who were there, the delegation was led my a man who later became their foreign minister and i saw in kabul a week ago. he is a con -- he was an intern for some time. he is currently a member of the afghan high peace council in kabul and reconciled and another man who was the minister of refugees and was assassinated after returning from a meeting in dubai trying to start a peace conference. the chairman went on later to become the center of commerce and is now likely to be in the next cabinet. this is a historic room and a pleasure to welcome dipali mukhopadhyay who i met at the international studies union in san diego from a friend. let me start by referring to something that jack mentioned which was that i was on the un delegation at the bon tox which setup or launched the process that led to the current government of afghanistan after 9/11 and the united states decision to overthrow the taliban regime. one of the issues we faced at bon was how to keep with the fact that men were on the ground leading armed groups such as the main figures in your book who became governs who some people called warlords. we had a question on how, whether they should be incorporated, whether they should be held accountability and issues about an amnesty or not. i should mention the secretary for peace keeping operations and before bon, after a meeting i attended on september 24th for it state department as an outside expert along with something you will hear more about, a meeting chaired by richard hoss who maybe on morning joe now. i went to see maria in office at the un and my conclusion was the un might be asked to send a peace keeping force to afghanistan or to kabul at least to maintain the capital free of the influence of these armed men on the ground; the warloads. so a non-military process could develop which is one of the classic problems coming out of the civil war. and as it turned out there wasn't a peace keeping force but a multi national force with a mandate. but you have access and did a remarkable piece of research about the development of the figures some of these people called warlords and i wonder if you can talk about accountability and how to cope with people as the country is transitioning from a civil or transnational war to, i don't know what to call it -- i should not say peace but a greater deal of political legitimacy. >> let me start saying what a privilege it is to share these chairs with you, barny. your work on afghanistan for all of us who have studies it has been the central text we start with. so talking about my book with you is a thrill, really. i think the central dilemma you present about the presence of the actors, part of the united states military and the question of "what to do with them" after the taliban fell was what animated this book. for me it comes down to a question of definition first. i think if you define warlords as predtory spoilers who are seeking gains at the expense of the state building project and the creation of peace and good governments then it is very difficult to make an argument that they should not be marginalized. if on the other hand, you define them, and this is how i define them in the book, as leaders of the national level on factions and people that have access to military amounts, money, economic power and social and political ties within their communities, then it is possible to understand them both as potential competitors in the state building project but it is possible to thing of them as r participants as well. >> i would like you to give us a portrait of the characters in your book for the viewers. and the chapters about those two men, one of who is the governor in northern afghanistan and one is the governor of another country in afghanistan are open with very interesting pictures of you in their company. you stand out in that group even more than you do sitting out here with me. >> that is true. i had the interesting experience of meeting both of these men who different occasions each. so, yeah, the first is i write about a man who is the governor of balls and he has been for a decade coming up. he is the native of the province and build grow up there and fought the soviets and the taliban. along with this long-time nemesis he joined the americans to take the central northern city back from the taliban in the fall of 2001. the other person i write about who just finished his run for the presidency and it looks like from the numbers he doesn't quite have a shot, which isn't a surprise. but he comes from the southern province and comes from a tribe that has a long legacy of rule and involvement in rule in afghanistan. ... came to an end when he decided to run for the presidency. also -- his presidential aspirations didn't just begin in 2014. he was interested in running in 2009, but he describe to me a process by which he was kind of cone -- convinced that it would be better for the pashtu -- pashtun for him to support president karzai. >> what happens in their offices? and with the view not just to telling interesting stories but understanding their style of governance. and how they integrate their informal ties which are linked to things people might call corruption, with their formal position. >> they're offices, which they have multiple, the palaces they have, and when you meet with them, they have two quite different styles. superficially they're similar, very ornate palaces. and it's really an experience, as if you're going back in time. you're essentially entering a kind of port in which -- >> which is depicted on the cover of your book, which you might hold up for the camera there. >> guest: this covers -- because it's a courtly scene from times in india, it's very -- it's quite amazing how similar my experience was in meeting them to this kind of scene. so you get an audience in which you're sort of waiting with a number of other people. people who are -- tribal elders who have come from the district, business people, journalists, and these are basically people who have come to get their advice, come to ask for something, for their communities, ask for something directly for themselves, and it's a courtly style of politics in which you sort of realize that the informal is as much or in many cases much more important than the kind of formal. but they're quite different from each other, i should say. governor atta has a more what i think of as a more corporate style. a lot of people -- everybody who meets and comments on his dress so he very soon after the taliban fell, he wears very nice suits -- >> he didn't shave the bored 100 -- beard 100%. >> he has at points. he has a really nice watch, very nice shoes, and he has a very -- a staff that kind of operates. it feels much more like a firm. governor sharzi feels a little more feudal to be honest, and he is actually very interested in the esthetics of courtly life. so he swept time and money rennovating the king's winter palace, and the second time i interviewed him we sat in the gardens there are tribal elders waiting, and it feels like you're out of a different time. >> host: well, not to put our on the spot since you know these men and they know you, but to lay out one side of the argument, what -- there are people who strongly criticize the incorporation of men like this into the political system. can you start by giving us a brief outline of the type of arguments that those people would make about what those men had done and why they would argue it's not appropriate for them to have such high office? then we'll look at the other side. >> guest: sure. the dominant narrative, especially after 2001, was these were the individuals who were responsible for dragging the country into a civil war. they demonstrated their enable to set aside kind of petty factional differences to come together. they made clear they were interested in profiting from elicit economic activity which didn't serve the development of the country, and then after the reign of the taliban, which many people argue the taliban was popular as an upcoming movement and then a regime because it was a replacement for war lordism, that to bring these people in the fray after township was to take the country back to a really dark time and was to ignore, i think, what was a kind of popular enthusiasm about a different kind of politics, which would be democratic and it would be accountable and representative and kind of a new chapter for afghanistan. so why would you want these old and characters with these legacies of abuse and predation, to be the new players in this new promising time in afghan politics. >> host: after the agreement, when these men were appointed to various positions, i think that atta was initially the head of the garrison -- >> guest: that's right. >> host: before becoming a civilian and becoming governor. sharzai did not care what his formal appointment was, he was governor and also in charge of the security forces, and both of them, also, exercised authority over -- informally at least -- over several provinces, not just the provinces they were supposedly governors of. nonetheless, they did not behave as people -- entirely as people feared, that is you did not have a renewal of civil war. of course there, was plenty of elicit economic activity, accompanied by his -- licit economic activity and the between the two is sometimes hard to discern and the main activity in the areas was the u.s.-led war effort. maybe not always thought of as an economic activity. why is it that they did not reproduce exactly what they had done before? and how -- although they maintained their capacities to exercise power through having command over men who could use violence, who, having control of money, some of which was officially state money and some of which was something else -- how did they change from protagonists in a civil war to powerful figures in a government? >> guest: well, i think, one of the things from the beginning this project was about was about trying to understand this intuition i had from the beginning but that required a lot of investigation to figure out if it was true. the intuition was that not all warlords are the same. so i was trying to figure out the question. by the time i started the restarch in 2007, people were already talking about atta and sharzai not as warlords as much as actually powerful governors. so it struck me that something already fervor beginning of the research -- something seemed -- at a minimum they were understood as warlord governores, not just warlords and they made the transition, partly about understanding them in their circumstances and partly about begunking the way the state is organized in afghanistan. so because many people don't realize how highly centralized the afghanistan state is and what that afforded president karzai who didn't have a wholelet institutionally -- there wasn't that much there there in the beginning but it forded him this very important tool, which was the tool of appointments, and so every appointment that was made outside of kabul would be at least informally -- there was a ministry of interior and latary directorat for local governance but first it was his decision who would do where. so what that allowed him to do was to play these warlords off of each other in ways that actually brought them into the system. so, the kind of central argument that i make is the reason why all warlords are not equal, is because we can understand them not only as different from one another in terms of how strong they are, but also different in terms of what their local competitive environment looks like. so, for example, atta, as you said, was the head of the seventh army corps in the north of afghanistan. he was a commander, a powerful commander, from the province, men who war loyal to him, access to resources and relationships, but most importantly, he had major competitor in the general, and he also had another competitor in mohammad mohatak, another major figure. they're both presidential candidates. so, because atta, i think, recognized -- this is my interpretation, but i think he recognized and it was clear the fact on the ground that he could not dominate the space on his own. he actually -- there was an incentive for him to engage with the central government and this is, i think, where the use of the word "warlord" becomes unhelpful because the assumes is these are actors in crime to wage war against somebody, and i think instead the reason that i kind of took on the word "strong men" is these are individuals with great strength in their own right outside of the statement but under certain circumstances it's valuable for them to be part of the state building project, and the central reason is a understood it was in order to beat their competition, and so atta kind of began a really interesting relationship with karzai in which sometimes he misbehaved, sometimes he demonstrated loyalty, in order as part of a kind of bargaining relationship and it took a couple years before he was appointed governor. by the time he was appointed governor, everybody knew, including him and including hamid karzai, that he was going to be in charge of both in part because president karzai decided he would be in charge of both, and knowing that general dosum and another pashtun commander, that there were all that's other players that weren't really happy about that, that would have liked either themselves or their open guy to be there. that motivated him to serve as an effective governor, to continue to have the support of the central government. >> host: let me ask you about other -- you're talking about the relationship to the government, but as i mentioned, the major source of money and the major source of coercion was the united states and its coalition partners. now, both of them had developed different keep kinds of relatiop with the international military prepares and the international civilian presence, which is importance for us as americans to understand. while people in this country often see this warlordism or corruption as an afghan phenomenon, as you know in afghanistan, many people say you americans brought this here. you put these people in power. it's your money that created corruption and so on. so, slarzai was governor in the home of the taliban, which meant there was large military force and not just military force but counterterrorism operations, that is, cia, proxy armies, which were parallel to the state, plus special forces operating separately from the main military operation. there were special funding, some of which was used by governor sharzai at here's in con da -- kandahar for his own projects. it was close to the border in an area where there was taliban infiltration. atta in the north, of course, initially came to power through that process, but then the north became relatively stable and the international military presence there was a provincial recon strung team which -- reconstruction team which was head by the british and then -- the organizer of the international military mission. can you describe how each of them related to the international military, how they used it politically? in dealing with the rivals and central government, that relationship with us was also very important. >> guest: yes. for sharzai the relationship with the americans is absolutely central to understanding his story. a lot of people said to me over the years, shari was really not a major until the americans saw something -- a major player until the americans saw something in him and connected with him and afforded him an opportunity to take power in kandahar, and then allowed him to make an extraordinary amount of money. i think rashid and a number of others estimated, just in kandahar, before he moved, he had already made several hundred million dollars through contracts. so, there was -- >> host: when you say contracts, what were those contracts? contracts with whom? >> guest: contracts, for example, i think graveling was -- >> host: contracts for the u.s. military? >> guest: that's right. contracts that centered around construction and allowed him -- >> host: logistics, vehicles, fuel. >> guest: that's right. he built a kind of expertise, in particular doing construction work that he then brought with him, but the relationship with the americans continued to be very deep in nangahar and, my first trip there in 2007 was not on my own. it was actually with the u.s. military commander of the american prt. he suggested to me, oh, you know, you're interested in warlords in governors. you should come back with us to nangahar. >> oo you were in kabul. >> guest: i was in kabul at the time and i had never been to the pakistan border. i had certainly never flown in a u.s. military helicopter, and what i didn't -- >> host: usually normal civilian helicopters to get around new york. >> guest: that's how i got here. so, i -- what didn't realize is they would keep me on the base. they wouldn't let me go off the base. about they brought all kinds of people in. and what i realized was, first of all this this is not a good way to do field work so i did not have that arrangement again in my subsequent three trips there. but what became very clear was how intimate the relationship was between the americans and sharzai, and that's been very interesting for him as a governor because on the one hand the benefits are very obvious. basically -- first of all, affords him an independent source of influence and income outside of his relationship with president karzai. the other thing it does, of course, is give him a leg up from a coercive perspective from all the other actors. so his -- >> host: not only the talibans and others -- >> guest: that's right. >> host: -- primarily about his competitors. >> guest: that's right. competitors, prominent families in afghan politics, and with a long legacy of sort of coercive power, the arsala family had a legacy of having great influence inside the province. >> host: natives of the province. >> guest: natives and in fact one of the major kind of brothers, one of the major figures had been the governor before sharzai came, and people talked to me about how he and me americans didn't work, the relationship. they didn't think he was serious about reconstruction, thought hi was a quieter, more pieos and religious main, when sharzai move started moving, roads paved. one of the strongest achievements people talked about what the paving of the roads from jalalabad to the capitals, and you asked, who actually paves the -- who actually paid for the roads to be paid? well, the americans. but a lot of people don't know the americans and sharzai were the difference. they got all the contracts and the government takes credit, the provincial government, and what is interesting -- this where is the donor experience is so fascinating to study, is that's sort of the point. the team wants the governor to take credit for the work that's been done because they're tribal to enable his authority and presence in the province, bit started to become unclear to people whose power is whose. >> host: just to -- the dilemma there is, are they building the institutional power of the state or the government or are they empowering this individual. >> that's>> guest: that's right. one over the biggest find office the research for me was thesaurus really -- there's really -- in a post-cop atlantic state insuring weak states, it's not a clear distinction between the government as an institution and the people that are occupying that institution. the institution can rise or fall in positive or negative ways based on who is there. and so i think the sort of tricky part for the for was the americans were doing some kip net tick work -- kinetic work, meaning military operations in which they might detain people or property might be damaged or civilian cash advertise -- casualties and in those cases the blow baeck might come back to governor sharzai so part of what was valuable to the americans was he was on their side, and was willing to absorb that political unrest, and manage it, and -- >> host: much more of that in nongahar. >> guest: much more, and much more as time went on. he became increasingly incapable of managing the backlash. nangahar is a very wealthy province, on the border, central cross-point for -- point for cross-border trade and also on the border with pakistan, so, the vulnerability to insurgency was very real and was a huge challenge to the governor. there's one story i'll tell about the relationship between the americans and sharzai which is emblematic. i first went in '07, then the summer of '08, and spent some time. then i went back in the fall of '09 and by this point president obama had been elected, and people still in 2012 when i went, were still talking about the story. when barack obama was a presidential candidate he made a visit, as you recall to afghanistan. >> host: i recall very well. >> guest: maybe you were even on this trip. >> host: i was not on the trip. >> guest: he made the decision to, rather than first good meet president karzai, to stop off first in jalalabad and say hello to the governor. i don't know if you remember this. >> host: that is not the decision he thought he made. >> guest: oh. maybe you can tell me what the decision was he thought he made. >> host: he had no idea who sharzai was. he wanted to be photographed meeting american troops in the field, and he didn't want to go to bagram where everybody want so they had to find a place that was reasonably secure and had an airfield big enough for his plane to land, and therefore they took him to jalalabad to meet the american soldiers. however, they said, oh, while you're here, first thing you must do is greet in the governor, who embraced him and that was the picture that afghans saw, of -- >> guest: still talking about it. >> host: of barack obama meeting the governor of the province. >> guest: that was a joke that governor sharzai took credit for the joke. he took credit for that joke. that -- >> host: he claim that barack obama was his fellow -- >> guest: that's right. they were both from the same tribe. that story had tremendous legs because people interpreted that story in a number of ways -- >> host: by people, you mean hamid karzai. >> guest: i'm sure. and -- but also people in nangahar and people in kandahar and a number of other places, at people said to me, if barack obama first comes to see governor sharzai before he goes to see hamid karzai, it means he wants governor sharzai to be president instate of karzai and he thinks everything the governor is doing is fantastic and if he is president, the governor will be in a really good spot. was he invited to the inauguration? >> host: he wasn't invited but came anyway and claims he was invited. >> guest: right. so you can imagine that -- >> host: to this day i believe that president obama knows who he is. >> guest: that's probably very fair to say. to this day, it's quite extraordinary how many people in nongahar know about the story, and i think -- then there was the story, then many, many years later, about -- i think in "the wall street journal," the story that came out maybe in 20132012 and how corrupt he is and getting illegal contracts and taxes. so of course the table can turn on somebody quebecly. >> host: that is when president barack bronco -- barack obama ordered him -- that is a misperception. >> guest: yes. for him the relationship had some ups and downs about mostly ups that were hugely valuable. >> host: his realizationship with barack obama of which barack obama is unaware. >> guest: growth, his intimate, one-way relationship with president barack obama. for at tacoma it was different. the british were there, and then the germans had a big base and the swedish came and took over the prt. the swedish had a different approach to development. their approach, as was described to me, was to channel the majority of their funding, which would be much less than the american amount of money, through the central government -- through kabul in order to support the creation of a governing system in which direct aid was not coming into the province. >> host: who described it to you that way. >> guest: not just by local people but also by sweeds. >> host: i'm sure it was described by swedes. how, for instance, governor atta would have described it. >> guest: the governor's relationship with the swedes was extremely colorful, let's say, very, very turbulent. on multiple occasions he asked them to leave. on multiple occasions he asked them to rename their team because the team provincial reconstruction team he said implied reconstruction and that wasn't accurate. then he said maybe they should change their name to provincial security or stability team. then they said they were providing the swedes with security so it wasn't accurate. so a very contentious relationship. what was interesting about it was i think he used it to actually consolidate power in a kind of counterintuitive way. so he could take credit for everything that happened in that province. nobody was thinking the swedes did this or their germans did that, even though the truth is the germans, for example, created a base, an airport, all these things for which i think donors and usaid had a presence in the north. of course, could take credit, but because he could make an argument that unlike the americans, the europeans weren't really doing much. all of that credit went to him. all of the relationships with the business community he could kind of monopolize, and he could direct contracts and all of the fallout that would come from counterinsurgent or counterterror military activity, he didn't have to deal with that. so it's a double-edged sword having a powerful donor working with you because the relationship can become problematic. ... >> and it is also a major trafficking area with a different route because you mentioned the border of pakistan and then we have the border of central asia and therefore the trafficking root thereat leads to russia and western europe through a different route as well. can you describe, barring in mind you might want to go back to afghanistan some time, can you describe the relationship of the government of those two governers both to their narcotics economy and the counter-narcotics that were spear headed by the united states. >> i am happy to say because i am hoping to go back i don't have concrete evidence of involvement on the part of these two governers. there is rumors about profiting on their part at different points in their career as there are rumors about that for a number of other governmental officials. having said that, both of them at the time these two governors and they were very high. after halman. and one of these central kind of performance possibilities for them, one of the things they believed deliver to president karzai and the donor community was to get rid of the cultization of poppy. so there are a number of researchers who have worked on this. david mansfield is the one who wrote the most i read. >> poppy is the flower from which the opium gum is extracted and that becomes heroin. and poppy is visibility and photogenic. >> i have a paragraph of myself in 2004, with the second producer, in a beautiful field of purple and white. >> that is the central of highest quality opium. >> it was demonstrated how one would go about cutting the bud, drying it and the more refined it the higher along the value chain you are in terms of ability to profit. so both of these provinces saw a dramatic reduction in the poppy production about six or seven years ago. it was touted was a wonderful thing to be near poppy-free as the u.n. said. it was hard to understand how that happened but it is important. when i talked to people inside the government about how it happened they told me a story about powerful law enforcement and policy and explaining to the afghan people this wasn't legal and unislamic and there was an enforcement of that policy. a language of government really. other people who observed outside of government had a different story. it was more a racketeering story. there were a certain set of people who had been involved in different illegal or elicit activity and they were in position of influence now either inside the administration, or the police or connected to people informally to people in power. and once the decision was made at the top, from the governor, that this activity was over there was an incredible and powerful informal appething tha could turn it around. >> what does informal appartus mean >> they are armed men who have the ability to enforce the wish of the governor. and one of the things that became clear to me and it is one of the reasons why i think strong men have a role to play in the province when you look at it this is the first time this force is standing up. there haven't been opportunities for training and capacity building and the things we as c associate with building the police and now we are talking about a new chapter and the people who were policing are not longer policing. so what i saw in particular was that even though the normal appointment process and the way the people chose to be leaders was decided by the interior in kabul. the governor was of who he was and the armed men whom he had relationships with he had enormous influence on who was put into police. and the result was a lot of men who fought with the governor for long time and knew them for a long time, now owed an entirely new life to him. this wasn't just the police. it was people who had business opportunities or had an opportunity to get in politics or run for a seat on the council and all kinds of ways these men who were fighters were reinventing themselves. and when he made decisions like no more poppy populations he had the ability to enforce that. there was an uptick in poppy cultivation around the second presidential election in 2009. but what i am hearing from people doing research closely on this is hat in fact now we are not seeing poppy there again. we are seeing the control of the governor being asserted. so the interesting thing about that is on the one hand that is a real success story because the policy was get rid of the poppy and now we don't have poppy. the challenge is that the farmers are suffering because of that. and the promises of all kinds of other opportunities have not manifested in a way that people thought they would. and there is a lot of unrest about it and there are questions about once the donors leave will the governors enforce the ban in the same way? will it be worth it to them? the governor hasn't had as successful experience of enforcing the ban. in part because of the dynamics of the province. it is difficult to control power in an autocratic way on the pakistan border. >> i wanted to ask you to comment on two things before questions. we talked about the process of state building, governance in afghanistan but we have not talked about what is covered in the media which is the war with the taliban and i wonder if you can comment on how that affected the governors briefly. and second, i would not be surprised if people looking at you and trying to imagine you in these circumstances, of which there are photographs in your book, are curious about your personal experience as an american women, graduate student of indian decent dealing with these afghan strongmen. it is an unusual form of field work and perhaps other graduate students and others would be interesting in your personal experiences. >> sure. i hear about the questions of when this end and as the troops leave will they retake kabul and so on. my experience of studying these two governors in particular but also the two other governors have talk about in the book who were not as successful because they didn't have the same profile. they are host of powerful actors that are not the taliban or interested in the taliban coming back to power in the kind of typical sense of retaking kabul and they are gained politicately from the changing of that regime. i think what is interesting about these characters who are anti-taliban and that is why they came to power because they fought them with the americans but there is a pragmitism to afghan politics and i hope we can talk about this but no -- animosity is to the core of who any strong afghanistan man. and i am sure we can talk about the decision and if someone cold me that would happen i would have laughed hard and for a long time. i think they are -- >> by the way, he is a ph.d from columbia. >> that is correct. he is an alumni of columbia. he was one of the most focal critics of warlords including the general who is now his running mate. i think what that tells us, to me, is about the agility and flexibility and dynamic quality of afghan politics. so looking at these characters is a different story than the taliban. they were fighting on behalf of the government through policies and through their influence to defeat the insurgeerancy but i don't think it precludes down the line interesting and different positions on their part about the possibility of the role of the taliban in afghan politics going forward. in terms of my personal experience it was very, very difficult for me to convince anyone to let me come to afghanistan in 2004. i was lucky i bet ambassador robert fin who was our first ambassador after the 9/11 and he should you should look up this network that does interesting work and they let me buy my only ticket and work for free as many students know what that experience is like. they let me come with them to do -- >> in the far northeastern part. highly mountainous border. >> it is the most remote place i have been and people say the most remote parts of the country. and i just fell in love with the place. and because we were in a small village there i started to see two things: one how complex the politics was and how these individuals who had a particular kind of strength as commanders and they were known at the local level what kind of influence they had and the complexity of their role. the other thing i realized is that it is hard to find an afghan who is not interested in talking about politics and able to articulate a sophisticated analysis of whatever particular political question you pose. so i realized it would not be difficult to do field work in afghanistan from that perspective. if i looked at the politics of chris christie in new jersey and we can talk about interesting parallels there but if i decided to look at that and i am not sure if i showed up new jersey and talked to people in their homes and such. >> there are members of your ethnic group in new jersey. >> that is true. i would have that advantage but i am not sure i would have had the access and interest in mana -- new jersey -- i found. if you can leave kabul you will find interesting things happening. much more interesting than what is happening in kabul but also people who haven't been asked about their opinion. it was rare someone said no to an interviewing. it was actually helpful i was female, that i was short actually because i think i don't have an imtimidating persona so when i approach people who might find the questions i was asking or the subject matter potentially threatening i don't think i was projecting a threatening vibe. i also think being with students is a very disarming identity. because you are sincerely trying to learn. i had no preconceived idea of what warlords were or they had done certain things. i sincerely asked what kind of governor they were. but i should say something like 200 interviews i did four of these were with these two people. the vast majority of what i learned was talking to the people that hated these governors, loved these governors, worked with them, worked against them, worked in sectors that seemed unrelated but were influenced by them and you start to piece together a story. i think i just came back from kabul about two weeks ago and i think one of the great challenges for people doing this kind of research with every year is that people like us are very much the targets now of insurgeant and the people that work with us and associated with us. so it is hard for me to imagine, for example, next year traveling to another area that is very dangerous. the trick for me was the more i was there the more comfortable i was, the more people i knew, the more i trusted myself. but the situation has gotten more dangerous every year for researchers. so it remains to be seen for researchers and journalist how we can find a way to continue to tell the stories in a highly and permissive environment. >> we should remember that only recently three journalist have been killed in kabul in afghanistan and one badly wounded in the same attack. there are a lot of other things we can ask including the two questions that might be on people's mind. such as one, was the american effort worth it and two, who is going to win the presidential election. i am not ask those. >> those are rhetorical. >> we have until 7:30? >> no, we have until 8:00 and i want to take the chance to ask you a few questions because this is a rare opportunity. i might ask you to answer the two questions you just posed and i will frame them more specifically. i am wondering if you can -- you have had this extraordinary experience of studying a country at a time and deeply trying to understand its politics at a time when people were not concerned about it in your home country and then it was all of a sudden at the center of american foreign policy. i wonder if you can share with us what that experience was like of having that knowledge and learning and then becoming first an advisor but to become part of the american foreign policy establishme establishment -- making policy, when you look at it on the inside, what do you think americans accomplished and do you have a sense of what our role is going to be going forward having been on the outside and inside? >> uh -- [laughter] >> first, i should say when i started working on afghanistan in the 1980's it was a greater concern. the perspective that i brought to it was i was coming from my particular generation of being the kind of people who were 18 in 1968 and going to universities at the time -- i was studying and trying to look at politics from the ground up and i was doing my dissertation on india. i got involved in afghanistan initially from the perspective of documenting human rights violations. my interest developed into understanding more how the conflicts looked to the people living them and not solely as part of the cold war. i had to integrate all of those various things. it went through a period where it was much less of an interest to people. and i made an effort to diversify my academic efforts. i succeeded in that but was foiled by bin laden. he ruined a lot of people's plans and lives. i would say now since 2001 i have become -- sometimes i feel inappropriately overinvolved with this country i should have nothing to do with thinking back to my boyhood in philadelphia. as you work on a subject like this it isn't only or perhaps even primarily the knowledge that you have and everything that you know is something that someone else disagrees with in any case, but the relationships with people that you develop. and i don't just mean with afghans, although there is that, but also in the neighboring countries that are involved and international organization and the u.s. government. i might add in this very gathering is one person i met when he was working for the united states government, one woman i met who works for the turkish government and was in the embassy in afghanistan, quite a few people from afghanistan who have studied in one way another. so you develop people in the u.n. mission in afghanistan and are now working on issues relating to it and head quarters in new york. so those are the things that keep you coming back. i think what the problem -- i don't know how to explain this exactly. but what i have tried to do in a lot of my work is to look at how these big global issues have an impact on local, very local issues that the global actors don't understand or perceive and vice versa. and the story about obama and sharzi is a good explanation of that. from senator obama who was with a candidate for the president, what was relevant about afghanistan was he had troops fighting to eliminate terrorist who had attacked to united states and he wanted to show his solidarity with those troops. when you are running for president of the united states, you know, the rivalry is between the leader of the tribe there and his rival karzai who was a leader of another tribe isn't what is utmost on your mind because you are not competing against the two. what is important is the picture of obama with the troops. that wasn't the picture the afghanistan saw. they saw the picture of obama with karzai's peters opponent. and that had important results. it was the start of karzai's thinking that obama was out to get him and that continued through the election in 2009. it was an unintended consequence and may not be understood today even. i think similary these issues of local politics in afghanistan are then interpreted as having something to do with the war on terror which they maybe connected but often they are not. i will not go into more details, but being in government as an advisor in the u.n. i would try, through my imperfecting understanding and many of the afghanistans have expressed that, i tried to bridge that gap. but i concluded it isn't really bridgeable because there is just an a symmetry of power in the world and we have more money at our disposal and we are able to implement our ideas our con exceptions and protect our interests more forcefully than those with less money and power at their disposal. and that means that there is also an asymmetry of knowledge because say afghans have in a way a much bigger incentive to try to understand the united states than the united states does to try understand afghanistan. there perceptions are also often incorrect such as the belief that obama was trying to support someone or many things we do that are not contentional that gives rise to conspiracy theories. the main thing i have gotten out of it is something that may not be evident to those that know me well because i don't always act on it but a degree of humillty about what we can accomplish in the world either good or evil. i would say on the whole the effort that we and the international community made in afghanistan is worth it. this week we feel that more because of the successful conduct of the election. although, we don't know if is successful because the purpose is to chose a president not to stand in line having your fingers dyed and the president hasn't been chosen yet. yet, so much has been wasted, so many mistakes have been made. perhaps they were not necessary but no one gets to be president of the united states by spending a lot of time and energy with politics and angle heart. you cannot criticize that. it is just a reality. so it is a constant struggle. another thing that really changed since i started is the internet and electronic communications. the first time i went to pakistan in 1984 and afghanistan in 1989 and once you were there there was no way of getting information out except by coming out. ... and i've seen not have a tremendous impact, good and ill on the linkages between people in conflict current countries afghanistan and wealthy societies tiered >> with that, why don't we open it up. >> i will go over here so i can be more easily. because this is being broadcast, richard and i recognize you. when a shoe for make you worry line is the same united teeth behind the microphone that they are by yourself, name and affiliation and ask a question. try to keep it relatively brief. thank you. >> congratulations and very good work. i'm a full price and from afghanistan. escape to see you out there. i seems the issue of asking this and it's not as black and white because it's very complex. it's extremely complex. there's so many factors. these warlords and strawmen did not exist. there's a constructional and historical sciences. >> i'm sure you have a lot to say on the subject. >> i'll get into it. the question that i have -- i have were with others because i work for the government. the stories that you say is very relevant. i have quite a few of them myself, but i won't get into that. the regional dimension is these people are primarily supported a different regional countries. like the president of tucci tristan, turkey orators. as if he's ahead of steve. the same thing goes with -- he is very close connections of packets and so on and so forth. how do you see that? i think you mentioned about president, and a dozen other prime ministers. that boosted the credibility of these factors. i would just end with this note and it's very interesting. size with a bunch of ministers in bizarre and this very interesting story that he asks you to fund a project. at the end he was so frustrated he said look, i'll fund this project. i'll pay for poor friend, then you pay me later in the same game i heard that his construction companies were built same of those other things than the government had to pay them later. so there are so many stories did what i do want to tell you >> if you have your question. >> look at the regional part. >> dipali coming for you there, i'll take free time. introduce yourself. the mac yet, carl mayer, writer and journalist who's written about afghanistan for a long time in the south by bernie rubin. i got two interrelated questions. what is same interested cinematheque name from the figures in the past and first of all go but intact a guy who was a big figure on the radical islamic side. idc the part of the political equation? second question come i was interested yesterday to hear carlotta pole to npr and she was -- idea mike just published a book called the wrong enemy. >> her pointless ranting about pakistan commemorating the obvious point that pakistan is finally interrelated with domestic afghan politics, making the point there were two views she discerned about military -- will of the military in pakistan but paradoxically the u.s. military was stronger and more stringent in saying we should be tougher on particularly protect another radicals on the border of afghanistan. the diplomats, civilians who kept saying we really have to take care. we don't want to rupture this important ally and they were the soft line on it. i am wondering, what is your perception of that is to? >> finally, please go ahead. >> i'm happy with world politics review. your goodness to enough to let me interview you about these people a couple weeks back. thank you for doing that. i want to stack about the issue centralization erased earlier. in particular criticism to which karzai sensualist government and abiding forces to be activated. you sort of in my head it's been an advantage in terms of its ability to bargain. i wonder how you see the trajectory of centralization under the kind on the orbital administration. >> so dipali, once you talk about the relationship between regional powers and centralization and i will deal with interagency discussions on pakistan. >> with great pleasure i will say that question to you. the idea of the regional dimension is hugely important. it is important for a variety of reasons. one that you raise the political -- and then i raise the political leverage that congress vis-à-vis the central government and other players figure area as a strongman and you get from having direct relationships with other countries. you know, it's not common famously, the nature warlord in the western part of the country in herat province who features as a shadow piece in my book of the strongman's so strong that there was any competition around him to make it worth it to her for the center had a relationship with the iranian that amplified his power economically, militarily and politically and use that. it is entirely on that point. on the question of centralization, i think this is a real paradox, right, that you have a state in which a tremendous amount of real power lies in the provinces in the districts in the villages and yet you have a government which is organized and barney, you can also comment on this. as i understand it, historically this is not something that came from the outside that the westerners that this kind of government will be good for you, but that is historically centralized and the idea of appointment, that is, in a future romney an anthropologist described appointments as the prerogative to decide who will govern them which provinces. >> in his writing about the afghan government 40 years ago. >> from an historical. on the one hand, it looks like it doesn't match. what i've argued and interested in a new project trying to understand the different logic by which karzai appointment all-time different governors, that clearly affords the central government is now not of influence for this kind of informal policy. going forward, i think there are a number of political players in afghanistan who believe there should be serious decentralization and there are a number of scholars and anchors but to be around what would be a better set. and bernie, i'd be interested to know what you think. just regulating, let's say two of the main contenders for the president he are abdullah abdullah and ashfaq kayani, between the two of them my interest to be ashfaq kayani would be in a strongly centralized date and abdullah to love would be more interested in the possibility of decentralization. we can talk about more why that could be the case, but it's not clear to me that the path is fixed in one direction or the other. some people believe there has to be a con to shell amendment around this. other people say there's room for maneuver here. but i think it is a central question for the next government about the extent to which decisions get made more in the provinces and the possibility, for example, that district governors elect good. might governors be able to collect taxes. that would be a very different model and it's hard for me to imagine at least in the short term there'll be a loss for the government in terms of power. >> for me just comment on that replay. we tend to think of government is having an institution that should provide accountable services to people and therefore the degree of decentralization and prevents accountability to people would be better, especially fragmented society. but the rulers of afghanistan have thought of government as an institution to prevent their country from being torn apart and that leaves you towards a different structure of government and titanium x of control versus accountability or though they are. some argue that decentralization lead to accountability. others argue decentralization would lead to chaos, civil war and fragmentation. so it's not a simple matter to find the right balance. it is one of the issues in the current election. just briefly on the question of packet and come i want to mention something we haven't mentioned so far, which is asking the nsa landlocked country and in order to maintain a military presence there or for any outside country that does not border in afghanistan to maintain any kind of present day are coming you have to bring everything through other state and specifically given its location, in order for the united states to have any access at all to afghanistan, it needs to have good relations with -- so given u.s.-iran relations, and there simply no alternative for the united states to depend on pakistan for its logistics. i would also mention that pakistan has in the air weapon. there is just a limit to which any army can launch defenses against don't supply lines and that is why whatever the emotions people may have in different departments of the government about what is going on in pakistan, when i was in government, but with a lot of different views in many different departments, but ultimately the conclusion was we had to balance are sometimes very strong differences of pakistan but their mutual dependence on it. i think afghanistan is thought that the state has a very similar difficult problem. >> hi, i have two questions, big picture questions. has a war on terror been used as a justification for sovereign nations like afghanistan as well as taking away across the additional right such as widespread spying on the nsa of americans to protect as in the so-called war on terror? in the second question is to afghanistan believes 9/11 was an inside job by the u.s. government and other entities in saudi arabia in order to justify the country. >> will take two more. >> please, go ahead. >> on this question of warlordism, the thought arose, maybe a little far-fetched, but there is an historic analogy stretching somewhat, but she think of the futile loss of how databases for continued existence, living off the surplus of peasants, creating great difficulties after a while, finding each other, results of the peasants of dough for an ultimately they were able to maintain the formation of what ultimately became an all-powerful state, a feudal state. i think there are certain similarities, not between administrators of the central government and tax collectors and continue to live up to surplus. i have a friend that some name like this is occurring in afghanistan. maybe a little far-fetched, but we can use this framework for understanding the dynamics of warlords being converted into governors and then integrating into a central -- into a central government. of course the interest of the united states, which will not permit the defendant's power enables it the return of the taliban was perhaps an integration of taliban, given the direction of globalization in the can or not the u.s. for maintaining hegemony, world hegemony and the mobilized world and anticipating content stations with iranian provincial or regional concern for authority. chinese, russian. you see that manifesting as of today so that there are some similarities anything for some overarching ways in which we could look at the emerging developments in afghanistan. >> joe borghi, department of defense. i decide to read at the current status is of the country. [inaudible] >> okay, i may have to have someone from the audience answer the question. >> a glorious indebtedness is one of the main drivers of poppies cultivation, indebtedness and insecurity. paula, do i take a question about feudalism clicks >> yes. i have not heard 9/11 was an inside job in afghanistan. the war on terror is a justification for occupation of another country also have not heard that. i don't think there's any question that had 9/11 had not happen, that 9/11 happened was the catalyst for an intervention afghans dead. that's a very different statement than saying that it was a mixed views to occupy another country. under parallel to europe -- >> before you go on, one comment on the question. as reported in the press company names daytona series of direct discussions with representatives of the taliban leadership in germany and qatar over 2010 through 2012 and which of course al qaeda and the taliban's relationships with a central question. and i could say the taliban never questioned whether al qaeda had carried out 9/11 or whether 9/11 was the recent united date fate of afghanistan. they said they are punishing us for some and we did do. it was quite a different argument. you can argue whether that's an active statement on their part or not. but they didn't contest the reality of what had happened. iraq is a different question which had nothing to do with 9/11. we are not going to talk about that here tonight however. >> i hope the parallel a feudal europe isn't that far-fetched, but inspiration for a lot of my theoretical argumentation. and this book on the scholar who influenced my work as well as barney's work with the head of the sociology department here at columbia for many years. charles tilly who described across as a stable nation in europe as many as nine did many, many times, which involved engagement on the part of strongmen at different hours. and involved what i got had very interesting parallels and had resonance with the experience in afghanistan. i was lucky not to talk about the project with charles williams before he passed away and i think he gave his relax it lasted. he was nervous always for people to draw the parallel. the differences are obvious. but i think there are quite interesting parallels. on the question of poppies debt, i don't have an answer to that. david mansfield might very well have an answer. >> nyu has been working on this. do you have any data or information on that? >> i think he should go to the microphone are not. >> we are working together on a paper now on what is likely to have been to the economy in afghanistan after the security transition in the end of nato combat role in 2014. i know you are not prepared to speak. >> i would just say especially the most recent afghan survey, the number one reason for cultivation is always going to be cost and prices in particular in 2012 went up tremendously, which motivated. that is always a reason to let cultivation will try and continue. if you look at areas -- >> one of the things that attack into afghanistan as it is to all countries to go through ursa destruction subsistence economy where people produce their own food in others to an replacement by a cash-based economy. of course the influx of huge amounts of cash for counterterrorism and reconstruction only reinforce that. under conditions of insecurity where it's almost impossible to get regular goods to market, there are no function financial institution. growing and marketing narcotics is one of the few ways of raising the cash people need to see and also get the cash to plant the poppies and the first place. people borrow money and depending how good the crop is, they may or may not be able to pay off their debt. so there is a cycle of debt, which is one of the drivers of the poppies crop and has to be addressed if the peasants and farmers are to enjoy security. as dipali mentioned, although the strongmen are able sometimes to use their capacities to globalize 4 cents to one to press poppies cultivation and come it does lead to hardship on the part that's vulnerable parts of the population sometimes. sometimes they're a rather perverse ways of addressing such as growing hashish and marijuana in that of opium, which is less photogenic, less profitable, also something you can make money off of in a situation where the rule of law is made. well, i don't see anyone else up at the line, so i will really say dipali -- sorry, please, go ahead. >> i actually have a history in afghanistan since 1967. that being said, we used the word strawman warlord. we can also use governor and some cases. why don't we just say leader, regional leader. are we already prejudicing the outcome by using different terms. also, without usaid for assistance, will there be a state in our sense of the word? >> well, maybe i'll take an opportunity of answering the question to say a couple of closing thoughts. the question about the use of the word is really an interesting and one and one people have written about. for me, the word leader is as i said at the beginning i think it's an accurate label for a number of these. i think i was interested in the kind of strength they were bringing to the formal state, the kind of informal strength. so the idea being strong in a particular way that can be studied and understood any function of different characteristics was an important part of the story for me. i also was interested in using the word warlord because it has a certain connotation and precisely because of that comet strikes me as a word that's in part to a set of actors, it is important to understand any disaggregated and kind of more complex way. one of the ways to do that is to use the word and the away from lowered and a different set of respect is. >> can i do say on the word, it not a word used only by

Related Keywords

New York , United States , American University , Al Qahirah , Egypt , Qatar , Dubai , Dubayy , United Arab Emirates , Germany , Iran , Afghanistan , Arsala , North West Frontier , Pakistan , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , Turkey , China , San Diego , California , Russia , Kabul , Kabol , United Kingdom , Mexico , Cairo , Iraq , India , Bagram , Parvan , New Jersey , Herat Province , Herat , Jalalabad , Nangarhar , Sweden , Nangahar , Saudi Arabia , Americans , Mexicans , Swedish , Chinese , Turkish , Soviets , Russian , Germans , Afghans , Swedes , Iranian , Afghan , British , American , Abdullah , David Mansfield , Scott Walker , Susan Martinez , Charles Tilly , Carl Mayer , Richard Hoss , Hamid Karzai , George H Bush , Lou Dobbs , Charles Williams , Bernie Rubin , Chris Christie , Pashtu Pashtun , Barack Obama , Al Qaeda , Ashfaq Kayani , Lisa Anderson , Ted Cruz ,