A Conversation With an Afghan General

[0] From New York Times, I'm Michael Wobarrow.

[1] This is a daily.

[2] From the moment that Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

[3] And in the weeks that have followed, the United States has put much of the blame on Afghanistan's security forces.

[4] and equipped an Afghan military force was some 300 ,000 strong.

[5] A force that President Biden has said gave up without a fight.

[6] We gave them every chance to determine their own future.

[7] We could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.

[8] But the security forces themselves have said little about what happened.

[9] Today.

[10] A conversation with an Afghan general who worked closely with the U .S. about why he thinks the Taliban won and why he left in the middle of the fight.

[11] It's Tuesday, September 28th.

[12] Hi there.

[13] Hi, Michael.

[14] How are you?

[15] Good, good.

[16] How are you?

[17] Very well.

[18] It's nice to meet you and nice to see you.

[19] Thank you.

[20] I want to ask you just to introduce yourself for me. Your full name, your title, the whole thing.

[21] I'm Brigadier General Koshal Sadat.

[22] I was until three months ago, one of the deputy ministers in Afghanistan for security.

[23] I joined the Afghan forces in 2003, and I pretty much raised through the ranks, commanding the country's special forces.

[24] And then in 2019, I was selected by President Gandhi to become one of the deputy ministers at the Minister of Interior.

[25] Wow.

[26] So you've held some of the highest ranks within the Afghan security forces in government, it sounds like.

[27] Yes.

[28] So I'm curious, what has it been like as a general and as a minister in the government, as such a high -ranking person in the Afghan government to watch the country fall, watch the army surrender it and watch the Taliban take control of your country?

[29] How did that make you feel?

[30] It's troubling, for sure.

[31] You know, I grew up under the Taliban in Kabul, and women were beaten, forced to stay at home.

[32] You're not allowed to listen to music.

[33] Your life is pretty much controlled by this fanatic group of radical, religious individuals.

[34] And to see that come back, you know, I don't want to see all the women of Afghanistan.

[35] We whipped again.

[36] Be forced to what to wear and when to come out of fun.

[37] or not come, or you're not allowed to go to school and so on.

[38] So that's the troubling part.

[39] That's really the troubling part.

[40] Well, you're starting to hint at this, and I want to understand your journey to becoming a leader in the military, a leader in the government, and it sounds like that story starts with your family and growing up under the Taliban.

[41] So can you tell me a little bit about that period?

[42] of your life.

[43] Where does it start?

[44] Yeah, so I had a very interesting life.

[45] You know, I lost my father when I was four years old.

[46] He was a pilot.

[47] His plane crashed in 1988.

[48] He was a pilot for the Afghan government?

[49] For the government, and this is during the communist regime.

[50] So this was when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan?

[51] The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, yes.

[52] We don't know how it happened, regardless of whether it was shot down or crashed and so on.

[53] but we found out a month later that he died in a plane crash.

[54] So my mother raised six children, me, my brother, and four sisters.

[55] Wow.

[56] During the wartime, and actually Afghans fled to Pakistan or Iran or elsewhere.

[57] We couldn't go anywhere because my mother knew, you know, having had teenage daughters, my sisters are older than me, and she heard so much about, you know, you're traveling for days with teenage girls, and you hear a lot of.

[58] of bad things happening in them.

[59] So we decided we're going to risk all the state.

[60] We stayed in basement to protect in case of an air bomb or airstrike or rockets were landing.

[61] Sort of pictures of what you see in Raka, Syria, where the entire city sort of, you know, Germany after World War II collapsed.

[62] But somehow we survived.

[63] You know, my mother had a shrapnel in her arm.

[64] I had small shrapnel you know, from the bombings of between various, during the Civil War, from 1991 until 96.

[65] And when you say the Civil War, you're referring to the period after the Soviets left Afghanistan in the late 80s and when there's a vacuum that's being filled by warring groups trying to establish authority.

[66] That's right.

[67] That's right.

[68] And then the Taliban emerged.

[69] And we didn't know what they would be like, who they are.

[70] And we sort of, everybody sort of welcomed them because it was one group.

[71] We had enough of this civil war, and we didn't know what they will do.

[72] So initially, they welcomed these people.

[73] They say, you know what?

[74] We are against the thieves, the robbers, people who looters, and so on and so forth.

[75] It was all good initially, all good soundbites.

[76] And when they arrived to Kabul, they started giving out a couple of, you know, two or three sort of Sharia orders that everybody had to abide by.

[77] So the first one was women not allowed to go outside without Berka and without a male companion.

[78] So my mother couldn't go.

[79] We would go.

[80] We were young, but we would have to go with her.

[81] So sisters couldn't go anywhere.

[82] They couldn't go to school, so they had to stay home.

[83] And then men had to have a beard long enough so you can hold your hand, hold it with your fist.

[84] So they'll come and hold it to your chin.

[85] And if your beard was shorter, you would get punished.

[86] And thirdly, you know, the ban on music, watching movies, all of that were banned.

[87] And how old are you at this point?

[88] I was 12 years old at the time.

[89] And so what did you make of these new rules around everything?

[90] It was not good.

[91] It was troubling.

[92] It was more troubling because there were a lot of women in my home.

[93] Like I said, four sisters and a mother, and for them to not be able to go to school, it was hard.

[94] Courage to my mom, we went to school.

[95] Me and my brother, my younger brother, we went to school.

[96] And we both had books and so on, and we would come back home.

[97] They read our books.

[98] They pretty much homeschooled.

[99] And my mom and sisters, my older sisters, were seamstress, you know, making dresses.

[100] You know, they made money to help me to go to school and food and so on.

[101] The UN would provide us some food, the WFP World Food Program.

[102] The Red Cross would give sort of a card that you could get, you know, oil, flour, rice, sugar once a month.

[103] or so, but it was not enough.

[104] Was there something, as a 12 -year -old boy, that you had to change because of the Taliban's sudden rise to power and all these new rules?

[105] Music you liked, movies you watch, TV, you cared about, that you suddenly had to give up?

[106] It's interesting because we used to, we still listen, but very secretly, you sort of soundproof your house, soundproof the windows, and you listen to music.

[107] not too loud, because they did patrol around the city to listen to your door, see if you're watching a movie, and then they were knocking, bust into your house, and break the TV, arrest the mail, and break the VCR at the time, or the cassette player, and so on.

[108] So what would you have been secretly watching in a soundproofed house?

[109] So we had a TV, but we would put blankets around it and so on.

[110] We hit that during the day at night time or whenever we had a chance or electricity, because electricity was also a big issue for us.

[111] We would pull it out, put blankets in the windows and the door, and put on movies.

[112] I remember Titanic was a big hit and everybody was watching it.

[113] Wow.

[114] You know, I watched it like two or three times.

[115] You know, we had, so friends would come in, oh, we got to watch.

[116] So it was sort of a big thing that, you know, family, relatives, friends, classmates would want to watch that movie.

[117] They would come to our home, and then we will soundproof the room, which is kind of cool.

[118] You know, you turn it into a little cinema, and they all sit there, drink tea and sweets and watch, you know, watch Titanic or any other movie.

[119] You know, oftentimes you have one of the guys when he's taking a bathroom break, go check out the front door, make sure there's nobody there, and he kind of look and come back.

[120] I had friends who lived far from me. they would have a different movies and i would have different so you do it swap films and you carry it tucked in your belt and then you go there it's like a you watch you know sort of a drug deal you know you sort of you look nobody's there you pass it he passes it to you like a little spy secrets being exchanged and and and then you get that you tuck it in your either sleeve if you have a big jacket or in your belt like a gun and then and then you bring it home you You remember doing this, walking around with movies inside your pants.

[121] Inside my pants, absolutely, absolutely.

[122] Yeah.

[123] That's a very big set of changes for a 12 -year -old to start absorbing.

[124] Absolutely, yeah.

[125] And then you become used to it.

[126] It's, you know, we got used to praying five times a day.

[127] I mean, you know, okay, we're, you know, we're not extremely religious.

[128] You know, we're very open -minded.

[129] But you get forced to go pray.

[130] If you're on a street at 1 p .m., you get whipped and say, hey, get to the mosque.

[131] And were you wept?

[132] Yeah, yeah, most of us.

[133] Most people, if you're in the street, you get wept, okay, get to the mosque.

[134] And this guy's, you know, the Taliban would keep running and I'm beating you to go to the mosque.

[135] So looking back on that period, what was the impact of having to live under those conditions, under the Taliban?

[136] How do you think about it?

[137] Look, I lost my teenage life that I should have been, you know, striving and becoming a different person to, you know, to become.

[138] becoming a soldier, ultimately trying to rid them off our country.

[139] So when exactly did you join the military?

[140] And what did that look like?

[141] It sounds like it grew out of this period of your life where you and your family are very unhappy with the rules and structures of the Taliban.

[142] So, you know, 9 -11 happened.

[143] And then everybody said, hey, hold on a minute.

[144] They messed with the wrong people.

[145] America's coming to take revenge.

[146] And then the U .S. came.

[147] And the U .S. just started bombing the Taliban and started bombing the al -Qaeda.

[148] But for us, and we watched it all.

[149] You know, we watched the bombing.

[150] We watched the U .S. planes.

[151] And I'll go up to the rooftop.

[152] My mom would, like, scream at me, get back down and then watch these planes, B -52s fly above Kabul, and then just drop a bomb on the Taliban headquarters.

[153] And that took a few weeks and months, actually.

[154] But then it was just one day that they were all gone.

[155] They'd left the country, left the city.

[156] The Taliban.

[157] The Taliban.

[158] When I woke up, my mom said, until 1 a .m., there was all these vehicles fleeing Kabul airport.

[159] And 1 a .m. it stopped.

[160] Everything just went quiet.

[161] And then it was around 6 .30 or 7 a .m. and I started walking to the bakery.

[162] And the Voice of America and BBC were announcing that anybody, I think the American military and the government announced that anybody who delivers an al -Qaeda to an American will get $5 ,000.

[163] dollars.

[164] And I saw these locals chasing these two Taliban.

[165] I think they were Al -Qaeda because they couldn't speak the language.

[166] And people were chasing them, trying to get them, because they're all gone and these two guys were left behind.

[167] These two guys ended up in a house, in an empty sort of a ruined house.

[168] And they pulled out grenades and blew themselves.

[169] They didn't want to be captured alive.

[170] Wow.

[171] So they blew themselves up.

[172] And then the Americans later came And some locals will hold a leg.

[173] They'll bring a leg of this kind of guy.

[174] Oh, do you want to have him?

[175] Can I get money?

[176] And he said, no, I wanted him alive.

[177] But it was those scenes, the early day, the first day of this, you know, end of the Taliban and al -Qaeda.

[178] Yeah.

[179] So you're watching all these scenes unfold.

[180] How are you feeling?

[181] Oh, cheering.

[182] Cheering.

[183] Chearing.

[184] Literally cheering.

[185] All of us were cheering.

[186] because they were bombing the Taliban and Al -Qaeda bases in the country.

[187] This constant use of force for the five years that they were in charge had bubbled up so high that the moment this thing collapsed, everybody hated them.

[188] It was freedom, you know?

[189] It really was.

[190] So you saw Americans as liberators in that moment?

[191] Absolutely.

[192] Everybody saw Americans and liberators.

[193] at that time.

[194] So how did you hope that your life would change in that moment?

[195] Well, to be honest, we were kept in such isolation just to get free from that, just to have the ability to listen music or watch movie or go to shave your beard or wear jeans.

[196] That was freedom.

[197] I remember there was the most expensive or rare thing to find in those days, early weeks, were shaving kit for men.

[198] So that's what it was.

[199] To see women go to school, school.

[200] This was the freedom.

[201] We didn't really think beyond.

[202] It was the basics of what you can get.

[203] Did you get a shaving kit?

[204] I couldn't grow at the time.

[205] No, so I didn't, I didn't, yeah.

[206] So how old are you at this moment when the U .S. is routing the Taliban?

[207] So late 2001, I'm 16, 17.

[208] Got it.

[209] Yeah.

[210] Pre -beard.

[211] Pre -beard, yeah.

[212] So how does the 16 -year -old version of you get drawn into the military?

[213] So not yet.

[214] I was going to college.

[215] I was going to be an engineer.

[216] So I didn't really have an intention to join the army or be part of anything to do with the government and so on.

[217] But, you know, it's expensive to go to college.

[218] Yeah, college was free in Afghanistan, but you have a lot of expenses, and we couldn't afford that.

[219] But I spoke English.

[220] And in November -ish, 2002, I decided to become an interpreter.

[221] So were the U .S. military?

[222] Yes.

[223] Yes.

[224] So I had a bicycle.

[225] I rode my bike to where the U .S. embassy is now.

[226] And they said, okay, you fill these forms, sign here, fill this, fill this.

[227] It was within an hour I was hired because they needed people to speak a language.

[228] And they said, you will get paid $450 a month.

[229] I was like, what?

[230] a doctor was getting paid $150, and I was getting paid $400.

[231] It was the biggest salary you could imagine.

[232] Like, whoa, I'm like 18 now.

[233] So, yeah, I left the bike there, and I right away jumped in a military vehicle to drive out to translate for them.

[234] Wow.

[235] And I came back home.

[236] I had a lot of mud on my shoes or my pants.

[237] And my mom said, where have you been?

[238] I said, I got a job.

[239] She didn't believe.

[240] I said, no, I really do.

[241] And so how did I join this?

[242] I was an interpreter in 2002, late 2002, about six months later, when we started forming the Afghan National Army and the police, one of my senior leaders, commanders who told me, said, look, if you want a future, you can't just be an interpreter.

[243] You need a career.

[244] Your dad was a pilot.

[245] He served the country.

[246] Come join the army.

[247] And so I decided, okay.

[248] And then I enlisted.

[249] And that's how it all started for me. And when you enlisted, which is a very big decision, what did you see your mission as?

[250] And what did you see the larger American mission as at that point?

[251] What were you signing up to do?

[252] I signed to be part of a team, part of a community of dedicated people.

[253] But I wasn't really thinking beyond that.

[254] It became larger than just a job.

[255] It became more important than a job and a responsibility.

[256] when I became an officer.

[257] You know, I commanded a group of about 40 men at the time.

[258] We trained and we conducted operations, but we had the U .S. providing us support.

[259] So helicopters, fighter jets, any other support that we needed, they were with us.

[260] But slowly, the Taliban had started to reorganize themselves.

[261] This is 2006, 2007.

[262] The Taliban started creating this, you know, suicide.

[263] bomber training camps in Pakistan, and then they came back to Afghanistan, and the attacks have rampant, you know, more attacks against the coalition, the U .S. and NATO forces, and large explosions, you know, truck bombs.

[264] But the U .S. was busy in Iraq.

[265] So the resources were very limited in Afghanistan, but Americans were busy in Iraq, Afghanistan just sort of skyrocketed.

[266] We'll be right back.

[267] When you say that the U .S. is suddenly busy in Iraq.

[268] How do you see that in the work that you're doing in Afghanistan?

[269] Well, I mean, at the time, I didn't know how capable the United States was.

[270] So I believe the U .S. was this sort of massive, you know, it had everything you needed.

[271] It was powerful second to God.

[272] Whatever you needed, they would bring.

[273] So you never doubted the American capabilities.

[274] But essentially, slowly we started seeing, okay, we can't get a drone.

[275] to give us support, well, well, it's limited.

[276] And you can't get these Apaches to come and support you because they're supporting other missions.

[277] And you realize, okay, there's another war going on in Iraq.

[278] So most of the assets are being pulled, and we realized, you know, how tough Iraq was.

[279] But Afghanistan was getting there.

[280] You know, I remember the first time the Taliban learned how to behead people from the al -Qaeda.

[281] Wow.

[282] There was an Afghan soldier sort of kidnapped from his home, and there it is the Al -Qaeda teacher, instructor, showing how to properly behead a person, and all the students of the Taliban sitting there and watching it.

[283] And the videos came out, and it was sort of gut -wrenching just to see, like, how sick can you be to do that.

[284] And that just really increased our anger towards him.

[285] And in 2007, really, as we saw the Taliban attacks increase, the U .S. and U .K. and coalition started to equip us more.

[286] I mean, at the time, we were just carrying an old rusty clashing cough.

[287] We didn't have nothing.

[288] I mean, we were just tagging along with the coalition forces.

[289] So they started giving us more equipment.

[290] They started giving us night vision.

[291] They started giving us laser for our weapons.

[292] So that kind of enhances your capability to operate at nighttime.

[293] and we increased our operational tempo.

[294] We started doing more specific arrests.

[295] And we made a lot of mistakes, I have to admit.

[296] Me and us, the Americans coalition, because the intelligence would be wrong.

[297] You go trying to find that one person, you go and arrest 50 others.

[298] You bring a guy, he's the only breadwinner of his family, and you arrest him, sort of humiliate him in front of his family, put handcuffs behind him and you drag him in the helicopter into the helicopter and fly him to place and then you don't know what happens to that guy you know and his brother and his father certainly is going to take revenge and pick up arms or somebody who has a weapon in his house and then he comes out with a rifle and you shoot that person and later on you find out he wasn't the guy we were after.

[299] He was just the guy who thought some robbers came and some thieves are about to go loot their house and he came out with a rifle.

[300] So we made a lot of mistakes And I admit I was part of that, you know, I was part of that very, very lethal actions we've took.

[301] Don't be wrong, 90 % were very, very effective, tactically effective at the time.

[302] So the response that you yourself participated in to try to rein in this resurgent Taliban, it sounds like you're saying you understood in the moment that it was doing some real harm to the civilian population.

[303] Was it turning them against you all and against the Afghan security forces?

[304] Yeah, so at the time, it was effective because you would know in this village, the intelligence assess, the reports that you get is an individual who is putting bombs on the highways against the coalition forces and Afghan forces.

[305] Okay, you spend some time identifying that guy, and you go and do the raid.

[306] You arrest him and maybe other people who are sitting in the house with them.

[307] you arrest them as well.

[308] But not knowing that six people were there, five of them were innocent, and the one guy was a perpetrator, but you didn't know at the time that five people were innocent because they were all sitting with the guy who was criminal or terrorists, you know.

[309] Those five people had nothing to, they didn't even know that first guy was involved.

[310] And then you have the entire village against you, pretty much.

[311] It's a snow, snowball, you know, rolling snowball, as we call it.

[312] You know, it's just bigger, bigger, bigger.

[313] But at that moment in time, you've sealed the hole.

[314] There's no problem coming to you from that village.

[315] You've sealed the hole, but you've also lost the village.

[316] You lost the village.

[317] All the other guys in the village, they get so angry.

[318] They go across to Pakistan.

[319] There's a training camp.

[320] They give you $10 ,000.

[321] They give you a motorcycle and a rifle and training on how to make bombs.

[322] Next thing, year, you have 10 more coming.

[323] There are millions of stories like that.

[324] millions of stories like that all over Afghanistan in the past 20 years, yes.

[325] In effect, you all, you personally, as well as the Afghan security forces, are helping to regenerate the Taliban, regenerate the enemy that you're trying to stop and break down.

[326] Sadly, yes, we did.

[327] We did.

[328] You know, I questioned myself.

[329] I questioned what we were doing.

[330] It was just not working, you know, in a larger scale.

[331] And we can't fight our own people forever, the entire province, the entire district.

[332] But there were a lot more could have been done by the Afghan government and the U .S. government.

[333] If we wanted to help Afghanistan, it didn't have to be what we did.

[334] It didn't have to be always the military solution.

[335] Whenever we went to an area to do an operation, we always talked to people as well.

[336] And I said, look, we arrested this individual.

[337] He was putting bombs and this and that.

[338] But you know what?

[339] it shouldn't be this way.

[340] Allow us to come, allow our government to come and build your school and build roads and so on.

[341] And the people were really happy.

[342] But we never built them a school or we never built them a road.

[343] You know, some areas did happen, but a lot of areas it didn't.

[344] And this is between 2003 and 2006 -7.

[345] By the time we had all this budget in 2010 when President Obama came, he sort of increased the troop number and he wanted more.

[346] He had a lot of money to spend and building schools and roads.

[347] It was too late.

[348] We already had 50 ,000 Taliban fighting us.

[349] And even this time, we would come, say, we have money.

[350] We build your school.

[351] You killed my dad.

[352] I'm taking revenge.

[353] So you're going to these communities and you're making commitments that you and the security forces in the U .S. can't or won't keep.

[354] It's exactly right.

[355] I remember it very specifically in Sangin District of Helmand.

[356] And I was there and we were talking to these people.

[357] We said, stop doing drug dealing.

[358] Stop having this drug lab.

[359] You can have schools.

[360] You can have jobs.

[361] You will have factories.

[362] I know we will take all this information to Kabul.

[363] We will report it to the government and we're going to make sure that you get a budget that you will have a road built and school built.

[364] And people are just looking at us like this.

[365] Oh, that's really good.

[366] I hope that happens.

[367] The time after that, when we landed in the same area, it took us six hours to get out because there was so much gunfire.

[368] It was like the entire city was against us.

[369] Because we lied and lied and lied for years every time we did that you will have roads, schools, factories, whatever, jobs, nothing happened.

[370] Did you feel like you were lying in the moment, or did some part of you believe the commitments you were making?

[371] No, no, we believe because that's what we were told.

[372] That's what the government told us.

[373] And when you say the government, do you mean the United States government?

[374] Do you mean the Afghan government?

[375] The Afghan government.

[376] Well, the Afghan government was supported by the U .S. government.

[377] but the governance was so bad and so corrupt that it just, it ruined it all.

[378] When you say corrupt, what I mean?

[379] What I mean is if whatever money that would be sent to a province to go and spend it on developmental projects, all stolen, all shared between these people in the province, in the government office building, and nothing would get to the front, to the poor in the village.

[380] And then, about two and a half years ago, about January 2019, and I inherited all that, the mess, the corrupt.

[381] In 2019, I took command of all the police forces.

[382] I became the deputy minister of security of the interior.

[383] It's like a four -star general position, but they gave it to me. And I am in charge of this 120 ,000 police.

[384] and I knew corruption was the biggest problem the police deals with public face -to -face every day and that's the face of the country's securities they were the ones that caused another gap another space between the government and the people you know I have a personal story in 2007 on Christmas there was an operation in Musa Kala District of Helmand that operation involved U .S. 82nd Airborne Division.

[385] It involved the British forces and above my unit, and Afghan police and army as well.

[386] And it was successful.

[387] And the operation took about a week or so, and we've cleared the entire district.

[388] So we were staying in this big compound.

[389] And we all, we ate same food as the Americans would eat, or the British would eat, the MREs, the meal really to eat.

[390] And I saw in the corner, there's this group of Afghan police.

[391] They were cooking chicken.

[392] They had a fire going on, and they had this chicken chopped up very nicely.

[393] They put masales around it.

[394] You could smell the masas.

[395] And I'm just watching this corner.

[396] This American soldier, with their translator, interpreter, walked to this policeman.

[397] And I'm assuming they said, where did you get it from, or how much it was?

[398] And the guy said, $5 per chicken.

[399] Okay, so these are the, you know, American soldiers and everybody's eating MREs for the past, you know, long time.

[400] And they all shared $5 each, so it's a group of them, and they gave it to the policeman.

[401] The policeman went away for an hour.

[402] He came back with this chicken, live chicken, like 10 of them in his hands.

[403] And he brought all these live chicken.

[404] And the Americans, the soldiers, and took the chicken and sort of used their baited, it, lob their heads off, and kind of peeled it, and made a little barbecue.

[405] Fast forward a week later, I had orders to secure a huge gathering area because the governor and the mayor and the commander of the army and everybody is going to come.

[406] This high VIP delegation will arrive and talk to these 1 ,000 elders.

[407] So we have this 1 ,000 -ish people sitting there, all just sitting on mud.

[408] And in the middle of this crowd, an old man just stands up.

[409] And he said, God damn it, your police is so bad and corrupt, they come and steal our chicken.

[410] Oh, wow.

[411] And I just bang my foot like, shy.

[412] That's the same.

[413] That's the chicken that this policeman sold to the Americans.

[414] So the Afghan policeman stole the chicken from this family, sold it to the U .S. soldiers.

[415] But at the end of the day, this family has just had all of its chickens taken from them.

[416] Right.

[417] By the U .S. and by U .S.-backed Afghan forces.

[418] So I don't know if you know much about Afghan rural houses and families.

[419] That's their life.

[420] You have a cow, you have 10 sheep, you have an acre of land, and you have chicken that provides you eggs or maybe meat when you need it in dire times.

[421] This is their life.

[422] And our police took that.

[423] So in that sense, you know, the Taliban were for the people, they said, you know, Taliban are the saviors, not this local security.

[424] They're taking money from me, they're abusing me, they're this, this, this.

[425] So you would have a police in a district that the U .S. and coalition paid.

[426] And that police in the district, their leadership and everybody would be appointed by the Kabul elites.

[427] and he would be stealing, taking cuts from drug dealers, you name it, anything that upsets people.

[428] So when I became a deputy minister, I started firing the police chiefs, I started arresting those who did that.

[429] I fired 27 police chiefs for the provinces because they were just that, as I explained.

[430] Then the government will bring the very same corrupt, bad people to the district again, because some individual pushed President Ghani to remove my guy and bring his own guy.

[431] But that's how it was.

[432] So you start hitting a wall?

[433] I started hitting the wall.

[434] You know, the reality on the ground was we had the insurgency rising.

[435] The Taliban were becoming more stronger and stronger, as in numbers, because the nation itself is just frustrated with how coalition forces and the Afghan government was operating.

[436] So between the...

[437] very counterproductive military efforts you saw on the ground when you were doing counterterrorism efforts that drive people to the Taliban and this corruption that you have been seeing in parts of the Afghan government, are you feeling at this point like you are building a legitimate military and security apparatus that that's even really possible to build that, given everything you're describing, does it look like something that can survive on its own?

[438] if and when the United States leaves.

[439] No, I didn't believe they would survive, given the people we had there.

[440] I actually, I left in June before the fall.

[441] I left the forces, I left the country.

[442] I said to President Ghani, you know what, the way you're running this system, the way how you want us to run these operations, I cannot support you.

[443] And that really, I didn't want to leave the country.

[444] I didn't want to leave the fight.

[445] but I wanted that to be to be a warning, say, hey, look, I can't do this unless we change, of course.

[446] When Afghanistan collapsed, our president pretty much put the blame squarely on Afghan forces, the kind of people that you used to command.

[447] Yeah.

[448] And he said that they gave up many of them without much of a fight.

[449] And I wonder what your reaction to that is, because after talking to you, I'm seeing that statement in a different.

[450] different light, and wondering how it squares with all these operations backed by, in some cases, participated in by U .S. forces that alienated so many Afghan civilians and helped drive people into the arms of the Taliban.

[451] So when you hear the president say that this was soldiers giving up, walking away from their jobs, laying down their guns, is that an oversimplification given everything you've told us?

[452] Is it wrong?

[453] It's wrong, certainly.

[454] It's certainly wrong.

[455] When you take the lifeline of an army, you pull out all the maintenance and support of the, you know, all of aircrafts being maintained and fixed.

[456] You mean the U .S. support for the Afghan forces?

[457] He pulled out all the U .S. support from the forces.

[458] You know, sometimes when we would be in the firefight, when we'd be attacked by the Taliban, the U .S. Air Force will respond.

[459] In multiple cases, the Americans did not respond.

[460] They watched our guys get killed or be overrun, but their orders were, there's a peace deal in Doha, you can't respond.

[461] So that's one side, the betrayal, as you call it.

[462] But secondly, as I mentioned before, the reason why this large group of Afghans have joined the Taliban and fight us is because the American war.

[463] I don't know.

[464] I can't defend myself or I can't defend the forces given the situation we're at right now.

[465] But the reality is well known to the American service members that have served alongside with us.

[466] And that reality is what?

[467] The reality is that we were not cowards.

[468] We did not lay our arms.

[469] We would not lay our arms based on the military pressure.

[470] We laid our arms because our commander -in -chief fled, Ashrafgani, the president, fled the country.

[471] and the governors who were left there and said they need to lay armed, there's no need to ruin the country.

[472] And I agree, because what kind of a victory would it be if we have six million people in a Kabul city dying and bleeding?

[473] So, you know, the city would have been destroyed just because we wanted to defend what, the republic that is already full of so much corruption?

[474] I think the suggestion by those in the U .S. who wanted our forces to withdraw was that the U .S. at the end of the day, can't really help an Afghan military force that refuses to help itself and can't commit U .S. soldiers to a cause that the Afghan people aren't willing to fight for.

[475] And you've explained why you think a lot of civilians aren't interested in that fight.

[476] And I guess I'm wondering about you yourself.

[477] Do you feel that you gave up?

[478] do you feel like ultimately you yourself lost your commitment to this cause and I don't want to sound disrespectful because I know all the sacrifices that you have made but you absolutely right you absolutely right to you did leave and you left at a crucial moment and for reasons that might be understandable but if everyone does what you did there's not many people left to fight the war and stop the Taliban Yes.

[479] I left, yes.

[480] But I, look, I did not want to serve that government.

[481] When I resigned, I was in the fight in Lagman province.

[482] The Taliban attacked Lagman the first province they wanted to reach and it took it.

[483] And we started the fight from the rooftop of the province.

[484] And we used artillery, we used our air force, we used our special units.

[485] And we did, I think my guys did great.

[486] A lot of the Taliban were killed and we lost some guys as well, but we pushed him back.

[487] But I also prolonged the problem of Lagman people.

[488] Throughout this war, we've never discussed the pain of the local people.

[489] The very innocent farmer who has three, four children and he's got land and he just wants a happy life or quiet life.

[490] We come in, disrupt his life and his family's life.

[491] He's moved out living in a tent in a stadium because there's bombing going on in his village.

[492] There are Taliban and there's us and we're shooting in like a Tom and Jerry video cartoon.

[493] And this poor family is just watching.

[494] But how did you weigh that against the potential suffering of your fellow Afghan citizens under the Taliban, suffering along the lines of what you yourself experienced as a kid?

[495] But it was not a bloodshed.

[496] We didn't die.

[497] We just didn't have access to music.

[498] So you're saying by comparison, that is not suffering.

[499] Well, there...

[500] You would rather perhaps subject the people of Afghanistan to profound cultural changes, women to not being able to go to school, a young version of you, not being able to watch Titanic, if that meant that they would not risk death every single day.

[501] That's a...

[502] I know that's a harsh way of...

[503] It's an appropriate thing to do.

[504] You want to be alive and, you know, or not having ability to watch a movie.

[505] But to be clear, that is a life that you don't have to live now.

[506] You're not in Afghanistan, but lots of other people are.

[507] Yeah.

[508] That's also, that's something...

[509] It's hard.

[510] It's hard to comprehend, you know.

[511] but I'm not trying to make an excuse to myself that what I did was right.

[512] I was going to leave anyway, even if Ashrafgani and his government was still there.

[513] I believe, and this is me spiritually speaking, I think a nation, Afghanistan, 40 years of war, the conflict was sort of passed and inherited.

[514] My grandfather thought he handed it to my father, I took it, and then very likely my son would have taken it too had he raised in Afghanistan.

[515] So this chain of violence would have been passing on from generation to generation.

[516] Somewhere in the line, you need to cut that.

[517] You need to cut the chain and hand it to a piece, you know, nonviolent.

[518] Because once the violence comes away, once the guns are silent, people will have to start thinking about some sort of life.

[519] If it starts with, you know, the Sharia law where, you know, you've got to have a beard, you've got to pray five times, fine, but at least people are not dying.

[520] And I think even the Taliban now, if they keep themselves away from international, transnational terrorist networks, if they allow human rights, they respect women, I think time will fix things, you know, time will change, you know.

[521] I believe that.

[522] I believe people change.

[523] You tick through some very big ifs there.

[524] And it sounds like for you right now, the priority, after all this violence and death, is safety and some kind of peace.

[525] And then questions of equality, justice, civil rights, women's rights.

[526] Only then can those be addressed.

[527] But for now, you're saying they're going to have to take a back seat to just people not die.

[528] Exactly.

[529] That's well put it there.

[530] The influence that the United States has in the region and the world can still shape the future of Afghanistan.

[531] The policies, the U .S. foreign policy could shape ultimately resulting in peaceful Afghanistan and not becoming another safe haven for terrorists to attack the United States.

[532] But we have to stop the guns.

[533] If we have to stop the violence.

[534] And I'm a very, I was a very violent person when it comes to, you know, the way my operations, when I lit operations, it was very, very, you know, to hear it be kind of, if my soldiers, my guys will hear, it's, they'll think I'm what happened to me. But I'm being sensible.

[535] You know, I'm being honest here.

[536] I'm sure a lot of people who hear my voice in your, the podcast, they're going to think I'm, I've gone crazy.

[537] I'm a traitor.

[538] Why am I, you know, disrespecting the many, many thousands and millions who are unhappy?

[539] But I'm being realistic.

[540] I think I'm going to be criticized a lot for what I said.

[541] But it's coming from someone who have personally have been in firefights and conflicts with the Taliban.

[542] And, you know, I have been in much more violence engagement with the Taliban than probably a lot of my soldiers, a lot of Afghans.

[543] I've been at a first -hand, direct, close quarter direct action with the Taliban.

[544] But yet I'm still saying that give the Taliban a chance.

[545] Or what will we do?

[546] What other options do we have?

[547] General Sadat, thank you very much.

[548] We really appreciate your time.

[549] Thank you, Michael.

[550] Pleasure.

[551] We'll be right back.

[552] Here's what else you need to another day.

[553] On Monday night, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic plan to avoid a government.

[554] government shutdown later this week by financing the government through December, prompting a rebuke from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

[555] Madam President, after today there will be no doubt, no doubt about which party in this chamber is working to solve the problems that face our country and which party is accelerating us towards unnecessary, avoidable disaster.

[556] Republicans said they opposed the measure because the Democratic bill would lift the U .S. debt -sailing.

[557] An explanation Democrats mocked because Republicans themselves voted to raise the debt ceiling under President Trump.

[558] And the R &B artist R. Kelly was found guilty on Monday of serving as the ringleader of a decades -long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex.

[559] His conviction on nine counts was the first time Kelly faced criminal punishment, despite decades of allegations of misconduct, and represents a significant moment in the Me Too movement for both black women and the music industry.

[560] Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester with help from Lindsay Garrison.

[561] It was edited by Paige Cowan and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Mary Lazzano, Dan Powell, and Alicia E -tube, and was engineered.

[562] by Chris Wood.

[563] Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

[564] Special thanks to Thomas Gibbons Neff.

[565] That's it for the daily.

[566] I'm Michael Barrow.

[567] For the next two weeks, my colleagues, Astead Herndon, Sabrina Tavernisi, and Kevin Roos will host the show while I'm on paternity leave.

[568] They'll see you tomorrow.