>> Doug Swanson: Good afternoon, everyone.
I would like to welcome you to the William
G. McGowan Theater located in the National
Archives building in Washington, D.C. I'm
Doug Swanson, visitor services manager for
the National Archives Museum and producer
for the noontime lecture series.
Before we bring today's author on stage, I'd
like to remind you of a few other programs
that will be taking place in this theater
in the near future.
On Thursday, May 7th at 7:00 p.m., Dr. Jonathan
Sarna will be here to discuss the story of
the extraordinary relationship between Abraham
Lincoln and the Jewish community with journalist
Steve Roberts. Dr. Sarna will be able to sign
copies of his book "Lincoln and the Jews,
A History," following the program.
On Tuesday, May 12th at 7:00 p.m. Pulitzer
Prize winner and best-selling author Joseph
Ellis will be on hand to discuss some signed
copies of his new book, "The Quartet: Orchestrating
the Second American Revolution."
And, finally, on Thursday, May 28th at 7:00
p.m., Akhil Reed Amar and Harold Holzer and
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will
discuss Amar's new book.
To find out more about these programs and
all of our exhibits, please take one of our
monthly event calendars which you'll find
in the racks in the theater lobby or you can
visit our Web site at www.archives.gov/calendar.
Our topic today is "88 Days to Kandahar: A
CIA Diary" by Robert Grenier. A highly decorated
27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence
Agency's clandestine service -- oops. Sorry,
someone has a cell phone going. That's okay.
Sorry. A highly decorated 27-year veteran
of the Central Intelligence clandestine service
played a role in the greater security challenges
of this generation. When 9/11 struck, he was
the CIA's chief of station for Pakistan and
Afghanistan based in Islamabad.
After preparing the original war plan for
the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, approved
by President George W. Bush on September 24th
2001 Mr. Grenier went on to organize and direct
the joint CIA special forces Afghan combat
teams which drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda
from southern Afghanistan effectively ending
the initial military campaign.
Later, as the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq,
Mr. Grenier was brought back to Washington
and named CIA Iraq mission manager, responsible
for all CIA intelligence operations and analysis
in that country and representing CIA in all
White House policy deliberations on Iraq for
a 2 1/2- period.
In 2006, he resigned from the CIA and went
into retirement. Since then, while pursuing
a business career, Mr. Grenier has appeared
widely in both U.S. and international media,
including many appearance on all the major
TV networks as well as CNN, PBS, History Channel,
NPR, BBC, and many others. He's also been
interviewed in dozens of leading print publications
around the world. He received an A.B. in philosophy
from Dartmouth and did foreign affairs at
the University of Virginia. He is chairman
of ERG Partners, an investment banking providing
financial advisory services and serves on
several boards, including the CIA Officers
Memorial Foundation. He is a life member of
the Council on Foreign Relations.
Please join me in welcoming Robert Grenier
to the National Archives.
(applause).
>> Robert Grenier: Well, thank you, Doug,
for that introduction. And thank all of you
for coming out today on such an absolutely
gorgeous day. We were afraid some of you might
abscond and decide to spend your time on the
mall. I'm glad you came in to spend a few
minutes here with us this afternoon.
You know, 88 days to Kandahar, my book, is
in some ways, I guess, sort of a typical Washington
book. It deals with foreign policy, counterterrorism,
and like most authors, in this genre, I guess
I like to think it is a fairly important book
and that you can draw certain important lessons
from it.
Really, what I tried to do essentially in
this book was just to tell a story. A story
begins early on a Sunday morning. It was a
warm, fall day in Islamabad, Pakistan. I was
sound asleep in my bedroom, locked behind
bolted steel doors.
I had been working until 3:00 in the morning.
I had been sleeping fitfully for maybe three
or four hours only and suddenly the phone
rang. Woke me up out of a dead sleep.
And so I probably portrayed a little bit of
annoyance when I picked up the phone and I
said "hello." Of course, I immediately regretted
it because at the other end there was a familiar
voice that said, "Did I wake you up, son"?
Oh, good God, it is the director.
I sat up at attention in my bed and I did
what you absolutely should do in those circumstances,
I lied. I said, no, Mr. Director, I was just
getting up.
(laughter).
Remember, this is early Sunday morning my
time out in Pakistan. It's late Saturday night
here in Washington. And the director said,
look, we're going to be meeting at Camp David
tomorrow morning to talk about our war plans
for Afghanistan.
He said, the Pentagon is telling us that there
are very few military targets in all of Afghanistan.
We can probably hit them all in just a matter
of days. We know where all the terrorist training
camps are but they're all empty. The terrorists
have all run away. He literally asked me,
well, should we bomb empty camps?
Now, think about this for a minute. This is
the 23rd of September, 2001. 12 days after
9/11, the worst one-day disaster in America's
history since Pearl Harbor. Here is George
Tenet, director of Central Intelligence, at
the heart of the power here in Washington,
D.C. who is calling halfway around the world
to ask a field operator in essence what do
we do. If you didn't know we were in trouble
before, you knew it now.
(Chuckles).
I really wasn't expecting this call. I said,
look, Mr. Director, I'm not sure we're thinking
about this in just the right way. You're asking
me about military tactics. Actually what we're
dealing with here is a political problem.
Now, yeah, it's probably not going to be all
that hard for us to chase Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
We didn't refer to al-Qaeda in those days.
We talked about them as the Afghan Arabs which
is what the Afghans themselves called them.
I said, look, we can probably chase Bin Laden
and his Arabs out of Afghanistan. Unless we
are going to colonize the place, the problem
is to keep them from coming back. To keep
Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist safe
haven. Only Afghans can do that at the end
of the day.
So whatever military tactics we use, we need
to make sure that they are sequenced and they're
calibrated in such a way that we can bring
about some new political dispensation in Afghanistan
that will not only chase out Bin Laden and
the Arabs but will keep them out and keep
the country from, again, becoming a terrorist
safe haven.
So I started to walk him through it. And he
kept interrupting me to ask questions and
pausing to take notes. I said, look, Mr. Director,
this isn't going to work. This is taking too
much time. Let me try to write all this down.
He said, good idea. After 11:00 his time,
he said, look, the helicopter comes from me
to take me to Camp David at 6:00 tomorrow
morning. I'm going to be up at 5:00, can you
get me something by then? I said, yes, sir,
I can.
So I raced into my office and in about three
hours I banged out an eight-page cable. By
this time my senior lieutenants had come into
the office on the Sunday morning and I circulated
it to all of them, got some very good suggestions
from them, incorporated those suggestions.
Sent it off to Mr. Tenet's security detail
with instruction that is they should hand
it to him as soon as he got up.
As far as I knew, that was the end of the
story. I sent this thing off and I didn't
know what happened after that.
But when he awakened, his security people
handed it to him. He looked it over, he immediately
sent copies to the other members of the war
cabinet, to Vice President Cheney and Condoleeza
Rice and the joint chiefs of staff. And they
discussed it that day at Camp David. The following
day they met with the President in the situation
room at the White House. And the President
said, Done, this is our template going forward.
And the first I knew was later on that Monday
afternoon when I was asked to do a secure
video teleconference with General Tommy Franks,
commander of central command, who was going
to be responsible for the military campaign
in Afghanistan to make sure that his battle
plan conformed with what we had agreed we
should do going forward.
Highly unusual circumstance. CIA doesn't normally
get asked to write battle plans. We're supposed
to inform policy, not to make policy. But
it was a highly unusual circumstance. And
I was in a position where I was one of the
few people in the U.S. government frankly
who knew anything about Afghanistan. It wasn't
because of any particular wisdom on my part.
So what was it we said in this eight-page
message that was approved by the President?
By the way, no plan ever survives contact
with the mean. This plan was no different.
But there were certain principles that we
outlined that were followed during the conduct
of the war and that I think were actually
very helpful in the first part of the campaign,
the part of war that we actually thought we
had won.
So as I mentioned before, what I said to the
director was, look, remember, at the end of
the day, this is a political problem. At the
end of the day, what we need is some political
authority in Afghanistan that will do permanently
what we, Americans, can't do for ourselves.
That is to keep the country from being a terrorist
safe haven. If the Taliban is willing to be
that force, that's fine. Remember, Taliban
controlled 90% of Afghanistan. They weren't
recognized by very many governments as a legitimate
government but they were the de facto government.
Our hope after 9/11 was that the Taliban could
still be induced to change this policy, to
turn Bin Laden and senior lieutenants over
into American justice and to keep his terrorist
followers from remaining in their country.
And so we said, well, first we need to reach
out to the head of the Taliban, to Mullah
Omar. And we need to ask him again: Will you
change policy? Will you join this new international
coalition against terrorism? And if he refuses,
then we have to hit him. We have to hit him
hard as a lesson to the others in his leadership.
And if they refuse to change policy, then
we have to hit them and the Taliban forces
at-large which means essentially whatever
political construct that we have in Afghanistan
is going to get smashed. And we have to think
about what we're going to replace it with.
As we do it, I said, it is very, very important
that we not appear to the mass of the Afghan
people that we're simply invading and trying
to occupy their country. That has not gone
well for large powers in the past. It went
very badly for the Soviets in the 20th century.
It went very badly for the British in the
19th century. I was very concerned that we
would repeat that unfortunate history.
I said, we have to keep the U.S. military
footprint very small. We have to make it very
clear that we're not coming in on our own
to invade and occupy their country. But what,
in fact, what we're doing instead is to come
in in support of Afghans who want to do for
their own reasons what we would also like
for them to do. And that is to chase out al-Qaeda
and to make sure that their country is not
again a safe haven.
But as we do that, I said, we have to be very,
very careful in the way that we choose our
Allies. Remember, 2001, Afghanistan was still
in the hold of a Civil War. Now, the Taliban
controlled 90% of the country. But 10% of
the country was still controlled by an organization
that was referred to as the Northern Alliance
militia drawn by sectarian minorities who
have been fighting civil war with the Taliban,
losing to the Taliban for a number of years.
Obviously, they were already opposed to the
Taliban. If we were going to have to go to
war with the Taliban, they would be a natural
ally. We have to be very, very careful that
we do not appear to the far more numerous
questions that the Taliban is drawn that we
are coming in on the other side of the Civil
War. Because while many of the Pashtuns are
sick and tired of the Taliban, many of them
are willing to stand up and oppose the Taliban,
if they believe we are coming in on the side
of the enemy, they will recoalesce around
the Taliban and the situation will be more
difficult than better. We have to reinforce
the Northern Alliance. But at the same time,
we need to find Allies among the Pashtuns
themselves. We were aided by the respect of
my station for the 18 months had been reaching
out to warlords, tribal leaders in the Pashtuns
south and east of the country, the ones who
in principle at least should have been more
aligned with Taliban.
They had a history with the Taliban. Many
of them had in positions of power before the
Taliban arose and had been pushed out of those
positions by the Taliban and were looking
for an opportunity to get back. As I say in
those 18 months we had reached out to many
of the warlords, many of whom who had been
commanders back during the 1980s, during the
anti-Soviet Jihad. They were very glad to
speak with us, once again, in many cases.
And so now after 9/11, we came to them again
and we said, okay, look, we've been talking
to you about rising up against the Taliban.
Now is your opportunity. If you will rise
up against the Taliban and push them out of
power, you'll have the full weight of the
U.S. military behind you. Something we certainly
couldn't have promised them before.
But almost to a person they demurred. You
don't prosper in Afghanistan by coming in
on the wrong side of the fight. They wanted
to find out if the Americans were serious,
if we were going to attack the Taliban. Then
they wanted to sit back a while longer and
see which way the fight would go before they
committed themselves. They didn't want to
have stick their heads above the gauntlet
until they were sure that the sides being
favored by the Americans were win.
In fact, there were only two significant tribal
leaders in all of southern Afghanistan who
were actually willing to rise up, declare
themselves against the Taliban and try to
lead a tribal rebellion.
The first was Hamid Karzai, many of us know.
Two-time President of Afghanistan after the
war. The second was an individual by the name
of Gul Agha Shirzai. He was the former governor
of Kandahar. He had the dubious distinction
of being the first tribal governor in Afghanistan
to be pushed out of power by the Taliban when
they began to organize themselves in 1994.
Those were the only two.
And so much of my book is taken up with the
improbable story how it was that these two
Afghan tribal leaders were able to go back
inside Afghanistan, organize their tribal
followers, lead a rebellion against the Taliban
and survive long enough for a combination
of CIA and Special Forces to come in to their
aid and martial U.S. Air Force on their behalf
to defeat the Taliban.
Gul Agha Shirzai had an auspicious start.
He began with crossing the border on three
followers. They were riding motorcycles, road
ride into Kandahar under the noses of Taliban.
Their first night in Kandahar they could see
the first flashes of the American airstrikes.
They traded their motorcycles for a taxi and
they drove north to Urozgan. As they were
crossing the border from Kandahar province
into Urozgan province, they were as to bed
at a Taliban check post. There was a young
guard, just a boy really, couldn't even support
a beard. And he examined their car and said
I want you to open the bag. That was the bag
with the satellite telephone in it which was
the only way they could communicate. They
weren't about to let him expect that bag.
So one of them went inside the check post
to speak to the officer in charge. And Hamid
and the two others who were waiting, they
said, if we don't get out of here today, we're
certainly not going to be captured. We have
to die here now and we're willing to risk
that.
Fortunately the commander of that check post
decided they didn't care about them or their
bag and waved them onward. When they got up
to Urozgan, Hamid went back to the tribal
followers of his father who had been the tribal
leader before him and they rallied to his
side because many of them were sick of the
Taliban rule.
As they began to organize themselves, the
Taliban backed down in Kandahar realized he
was there. They organized a force and sent
it north to try to capture him. The tribal
leaders he was with said we can't protect
you, we don't have enough armed men. So take
some of our armed men and go up into the mountains
so the Taliban won't capture you.
He did that. For the next several weeks, which
collectively must have erased a decade from
my life span, he was being chased literally
from mountaintop to mountaintop by the Taliban.
We were trying to organize an air drop of
weapons to him and his followers. Fortunately
we got an air drop to him before they got
into the Taliban force. They fought a two-day
battle at the end of which he found himself
on a high plateau up in the mountains of Urozgan.
The tribal leaders who was with him said they
managed to beat off the first Taliban attack.
They weren't sure how long they could hold
out.
They said, look, if you can get the Americans
to come in and pick you up, we'll go back
to our villages and we'll recruit more fighters
and when you come back inside, we'll rejoin
you. So we did just that. American Special
Forces helicopters flew into Urozgan. They
picked up Hamid and six of his tribal elders,
flew them to an air base in Pakistan and there
they were joined by a very small combined
group of CIA operatives and Special Forces
troops. Only about 15 people all together.
And they flew back into Afghanistan to recruit
another tribal force and with the help of
the U.S. Air Force to begin the long march
from central Afghanistan down to Kandahar.
At roughly the same time Gul Agha Shirzai
crossed the border and quickly organized a
considerable larger force. He had about 1500
fighters with him. With the help of the Air
Force and small team of CIA operatives and
Special Forces soldiers marched in from the
east. The two were able to converge in early
December 2001 on Kandahar and drive out the
Taliban and al-Qaeda.
At the same time that we were doing that in
Afghanistan, there was a parallel war going
on because as the al-Qaeda fighters who were
allied with Bin Laden realized that the situation
was turning against them inside Afghanistan,
they began to flee out into Pakistan in hopes
of traveling through Pakistan on to Iran and
onward back to their home countries.
And as they did that, we at the CIA were working
hand and glove with the infamous Pakistani
intelligence service, the same organization
that had refused to cooperate with us against
terrorists for the previous several years.
And now because of the change in Pakistani
policy, they began to work very closely with
us in rounding up these members of al-Qaeda
as they were fleeing into Pakistan and, in
fact, they ended up comprising a very large
proportion of the population of Guantanamo
years later.
Along the way, there was a group of foreign
missionaries including two young American
women who were taken captive by the Taliban
just before 9/11 and were held prisoner. We
tried to organize on a couple of occasions
Special Forces raids so we could liberate
them. We weren't able to get into them before
the situation in Kabul began to unravel. We
still managed to get CIA people and U.S. Special
Forces into rescue them just as Kabul was
falling to the northern alliance.
There was an organization called the UTN which
was Pakistani nuclear scientists. We had credible
information at that time that they had given
nuclear materials and possibly God forbid
a nuclear bomb to al-Qaeda. I don't have to
describe for you how that got Washington's
attention.
And so fortunately we were able to get to
the bottom of that situation and demonstrate
to our satisfaction and Washington's that,
in fact, they hadn't succeeded in providing
a nuclear bomb to al-Qaeda.
And in the days after the fall of the Taliban
and al-Qaeda, we had a very close brush with
all-out war between India and Pakistan. I
don't have to remind anybody here that both
India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear
weapons. We could actually have had a nuclear
war on our hands at the same time that we
were going to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
But as much as we were able to succeed in
those 88 days, the 88 days that began with
9/11 and ended on the 7th of December, 2001
when the Taliban and al-Qaeda were driven
finally out of Kandahar which was their southern
capital, we really didn't fully understand,
as I look back, exactly why we had been able
to win that campaign. We didn't really fully
understand the local politics that caused
the Taliban to decide that they should surrender
rather than fight on. Because we didn't fully
understand the reasons why we won that war,
we didn't really understand just how tenuous
that victory was and how relatively easily
it could be reversed.
We take some time and maybe some of you would
like to ask some questions about it as to
why it was that the Taliban was later able
to come back. There were a lot of mistakes
that were made. Some by the Americans and
our NATO Allies. Many more by the Afghans
themselves. People on the winning side in
the war did what people often do on the winning
side in wars, they didn't make sufficient
provision for the Taliban and their followers,
those were aligned with them, to demonstrate
to them that there was a place for them in
Afghan society going forward. Ultimately they
turned on the government of Hamid Karzai and
his American followers.
There was a lot that we didn't do in terms
of a very rapid reconstruction of the country.
Frankly, we were far too slow in coming to
the aid of the Afghans as we promised we would
at the outset of the war. Our national attention
shifted very quickly from Afghanistan to Iraq.
And as Douglas mentioned, in fact, I left
Pakistan and Afghanistan in the summer of
2002 so that I could go back and participate
in organizing CIA to support the war effort
in Iraq. So our command attention shifted.
And by early 2005 when I again returned to
focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, this time
as the director of CIA's CounterTerrorism
Center, you could see that the situation was
beginning to slip away from us. This is to
both Pakistan and Afghanistan in the spring
of 2005. We didn't fully realize it then.
But you could begin to see the opening signs
that the Taliban was coming back. They were
beginning to reassert power in significant
parts of Afghanistan.
In my humble estimation, in the years after
2005 and beginning particularly in 2009 during
the so-called surge, I think we made a very
serious strategic error. You remember back
in the beginning, we said that it was very
important that the U.S. not be seen as an
occupier in Afghanistan. We said it is very
important that the American, whatever they
did, were essentially operating behind the
scenes in support of Afghans who were operating
for their own reasons and out of a sense of
Afghan nationalists.
What we did after 2005 instead was essentially
to take over the war effort ourselves. Because
of the manifest shortcomings of our Afghan
Allies -- and it is true they were not very
effective in a lot of ways. There was rampant
-- it was setting the stage for the resurgence
of the Taliban. We decided in effect Afghanistan
was too busy to be left to the whims of Afghan
and NATO took over the war effort.
During the surge, we had 100,000 American
troops. We had another 40,000 from NATO. We
were spending $100 billion a year. We completely
overwhelmed the small primitive agrarian country
with a tiny GDP. While, yes, we did gain a
lot. We did manage to retrieve significant
areas from Taliban control, we were making
gains that Afghans themselves were simply
not able to sustain which led the administration
to change course and to essentially evacuate
from Afghanistan.
Now, we're left with a very, very small residual
force. And the concern that I have now is
that having made the mistake of trying to
do too much in 2009, 2010, 2011, I think that
we were compounding that error now by trying
to do too little. The concern that I have
is that with such a small American and international
force -- and with that force itself, scheduled
to leave by the end of 2016 -- that when those
last foreign troops leave, at the same time
foreign financial assistance to the Afghan
government will try up as well. That without
American and international troops there, it's
going to be very difficult to convince the
U.S. Congress and the Parliaments of other
European countries to maintain a level of
financial assistance that will be necessary
in order to sustain the Afghan government.
There is a lesson in this. When the Soviet
Union withdrew Number 1989, a lot of people
thought the government that was backing it
would collapse. It didn't. In fact, it did
quite well for an additional two years. The
reason they were reversed and overthrown was
not because the Russian troops were not there
any longer. It was because the Russian money
stopped. And I'm afraid that we may again
repeat that history in Afghanistan.
And if that were to happen and if the government
in Kabul were who fall, the Taliban were to
reassert itself over much, if not all, of
the country, eventually -- and maybe in the
relatively near future -- as the situation
with foreign Jihadists begins to shift around
the globe -- right now the main focus of their
attention is Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise
of what's referred toes the Islamic State
or ISIS.
They will be looking for new safe havens elsewhere
in the world. My concern is if the Taliban
is in full control of substantial parts of
Afghanistan, once again, they will go there.
And the U.S. won't be able to ignore their
presence in the future as they have in the
past and that we may be called upon to fight
in Afghanistan yet another time.
This book was a long time in coming. I knew
that I was going to write this book. I knew
that I wanted to write this book as early
as 2001, at the end of those 88 days when
the Taliban was driven out of Kandahar. And
I knew what I was going to call it, 88 days
to Kandahar.
And when I left government in middle of 2006,
I was -- I toyed with the idea of writing
it then. But I got busy with other things
and didn't actually get around to writing
it until last year.
Well, I'm actually glad that I waited. Because
if I had written this book in 2006, 2007 essentially
this would have been an adventure story, the
adventure of 88 days and how we managed to
drive Taliban and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan
and how it was that we won the war.
Now we know the rest of the story. We know
that while perhaps we won that first American-Afghan
war. We certainly didn't win the second American-Afghan
war after 2005. And there are premonitions
now that we may be yet called upon to fight
a third American-Afghan war if, as I fear,
the government in Kabul is not sufficiently
supported in Afghanistan and, again, becomes
a safe haven for international terrorists.
Thank you very much for your attention.
(applause).
I would invite you to ask questions. Those
of you that would like to ask questions, there
are microphones on either side of the auditorium
here. So I would invite you just to line up
behind the microphone. Please just identify
yourself by name. And I'm very happy to get
your comments.
Please keep comments short and let's try to
make questions questions.
>> My name is Gina. I was just wondering in
your experience in the past, what should the
American government be doing now?
>> Robert Grenier: What should the American
government be doing in Afghanistan?
>> Right now, in Afghanistan. (speaker off
microphone.)
>> Robert Grenier: As I mentioned before,
I feel that we tried to do too much during
the surge in Afghanistan, that we were fighting
on our own account in a way that alienated
many Afghans and put us in a position where
Afghans were not able to sustain the gains
we were making. It would have required a great
deal of patience and would have been wiser
and would have involved running the risk frankly
of abject failure that we could not win for
Afghans what they could not win for themselves.
I'm afraid we are compounding that error by
doing too little. What ought should we be
doing? I am not sure what the precise number
of troops ought to be. I think it ought to
be more than the 9800 we there right now.
I think it probably needs to be less than
20,000. But what's critical is not so much
the number of troops we have but what they're
doing. Right now the tasks for American troops
in Afghanistan is to provide support and training
for the Afghan National Army which frankly
I think is unsustainably large.
So I think that going forward we need to,
yes, be training and equipping a manageably
small Afghan Army. No centralized Afghan Army
has been able to control the country. It's
a country in which power is very much diffused
around the countryside. And so I think that
we need to also be working with U.S. Special
Forces in support of those Afghans who in
their own areas are willing to rise up against
the Taliban.
Now, one of the immediate objections to that
is doesn't that mean you are reinforcing warlords.
The short answer to that is yes. Yes, there
are downsides to supporting warlords because
often warlords end up preying on the local
people rather than working on behalf of the
local people. Well, I think there are a number
of things that we can do when you understand
the culture, when you understand the tribal
structure in the areas where you're operating
to make the warlords the best warlords they
can be. It takes a lot of wisdom to do that
but I think that's what we need to be doing.
I think we need to have a sufficient number
of troops that we can work with the Afghan
National Army but also work with local warlords
and local militia who are willing and have
the tribal standing to rise up against the
Taliban. Many of them actually do want to
do that and make sure that a potential terrorist
safe haven in the future rather than being
an uncontested safe haven will at least be
a contested safe haven. They will be in a
position where we can try terrorists out of
areas where we know they are planning terrorist
operations well outside of Afghanistan.
Eventually we hope the Taliban is going to
realize that, you know what, they can't win
this war. And once they realize that, then
I think we'll see serious negotiations to
some sort of a negotiated solution.
Yes, sir?
>> Thank you for returning. I know the snow
prevented you giving this lecture several
months ago. I believe you were listed to do
that, so I appreciate it. I would like to
talk specifically about the money you talked
about. A lot of money has gone into Afghanistan.
In the Soviet time, you mentioned the Soviet
money dried up and things changed. I'm curious
what if you are in a situation where you are
at a crossroads, Northern Alliance versus
Taliban. Let's say more pressure or support
was put into the Taliban's direction in regards
to control and developing that type of regime,
is that possible from your perspective? It
seemed like after 9/11 there were mystery
dialogues occurring and do this by this point
or we're coming in. We eventually came in.
It seems like what we have now is, as you
said, a third potential theater operation
because of a conflict that exists. The Taliban
is there. They go into caves. They disappear
and they come back out. I'm curious about
the support and trying to resolve the Taliban
issue from that perspective.
>> Robert Grenier: If I understand your question
correctly, the first part is what if we had
reinforced our efforts to try to make a deal
with the Taliban at the outset?
>> Versus the Karzai direction.
>> Robert Grenier: Versus the Karzai direction.
I did mention it in this talk but I describe
it at some length in the book. I had two very
lengthy meetings back before the start of
hostility. 9/11 occurred obviously on the
11th of September. The U.S. bombing of the
Taliban began on -- and al-Qaeda began on
the 7th of October, 2001. During that interim
I had two lengthy meetings with Mullah Osmani
who was the number two figure in the Taliban
at that time. I won't describe them at great
length. In the first one, he made it clear
he was there as a representative of Mullah
Omar and he had an official notetaker with
him.
And at first, I was tremendously encouraged.
We knew this beforehand. I thought that in
coming to this meeting with me that he might
have a personal agenda as well because we
knew from our intelligence that, in fact,
he didn't like Bin Laden. He didn't like al-Qaeda.
He frankly didn't want them in the country.
And at the outset of our conversation, he
said, well, look, we don't like Bin Laden.
And we don't like his followers. They're a
problem for you. They're a problem for us.
We need to cooperate together to find a way
to solve this problem.
Now we're talking. Okay. We got something
to work with here. So we went through a whole
range of different options, ways that the
Taliban could potentially cooperate with us.
If it is too political for us and you want
to turn Bin Laden over to us without your
fingerprints, we can find a way to do that.
In the end, he said, no, this is going to
be to work. So I said, well, okay. He said,
but I'll take all of your ideas and ill go
back to Mullah Omar and he will decide. That's
what he did.
And then we had a second meeting. By this
time Mullah Omar had come out publicly and
said we will not turn over Bin Laden. You
can could see at that time that attitudes
were hardening in Washington. They decided
we're going to war in Afghanistan. Nothing
is going to stop it.
And so in that second meeting with Mullah
Osmani, I said, look, it is clear that Mullah
Omar is not going to do this. If you want
to save your country and save your movement,
you have to gently push him aside, hold him
incommunicado, and seize power. He came up
reasons he didn't think he should do it. Finally,
you could just tell he was in despair because
he said the Americans are coming. What are
we going to do about this? Once again, I said,
look, you need to push Mullah Omar aside.
We went through in detail what he could do
to seize power and that al-Qaeda was no longer
welcome.
He said, okay, I'll do it. And then he went
back to Kandahar and clearly had a change
of heart. And he and I were continuing to
speak by satellite phone right up until -- and,
in fact, after U.S. bombing started. Our conversations
after the bombing started were less polite
than they were before the bombing started.
But in any case, in effect, there was an excerpt
from my book that appeared in the "Atlantic"
magazine where they said if we had more time,
is it possible we could have convinced the
Taliban to change power and maybe history
would have been different. U.S. wouldn't have
had to launch this campaign. Things might
have been very, very different in Afghanistan.
I can tell you in all honesty, as much faith
I have in my persuasive powers, I gave it
my best shot with Mullah Osmani and I don't
think he was going to do it. We agreed at
first he would but when it came right down
to it, he wasn't going to do it. It wasn't
until later that I began to understand the
inner workings of Taliban sufficiently that
I began to understand what hold Mullah Omar
had over these people. He really had them
divided. They didn't trust one another. The
only person that they trusted for the most
part was him. So he was like the hub of the
wheel and his people had key personal relationships
with him. That's how he was able to manipulate
the people around him and maintain power.
There was no way they were going to come together
and overthrow Mullah Omar and change policy.
I didn't realize that in September. I realized
it very later. It is a long answer to your
straightforward question.
Given more time could we have convinced Taliban
to change policy, I think the answer is simply
no. We gave it our best try. We certainly
weren't able to do that.
The second part of your question?
>> Related to that is you said it has come
full circle potentially is your prediction.
What you started -- and I guess it's difficult
now because you can't be -- you could be negotiating
with the Taliban today but you have this other
government that's in place as well I guess
it all relates to the money. A lot of money
has gone into Afghanistan. There has been
a lot of infrastructure that's been developed
that's not being utilized that could be and
some other things related to that. You have
moved on and people that are there now have
to work out that, but you think there's an
opportunity there to resolve that now?
>> Robert Grenier: You know, back around 2012,
2013, there was the start of some conversations
between the Americans and the Taliban. At
the time I was very skeptical that anything
would come of those discussions because it
seemed pretty clear that the Taliban felt
they were in the ascendancy. The only thing
keeping them from power was the American military
presence. They didn't want to talk to the
Afghan government. They refused to talk to
Hamid Karzai who was still President of Afghanistan
at the time.
They were unwilling to talk to the Americans
about what conditions they would withdraw.
Now the Americans have substantially withdrawn
and you have what is at least in the Taliban
eyes a far more independent Afghan government,
they have begun to have conversations with
that government. And, in fact, just in the
last few days, there were Taliban representatives
who the Taliban were very careful to say we
are not engaged in negotiations. They were
only appearing at individuals speaking on
their own behalf, not on behalf of the Taliban,
but having discussions with representatives
of the Afghan government.
So these were sort of exploratory discussions
and there are some hopeful things that have
come out of those discussions from what we
understand. It appears these Taliban representatives
are saying among other things, they're willing
to have a different policy with regard to
women's education, women's rights. But I don't
think at the end of the day, that they are
going to be serious about reaching some sort
of a political accommodation with the government
in Kabul unless and until they feel that military
success is beyond their grasp. So I think
we've got some way to go before we reach that
point.
And another thing is -- I'm not really sure
that the Taliban is capable of reaching a
negotiated solution. I don't think that they're
capable of operating as a political party
among political parties and forming some sort
of coalition government. I don't think it
is in their DNA. Maybe I'm wrong. People of
all organizations evolve. There may be a lot
I don't understand about the Taliban today
versus the Taliban I was dealing with a number
of years ago.
But I think that the Taliban is best understood
as a social movement. And I had some very
interesting discussions a couple of years
ago with one of the founders of the Taliban,
individual by the name of Zaeef who was the
ambassador to Pakistan before 9/11 and ended
up being arrested by the Pakistan and spent
five years in Guantanamo. He is now out and
living freely. I have had a couple of long
conversations with him.
Interestingly, he says -- he's still a member
-- considered a member of the Taliban. He's
withdrawn himself from the fight but is still
very much respected by the Taliban. He says,
look, I think -- what I tell my colleagues
that we should get out of politics. As a movement,
we shouldn't be trying to govern. Instead
we should remain what we were before, that
is a social movement that forces those in
power to follow the path of Islam.
And I reckon that in those parts of Afghanistan
where they naturally hold sway that that may
be the role that they will have going forward,
that people affiliated with them may hold
government positions in their respective areas.
But the Taliban, as a party I don't think
is going to play a political role on the political
stage. I may be wrong but that's what I think.
Yes, ma'am?
>> Hi. This is really a followup to your response
to the first question, what we should be doing
now.
Given that these are tribal societies, that
their loyalties are tribal, that they don't
seem to have an appetite for or even any concept
of some kind of centralized governing body,
how do you train an Army, an effective Army,
given that if their loyalties are to their
tribe and there isn't an overarching loyalty?
Iraq is kind of an example. We trained their
Army. When ISIS appears, they cut and run
because they don't have any sense of loyalty
to an overarching thing.
So how do you take that into account when
you talk about going in there and training
their Army to be effective?
>> Robert Grenier: Yeah, you put your finger
on a real difficulty. No question about it.
And I would say that, yes, Afghanistan is
a tribal society. That people's hierarchy
of loyalty sort of runs from family to clan
to tribe and then region and then maybe ultimately
to the nation as a whole.
But Afghans do have a sense of national identity,
for all that they are tribal. They do have
a sense of national identity. And so I don't
think you'd ever see a formal partitioning
of Afghanistan, despite differences between
the different areas. They do have a sense
of national identity. But I strongly suspect
that the Afghan Army now, which unsurprisingly
is heavily weighted towards the old alliance,
that a disproportionate are part of Army.
Part of the reason they are fighting loyally
on behalf of the government is because the
government is dominated by people from their
ethnicity and their sect.
I don't say it is not impossible to have a
national Army. Afghanistan has had a national
Army in the past. But when push comes to shove
and when it's clear that the Army is fighting
on behalf of a government which isn't representative
of significant parts of the country, that
there's always that tendency that the Army
will splinter.
The case in Iraq, I was involved in Iraq for
quite a number of years. I think there were
a lot of mistakes we made quite frankly right
from the beginning in the way we reconstructed
the Afghan -- rather, the Iraqi National Army.
I don't think that we gave them a sufficient
sense of themselves as an Iraqi Army. I think
they sprang from battalions that we were training
that were essentially reliant upon the Americans
to fight against the insurgents. I think it
is a somewhat different situation in Iraq
than in Afghanistan.
But you're right, the sense of national identity
is a fragile thing and something that you
have to watch very, very closely. I don't
say it's impossible to have an Afghan National
Army but it is one that does have to consider
itself to be comprised of elements which are
representative of the country as a whole.
And if at some point, elements within the
Army feel that their tribe, their sect is
no longer being adequately accommodated in
the national political setup, then they will
withdraw. There's no question about it. They
certainly won't fight.
Yes, sir?
>> What do we know about the existence or
the where about as of Mullah Omar? Is he still
alive? Are we not investing the resources
to find him that we invested to find Bin Laden?
>> Robert Grenier: Yeah. There is -- as was
the case with Bin Laden, there's a lot of
speculation about Mullah Omar. There are people
that suggest he is dead and people in the
Taliban would know it and it wouldn't remain
a secret and if he were dead, we would know
that. It is amazing he has been able to hide
as successfully as he has for such a long
period of time.
But, on the other hand, I would point out
two things. One is that we, the Americans,
have not been as focused on chasing down senior
members of the Taliban who are not actively
engaged in the insurgency inside Afghanistan.
So much of the intelligence-led U.S. military
operations have been focused on local commanders
because they are the ones killing our troops
rather than hunt down Mullah Omar hiding as
we suspect he must be somewhere in Pakistan.
By the same token, the Pakistanis have not
been particularly eager to chase down Mullah
Omar. And if they knew where he was, I don't
think that they would tell us where he was
because I can see even in my time in Pakistan,
as early as say the spring of 2002, already
you could see that the Pakistanis were hedging
their bets. They were working very carefully
and very effectively with us to capture members
of al-Qaeda. But somehow when we would give
them leads -- and in all honesty, I must say
that we, the Americans, the CIA, were focused
like ally certificate beam on al-Qaeda. We
thought at that early stage that the Taliban
was a spent horse. We weren't focusing our
intelligence capabilities heavily in trying
to track down senior members of the Taliban.
I also knew what I was still the chief of
station that it was really unlikely even if
we gave the Pakistanis very good information
that they were going to manage to capture
the senior members of the Taliban because
they were already thinking ahead. They were
thinking, look, we've seen this played before.
We have seen what the Americans did with the
Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. The Americans
withdrew and they were anticipating that we
would withdraw from Afghanistan again in the
future.
They also realized that the government, the
new government in Kabul, although it was under
Hamid Karzai who himself was a Pashtun was
heavily dominated by the northern alliance.
And the northern alliance has had bad relations
with the Pakistanis and the Indians. The Pakistanis,
although needless to say with all of the assistance
they gave to the Americans did not have particularly
good relations with the Taliban anymore. They
didn't want to foreclose the possibility of,
again, having relations with the Taliban in
pursuit of their own national interests to
make sure there was a friendly government
in Kabul, which they didn't consider to have
when Hamid Karzai formed a government there
after the defeat of the Taliban.
So as I say, the Pakistanis ever since have
been hedging their bets. And they're certainly
not about to turn over Mullah Omar or any
other senior lieutenants to us. If we could
have tracked him down on our own as we managed
to track down Bin Laden, perhaps. Again, it's
a difficult undertaking if the individuals
who are being pursued have a very low profile,
are hiding among an indigenous population
that is committed to protecting them, it's
going to be very, very difficult.
Obviously the U.S. can't spend Special Forces
crawling around inside Pakistan without the
Pakistanis knowing about it pretty quickly.
So I have an idea that we're going to see
Mullah Omar alive and well and back inside
Afghanistan before he is ever captured by
us or anybody else.
Yes, sir?
>> Yes. Thank you, sir. The narrative has
brought your book into a sharp relief, and
I appreciate that. Three questions. Currency,
how well is the dollar holding up across the
borders? How do people move money, weapons,
guns, people, opium? Is the dollar holding
steady between all the borders? And I'd like
to know your favorite aviation vehicle for
popping around across all these areas because
you did a lot of that. I know you maybe click
Chinooks. And is the C17 a really worthy desert,
unimproved runway vehicle for transporting
all these things since we're going in and
out all the time? Is that really a worthy
aviation tool?
>> Robert Grenier: Gosh. That's quite a series
of questions. I'm not sure that I'm fully
qualified to answer all of them.
I admit I haven't really been following the
exchange rate for the U.S. dollar in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. But, yeah, I mean, there's not
a lot of international trade in the Afghanis.
But all that said --
>> (speaker off microphone.)
>> Robert Grenier: Right. Well, listen, yeah,
it's one of the mysteries really. If you look
at insurgent forces, tribal forces, terrorist
forces, and you wonder how it is that they're
able to sustain themselves since they're often
in very poor parts of the world. Where do
they get the money? Where do they get the
guns?
I think the answer is that, you know, in that
part of the world, when fighters really aren't
paid very much at all and the population at-large
is a wash in weapons, that indigenous insurgent
forces are able to cobble things together
and to fight relatively easily. And they don't
require huge sources of outside funding. I
think that the Taliban has had some sources
of funding, wealthy people who are sympathetic
to their cause, particularly in the Persian
Gulf.
But we hear a lot about the U.S. Treasury
Department -- and God bless them. I have very
good friends who have led that effort within
the department of the treasury and talk about
the importance of cutting off sources of funding
whether to the al-Qaeda or the Islamic State
or the Taliban, that's very difficult to do.
It's not like cracking down on the mafia.
It is not like you have a hidden banking system
that you can shut off those flows of funds,
you can starve them of resources.
Terrorism and insurgency is largely a cash
and carry business. To the extent that there
are outside sources of funding, that generally
moves in cash and via couriers. There are
large parts of the world that for all that
currency is becoming an afterthought to us,
we do almost everything with credit card.
In large parts of the world they make major
purchases with cash. And that's still very
much the case in Afghanistan, Pakistan and
a number of the countries in the gulf and
elsewhere in the Middle East.
One of the things we often hear is that, well,
it must be the opium trade in Afghanistan
that the Taliban has seized control over.
This is how they are able to fund themselves.
Well, the Taliban does not now nor has it
ever really controlled the opium trade. There
are traditional opium trader that is provide
seeds literally and cash to the farmers at
the beginning of the growing season and collect
back what's owed to them in the form of opium
after the poppy harvest has come in.
And in those areas that the Taliban is able
to control, they were able to tax the opium
trade. Typically it's 10%. So, yes, they were
able to tax it the same way that other warlords
and the Afghan government itself is able to
tax it.
But, again, it doesn't mean that they have
to control that industry in order to get financial
benefit from it. So that comes somewhere with
answering your question.
With regard to the operation of C17s and unimproved
runways, C17 is a big aircraft. I have seen
a lot of them. I'm not sure they are able
to operate off of completely unimproved runways.
But it is a very good, very effective aircraft.
It can operate on small landing strips. But
in places like Afghanistan, the prop driven
C130 is probably the transport aircraft of
choice because they can operate on relatively
unimproved air strips and they can take off
and land very, very quickly. Those are really,
really effective.
Is that good?
>> (speaker off microphone.)
>> Robert Grenier: Oh, for me getting around?
You know what? You know what's really good
is the Russian helicopter. The Russian helicopters,
the MI-17 are very, very good aircraft. They
can operate at high altitudes. And so still
now in Afghanistan, for the Pakistanis and
for some extent the Afghans as well, it is
the MIs, the Russian helicopters that are
probably the most effective in the mountain
areas. Frankly when I was flying in and out
Afghanistan, that's what I was flying on.
>> (speaker off microphone.)
>> Robert Grenier: They're around. Absolutely.
Thank you all very much.
(applause).
