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This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Pete Buttigieg: America deserves a commander in chief who knows what that sacrifice means, and who will honor the sacred promise we make to our veterans.

Mark Steiner: Welcome to The Real News, Im Mark Steiner. Yes, Pete Buttigieg. He really weaponizes his time in the military and his six month tour in Afghanistan, pun intended. What did he really do over there? How did he become an intel officer? Why was this officer a chauffer? What is so potentially dangerous about a Buttigieg presidency in this context? What was this outfit, the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, or AFTC as it was known, that he was assigned to? What did they do? What was their role in this war and why does it matter, and what questions should Buttigieg and the others who are running for president have to answer about these wars, and the wars we dont want to see come? Were joined by a man who knows a bit about all this. Matthew Hoh, who wrote Heaven Protects Us From Men Who Live The Illusion of Danger: Pete Buttigieg and the US Military, that he wrote for CounterPunch. And welcome Matt, good to have you with us, as always.

Matthew Hoh: Thanks Mark.

Mark Steiner: And Matthew Hoh is an activist and a writer. Hes a member of advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans for Peace and World Beyond War. In 2009 he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan to protest the escalation of the war under Obama. And previously, he had been in Iraq with the State Department, and served combat tours of the US Marines as an officer in Afghanistan, and is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. So, Matt, it is good to have you back, and I really love this article you did for CounterPunch, its something that I think needs to be talked about in this way. Lets talk a bit about what we know and why its so important to know about Buttigiegs service in the US Navy, how he became an officer through a direct commission, and what is that, because it seems to serve a purpose but its really unclear how he got in, for privilege. So, talk a bit about what all that means.

Matthew Hoh: Well, thanks for having me on again Mark. And it is important, because Buttigieg is doing well in the polls nationally. He won in Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, and we have Super Tuesday coming up, and hes doing well. And he is campaigning, a large part of his campaign, is based upon his military service. In his speeches, at his campaign rallies, you will see posters of him in uniform. On his TV advertisements, there is video or photos of him in uniform carrying a rifle, and in the interviews, speeches he does when hes behind the podium at the debates, he says things that, to paraphrase him, are along the lines of, I know about war and peace peace, and I know about these issues, regarding, say, Iraq and Iran or Afghanistan and Libya or whatever, Because I was in the Navy, because I was in Afghanistan, because I went to war. He says things like, I know the meaning of sacrifice. I know what it means to go to war. I know what it means to live in a dangerous combat zone.

So, its important because this is what he is using to set himself apart from the other candidates. This is something that he is using to basically state why he has the experience to be president, because his other experiences are pretty limited, particularly when compared to the other front-running candidates, all of who have had years, I mean, decades of elected service and have filled other roles.

Its also very important too, and this is I think why I started to write the piece, because in the United States, the military is a, as I said in the piece, a para-clerical organization. I wouldnt want to say quasi-religious, it is a religious organization. And the idea that you question the military, you question somebodys record in the military, what they actually did, and in this case where someone is using it too, Buttigieg is using it to define why he would be a better president, that you are committing a heresy, that you are blaspheming.

You see this, and Ive seen this in the last few days with the responses Ive gotten to my essay. It basically breaks down along the lines of, How dare you question a veteran? This is a very serious problem we have in the United States. This is a reason why we continue to be not just sustaining and continuing these wars, but on the verge, seemingly weekly, of getting involved in new ones. The ability to question the military and the militarism in this country, again, it borders on the heretical.

Mark Steiner: One of the things you write about here is that he got his commission as a captain through something called a direct commission. And that, no matter, you talked about being able to look through his records, there was no record. Let me just read what you wrote here. You said, There is no record, and here Ill offer the possibility that his record in incomplete, of his attendance at any form of military schools or his participation whether as a mobilized active duty officer or a drilling reservist. His record contains only one DD-214, which is a record of his active service. And those were important. So, lets talk about that. Why is it important to know this about him? I mean, let me just say it in one context here. A lot of guys in, say, Vietnam, didnt see combat. They were pushing papers. But everybody went over. So, why is this important?

Matthew Hoh: Again, because this is what he is campaigning on. When, say, the question of General Soleimanis assassination by President Trump or the question of the United States pulling its forces, supposedly pulling its forces out of Syria, we know that didnt really occur, they were just redirected to the oil fields in Eastern Syria. But you know, when he receives questions like those, Buttigieg will say, and again, to paraphrase him, he will say My experience has informed my decision making on this. And when you look at his record, he really doesnt have much military experience. He received a direct commission, which, a direct commission means that you are literally appointed as an officer of the US military, that pen is put to paper, and voila, you are a military officer, and in this case he was made an ensign that way.

Most likely, the campaign And I will say this, too. As I went through his autobiography, as I went through a number of interviews, a bunch of different articles on this that have been written over the last year, his campaign repeatedly has denied requests for more information about his military career. So, when you look at his military records, which are available, I believe it was The Hill, the newspaper The Hill first released, at least notified people that his military records were available, you will see a large part of them are redacted, but thats personal information. And again, a large part of it is redacted, but again, thats personal information. The information that is available is important because it shows how often he actually wore the uniform.

It shows, as you stated, Mark, in my essay, that he never attended any schools, he never attended any form of training. He never received whats called an MOS, a military occupational specialty, or in the Navy they call it a designator, but just to keep it simple here, lets use you use the common term, MOS, right. He never received that qualification as an intelligence officer. And heres this other thing about the direct commission, is that it requires no selection process. It requires no training. Theres no hardship. So, whereas the vast, vast, vast majority of the men and women who are officers in the US military go through the service academies, go through ROTC or go through officer candidate school and theres selection involved, theres training, its hard, its difficult. Pete Buttigieg did none of that. And he was a young man at the time, he was 28 or so roughly. So he certainly could have done this if he wanted to.

This direct commissioning program, theres a practical for its existence in that in times of crisis or emergency, the United States military can just bring in specialists, doctors, lawyers, people that have specific skills that the military requires at the time. But theres also a political aspect of this, and as I note in the essay, Hunter Biden is probably the most famous, or infamous You know, Hunter Biden received a direct commission into the Navy, and then was discharged for a positive drug test within about a month of his commissioning.

But in my time in the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps I dont believe does direct commissioning, but I have met a bunch of Naval officers who were direct commission. Some of them were public relations people that were brought in because they had that skill, they had that talent, and others were political. They had benefactors, in the Bush administration or in the Obama administration, who got them these appointments because somebody was high up in the campaign, someone donated a lot of money. And thats what seems to have been Buttigiegs route, was during the 2008 campaign, he met somebody, when he campaigned for Obama, he worked for Obama, he met somebody who was able to secure him in this position. And so with a kind of a magic wand, pen on paper, he becomes a Navy officer. Never does any training, theres no records of his time with the reserve unit.

There is anecdotal evidence, there are people who are part of the reserve unit who speak highly of him, and so it does seem like he did at least on occasion. How often we dont know, because the campaign wont say this. How often he actually went to the unit we dont know, but it seems like he did. The reports are positive, and you could imagine that, hes a very smart man. He seems like hes very personal and very positive. He probably would be a very good junior officer, but he just didnt do the work, and you have to also now get into speculation because the campaign wont release more information. Did he even have the security clearances necessary to do the intelligence work that he claims he did, or that he says he was, yeah

Mark Steiner: Well lets just get to that. Theres a couple of things you said here I really want to kind of tackle. So, one of them is that you wrote about people who live like Buttigieg, an illusion of danger, that he would become a dangerous president. What does that mean to live with an illusion of danger, making you a dangerous president? You wrote that a couple of times in different ways.

Matthew Hoh: Yeah. Well, I think its something our country goes through daily. Whether its in the practical, whether its the fact that one person had, of however many, literally at this point billions of air travelers in the last 20 years, one person tried to light a shoe on fire and blow up an airplane, and we still ritually take our shoes off when we go into the airport, right? So, as a nation, whether its those color-coded terror alerts, whether its the fact that we are okay with the NSA listening and recording all our conversations, all our text messages, all our email, all these types of things, when there is no danger, or the danger is so minimal that it is statistically insignificant. And we go along with it because there is something in our society that worships this danger.

You could see this also too in other ways, and I point this out in the essay. Were a nation that has more guns than people. Why is that? Because people have these fantasies of having to protect their home from armed intruders, or these fantasies that they need these assault rifles because theyre going to have to fight the government at some point. We live as a people, as a society, with these dangers.

And when you get it down to the individual level, when in a case of Buttigieg, where he did go to Afghanistan, saw no combat from everything we can see, did not work on intelligence matters, was attached to an intelligence unit, but seemed to have, according to his own words, spent most of the time driving other officers around, driving them to meetings, not going into the meetings, waiting with the vehicle outside. But then, coming back and saying things like he does to CNN and to other places, and this is what he said, he said, I didnt kill bin Laden, but what I was doing was dangerous.

Well, I mean, when you have that kind of chutzpah to say those kinds of things, to run your presidency on a very shallow military record, you have to wonder, what is he going to do in office when he is confronted by the generals and the admirals, and the generals and the admirals always lie. I include a Dwight Eisenhower reference to that, Eisenhower speaking about that as well. Its something his granddaughter relates, that Eisenhower said, looking at his chair in the Oval Office, and Im sure Ive said this on The Real News before because its one of my favorite quotes, but I think it really tells us so much about the US military and the American government, is that he said [inaudible 00:14:29], he says, Im scared for this country when a man sits in this chair who doesnt know the military the way I do.

And he doesnt mean that you need to be an expert strategist, you need to be a tactician, you need to know operations, you need to understand logistics. It means that you need to understand that the generals and the admirals always lie, and if you look at Buttigieg, I dont think he has that understanding. His photos, and there are lots of photos online of him with various generals, various colonels, and he is like a kid at a football game. He is excited. He is just wide-eyed and grinning, not even grinning, a huge smile.

You get this, his work did not put him in a way to, one, truly understand war, to truly understand the significance or the reality of combat, the complications of it, the fog of it, all these types of things. But also, two, I dont think he was ever in a position to really get that the generals and the admirals lie all the time, and certainly nothing about how he presents himself would lead you to believe that when they come into the Oval Office, if he is president, that he is going to stand up to them. Rather I think, because he has this image he wants to protect of being a part of the military, that he would continue to use the military as a political tool, to include going along with whatever the generals and the admirals want.

Mark Steiner: So, let me conclude with this in the time we have left. One of the things you write extensively about in the article I think is important, he was assigned to this group called the Afghan Threat Finance Cell. And you talk about them in the context of the Afghan war, and the drugs in Afghanistan and what their role was with that, and how this all kind of really played a part that the media doesnt want to get into because its so complex about that and about how the Taliban was really funded, in large part, by our allies in the Middle East, by the Gulf states and war, and how this feeds into one another. He wont address it, none of the candidates will address it. The media will not address this because its too messy. I can remember this stuff from back in the Vietnam War, the same things, with importing heroin and opium coming out of Vietnam and Laos, and the same thing was going on, but this in some ways is a much larger scale.

Matthew Hoh: Yeah, this goes back to the 19th century. This goes back to the China trade. I recommend the books of James Bradley, Alfred McCoy. There was a documentarian called Al Profit, a writer named Julian [inaudible 00:17:16]. There have been books and books written about how, not just, complicit is probably too weak of a word, that the US military, US intelligence agencies, US government, have been arm and arm with drug lords and organized crime, going back nearly 200 years now, at least 180 years now. And its no different in Afghanistan. And so, theres this Afghan Threat Finance Cell, which dates back to in the years after 9/11, Treasury Department had this idea that, Look, were going to try and stop the money traveling between the terror groups and their financiers.

And of course, it really has never come to anything, because most of the financing for these terror groups, these Sunni terror groups, comes out of the Gulf monarchies, comes from our allies. The Saudis, the Bahrainis, the Qataris, the Emiratis, you know what I mean? The Kuwaitis. And so, it really has been, again, this kind of goes back to the topic, the title of the essay, with regards to an illusion of danger. Its really been this illusion about fighting both terrorism as well as, too, its ties into the war on drugs. And this is an issue that Look, I mean, the opium crisis at its peak was killing 200 Americans a day just a couple of years ago. There has been no investigations from the US government, from our Congress, as to that linkage between the Afghan War, where in the last 20 years weve seen poppy cultivation go from zero to 80 to 90% of the worlds heroin and illicit opium production, and this opium crisis in the United States, or this opiate crisis in the United States.

So, when you start to pull these things apart and you see that people like Pete Buttigieg are at least assigned to these units, and come away with the idea that everything that we are doing there is right and just, and that the workings and the apparatus of the United States government are correct and authoritative and are necessary, you really get into this idea that this will be a very dangerous president. I mean, this was a man who was attached to this unit thats purpose was to disrupt the drug trafficking in Afghanistan. It was run by the the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the biggest drug lords in Afghanistan have been in the Afghan government, have been in the Afghan military. I mean, until he was assassinated, the biggest drug lord in Afghanistan was President Karzais brother in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai.

So, you have these nexuses, you have these things that, as you said Mark, are really messy, really sloppy, and they dont get brought up, and they dont get questioned. Now this gets back to what we originally talked about, about how with the veneration, with the deification of veterans, with the unquestioning of the US military, these things continue to propel themselves. And theyre just not effecting people over overseas where tens of millions continue to suffer from these wars, but they have a very real effect here on the United States. Again, there is literally no investigation by the US Government, no investigation by major American media on, well, okay.

I mean, again, is it just a coincidence that poppy production has soared in Afghanistan at the same time that US opiate crisis has begun? You get shouted down as youre a complete conspiracy theorist, but I think any rational person, would say particularly knowing, as we brought up, the history of the U S governments relationship with drug lords all throughout Asia, through the Mediterranean, after World War II et cetera, that this is not conspiracy. This is actually, there is real history to this, and certainly we could talk for hours about all the different things I understood when I was over there about the drug trade, how the Afghan Air Force that we were giving these planes and helicopters to, use those planes and helicopters to move drugs out of the country. How there is very real evidence that some of the American military members in Afghanistan who were killed by Afghan soldiers were killed because of issues involving drug trafficking.

I mean, theres all kinds of things that have just been shut away. And when you step back and look at Buttigieg running for president, it makes sense that you have a man who has this elusory military record, this is the basis of his running for office, where most of his experience seems to come from. That and being the mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana. You have to say, hey, look, we have a real problem in this country and its going to propel things to be worse if we dont put some type of brake on it.

Mark Steiner: Well Matt Hoh, its always great to talk to you. I appreciate your time, the work that you do, bringing this to the fore. Thank you so much for joining us here on The Real News.

Matthew Hoh: Thank you, Mark.

Mark Steiner: Oh, thank you. And if any of you were thinking here about Pete Buttigieg, please listen to this broadcast. Read the transcript, think about what were talking about here and what this is really all about. Im Mark Steiner here for the Real News Network, thank you all for joining us. Let us know what you think. Take care.

More here:
What Is the Real Story of Buttigieg's Service and Time in Afghanistan? - The Real News Network

Shah Mohammed had always been proud of his job. As a deminer, he had laboured hard for years, clearing over 300 mines and explosives across several southern Afghan provinces with his team.

He had loved going to work, helping his country to a better future until the day his job changed his life for the worse.

I just remember the blast, the pain, he said. I didnt think I would survive.

Mohammed, who is a father of six, spent the next year in hospital in neighbouring Pakistan, recovering from his landmine injuries

He survived, but lost his eyesight, his right leg and arm to the explosion. His face is scarred; much of his skin burned.

The accident happened 20 years ago, but recently Mohammed has found a new home in his native Kandahar, a southern Afghan province.

From a distance, Mohammed bin Rashid village looks just like any other place until its residents come outside their houses in the morning hours to catch up with each other or to go for walks. They are missing legs or arms, sit in wheelchairs or carry crutches, are blind or deaf

Home to 200 families, the village was built 15 years ago, under one condition: its residents had to be living with a disability; most of them injured over the past four decades of war.

Over the coming decade, 200 people living with a disability moved here, bringing their families and raising the population to about 1,800. More people are arriving still.

The spacious houses are clustered near the main road on one side, leading to the provincial capital, and a mountain backdrop on the other.

It was once deserted land. Now it keeps attracting increasing number of people, Mohammed said.

Kandahar, once the Talibans heartland, has seen heavy fighting over the past decades. In 2001, the first US bombs fell here; prior to that, the Soviets caused havoc.

Frequent attacks and explosions continue to shake up everyday life. With the US and the Taliban on the brink of signing a peace deal as early as the end of this month, people hope that levels of violence will ease that peace might come.

Throughout Afghanistan, about 1.5 million people live with a disability, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Each year, tens of thousands of prosthetics are provided to people of all ages.

With most of the national budget spent on security and defence, the countrys Ministry of Public Health receives little financial support for people living with disabilities, let alone to treat general health conditions. In the 35-million strong nation, only about $5 annually per person is set aside for peoples healthcare.

Mohammed bin Rashid, originally built with donations from the United Arab Emirates royal family, is the only village of its kind in Afghanistan and thats why its population is so diverse.

People have flocked here from far away provinces, seeking support and a place where they feel understood. Its a small Afghanistan, explained Dr Noor Ahmad, who heads the local clinic.

There are advantages of course. Residents have both a clinic and school for their children nearby and the village often attracts the attention of NGOs or local people wanting to help. The union and support between the residents is stronger than Ive seen anywhere else.

While the men meet and gather outside, women living with disabilities here are just like in many villages in conservative rural Kandahar kept behind locked doors inside their compounds.

Bibi Shirina, 42, is one of them. She lost her right leg in an explosion 13 years ago but says that, even if the war ends, her suffering will last a lifetime. A mother of seven, she has moved to what locals refer to as the village of the handicapped 11 years ago.

She pauses, then takes off her prosthetic leg, exposing a stump dotted with blood. It still hurts every day, she explained. I dont talk to anyone about my suffering, but there are other woman here who are going through the same pain. This helps me. Besides that, our children grow up around people who have faced difficulties. It teaches them compassion.

The village, she says, is trying to meet exactly those challenges people with disabilities have to face on a daily basis in Afghanistan. Because our community is strong, we help each other find jobs and support our children going to school, Shirina explained, who also works as a tailor.

While the initial ground level houses were donated - all built to accommodate different disabilities - the village has ever since functioned independently, without major support from outside.

Amruddin Gul, a 40-year-old amputee repairs motorbikes in the community. He has a small shop on the main road, attracting customers from all over the district. Hes never received a prosthetic leg, but is fast on his crutches.

I moved here from Badakhshan 14 years ago, he said, referring to a northern Afghan province deep in the Hindu Kush mountains about as far away from Kandahar as it gets. Life there was difficult, especially during the snowy winters. Here, its warmer and I live in a supportive community.

Mohammed bin Rashed opens its doors to new people every year, with the tight community slowly expanding. Every family is welcome - the only requirement we have is that one family member lives with a disability, explained Mohammed Ghani, 50, the villages elder.

He sits on a tricycle, having lost both of his legs in a mine blast. Maybe that makes us an exclusive community after all, he laughed.

In the early morning hours, Rashed sits outside on a mat as children walk past on their way to school and neighbours join him for a glass of green tea.

Life could have been different, he admitted. Better even! He used to be a tall man, carries a serious face and wears a traditional turban wrapped around his head. Still, I think weve made the best out of it. There is war everywhere around us, but our village our home is quiet and peaceful.

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Village of the handicapped: The Afghanistan community built for people with disabilities - Telegraph.co.uk

It appears that the U.S. military expedition in Afghanistan, begun in the autumn of 2001, may finally be coming to an end. Significant hurdles still have to be overcome, involving among other things the Taliban having to meet a vague standard of reducing, though not ceasing, their military operations. But a conclusion to direct American involvement in the Afghan war does seem closer than at any previous time in the more than eighteen years of that involvement.

Expect many commentaries in the weeks ahead about what went well and what went poorlyespecially poorlyin the Afghanistan war. There will be hindsight-laden appraisals of tactics and strategy and of such things as troop surges said to have started too late or ended too soon. Most of the commentary probably will miss the most fundamental aspects of Americas experience in Afghanistanwhat most deserves to go into the history books and what is most relevant to avoiding more ultra-long wars in the future. Those fundamentals have less to do with tactics and strategy and more to do with broader perceptual and political patterns in the United States, including the following ones.

Getting Stuck in Terrorist History

U.S. forces were sent to Afghanistan in 2001 in direct response to the 9/11 terrorist attack, perpetrated by Osama bin Ladens Al Qaeda at a time that this group was a guest in the Taliban-controlled portion of Afghanistan. The tragic events of 9/11 created such severe national trauma that they have reshaped the way Americans think about terrorism and counterterrorism. It became a template in which perceptions about terrorism and combating terrorism were formed, even though the template does not always conform to a wider reality.

A major aspect of that perception was that the fight against terrorism came to be seen as primarily a military fight, with Afghanistan being the initial battlefront in a war on terror. Any backing away from that military fight thus was seen, wrongly, as a backing away from counterterrorism itself.

The template also promoted a failure to understand the special circumstances, including the history of the earlier mujahedin fight against the Soviets, that led Afghanistan to be associated with bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and a terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland in 2001circumstances unlikely to be replicated by future terrorist threats to the United States. Afghanistan came to be seen as the terrorist haven par excellence, even though, to whatever extent such havens may be significant, many other places could serve that role. Afghanistan was seen playing that role even though many of the critical preparations for the 9/11 operation itself took place in Europe, the United States, and cyberspace.

Political Fear of Imperfect Results

Another American legacy of the trauma of 9/11 was a zero-tolerance attitude toward terrorism. Even a single American death from a single terrorist attack was regarded as something that could and should be avoided, regardless of the costs of trying to do so. This has not always been the case. The 1970s, for example, saw many terrorist attacks within the United States, perpetrated by a variety of foreign and domestic actors, without counterterrorism zooming to the top of national priorities and without any felt need to launch a war on terror. As a result of the new zero-tolerance standard, U.S. political leaders have had to live with the fear that if they pulled troops out of Afghanistan and the United States later experienced any type of terrorist attack with any connection at all to Afghanistan, their political opponents would pillory them.

Bias Toward Mission Creep

The longstanding term mission creep testifies to the prevalence of what that term describes. The dynamics of how mission creep worked in the Afghanistan war, similar to how it has arisen with other issues, are twofold. First, leaders mustering public support for costly efforts such as a war in a far-off, half-forgotten land tend to pull out all the rhetorical stops to do so. Thus the costs and casualties incurred in trying to defeat the Taliban were said to be necessary not only to beat terrorism but also to build a stable democracy in Afghanistan.

Second, once the intervention took place, a sense of U.S. ownership of the problem followed and with it, changed standards for deciding whether to go or to stay. Issues that never would have been a reason for going to war in Afghanistan in the first place later became reasons not to leave it. Concern about the repressed state of women under restored Taliban rule, for example, became one of those issues even though it would not have been a casus belli for initiating the intervention.

Effects of the Iraq War

The grand neoconservative experiment in trying to remake the politics and economics of the Middle East through regime change in Iraq had deleterious effects on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, in two different ways under two different administrations. For the George W. Bush administrationwhich began the march toward war in Iraq shortly after 9/11 and, after a huge promotional campaign to sell the war, launched it in March 2003Iraq was an enormous distraction from Afghanistan. The biggest cost in this regard was not measured in troops and tanks but rather in the focus and attention of policymakers. The resulting loss of focus on Afghanistan was a major factor in missing what would have been an appropriate exit point, just several weeks into the U.S. intervention after Al Qaeda had been rousted from its base and the Taliban had been ousted from power in Kabul.

For the succeeding administration of Barack Obama, the good war in Afghanistan contrasted with the bad war in Iraq. Having been on the correct side all along in opposing the folly of the Iraq War, Obama felt an extra reason to stay the course in Afghanistan and even to surge U.S. force levels temporarily to show that he was not a pacifist wuss.

Misunderstanding Other Peoples Ways of War and Peace

Americans tend to think of all their wars in a simplified way in which wars have definite beginnings and ends and in which good guys are clearly distinguishable from the bad. The model was a poor fit for the long and messy Afghanistan conflict. The U.S. intervention was preceded by decades of warfare, of ever-changing complexion, in Afghanistan. That history included coups and insurgency in the 1970s, Soviet occupation and resistance to the occupation in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, fights among warlords later swept aside by the Taliban. Revisions of alliances and outright side-switching have been common. Afghanistans complex ethnic geography has further complicated the Americans problem. For example, the Tajiks who dominated the local forces most heavily involved in ejecting the Taliban from their seat of power after the U.S. intervention are a minority who would never be allowed to secure a dominant position in Afghanistan.

The prudent way for the United States to have extracted itself from that messy situation would have entailed adapting to the Afghans ways of war and peace, in which concepts of victory and defeat and of good guys and bad guys play much less of a role than do hodgepodges of bargains struck among local chieftains. But the United States never seemed to adapt, and kept thinking in terms of achieving nationwide victory over the Taliban. More than eighteen years later, its troops are still there.

Paul R. Pillar is a contributing editor at the National Interest and the author of Why America Misunderstands the World.

Image: Reuters

Originally posted here:
Pashtun Paradise: How Years of a U.S.-Led War in Afghanistan Helped Its Adversary Succeed - The National Interest Online

RichardStanley was in Pakistan, andhad just watched a man die, whenhe got a call from London. It turned out to be a producer named Trix Worrell, the director recalled. By the time he found me, he was already desperate.

He was using a lot of f-words. You have no f------ idea how hard weve been working to f------ find you, mate!I hung up on him.

Stanley, a director of pop videos for Public Image Ltd and Renegade Soundwave, was at a Red Crescent field hospital in the city of Peshawar, 31 miles from the border with Afghanistan. Hed fled there directly from the Battle of Jalalabad, a standoff between the Pakistan-and US-backed Mujahideen and the Afghan army. Some 15,000 people had died there during a savage battle marked by numerous atrocities against civilians.

And people were still dying. All around Stanley layamputees bleeding out, and burn victims losing their fight for life.Stanleyand his cameraman, Immo Horn, had been among the fortunate ones.Theyd taken fire from Afghan forces at point-blank range, only tostagger away unharmed.Stanley likened their escape to the Pulp Fiction scene in which John Travolta and Samuel L Jacksons characters face a hail of bullets and yetsurvive. (Horn had, however, been wounded by shrapnel, hence theirhospital trip.)

And now this: an executive from London-based Palace Pictures, desperate forStanleyto come back to Britain. Having joined the Mujahideen in frustration at his moribund movie career and with the vague intention of making a documentary, the South African filmmaker had seen death at first hand. The last thing hedexpected was his old life to come crashingthrough the walls. He had no idea how to react.

Trix had tracked me down,Stanleytold the Without Your Head podcast in 2017. They wanted to option my script. The Hardware script had been floating around London like a raisin dropped in a glass of champagne.

Without me knowing, it had gone from one set of hands to another and had found its way to Steve Woolley at Palace Pictures I was so confused, I didnt take it seriously for a period of time.

But, against the odds, Hardware was about to get made. In an even more unlikely twist, it would become a surprise money-spinner for Harvey Weinsteins Miramax, thanks tothe companyhaving a relationship with Woolley that led them to distributesuch Palace hits as The Crying Game and Scandal. Hardware would also serveas an acting showcase for two of rocks craggiest icons: Iggy Pop and Lemmy (of Motrhead).

And it would representthe opening chapter ofStanleys unconventional career as a feature director. He subsequently made the 1992 cult chiller Dust Devil before things wentspectacularly awry in 1995 afterhe was given the job of directing the disruptive duo of Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer in The Island of Doctor Moreau. (After just three days on set, he was fired by fax.) Recently Stanleyhas achieved another milestone, as his adaptation of HP Lovecrafts Colour Out of Space opens in cinemas.

Allthis, however,was in the future. As Stanley put down the phone in Pakistan, hewondered if he wasnt dreaming.In subsequent months,that suspicion would never entirely dissipate. Halfway through the Hardware shoot, which took place at the Roundhouse in Camden, Hornturned to his director and suggested that they must have died back in Jalalabad, making everything sincea grand hallucination.Stanleywasnt sure he disagreed.

It did feel a little uncanny, hetold Screen Anarchy in 2009, as if we werentreally on set but in Hell all along. And that the folks surrounding us werent really our friends, colleagues and loved ones, but demons sent to devour us.

No one had really heard of post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, but I guess it helped give Hardware a certain edge, an authentic stench of trauma. Hardware is what we had instead of therapy.

On its release in October 1990, Hardware would be hailed as a pulp masterpiece. The storyis stunning in its simplicity. In a far-future Earth ravaged by global warming, a scavenger (Fields of the Nephilim frontman Carl McCoy) discovers a buried robot. Hesells it to an ex-soldier, who passes it on to his sculptor girlfriend.

Unbeknownst to all, the MARK-13 is an experimental combat droid capable of self-repair and programmed to dismember on sight. Soon its chasing heroine Jill (Stacey Travis), boyfriend Moses (Dylan McDermott) and sundry other characters around a dystopian apartment complex,armed with a chainsaw, rending claws and a deadly toxin.Stanley, not-so-subtly,also flags a Bible verse Mark 13:20 No flesh shall be spared.

Stanleyhad intended for the film to be set in a future-shock Britain, but under pressure from Weinstein and Miramax, he agreed to a transatlantic casting. Hence Travis, a Texan,shares the screen with British actors such as Mark Northover and Paul McKenzie.

I didnt believe the movie would get made,Stanleylater revealed. They used extraordinary means to get me back from Afghanistan. They chartered my immediate ex-girlfriend to bring me home. I [went] directly from the Afghan conflict to developing Hardware.

Stanleyhad used his music industry contacts to convince Iggy Pop to play the part of DJ Angry Bob (who never appears on screen). And he talked Debbie Harry of Blondie into portraying a cab driver plying the flooded byways of his future city. Unfortunately,she dropped out to go on tour. So the director went to the nearest pub, on Chalk Farm Road in Camden, in search of a replacement. There he found Motrheads Lemmy: He agreed to do it in exchange for a bottle of Jack Daniels.

You like to be in a movie, Lemmy later said in a behind-the-scenes feature about the making of Hardware. But you dont realise how boring it is to be in one. Its bloody boring, acting in a movie. Its standing around really.

It was shot in London in the middle of winter, Stanleyadded. The weather was like a hurricane at times. It was all made more difficult by the fact Lemmy wasnt following his script [and was]ad-libbing all the dialogue.

Palace had stumbled onStanleys script after it decided to make a straight-to-video horror in the vein of Evil Dead, and thedistribution deal with Miramax had raised the stakes. The budget of $800,000 (626,000), however, was still puny considering the many special-effects shots required.

Stanleys solution was to hire a crew made up of eager newcomers. Theseincluded 15-year-old Chris Cunningham, later to become famous directing videos for Bjrk, Aphex Twin and others.He was already a genius, Stanley remembered.There were a lot of young people. All too young. None of them [were] paid enough.

Back then, the Roundhouse was essentially a dilapidated shed, full of junk and detritus. But it was cheap: it cost less tofilm there for a weekthan it cost to hire a soundstage at Pinewood for a day. The director was able to scrimp further by shooting through the night. He used two crews,the firstworking with the actors until 6.30pm,then the second coming in andfilming the FX sequences. Stanley was on set throughout: We were able to run 24 hours, which meant that I didnt get much sleep.

Hardware was hailed as an instant splatter classic, andMiramax took the extraordinary step of putting this mere B-picture in 700 screens across America.It duly opened at number six in the box office, going on to gross $70 million.

But its success wasdouble-edged. It landedStanleywith a lawsuit from 2000AD, which accused Hardware of lifting the robot-repairs-itself storyline from its 1980 strip SHOK! Fleetwood Comics went to court; subsequent releases of Hardware were required to include a credit acknowledging 2000AD as the source material.

Stanleys gonzo adventures in the B-movie business were just beginning. He would go through further hell filming his next picture, Dust Devil, on location in Namibia. In the end, he was locked out of the editing room by the financiers. That was followed by The Island of Doctor Moreau, a$40-million disaster.Stanleywas fired after three days of running battles with Kilmer, who had turned up at the tropical Queensland set in a sulk after discovering that his wife, Joanne Whalley, was divorcing him.

Stanley would, though, bounce back with Colour Out of Space. After condemning him to 24 years on a directors desert island, Hollywood hassuddenly embraced this maverick again. Hes already looking forward to his next project, an adaptation of Lovecrafts The Dunwich Horror.

Yet for many, Hardware will always be his masterpiece. Its weird and rough-hewn; ithas a robot with a chainsaw and Lemmy from Motrhead driving a apocalyptic taxi. What else is required?

As Stanley says of the shoot: I was actually in pretty murky psychological shape at the time. I had been fished out of the war in Afghanistan and put straight into pre-production.They were strange experiences to have back-to-back. I guess a lot of that spills over into the movie and the way it looks.

This piece is part ofScreen Secrets, aregular series telling the stories behind film and TVs greatest hits and most fascinating flops

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From Afghanistan to androids: the story behind heavy metal horror masterpiece Hardware - Telegraph.co.uk

Islamabad plays a crucial role in advancing mediation efforts between the Taliban and Washington, positioning itself as a powerful bargaining force in the future of Afghanistan.

As the talks between Washington and the Taliban have increased the possibility of a settlement in the Afghan conflict, behind the scenes, Pakistan, a state which has crucial ethnic and cultural ties with Afghanistan, has played a critical role in bringing the Taliban to the table.

Pakistan has been very consistent about the Taliban. Right after September 11, Pakistan kept telling Americans that there is a difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We must talk to the Taliban, said Kamal Alam, a military analyst.

Before the September 11 attacks, the Taliban was the ruling power in Kabul. In order to go after Al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan, and harboured by the Taliban leadership, Washington went to war with Kabul in 2001.

The US military eventually overthrew the Taliban-led government, replacing it with a pro-Western alliance of political powers, which have not been on friendly terms with Pakistan.

In 2001, there was the Bonn conference, which brought Hamid Karzai to the government, even then, they wanted the Taliban talks to happen. When Karzai was the president, he wanted to talk to the Taliban, but the Americans did not allow him, Alam told TRT World.

But nearly two decades later, Washington appears to be bogged down in a civil war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban controls much of the country. In the face of a growing Taliban reality on the ground, US President Donald Trump currently seeks a quick exit from the conflict.

Now, Washington appears to recognise the validity of Pakistans Taliban argument, getting closer to a deal with the groups leaders.

Pakistan has long said that the Taliban is different from international terrorism and the group should be part of the Afghan dialogue, according to Alam.

Americans have finally agreed to this. Not because Americans like the Taliban, but because they are stuck after 19 years of failure, Alam underlined.

After a disputed election, the two contenders the incumbent Ashraf Ghani and Dr Abdullah Abdullah, an influential Tajik-origin politician are jostling for power, both claiming the Afghan presidency.

After all these strategic failures, Americans are saying, Right, lets talk to the Taliban. And Pakistan is bringing the Taliban to the table in Doha [the capital of Qatar, where the talks have been held], Alam said.

Pakistan: the main actor in the Taliban talks

Alam definitely thinks that Pakistan is the main actor in the ongoing Taliban talks because key people participating in the negotiations are under the influence of Pakistan.

Some of the exiled Taliban leaders have allegedly lived in Pakistan since the US occupation of Afghanistan. In the wake of the Taliban talks, Pakistan quietly released Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar,one of the co-founders of the Taliban, who joined the Doha talks right after his exit from a Karachi prison.

While Pakistan has much more influence over the Taliban than any other regional states, Iran and Russia also support the group, Azam says.

As a result, Pakistan wants to make sure that if the Taliban deal comes into force and the Americans leave Afghanistan, Washington does not have to drop all its problems on Pakistans door, according to Alam.

Thats what happened in 1989 after the Soviets departed Afghanistan in defeat and Pakistanis do not want to have another repeat of history, Alam says.

Pakistanis have done their job and now the job is an Afghan job, which is the intra Afghan dialogue. The Taliban needs to sit with Ashraf Ghani or Dr Abdullah. Now its up to the Afghans. Pakistan can not do anymore, Alam said.

The supposed agreement will create a political mechanism in which the US military will withdraw from Afghanistan in exchange to the Taliban promise that the group will not harbour any terrorist organisation which aims to attack the West.

As the US military begins withdrawing from Afghanistan, the intra-Afghan talks will be launched to address the countrys long conflict between the Taliban and Kabul, the deal proposes.

Whats actually happening on the ground?

While the Taliban and the US negotiate a deal to end their respective hostilities, the situation on the ground has not improved much.

This is just for Trump to declare a victory and say that I ended the Afghan war. There has been a peace deal, Alam said.

[But] the situation on the ground is very bad. The Taliban will continue to fight. Probably they want the whole country. And Ashraf Ghani and all other politicians want to remain in power.

If the Taliban takes over the whole country, it might also have an impact on Pakistan.

I dont think its in Pakistans interest for the Taliban to rule the whole country, Alam added, citing different factors from changing times from the 1990s to 2010s, to the rise of international terrorism, economic sanctions, the relationship with Iran and Pakistans worsening relations with India.

Source: TRT World

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Where does Pakistan stand in the Afghanistan deal? - TRT World