Jocko Podcast 313: What's Going On? Hollie McKay's Recent 5-month Trip in Afghanistan

2021-12-29T09:38:46Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @hollieSMckay @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:19 - Hollie McKay back from Afghanistan 2:27:59 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 2:51:50 - Closing gratitude.

AI summary of episode

So after the Russians were kicked out of Afghanistan, you know, quickly things became another war again, which was the civil war in Afghanistan and Molo and my presented this idea of there was going to be no corruption and the crime was going to stop and he would give food and money and things to the poor and, and people gravitated to that and you could see just from sort of the simplicity of this tiny little mosque that, you know, looked like the comp, it's weren't replaced in 30, 40 years that that was really something I think that he did live by was this sort of sense of humility and I think a lot of Afghans at that point when they were starting to see corruption among all these warlords, they gravitated to that and that's how he was able to build a very strong following very quickly. Yeah, so I was working between his back a set and Tajikistan and I would have gone back or tried to go back a little earlier, but when I met with these diplomats, one of them sort of said to me, he had said, you know, because he was sort of involved in being, you know, he'd put him in touch with the middle man to leave Afghanistan and he'd sort of said, you know, I've been doing this for 30, 40 years and being in many wars are in sort of working You know, you're sitting with all these Taliban and they're bragging about killing Americans and they're bragging about shooting down, you know, American helicopters and they're, you know, and I, I really had to reflect on it a little bit because I thought, I mean this situation, you know, what is my job here And that sort of a point that I think that I've gotten to, you know, especially with going into some of the ISIS areas, and even my photographer was hesitating, and I, I was okay, well, I'm fine, and I didn't have the same, I think normal reactions you should have to those situations, just, you know, the natural sense of fear or worry, and so anyway, so I knew it was definitely time to take a break with that, but I think, And they, a lot of the hell made, we went up to Hellman to sangin and places like that where they grew the pop bees and it's funny because I went, the Taliban were putting on this big, you know, despite we're getting rid of the drugs, it's a rum, we're going to kill the crops and blah, blah, blah, and I was at the Canada and I caught it and the guys, you know, they're putting on this display I tried to put them in touch with a rescue organization that was going to help them get out and speed up and they said, oh, you know, we're supposedly in contact with some lawyers in DC, but I don't know that anything ever came out of that either or, you know, if they were able to get out. So I'd say if you're going to estimate in someone like Kabul, 80% of people want that previous life because they were able to do not, that was bars, it was music that you know could go to clubs, you could go to, you know, get alcohol, you could do all of these things because you had that foreign footprint there. I mean, I know one thing that you'd mentioned to me is like, and it's sort of the, I guess the ground or the most granular sort of point zero for the disaster is like what happened in the military working dogs that got left behind. So there was like a line, because, you know, early, early, you said, you know, that when the Taliban would look at you, and you were like, oh, when the cars, they was wavering through checkpoints, because it's a sign of respect. Yeah, it's like the other room and the team that what he called T9 word, you know, the one it's not like a phone it's like actually keep people. You know, when you have these managers begging, begging to be chosen, just pick me, pick me, it's like the highest, I don't know that they could possibly take and, and you know, the, if despite being in government now, there's no plans to get rid of the suicide bombing schools. And yet, you know, we, and when I say we, I say, you know, we turned a blind eye to that for really 20 years and said, are going to the root and fixing it, we let it fester and create this entire industry of corruption, which is what the Taliban was not only able to capitalize on, but they came in saying, we're not going to be corrupt. And Afghanistan, most people are like, okay, well, the Taliban's in charge of the Northern Alliance in charge, I want to, you know, continue to get my job done and raise my family and move kind of forward, like, kind of leave me alone type thing. And I, yeah, and I was, you know, I, and I think all sort of the next day, well, do a button came out and said, you know, these guys ran away from their posts and things and, and to a degree I understand where that came from, but it actually, it upsat me because they were really sold out by their leadership. And we didn't know at that point, you know, how they're going to treat a foreign, how they were going to treat a woman, how they were going to treat a journalist. And I just think that was just sort of, and I still hear it now about, you know, people going around trying to get weapons, trying to, you know, it's not there. Just sort of, a way to present, I guess, Afghanistan to people in a very visual way, you know, just sort of showing people what, what it's like to be there through the fall, and then in that period after, and who the Afghans are, who the Taliban are, who are all these different players. So, you know, when Taliban's approach some of these soldiers, you know, they either have to show the letter and if they don't have the letter, then the Taliban's will want to know where their weapon is and what they're doing kind of thing. It's like the worst thing to say, the worst thing to say and even an worst thing to think is, I know, I know what you're thinking. Women, you know, I met with many women who, you know, were doing, you know, in the national sort of tech one do teams or in the national tennis team. and he said, you know, he've gone out that day and they just, they were so outnumbered and he's three bodyguards had been killed and, you know, it was really the commanders that were trying to hold it and he said, by four o'clock that afternoon, somebody came to him and said, oh, dust and left. And like you said, you know, you're reporting about what the, the new Northern Alliance was, how well they thought and you're like, they, there wasn't much of a fight and people are mad at you. And that's the way that I sort of see a lot of journalism is not to go in and interrogate or to stick it to them or to, you just have to go in and have a conversation and sometimes that's, I find it to be really difficult because, you know, he's somebody that's, that's, you know, bragging about killing Americans or, or, and yet you still have to go in there and have tea and talk to them and it's, it's a balance of sort of this compartmentalization with, running from a place a few manatee, but I see that as, that communication is being something that really journalists can do. And that's the, when you pull the string on Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government was just completely corrupt and a lot of the issues that they had were due to the exact same type of corruption, the whole, system operated on through corruption and scratching each other's backs and, you know, getting money here and putting in your own pockets and, you know, that was just the way it worked and that was a huge part of the issues that they had and why, it's the exact same thing, it's literally the exact same thing, seeing it again. And, you know, telling me about, I'm asking them about there, how they viewed Islamic law or entry law and what they wanted and they just sort of said, well, you know, we want people's hands to be topped off when they steal. My biggest thing that, to, to drive home is, you know, we can talk all day about military strategies and, and the Taliban military strategies, but at the end of the day, and I feel like I'm a broken record saying this, but corruption, corruption, corruption, the last government backed by the US, there was so much corruption every possible level to the point where, if you wanted to go and get an interview at the US embassy, just an interview, if you were a university graduate who wanted to get a job at the embassy, because that was a cool thing to do. Like, these dogs, like, they don't look like, you know. And now they're out, you know, and so, in friends of mine, you know, I had it, you know, even with my fixer, and good friend of his, he was saying that someone he's known since he was very young. That's why another thing like going deep on squats, the minute you're like, well, you know, I don't need to go that deep. And I really had no idea what she was going to say when I asked her that question because even, you know, reading through articles and stuff, you know, I thought maybe she'd have some strategic thing about the way we treated the trial. But, um, and I mean, you know, you know, very close without, you know, the founder of the Hakanis, Hakani himself. And next thing you know, you hear in choppers in the air and I said, I haven't heard this for ages, you know, was going on and they were flying a black hawk and two of the Russian MH17s and they had apparently dropped a suicide bomb on to the hospital because ISIS was attacking it. But, you know, he's someone who used to go to each match with, you know, the police, you know, Afghan police flag. But if you have the ankle mobility and then you don't do them for a while, then trade do them, you'll feel like, oh, wait, I got to get my ankle, like mobility kind of back, you know? Oh, it's almost sort of a, it's almost like a, it's almost like a, it's almost sort of like a, it's a tribute to the moora, but for some reason they felt the need to put the Bobo Bell there. But I think it's something that's very important to Americans and important to, you know, to my generation who really grew up, you know, with often on 11 and so many people that I knew that went to fight there. We know you were, you know, we know your Afghans security.

Most common words

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocopont Gas number 313.
[00:00:03] With echo Charles and me, Jocobo-Willink.
[00:00:05] Good evening, echo good evening.
[00:00:08] He looks like any other ordinary young afghan,
[00:00:12] a dusting of a dark beard, sun-leathered face,
[00:00:15] a small child that clinging to his side.
[00:00:18] Only Nazifula 24 is a proud member of afghan's
[00:00:23] ISIS affiliate known as ISIS K or informally
[00:00:28] as dash.
[00:00:31] He has long been wanted by everyone from US troops
[00:00:35] and the now defunct afghan security forces
[00:00:38] and the Taliban, formally known as the Islamic Emirate
[00:00:42] of Afghanistan.
[00:00:45] Nostrulla says he joined the terrorist group
[00:00:48] around five years ago out of frustration
[00:00:51] that the Taliban was dishonest about the status
[00:00:54] of its shadowy leader.
[00:00:57] We kept asking the Taliban to show us
[00:01:00] video of Mullah Omar, but we couldn't get any claims.
[00:01:03] That is why the dash here was created.
[00:01:06] They seemed truthful and said they were going
[00:01:11] to implement Sharia law.
[00:01:12] So that is why I joined them.
[00:01:16] Taliban founder Omar died in 2013,
[00:01:19] yet it was kept secret for more than two years.
[00:01:22] Most ISIS K recruits are believed to have
[00:01:25] defected from Taliban branches in Afghanistan
[00:01:28] and neighboring Pakistan seeking an even more extreme
[00:01:31] interpretation of Islam with more international
[00:01:34] rather than domestic centered goals of caliphate control.
[00:01:39] Since then, the terrorist outfit has attracted a wealth
[00:01:43] of foreign recruits bent on attacking NATO, Afghan forces,
[00:01:48] and the insurgency turned Taliban government.
[00:01:51] Since the Emirate came to power on August 15,
[00:01:56] ISIS K has waged a deadly spat of suicide attacks
[00:02:00] and targeted bombings across multiple provinces
[00:02:03] and claimed dozens of lives.
[00:02:06] While some assaults have targeted the Taliban,
[00:02:09] the vast majority have been inflicted upon innocent civilians,
[00:02:13] particularly the minority Shiite population.
[00:02:17] Nazifula says he is unclear how many ISIS K members
[00:02:23] are hidden inside Afghanistan.
[00:02:26] He spent the last year locked away in the country's
[00:02:29] notorious Bagram prison, having been arrested by the previous
[00:02:33] Afghan government for his ISIS membership.
[00:02:38] However, when the Taliban swept to power in August,
[00:02:42] he says he was released.
[00:02:44] Even though the new regime was aware of his checkered past,
[00:02:49] Nazifula went straight back to the black-clad terror clan,
[00:02:53] but says he has since broken his leg,
[00:02:56] seemingly from an accidental discharge from his own rifle.
[00:03:00] Yet he remains ready to take up arms again
[00:03:03] with a very specific goal in mind.
[00:03:08] Our first target is to destroy Pakistan
[00:03:11] because the main reason for everything in Afghanistan
[00:03:14] is Pakistan.
[00:03:15] He vows, when the Taliban were here,
[00:03:19] they were saying that we control 80% of the country,
[00:03:22] but they were not implementing Islamic rulings.
[00:03:26] That's why we stood up in when we started ISIS K over in this area.
[00:03:33] Nazifula continues, then in the parcel under their dominance,
[00:03:38] the outfit immediately began, quote, implementing Islamic rulings
[00:03:43] like cutting hands and everything.
[00:03:48] So that's when the Taliban got funding from Pakistan
[00:03:51] and started fighting us back, he claims with a big smile.
[00:03:56] And at that time, Baghdad announced the caliphate in our area
[00:04:01] and we were on top.
[00:04:03] That's why we are against the Taliban.
[00:04:05] Although Nazifula asserts that his outlawed group is, quote,
[00:04:12] week now and attempts to downplay their leethality,
[00:04:16] their hard-line goals remain firmly in place.
[00:04:21] We want to implement Sharia law.
[00:04:23] We want to implement the way our prophet was living,
[00:04:26] the way he was clothed, the dressing his job was there.
[00:04:31] Currently, we don't have much to fight,
[00:04:34] but if you give me anything,
[00:04:36] I am going to fight Pakistan now.
[00:04:41] Yet hauntingly, Nazifula also makes it clear
[00:04:45] that ISIS K has far more global reaching ambitions.
[00:04:50] Whoever goes against Islam and against the Quran,
[00:04:53] he adds darkly, we are against them.
[00:04:58] And that is an article from mknews.com.
[00:05:08] The article is written by Holly McKay.
[00:05:11] Holly is a journalist, she's an author, she's a war reporter,
[00:05:16] and she is an extremely courageous human being.
[00:05:20] She's been on this podcast before number 271,
[00:05:25] where she talked about her experiences in the war against ISIS
[00:05:29] in Iraq and Syria, which she chronicled
[00:05:32] in her incredible book, which is called Only Cry for the Living.
[00:05:38] And she's back with us again tonight to share
[00:05:40] with us her experiences from Afghanistan.
[00:05:44] Because she was there, she was there
[00:05:46] during the American departure, the collapse of the government
[00:05:51] and the rise to power and control of the Taliban.
[00:05:56] So Holly, welcome back.
[00:05:58] And I do mean that sincerely I was watching
[00:06:03] through social media when you were in Afghanistan,
[00:06:06] and I was terribly worried about you.
[00:06:10] And we'll discuss why, I'm sure we'll get to some of that.
[00:06:12] It was definitely sketchy to say the least,
[00:06:15] but for now, I am truly glad that you are here.
[00:06:19] And you went there for a reason to learn to capture
[00:06:25] what was happening, and you've done that.
[00:06:26] So let's talk about what you've been through
[00:06:30] first of all, welcome back.
[00:06:31] Thank you, thank you for having me.
[00:06:33] Strange adjusting, so it's been a few days
[00:06:36] and I'm still getting used to, no, you know,
[00:06:39] highway without bombed and pop holes.
[00:06:42] And like, oh, this is a nice road, hang on a minute.
[00:06:45] Yeah.
[00:06:46] Just to set the stage a little bit to bring you into Afghanistan
[00:06:50] when you went back, when you went to Afghanistan this time,
[00:06:53] just to get where what you stepped into,
[00:06:57] July 2nd, Germany and Italy withdraw from Afghanistan,
[00:07:03] that is the same time that America quietly
[00:07:08] and strangely left Bogramar base.
[00:07:11] July 8th, Biden announces that the war is gonna be over
[00:07:16] and we're gonna be out by August 31st,
[00:07:19] July 12th, General Miller, who is the commander of US
[00:07:24] and NATO forces in Afghanistan, he steps down.
[00:07:27] And by the way, this is right as Taliban
[00:07:31] is seizing district after district.
[00:07:33] By mid-July, they had seized, you know, 140 or 150 districts
[00:07:38] inside of Afghanistan, July 21st, General Milley reports
[00:07:47] that have the districts in Afghanistan
[00:07:50] are under Taliban control.
[00:07:53] So July 22nd, the US House of Representatives,
[00:07:58] they pass a bill for visas for our interpreters
[00:08:02] and other allies that were there.
[00:08:04] And the reason I bring that up is
[00:08:05] because that turned into a big deal
[00:08:07] as everything shut down.
[00:08:09] And so that's what we're going into.
[00:08:12] It's very obvious, I forget the quote from General Milley
[00:08:15] but it was something along the lines of
[00:08:18] everyone was surprised at how fast it was collapsing
[00:08:22] but it was collapsing quick.
[00:08:23] So August 7th is when you arrive in Kabul.
[00:08:29] What was your purpose in going there?
[00:08:32] Did you know how fast it was falling down?
[00:08:34] Did you like, hey, this isn't gonna make it?
[00:08:35] I'm gonna go in there anyways.
[00:08:37] What was that?
[00:08:38] What was the thought processor?
[00:08:39] So I made the decision.
[00:08:40] I think it was around May June
[00:08:42] that I was going to go back in August.
[00:08:44] With my photographer, Jake, who's Australian,
[00:08:46] who's also spent a lot of time,
[00:08:48] he lived in Afghanistan and spent a lot of time
[00:08:50] in other places.
[00:08:51] So we thought we would go back and document
[00:08:54] what I thought was going to be the last month
[00:08:57] of the Americans being there
[00:08:59] and then the Afghan government trying to stand
[00:09:02] on its own two feet.
[00:09:03] So between making that decision and what happened,
[00:09:07] it just, you couldn't, I just,
[00:09:10] I did not realize it was going to happen that quickly.
[00:09:14] And so when I arrived, even that first week,
[00:09:17] I was going to meetings at NDS,
[00:09:19] which is the Afghan intelligence,
[00:09:20] I was going to meet with all these different people
[00:09:22] and everybody was just so convinced
[00:09:25] that it wasn't going to fall immediately,
[00:09:27] at least not within say that month.
[00:09:30] And so the speed of that and I've had to do so much
[00:09:34] reflection on this and looking back
[00:09:36] and going where did you miscalculate?
[00:09:38] How did this sort of happen so quickly?
[00:09:41] And it really just goes to show,
[00:09:45] I think nobody really had any idea at the end of the day.
[00:09:48] I think there were sort of intelligence failures
[00:09:53] on many different levels from many different parts of it.
[00:09:56] I've talked about some of this.
[00:09:59] If I'm a company commander
[00:10:03] and I'm in charge of training Afghan forces,
[00:10:07] I want to do a good job.
[00:10:09] And when I report to my battalion commander
[00:10:13] and I, you know, the first,
[00:10:14] I'm working with these guys for a month
[00:10:16] and, you know, he says, how are those guys?
[00:10:18] And I say, well, they got some work to do.
[00:10:20] They're not that great.
[00:10:22] They're deficient here.
[00:10:23] They're deficient there.
[00:10:23] They're not good at this.
[00:10:25] And my battalion commander says, okay, well,
[00:10:27] you know, get them squared away.
[00:10:29] The next month, what do I say?
[00:10:32] You know, I'm gonna tend to say,
[00:10:34] what make some improvements,
[00:10:37] what we're doing a little bit better,
[00:10:38] we've got them issued better gear,
[00:10:40] we got the supply issues taken care of that we were worried about,
[00:10:43] we did a live fire training operation.
[00:10:46] And so you end up just by virtue of having a positive attitude
[00:10:51] which Americans certainly have, we end up
[00:10:58] painting a better picture than what is actually happening.
[00:11:01] I saw this, I tried to think if I did this,
[00:11:05] I believe I did.
[00:11:06] I believe that I did in training Iraqi forces
[00:11:09] would sometimes say, you know,
[00:11:12] I would put some lipstick on on the situation a little bit.
[00:11:17] Again, trying to have a positive attitude,
[00:11:19] trying to look at the brightest
[00:11:21] side of what was happening.
[00:11:22] And there was times in Iraq where the Iraqis would take over
[00:11:29] a position and the insurgents would immediately attack it
[00:11:33] and crush them.
[00:11:34] And so we got put in check a few times.
[00:11:36] I would almost say luckily,
[00:11:39] because that what that caused us to do
[00:11:40] was to be very honest about the capabilities
[00:11:43] that people we were working with.
[00:11:44] So there is actual times where the Iraqis would take over,
[00:11:48] let's say, a checkpoint.
[00:11:51] We'd say, yep, they're good to go.
[00:11:52] And this is what I say, we, I mean, coalition forces
[00:11:54] in general, you know, the Americans that are there said,
[00:11:56] yes, we've been working with these Iraqis.
[00:11:58] They can handle this checkpoint.
[00:12:00] We'd step away from the checkpoint.
[00:12:02] And this happened almost immediately upon my arrival.
[00:12:05] This checkpoint got taken over by the Iraqis
[00:12:08] and the insurgents attacked it a day later, two days later.
[00:12:12] They killed the American advisor.
[00:12:15] That was there.
[00:12:15] Actually, two American advisors that were there overran.
[00:12:18] It was total disaster.
[00:12:19] And that happened when I first showed up.
[00:12:21] So it really put us in check in terms of,
[00:12:25] okay, what we need to be very cautious about
[00:12:27] what we report up the chain of command
[00:12:29] and when they're actually ready.
[00:12:31] But at the same time, you know, my guess is,
[00:12:36] and even when we left Iraq, I was very worried.
[00:12:39] I was very worried when America left Iraq,
[00:12:41] when coalition forces left Iraq, I thought to myself,
[00:12:44] they're not ready yet.
[00:12:46] And there's a, there's a similar obvious,
[00:12:49] similar theme here.
[00:12:51] So almost every, I never fought in Iraq,
[00:12:54] I know Afghanistan, but everyone that I know
[00:12:57] that worked on the ground with the Afghan forces
[00:13:01] were all not surprised.
[00:13:03] Hey, they weren't ready yet.
[00:13:04] They just weren't ready yet.
[00:13:06] And it's a huge, it's,
[00:13:08] it's almost like when you have these, these elements,
[00:13:15] the US support is really like the long,
[00:13:19] pull in the tent.
[00:13:20] And all the other tent poles and the canvas
[00:13:23] that goes over the tent is,
[00:13:25] and the stakes that go on the ground,
[00:13:26] all those things are really, really important.
[00:13:28] And you can build those up and you can make them
[00:13:30] really good and they can provide you shelter from the rain
[00:13:33] and shelter from the wind.
[00:13:34] But if you pull out that one long pull in the middle,
[00:13:38] it has a huge negative impact.
[00:13:40] And that sort of, again, in hindsight,
[00:13:44] as I look at it, that's what,
[00:13:46] that's one of the things I think happened.
[00:13:47] Yeah, I think there were just multiple things,
[00:13:49] I think even right down to the number of ghost soldiers,
[00:13:52] so on paper, there might be 300,000 Afghan soldiers
[00:13:56] when there's in reality there's a quarter of that,
[00:13:59] because people would take command
[00:14:01] as we're taking money of people that never existed,
[00:14:03] or they were dared, or there was no accountability.
[00:14:07] You know, I can go into corruption for days
[00:14:10] and how that really destroyed Afghanistan.
[00:14:13] And so to drill into that corruption that you just thought,
[00:14:16] let me see if I got this little piece of it, right?
[00:14:18] I'm a commander, I'm an Afghan commander.
[00:14:21] If I say I have 500 soldiers, I get X amount of money.
[00:14:25] Yep.
[00:14:25] So guess how many I have?
[00:14:27] 700.
[00:14:28] And two of you guys die, you're not gonna report that,
[00:14:31] because you still wanna keep getting their money.
[00:14:32] To the point where they would take the bank cards
[00:14:34] of the dead soldiers and go to the bank
[00:14:36] and get their paychecks every week or every month.
[00:14:39] Like, it's the level and we can get into this,
[00:14:42] but I've never seen a more corrupt place
[00:14:46] on every possible level.
[00:14:49] And yet, you know, we, and when I say we,
[00:14:53] I say, you know, we turned a blind eye to that for really 20 years
[00:14:57] and said, are going to the root and fixing it,
[00:14:58] we let it fester and create this entire industry
[00:15:02] of corruption, which is what the Taliban
[00:15:04] was not only able to capitalize on,
[00:15:06] but they came in saying, we're not going to be corrupt.
[00:15:11] And people that don't even like the telebands,
[00:15:13] we'll so fed up with that corruption
[00:15:15] that they were gonna support that,
[00:15:17] even if they didn't support the ideology.
[00:15:22] So you get there on the seventh, the eighth and ninth,
[00:15:26] you're meeting with Intel people.
[00:15:29] It's still not clear that this thing is gonna fall apart,
[00:15:31] or you, or is it a little bit,
[00:15:32] I think there was this idea of,
[00:15:34] well, Kabul was never going to fall.
[00:15:36] And certain pockets like Kabul, Pangea,
[00:15:39] you know, even Mazaw, which is where I ended up,
[00:15:41] these were very, very staunch resistance places,
[00:15:44] and there was sort of this idea that how can they possibly fall?
[00:15:48] And so I met with, and I had actually stayed
[00:15:51] with him in 2018 and uncarrow was General Dustin.
[00:15:55] So General Dustin was the, the warlord,
[00:15:58] I guess, who the US troops first went in with
[00:16:01] from the north during, after the 9, 11.
[00:16:04] And that's where Mike Spend was killed
[00:16:06] and sort of the first people there.
[00:16:08] So I'd met him several years ago in Turkey
[00:16:11] and did a profile with him.
[00:16:13] And so he invited me to go back to Mazaw
[00:16:15] because he was leading some resistance forces there
[00:16:18] that were working with the Afghan commanders.
[00:16:21] And yeah, it was just sort of this idea,
[00:16:24] and I guess looking back, it was, you know,
[00:16:25] selling a story that didn't exist,
[00:16:27] but we decided, okay, well, let's go and cover
[00:16:30] what's happening in Mazaw,
[00:16:32] even though the northern provinces surrounding it were all sort of falling,
[00:16:36] there was this sense that Mazaw was going to hold.
[00:16:39] So we went to Mazaw, it was very early on a Thursday morning.
[00:16:43] How'd you get up better?
[00:16:44] We flew, okay.
[00:16:45] Yeah, camera.
[00:16:46] And so it's about a 50 minute flight from Kabul to Mazaw.
[00:16:51] And so we get, did you say, did you say a 50 minute flight?
[00:16:54] About a 50 minute flight.
[00:16:55] And was this, who's, who's flying the helicopters?
[00:16:58] Is this just chartered?
[00:16:59] This is a commercial airline.
[00:17:01] Just a commercial airline.
[00:17:02] Yeah, yeah, I've a little commercial airline two weeks ago.
[00:17:04] So they still exist.
[00:17:06] I was glad to learn that one because there was no landing lights.
[00:17:10] But they were still in commercial airlines.
[00:17:13] So we flew to Mazaw, because at this point,
[00:17:15] you couldn't travel and roads anywhere,
[00:17:17] which is something else that's changed significantly now.
[00:17:20] But then you couldn't, the Taliban had really cut off
[00:17:25] every strategic road.
[00:17:26] And you couldn't go much beyond sort of Kabul,
[00:17:29] maybe Kabul to Pangea, but that was sort of the most road travel you could do.
[00:17:33] So we flew to Mazaw, that was really early in the Thursday morning.
[00:17:39] And you get there.
[00:17:39] And it was just this incredibly vibrant place.
[00:17:42] And I just remember, it was the, how, how is there,
[00:17:47] how are all these provinces around this place falling to the Taliban?
[00:17:51] When the markets were just chocolate block,
[00:17:54] and everybody is just going about that daily business.
[00:17:57] And I just, I was flabbergasted.
[00:17:59] And I thought, isn't, like, what is happening?
[00:18:02] And you go and sort of talk to people.
[00:18:04] And they be, oh, I'm a little bit worried.
[00:18:06] But it's okay.
[00:18:06] I think it'll be okay.
[00:18:07] We'll just flee to Kabul.
[00:18:09] So that was the Thursday.
[00:18:11] And everything, yeah, it's very normal.
[00:18:14] Yeah, so your feeling was, okay, well, obviously this is going to be okay.
[00:18:18] Yeah.
[00:18:18] And, and, you know, had a couple of friends who were very worried about me being in Mazaw.
[00:18:22] And I was sort of like, it seems fine to me.
[00:18:26] But what did really struck me as weird was that there was no police.
[00:18:31] There was no military presence on the street at all.
[00:18:35] I didn't see a single, like Afghan forces come through.
[00:18:39] And I, I thought that was strange.
[00:18:41] I thought, where is, where is this?
[00:18:44] Like, this is city.
[00:18:45] This is in the middle of a firestorm here.
[00:18:47] And there is zero security forces right now.
[00:18:51] So that struck me as strange.
[00:18:53] But everybody was going about life.
[00:18:55] And then the next day, Friday, which is the weekend day in Afghanistan.
[00:18:59] But still things were out and I was going out interviewing people.
[00:19:03] I just asked you how they felt, people in the markets.
[00:19:05] And people were starting to feel really worried.
[00:19:07] They said, well, you know, we think it's going to fall.
[00:19:10] But we just don't know when it's going to happen.
[00:19:13] And as the day progressed, you felt it get a little bit people were becoming more tense.
[00:19:19] And we go to this, there's a beautiful big blue mask.
[00:19:22] A big shrine there that's that's quite famous.
[00:19:24] And there were just a lot of people that had fled from other villages and other provinces.
[00:19:28] And they were all sort of hanging out outside this mask.
[00:19:32] And by the evening, things were still happening.
[00:19:34] But I said to Jake, my photographer, we need to book this return flight back to Kabul.
[00:19:40] And so I get online.
[00:19:41] And then like the earliest flight we can get is Monday night.
[00:19:45] And I was like, I think it's, you know, I called a few people as I kiss it going to
[00:19:49] hold.
[00:19:50] And they were like, yeah, you know, you should be fine.
[00:19:53] But get out in the next flight you can get back to Kabul.
[00:19:57] So I booked the flight.
[00:19:58] So you're online booking a flight, which means you're online watching news and seeing
[00:20:02] updates for other things.
[00:20:03] Yeah.
[00:20:04] Yeah.
[00:20:05] And it's still, you got the impression, because I'm sure I don't remember exactly.
[00:20:08] I knew that you were in Mazar through social media because you're like posting about
[00:20:13] this stuff.
[00:20:15] But I also remember seeing, you know, sort of the battle map of what's happening and
[00:20:20] seeing the various provinces collapse around.
[00:20:29] So yeah, and I remember thinking that too, and I thought this doesn't feel right.
[00:20:34] But that night we went out with the commando, the Afghan commando, and they were taking
[00:20:38] a lot of hits and a lot of fighting.
[00:20:41] But they was such extraordinary, and again, you know, this perhaps walked my thinking a
[00:20:45] little bit too, but you have these men who were just like, we will never give this up.
[00:20:49] They will never get Mazar.
[00:20:50] We will, you know, and defend it and hold it and just really great young men.
[00:20:56] And we stayed out with them until we were about to hook up that morning.
[00:20:59] And there was this sort of strange sense with one of them.
[00:21:02] His name was Safi.
[00:21:03] And he kept, you could tell how much he missed the West.
[00:21:06] He wanted a sustained drink, beer with him, and listen to music.
[00:21:10] And he just, he didn't want us to leave.
[00:21:12] He just, he wanted this sense of this connection to the West that I think that you
[00:21:17] had been trained by the Americans and just have this sort of deep love.
[00:21:21] So two-clock came.
[00:21:22] We got the guys to take us back to Ahotel and we were supposed to go out with them again
[00:21:25] at around 7 or 8 that morning.
[00:21:28] So we wake up on the Saturday and I'm waiting for a call from him.
[00:21:32] He's not there.
[00:21:33] He's not answering his phone.
[00:21:35] And I thought, you know, God, I hope he's okay.
[00:21:37] This is strange.
[00:21:38] I don't know what to do, but I will just wait for him to contact me again.
[00:21:43] And then we thought, let's go out and do some stories.
[00:21:45] And we tried to contact some fixes or interpreters that we had known live there.
[00:21:50] Everyone had fled to Kabul.
[00:21:51] We could not find anybody.
[00:21:53] Eventually, by mid-morning, we found somebody who said he could come and be an interpreter
[00:21:59] if we did some interviews.
[00:22:01] And so we went out.
[00:22:03] It was just suddenly this ghost town.
[00:22:05] From this, it had gone from extremely vibrant place to this complete ghost town.
[00:22:11] You just saw people lining up outside banks, just trying to get them money out.
[00:22:15] And we're walking and people just fleeing from the outside villages into Mazar.
[00:22:21] On those little rickshores, and you know, with all their stuff and we met with this interpreter
[00:22:27] and we get into a cab and we're driving out toward there was three front lines.
[00:22:33] And the interpreter who I didn't really know too well is on the phone as we're driving.
[00:22:38] And it's about midday.
[00:22:40] And suddenly he looks at me and he tends around.
[00:22:42] He's got this big smile on his face.
[00:22:45] And he says, oh, they just broke through the first of the three lines.
[00:22:49] And it's surrounded.
[00:22:50] And we looked at each other and the cab driver was like, I'm really scared.
[00:22:55] Because we're sort of driving to what it.
[00:22:56] And I said, okay, let's find what we'll turn around and go back.
[00:22:59] It's no big deal.
[00:23:01] So we went back and I went.
[00:23:03] When you had this detail that you just gave me, he was smiling.
[00:23:06] Yeah, he was, and I still can't figure out why he was smiling if he just didn't care
[00:23:12] if he was a Taliban or if he just was trying to appease me.
[00:23:16] So I was like, oh, he thought, hey, I'm getting to get you some stories.
[00:23:19] They just broke through here with you.
[00:23:20] Yeah, he's sitting there in the front.
[00:23:22] He's like, tens of rad and it's just this, they just broke through the first.
[00:23:26] And I'm okay.
[00:23:31] So I get back to the hotel and I'm trying to make some phone calls because there's no
[00:23:36] flight out that I can get earlier than that Monday.
[00:23:39] And there's no way, it can, you know, to 10 hour drive, but there's no way it could even
[00:23:42] attempt to do that drive because it's all Taliban controlled.
[00:23:45] And so I'm making some calls to, you know, again, to my Intel contacts and Kabul and even
[00:23:50] then they're saying, no, no, it should hold.
[00:23:52] It'll hold, don't worry.
[00:23:54] And I was starting to get pretty worried and I was just strapping myself, you know, doing
[00:23:58] some work and things and then, and then we normally go to this, there was a cabab cafe
[00:24:03] that we'd always go to each night.
[00:24:05] And it was a really lively place.
[00:24:06] It was underground, they would play these terrible soap operas, but there was always
[00:24:10] like a lot of people there playing music.
[00:24:13] And so Jake and I said, okay, well, let's go to this cabab cafe and we step out.
[00:24:16] It's just pitch black and not a single person around.
[00:24:19] And I'm still figuring out, we walked at this cabab cafe and it's open.
[00:24:23] We're like, oh, it's open and we go downstairs and the TV is off.
[00:24:26] And there's just these, the two guys that work there, they're just sitting there.
[00:24:29] And we all have food and we're sitting there and then we just let each other and we're like,
[00:24:33] something is really, really wrong.
[00:24:36] We need to go.
[00:24:37] And so we get up and we start hurrying back towards the hotel.
[00:24:41] This was early evening around seven and then you just see those motorcycles coming in.
[00:24:47] And that's the Taliban.
[00:24:49] And so we sort of hurry back just in time to get to our hotel and go to the roof and
[00:24:53] I'm just looking out and the Taliban is just circling.
[00:24:56] There's just hundreds of them and they're shooting in the air and they're playing
[00:24:59] then a sheet, which is their religious music and celebrating that they just took a
[00:25:04] city without firing a shot basically.
[00:25:08] But what also struck me during the day and that was the other bizarre thing.
[00:25:11] I thought, here is a city that's falling and there was no air power.
[00:25:17] There was not a sound in the air.
[00:25:20] And I remember that something and I did a little video about it.
[00:25:22] I was like, where is the air power?
[00:25:25] Didn't we train?
[00:25:26] Didn't we put just tens hundreds of millions of dollars into this Afghan Air Force
[00:25:31] where the hell is it?
[00:25:33] Because I don't hear it.
[00:25:34] And air powers are a great example of the long pole in the tent.
[00:25:39] If you have air power when the Taliban is coming in on their motorcycles and in their
[00:25:43] trucks, they can't, yeah.
[00:25:45] Literally can't do it.
[00:25:46] And that's the long pole in the tent that falls apart when that happens.
[00:25:51] As you were talking about like the talking of one of the Afghan soldiers that you
[00:25:57] knew and how he, you know, hey, we're going to stay here.
[00:26:00] We're going to fight them and take us.
[00:26:03] Do you remember all that stuff that happened up in Portland when the Antifa took over
[00:26:08] the part of the neighborhood or whatever they were calling it?
[00:26:12] I think it was originally called Chop and then they changed it to Chaz but it was the
[00:26:16] occupied zone or something like this.
[00:26:18] But somebody was asking me about it.
[00:26:20] And I kind of said, hey, there's no one up there in the Chop.
[00:26:26] That's like ready to die for the cause.
[00:26:29] That's ready to say, you know what?
[00:26:31] We're going to stay here.
[00:26:33] They're just not, there's not up there.
[00:26:34] There's no, I mean, America and I kind of made the comment that, hey, even the people
[00:26:39] that are Antifa members, guess what?
[00:26:42] They have cell phones and they have, you know, like nice, they have clothing and they
[00:26:46] have running water and it's just not that bad of a thing and they're not right that
[00:26:50] committed to it.
[00:26:52] And it's interesting when you think about what it really takes for someone to stand
[00:27:00] up and be willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause, whatever that cause is.
[00:27:06] And when you look at the Taliban and you, you're this Afghan person that's been fighting
[00:27:11] for however many years and you've been fighting for the Americans, you've been fighting for
[00:27:14] the Afghan government for 10 years or seven years.
[00:27:18] And then you're like, well, it looks like we're completely surrounded.
[00:27:22] If I fight, I'm going to die or I can just kind of put down my weapon, take off my uniform
[00:27:28] and carry on with my life.
[00:27:30] And I, yeah, and I was, you know, I, and I think all sort of the next day, well, do
[00:27:37] a button came out and said, you know, these guys ran away from their posts and things
[00:27:41] and, and to a degree I understand where that came from, but it actually, it upsat
[00:27:45] me because they were really sold out by their leadership.
[00:27:49] And I'll give you examples.
[00:27:50] So, Safi, the guy that I met that Friday when I was finally able to get back in contact
[00:27:54] with him after Mazarad Follin and I asked him, are you okay?
[00:27:57] Or are you? and he said, you know, he've gone out that day and they just, they were so
[00:28:03] outnumbered and he's three bodyguards had been killed and, you know, it was really the
[00:28:07] commanders that were trying to hold it and he said, by four o'clock that afternoon,
[00:28:11] somebody came to him and said, oh, dust and left.
[00:28:14] And so did the commander left, like, oh, your commander's left and it's up to you if you
[00:28:18] want to stay and die or you can leave and he just, he, they were sold out, like everybody.
[00:28:25] I did hear stories from guys that I knew that said that the Taliban would like a
[00:28:32] pro-chivalage and just send a messenger in there and be like, hey, you know, here's your
[00:28:36] chance.
[00:28:37] We know you were, you know, we know your Afghans security.
[00:28:39] You can put down your guns and be cool or we're going to kill everyone.
[00:28:43] And guys were like, okay, we're surrounded, we're going to die.
[00:28:47] I guess we'll just go back to the way used to be by the way.
[00:28:51] That's the other thing, it was they have sort of a lot of them had memory of what
[00:28:55] it used to be like and it's like, okay, well, I guess we're going back to the way used
[00:28:59] to be, but it's better to do that and be alive than be dead.
[00:29:05] And the amount of sacrifices that a lot of those Afghans soldiers made, I mean, they
[00:29:09] weren't even released the number of killed, but it's well-posed 100,000.
[00:29:14] Yeah, I mean, there was at least 50,000 killed going into this whole thing taking place.
[00:29:20] So it's not like, and again, there's plenty of Americans that fought alongside the Afghans
[00:29:26] and had met awesome Afghans troops, just like in Iraq, you know, there was.
[00:29:31] And by the time you were in Iraq and the Iraqis were fighting ISIS, they were taking massive
[00:29:38] casualties, massive casualties going to take Muzuel back.
[00:29:41] That was led by the Iraqi forces.
[00:29:44] And they took massive casualties and they kept going, compared to in the battle from
[00:29:48] the Saudi Arabia, Iraqi forces were some of them, were very scared and didn't want to
[00:29:52] take lead and definitely didn't want to take casualties.
[00:29:55] We had a whole battalions abandoned and leave.
[00:29:59] So that idea of this kind of, this kind of clear cut American version of the way things
[00:30:07] are, is doesn't apply here.
[00:30:10] There's no clear cut way of, hey, oh, if you get captured, American, you get captured,
[00:30:18] you know what's going to happen.
[00:30:19] You're going to get tortured, you're going to kill, it's like, hey, you're an Afghan security
[00:30:22] force and you surrender.
[00:30:25] You're not sure what's going to happen, but you know what's going to happen if you don't
[00:30:28] surrender, you're going to die.
[00:30:30] So, and then you see your leadership.
[00:30:33] Oh, right away, all running away, all of them.
[00:30:37] And every single one of them ran away, including the president, including the president,
[00:30:41] including the president, who, yeah, with that guy, that is an insane
[00:30:48] situation.
[00:30:49] I mean, you have that guy, Ashraf Ghani, who, who is like a professor at Berkeley, a professor
[00:30:56] at Johns Hopkins, went to some leadership school at Harvard wrote the book called Fixing
[00:31:04] Failed States, which is like an academic exploration of this, the theoretical, it's an
[00:31:10] embarrassment.
[00:31:11] Yeah.
[00:31:12] And he bailed with a bunch of money by the way.
[00:31:14] And yeah, a bunch of money is now under investigation, but what, what I remember going back
[00:31:19] in being Afghanistan in 2017, and sort of hearing when I'd go to the NATO Compound of the
[00:31:25] US embassy and everyone would say all these great things about Ghani.
[00:31:29] And I remember saying to a few people, have you gone out to the street just to talk to the Afghan
[00:31:34] people because they have a different idea, you know.
[00:31:37] So I think part of that problem was the US because nobody was leaving that base in the
[00:31:42] diplomacy world, they were getting a vacuum of information that was pre-approved people to
[00:31:47] enter.
[00:31:48] That were all part of this sort of puppetry stream.
[00:31:51] And they weren't actually out there talking to the Afghans who were terribly frustrated
[00:31:54] with the corruption going on, terribly frustrated with the sort of, I guess, the, the past
[00:31:59] tune and the sectarianism and things.
[00:32:01] And I just, the picture that was so warped compared to the reality that I saw even back
[00:32:07] then.
[00:32:08] And that was, so 2017, you're all talking to normal people and they're totally frustrated
[00:32:14] with Ghani.
[00:32:15] And yet the Americans are getting this white-washed version of how Ali is doing an excellent
[00:32:20] job.
[00:32:21] Yeah.
[00:32:22] Yeah.
[00:32:23] Yeah.
[00:32:24] Yeah.
[00:32:25] Yeah.
[00:32:26] So it was like August 14th.
[00:32:29] So Mazar Falls, Kabul Falls, too.
[00:32:32] So that was the episode.
[00:32:33] That was the Saturday night.
[00:32:34] So suddenly I'm like in this room in this hotel and the locals at all fled and there
[00:32:41] were no foreigners in there except I think there was a guy from Dika Stan who was there for
[00:32:45] a couple of days and someone else.
[00:32:46] But so in Jacob and I look at each other and we said, well, what are we going to do?
[00:32:51] You know, we're making some calls and I'm speaking to some, some deal to people in Kabul.
[00:32:57] And they said, well, you know, go and get us measurements, go and get us a cold and it's
[00:33:00] going to this and that and we'll see if we can get you out in the morning, the early morning.
[00:33:06] And it was an interesting night.
[00:33:08] So you had, you know, I was trying to get all this information and then the morning
[00:33:16] and the telebands were out having a crazy, you know, teleband party all night.
[00:33:21] And so by the morning light, I thought, well, they'd gone to sleep then because they
[00:33:25] celebrated all night and they'd gone to sleep but then nobody's calling.
[00:33:29] They were just sort of looking at each other going well, now it's kind of the chance to get
[00:33:33] out in this period where they're not in the street because they're going to be in the street
[00:33:37] in a couple of hours.
[00:33:40] But it became very evident that just it wasn't going to happen.
[00:33:42] And then then that Sunday, we started seeing news reports that the telebands were at the
[00:33:48] gates of Kabul and then the next thing, you know, they're taking the palace and we just sort
[00:33:52] of, I looked at, I looked at Jacob and that happens and I said, well, we're pretty much,
[00:33:57] we've got to figure this out.
[00:34:00] Were you feeling, were you feeling threatened with when the teleband showed up?
[00:34:05] So the images that they were portraying of the teleband was like a kind or gentler,
[00:34:12] teleband was coming in right?
[00:34:13] It was like, you said it was like celebratory.
[00:34:16] Yeah.
[00:34:17] It didn't look like a angry mob.
[00:34:19] It looked like a happy mob that was celebrating in that, that was sort of the images that
[00:34:26] we got initially.
[00:34:27] And it quickly turned into images of people being killed, people being murdered.
[00:34:32] But what was your initial impression?
[00:34:35] My initial impression was, it was just bizarre because I was like, well, these barbarians
[00:34:40] in the street.
[00:34:41] How was this, like, and then doing announcements over the last speaker?
[00:34:44] And it was so strange because you saw this instant transformation of a city and they did
[00:34:50] look a little, you know, intimidating.
[00:34:52] They were just so many of them.
[00:34:53] And that was a thing.
[00:34:58] I felt, where did these people come from because Miss Al was a very strong teleband resistance
[00:34:59] place.
[00:35:00] And suddenly, it's just, there's hundreds of them.
[00:35:03] And I don't know where you, they come from.
[00:35:05] And I, I sent Jake out to buy me a book or at the market.
[00:35:08] And he just came back.
[00:35:09] He's like, my God.
[00:35:10] They're just, they're crazy, you know.
[00:35:12] And so we were trying to, I guess, figure out.
[00:35:15] Where did I mean by crazy?
[00:35:16] He just, like, they're, they're just everywhere.
[00:35:19] Okay.
[00:35:20] And they just, you know, that they literally have sort of the dominance of the
[00:35:23] of every corner possible in the city.
[00:35:26] And that was their strategy.
[00:35:27] I think in the very beginning when they took places, they just flooded it with
[00:35:31] lighters to make sure that they could hold it.
[00:35:34] Now, a normal person would concentrate on hiding and getting out of there.
[00:35:38] But you kind of focused on, let's go interview people.
[00:35:41] So, not quite.
[00:35:42] So, I mean, I first went a little quiet.
[00:35:45] I was like, I don't know.
[00:35:47] And I was trying to pretend to my parents.
[00:35:49] I wasn't in the city.
[00:35:50] I was straight away in my dad's like, we just had on the news, Miss Al's full.
[00:35:52] And you there, I said, no, I'm outside the city.
[00:35:57] So, I was trying to, yeah, to try and open his them a little bit.
[00:36:02] So, I was a little unclear.
[00:36:04] And what sort of concern had concern me at that point was, I know that first night
[00:36:10] that they came in, and there was a bank underneath the hotel.
[00:36:13] So, the televents of desperately trying to get into the hotel where we were.
[00:36:18] And we knew that we were the only foreigners in there at that point.
[00:36:21] These incredible hotel staff had stayed there for us.
[00:36:24] And they were terrified because they'd all been former NDIS or previously worked in different
[00:36:28] capacities with the Afghans.
[00:36:30] And I knew that they were desperately wanting to go home to, you know, safety or flee
[00:36:35] or their families.
[00:36:36] But they really stayed there for us.
[00:36:37] And that was just something that I thought was just extraordinary.
[00:36:41] And it goes back to that Afghan hospitality and care.
[00:36:45] So, we were there.
[00:36:46] And several days are going by.
[00:36:49] And the focus was to get out, but it just, it became so, and my phone was just blowing
[00:36:55] up.
[00:36:56] But so many different people telling me, do this, do this, and I was just like, you all need
[00:36:59] to leave me alone at this point, please, because it's not helping.
[00:37:05] And I said to the US people that I was speaking to right from the beginning, I think the
[00:37:09] only way is you go and talk.
[00:37:10] Like I need to go and talk to them to get their permission to leave.
[00:37:15] Because they really wasn't another way.
[00:37:17] It wasn't really a way that I felt that I could sneak out or, you know, go on to the
[00:37:21] radar.
[00:37:23] And yeah, that was what I was pushing for from the beginning.
[00:37:26] So that was sort of my focus in doing that.
[00:37:30] So it falls on like the 14th, 15th, and you spend the next few days trying to figure out
[00:37:37] what the best course of action is.
[00:37:38] And so what'd you finally figure out?
[00:37:40] So, yeah, I talked to some of you different people and I thought, you know, any sort of
[00:37:44] rescue, any whatever is not going to happen.
[00:37:46] So I talked to a couple of diplomats and then I talked to, sort of I guess a middle
[00:37:51] person who was a Afghan business guy.
[00:37:54] And so it was very, very quick.
[00:37:56] And then he sort of said, well, I'll come to the hotel and, you know, be ready at this
[00:38:01] time.
[00:38:02] And they teed some things up with the US bet console, which was closed, but they were able
[00:38:09] to kind of get it open.
[00:38:10] So next, you know, I'm dragging my stuff down.
[00:38:13] And the two people that come to meet me is my driver is at the two Taliban elders, you
[00:38:16] know, the cousin of the, he's shadow governor, his turn, new governor.
[00:38:22] So you see these sort of old Taliban guys and, and I'm getting into the car with them
[00:38:26] and they were like, welcome.
[00:38:28] It was so bizarre.
[00:38:29] So I was like, what a high.
[00:38:35] Because at that point, we really didn't know, well, I guess.
[00:38:37] It's just you and Jake getting into the car.
[00:38:38] Yeah, just Jake and I getting into the car with the Taliban's.
[00:38:41] And we didn't know at that point, you know, how they're going to treat a foreign, how
[00:38:44] they were going to treat a woman, how they were going to treat a journalist.
[00:38:48] And so yeah, they, they drove us through the city and I said, do you mind if I have a talk
[00:38:52] to you and ask you some questions and they said, sure.
[00:38:56] And, you know, telling me about, I'm asking them about there, how they viewed Islamic law
[00:39:02] or entry law and what they wanted and they just sort of said, well, you know, we want
[00:39:05] people's hands to be topped off when they steal.
[00:39:08] And if you murder, then you should be, I for an eye kind of thing and telling me all about
[00:39:14] their rulings.
[00:39:15] And, but at the same time they were like, yeah, you're welcome enough, Afghanistan, you're
[00:39:19] welcome to stay as long as you like.
[00:39:22] And we hope you enjoy our country.
[00:39:25] And it was very bizarre.
[00:39:26] And then we were dropped off of the Uzbek Council.
[00:39:30] And then suddenly these other Taliban's came.
[00:39:33] And they were, there's a group of them, really young ones, like in their early 20's and
[00:39:38] they were going to be out escort.
[00:39:40] And the only way, sort of, because we couldn't go back to Kabul was to go north to the
[00:39:43] Uzbek border.
[00:39:44] And so you had these bunch of these young Taliban's who were just, who wanted to take selfies
[00:39:49] and, you know, continue to send, they continued to send long after that.
[00:39:53] My photography, you know, selfies are themselves with, you know, urging music in the background
[00:39:59] and love heart emojis.
[00:40:00] And so it's literally the most bizarre thing you can imagine.
[00:40:04] I know, I was looking at pictures.
[00:40:06] I'm sorry, you're articles.
[00:40:07] You have pictures of these Taliban guys, like with their iPhones or whatever, out, they're
[00:40:15] doing selfies.
[00:40:16] Yeah.
[00:40:17] It's freaking, and they're all they want.
[00:40:19] Yeah.
[00:40:20] And they, and they harass and, and I know, there was a couple of other photographers that
[00:40:22] I know, and they harass, poor Jake and, and the other photographers get a rest for their
[00:40:26] photos.
[00:40:27] So if you take a picture of a teleman's, oh, I need to WhatsApp.
[00:40:29] If I need to WhatsApp and get in, then they just harassing.
[00:40:32] They want pictures of themselves.
[00:40:33] Like, it's just, it's so new to them.
[00:40:35] These are people who are in hiding in the mountains for 20 years.
[00:40:38] And then suddenly they're like out and free in kind of a spectacolic, it's very bizarre.
[00:40:45] How does selfies and Instagram match up with Sharia Law?
[00:40:50] I'm not sure about that one.
[00:40:52] I guess it's, it's, it's a new for Sharia, maybe.
[00:40:55] How does that work?
[00:40:56] They haven't bought a ruling on it yet.
[00:40:59] Man, that's crazy.
[00:41:01] So you, were you at any point at what point did you go?
[00:41:06] I think I'm going to be okay.
[00:41:08] Did the old Taliban make you feel that way?
[00:41:10] Did the young Taliban make you feel that way?
[00:41:12] I think, well, I did, I did feel like I was going to be okay even when I was stuck in
[00:41:17] the hotel.
[00:41:18] I think the first night I was a little bit, well, you had a normal sense of fear, I guess.
[00:41:23] I certainly, I didn't panic, but I was a little bit frown.
[00:41:27] This wasn't in the plan at all.
[00:41:31] But actually, it's, it's small things that make you feel that I remember this young man from
[00:41:35] the hotel came up to me and he said, and he put the manager of the hotel on the phone
[00:41:39] to me, the owner.
[00:41:40] And the owner said to me, don't worry.
[00:41:43] I've already talked to the Taliban and they promised not to answer the hotel.
[00:41:47] And I thought that was just like Christmas.
[00:41:49] It's like, thank you.
[00:41:50] And I just, even though I didn't know whether that was true, whether they were going
[00:41:53] on to that, which they certainly weren't because they were trying to get in.
[00:41:56] But it was like just what I needed to hear at that point to give me that sense of calm
[00:42:00] that I needed to focus on what it is I needed to do.
[00:42:06] In Missouri, I saw images and it was pretty prominent in the news back here, sort of as
[00:42:11] Cobbett fell, like, let's say there was like a women's clothing boutique.
[00:42:17] And then they chilled the next day to be gone, or it'd be now whatever selling shovels
[00:42:21] or something like that.
[00:42:23] And Missouri, go through that really rapid transition from, like, more Western influence
[00:42:28] just to boom overnight all of a sudden.
[00:42:30] Yeah, it was very overnight.
[00:42:31] And mind you that was, that was self-sensorship.
[00:42:33] That wasn't the Taliban going around telling you in the head.
[00:42:35] Yeah, that was me going, oh, you know, I'm not going to be selling these weapons, freaking
[00:42:38] bikinis anymore.
[00:42:39] Where's that in the down?
[00:42:40] Yeah.
[00:42:41] Yeah.
[00:42:42] So, yeah, Missouri really was just this drastic.
[00:42:44] But what I found fascinating was the clothing transformation.
[00:42:47] So, you see people walking around in western jeans or whatever it is, and then suddenly
[00:42:52] everybody's in F-kindress and very, very traditional.
[00:42:57] And that was sort of the bizarre thing.
[00:42:58] And it took a couple of days before I saw a woman again on the street.
[00:43:01] And when I did, she was always in a book.
[00:43:03] So that was very, it really felt like you went from one civilization and then you just
[00:43:10] plunged back a couple of hundred years overnight.
[00:43:13] And even just there were these messages coming out of the speakers, which I'd never heard
[00:43:17] before, and Missouri either.
[00:43:19] So the same speakers that they used for the call to prayer were suddenly delivering messages,
[00:43:25] sort of town hall messages to people, telling them that, you know, if anybody steals
[00:43:30] from them or anybody does anything and they're to call this number or come to this place
[00:43:34] to report it.
[00:43:35] And so you have this immediate sense of the teleband's trying to govern suddenly.
[00:43:40] But yeah, it was so drastic that that transformation.
[00:43:44] So, how do you get up to the use back border?
[00:43:48] Just driving up there?
[00:43:49] Telebans.
[00:43:50] So the telebans took us, I know.
[00:43:53] So the telebans take us to the Uzbek border, which is back border is closed.
[00:43:58] But again, it's a couple of really amazing diplomats in Tashkent, which capital of Uzbekistan
[00:44:04] had made arrangements with Uzbek consulate to open the border, which actually found
[00:44:09] out I didn't even need because both of us had Australian passports and we didn't need
[00:44:12] a visa for Uzbekistan but Americans do.
[00:44:15] So I could have gone anyway I guess, but they had to open it specially for us because it
[00:44:19] was closed because they're not before when Masar had fallen or the night's before.
[00:44:23] When Masar had fallen, the soldiers flooded that border because they had nowhere else
[00:44:28] to go.
[00:44:29] So they really flooded that border and you drive along the way and you just see all the
[00:44:33] American vehicles and the homies and everything just abandoned and left behind and the
[00:44:38] weapons still lying on the road and the fatigues and these were just Afghan soldiers.
[00:44:43] And they were going for Uzbekistan.
[00:44:46] Yeah, because that was the closest route that they could go to get out.
[00:44:50] So I think they let a certain amount in and then they just shut the border.
[00:44:53] How hard was it if I was a corporal or a private in the Afghan army and the Taliban's
[00:45:00] coming, how hard is it for me to be able to take off my uniform grab some traditional
[00:45:04] clothing and leave and get away with it?
[00:45:07] You wouldn't be able to get out of the country.
[00:45:08] I mean, they weren't taking anyone.
[00:45:10] And how about my identity as far as I am just going to go back to my home wherever in
[00:45:15] this village and just kind of take up life as a normal farmer or whatever?
[00:45:19] I mean, you could go and do that.
[00:45:20] I think eventually they track you down and not.
[00:45:23] And I think this was also a bit of a misnorm that happened in the beginning.
[00:45:27] Was people were talking a lot, especially in the news.
[00:45:28] They were, oh, Taliban's got a list.
[00:45:30] They're coming to houses.
[00:45:31] They're getting, you know, XYZ, they're targeting so and so.
[00:45:34] And when I looked into it, they weren't really necessarily and of course there are exceptions.
[00:45:40] But their overall goal wasn't necessarily to target any of these soldiers.
[00:45:44] Their goal was to take back government weapons.
[00:45:46] So any government vehicles, any government issued guns, they needed to take them back.
[00:45:52] So the process is when somebody surrenders, they get, they hand over their weapon and they
[00:45:57] get given a letter from the Taliban.
[00:45:59] So the Taliban's give them a letter that basically says they've surrendered.
[00:46:03] This is then number that free to go.
[00:46:05] So, you know, when Taliban's approach some of these soldiers, you know, they either have
[00:46:09] to show the letter and if they don't have the letter, then the Taliban's will want to know
[00:46:12] where their weapon is and what they're doing kind of thing.
[00:46:17] So yeah, it was muddy.
[00:46:19] Okay, so now you're a newsbackest man.
[00:46:22] You get there by what August 20th.
[00:46:25] You're in a, who's back as Dan?
[00:46:26] Yes, around August 20th.
[00:46:28] So at this time, it's getting, it's getting crazier in Afghanistan.
[00:46:32] You got bite and Biden is now on August 20th makes his promise that all Americans
[00:46:38] to distance are going to be brought home.
[00:46:40] August 23rd, the CIA director William Burns meets with the leader of the Taliban or
[00:46:48] one of the leaders of the Taliban.
[00:46:50] Well, co-founder of the Taliban, actually, to start talking about how we're going to withdraw.
[00:46:58] That starts to happen.
[00:46:59] The withdrawal starts happening.
[00:47:00] August 26th, that's when this attack happens, kills 13 US military personnel, 11 Marines,
[00:47:10] one Navy corpsman, one American soldier, about 70 odd Afghan 180, 180, 180, 180.
[00:47:23] That happens on August 26th.
[00:47:28] Every night, there's a drone strike that is allegedly targeting some ISIS K or some Taliban
[00:47:40] or, and it ends up killing a USAID worker, a guy named Samari Ahmadi, kills him two other
[00:47:49] adults and seven kids.
[00:48:00] August 30th, there's some rocket attacks, but August 30th, we win the last US planes.
[00:48:04] We've Afghanistan.
[00:48:06] The Taliban rolls into the airport, just rolls into the airport and declares victory.
[00:48:14] So there it is.
[00:48:15] The Taliban's in control, at which point is this when you go back in?
[00:48:22] Yeah, so I was working between his back a set and Tajikistan and I would have gone back
[00:48:27] or tried to go back a little earlier, but when I met with these diplomats, one of them
[00:48:34] sort of said to me, he had said, you know, because he was sort of involved in being, you know,
[00:48:40] he'd put him in touch with the middle man to leave Afghanistan and he'd sort of said, you
[00:48:45] know, I've been doing this for 30, 40 years and being in many wars are in sort of working
[00:48:50] and he said, I've never felt more terrified when then I basically handed you over to the
[00:48:56] Taliban to get in their car to leave and he said, I just, I was so relieved when you
[00:49:02] were okay and I add a respect to him, I didn't want to go back in straight away.
[00:49:07] So, but there was never doubt in my mind that I was going to go back in, of course,
[00:49:10] I didn't tell that to my parents or do anybody else, but I thought I'd plan to come
[00:49:16] and do a job.
[00:49:18] I felt confident enough to go back because despite the hype that we were sort of seeing
[00:49:24] in the media and everybody trying to get out, I did know other sort of British journalists
[00:49:28] and things that had stayed that was still in Kabul and I felt confident enough that I could
[00:49:34] go back and be okay about it and so we made that decision to go back and I thought, you know,
[00:49:42] I'll let this airport chaos die down and so we'll go back in on the first and we'll drive
[00:49:47] back from the north, back from Uzbekistan border and we'll take that, it's about a 12 hour
[00:49:53] drive across Afghanistan, back to Kabul because there really wasn't any other way.
[00:49:58] And yeah, that's what we did.
[00:50:00] Okay, me, we crossed that bridge again and I still, and they were honoring the valid
[00:50:06] visas.
[00:50:07] So, my visa was valid, media visa and so I went back and we kind of went to this little
[00:50:12] passport hot and I was just a Taliban sitting in there and you didn't ask a single question,
[00:50:17] just had a notebook, wrote it down, stamped with the Taliban stamp and we were good to go.
[00:50:22] So it was sort of that easy to go back and I thought, gosh.
[00:50:28] And then you're just driving south.
[00:50:29] And we're just driving, so we'd hired a driver for friends of a friend who'd come to pick
[00:50:34] us up and so there was, all of his jammed into this little Toyota Corolla driving from that
[00:50:40] bridge down just through selling paths down into, yeah, it was about 12 hours.
[00:50:46] Are you in your getting the checkpoints?
[00:50:47] Yeah, so there was about 16 checkpoints.
[00:50:50] And was that feel like?
[00:50:52] You know, they, and still now, they barely stop you when they see a woman.
[00:50:55] They see a woman go, go, go, go, go.
[00:50:57] They've been basically instructed, at least definitely at that point they're instructed,
[00:51:00] don't question a woman, don't, you know, if there's a woman in the car, just let them go.
[00:51:04] Why so?
[00:51:05] They're terrified of women.
[00:51:08] They, they, yeah, they just, they think they see it as a sign of respect.
[00:51:13] Don't question a woman, don't ask her who she don't look at her, don't question.
[00:51:17] Really only once we got stopped, I think at a checkpoint, they asked a sort of a few
[00:51:22] questions, looked at the passports and one of them poxies had through the window, the
[00:51:27] one, it was, again, it's like being a clown show.
[00:51:30] And Jake said to this guy, how did you get your hair so shiny?
[00:51:33] Because they've got this black hair that's letting around and the guy looks he goes, had
[00:51:37] and shoulders.
[00:51:38] It was the whole thing.
[00:51:40] It was like, I don't know what movie I'm in right now, but this is crazy.
[00:51:46] But yeah, so they barely got stopped at a checkpoint and suddenly we're back in Kabul.
[00:51:50] And really at that point, the only, it's fighting that was really still happening was in
[00:51:55] Pangea and that was sort of the last holdout that the Taliban's hadn't taken yet.
[00:52:02] So, and you ended up going up there, right?
[00:52:05] Yes.
[00:52:06] And the reason you go, well, because there was, there was anti-talivan forces that fled
[00:52:11] there.
[00:52:12] Yes.
[00:52:13] And they were flying the flag of the Northern Alliance up there.
[00:52:18] And it seemed like that could be sort of like the Montana or the, you know what I'm saying?
[00:52:27] Like the Wyoming of, hey, hey, they might have taken the rest of America, this is like a red
[00:52:32] dawn scenario, right?
[00:52:33] These are the Wolverines up there.
[00:52:35] Thinking, all right, we're going to go up there.
[00:52:36] Do you know what I'm talking about?
[00:52:37] Yes.
[00:52:38] Okay, because I know Eco does, you know, he's very up to speed on those kind of movies,
[00:52:42] but that's what it was.
[00:52:44] That's what it seemed like, up in Pangea was, hey, we've got, this is the last holdout
[00:52:48] we're like the Wolverines up there.
[00:52:50] Yeah.
[00:52:51] We were flying the old flag of the Northern Alliance and we've got experienced fighters.
[00:52:58] You're hearing that story.
[00:52:59] Did you looking at it think that they could hold out?
[00:53:02] So I was hearing a lot of information with people.
[00:53:04] We're going to do this, this, this and this.
[00:53:07] And I've spent a lot of time in Pangea previously.
[00:53:09] And I knew that there was a lot of great fighters, great guy, you know, people that, that
[00:53:13] fought during the Soviet occupation.
[00:53:15] And that was the only place the Taliban's never controlled during their reign in the
[00:53:18] 90s.
[00:53:19] They never got Pangea, that was the one place.
[00:53:21] So they certainly had this mentality to hold, but at the same time, all the young men
[00:53:26] that I knew that had lived there, it all fled to France, all of them.
[00:53:30] And I'm thinking, why have you fled to France?
[00:53:33] Like you should be here finding for your province.
[00:53:36] Like what is going on?
[00:53:37] So it was a little skeptical to be honest because I was hearing, especially from contact
[00:53:41] somebody in the US who were like, where can I send them weapons and get this?
[00:53:45] And I remember just sort of thinking, I don't know if I'm buying this right now.
[00:53:51] So we decided, yeah, I was like, I need to get in.
[00:53:55] And there was still this debate going on.
[00:53:56] Has it fallen?
[00:53:57] Has it not fallen?
[00:53:59] Because the Taliban's were claiming in that sort of first week of September to have
[00:54:03] taken it.
[00:54:04] But then the NRF, as they know, in the national resistance front, were saying, no, no, no, we're still
[00:54:10] in control.
[00:54:11] And so nobody could figure it out because nobody could get in.
[00:54:13] The Taliban's were not letting anybody go into the province.
[00:54:17] And there's really terrible cell service there.
[00:54:19] It's always been terrible cell service there.
[00:54:21] So especially if you're in the mountains, you're not going to be able to report back.
[00:54:25] So there was this really crazy debate going on.
[00:54:29] And again, whether misinformation was coming out of was this idea of, then people started
[00:54:34] saying, the Pakistan has got drawings there.
[00:54:37] And they're supporting the Taliban's.
[00:54:38] And I looked at the video and then I was like, that's a video game.
[00:54:43] Like they're using footage, like news outlets are using footage of a video game.
[00:54:46] And also footage of like, a US military in Arizona.
[00:54:51] And it's been passed off as the Pakistan is in Pangea.
[00:54:56] And I just remember thinking, what, it was this complete disinformation circle.
[00:55:00] And when I really started to dig into it, I found that it was a lot of the disinformation
[00:55:04] was coming from India.
[00:55:06] So basically, Pangea had become this proxy for the conflict between Pakistan and India.
[00:55:12] And they were sending different information, a lot of which was completely inaccurate.
[00:55:17] So I said to my fixer, I mean, to do whatever it takes to get into Pangea.
[00:55:22] Because I need to know, has it fallen, has it fallen?
[00:55:25] What is going on there?
[00:55:27] And so he was able to make that arrangement.
[00:55:30] And we were sort of the first journalist that were able to get in and go through all
[00:55:33] like districts. And that was about, that was, I want to say, it was about September 9.
[00:55:39] I think I did, we went to Pangea.
[00:55:42] And did you drive up there?
[00:55:43] Yeah, we drove.
[00:55:44] So it's not far from Kabul.
[00:55:45] It's about an hour and a half.
[00:55:47] And then we get there.
[00:55:49] And it was very heavily fortified by the Taliban.
[00:55:51] And we get in.
[00:55:52] And immediately it was very clear to me that the Taliban had complete control of it.
[00:55:57] Even, even, yeah, there was just so much misinformation.
[00:56:01] Did you talk to any anti-refiters?
[00:56:03] Yeah, I did.
[00:56:04] And most, I was watching them surrender from the mountains.
[00:56:07] And they were coming down and handing their guns over to the Taliban's and the Taliban's
[00:56:11] were giving them the letter.
[00:56:13] And off they were going.
[00:56:14] And they were leaving.
[00:56:15] And honestly, and I got so much heat for this.
[00:56:19] But you know, you can only report what you're seeing here.
[00:56:23] They really wasn't a fight.
[00:56:24] It wasn't a big fight.
[00:56:25] A lot of that was exaggerated.
[00:56:27] There was not a single amount of damage that I saw anywhere in that main street.
[00:56:32] Not to say there wasn't fighting in the mountains.
[00:56:35] But I didn't, I had one rocket launch that entire day that I was there.
[00:56:39] The leadership had fled.
[00:56:41] They'd already left.
[00:56:44] And I just think that was just sort of, and I still hear it now about, you know, people
[00:56:48] going around trying to get weapons, trying to, you know, it's not there.
[00:56:52] It doesn't exist the way it existed 30 years ago.
[00:56:56] And again, goes back to so many of them that I knew they're not in the country anymore.
[00:57:01] But you know, and it was crazy.
[00:57:03] I got so much heat for simply reporting.
[00:57:06] They really wasn't a fight here.
[00:57:08] And the diaspora just came off to me and people, you know, just I never experienced that
[00:57:13] kind of backlash just from reporting a story.
[00:57:16] So I was kind of relieved when some friends of mine from Wall Street Journal in New York
[00:57:20] Times and things.
[00:57:21] They went in a couple weeks later and reported the same thing.
[00:57:23] So I was like, well, okay, I'm not crazy.
[00:57:27] Yeah.
[00:57:28] And then, you know, when you talk about the folks that you knew that went to France,
[00:57:34] like, give us a little bit of background on that.
[00:57:37] Well, it was just in that initial evacuation period.
[00:57:40] Just a lot of the young fighters that I knew that France was very close with the panjuries.
[00:57:45] And I'm much more matured, his wife lives there.
[00:57:49] And he spent a lot of time there during his time.
[00:57:51] And so they have a very close relationship and the franchise are very aligned with the
[00:57:55] panjuries. So they were mostly able, a lot of the men were able to get, I guess, SIVs to
[00:58:00] go to France in that evacuation period.
[00:58:02] And a lot of them took it and I'll say, went.
[00:58:05] And so, yeah, I don't doubt there was certainly a fight there.
[00:58:10] But I just think it was really blown out of proportion in terms of any ability to take it.
[00:58:15] It was very clear that Talaman had full control of every single of those districts.
[00:58:20] So you spend what how long would it have for a day?
[00:58:23] Yeah.
[00:58:24] And you spend a day up there.
[00:58:25] And now, at this point now, the Taliban is forming their government.
[00:58:30] And yeah, they now run the country, they formed their government.
[00:58:36] September 11th, they kind of formally announced that they're in control.
[00:58:39] And this is the new regime.
[00:58:41] Yeah.
[00:58:42] They reopened the Ministry for the Prevention of Ice and Propagation of Virtue, which
[00:58:48] is something that existed in their first reign, where they would go around with these morality
[00:58:53] police and school people.
[00:58:56] And people would get flogged if your beard wasn't long enough or for women's, you
[00:59:00] know, wasn't wearing the correct burka.
[00:59:03] So they were very stringent about that.
[00:59:05] They haven't restarted the morality police.
[00:59:07] But at the beginning, it was a little bit terrifying.
[00:59:10] And I went to the opening of the Ministry and we sort of just, it was very bizarre that
[00:59:15] very first month, you could just walk up and knock on a door anywhere and get in.
[00:59:20] They tightened down since then.
[00:59:22] But it was suddenly just how to all this access to things.
[00:59:24] And because the Taliban's were not used to all this media and people and it was very
[00:59:29] bizarre for them.
[00:59:30] So they were just sort of show, come in.
[00:59:32] What's your opening line?
[00:59:34] You walk up to the Ministry of Prevention of Ice and Propagation of Virtue.
[00:59:38] What do you say when you knock on their door?
[00:59:40] We just come and I go with my fix from my photographer.
[00:59:42] And of course, I don't look at me.
[00:59:44] They, you know, that was the other bizarre thing too.
[00:59:47] I, the psychological effect of being ignored and invisible for a month straight is actually
[00:59:55] to say, it made me get a little bit crazy.
[00:59:58] So but I would make a deliberate at first for the first few weeks.
[01:00:02] I was being trying to be polite.
[01:00:03] I would stand back and just let them go up and, you know, handle it and do their impestion
[01:00:08] greetings with the Taliban's and make us the questions.
[01:00:11] And I would just be in the background.
[01:00:13] They would interview with me.
[01:00:14] They didn't like it.
[01:00:15] They would complain.
[01:00:16] They would bring a woman, you know, which I should be interviewing with the man.
[01:00:19] But they would usually, and my fixer would say, well, she'll go and write about it.
[01:00:23] She'll go and write about the fact that you aren't going to interview her.
[01:00:26] So then they were very worried about perception at that point.
[01:00:30] But so we, we'd go up and they were doing this, you know, big opening for there, you
[01:00:34] know, all the guys went in and I couldn't go in.
[01:00:36] So my photographer and fixer went in.
[01:00:38] I was allowed to go into the compound.
[01:00:41] And some of the Taliban's bought me a chair and I'm sitting under the tree.
[01:00:45] And they're all, you know, doing the, the Hakani's and everybody's in the building
[01:00:49] next to me doing their, their summons.
[01:00:52] And then finally they said, oh, we need to put her in a room.
[01:00:54] She can't sit here.
[01:00:55] So I get moved to a room and they bring me tea and fruit and it was all just very bizarre.
[01:01:01] And then finally when the celebrations had finished and they're all doing picnics outside,
[01:01:05] the director came to interview me in the, in the little room and he would just sort of sit
[01:01:10] there and very softly spoke in and what else are my questions.
[01:01:14] But looking at the ground.
[01:01:15] So I was, yeah, I was very invisible, which at first I took, I said, you know, I'll be,
[01:01:21] you know, I went with the approach that they're not used.
[01:01:25] They've never seen a woman before.
[01:01:27] Especially not a woman working out with men.
[01:01:30] They, if lucky, they've seen their mothers, daughter if they have one in the sister, they
[01:01:36] really have not seen a woman before.
[01:01:38] So I tried to be like, well, this is very new to me.
[01:01:41] And you went in a burger or no?
[01:01:42] No, nope.
[01:01:43] I was confused.
[01:01:44] I wore everything that I normally wore and I've got to stand previously, just a
[01:01:47] had job.
[01:01:49] And sometimes I wore a mask, depending, but I refuse to wear a burger or if you're
[01:01:53] still wearing a quibbo, refuse to wear anything other than a had job.
[01:01:56] Because that's all it says in Islam is cover the head and that's it.
[01:02:00] So that's what I went with.
[01:02:01] So I thought, you know, this is a very big learning experience for them, too.
[01:02:04] And even when I would go to villages, it was so bizarre.
[01:02:07] You could hear the villages in the background.
[01:02:09] She had a man or a woman, like they just never seen, it was just so new to them.
[01:02:15] And so at the beginning, I was respectful.
[01:02:17] And then I snapped.
[01:02:18] I, I, I, I, I just, when you're ignored completely for that long, I just thought, I'm
[01:02:25] not okay with this anymore.
[01:02:27] And so I made a very big point of any time we went to meet with the Taliban's that I was
[01:02:34] with my photographer from Fixer.
[01:02:35] I would walk up and I would just stare at them.
[01:02:38] I'd say, hi, and I would stare at them.
[01:02:40] And they looked the other way.
[01:02:42] And even an interview when they would speak and they would just look at my fixer and not
[01:02:45] to me, I would continue to stare at them.
[01:02:48] And 95% of the time they broke.
[01:02:50] 95% of the time, eventually they started to look at me.
[01:02:54] And throughout the course of my months there, I found that by the end, the most of them were
[01:02:59] actually looking at me.
[01:03:00] And I thought, I don't want to go and perpetuate this idea of, it's okay just to, nor
[01:03:07] one, and even though, to a lot of them, that is respect.
[01:03:09] They think it's respectful to not look at me or ignore me.
[01:03:13] And I thought, if you're, I'll going to run this country, you need to learn what that is
[01:03:17] going to entail.
[01:03:18] And that is going to be that women are working in the street.
[01:03:22] That's how it is.
[01:03:23] Foreign women will come in and work.
[01:03:26] So it's just an interesting social experiment, but I could, yeah, staring at them.
[01:03:30] So there was like a line, because, you know, early, early, you said, you know, that
[01:03:35] when the Taliban would look at you, and you were like, oh, when the cars, they was wavering
[01:03:39] through checkpoints, because it's a sign of respect.
[01:03:41] But then when you're actually trying to communicate with them, and they're just not even
[01:03:44] looking at you, whether they are, when they are afraid.
[01:03:46] Yeah, it's just what they taught.
[01:03:48] They taught to never look at a woman.
[01:03:50] It's just, it's indoctrination that it's disrespectful to look at a woman.
[01:03:55] That's not your own wife or your mother.
[01:03:58] That's the way that they're taught.
[01:04:00] So I understand that, but they're also going to have to learn.
[01:04:07] That's not always going to be the way.
[01:04:08] Yeah, and you said, hey, it's not going to, this is the way it's going to have to be in
[01:04:13] the future.
[01:04:14] But do you think it'll be that way?
[01:04:15] Where do you think I'll just not allow it?
[01:04:16] I saw a big shift over that few months.
[01:04:19] Again, I tried to take the approach of, as much as this is new for me, this is new for
[01:04:23] them, too.
[01:04:24] They've never been in a media spotlight the way they are now.
[01:04:26] They've never had all this social media or an attention.
[01:04:30] And so they're never getting something new as well.
[01:04:33] And so I think that, I hope that they've learned, I did see a change in an over that period
[01:04:40] just in their interaction.
[01:04:46] I know you actually, I talked about that drone strike earlier.
[01:04:50] And I know that at one point you actually, twice I went and met with the family at the
[01:04:55] house where it was hit.
[01:04:56] Yeah.
[01:04:57] Talk us through that.
[01:04:58] Yeah, that was devastating.
[01:04:59] So yeah, on the edge of Kabul, very small, you know, sort of in a published area,
[01:05:06] we went to see that family on that first day that basically that the Pentagon had acknowledged
[01:05:12] that, okay, it was a mistake.
[01:05:15] And it was heartbreaking.
[01:05:16] It was absolutely heartbreaking.
[01:05:18] And one of the, you know, three brothers that were all sort of living there with all their
[01:05:22] family and waiting to get that call to go to the airport to evacuate.
[01:05:27] And one of them, the men had lost all these kids, all these three kids were killed.
[01:05:32] And another one, two of them, just, it was heartbreaking.
[01:05:37] The car was all still there.
[01:05:39] And I just, I kind of imagine that the guy had gone to work that day.
[01:05:44] He was working for an NGO.
[01:05:46] And they sort of had a ritual where the little kids would run up to the car when it came
[01:05:49] in.
[01:05:50] And he would, you know, then they jump in the car and they drive into the house.
[01:05:56] And so he came back in five o'clock that afternoon.
[01:05:59] And that's when the drone hit and the kids, it all sort of ran out to get the car and
[01:06:03] jumped in.
[01:06:04] And that's when they were hit with the drone.
[01:06:08] And it was just, it was never stating, you know, the mothers who just who could not speak.
[01:06:13] And I went back to follow up with them a couple of, I guess it would have been in November.
[01:06:21] So, late November.
[01:06:23] So recently, and, you know, I said, has anybody, because there were reports that you've
[01:06:28] been compensated, the US was going to give them compensation and also speed up their visas
[01:06:34] to come because some of them did qualify for SIVs and had applied for them before the
[01:06:39] evacuation.
[01:06:40] So before any of this had happened.
[01:06:42] And they said, you know, we haven't had a thing.
[01:06:44] We have nobody's apologized, nobody's contacted us.
[01:06:48] And in the US kind of saying, oh, we're going to give these people compensation, it endangered
[01:06:54] them further because then people around, they'll, well, these people have money now.
[01:06:58] And, you know, and crime in Afghanistan is terrible as it is.
[01:07:01] And so suddenly, these people were under an extra layer of threat on top of it.
[01:07:05] So I don't know what sort of happened if anything's transpired over the last couple of weeks.
[01:07:10] I tried to put them in touch with a rescue organization that was going to help them get
[01:07:14] out and speed up and they said, oh, you know, we're supposedly in contact with
[01:07:18] some lawyers in DC, but I don't know that anything ever came out of that either or, you
[01:07:23] know, if they were able to get out.
[01:07:24] But it was really just heartbreaking in many levels.
[01:07:28] And what's fascinating is that they weren't bit of people.
[01:07:31] They were not angry at the US.
[01:07:35] They were not, you know, they didn't want to try to get revenge.
[01:07:39] They want to come to the US.
[01:07:40] You know, they still wanted to come and live here and get out of Afghanistan.
[01:07:45] But yeah, I just hope that that that case isn't lost.
[01:07:49] Is there any news or information about the sort of intel thread that led to that drone strike?
[01:07:57] I mean, only from what I've read out of reports was just it seemed like a, I guess, a perfect
[01:08:02] storm of fire, really, just seemed that.
[01:08:05] And again, I'm still trying to understand it was like you were targeting a Toyota Corolla.
[01:08:10] We'll 70% of the cars in Kabul, a Toyota Corolla.
[01:08:14] So I just think it seemed like a perfect storm from many different level.
[01:08:18] And I think the US was in panic mode at that point having had the airport attack a couple
[01:08:23] of days earlier.
[01:08:24] And we were so terrified that this guy who was pulling water out of his car was pulling
[01:08:29] explosives out of the car.
[01:08:31] And yeah, it all just seemed to come together without, I guess, the correct due diligence.
[01:08:39] I've done targets before hit targets that were just, there was wrong.
[01:08:48] And I was a huge lesson learned from you.
[01:08:49] I hit a target one time at first deployment to Iraq and pulled the thread on the, because
[01:08:55] I got back thinking that was not right.
[01:08:57] Like, that person with the guy that we got is not a bad guy.
[01:09:00] You clearly was not a bad guy.
[01:09:02] And it came back and started pulling the thread, hey, who, who did this, who gave us this
[01:09:06] information and eventually pulled the thread and it was like, he had, his wife had fired
[01:09:15] the maid or something like that.
[01:09:17] It was something like that.
[01:09:19] The maid was pissed.
[01:09:21] And so she went and started telling Americans that, oh, yeah, this guy, he's a bad guy,
[01:09:27] he's financing.
[01:09:28] You know, that kind of thing.
[01:09:32] And so that was a huge lesson for me.
[01:09:34] This is from then on, my, my question would be, who put this X on this building?
[01:09:38] Because that's what we would literally get would be a map and there'd be an X on the
[01:09:42] building, a red X just like a movie, a red X on a building.
[01:09:46] And I would say, who'd put that red X there?
[01:09:48] I want to know who put that red X and now I would pull the thread and find out exactly,
[01:09:52] hey, this is the information that we got.
[01:09:54] This is what's corroborated.
[01:09:55] It's really, really hard.
[01:09:59] And if you're not in that mode and there's pressure, that's where these people make
[01:10:03] these quick calls to try and do something.
[01:10:07] And again, I don't, I want to pull the thread on that more.
[01:10:11] And hopefully I can try and as it becomes declassified.
[01:10:14] Because I'm sure some of it's classified whether getting information from all that stuff
[01:10:18] can be classified.
[01:10:19] But it'll be interesting to pull the thread on that and see why they pulled the trigger on that
[01:10:26] mission.
[01:10:27] And the report came back saying nobody was responsible.
[01:10:29] Nobody was how to cannibal.
[01:10:31] It was just a mistake that they couldn't sort of pin to one person was the Pentagon report
[01:10:35] on it.
[01:10:36] I thought, how is that possible?
[01:10:39] And how is nobody held accountable to this at all?
[01:10:43] Well, you know, even for me, when we hit that target and caught this guy, thank God we
[01:10:50] didn't shoot him.
[01:10:51] Thank God he didn't resist.
[01:10:52] He didn't resist because he wasn't a bad guy.
[01:10:53] So we went, we grabbed this guy.
[01:10:55] But the reason I wanted was so engaged with that was because I knew it was me.
[01:11:00] I'm the one that's kicking in the door and where my team is doing that.
[01:11:06] So I need to take ownership of what we're doing and make sure that this is the right thing
[01:11:12] to do in the right situation.
[01:11:14] Because yeah, I mean, so if you're allowed to sort of push responsibility onto 14 different
[01:11:22] people that all had a hand in the intel gathering, which a bunch of people do gather that
[01:11:26] intel, but who's pulling the trigger, who's saying, yes, go and you need to own that.
[01:11:31] If you make that mistake and explain why, and then you can put some procedures in place
[01:11:35] that won't let it happen again.
[01:11:38] And also, you have to question a little bit.
[01:11:41] You have the Inspector General of the Air Force investigating the Air Force.
[01:11:44] Like, you know, would it be better to have an independent person looking at this as opposed
[01:11:49] to having somebody investigate themselves?
[01:11:52] I don't know.
[01:11:53] But it's just a sort of a question that I've asked myself.
[01:11:56] And there's another thing that can happen as well.
[01:11:59] And this was a term that I first heard when I was in Iraq, my second deployment, good
[01:12:05] shot bad result.
[01:12:08] Meaning when you lay out what happened, what a individual saw, like if the person that pulled
[01:12:13] the trigger, what he saw, what he understood, what he was thinking, you lay all those things
[01:12:19] out.
[01:12:21] You say, you know what, that was a good shot.
[01:12:24] I understand why you took that shot.
[01:12:26] I'm sorry that this is what happened.
[01:12:28] But we at least investigate and say, okay, how did this happen?
[01:12:34] How did this occur?
[01:12:36] And how do we make sure that first of all, the person wasn't being negligent, the person's
[01:12:40] not trying to hide anything?
[01:12:42] Because look, when you're in war, you're going to shoot people.
[01:12:46] And occasionally, you're going to shoot someone that didn't deserve to get shot.
[01:12:50] What happens?
[01:12:51] And when that happens, you have to actually look at it and say, okay, how did it happen?
[01:12:56] How did you make that decision?
[01:12:57] Why did you make that decision?
[01:12:58] What did you see?
[01:12:59] You pull all that stuff apart.
[01:13:01] And with my guys, the couple times that something like this happened, it was, hey, I understand
[01:13:09] why you took that shot.
[01:13:11] And it was actually the right call.
[01:13:14] And it's horrible that has a bad result.
[01:13:18] But I understand why you did it and it made sense.
[01:13:21] You know, that's a lot different than, oh, wait a second, you didn't see anything that
[01:13:26] looks suspicious or you, why did you shoot this while?
[01:13:29] I don't know.
[01:13:30] Never got that answer.
[01:13:31] And never was in those situations.
[01:13:33] So for, for, to your point, for, to pull the thread on the whole thing, if someone said,
[01:13:39] hey, this is what we saw.
[01:13:40] This is the vehicle that we were targeting.
[01:13:41] This is the intel hit that we got.
[01:13:43] This is what our informant said.
[01:13:44] This is what our electronics surveillance said.
[01:13:47] They could actually paint a picture where you say, you know, in that pressure situation,
[01:13:52] I understand what you did.
[01:13:54] I understand why you took that shot and you took the risk at taking that shot.
[01:13:58] So you could save Americans and save an attack.
[01:14:00] I understand that.
[01:14:02] Okay, now we, we at least learned something.
[01:14:05] But to just say, nothing, it doesn't make sense.
[01:14:11] It's not, it's not the right move, man.
[01:14:13] It's not the right move, it's not the right move.
[01:14:17] You also, I mean, you were like on the freaking Taliban tourist trip.
[01:14:23] I mean, you went to visit Mola Almars, like remote mosque out there.
[01:14:29] What was happening?
[01:14:30] So we took this, you know, again, taking advantage of the fact suddenly, we went to,
[01:14:34] I went to almost all the provinces because this was something that I couldn't have
[01:14:38] a deeper flow by raging.
[01:14:40] Only we could, we could travel and this was fascinating to me.
[01:14:43] So we took this epic kind of journey from Kabul to Kandahar and, you know, through
[01:14:50] Loga and then Wardak and then through Gazi and actually was very bizarre and Gazi, we
[01:14:56] say the filthyest hotel.
[01:14:58] I think I've ever stayed out of my life.
[01:15:00] I think the sheets weren't like it was, it was gross.
[01:15:03] And my dearest was still September or it was very hot.
[01:15:05] It was a bad yelp review for sure.
[01:15:07] It was not hard just that.
[01:15:08] I didn't have a sleep, the toilet didn't work.
[01:15:10] Like there was just one shared squat toilet that didn't work and the shower didn't work
[01:15:14] and it was over flooding when I just, I just kind of wait to leave that place.
[01:15:18] But anyhow, what's so bizarre?
[01:15:19] I like the fact that you're jumping in a random car, the Taliban elders, but you
[01:15:24] don't get mad into a lot of freaking stuff, upshallower.
[01:15:27] But you know what's so bizarre?
[01:15:29] So we're sitting there and there's little place having dinner downstairs and again,
[01:15:32] it's very unusual for a woman to be out in nine hours.
[01:15:35] I go, you know, effort, I'm going out.
[01:15:37] So I'm having dinner with you.
[01:15:38] It was my driver, my fixer and my photographer.
[01:15:43] And then a bunch of Kanda Hari telebands come into the restaurant and sort of sitting there
[01:15:47] and, and, you're staring and doing there, you know, asking a few questions and went
[01:15:52] about their business.
[01:15:53] But anyway, I found out the next day which was very strange to the hotel.
[01:15:58] And because I have to stay separately to the man.
[01:15:59] So the guys all shared one room and then as a woman, I have to have my own room.
[01:16:03] So I was on the other side and then these Kanda Hari telebands, so bizarre.
[01:16:08] They stayed.
[01:16:09] They were traveling through but they stayed that night because they heard their
[01:16:12] affarn is there.
[01:16:14] And literally they stayed outside my room that night to make sure nobody came in, which
[01:16:19] was just bizarre.
[01:16:20] Anyway, it kind of goes back to their past June, Wally, hospitality, wanting to make
[01:16:25] sure nothing happened to the affarn is.
[01:16:28] Which, yeah, we can talk about that because that leads to so many different things.
[01:16:33] But that sort of shows you this very bizarre, decodemy of what is happening in this country.
[01:16:40] Because on one hand, you're sort of seeing acts like that and then on the other hand, you
[01:16:44] see the brutality and you see this insurgency that's trying to be a government.
[01:16:48] So, yeah, very bizarre.
[01:16:50] But anyway, we continue to go through the Kanda Hari, which is the birthplace of the
[01:16:54] telebands.
[01:16:55] On all the roads they bombed up, you know, I'd ask them, who bombed this road?
[01:16:59] Oh, we did.
[01:17:00] We've got to fix it, right? Like, now it's time because the road's a terrible.
[01:17:05] So, you know, we eventually got there.
[01:17:07] And then it's about two hours from Kanda Hari City to go to this little tiny, it's
[01:17:13] in Sangha's art, which is where Molo must started the teleband in 1994.
[01:17:18] So, we drive there and get to this, it's extremely primitive place.
[01:17:24] It's just mud hard.
[01:17:25] It's dirt roads.
[01:17:28] And somewhere I really think that the US just never was because it was just, it was
[01:17:32] Taliban territory forever.
[01:17:33] So, we get there and just this one tiny square room in the middle of nowhere.
[01:17:42] And go in and the Imam and these village elders welcome us in.
[01:17:48] And it was actually strange again because that was the first time that, and it was at Molo
[01:17:52] Imam's mosque that the Molo's were actually looking at me and talking to me.
[01:17:58] I felt this is just strange because I've come from all these other places and here should
[01:18:02] be the most conservative of all.
[01:18:04] And yet you're actually engaging and asking, asking me about my personal life.
[01:18:08] You know, so I just thought this is bizarre.
[01:18:12] But, you know, they're sort of philosophy on it was that Molo and my gained traction
[01:18:17] and gained supporters because this came after the, there was a civil war going on.
[01:18:22] So after the Russians were kicked out of Afghanistan, you know, quickly things became
[01:18:28] another war again, which was the civil war in Afghanistan and Molo and my presented this
[01:18:33] idea of there was going to be no corruption and the crime was going to stop and he would
[01:18:38] give food and money and things to the poor and, and people gravitated to that and you
[01:18:43] could see just from sort of the simplicity of this tiny little mosque that, you know, looked
[01:18:48] like the comp, it's weren't replaced in 30, 40 years that that was really something I
[01:18:53] think that he did live by was this sort of sense of humility and I think a lot of
[01:18:58] Afghans at that point when they were starting to see corruption among all these warlords,
[01:19:02] they gravitated to that and that's how he was able to build a very strong following very
[01:19:07] quickly.
[01:19:09] You mentioned to me about seeing people addicted to drugs there.
[01:19:15] And what's that culture like because it's the Mecca for Opium, right?
[01:19:20] Yeah, absolutely.
[01:19:21] I think it's something more than 90% of the world's heroin and Opium come from Afghanistan.
[01:19:26] So the Taliban has really brought that, that has been one of the number one ways they were
[01:19:31] able to make money through the insurgency, was through the this allying of those drugs.
[01:19:36] And they, a lot of the hell made, we went up to Hellman to sangin and places like that
[01:19:42] where they grew the pop bees and it's funny because I went,
[01:19:45] the Taliban were putting on this big, you know, despite we're getting rid of the drugs,
[01:19:48] it's a rum, we're going to kill the crops and blah, blah, blah, and I was at the
[01:19:54] Canada and I caught it and the guys, you know, they're putting on this display but then
[01:19:59] it became very evident to me, especially when I went there and the Taliban themselves
[01:20:04] are harvesting it and I said, well, so you tell me it's a rum and then one of them says
[01:20:08] to me it's only her arm if we sell it to Afghans.
[01:20:11] If we sell it over the border, it's not her arm.
[01:20:13] So basically they said, we can sell it to, we can kill other people in other places but
[01:20:18] we don't want to kill, we don't want to kill Afghans.
[01:20:22] So that was sort of there for us.
[01:20:24] I don't see them ending that anytime soon.
[01:20:26] They're going to try to, I think, probably find avenues to legalize it in the sense of
[01:20:32] countries that perhaps are friendly to them that need OPM for medicine.
[01:20:38] I think that's their approach that they seem like they're going to want to take is
[01:20:41] to try to legalize it in some way.
[01:20:44] Now they were using the jails to, they were, rounding up a lot of the addicts from the streets
[01:20:48] and there's a lot of addicts in the streets and rounding them up and putting them in jail
[01:20:53] because they didn't have proper rehab.
[01:20:55] So that was sort of the approach that the Taliban's have been taking.
[01:20:59] Thank you.
[01:21:00] Those two, they have a lot of, sadly, a lot of young kids.
[01:21:04] Is there a drug culture of some kind or is it just something that sort of seeps into, hey,
[01:21:09] this is what we grow, you start trying it, you start figuring it out, whatever.
[01:21:12] You know, it was like one little boy that I talked to, he was 13 and he was addicted and
[01:21:17] he was in this jail and I said, well, how did you start taking this?
[01:21:20] And he said, several years ago, he'd have to go and buy it for his dad.
[01:21:24] So he'd go and buy, get the, get the, you know, puppies and heroin for his dad and then
[01:21:29] eventually he just, you know, tried at once and he'd be chemiticked.
[01:21:33] So I think it tends to filter through families and really impoverished families usually.
[01:21:39] So yeah, just.
[01:21:41] No, you eventually do get like detained and kind of accuse the being a spider.
[01:21:47] What happened with that?
[01:21:48] Oh, gosh.
[01:21:49] So that was also in Canada, huh?
[01:21:50] So what happens is as a journalist.
[01:21:53] So just to go back a little bit.
[01:21:54] So when you get to the country, as a journalist, you have to go to the, the minister of
[01:21:59] information and culture, which is sort of like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[01:22:02] And they check your credentials and give you a, a major hit.
[01:22:06] That would be all the major hit is the spokesperson basically gives you a signed letter that
[01:22:10] says you're credited journalists to be able to work and, and you flash that letter.
[01:22:14] So when I'm going through a checkpoint or when I'm going to try to interview, I flashed
[01:22:18] my Zabby all the letter and they say, okay, she's practically coming in or whatever the
[01:22:22] situation is.
[01:22:23] So, and when you go to a province, you have to, the protocol is you're supposed to go
[01:22:28] and inform the minister of information and culture that you are there so that they know
[01:22:32] that you can get through checkpoints and you're not going to get arrested.
[01:22:35] So in Canada, how that's exactly what we did.
[01:22:38] We went to the Ministry of Information and Culture and did an interview with him about blah,
[01:22:42] blah, blah, and he said, okay, you can go anyway.
[01:22:45] You want goodbye sort of thing.
[01:22:47] So we're like, okay, well, we're going to spend boldack, which is the border of Pakistan
[01:22:51] and in Canada.
[01:22:53] So it leads into into that tribal area.
[01:22:58] So into Quadar.
[01:22:59] So we go down to spend boldack and there's just people everywhere trying because the border
[01:23:04] is mostly closed and there's people everywhere and instantly I just get mobbed.
[01:23:08] Like absolutely, I'm talking just fluttered by hundreds of people that just surround me.
[01:23:16] You know, with my fixer, I'm like, don't leave me because these people are going to mob
[01:23:20] me.
[01:23:21] So I'm trying to do an interview just you just get mobbed.
[01:23:23] It was crazy and the talent just cuts your western school.
[01:23:28] Yeah, they saw a camera and they saw a female and they thought, okay, John, everybody
[01:23:33] makes a curious, I want to tell this story.
[01:23:35] But what was bizarre, Jokal is the telebands before being like whipping these guys to get them
[01:23:40] away from me and I was like, please stop that.
[01:23:42] Like, I don't want to be responsible.
[01:23:44] They just continue just to follow.
[01:23:50] I was like, you're just getting whipped and I was upset about it because I didn't want
[01:23:54] people getting hurt.
[01:23:56] Oh, just why are you not leaving when this is happening?
[01:24:00] It was bizarre.
[01:24:01] What ended up happening was it just it got to the point where it was so much.
[01:24:05] There were just just people everywhere and just what was the closing in on me.
[01:24:09] This town was like, what?
[01:24:10] Who, what kind of town was this?
[01:24:11] It was like a super remote town.
[01:24:12] It's a border town.
[01:24:13] It's just a border crossing.
[01:24:15] So it was a small bit just so many people.
[01:24:18] But they were just freaking hyped to see you.
[01:24:20] Just it was the craziest thing and I, I mean, you have that a little bit, but this was
[01:24:25] a whole other level where I just thought, oh my goodness, what is happening?
[01:24:28] Anyway, I couldn't go anywhere and I would try to grab people to interview them into a store
[01:24:32] and I'd look at the window and suddenly the store was just surrounded.
[01:24:36] It was so crazy.
[01:24:37] And I said, I just, I didn't, and the, and the, so the telebans were coming along, asking
[01:24:42] questions, what is happening.
[01:24:44] And we tried to call the driver.
[01:24:46] And we have this funny driver called Shafiq.
[01:24:48] And he, he always likes to eat.
[01:24:53] And every time he goes, he just finds eat.
[01:24:56] And suddenly Shafiq's not in the place that he, we'd love to.
[01:24:59] Shafiq had gone off to get food.
[01:25:01] At the corner.
[01:25:02] And the car wasn't there.
[01:25:04] And, and, and, and the weed, my fixer is calling Shafiq.
[01:25:07] I mean, where are you?
[01:25:08] Where are he?
[01:25:09] He's not answering his phone.
[01:25:10] And so the telebans come along in their police vehicle.
[01:25:13] And we're just trying to call Shafiq and I'm telling them, like, we're leaving, we're
[01:25:16] leaving.
[01:25:17] We're just getting our driver.
[01:25:18] We couldn't contact the driver.
[01:25:20] And so next thing, you know, telebans like, are I get in?
[01:25:23] And I said, I don't want to get in your car.
[01:25:24] I want to go to the police station.
[01:25:26] And they said, no, get in.
[01:25:28] And so we get into the police vehicle.
[01:25:31] We go to the police station.
[01:25:33] And they put us in their detention room.
[01:25:35] And we're sitting there for a while.
[01:25:37] And I'm thinking, this is going to get resolved really quickly.
[01:25:39] Now, as an hour, as an hour.
[01:25:40] And then finally, just more of them are piling in.
[01:25:42] And the top intel guy is piling in.
[01:25:44] And all these telebans are piling in.
[01:25:46] And I'm showing them my credentials.
[01:25:48] I'm showing them the letter.
[01:25:49] I'm showing them the passport.
[01:25:50] I'm showing them my press card.
[01:25:51] And they said, oh, this is fake.
[01:25:53] That's not.
[01:25:55] They said, yes, it is.
[01:25:58] And they're accusing us of basically spying.
[01:26:01] And I just, I don't know what else to tell you.
[01:26:05] I'm a journalist.
[01:26:06] I've showed you my credentials.
[01:26:07] I've showed you my passport.
[01:26:09] You have all my information.
[01:26:11] So I don't know what to tell you.
[01:26:12] So we're sort of sitting there.
[01:26:14] More people are coming in.
[01:26:15] Hammering us.
[01:26:16] I can see my fixer starting to get wide.
[01:26:18] And he's a very sort of cool com.
[01:26:20] He doesn't really things don't rattle him too much.
[01:26:23] But I can see he's starting to get wide and doesn't know what to do.
[01:26:28] And they're telling, you know, it's about these packastany spies that they arrested a couple
[01:26:31] of nights earlier.
[01:26:33] And long story short, eventually, many hours later, they were able to get in contact with
[01:26:39] the, there's Abigail's office who was able to verify our information.
[01:26:43] And then they were extremely apologetic.
[01:26:45] And they said, well, we'll take you to the border.
[01:26:46] And you can, you know, photograph the packastany's.
[01:26:49] At that point, they were fighting with the packastanies.
[01:26:51] So yeah, I guess that was so, so we ended up going to the border and getting, you know,
[01:26:58] some good interviews and footage in there were very, very apologetic about the situation.
[01:27:02] But it was just one of those, those situations where that, that usually is the case for journalists
[01:27:08] is that especially working in the Middle East or in Asia like Afghanistan, they will accuse
[01:27:13] you of being spies.
[01:27:14] And you have a little recourse to argue and say, well, I've showed you my credentials.
[01:27:18] I'm not, but I don't know what I need to do.
[01:27:21] Convinciu anymore.
[01:27:22] You've got like survivors bias, but you just, we just make it through everything.
[01:27:29] It's crazy.
[01:27:30] Like there's so many people that this, your story always seems to end up working out.
[01:27:35] Yeah, because, yeah, it's a touch on touch.
[01:27:38] What on that one?
[01:27:39] What about the Hakkana, you visited coasts kind of?
[01:27:42] So, host, yeah.
[01:27:43] So that was, that sort of way the Hakkana is a lot of them come from that in Pactia.
[01:27:48] And yes, so that was interesting.
[01:27:50] So I have a good friend of mine who's from host and so we went down there.
[01:27:54] And you know, it was an interesting place because it, you know, again, is that sort of
[01:27:58] the home of the Hakkana is, but it was very untouched a lot of the time by actual conflict.
[01:28:02] It was one of the few places where you had roads that were decent and that it was a very
[01:28:08] self-sufficient kind of place.
[01:28:10] But yeah, what struck me going in is this big billboard of Bobo Bell.
[01:28:16] That's just there.
[01:28:19] You enter, as you enter the city.
[01:28:22] And it's Bobo Bell and another moora.
[01:28:24] Like a salute to Bobo Bell.
[01:28:26] Well, no, it's not.
[01:28:27] It's him looking down and like he sort of got blood on his face and he's looking, like
[01:28:31] he's detained and miserable and then there's this moora standing in the picture next
[01:28:35] to him.
[01:28:36] And it's a poem in Pactia that doesn't really make a lot of sense.
[01:28:39] But it's basically a tribute to this moora and I'm still very, I'm clear.
[01:28:42] I thought your saying was a tribute to Bobo Bell.
[01:28:44] Oh, it's almost sort of a, it's almost like a, it's almost like a, it's almost
[01:28:46] sort of like a, it's a tribute to the moora, but for some reason they felt the need
[01:28:51] to put the Bobo Bell there.
[01:28:52] It's this new new billboard and then I found out that the, the, the, the, the, the
[01:28:57] governor of host is actually one of the, get my five.
[01:29:00] So I guess he put it up there to celebrate himself in some way and he actually
[01:29:05] invited us to go and do an interview which I didn't end up going because he didn't
[01:29:10] want, I went and met with the mayor, but I didn't go and meet with him because my,
[01:29:14] he didn't want my friend, the friend that had the hosty friend who would take in me
[01:29:18] to host.
[01:29:19] He didn't want her to go.
[01:29:20] So I felt sort of a blind to do.
[01:29:22] I mean, just explain that Taliban five point.
[01:29:25] Yeah.
[01:29:26] Yeah.
[01:29:27] So I guess when when Bobo Bell was traded, he was, what, captured in 2009, he ran off base, I
[01:29:33] think.
[01:29:34] He deserted his base in, in the neighboring Pactia, which is next to host.
[01:29:39] And he was captured by the Taliban and the, ultimately, the Hakanis took him.
[01:29:44] And he was, I guess, yeah, and a captivity for a long time.
[01:29:46] And then eventually under the Obama administration, I think it was in 2015, they orchestrated
[01:29:52] a deal to release five, get my detainees in exchange for the one US soldier.
[01:30:00] So.
[01:30:01] And now now that one of the guys is, what the mayor, what is he?
[01:30:05] He's the governor.
[01:30:06] The governor.
[01:30:07] The governor of host now.
[01:30:08] Yeah.
[01:30:09] They're only in top leadership positions.
[01:30:11] They're all running the show.
[01:30:13] And that Connie's themselves.
[01:30:14] I mean, Suraj, he's wanted by the US for $5 million.
[01:30:18] He's now the Minister of Interior.
[01:30:20] And he's Uncle Khalil is the Minister of Refugees, which, yeah, I don't know, I don't
[01:30:27] know what that entails.
[01:30:28] It's crazy.
[01:30:30] So how about the, let's talk a little bit about this.
[01:30:33] So, you know, you mentioned the Hakani, you got Taliban, a Hakani, and Taliban are very
[01:30:38] aligned, right?
[01:30:40] Um, in fact, they, they kind of say there's no difference between the two, even others.
[01:30:44] Well, the, the Hakanis are actually designated terrorist organization, but the Taliban isn't.
[01:30:49] But I'm saying in Afghanistan, they're very close.
[01:30:52] Well, now it's basically in twine.
[01:30:54] Right.
[01:30:55] I think before it was, there was slight sort of ideological differences.
[01:30:58] And in many ways, the Hakanis were, they were the leading, they were like the whole
[01:31:02] talks.
[01:31:03] Yeah, they were the hardcore, most of the suicide bombings were orchestrated by them.
[01:31:07] They were the ones kidnapping who still have Americans and kept, kept tivety.
[01:31:11] But, um, and I mean, you know, you know, very close without, you know, the founder of the Hakanis,
[01:31:17] Hakani himself.
[01:31:18] Yeah.
[01:31:19] This was a guy that was, you know, funded by the CIA to fight the Soviet Union, Reagan
[01:31:23] called him personally, a freedom fighter.
[01:31:24] Yes.
[01:31:25] Yes.
[01:31:26] That's, that's bizarre.
[01:31:27] So, when we talk about things, the B.M.
[01:31:29] B.R.
[01:31:29] Right now, they didn't bizarre for a long time.
[01:31:32] They, they've been very bizarre for a long.
[01:31:34] We paid him millions of dollars, um, the founder of the Hakani.
[01:31:39] And I think, I mean, it's an, it's a fascinating guy, you know, and he was, um, he's got
[01:31:46] two wives, got seven sons.
[01:31:48] I think three or four of his sons were killed in combat.
[01:31:51] Yeah.
[01:31:52] And he, he's the really of the one who brought a lot of the Arabs into the fold.
[01:31:55] So until that point, it was very, you know, Afghan Pakistan, he started getting a lot
[01:32:00] of the Arab funding, which brought in the bin Laden and a lot of that kind of funding.
[01:32:04] But, um, but what, what I found to be really interesting and, and really researching the
[01:32:08] economies is they're very educated and they, they get a lot of education, a lot of their, their
[01:32:14] wives go to the Middle East, go to Saudi Arabia and get education, which is ironic given
[01:32:20] that so many of the women under the Taliban are deprived of education.
[01:32:23] So it's sort of this economy, but everyone I know who's worked closely or knows the
[01:32:27] economies well will always say they're 20 steps ahead of everyone else.
[01:32:31] Like they are the brainchild, really, of the Taliban.
[01:32:34] So they know what is going on down to a tea and surage does not get photographed.
[01:32:40] There is not a photograph of surage that you can possibly find.
[01:32:43] A grainy photograph of the FBI has, but it's very old and very unclear.
[01:32:48] He does not get photographed at all.
[01:32:50] And he did an event once when I was there, which was celebrating suicide bombers.
[01:32:57] At the Intercontinental Hotel, which of course, the Hacani's, you know, sent suicide bombers
[01:33:03] to several years earlier, the whole thing is.
[01:33:05] So when did you go to this thing?
[01:33:06] Was this on this?
[01:33:07] I didn't go in, this was in, this was in late October they had.
[01:33:11] They were giving land and compensation money to families of suicide bombers, which we can
[01:33:14] get into because they very much continuing this suicide bombing despite being a government.
[01:33:19] But they, um, so he's doing this big event there, but in every photograph that was taken,
[01:33:25] it's him from the back or him from the side or he's face his blood.
[01:33:27] And I said to, to one of my sources there who was, he works for him who's a Kabul Intel
[01:33:33] Taliban guy and I said, well, you know, what is up with that?
[01:33:36] And he says, surage will walk around the street every few days.
[01:33:40] And nobody knows who he is.
[01:33:42] So he will walk around the street to check, you know, what's happening at the checkpoint,
[01:33:45] it's check what the Taliban's are doing and nobody knows who he is.
[01:33:49] And he's going to keep it that way.
[01:33:51] I'm to cover balls and you know, such a lot.
[01:33:53] But they're, yeah, they're it the whole thing is just crazy.
[01:33:56] And then you have, so he's minister in interior and then you have Maloma son, Malaya
[01:34:02] Kube who's only about 2930.
[01:34:04] He is the minister of defense and those two, about heads that unlike each other, they're
[01:34:09] coming from different schools of thought.
[01:34:11] So it's just, it's a crazy world.
[01:34:16] And then outside of those two groups, you have ISIS K.
[01:34:19] Yes.
[01:34:20] Yes.
[01:34:21] They, you know, they've had a presence in Afghanistan since about 2015.
[01:34:26] But essentially, we're pretty much defeated around 20, I think the Afghan government in
[01:34:30] early 2019 basically said that they were defeated.
[01:34:33] And that was the whole idea of the US's mission up until, I guess, Trump authorized them
[01:34:38] to go after the Taliban's.
[01:34:39] But up until then it was al-Qaeda and then ISIS.
[01:34:44] And they've really made it, terrifying resurgence.
[01:34:47] Because almost daily attacks happening across Afghanistan as I was there.
[01:34:53] And they are like even more hardcore than the Hakani.
[01:34:57] Is that accurate?
[01:34:58] Yeah, they've got a different ideology.
[01:35:00] So what makes the Taliban's and the Kani's different two ISIS and to al-Qaeda is they're
[01:35:08] very, tell them it's a very much focused on Afghanistan.
[01:35:12] They don't have any grandiose designs.
[01:35:13] They say we want to make sure that no foreign is coming to our country.
[01:35:17] We want good relations with everybody, but we don't want another foreign to come into
[01:35:21] our country.
[01:35:22] And they're like isolationists.
[01:35:23] Yes.
[01:35:24] They're very focused on Afghanistan, whereas groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have a much
[01:35:30] more global ideology, where they want to see, as the fighter said, they want to see
[01:35:35] their interpretation spread throughout the world.
[01:35:37] And they're the ones that will plan to tax in other countries.
[01:35:41] So therefore, a view as a national security threat, whereas the Taliban isn't.
[01:35:46] And that's really hard for the Afghans to, it's always been hard for the Afghans to really
[01:35:51] wrap the head around because the Taliban's were doing so many suicide bombings and attacks.
[01:35:56] And to them, they're absolutely terrorists.
[01:35:58] And they couldn't, it was hard for me to explain to them why the US was sort of leaving
[01:36:04] the Taliban's alone and going after these much smaller groups.
[01:36:07] But we're at that point, not even doing that many attacks.
[01:36:11] And that is going back to, well, the Taliban's is not a threat to United States necessarily
[01:36:16] in and of itself.
[01:36:20] You went to the area where the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddha's history.
[01:36:27] Yes, the Bamiyan, Bamiyan, beautiful province, beautiful province.
[01:36:32] Fifteen hundred years old, those statues were.
[01:36:35] And that was crazy.
[01:36:38] I talked to the Taliban about this about, was that a mistake.
[01:36:42] And so they say, no, no, that wasn't a mistake.
[01:36:45] That was the decision then, but now we're going to protect everything.
[01:36:48] And so I went to a few other places with ruins.
[01:36:51] And the Taliban's are all protecting it.
[01:36:52] And I said, are we going to continue to protect these Buddhas or a Mzina, another place?
[01:36:57] Yeah, yeah, that's our orders for now.
[01:36:59] But what we have to remember is this might be their orders for now.
[01:37:03] But they didn't blow up those Buddhas until early 2001.
[01:37:06] So at that point, the Taliban's had already been in control of what since 1996.
[01:37:10] So it was left alone.
[01:37:13] And then Mullah Omar did it as an extortion because he wanted the international communities
[01:37:18] to give the Taliban's money and the international community wouldn't.
[01:37:21] So then he threatened, well, I'm going to blow up the Buddhas and still didn't get the
[01:37:25] money.
[01:37:26] So he made good and he's promised.
[01:37:28] So that's the thing with the Taliban's right now.
[01:37:30] They might be okay where everything's okay, but you don't know what they're going to do
[01:37:33] next month.
[01:37:34] You don't know how the orders will change.
[01:37:36] And so and you get there and it was bizarre because the Taliban's are taking selfies
[01:37:40] in front of these Blend Out Buddhas.
[01:37:41] And I said, well, you do know that you guys who blew these up, right?
[01:37:47] It's just incredibly strange.
[01:37:49] But Bermian is a beautiful province.
[01:37:51] It shows you, I think when we think of Afghanistan, we just think of the war and the blood
[01:37:56] shed, but it just is one of the most remarkably aesthetically beautiful places in the world.
[01:38:04] And Bermian is just a prime example of that.
[01:38:07] It was the first national park in Afghanistan.
[01:38:11] Now there was a drone strike that killed the facilitator and planner.
[01:38:15] And you did a little investigation on that as well.
[01:38:18] Yes, so when there are a few times, so that was just outside Dallalabad in Nanganha.
[01:38:23] So Nanganha has always been the hub for Icy's K.
[01:38:26] It's on the Pakistan border on the east.
[01:38:28] And it's just that is where, you know, Torabor is where bin Laden went and hid immediately.
[01:38:34] I also went out to the Moab side, if you remember, when the US dropped that massive mother
[01:38:40] of Obambs in beginning of 2017.
[01:38:42] That's also in Nanganha.
[01:38:44] So there's a couple of different areas, but that particular area was a district called Crockrod.
[01:38:51] And that was just outside of Dallalabad.
[01:38:53] And it's one of those very eerie places.
[01:38:56] And you go there and you feel like they're skinned and you're neck is standing up because
[01:39:01] it just doesn't feel right.
[01:39:03] And so the house that was hit was in the farm corner.
[01:39:06] It was actually a really nice house compared to a lot of the mud huts and things.
[01:39:10] And this was a nice sort of brick home.
[01:39:12] And we went into the home.
[01:39:14] And you could really see where it was hit.
[01:39:16] And it was if it was so precise.
[01:39:17] It was just like, you know, this one section of the backyard in this chair that had been
[01:39:21] blown up and nothing else was touched.
[01:39:24] So I went and talked to the neighbors there.
[01:39:27] And one of the guys who was there as the drone strike hit, which was close to midnight,
[01:39:32] he was on the guy gets guard duty on a roof across.
[01:39:36] And yeah, he sort of said that there was a strange guy that sort of hadn't been living
[01:39:40] there that long.
[01:39:42] But would come and go.
[01:39:45] And yeah, they hit that night and then sort of immediately I guess a car came and took
[01:39:49] the women out of the house and the children.
[01:39:52] And then the next day a bunch of televands came in and were taking things out, taking
[01:39:57] flags, taking, he said, he didn't know what they were taking.
[01:40:00] But big boxes that were just weighing the car down.
[01:40:02] And then televands went in there after that and took out more things.
[01:40:06] So I guess from the house.
[01:40:08] And then he said that those televands were found without their heads hanging on a tree
[01:40:13] the next couple of days later with an ISIS stamp flat, an ex to it basically saying anybody
[01:40:18] who removes these bodies is going to kind of be next.
[01:40:22] And he said eventually that is someone from another district came to collect them.
[01:40:26] But they were just hanging there on that tree for many days because people were afraid
[01:40:31] of ISIS.
[01:40:32] And he said that every night sort of you ISIS comes in.
[01:40:36] They come in and take control.
[01:40:38] But during the day, it's very much the Taliban doing patrol.
[01:40:41] The Taliban gets scared and disappear.
[01:40:43] And then the ISIS fighters come in at night and he even showed me his own warning letter.
[01:40:48] He got from the telebens for doing a local news interview after that during strike.
[01:40:53] And then he said that the televands are the interview and, and brewed then accusing him
[01:40:57] of being the one that gave the location to the foreigners.
[01:41:00] So it's complex.
[01:41:02] And then the actual ISIS controlled center where a lot of these people come from is the
[01:41:07] next district over which is Chapagar.
[01:41:09] So we went into that one day which I don't know was as soon as decision but I'm here today.
[01:41:18] You should play lottery because you went a lot.
[01:41:23] So I know you left what the first first of December.
[01:41:29] Yes.
[01:41:30] So like a few days ago, a few weeks ago.
[01:41:35] As you look back to anything else, any other high points from there, I mean there's a bunch
[01:41:39] of stuff for you.
[01:41:40] You know, on your website, you've got a link to a bunch of the articles that you know.
[01:41:45] And I have a sub-stack that I also described to that and I usually put all the articles
[01:41:50] into that and also a little bit of extra kind of background.
[01:41:53] So how do they get to the sub-stack?
[01:41:54] So it's just you can get it straight from my website or it's just yeah.
[01:41:58] And your website is what?
[01:41:59] Holly, my K.
[01:42:00] H-O-L-L-I-E-M-C-K-A-Y dot com.
[01:42:04] There you go.
[01:42:05] And then you can get to the sub-stack.
[01:42:06] Yep.
[01:42:07] I'll tell there.
[01:42:08] But as you look at what's going on, what's going on now?
[01:42:14] This is a disaster.
[01:42:16] I mean, I know one thing that you'd mentioned to me is like, and it's sort of the, I guess
[01:42:24] the ground or the most granular sort of point zero for the disaster is like what happened
[01:42:33] in the military working dogs that got left behind.
[01:42:36] And that was such a big story for everybody remembers.
[01:42:39] There was about 130 dogs and you see these pictures of them at the airport.
[01:42:44] And so I wanted to follow up on that and find out what happened to those dogs because the
[01:42:49] DOD was very quickly to come out and say they weren't US military dogs, but they were
[01:42:53] contracted dogs.
[01:42:54] So the long story short is that the, you know, different contracting companies had given those
[01:43:01] dogs to a complex, small and at more rescue, which is run by a woman named Charlotte.
[01:43:06] And she was tasked with getting them out.
[01:43:08] But when she got to the airport was basically told, you know, you can't get all these dogs
[01:43:12] in the plane and you can only take out what you can carry.
[01:43:16] So there was a lot of controversy.
[01:43:18] Oh my gosh, these dogs are being abandoned.
[01:43:20] But you know, she's someone who really does amazing work in rescuing these animals and
[01:43:25] caring for them.
[01:43:26] So I wanted to follow up and find out what happened to them.
[01:43:28] And I talked to her and she said they were confident about 70.
[01:43:33] Most of them were not, half probably been killed by the telebands.
[01:43:37] And then you had, so a lot of the spanials, which are very friendly dogs, had run up to
[01:43:42] the telebands and the telebands just, and they don't have dogs as pets.
[01:43:45] When they had the rule in the 90s, dogs were outlawed.
[01:43:48] They considered unclean by the telebands.
[01:43:50] You can have cats, but not dogs.
[01:43:52] So a lot of them were shot and then they sort of saw that these dogs had gotten so much
[01:43:57] attention and thought, well, this is a bit of a bargaining chip.
[01:44:00] So they kept a lot of the German chapels because they thought that a lot of the German
[01:44:03] chapels must be guard dogs even though a lot of them were not trained at guard dogs.
[01:44:06] But you see, especially the airport and other places, the telebands were walking around
[01:44:10] these dogs that they have no idea what they're doing.
[01:44:13] Like, these dogs, like, they don't look like, you know.
[01:44:17] So some of them survived.
[01:44:19] Some of them were left to run around the airport compound and some of them got out.
[01:44:23] So yeah, it was a sad situation.
[01:44:26] And we can debate for days, you know, obviously humans have to get priority over dogs.
[01:44:30] But I think we all can agree.
[01:44:32] We love Owen.
[01:44:33] Yes.
[01:44:34] Yeah.
[01:44:35] Well, what about the human, the human, the humanitarian perspective of what's going
[01:44:37] on there now?
[01:44:38] It's an absolute disaster.
[01:44:39] And that is the heartbreaking thing is the, to give you some context when I got there,
[01:44:45] it was 70 Afghans to won US dollar.
[01:44:48] It was 100 by the time I left.
[01:44:50] So that just shows you how quickly that devalued their Afghani devalued the currency.
[01:44:56] People kind of fled bread, people kind of forward just basic things there.
[01:45:00] There is no middle class in Afghanistan anymore.
[01:45:03] It's people are selling their belongings on the street.
[01:45:06] Crime has gone through the roof again.
[01:45:08] It dropped initially because I think people were in fear that they were going to get
[01:45:11] the hands chopped off and when it became prevalent, that wasn't going to happen, at least
[01:45:14] not right now.
[01:45:16] The crime went back up.
[01:45:17] And it's, you go to these public hospitals.
[01:45:21] And I mean, they were just that the amount of malnourished babies that are just dying
[01:45:26] on mass and the mothers are on the floor breastfeeding.
[01:45:29] And it was something I really just never seen to that degree.
[01:45:34] And it broke my heart because of the amount of money that we as Americans and the amount
[01:45:38] of treasurer and the amount of people in the amount of, you know, effort that had been put
[01:45:42] into this.
[01:45:43] And this was a result.
[01:45:45] And it's only going to get worse during the winter and the US and other countries
[01:45:51] are going to have to make this very uncomfortable decision of, do we unfreeze this money?
[01:45:58] This 9.5 billion, that was frozen when the telebans took over in the World Bank and international
[01:46:04] monetary fund also froze.
[01:46:06] Do we unfreeze that in a naval, this government to support a country of 38 million?
[01:46:13] Because there is no money coming in.
[01:46:14] There's absolutely no money.
[01:46:15] You cannot get money out of the banks.
[01:46:17] Yeah, it was very challenging to work in because of that environment.
[01:46:24] But we're going to have to make this decision of, do we work with this government so that
[01:46:28] these innocent Afghan people who have already gone through so much can survive and have
[01:46:33] some kind of dignity in their lives?
[01:46:35] Or are we going to just, I guess, turn away and say no, no, these people, human rights
[01:46:39] filate is we are not going to talk to them and to isolate them.
[01:46:44] And I always look back in history and I hope that we don't make the same mistake because
[01:46:49] there was no more isolated government than the Taliban during their first reign in the
[01:46:53] 90s through 2001.
[01:46:56] They were blackboard by everybody and they had no money.
[01:46:59] The one person who came in and gave them money and not very much, 1.5 million I think
[01:47:03] it was, was a summer bin Laden.
[01:47:06] He's the one who came in and gave them money and so naturally they were going to protect
[01:47:10] him.
[01:47:11] Initially when the US said, hand him over, Mueller, I must said no.
[01:47:15] He's the only one who came in and gave us money.
[01:47:17] So it's a very complex decision and there's going to be a lot of people that feel very
[01:47:21] strongly in many ways but it's an uncomfortable decision that needs to be made on a diplomatic
[01:47:27] level of how we're going to deal with this because I think the Afghan people are being
[01:47:32] through enough and they don't deserve any, they don't deserve to suffer their ramifications
[01:47:38] of this anymore than they already have.
[01:47:41] And that's sort of the uncomfortable choice.
[01:47:44] There isn't many options.
[01:47:47] Do you, as when you got back to America, I guess it's been a couple days ago, but even
[01:47:53] as you were overseas and you were online and you were looking at the way that the stories
[01:47:59] were being presented and the way that the events were being presented with now, the way
[01:48:05] the media and social media and emotional media are working out.
[01:48:08] What was the delta between what you were seeing and what the world was being fed?
[01:48:14] There was quite as a codomy.
[01:48:15] So if I was just to look at Twitter and to look at what was happening, I would think there
[01:48:19] was mass slaughter on the street.
[01:48:20] I would think that the Taliban's were going out and pulling people from their homes and
[01:48:25] certainly there are isolated cases of that happening but that was very much the exception
[01:48:30] not the norm.
[01:48:32] And that was not accurately reflected.
[01:48:34] I think a strange as it is, the Taliban's were trying to show this image of, they want
[01:48:41] to be recognized.
[01:48:42] Is it safe to say that the Taliban is trying to re-brand?
[01:48:46] Yes, absolutely.
[01:48:47] And I think there's a lot of, I hear a lot of, well they haven't changed since 2000 or
[01:48:53] their first reins in the 90s.
[01:48:54] And I don't think that's accurate.
[01:48:56] They have changed.
[01:48:57] They've changed a lot in many different respects.
[01:49:00] But yeah, a lot of the information I was seeing about these mass slaughteres and I think
[01:49:06] there was one thing where, and a lot of people had asked me about it, there was a room
[01:49:10] of going around about a girl that had been beheaded by the Taliban and when I looked
[01:49:13] into it and asked my fix, I looked into it and it turned out that she had been killed in July.
[01:49:18] So before the Taliban's came in, but it was an internal family conflict.
[01:49:22] It had nothing to do with, and yet this was being presented as this just happened last
[01:49:27] week.
[01:49:28] And she's being beheaded and I saw like Kim Gidae sharing or someone was then re-tweeting
[01:49:32] it and putting it on a story and then a million more people are asking me.
[01:49:36] And I thought this is how this cycle perpetuates.
[01:49:39] But if I was to sum up the situation, it was certainly terrible things were happening.
[01:49:45] But it wasn't what was being painted.
[01:49:48] As I said, I could work freely and unhamed.
[01:49:53] And I was only wearing a job.
[01:49:54] So a lot of the information was wrong and there was something even so there was a picture
[01:50:00] that was going around where it was a woman in a book or she had a train around her ankle
[01:50:04] and was being led by a husband and people was saying, this is Afghanistan now and the
[01:50:09] Taliban.
[01:50:10] I looked at a quick reverse image search and you see, oh no, that was 2003 or so.
[01:50:14] Somebody photoshopped a chain to this woman's ankle.
[01:50:17] So there was so much of that.
[01:50:20] And I think there really were few journalists that were in there.
[01:50:25] I didn't meet too many other Americans.
[01:50:27] I met a couple of Americans that came in and left again.
[01:50:30] But generally there was just a few European journalists that came in.
[01:50:34] And so a lot of the work was being done from outside the country.
[01:50:37] And I think it just shows you the importance of being on the grounds and a lot of news
[01:50:41] organizations don't want to invest in that anymore.
[01:50:45] But Afghanistan really showed me the importance of having that ground perspective because
[01:50:49] it's so different to what you see just sort of an aggregating or even talking to people.
[01:50:55] And I think a lot of interviews were talking to the diaspora people that had fled.
[01:51:00] But their perspective was no longer in Afghanistan.
[01:51:04] So yeah, there's a lot of disinformation.
[01:51:07] Yeah, it'll be no one knows, right?
[01:51:11] We don't know what the Taliban's going to do.
[01:51:14] Now they were pretty brutal in their last time in power from 1995, 1996, up until 2001,
[01:51:26] up until the Northern Alliance in America went in there.
[01:51:29] And I mean, they had some bad things happened, right?
[01:51:34] Starvation and just bad stuff happened.
[01:51:39] I mean, horrible.
[01:51:40] So definitely human rights violations and all that stuff absolutely has happened.
[01:51:47] And you know, there was obviously there were some reports of terrible things happening again.
[01:51:51] And it's hard to know.
[01:51:54] But to your point, unless you have people on the ground, it's very, it's makes it even
[01:52:02] more difficult to actually know what's happening and make decisions on what you're going
[01:52:05] to do when you're basing it on Photoshop images.
[01:52:09] Yeah, absolutely.
[01:52:13] You mentioned Osama bin Laden.
[01:52:15] What was talked to us a little bit about Osama bin Laden's presence in the psyche
[01:52:24] of the Afghan people now.
[01:52:27] What did you observe from that perspective?
[01:52:29] Yeah, so I really think you, he's legacy is still very strong in Afghanistan.
[01:52:33] And even places that I went to, you know, again, the Jalalabad, the information and culture
[01:52:39] and this, there is told me, don't do any stories on a song within Laden.
[01:52:42] So I was like, oh, you wait.
[01:52:43] You wait now.
[01:52:44] I'm going.
[01:52:47] So, but you see that legacy sort of carry through.
[01:52:50] And they're all in power because of him.
[01:52:52] And again, it goes back to he's the one who sort of came in and gave them money when no
[01:52:56] one else would.
[01:52:58] And so in return for that, they gave him, gave him safe harbor.
[01:53:01] And it's under that code of pastion wally, which is really the highest moral code that the
[01:53:07] pastions have in protecting guests.
[01:53:10] And it's the same code that they used to protect somebody like me who's a guest in their
[01:53:14] country.
[01:53:15] So it's a very complex sort of thing.
[01:53:18] But when you talk to regular Afghans or students or people that, you know, in their
[01:53:24] young 20-something, they don't know who he is.
[01:53:28] And it's just interesting because you sort of look at this war and you, that was continuing
[01:53:34] to go on and, and yet you sort of have the people that are caught in the crossfire who just
[01:53:39] sort of have no idea of what happened and what the background is and why this is all kind
[01:53:46] of still going on.
[01:53:47] So it's interesting.
[01:53:48] And I'll kind of still, you know, certainly exist in Afghanistan too.
[01:53:52] My understanding from the telebands is that they've been told that they are not allowed
[01:53:57] to do any take any military actions that they have to, you know, they're allowed to be in
[01:54:01] the country, but they have to, to stop, you know, not plan anything or do anything otherwise
[01:54:06] they'll be in trouble.
[01:54:07] But I think a lot of the times, too, a lot of those out of Kyra members have just been basically
[01:54:12] folded into the Taliban's and a part of the intelligence units or a part of that whole
[01:54:18] operation.
[01:54:19] Yeah, I was definitely some of your articles mentioned the fact that, you know, some
[01:54:23] 20-year-old Afghan didn't really know who Osama bin Laden was.
[01:54:27] Yeah.
[01:54:28] So sometimes when I get into discussions with people about the divisiveness in America,
[01:54:35] I'll reference the fact that I work with a bunch of different companies, am I consulting
[01:54:39] company and most people that you talk to, they're not thinking about what's happening on
[01:54:47] Twitter right now.
[01:54:48] They're not thinking about what they're doing, they're thinking about their job, they're
[01:54:51] thinking about their company, they're thinking about moving, you know, how they're going
[01:54:54] to grow, how they're going to go new markets.
[01:54:56] That's what they're thinking about.
[01:54:57] That's what they're doing.
[01:54:58] Is it similar?
[01:55:02] I mean, I guess this is a rhetorical question, but did you find the same thing?
[01:55:06] And Afghanistan, most people are like, okay, well, the Taliban's in charge of the Northern
[01:55:10] Alliance in charge, I want to, you know, continue to get my job done and raise my family
[01:55:14] and move kind of forward, like, kind of leave me alone type thing.
[01:55:18] Yeah, two camps.
[01:55:19] You have the people who's in tie a day is, it's fixed I didn't trying to get out.
[01:55:24] Trying to get out of Afghanistan.
[01:55:25] You're trying to get out.
[01:55:26] You're trying to get out of the way to camps and, you know, even now, just every day,
[01:55:29] all day, my message is my LinkedIn, everything is just flooded.
[01:55:32] How do I get out?
[01:55:34] So you have that camp and then you have another camp of people who would just basically,
[01:55:39] I know that I can't go anywhere and this is the new reality.
[01:55:43] So how do I survive and how do I feed my family?
[01:55:46] And that's really what it comes down to.
[01:55:48] It comes down to survival, especially now with the crisis being what it is there and the challenges
[01:55:54] of just day-to-day life.
[01:55:55] What are people when so many messages you get 10 messages about, I want to get out, I want to get out.
[01:56:02] Why do they want to get out?
[01:56:03] What do they, what's it, they really really, really.
[01:56:05] And it's a mix that you have, you have people that are certainly have legitimate reasons to get out.
[01:56:09] A lot of the commandos that I met with that are interrified because the commandos were really leading the charge and a lot of the fights.
[01:56:15] And they're very concerned about retaliation.
[01:56:18] But then you have a lot of people who, who, and again, what I found, a lot of people who were maybe drivers
[01:56:24] or worked for different companies who were desperate and terrified to get out.
[01:56:27] But when I talk to them, I say, well, where's the threat?
[01:56:31] Nobody's been threatened or they're passing around or what's at the letter that everybody's been given that's fake or.
[01:56:38] So, in a way that the fear is contagious.
[01:56:42] And again, that's where I'm saying the fear doesn't always match the reality.
[01:56:45] And what I found was that people thought, well, so-and-so scared and my neighbor scared and everybody scared,
[01:56:51] so I'm going to have to be scared too and I'm going to have to leave.
[01:56:54] So, that, yeah, it was contagious and that's what I found that a lot of the, the worries were self-inflicted as opposed to an actual real threat that was then.
[01:57:06] It's got to be like a massive level though of like suppression, right?
[01:57:11] I mean, if you're a person that was sort of open-minded and moving in this direction and now like it's over.
[01:57:18] Yeah, and, and you don't get that, and especially for women too, you know, that's deeply challenging.
[01:57:23] Girls are still not able to go to public school, the private schools are still open, but secondary schools have been closed for girls now for months.
[01:57:30] And the Taliban's keeps saying, because we've got to make sure that they have transport that separate to the man.
[01:57:35] And I said, well, great, we'll get you some buses.
[01:57:37] Oh, and then there's another excuse.
[01:57:39] So, I'm not sure what's happening with that, but you know, women that we're definitely used to going to work into other places and they're at home.
[01:57:46] And, you know, that's heartbreaking.
[01:57:48] Women, you know, I met with many women who, you know, were doing, you know, in the national sort of tech one do teams or in the national tennis team.
[01:57:56] Yeah, it was a big article about their soccer team too.
[01:57:58] Yeah, you know, and now that then they're not allowed to do there, you know, to not even practice, let alone go into any tournaments.
[01:58:08] Even I met with the top MMA guy there as well, is, you know, great fighter.
[01:58:13] I think two fights away from UFC. And he's like, we can't fight anymore. And he said that he tried to do a fight.
[01:58:18] The Taliban's told him that they have to wear like full clothing, which he said, you know, we obviously can't do that.
[01:58:23] And the Taliban's came to their first fight and broke it up and kind of took a big mess.
[01:58:28] But, you know, he's concerned because, you know, he can't get out, but he's trying.
[01:58:33] But, you know, he's someone who used to go to each match with, you know, the police, you know, Afghan police flag.
[01:58:41] Again, it was very, it spurred the former security forces. And so, you know, it's tough for the guys too, even though they can do well, you know, a little bit more than the women.
[01:58:50] But music is completely kind of outlawed and arts and all those sorts of things.
[01:58:56] Yeah, you're not allowed to paint any people, you know, the painting, any living things or film, any living things or photograph, any living things.
[01:59:03] Yeah, well, they haven't been too strict about that.
[01:59:06] But, yeah, instruments have been outlawed. Yeah, except for like some drum.
[01:59:11] Yeah, well, they have this, they're music is this in sheet music. It's just a drumming crazy.
[01:59:16] So they would get into the car and they'd put in, you know, insist and if we're driving somewhere remote and time telebands would get in the car.
[01:59:24] And they'd put in their machines and it was just this Islamic music without instruments, it's all vocals.
[01:59:30] And then there's bomb blasts and bullets and just like, and they ton it up and I was like, it's like their motivations and battlefield music.
[01:59:37] And it's like, this is crazy. And that's what they play on the night. And the telebands actually moved next door to the house that I was living in.
[01:59:44] So I would deliberately go and get my two back in.
[01:59:46] I began to splast it.
[01:59:49] I think I'm used to it.
[01:59:51] I was like, you know, what's time to go Holy Hill.
[01:59:54] So here's what I find, this is what's so hard to really contemplate as a human being, right?
[02:00:04] What percentage of people are, are, are don't want it to be this way, right?
[02:00:12] What percentage of people don't want it to be this way?
[02:00:15] And would give anything to go back to whatever, to 2000 and 19 and be moving in a certain direction and have the females ready to go to school and be able to play or guitar and be able to do MMA.
[02:00:30] What percentage of the population feels that way versus what percentage of the population wants to go back to the old teleband ways and strict, sharia law.
[02:00:42] I'm not asking you, you can, you can make an estimation, but it's very difficult.
[02:00:46] And then, okay, if you're that, if you're the 90% is on board for sharia law, and that's what we're doing and hey, the 10% that aren't on board with it, you best get out of here because this is what we're doing.
[02:00:59] Or is it 90% of the population wants to just go back to again 2019, moving that direction, move towards a more open society.
[02:01:09] And if that's the case and it's just a strict small percentage of people that maintain power and control via force and brutality, well then then then what are we supposed to do?
[02:01:22] So I think there's really, again, when we see with the media what we're seeing is always generally coverage that's coming out of Kabul or coming out of a city.
[02:01:30] And I tried to really make an effort to to to go to as many rural areas and provinces because the perspective there is completely different.
[02:01:38] So I'd say if you're going to estimate in someone like Kabul, 80% of people want that previous life because they were able to do not, that was bars, it was music that you know could go to clubs, you could go to, you know, get alcohol, you could do all of these things because you had that foreign footprint there.
[02:01:56] But you go to the villages and you know, that are already very conservative where the women don't necessarily, you know, go to school past the age of 13 and that are very much relegated to the home.
[02:02:07] And they don't leave and that's just cost-a-marry because that's the way that their life is.
[02:02:12] Their lives are actually going to get better and I say that because they don't have to face the daily bombings anymore.
[02:02:18] They don't have to deal with the ramifications of war but their actual lives aren't going to change because they were never really privy to all those sort of new western insbyte if you will, freedoms.
[02:02:30] So you can make the argument that, you know, for them, they now have a more peaceful life. But in the cities, that's where you really see women and people losing a lot of those freedoms and suffering.
[02:02:43] But but what I think is also interesting that came out of this was the number of, of Taliban's that were embedded into the military, into the government, into every possible avenue in every city.
[02:02:56] And suddenly when the Taliban's were able to take power, these people came out, people I knew, for years and years and years who were working with journalists, it's fixes, said to me, oh yeah, being Taliban for 20 years.
[02:03:07] And now they're out, you know, and so, in friends of mine, you know, I had it, you know, even with my fixer, and good friend of his, he was saying that someone he's known since he was very young.
[02:03:16] When the Taliban's took power, suddenly he finds out his Taliban, like it's just, these people kept secrets for so long and I think that's also why the Taliban's were able to come to power so quickly.
[02:03:25] They infiltrated every possible, you know, government entity that they could.
[02:03:33] What do they do? What's the Taliban doing with their, with the military equipment that they took over?
[02:03:41] So I, you know, was interesting. So I did a tour of the airport just before I left and you still see a lot of the damaged aircraft, the US blew up a lot of the aircraft before it left.
[02:03:51] They still have all those Russian Russian helicopters that are still there and and they have a lot of entities. They brought back a lot of the technicians from the previous government trained by the US that are now there able to to help, you know, repair whatever they can.
[02:04:05] And they still do have very limited our power, but I know that something they're trying to build because the Air Force is something that they want that they didn't have before.
[02:04:15] And it was funny because I was sitting outside, you know, one, one afternoon and and you see there was, there was a big blast, a big bomb and the smokes in the air and it was just, it was down at the military hospital very close.
[02:04:27] And next thing you know, you hear in choppers in the air and I said, I haven't heard this for ages, you know, was going on and they were flying a black hawk and two of the Russian MH17s and they had apparently dropped a suicide bomb on to the hospital because ISIS was attacking it.
[02:04:43] Again, they're still using suicide bombers for situations like that, but yeah, craziness. So it was an ongoing, it wasn't ongoing, you know, thing, but, but so they certainly have the capacity if they need it, but they're saying, we're just going to use it for important and urgent circumstances.
[02:05:01] The other thing is, is backwards, but yeah, actually went to a suicide bombing school that I found, which was in a kindergarten on the Air DeCarble where they trained the suicide bombers.
[02:05:11] You know, when you have these managers begging, begging to be chosen, just pick me, pick me, it's like the highest, I don't know that they could possibly take and, and you know, the, if despite being in government now, there's no plans to get rid of the suicide bombing schools.
[02:05:29] How about what do you see in for a lessons as you look at it now, you're looking back on it, you've been gone for a week now, what are you looking at, what, what kind of big picture strategic lessons are you saying?
[02:05:43] My biggest thing that, to, to drive home is, you know, we can talk all day about military strategies and, and the Taliban military strategies, but at the end of the day, and I feel like I'm a broken record saying this, but corruption, corruption, corruption, the last government backed by the US, there was so much corruption every possible level to the point where,
[02:06:07] if you wanted to go and get an interview at the US embassy, just an interview, if you were a university graduate who wanted to get a job at the embassy, because that was a cool thing to do.
[02:06:17] You had to pay a middle person about $5,000, just to get an interview, let alone if you were to get a job, and then you'd pay them a whole bunch more, and that was in every government institution.
[02:06:27] Money, you know, and, and this is what I would get angry about, because I would tell a lot of these, I've got to say that's my money. As a US taxpayer, you stole our money, or not, you personally, but you're a previous government, you stole our money, and you took that and you lined your pockets.
[02:06:43] And then, the corruption on every level was just so rampant and so disgusting, and even when, you know, a lot of these wallards and people were fleeing the country and the tallybs of taking over, there was chunks of gold that they were keeping, you know, hidden underground, just wards of cash that, just unfathomable numbers.
[02:07:10] There was not a thing that you could do to get through daily life without paying a bribe, you know, to get through a checkpoint, you're paying a bribe, to get whatever you need it, like, life for afghans was difficult, because of this institutionalized corruption, that I think the US looked at, and said, well, this is too systemic for us to do anything about, we just have to leave it.
[02:07:29] But really, to me, that was the root of the problem. So people looked at that, afghans looked at that, and we're like, why am I starving here when this local governor is rolling around and with all this money and rolls, rolls, and all these fancy things, and I can't, you know, I have to pay every time just to get to my job.
[02:07:51] And that's what the, the tallyben really capitalized on that. They capitalized on where we are not going to be corrupt, you know, that's against Islam. We are going to, you know, support everybody, treat everybody the same. And so people that didn't even ideologically want to be, you know, with the tallyben's, they were driven to that, and I have seen that in many countries.
[02:08:12] You want to fight against the government that you feel is stealing from you, and it just got to the point where it was, it was so bad you had, you had judges in provinces or a lawyer's, like, just falsely accusing people of something, and taking them to court. So they could get bread money.
[02:08:28] So it just, and it was just, it was on the every possible level, even even at the hospitals, you had medical staff stealing the supply, so they could go and sell them at a local pharmacy or because they owned their own pharmacy. And that was going to pay them better money than the government's salary. So,
[02:08:44] you know, if you're going to go into a country or give country any sort of form of foreign aid, I hope that the US or in the countries can learn that lesson of, if you don't stop that right in the beginning, if you don't hold people accountable, and there was, there was never accountability to any of the corruption or stolen money.
[02:09:04] This is the result you're going to get, and I saw that in Iraq too, with, you know, people joining ISIS because they wanted to fight back against the government, who they felt was stealing from them, were corrupt and was suppressing them.
[02:09:16] And it wasn't about, we want to be part of ISIS because we agree with ISIS, it was no, we want to fight this government because they're not here for us.
[02:09:24] And that's the, when you pull the string on Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government was just completely corrupt and a lot of the issues that they had were due to the exact same type of corruption, the whole,
[02:09:37] system operated on through corruption and scratching each other's backs and, you know, getting money here and putting in your own pockets and, you know, that was just the way it worked and that was a huge part of the issues that they had and why, it's the exact same thing, it's literally the exact same thing, seeing it again.
[02:09:55] I knew that, you know, you've been, you've been gone to you over there for August September, October, November, December, that's like a deployment, a deployment into a, into a war zone where everything's falling apart.
[02:10:10] What is that?
[02:10:12] That's, I mean, you come in back this time, what, how's it, how's the transition back to reality, back to normal, normal American life?
[02:10:22] It was incredibly difficult, I think, for me to leave this time.
[02:10:26] I felt tremendously guilty about leaving because I knew that I can, as an Australian and an American, I can get, you know, I'm able to get a flight out to Abu Dhabi and, and able to leave freely.
[02:10:40] When that's something obviously a lot of Afghans want, and I felt tremendously guilty because, again, you know, I never think my life is any more valuable than theirs.
[02:10:48] I just happen to be lucky enough to be born in different geographical coordinates that have given me different, different passports and, and, and a very different life.
[02:11:00] And, you know, the Afghans are some of the most truly beautiful people, they're just so hospitable, very kind.
[02:11:11] I have a great love for the Afghans, I always say that I've been to many places in the world, but I've never quite sort of fallen in love with the place the way I fall in love with Afghanistan over the years.
[02:11:21] And it's just, it's very special people, and I felt tremendously guilty.
[02:11:26] And, I guess, you know, walking away from them, and I knew that it was time to leave, and I knew that, you know, some of the decisions that I felt that I was making as a journalist were, I was taking risks that I knew were,
[02:11:40] were, were, I shouldn't be taking.
[02:11:44] And I think when you get to that point, when you sort of maybe don't care so much about the outcome, it's time to take a break.
[02:11:51] And that sort of a point that I think that I've gotten to, you know, especially with going into some of the ISIS areas, and even my photographer was hesitating, and I,
[02:11:59] I was okay, well, I'm fine, and I didn't have the same, I think normal reactions you should have to those situations, just, you know, the natural sense of fear or worry, and so anyway, so I knew it was definitely time to take a break with that, but I think,
[02:12:15] yeah, I felt very guilty, especially those first few days, I was just, you know, wanting to turn around and immediately go back.
[02:12:24] That's my first thing, so I couldn't go for a run, and I'm a big runner, and I couldn't go for a run for, you know, five months, and so the first thing I did when I got to New York was go for a run, and I'm running, and I look and I see a sign for a beauty salon on the sidewalk, and I said,
[02:12:39] Oh, they've reopened the beauty salon.
[02:12:42] That was my first instinct, and I thought I hang on a minute to, you know, you're in New York City now, so you're not in Kabul, so, yeah, it's actually, yeah, it's a, it's a strange transition.
[02:12:53] And as I said, when I'm driving down, I'm looking at the roads thinking, how great they are, you know, how great is this road? Why didn't nobody bomb this road?
[02:13:01] And then just remembering, remembering where I am, so it's, yeah, it's a little bit of a transition, but
[02:13:08] And so how long are you going to stay home for?
[02:13:11] I don't, I don't have a home right now, okay? I don't, I don't.
[02:13:15] How long are you going to sleep at places where there's beds?
[02:13:17] I do need to get home. Actually, that is the objective for early 2020, early 2022, scary. I am going to get home, and so I have a good base, so I think, I need to.
[02:13:29] In America? Yes, so I can probably probably be a junior, I think, maybe, I kind of like that area.
[02:13:36] And then what's on the horizon for, you know, what are you going to do for workwise? Are you going to, are you going to, you know, you wrote only cry for the living, which is an incredible book,
[02:13:45] that really gives such clear picture of everything that went on with the ISIS battlefield in the Levant, what are your plans on this stuff?
[02:13:56] So I have, so Jake and my photographer and I have a photo book we're working on, and he's got some really just beautiful pictures of Afghanistan throughout this transition, and then I, I'm going to knuckle down and get the writing for that done.
[02:14:09] Just sort of, a way to present, I guess, Afghanistan to people in a very visual way, you know, just sort of showing people what, what it's like to be there through the fall, and then in that period after, and who the Afghans are, who the Taliban are, who are all these different players.
[02:14:27] So that's the writing project I'm working on, and then just continuing to do journalism and little bits and pieces of different things here and there, so.
[02:14:36] How much writing is going to take to get that book done? Not a huge amount, it's not going to be super word intensive because of the pictures, so probably, and I have so much material already, it's really just a matter of sitting down and and sorting through what I think is going to be the most compelling to go with the pictures that we've already selected.
[02:14:54] So kind of like a humans of New York, but more like humans of Afghanistan.
[02:14:59] Yeah, a little bit, and then sort of go into some of the, some of the decisions and some of the major things that were done and and said and explain things in a way that I hope people can resonate with really.
[02:15:12] Yeah, that'll be that'll be awesome. I mean, I didn't think of that connection until just now like the humans of New York, which is fascinating to look and, and obviously your, your Jake take just just unleashing picture after picture over there.
[02:15:26] And I'm sure he's got incredible full of this and then the context that you can put around those and the history that you can put around them and the knowledge that you have.
[02:15:34] That's, um, there'll be awesome.
[02:15:36] Yeah, so just, yeah, continuing with the writing and then I will return to Afghanistan probably in the spring is my, is my plan at the telebands will help me back. I'm not too mad.
[02:15:47] I just, a lot of this stuff I've written, some of them have been pretty mad. Do they contact you? Sometimes they contact my fixer and, and threatened and I had, I had an issue with one telebands for a long time that just drove me nuts.
[02:16:00] I had a little bit worried about him actually.
[02:16:02] What did you say about he was just very angry about everything and angry and they just just an angry person.
[02:16:08] But eventually I just say, I just say, I don't care. I don't care. Coming get me. I don't care.
[02:16:14] Well, they can't get you here, but maybe, or I thought, should I leave? And they thought, no, I said, come and get me. Tell them to come and get me. Come to the house if he's worried. Come to the house.
[02:16:24] Because he was like, where do you live? I said, come to the house. But anyway, he backed off and went away. But most of them, I think, you know, I think they have a media team that tries to read through, three through reports.
[02:16:39] They're desperate for recognition, so they want, they want attention, but they're increasingly becoming very cracking down on a lot, which in the beginning, though, very open and very free.
[02:16:49] And it was quite easy to get the interviews, but toward the end, it became very difficult to get any approval.
[02:16:55] Well, I don't know. You kind of remind me of Alex Honol, do you know who that is? Alex Honol is the rock climber that climbed L. Cap without any robes.
[02:17:05] And he's, they do like tests on him and there's no, he has, he registers less fear than a normal human.
[02:17:13] And I think you're kind of like that. I think you register less fear than normal human. So, L. Cap is 3000 feet in Yosemite, he straight up ran out and he climbed it with no robes. There's an incredible movie about it called Free Solo.
[02:17:27] But I would, he did that. I remember just thinking, man, I hope that guy never climbs without robes again, and of course he does it all the time. That's the way he is.
[02:17:36] So when you got back, I was kind of like, okay, cool, I hope you never go over there again, but I guess that's like asking Alex Honol not to do what he loves.
[02:17:45] Yeah, I guess, yeah, and I'm very grateful for the fact that I, I just, I feel very compelled and I really do love what I do when I don't, at this point in my life, I can't imagine.
[02:17:56] I don't know what I do.
[02:17:59] Is it just like curiosity?
[02:18:02] It's curiosity. It's just, it's just, it's being, there's rough draft of history that I just think is just a fascinating experience to have.
[02:18:11] And it's something I really thought about a lot.
[02:18:14] You know, you're sitting with all these Taliban and they're bragging about killing Americans and they're bragging about shooting down, you know, American helicopters and they're, you know,
[02:18:24] and I, I really had to reflect on it a little bit because I thought, I mean this situation, you know, what is my job here and and I think what journalists can do is it's, it's not to, you hear the stuff about being a voice and giving people platforms.
[02:18:41] No, that's not how I see my job. I see my job is being able to communicate the other to the people and I say that because we have to understand the way that they think.
[02:18:53] And we want to, it's very easy to paint things as black and white as, as this is the good guy. This is the bad guy, but you have to understand why they do what they do, where this comes from, what their impetus is.
[02:19:05] And that's the way that I sort of see a lot of journalism is not to go in and interrogate or to stick it to them or to, you just have to go in and have a conversation and sometimes that's, I find it to be really difficult because, you know, he's somebody that's, that's, you know, bragging about killing Americans or, or,
[02:19:22] and yet you still have to go in there and have tea and talk to them and it's, it's a balance of sort of this compartmentalization with,
[02:19:31] running from a place a few manatee, but I see that as, that communication is being something that really journalists can do.
[02:19:40] The best because, you know, we aren't government employees, so we don't have to, we can speak to anyone we want.
[02:19:45] And, and I think it's an important job to be able to, to understand, you know, where they're coming from and what that objective is. And, you know, one of them said something interesting, and I'd love to get what your response would be because I didn't have, I just didn't have a response.
[02:19:59] But he looked at me and he said, you know, if, how would you feel if I went to Australia?
[02:20:06] And I started recruiting Australians to kill other Australians. Wouldn't you want to fight me back?
[02:20:13] I thought about it for a really long time and I didn't, I didn't have, I didn't have a great response because, as I said earlier,
[02:20:23] Afghans were not the ones who drove those planes into New York. That was, they were Saudi.
[02:20:30] Osama was found in Pakistan, so we can sort of debate about what role Afghans really even had in the Aztecs.
[02:20:38] And so he, in putting myself in his shoes, you know, I didn't have a great response for, well, how do you respond to that?
[02:20:47] Yeah, well, that's the important thing about what you said earlier, and this is something that we don't do a great job of and by we, I mean, America and West, the West in general, is trying to understand what other people are thinking, right?
[02:20:59] And if you don't understand other people are thinking, as a, I mean, this is what Sun Su said, 2500 years ago in the art of war, you have to understand what you're opponent, what your enemy is thinking.
[02:21:10] If you don't understand what they're thinking, your chances of winning go down dramatically.
[02:21:15] So anytime you try and impose your thoughts on the enemy or you assume that you understand what they're thinking, you're making a huge mistake.
[02:21:25] You're making a huge strategic mistake when you let that happen. So when you talk about what you do as a journalist of saying, okay, let me set my emotions aside and let me listen and let me ask earnest questions about what they're thinking and why they're feeling that way.
[02:21:41] And then you actually listen what they have to say, that is something that people people should do every single day, first of all, as a leader in any organization, as a parent in, in a family, as a child in a family, in a, you know,
[02:21:54] spouse and a relationship in a governmental situation, that's what we should do. That's what you need to learn how to do is try and understand what other people's perspectives are.
[02:22:06] And you can only understand what other people's perspectives are if you ask earnest questions and you actually listen to what they have to say, and you'll probably figure out that what you thought they thought is not accurate.
[02:22:17] So there's a, you know, there's a whole, a whole road to go down with that, but that's something that we don't do very well. And you know, I think journalism nowadays is a whole, it's just a while.
[02:22:29] It's not what it used to be. Certainly, I think you're about as close to an old school journalist.
[02:22:35] I mean, you're, I mean, I know there's others that are like you, but you are in the model of the old school journalist that's out there to gather information and kind of report what's going on.
[02:22:45] And like you said, you know, you're reporting about what the, the new Northern Alliance was, how well they thought and you're like, they, there wasn't much of a fight and people are mad at you.
[02:22:57] Super mad at you because you told what you saw.
[02:23:02] And now, maybe if you were to said there was no fight and I didn't see, you know, there was no fight at all.
[02:23:07] And I don't remember your quotes from that article, but you know, it's like, hey, I didn't see any fighting. I saw, you know, the Taliban moving very dominantly through the area. So you're literally saying what you're saw.
[02:23:20] You're, you're leaving room for you even said today. You said, hey, there might have been more fighting in the mountains that I didn't see, but you're saying from what I saw on these heavily populated areas.
[02:23:28] There wasn't any resistance.
[02:23:30] Or there was very limited resistance. I saw one rocket. That's not a lot of resistance. So I think that that people listening, asking earnest questions is something that the world is forgot how to do.
[02:23:44] Part of it is, I would say the driving factor and that is our own egos to think, well, I know.
[02:23:49] It's like the worst thing to say, the worst thing to say and even an worst thing to think is, I know, I know what you're thinking.
[02:23:57] I know what they're thinking. I know what the enemy is doing. You don't. You don't know. And the minute you think you know is when you start making mistakes.
[02:24:03] So when you start assuming that you understand things and you don't. So I think what you're doing is extremely important.
[02:24:10] I'll still go with the Alex Honel. I actually don't want you to go back to Afghanistan, but I know you're going to be safe and will keep tracking on you.
[02:24:22] Anything. Echo, you got any questions? Yeah, what exactly is the fixer?
[02:24:27] So sorry, a fixer is something that journalists or NGOs even, but primarily journalists.
[02:24:32] When we go into foreign countries, we hire sort of a local person. Sometimes they're a former journalist.
[02:24:38] Sometimes they're just a connected person and they, you know, help. Often will be a translator and they will help sort of help us facilitate interviews and make calls and just kind of work with us.
[02:24:51] Some are sort of like, you know, I ended up calling my fix in a weed, a producer. So essentially he's kind of like producing for us. You know, he's doing a lot of the background and and it was really funny when we went back this time because for the last 20 years all the Afghans and the fixes of being speaking Dari, which is sort of an Afghan dialect of Persian.
[02:25:10] But now it's all pasto. Everything's written in pasto because that's what the, the Taliban's use. So a lot of the people that were, you know, fixing the 20 years are suddenly like, why can't speak the language that's needed.
[02:25:24] So it was a big big transit. A lot of the fixes of all left the country. So it was this very much. We had to find new people to work with. So it was a all the big learning curve.
[02:25:33] So it's kind of like the Las Vegas VIP host. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. So it actually, you up with this. Yeah, yeah.
[02:25:41] Echo has like, you know, he's got that different background.
[02:25:45] It was in the nightclub industry for a while. So for him, it's like, oh, that's the VIP host.
[02:25:49] Yeah, I did to in that background. Oh, let me talk to Fred over here. We're taking care of.
[02:25:53] Yeah, so my poor fixer is you know having to talk to the, the dash and all these people on my, he has.
[02:25:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, Holly, we can find you at hollymaka.com. You're on Instagram. Holly S. And it's H-O-L-L-I-E. S.
[02:26:11] M-K. M-K is just MCK-A-Y. You're on Twitter. You're on Facebook. It was crazy to watch you on Instagram when you were over there.
[02:26:19] Um, and see you putting like Instagram live up in your reading like, oh, you're reading people stories like, I look at Echo's story.
[02:26:29] Oh, it's like he's in his kitchen. He's making a freaking sandwich. Oh, I'm, I'm posting that. I just got done working out.
[02:26:35] And you're like, I'm in a hotel in Mount Marys, Missouri, or Sharif. And then the most I've ever had ever had.
[02:26:41] I'm out of hand. Yeah. Yeah. Wait a second. This is interesting. So yeah.
[02:26:45] Yeah. And Holly M-K.com. And Holly M-K.com. I think it's the URL for the next.
[02:26:49] Yeah. Okay. So the sub-stack. That's where you're putting your information up. Awesome. Holly. Anything else?
[02:26:55] Thank you for having me. And for letting me talk a talk some more about Afghanistan. I think it's very easy for these things to fall off the news once.
[02:27:03] Once the evacuation happened and it fell off the sort of the rate of very quickly. But I think it's something that's very important to Americans and
[02:27:11] important to, you know, to my generation who really grew up, you know, with often on 11 and so many people that I knew that went to fight there.
[02:27:19] And I think it's important that we keep Afghanistan, you know, somewhere in our minds.
[02:27:25] Hmm. Well, you're certainly helping us to do that. And thank you for coming back to talk to us. And thank you for making it back to talk to us.
[02:27:33] And thanks for letting us know for all you do to go out there and let us know what's actually happening and reporting it so that the world knows what's really happening.
[02:27:43] It's definitely an eerie window into the heart of darkness. And it's a big risk for you to go in there physically, mentally, spiritually, but you're doing meaningful work.
[02:27:59] And it does have a big impact on the world. So thanks for doing it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.
[02:28:05] Thanks, Holly. And with that, Holly, Mk has left the building. Awesome, that she could stop by and kind of share some of that stuff with us.
[02:28:21] Lots of, lots of craziness in the world. And sometimes it seems like all that's craziness that's going on in the world.
[02:28:28] What are you going to do about it? How can you help it? Look, I don't know what you're going to do for some young girl that's getting no education in Afghanistan right now.
[02:28:43] I'm not sure what you can do about that. I'm not sure. But I do know this. You got a little control over your world. What's going on in your world?
[02:28:51] Trying to make your world a little bit better. That's my recommendation. Man, that's crazy how she mentioned the corruption. You know, like how much of a thought like that.
[02:28:59] I mean, of course, no one's going to be like, yeah, I'm totally down for corruption. No one's going to think that for the most part.
[02:29:04] So, but you don't really understand how important that is to be like legit and square to win that way.
[02:29:11] And I really had no idea what she was going to say when I asked her that question because even, you know, reading through articles and stuff,
[02:29:19] you know, I thought maybe she'd have some strategic thing about the way we treated the trial. You know, just whatever kind of the more common complaints that you'll hear about how Afghanistan was handled.
[02:29:32] And yeah, that was definitely very interesting and insightful aspect to bring up how devastating corruption can be.
[02:29:42] Because then then it's kind of like nothing works the way it's supposed to work. Right. Nothing works the way it's supposed to work when people are corrupt.
[02:29:52] Think about everything. The way things are supposed to be.
[02:29:55] They're not that way.
[02:29:56] Yeah, she said something super quick too. She said super quick, but I was like, oh, that kind of put add the corruption into this this point where she said some of the ISIS fighters joined ISIS, not because they support the ideology.
[02:30:10] It's just because their government is so corrupt and it's like, probably, like the government has so much power over an individual anyway. So if it's like their corrupt and they're just tired of that corruptness and they're like, you know what? I'm going to join this group who sure their stuff is kind of crazy.
[02:30:24] But at least I can fight back and have some power against this this government that I'm powerless against that's corrupt. You know.
[02:30:32] We, we, it's two things going on. We take it for granted in America. That things aren't corrupt and we take it for granted in America. That things aren't corrupt.
[02:30:43] You get my double meaning on this. What I'm saying is we walk around like, oh, you know, well, this American things aren't corrupt here.
[02:30:50] But we take that for granted. There's things that go on inside the government that are absolutely corrupt, absolutely freaking corrupt.
[02:30:57] And the more that stuff grows and also the more exposure it gets because of social media and because the way people can share information and the way you can Google information.
[02:31:09] It's just a different world. And I think that the amount of information that's available is going to start to become a light on a lot of the corruption that's in the US government in the, in now.
[02:31:23] And it's going to get even more so in the future. Yes. Yeah. When you get exposed for being like a whatever some corrupt person like in a position of power.
[02:31:33] There, it seems like there's an element of shame that goes along with it when you get caught.
[02:31:38] Then, then again, I'm no expert in Afghanistan. So I don't know, but it seems like it's just so accepted in certain places, you know. Yeah, well, like look at what just happened with the Cuomo guy from CNN. Why did they get that?
[02:31:53] Well, because he had text going back and forth that wouldn't happen 20 years ago, maybe 20, were we texting 20 years ago? Not too much. The first time I ever texted was.
[02:32:07] We were in Vegas with task unit brewser and lay for and Seth were texting and they started texting me and I'm like, we do it. Just call me or whatever because you're not right. You don't know what's happening.
[02:32:24] I'm like, just freaking call me like, what will send you text we get to wherever and I'm like, this call me. Why are you going to text me?
[02:32:30] And then sure enough, I'm sitting in some bar somewhere in it super loud and get the text. And then just responding.
[02:32:39] Yeah, it's like the other room and the team that what he called T9 word, you know, the one it's not like a phone it's like actually keep people.
[02:32:46] I got to I got to say I had a blackberry.
[02:32:49] When I was the Admos. I got issued a blackberry.
[02:32:52] But that was that. And so then I had the blackberry and once you have a blackberry, it was hard to do anything else because they were freaking a super square to win little rig.
[02:33:01] Even my I got the first iPhone. The very first iPhone that came out stoner went and got in line and got us both iPhones and three days later. You had like a three day return policy. I took it back. Got my blackberry back.
[02:33:15] Blackberry was a square away little rig and then now it gets crushed. Now it gets crushed by it. Well, it's crushed by the iPhone.
[02:33:24] Because they thought they thought they had lock.
[02:33:27] Yeah. They were arrogant. Blackberry was arrogant.
[02:33:31] And it's like, you know, even when you say a text it like texting is so new that we the language didn't even catch out. We just assumed that okay text is now a verb. So now we got to accommodate you know, so because before then text is now now it's an out and a verb.
[02:33:49] So now you need past tense present tense future, you know, all these additional things.
[02:33:55] So here I just say English major either you relate to this kind of stuff. So you're like, oh yeah, he texted me. It's like, is text it a word. Well, I guess it is now what's the past tense for text text.
[02:34:06] Just text.
[02:34:08] He texted me texted.
[02:34:10] And the past did right has just a text and then an ED had texted.
[02:34:15] Yeah, but see how that's like a question kind of text being.
[02:34:18] Yeah, we're not sure. Sounds weird. Text did doesn't sound quite right.
[02:34:22] And we're weird. We're to say, so we got to be careful that.
[02:34:26] Yeah, we do.
[02:34:28] Very careful. So there's corruption out there.
[02:34:31] Yeah, lots of craziness in the world. Like I said, try and make your world as square the ways you can.
[02:34:38] Yeah, how do we do that?
[02:34:40] Well, we have to stay capable to tell you that. Stay capable to healthy.
[02:34:45] How about that?
[02:34:46] You should just go with the first thing in the top of your head that you've utilized say like, hey, I was tired the other day.
[02:34:54] And I went and tried the new freaking pre-workout and it was savage.
[02:34:58] And I ended up jacking big steel.
[02:35:01] Yeah.
[02:35:02] Well, okay. I will, but it's not that story because when I tried it when I took some pre-workout, I tried it long time ago.
[02:35:09] When I took some pre-workout, hey, I wasn't tired.
[02:35:11] I just did it for the mind-body, for the mind-body pre-workout. Okay.
[02:35:16] For the mind-body connection, experience while working out, didn't let me know, full on.
[02:35:21] And it's kind of, and it's different. You can feel the difference like when you don't take it because I don't take it all the time.
[02:35:26] Yeah. So that was my experience recently. That was, did it before yesterday?
[02:35:29] Is there a moment where you say, oh, feeling this certain mode right now, going to jump into, I'm going to get that little extra head right now?
[02:35:37] Yes.
[02:35:38] And what is it, what is it feeling? What have been the feeling that compels that? Yes.
[02:35:42] Yes.
[02:35:43] It's pretty random. It's not what I'm tired though.
[02:35:47] Tariah, because it doesn't have enough caffeine for me to be like, oh, I'm tired of eating to take this.
[02:35:51] So that's too tired.
[02:35:52] Two scoops.
[02:35:53] That's whatever almost 200 milligrams of caffeine. Come on, bro. What are you a crackhead?
[02:35:58] I'm not ready for the two scoops.
[02:36:00] Yeah.
[02:36:01] You're JP at five o'clock in the morning. Yeah. He dry scoops. The new pre-workout.
[02:36:09] Yeah.
[02:36:10] Chased it with sour apple sniper.
[02:36:13] Mm.
[02:36:14] Dry scoops to another one and chase it again.
[02:36:17] Yeah.
[02:36:18] That's little bit beyond beyond my, uh, what is my consumption, uh, capabilities.
[02:36:24] Either way.
[02:36:25] Yes. Pre-workout. I did that.
[02:36:27] I would say the more significant experience is with the energy drinks.
[02:36:32] Mm.
[02:36:33] That's the one.
[02:36:34] That's the one that gets you.
[02:36:35] Yeah.
[02:36:36] And very, very often, like a drink a lot.
[02:36:39] Yeah.
[02:36:40] I'll often you drink them.
[02:36:42] I would say pretty much every day.
[02:36:44] Oh, okay.
[02:36:45] Just one, I'd say every day.
[02:36:46] What's your favorite?
[02:36:46] A mango by far.
[02:36:48] 100%.
[02:36:49] By far.
[02:36:50] Do you have anything else on standby?
[02:36:51] Yeah. Kind of the rest of them.
[02:36:53] Okay.
[02:36:54] The citrus that I really drink is much.
[02:36:56] Okay.
[02:36:57] But either way, this is what you do midday.
[02:36:59] Okay. So I wake up.
[02:37:00] I don't really eat breakfast anymore.
[02:37:01] Me neither.
[02:37:02] Yeah. So before lunch, I have one of those.
[02:37:04] That's good.
[02:37:05] That's a good one.
[02:37:06] By one of those, you mean, uh, one of these energy drinks.
[02:37:10] Discipline go.
[02:37:11] Yes. Energy drink healthy energy drinks.
[02:37:13] I really need to reach out to you on the, I'm me utilizing the term energy drink.
[02:37:17] Yeah.
[02:37:18] Did he send a season to say, no, no, no, he liked it.
[02:37:20] Okay.
[02:37:21] Yeah.
[02:37:22] Props to Henry.
[02:37:22] Yes. He says.
[02:37:23] So yeah, energy drinks that are healthy, no sugar, sweet with monk fruit.
[02:37:28] Good for you.
[02:37:29] Healthy or you're better off after you drink them legitimately good for you.
[02:37:32] Yep. You pay no back in a health price with these energy drinks.
[02:37:36] Yeah.
[02:37:37] So yes, one a day is good.
[02:37:38] Here's another front and, uh, investment.
[02:37:41] You can make into your life into your world is get joint warfare.
[02:37:46] Get super krill.
[02:37:47] So that way, you can proactively fight.
[02:37:51] You may have that's your causing to your own joints.
[02:37:54] It's true. You know how like, um, you take things for granted.
[02:37:58] Mm.
[02:37:59] Jensen that and as far as back to my experience, I have been taking my joints for granted.
[02:38:05] Luckily, I haven't, like, had any kind of terrible learning experience to remind me of that.
[02:38:10] I just, every once in a while, like, it's, I get hit with it.
[02:38:13] Like, for how old are I?
[02:38:14] I feel like, I don't have any joint problems.
[02:38:17] Yeah.
[02:38:17] And you got any, you know what you got to do, too?
[02:38:19] You got to continue to do, you got to continue to do the work.
[02:38:22] Yeah.
[02:38:23] Man, you got to, you don't surrender any positions.
[02:38:25] Yeah.
[02:38:26] Don't surrender any positions like your workout positions.
[02:38:29] Like, for me, overhead squat.
[02:38:31] Yeah.
[02:38:32] Over at squat.
[02:38:33] I hurt my arm real bad.
[02:38:34] Remember when Dean Lish.
[02:38:35] Yeah.
[02:38:36] And I could not lock out my arm.
[02:38:37] I could not do an overhead squat.
[02:38:38] It couldn't do it.
[02:38:39] Zero.
[02:38:40] And then finally it started healing.
[02:38:43] And it took months and months and months.
[02:38:45] By the time it was healed,
[02:38:47] my body had kind of forgot how to do an overhead squat.
[02:38:50] Yeah.
[02:38:51] And so the first time I tried to do an overhead squat again,
[02:38:55] my body forgot how to do it.
[02:38:57] And it felt terrible.
[02:38:58] And I couldn't use any weight, like barely any weight.
[02:39:01] I was just using the bar.
[02:39:03] And part of that little ego in the back of my mind,
[02:39:06] the little complacency in the back of my mind,
[02:39:08] was like, you know what, overhead squat's not that big of a deal.
[02:39:11] You should, you know, you don't know what I need to do overhead squat.
[02:39:14] You know, and then I said to myself, no, if you surrender that movement,
[02:39:19] if you don't do that movement, you're,
[02:39:22] it's going to go away forever.
[02:39:24] Yeah.
[02:39:25] So I'm very cognizant that.
[02:39:26] That's why another thing like going deep on squats,
[02:39:29] the minute you're like, well, you know,
[02:39:31] I don't need to go that deep.
[02:39:32] I'm going to go heavy.
[02:39:33] So I'm going to go less deep.
[02:39:34] No, actually don't do that.
[02:39:35] Yeah.
[02:39:35] Okay.
[02:39:36] You want to do that occasionally.
[02:39:37] Okay.
[02:39:37] I get it.
[02:39:38] We're, we're doing muscle confusion.
[02:39:40] Right.
[02:39:41] What?
[02:39:42] Yeah.
[02:39:43] But don't, you got to keep those,
[02:39:45] keep those movements alive, man.
[02:39:47] Keep it alive.
[02:39:48] And now they, that's what reminded me of that deep squats.
[02:39:52] So like, okay, so deep squats, if you, let's say,
[02:39:55] because some people don't have what the ankle,
[02:39:57] like a mobility or for that.
[02:40:00] But if you have the ankle mobility and then you don't do them for a while,
[02:40:03] then trade do them, you'll feel like, oh, wait,
[02:40:05] I got to get my ankle, like mobility kind of back, you know?
[02:40:08] And here's the thing, when you say you lose it forever,
[02:40:10] it's not like, you stop doing it and then it's gone gone.
[02:40:14] You, it's, you stop doing it though when you start doing it,
[02:40:16] it's like, you get it back, but not all of it.
[02:40:19] You did like a little tax.
[02:40:20] That's time to do it.
[02:40:21] And then the longer you wait, the longer my take to get back.
[02:40:24] The bigger the tax to.
[02:40:25] Same with muscle ups when I cut my arm, couldn't do muscle ups.
[02:40:28] Couldn't do it, you know?
[02:40:29] But at the time I started doing muscle ups again,
[02:40:31] I could do one.
[02:40:33] Yeah.
[02:40:33] But it was, it was not fun.
[02:40:36] Yeah.
[02:40:36] And so then I was like, okay, well, today I'm going to do three in my whole work.
[02:40:39] I'm going to do three muscle ups.
[02:40:41] You know what I mean?
[02:40:42] You do the rings?
[02:40:43] Yeah.
[02:40:44] Ring muscle ups.
[02:40:45] So it's one of those things.
[02:40:47] You know what this is?
[02:40:48] This is a little, a little tool to you, you put in your brain to think when you have the moment where you're saying, you know what I'm not going to do this particular exercise today.
[02:40:56] Just remember, you're surrendering that movement.
[02:40:59] And I'm telling you, please don't do it.
[02:41:01] So there you go.
[02:41:02] Don't surrender, don't surrender, don't do it.
[02:41:04] Don't surrender, don't do it.
[02:41:05] Don't take it for granted, either.
[02:41:06] Yeah.
[02:41:07] Take the joint worse, fair.
[02:41:08] Oh, oh, that'll help physically keep your joints in the game.
[02:41:11] That's on top of you keeping it in the sink.
[02:41:14] Moke.
[02:41:15] Moke, you're going to need, let's face, you're going to need to rebuild.
[02:41:17] If you do not know, overhead squats, you're going to need to rebuild.
[02:41:20] So you're going to need some mocks and extra additional protein that just so happens to taste like.
[02:41:25] Two serving.
[02:41:27] But an anachrime pie, if we're going to refer into it, that's the new one.
[02:41:30] But an anachrime bomber.
[02:41:32] Yeah.
[02:41:33] Who thought of that name?
[02:41:34] Maybe.
[02:41:35] Maybe.
[02:41:36] It's good, too. The design is good.
[02:41:39] I was on origin USA, the website.
[02:41:41] Mm-hmm.
[02:41:42] And they got whoever designed that website.
[02:41:44] Pete, I'm just assuming Pete, but well, Pete definitely designed the banana bomber thing.
[02:41:50] Yeah.
[02:41:51] Yeah.
[02:41:52] He's super into the bottom.
[02:41:52] You know, that's good.
[02:41:53] He's good, man.
[02:41:54] He likes it.
[02:41:55] Good design.
[02:41:56] Yeah, we're going to make it a black ball right, but they're on it.
[02:41:59] Yeah.
[02:42:00] He's a bra.
[02:42:01] He sends me objects.
[02:42:03] Yeah.
[02:42:04] We think of this.
[02:42:05] I'm like, bra.
[02:42:06] Right banana.
[02:42:07] So there you go.
[02:42:08] Yeah.
[02:42:09] You like, you bring it back down.
[02:42:11] Like, you know, because if it's, let's face it, dude, if Pete was running, like, had full creases.
[02:42:16] Yeah.
[02:42:17] They'll freaking, the, the mole could come in like a giant banana shaped bottle.
[02:42:22] Oh, yeah. Like he'd get too creative.
[02:42:23] Yeah.
[02:42:24] But then yeah, then you're like the dichotomy and whatever,
[02:42:26] bringing it back down to where it needs to be.
[02:42:27] Perfect.
[02:42:28] It's all perfect.
[02:42:29] My opinion.
[02:42:30] So origin USA.
[02:42:31] Or you can say, yeah.
[02:42:32] Merchimade stuff.
[02:42:33] Oh, wait.
[02:42:34] But what about for the drinks, you can get the drinks at wall,
[02:42:36] while, by the way, you can also get everything at the light of
[02:42:40] a shop.
[02:42:41] So check those out.
[02:42:42] And then you were saying origin USA.
[02:42:44] Yes.
[02:42:45] Or genius.
[02:42:46] You're talking about jeans.
[02:42:48] Blossom.
[02:42:49] Everything at origin is made in America.
[02:42:53] Straight up, even the materials are made in America.
[02:42:55] It's an American economic thing.
[02:42:59] The thing.
[02:43:04] What do you call it?
[02:43:05] It's recorded right now.
[02:43:07] No, no, no, no.
[02:43:10] No, no, no, no.
[02:43:11] Painting just if we don't corner it.
[02:43:13] No, we don't have to.
[02:43:14] Because it is a full on American thing.
[02:43:16] It is.
[02:43:17] It's not American thing.
[02:43:18] Yeah.
[02:43:19] All right.
[02:43:19] So, okay.
[02:43:20] So,
[02:43:21] a brain back certain elements of the, of the industry.
[02:43:25] To the point where it's almost,
[02:43:27] it's kind of bringing back and industry.
[02:43:30] Yeah.
[02:43:31] Bring back all elements of the industry.
[02:43:32] Yeah.
[02:43:33] That's what we're doing.
[02:43:34] We can all in one straight up.
[02:43:36] Yeah.
[02:43:37] You can get geese, which you should definitely get some geese,
[02:43:39] which by the way, the geese are not,
[02:43:41] this isn't your father's geek.
[02:43:44] This isn't your mother's geek.
[02:43:45] This is a new deal.
[02:43:46] Those geese are so freaking nice.
[02:43:48] Get yourself one of those geese.
[02:43:50] Sure.
[02:43:51] Also, just kind of FYI,
[02:43:53] we're making some stuff for hunting.
[02:43:56] Yeah.
[02:43:57] We're making a hunting.
[02:43:58] It's not just some stuff.
[02:43:59] We're making a hunting line.
[02:44:00] Yeah.
[02:44:01] Like a bunch of it.
[02:44:02] Yeah.
[02:44:02] So, when you roll out in hunting season,
[02:44:05] you can do it wearing American-made gear.
[02:44:09] We'll keep it posted on that.
[02:44:12] What else?
[02:44:13] Well, you said the boots jeans.
[02:44:15] There's some wallets said.
[02:44:16] Cool accessories on there.
[02:44:17] And I'm wearing accessories.
[02:44:19] I'm telling you, you make it sound like that.
[02:44:21] But like, look at the belt.
[02:44:22] You won't be like,
[02:44:23] The accessories.
[02:44:24] You'll be like, oh, that.
[02:44:25] That belt.
[02:44:26] I'm getting that wallet.
[02:44:27] The wallet's kind of minimalists wallet though.
[02:44:29] So if you're not into minimalists wallets,
[02:44:30] and maybe there's a maximum of,
[02:44:32] there's a maximum of,
[02:44:33] to not maximum.
[02:44:34] But there's a maximum of,
[02:44:35] for robust robots.
[02:44:37] There you go.
[02:44:38] All right.
[02:44:39] They do it with the low-cab coming in hot.
[02:44:40] Just trying to help.
[02:44:41] There's a lot of good stuff on there.
[02:44:43] All made in America.
[02:44:44] And in good quality stuff.
[02:44:46] So it's like, from top to bottom,
[02:44:48] that's kind of the go-to when you think about it.
[02:44:50] So yeah, origin USA.com.
[02:44:52] Also,
[02:44:53] John, did I say jacophil.com?
[02:44:55] I didn't.
[02:44:56] Jacophil.com.
[02:44:57] If you want that,
[02:44:58] the supplement.
[02:44:59] Yeah.
[02:45:00] So the house.
[02:45:01] Just feel that.
[02:45:02] Oh, good.
[02:45:03] Yeah.
[02:45:04] But yeah, jacophil is a story as well.
[02:45:05] That's where you can get disciplining,
[02:45:06] cool freedom stuff.
[02:45:07] shirts.
[02:45:08] Apparel.
[02:45:09] shirts hat.
[02:45:10] Tennis.
[02:45:11] Who these are back in?
[02:45:12] Mm-hmm.
[02:45:13] Twinter.
[02:45:14] Yeah.
[02:45:15] It's kind of colder here.
[02:45:17] And then there's the shirt locker,
[02:45:19] which brief description.
[02:45:21] So the locker, what do you got?
[02:45:23] It is a creative,
[02:45:25] let's just, okay, but on the basic level,
[02:45:28] it's a new shirt every month.
[02:45:30] But the designs are a little bit different,
[02:45:32] a little bit more,
[02:45:33] there are more layers to the designs.
[02:45:35] You know, they're funner.
[02:45:36] I guess.
[02:45:37] Remember when jacophil passed,
[02:45:38] there was a whole thing about like layers.
[02:45:40] Yes.
[02:45:41] There is still a whole thing.
[02:45:43] There's a whole thing about layers.
[02:45:45] Yeah.
[02:45:46] It's almost like it's just a underground.
[02:45:48] It's part of it.
[02:45:49] Yep.
[02:45:50] There's layers in the t-shirts.
[02:45:52] Yep.
[02:45:53] There's more to it than just a straight forward design.
[02:45:55] If you listen, you know.
[02:45:56] If you listen, you know.
[02:45:58] If you're in the game, you know what's up.
[02:46:00] Exactly.
[02:46:01] If you're not, you'll be like,
[02:46:02] oh yeah.
[02:46:03] But if you could do.
[02:46:03] Yeah.
[02:46:04] So that's the whole thing about the layers,
[02:46:05] as far as layers go.
[02:46:06] If you haven't had a game,
[02:46:07] you'll be like, oh man, that's cool.
[02:46:09] Yeah.
[02:46:09] And I get it more cool when every month cool.
[02:46:11] But if you listen,
[02:46:12] and you know,
[02:46:13] you know the other layers in it.
[02:46:14] So now you get the cool design on the front end,
[02:46:16] but then you get the,
[02:46:17] you know,
[02:46:18] you get the cool design on the edge.
[02:46:20] That can't.
[02:46:21] So all good.
[02:46:22] Check that out.
[02:46:22] Sunjuggle store.
[02:46:23] Dot com.
[02:46:24] Hey subscribe to the podcast.
[02:46:25] Also subscribe to Jockel on Ravling.
[02:46:27] Rollin' out some Christmas cheer with my point T.C.
[02:46:29] Talking about kinds of lovely subjects.
[02:46:31] Yeah.
[02:46:32] Grounded podcast.
[02:46:33] We got the Warrior Kid podcast.
[02:46:35] Also you can do in the underground.
[02:46:37] Speaking of underground.
[02:46:38] Jockel on the ground.
[02:46:39] We got a little something that we had to set up just in case.
[02:46:43] Tarenical forces take over.
[02:46:47] We got to have a place to go.
[02:46:48] We got to place to go.
[02:46:49] It's called Jockel underground.
[02:46:50] Jockel on the ground.
[02:46:51] If you want to help us in there,
[02:46:52] if you want to help us be ready for any contingencies that might unfold,
[02:46:55] you can subscribe.
[02:46:57] To eight dollars and eight cents a month.
[02:46:58] We got an additional little podcast on there.
[02:47:00] We answer your questions and whatnot.
[02:47:03] If you can't afford it,
[02:47:04] school,
[02:47:05] we still want you in the game.
[02:47:06] Go to assistance at underground.
[02:47:08] Jockel on the ground.
[02:47:09] Assistance at Jockel on the ground.
[02:47:10] There you go.
[02:47:11] It's true. Also we have a YouTube channel for the video version of this podcast.
[02:47:16] Some excerpts on there.
[02:47:18] And some also some additional content.
[02:47:22] That's it.
[02:47:23] You're going to have to check it out to see what it is.
[02:47:25] But yeah,
[02:47:26] everyone's going to put some additional stuff on there that turns out to be interesting.
[02:47:29] You're going to see what Jockel can't live without.
[02:47:33] Get that kind of video sometimes.
[02:47:35] There you go.
[02:47:36] Psychological Warfare.
[02:47:38] MP3 tracks to keep you on the path.
[02:47:41] We got flipside canvas dot com.
[02:47:43] Dakota Meyer selling stuff to hang on your wall.
[02:47:46] We got books.
[02:47:49] Only cry for the living mentioned it today.
[02:47:51] It's Holly McCase first book.
[02:47:52] We covered on podcast number 271.
[02:47:55] You can get that from jockelpublishing dot com.
[02:47:59] Jockelpublishing dot com.
[02:48:01] There's actually a book that I published.
[02:48:05] Why?
[02:48:06] Because it's a freaking epic story from somebody that spent time on the battlefield.
[02:48:14] When ISIS was being fought and pushed back.
[02:48:18] And she interviewed people from ISIS, which is crazy.
[02:48:21] So if you want to check that out,
[02:48:23] you can go to jockelpublishing dot com.
[02:48:27] Also, final spin.
[02:48:29] It's a story.
[02:48:30] It's a novel.
[02:48:31] It's a poem.
[02:48:32] It's a manuscript.
[02:48:33] It's a freaking wild emotional ride.
[02:48:35] Don't read it when you're in front of people because you might be crying.
[02:48:38] Don't read it when you've got to be quiet because you might be laughing.
[02:48:41] Final spin.
[02:48:43] I wrote it.
[02:48:44] Leadership strategy and tactics.
[02:48:46] Field manual.
[02:48:47] The code the evaluation protocols.
[02:48:49] Desperate your feet.
[02:48:50] Field manual.
[02:48:51] Or your kid.
[02:48:52] One, two, three, and four.
[02:48:55] That's the Christmas gift.
[02:48:57] That's the Christmas gift.
[02:48:58] You want to know what it could this little kid gives you.
[02:49:00] But yeah, that's the gift.
[02:49:01] Get him the get him all books.
[02:49:03] All books.
[02:49:04] Work way of the warrior kid.
[02:49:06] One, two, three, and four.
[02:49:08] There is no better gift you can get for a kid than those books.
[02:49:14] If you got a little kid, get a mic in the dragons.
[02:49:18] Little mic in the dragons.
[02:49:20] Let him learn to overcome fear.
[02:49:22] About face by Colonel David Hacworth.
[02:49:24] I wrote the forward on the new version.
[02:49:26] And then extreme ownership.
[02:49:28] And that I caught a new leadership.
[02:49:29] Who wrote with my brother, Dave Babin, speaking of life.
[02:49:32] We have a leadership consultancy.
[02:49:35] If you need help inside your organization from a leadership perspective,
[02:49:38] which if you have any issues inside your organization?
[02:49:41] Whatever problems you have, their leadership problems.
[02:49:44] Leadership is the solution.
[02:49:46] Go to asklombfront.com for that.
[02:49:48] If you want to come to one of our live events, you can check it out there.
[02:49:52] We also have the online training academy.
[02:49:56] Extreme ownership.com.
[02:49:59] So online leadership training academy.
[02:50:02] You can bring your team in there.
[02:50:04] You can get everyone aligned.
[02:50:06] You can get your whole company engaged in that.
[02:50:10] Or you can just do it yourself.
[02:50:12] But you don't become a good leader overnight.
[02:50:15] And you're not just born a good leader.
[02:50:17] Just like you're not born a good guitar player.
[02:50:19] You're not.
[02:50:20] Okay. Who you are.
[02:50:21] You've got to pick up and practice and learn.
[02:50:23] That's what the academy is for.
[02:50:25] Pick up practice, learn.
[02:50:27] For leadership. Go to extreme ownership.com.
[02:50:29] You want to ask me a question?
[02:50:30] I'm there.
[02:50:31] You can literally just sit there and talk to me.
[02:50:33] Three times a week.
[02:50:34] Two or three times a week.
[02:50:35] I'm there.
[02:50:36] Answer your questions.
[02:50:37] Live.
[02:50:39] So check that out.
[02:50:40] Extreme ownership.com.
[02:50:41] If you want to help service members active and retired.
[02:50:44] Their families, gold star families,
[02:50:46] check out Mark Lee's mom.
[02:50:48] Mom and Lee.
[02:50:49] She's got an incredible charity organization.
[02:50:51] If you want to donate to that, you want to get involved.
[02:50:53] She is helping so many veterans go to America's
[02:50:56] Mighty Warriors.
[02:50:58] Dot org.
[02:51:00] And if you want any more of my looming lectures.
[02:51:04] Or you need more of Echo's random retorts.
[02:51:07] You can find us on the in a website on Twitter on the Graham on Facebook.
[02:51:13] Echo's Echo Charles.
[02:51:14] I'm at chocolate.
[02:51:15] Holly is on Instagram on Twitter.
[02:51:19] She's Holly S.
[02:51:21] Makeh also Holly.
[02:51:25] Makeh.com.
[02:51:26] That's where you can find her substak as well.
[02:51:28] Where people's on new method of putting information out there.
[02:51:33] The substak.
[02:51:34] Yeah.
[02:51:35] A lot of journalists are using it.
[02:51:38] It's kind of like a patreon.
[02:51:41] But it's not being controlled.
[02:51:45] And they're allowing free speech, which apparently patreon was not substak.
[02:51:50] It's a substak.
[02:51:51] It's cool.
[02:51:52] Finally.
[02:51:54] Thanks to Holly.
[02:51:57] You can hear what she does.
[02:52:00] The rest she takes to inform and educate the world.
[02:52:02] So thank you Holly for doing that.
[02:52:05] People who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
[02:52:10] And someone has to uncover history.
[02:52:12] I like what she said about history.
[02:52:14] History rough draft.
[02:52:15] The rough draft of history.
[02:52:18] So someone's got to go out and grab that information.
[02:52:21] People like Holly, they go and do that.
[02:52:23] Thank you Holly for your hard work and bravery to make that happen.
[02:52:27] And if people in uniform out there.
[02:52:30] Thank you for doing your best to confront and stop evil in the world and keep us all safe.
[02:52:37] And that includes our police and law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,
[02:52:42] correctional officers, board of patrol secret service and no first responders.
[02:52:47] Thank you for keeping us safe right here at home.
[02:52:49] And everyone else out there.
[02:52:52] There is evil in the world and there is good.
[02:52:55] And we have to be on guard and we have to be vigilant.
[02:53:02] That's evil.
[02:53:16] So stay vigilant.
[02:53:18] Stay prepared.
[02:53:19] Tell the truth.
[02:53:20] Look out for each other.
[02:53:23] And try and keep your part of the world.
[02:53:26] Try and make your part of the world as good as you can.
[02:53:31] And help other people do the same.
[02:53:35] And until next time, Zekko and Joko out.