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April 27, 2025 21:41-23:02 - CSPAN
01:20:58
Discussion on the Situation in Afghanistan
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gen jack keane
fox 32:58
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jeremy hunt
06:37
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
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Former Army Vice Chief of Staff General Jack Keene spoke about the situation in Afghanistan following the U.S. military withdrawal at a discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute.
Following his remarks, a panel of former military and intelligence officials highlight potential security threats.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
Well, good afternoon and welcome to Hudson Institute.
I'm Jeremy Hahn.
I'm a media fellow here and want to welcome all of you who are here in person as well as those joining us online.
Thank you all for coming and really talking about a really important topic today.
I was talking about the situation in Afghanistan and particularly America's interests in the region.
And, you know, if you look in the media today, you don't hear a lot of talk about Afghanistan these days, but it's such an important and vital piece of our own national security here in the United States.
And that's why I wanted to do this event and really kind of shine a light on what's been going on there and hear from some really distinguished guests that we have here to even talk about their own experiences as well.
I'm really excited.
Before I get started, I want to mention our very own Luke Coffee senior fellow here.
Hashley has a fact sheet that he published recently that's here.
You can pick that up anytime after the event.
Get a copy of that.
It really gets into specifics about some particular policies that we recommend.
And so we're going to get to that a little later.
Before, though, I have the really honor, tremendous honor to introduce General Jack Keene.
And General Jack Keene, for those who don't know, is a course of foreign policy and national security expert who provides nationwide analysis and commentary and speeches, articles, congressional testimony, and does several hundred television and radio interviews.
You see him all over the news regularly.
And he served as an advisor to presidents, cabinet officials, members of Congress, our senior military leaders, international leaders, and CEOs.
He's the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and a member of the prestigious Secretary of Defense Policy Board, having advised four different defense secretaries in his time.
He's also a member of the 2018 and 2022 Congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy.
General Keene, a four-star general, completed over 37 years of public service, culminating in his appointment as acting chief of staff and vice chief of staff of the United States Army.
As the chief operating officer of the Army for over four years, he directed 1.5 million soldiers and civilians in over 120 countries with an annual operating budget of $110 billion, just to give you a sense of the scope there.
He also was a career infantry paratrooper, a combat veteran of Vietnam, decorated for valor.
And he spent much of his military life in operational commands where he commanded the famed 101st Airborne Division, Air Assault, and the legendary 18th Airborne Corps, which, for those who don't know, is the Army's largest warfighting organization.
And General Keene was also in the Pentagon on 9-11 and provided oversight and support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Since 2004, he spent a decade conducting frequent trips to Iraq and Afghanistan for senior defense officials with multiple visits during the surge period in both countries.
In late 2006, President Bush invited General Keene to the Oval Office, among others, to discuss Iraq.
And alone among them, General Keene brought the president a new strategic concept, later to be known as the Troop Surge, which, as we all know, succeeded in turning around the war.
Among his numerous awards, General Keene is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Award, the first military leader to actually receive that honor.
So thank you, sir.
It's such an honor to have you here.
Without further ado, General Jack Keene.
gen jack keane ▲ ● ▼
Well, a wonderful spring afternoon.
I think spring is here.
We had some doubts, right?
If this thing was ever going to get started, but the end of Passover yesterday and Easter Sunday, I think there's no doubt now.
We're on a good path, hopefully.
But Jeremy, thanks for your kind and generous introduction.
Listen, I'm delighted to be back at Hudson.
I really have a lot of admiration and respect for this organization.
It's good to see my friend John here who helps us run it.
And I was here as a keynote for an education program that Hudson runs during the summer.
I think it goes on about six weeks.
I was really so taken by it because we're bringing these youngsters in here, all who have wonderful futures in front of them, and we're teaching them about America, about America's history and its values.
Something that you can get through a 16-year education today in America and not have a foundational experience in what I just said, which is a disgrace as far as I'm concerned.
And Hudson has attempted to do something about that.
And I chair a think tank, the Institute for Study of War, and we do a program not as extensive as Hudson's, but nonetheless with the same thought in mind to mitigate and compensate for what is not happening in our institutions today in America.
So my hats off to Hudson.
And if I get invited here and my schedule is free, I'm coming.
So that's why I'm here today.
And I'm going to provide some brief remarks today prior to the panel of experts.
And I really commend you for this topic to focus on Afghanistan, what is happening there, and America's interest in the region writ large.
You know, given the global security challenges the United States is facing today with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, they're on a scale that we haven't seen in the minds of the Congressional Commission I was on for two years.
We haven't seen that scale since the end of World War II.
And part of that is the resurgence of transnational terrorism.
All of this is exceeding the capabilities of what we have in coping with that reality unless we get properly organized with the national security strategy and we get resourced properly to deal with the erosion of United States military capabilities that are in pretty serious shape.
So that's the, and I noticed just recently, you may have picked up on it in the annual threat assessment by our intelligence community.
They also mentioned the resurgence of transnational threats that we're facing and identified as ISIS-KP as likely the most dangerous or sometimes referred to as Daesh in Afghanistan.
I want to, as background, you know, the decision to unconditionally withdraw U.S. capabilities from Afghanistan by 1 September 2021 was a major geopolitical event that not only led to the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan and the rise of terrorism today,
it incentivized our adversaries to become more aggressive as they saw weakness in that U.S. decision.
They came to believe that United States leadership displayed by that decision is weak, that the United States lacks the political will to confront them, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.
And they organized themselves together to collaborate and to cooperate as a result of it.
They concluded that this was the beginning of the decline of the United States world leadership.
Russia would invade Ukraine less than six months later.
Iran's proxies in Iraq and Syria attacked U.S. troops in both countries after that decision 125 times prior to Hamas's October the 7th attack into Israel.
125 times.
And as a result of October the 7th, Iran operationalized all of its proxies, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraq and Syria militia, to do what?
To drive the United States out of the region and attempt to finally destroy the state of Israel.
Not by physically destroying the state of Israel, but making the security situation so volatile, so dangerous, that the small population of Jews that live in Israel, 7, 8 million, would migrate someplace else.
And that's how, that was their strategic objective.
And I may say, Iran did that with no fear of U.S. reprisals.
They had the evidence.
They'd attacked us 125 times, and we never laid a glove on Iran before October the 7th.
They attacked us 175 times after October the 7th and unleashed the Houthis in stopping 80% of international trade through the Suez Canal.
Perception of U.S. weakness is real, and they acted upon it.
The violation of Taiwan's air defense intradiction zone that President Xi has committed to a number of years ago, it was several hundred.
In one year after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it climbed to 1,700.
Last year, it was 3,000.
And he has conducted three massive ship surrounding Taiwan in the last two years.
Part of intimidation and coercion, for sure.
But what else is it?
Likely, in the minds of our military and intel analysts, a rehearsal for a quarantine or a blockade of Taiwan.
More aggressive since that pivotal decision was made.
That's the reality of it.
Why did our adversaries come to the conclusion of this weakness that so incentivized their aggression?
Certainly, we all saw the chaotic retreat that took place.
They witnessed it.
But their conclusion was much, much more than what we saw on our television screens.
It was about U.S. judgment, U.S. judgment that made such a difference.
They knew the United States had a very modest force in Afghanistan.
Some 2,500 troops supported by U.S. air power, which also supported the Afghan security forces.
Six other NATO nations had 7,000 troops there.
So close to around 10,000 troops were there.
We had three central intelligence bases and seven military bases in Afghanistan.
We had more troops in East Africa on the ground than we had in Afghanistan.
We had about the same amount in Iraq and Syria dealing with ISIS as we had in Afghanistan.
The Biden decision was made over the objections of the entire military chain of command.
The unseen commander, the CENTCOM commander, the Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Director Burns of the CIA, not a policyman, made the intelligence assessment that if the United States pulls out of Afghanistan,
ISIS, KP, and al-Qaeda will resurge and establish safe havens with the potential for out-of-Afghanistan's attacks against United States interests worldwide and the United States homeland.
That is his assessment.
Al-Qaeda, who, as we all know, support the Taliban then and supports them today.
ISIS-KP is opposed to the Taliban, and we know full well from our own military assessments that ISIS, excuse me, that the Taliban does not have the capability to defeat ISIS-KP.
But both organizations now have bona fide safe havens in Afghanistan to do what?
To plan, prepare for attacks inside of Afghanistan, certainly ISIS-KP, not al-Qaeda, but also in the region and also outside of the region.
NATO did not want to leave.
All six of those countries, their recommendation to U.S. leadership was to stay.
Why?
Was it motivated by U.S. interests?
Not at all.
They were motivated by their own interests.
They believe that ISIS-KP, in particular, Al-Qaeda to a lesser degree, would be a threat to their security interests in their homelands.
That's why they wanted to stay.
But they couldn't stay without the U.S. presence, air power, and logistics support that we provided for them.
I'm spending time on this because it's critical to understand this dilemma that we're in today.
So our adversaries concluded this.
The United States was willing to break with an ally that we had supported and fought side by side with for 20 years after that enemy had killed 3,000 of American citizens in our homeland and were supported by the Taliban in doing all of that.
Despite all of that, we were willing to break that relationship and put it at risk.
And more so, and this was taken to the president, that there would be risk in pulling out and no longer supporting the Afghan security forces and the government, that the Taliban would be able to take the country back.
And that's a fact.
The President of the United States, I know for a fact, because I've talked to the people involved in discussing it with him, that that reality was presented to him as a possibility that could occur, that this could happen a lot faster than what we think.
Because the Afghan security forces, once the date certain is established and they know the United States is gone, the intelligence is gone, the air power in particular is gone, what chance do they have to defeat the Taliban at that point?
Those Afghan security force leaders knew that they could not.
Why continue to risk your life if you couldn't accomplish the task in front of you?
And that's what we saw unfold.
They collapsed into themselves and chose not to defend because they knew without the United States, they couldn't win.
President knew that.
It happened faster than we thought, for sure, because that collapse happened in multiple provinces simultaneously and then actually in Kabul itself.
That's the reality of what we're dealing with and facing today as a result of it.
So that decision was made to withdraw, an unconditional draw by a date certain.
There were other options.
Ceasefire first.
Negotiations between the Afghans, secure, I mean the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Peace agreement, enforceable.
Those things could have been done.
Even if you made the decision to withdraw, you still could have cut a deal with the Taliban, particularly after they took all of the Kabul.
And the deal would be when we knew it was a problem getting all of our people out of there and all of the Afghans out of there, we go to the Taliban and say, we're not going by 1 September.
This is conditions-based.
This may take three months.
It may take six months.
And of course, they're not going to stand for that, right?
They're going to say, we're not going to put up with that.
And then you look them right in the face and you tell them, we know where all of you are now.
You interfere with us.
We'll systematically kill your leaders.
We know where you are.
You're in Kabul.
We know where your troops are.
You're no longer operating clandestinely.
You're running the country.
Now you have to defend yourselves against us.
We had huge amount of leverage, and we chose not to use it.
And we ran off and left those people there, those Afghans who worked side by side with us.
We got 120,000 out, and that's good.
And it was a Herculean effort on the part of our military to do that.
And they deserve credit for it, not condemnation.
There was one person to pin the rose on here, and that's the President of the United States.
He made this decision, and the consequences we saw at that airfield are a result of that decision, unconditional withdrawal by a date certain.
And that's what drove that security nightmare that we were facing at the airfield.
What is going on in Afghanistan today?
The Taliban are firmly in control.
Not a single country has recognized the government of Afghanistan.
Not a single country, not a major institutional or international organization.
No major think tank.
Nobody has recognized them.
The Taliban have outlawed political parties.
There's only one party.
and it's them and they're in charge.
The dissidents are facing arrest, torture, exile, and death.
The Taliban have killed hundreds of former government officials and there's thousands that have just disappeared.
Who knows what happened to them?
I would imagine they're presumed to be dead.
The Taliban economy is in a tank with a serious humanitarian crisis that's ongoing.
Foreign aid completely eliminated.
That provided 75% of the engine for expenditures inside of Afghanistan when the Ghani government was in power.
The economy shrunk by 30%.
700,000 jobs gone.
90% of the population is experiencing some kind of food insecurity.
It's a nightmare.
Strict Shia law has been imposed.
Women are barred from secondary education, secondary education.
As you know, we got a lot of women into college as a result of our presence there and encouraged their employment, and many of them had responsible positions in Afghan society.
They must cover their faces.
They have to travel with a male guardian.
Music of any dimension is banned.
Flogging, amputations, and executions are back, something we witnessed from 1996 to 2001 when the Taliban were previously in control.
The Taliban simply have a stranglehold on all aspects of life in Afghanistan.
What is the security situation like in Afghanistan?
Well, we have the National Resistance Front, and Alex Nazari is here, and he's going to be on this panel.
And what you hear from him will be informative and educational.
But this is a powerful movement.
We have a long association with people in this movement.
When George Tenet came up with the idea, and we knew for certain that al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan had killed 3,000 of us, we knew we were going to Afghanistan.
The question is how and when and where.
Tenet at the CIA came up with an imaginative idea.
The Pentagon was preparing a larger operation, and I was a four-star at the time, to conduct a takedown of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
George came up with an idea, well, why don't we try something that may accomplish the same thing, but not have need as many forces to do it.
And that is, we have a relationship with the Northern Alliance that goes back a number of years when we are helping some of them fight the Russians, the Mujaddin, and we were giving them anti-aircraft weapons, the famous Stinger weapon which shot down so many Russian helicopters.
That relationship still existed.
Let us go back there and find the leaders and see if they're open to the idea that we would bring in some special forces to work with them supported by U.S. air power.
An imaginative idea.
And that took place, and that's what was executed.
And three weeks after we got our special forces team on the ground, married up with the Northern Alliance, U.S. air power and support directed by those special forces teams at the request of the Northern Alliance leaders, three weeks later, the Taliban were defeated.
That relationship existed then, and it still exists today because they make up much of this national resistance front.
And you'll listen to Alex.
He has some imaginative ideas in how we can improve the situation in Afghanistan.
The 9-11 Commission had a number of findings as a result of the horrific attack that took place in our country.
One of the principal findings that they had, which they believe directly contributed to the success of al-Qaeda attacking our homeland, was the presence of safe havens.
And their conclusion was: you cannot permit safe havens to form if that terrorist organization has aspirations to attack U.S. interests or U.S. homeland.
You cannot let that happen.
And after that, multiple presidents took that seriously.
Bush, obviously, in dealing with Afghanistan and Iraq, but follow on also where were the terrorist organizations that we were concerned about.
There's 40 plus of them around the world.
All of them are threatening somebody, but not all of them have aspirations to attack the United States.
So Bush, Obama, and Trump all came to the same conclusion and supported the same reality.
We're only going to focus with military forces on those that have ambitions to attack us.
So that was obviously in Afghanistan.
That was also Iraq and Syria, ISIS in both of those countries.
And it was also al-Qaeda and ISIS in the Horn of Africa.
And that is where we were willing to commit intelligence forces and direct action forces to stop them from developing a safe haven, which could get into something much larger in terms of their ability to succeed at a comprehensive attack.
A modest, a modest commitment of forces to do something like I'm describing, but multiple presidents saw it the same way until President Biden made his decision to change that around.
And that is the issue today, because in Afghanistan, the al-Qaeda is supported by the Taliban.
Their leadership is in Kabul.
Their bases are well known throughout the country.
The Taliban know where they are, and they support them.
ISIS is operating, ISIS-KP is operating clandestinely in that country.
And that is a different situation, but that organization is growing in strength and in numbers.
The administration, previous administration, concluded that we would be able to monitor these organizations from over the horizon.
We would use satellites, obviously, to keep an eye on them, but we would also fly intelligence aircraft to monitor them.
And if necessary, we would conduct direct action missions to strike them so they're not able to form a safe haven.
Well, how much of that have we done?
The answer to that is none.
Zero.
And it's an eight-hour flight from the nearest air base to Afghanistan.
That begins to give you a sense of the problem in terms of gathering intelligence.
We have no ground force that can give us intelligence throughout the country.
We do get intelligence from the National Resistance Front, to be sure.
But it's not the same as what we had when we had the Afghan National Security Forces, some 300,000 on the ground, giving us intelligence.
That is gone.
So we have not done anything, taken any action against the growing threat that exists in Afghanistan.
And what have they done?
Well, we know for a fact that ISIS last year conducted three attacks.
One was in Iran against a gathering honoring Qasim Soleimani and killed a number of Iranians in doing that.
Another one was in, of all places, Moscow at a gathering at the Krosko City Hall.
And another one was planned to be in Austria at a Taylor Swift concert, and the Austrian security forces prevented that from occurring.
And Alex can tell you that there have been three that have been planned against the United States and Canada in the last year or so that have been prevented.
So there is no doubt that there are safe havens there, and they are planning and preparing to conduct operations outside of Afghanistan.
And what are we doing about that?
Not much of anything.
We do have better relations now with Pakistan than what we had in the past.
And that's pretty obvious.
I'm just going to be straight out what our problem was with Pakistan.
We know for a fact, prime feature evidence, that the Pakistan military and their intelligence services provided direct assistance to the Taliban and Halakhani network.
We had the evidence, indisputable evidence.
And we never did anything to stop it other than to talk to them about it.
And this was supposed to be an ally, providing military training on the ground to Taliban forces.
Have evidence of it.
Providing specific intelligence for them to attack U.S. forces.
Have evidence of it.
So what I'm saying is lots of U.S. troops and certainly even more Afghani troops were killed as a result of that relationship.
That's a fact.
But now we do have better relationships with them.
Why?
Well, because now it's really, really in their interest because they have terrorism in their country and some of it's labeled Taliban.
And now they want to talk and provide some information and will take the information, hopefully never giving up the rearview mirror of who these people really are and what they represented for far too many years in dealing with our problems in Afghanistan.
What we really need to do is we need a strategic policy dealing with Central Asia and South Asia.
We don't have it.
Now, it's early in this administration.
Biden was not touching it.
So that's gone.
The Trump administration will likely, I mean, this is what they did in the first term, they produced a national security strategy by the end of December.
Now, that was McMaster's.
He was the NSA, and he was driven.
Walsh is driven also.
Hopefully, he can get that done.
I'm told a part of that will be a strategic policy on how to deal with Central Asia, the problem we are describing right now with Afghanistan.
And hopefully that comes out fairly soon.
And we've got to recognize, you know, when we were there, the reasons we were there were the ones I was stating.
But there were other geopolitical reasons that were secondary, but nonetheless important.
You think of where is Afghanistan?
It borders on Iran.
It borders on China.
And it's one country away from bordering on Russia.
All three of those countries wanted us out of there.
The Biden administration claimed that they welcomed the fact that the United States would be bogged down in Afghanistan for years.
That's complete rubbish.
Those countries wanted us out of their sphere of influence area.
Three CIA bases, seven military bases, not even counting the other NATO operation bases that were there.
They wanted us all out of there and they got what they wanted.
However, do we have common interests with these countries given the rise of terrorism in Afghanistan?
And the rise it is.
The UN report came out and said there are a couple of dozen terrorist organizations in Afghanistan in addition to al-Qaeda and ISIS-KP.
And Alex just told me a few minutes ago that that number of the couple of dozen adds up to 24,000 terrorists inside of Afghanistan.
That means that Afghanistan is an epicenter for terrorism in the world today, exceeding any other place and exceeding dramatically what we were facing when we went in there on post-9-11.
So can we work with these countries?
Look, we've got major differences with these countries.
I just outlined some of it, but it goes much deeper than that.
We've got war in Ukraine, we've got war in the Middle East, and President Xi is threatening war.
But can we work with them on common interest dealing with this rise and resurgence of terrorism in this epicenter in Afghanistan?
It's possible.
Let's open the door and find out.
We have done this before with Russia.
And the province that borders on Afghanistan in China is where the Uyghurs reside.
And that's where they're in concentration camps.
That's where they're being persecuted.
That's where the Chinese believe terrorism will rise in their country and why they are being so repressive against the Uyghurs.
So would they have some interest?
Possibly.
They have mineral rights quite extensive in Afghanistan right now and possibly some interest in Bagram Air Base.
Alex has a suggestion he's going to make team.
I'll let him discuss it.
But it's worthy of consideration.
And that is to establish a humanitarian safe zone around Bagram Airfield in the Northeast.
unidentified
They would defend it.
gen jack keane ▲ ● ▼
We would have to help them take it, but then they would defend it.
It's an interesting proposition in terms of what its implications are, and I'll let him explain it a little bit more to you.
But there are things that obviously we can do.
And I'm really interested in seeing what the administration comes up with in terms of what the policy and strategy should be and what likely is the art of the possible.
One thing that has always guided me in dealing with these terrorist organizations that want to attack us, given what happened to us on 9-11, I've advised people, and I continue to say something along this line, that whatever you would do after another successful attack on the United States by a terrorist organization,
and you know that terrorist organization is aspiring to do that very thing to you, whatever you would do after that attack is what you should be doing now and not waiting for it.
We already learned that lesson.
We had a 9-11 Commission banging into our heads that we really made a strategic mistake that led to that loss of lives.
We all know from all the other things that were found that 9-11 was quite preventable.
And this one alone, in destroying that safe haven prior to the attack, would have taken away the capability to do just that.
We need to improve our intelligence capability for sure.
And we need to improve our direct action capability against those safe havens.
There's no denying that.
We just can't sit here and wait for something horrible to happen against our people in Europe or our European allies or in the United States.
We've got to take action.
There is enough evidence to know that there is a serious threat there.
And we need to apply our imagination once again, our determination once again, and our commitment to deal with this reality.
Well, listen, I appreciate you listening to me.
And I think you're going to really enjoy the excellent panel that's going to come up here and follow me.
So thank you very much.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
For everyone, when I say General Keene is a national treasurer, it's just an honor to have him here.
One more round of applause for General Keene.
And we're now gonna get ready for our panel part of the session here.
And I don't know if you want to go.
We're going to rearrange the stage here and begin promptly.
unidentified
Our panel
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
part of the program today, I'm excited to introduce the guests that we have to talk into some of the specifics that General Keene even hinted at during his remarks.
I'm going to start with some bios and beginning with Ali Nazari, who is now, you can't say you're no stranger to Hudson now.
You come a few times, and it's always an honor to have him here.
We had the honor of hosting him last year for a similar event about the National Resistance Front and all the efforts that they are doing in Afghanistan.
And for those who don't know, Mr. Nazari is the head of foreign relations of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, the NRF, and assuming the position after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
And before assuming this position, Mr. Nazari worked as a liaison between various resistance groups and international organizations, facilitating aid and support to those fighting against the Taliban.
It's an honor to have you here, Mr. Nazari.
We also have Ms. Lisa Curtis, who is a senior fellow and director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
She's a foreign policy and national security expert with over 20 years of service in the U.S. government, including as deputy assistant to the president and NSC Senior Director for South and Central Asia from 2017 to 2021.
She's also served in the CIA, State Department, and Capitol Hill.
So great to have you here, Lisa.
And of course, our very own Luke Coffey, Senior Fellow here at Hudson.
As many of you know, Luke has an extensive body of work studying Central Asia, and he's also a former Army officer who was deployed to Afghanistan.
He was there for a year where he earned the Bronze Star.
So it's an honor to, of course, to have your remarks here too.
So I first want to start with some opening remarks from each of you, and we can begin with Ali and then kind of go on down the line.
unidentified
Thank you very much, Jeremy.
It's, of course, great to be back at Hudson and to raise this issue which matters to all of us.
It's connected to our security, our well-being, and of course, our interests.
And I have to thank General Keene for delivering comprehensive and excellent remarks regarding the egregious situation in Afghanistan today.
And of course, I am here to provide more information and to provide our assessments.
And of course, what the National Resistance Fund of Afghanistan, led by Mr. Ahmad Massoud, is trying to achieve.
That is in the interests of not only the people of Afghanistan, but of course of humanity today at large.
It's wonderful and great to be here.
Of course, I'm here to answer any questions that you may have.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Lisa.
Great.
Thank you.
It's great to be here.
Thank you for the invitation, and it's great to be back at the Hudson Institute.
I also really appreciated General Keene's extensive overview of Afghanistan going all the way back to 9-11.
But I do want to fill in the blank.
He did leave out something that I'm very familiar with having worked as the NSC senior director on South Asia during the first Trump administration.
And that was the terrible impact of the Doha deal.
This is the Doha deal that was completed in February of 2020, signed by Zahlilzad, who was the envoy for President Trump with Mullah Barado, the leader of the Taliban.
This was a very weak agreement.
It conceded far too much to the Taliban.
For instance, the U.S. forced President Ghani at the time to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, many of those who went on to fight the government after they were released.
And so, you know, this was akin to handing the country over to the Taliban like a birthday cake.
It was not a peace agreement.
It was a withdrawal agreement.
It was basically between the U.S. and the Taliban, and it was about the U.S. wanting to withdraw troops and really giving anything the Taliban they wanted to be able to do that so that the Taliban would not kill U.S. troops on their way out.
So I just wanted to be clear about that agreement, what it was, and how it contributed to the rapid fall of the Ghani government under the Biden administration.
And I also want to dispel another fallacy, which is President Biden said his hands were tied by the agreement, that he had to abide by it.
He did not have to.
He did not have to keep Zahl Ilzad as his negotiator, which he did until September 2021.
And he did not have to follow through on that agreement.
He could have negotiated a new agreement.
I also want to talk about something that has happened over just the past week, which I think is abominable.
And this is that we are hearing that the Trump administration is now sending emails to Afghans who are here in the United States on temporary protected status and in some cases on parole and telling them that they have to self-deport within seven days, that they are no longer welcome in the United States.
These are Afghans who supported the U.S. mission.
They may have been interpreters for U.S. forces, helped with logistics, and in many cases may have fought alongside U.S. forces.
And one thing that I remember is in those chaotic days after the 2021 withdrawal, so many U.S. veterans stepped up, spending their resources and energy, helping their Afghan colleagues leave Afghanistan safely and start new lives here in the United States.
And after seeing that terrible, chaotic withdrawal, the loss of the U.S. Marines in the August 26, 2021 attack, along with so many Afghans, I think, you know,
our veterans could take some measure of satisfaction knowing they were helping to save Afghan lives by helping them resettle here to the United States, by helping their daughters have a better life here in the United States where they could actually get an education.
So after all of this and to see that the Trump administration may be turning back Afghans, deporting Afghans back to a Taliban-controlled country is really egregious.
And I want to quote here the leader of one of the refugee agencies that's been helping to resettle Afghan refugees.
And he's head of the Global Refuge Organization.
He said last week, forcing Afghan women and girls back to Taliban rule where they face systemic oppression and gender-based violence would be utterly unconscionable.
It would be a stain on our nation's reputation.
So I just wanted to raise that issue.
Let me say a few words about where we are now in Afghanistan and some ideas for U.S. policy moving forward.
So the first thing is even though we know the Taliban is not really going anywhere anytime soon, we should not give up on trying to influence the direction of the country.
We should be involved in trying to push a political process that involves Afghans both inside and outside the country.
The Taliban was not elected in Afghanistan.
They took the country by military force, so they're not representative of the Afghan people.
And at a minimum, I think that the Trump administration as well as congressional officials should be meeting with non-Taliban leaders, people like Ahmed Massoud and others.
These are people who do represent segments of the Afghanistan population, and we should be giving them time and a voice in the future of the country.
And then I would just add that we do have a roadmap for engaging with the Taliban in a broad political process, and that is the UN Independent Assessment Report that was released in November 2023.
That is something that we could use, we could follow.
And, you know, lastly, I would just make the point about supporting Afghan women and girls.
I think the Biden administration did do something right by avoiding diplomatic recognition of the Taliban until they improved the situation for women and girls.
And my hope is that the Trump administration sticks with that policy.
The previous administration had also supported valuable education programs for women, online education programs, scholarships for Afghan women.
Unfortunately, many of these programs have been defunded by the Trump administration.
So my hope is, again, these are reinstated.
And this is not merely a humanitarian gesture.
Educating women and girls of Afghanistan would protect U.S. national security.
The Taliban's severe repression of women only strengthens the Taliban's totalitarian grip on the entire Afghan population.
And it feeds extremism in this country where we already see dozens of international terrorist groups operating as we just heard from General King.
So I think that, you know, I'll just end with a quote by our National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz.
And this was made by him when he inaugurated the Women, Peace, and Security Caucus in Congress.
And what he said is: women's issues are absolutely a national security issue.
So I hope that he stands by that pronouncement when he formulates U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and as he is drafting or having his advisors draft that national security strategy that we heard about from General Keene.
Thank you.
Luke.
Thank you.
I want to echo the appreciation for General Keene's remarks.
One thing that he said, and it's something that Lisa also mentioned, was that all of this was a choice that we decided to make, we as a nation, we being the U.S. government.
It is true that President Trump's Doha Agreement planted the seed for the disaster that unfollowed.
And it is also true that President Biden could have changed this.
I mean, this is a president that had no problem changing dozens, if not hundreds, of other executive orders, regulations, et cetera, from the Trump administration.
But he tells us that this one issue was the issue that he couldn't change.
Don't believe it.
But the truth is, we don't know what a second Trump term at that time would have led to in Afghanistan.
It's impossible to predict.
We can make some assumptions, but we just don't know.
But what we do know is that on September 11th, 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the Taliban was controlling more of Afghanistan than they were on September 11th, 2001.
And this is a direct consequence, a direct consequence of the actions taken by President Biden.
And there's a sad irony here, in a way, because in 2009, when President Obama was undertaking his Afghan strategic review, you might remember at the time it was Vice President Biden that was understandably arguing for this more scaled-down counterterrorism approach, counterterrorism U.S. footprint in the country.
Going against this inside the White House was then Secretary Clinton, CIA Director Panetta, Robert Gates, who were saying, no, we need to go big like a surge like we had in Iraq that was a success.
So when President Biden entered the Oval Office in January of 2021, he inherited the Biden proposal.
2,500 U.S. troops only, focusing on counterterrorism and training at a fraction of the cost that it was costing the U.S. taxpayer 10 years ago during the height of the fighting.
So he even inherited his own plan that he wanted nothing to do with it.
So this is where we are today.
I want to just give my take on why Afghanistan still matters, on why engaging with groups like the NRF still matters.
The first is the most obvious one.
It's the one we've heard today on this panel.
It's the one that General Keene spent a lot of time on.
It's the counterterrorism reason.
I don't want to dwell too much on this because so much has already been said, but there are at least 20 different transnational terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan more freely now than they have ever been before.
Some of these groups are well known to us, al-Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State of Khorasan, for example.
But there are other smaller regional groups or more regionally focused groups that operate now in the country that threaten to create instability in the region, which could quickly lead to problems for us around the world.
We have no eyes and ears on the ground.
We have very minimal surveillance in the air, as General Keene pointed out.
He said eight hours away is the nearest base.
Depending on whatever you're trying to fly, it could be a bit longer.
And don't forget that Afghanistan is landlocked, so you're going to have to pass through the airspace of another country and look around, look at a map.
We don't have a lot of partners and allies in the region.
So we have basically Afghanistan has become a complete blind spot for us in terms of awareness and our counterterrorism efforts.
We need, the second reason why we need to care is because we need to heed the historical lessons that we in Europe, in North America, in the West, have experienced since the 1800s.
Now, I went through in a larger report that I published last August, which I recommend you go to Hudson.org and check it out, entitled the U.S. Should Support the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan.
I went through, and since the 1830s, there has been some sort of significant Western, by Western, I mean the U.S. or Europe or Russia, intervention in Afghanistan, 19 since the 1830s.
Some of them were military missions, some of them were very large diplomatic efforts, some were huge financial aid initiatives, but that's about once every 10 years.
Like it or not, once about every 10 years, we are up to our knees in Afghanistan.
This is just how it's been since the 1830s.
So there's no reason to assume this won't be how this won't continue on into the future.
So we need to learn the lessons of history.
We may want to forget about Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is not going to forget about us.
Also, the third reason, Afghanistan's location on the Eurasian landmass.
It's right in the heart of this huge landmass.
By definition, anything at the heart of something must be important.
General Keene pointed out, Iran is right there, Russia's nearby, China's there.
We got Pakistan, India, major powers in the region.
We have smaller but growing and significant countries in Central Asia that share a border with Afghanistan.
And an eight-hour flight from Bagram Air Base, an eight-hour flight, a radius of an eight-hour flight around Bagram Air Base, is about two-thirds of the world's population.
Okay?
This is crucial for our interests in this region of the world.
And then finally is homeland security and security at the southern border.
Now, this administration has done a lot to end the chaos at our southern border.
But if someone is intent on getting into this country to cause us harm, they will find a way to do it.
And also, there have been documented examples of weapons that we have left behind in Afghanistan that have found their way to the black markets in Central and South America.
We left, President Biden left about $7 billion in weapons in Afghanistan.
Interestingly, President Trump, when he talks about Afghanistan, which he actually has mentioned Afghanistan a number of times in the past few weeks, he always points this out and he always says he's thinking of ways to get these weapons back.
I don't know if this is possible at this point, but the fact that he's thinking about this, I think, is a good sign.
So those are the four reasons why I think we should care and worry about Afghanistan today.
Thanks, Jeremy.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
Ali, going back to you, I'd love to hear a little bit about the National Resistance Front, some of the recent successes that you've seen, kind of where things stand, a little bit of a status update for those who've been following, as well as some potential challenges that you're seeing in the future.
unidentified
Of course.
So for the past year, the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan has actually increased its efforts.
We've drastically increased operations.
We've expanded all directions inside Afghanistan.
So from 2024 up to today, there has been more than 400 operations in around 20 provinces.
Just in the last few days, we have operations in Kunduz, in many other areas in northern Afghanistan and in Kabul and in western Afghanistan as well.
So, and of course, this is all information that has been verified.
The United Nations Security General, Mr. Guterres, his report that came out more than a month ago, he verified more than 57 of our operations within the last three months.
And the United Nations Security Council report that came out in February of 2025 once again verified that it's not only the Taliban that we're facing inside Afghanistan, but it's al-Qaeda and the other terrorist groups that General Keene and Luke mentioned.
So the NRF, one success that we've had in the past three and a half years is sustaining our resistance and expanding our resistance without any external support.
So we've proven our will, we've proven our determination, we've proven our competence.
Something that many questioned in the beginning, even here in Washington, D.C., that this resistance is going to fade away within months or within a year, and that it's not serious.
But we've proven that we're able to not only sustain ourselves, but even to expand without anyone supporting us, with so much hostilities towards us in that region.
To give you a bit of information of what the situation is and to reinforce what Lisa and Luke mentioned and how it's tied to the national security interests of the United States.
There's four threats emanating from Afghanistan that's not only a threat to the United States, but the international community.
But of course, since we are here, it's good to be specific.
The threat of terrorism, which everyone mentioned.
There is 21 terrorist groups, transnational, regional, international.
There's thousands of foreign terrorist fighters, over 20,000 foreign terrorist fighters inside Afghanistan.
And all of them are preparing themselves to leave Afghanistan.
They're planning, they're training right now, and then they'll leave the country to facilitate attacks against the region and the international community, including the United States.
And the leader, the new leader of al-Qaeda, Saiful Ad, came out with a statement last June, specifically telling all his followers around the globe, saying, migrate to Afghanistan, prepare yourselves in Afghanistan, train yourselves, and then plan attacks against the West.
And he used these terminologies.
So the first threat towards the U.S. is terrorism, and we're already seeing movement from Afghanistan and the region towards South America, Central America.
Last year, in June of 2024, three terror cells were found here on U.S. soil in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York.
All terrorists, they originated from Central Asia, but they came from Afghanistan.
They received their training from Afghanistan and entered the United States through the southern border.
So the threat is already here when we're seeing three terrorist cells being arrested, and there has been terrorist threats inside U.S. soil since then.
The second threat is, of course, the arms that were left behind, as Luke mentioned.
$7 billion worth of arms, and we're seeing that these arms are now, these equipment are ending up in South America, in Africa, and other parts of Asia.
And why are they being sold in the black market and are ending up here?
There were credible reports published by the United Nations Security Council just six months ago, verifying that there was a shipment of arms from Afghanistan, U.S.-made arms, and they were confiscated outside of the Americas.
So you have a relationship between the criminal groups and the cartels in Central and South America and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
And then drugs is another threat.
We hear a lot about fentanyl now in the United States, but there's other synthetic drugs that are being produced in Afghanistan, meth being one of them.
And they're ending up in Europe, they're ending up in Africa, they're ending up even in the Americas.
So that's another threat.
And the Taliban are facilitating this.
They are part of the drug trafficking.
And they will be expanding this in the years to come.
And fourth is, of course, migration.
We do acknowledge there are people that deserve to take refuge in the United States, in Europe, those who are threatened.
But a large wave of migration from Afghanistan is neither in the interests of Afghanistan nor is it in the interest of the international community.
Because of the situation today in Afghanistan, controlled by a terrorist group and with the presence of regional and international terror groups, the people of Afghanistan are migrating outside of the country en masse.
Millions are in the region trying to find a way to get to Europe and North America.
And that's not sustainable.
So what are we?
And migration itself is a threat.
So what are we going to do?
Our assessment in the NRF is, of course, the situation with a terrorist group in power isn't sustainable.
The Taliban are weakening.
They're weaker today than they were in 2021.
They're fracturing and so forth.
So Afghanistan is on the course of a power vacuum.
But a power vacuum can be both an opportunity and a challenge.
It's a challenge if the international community, especially the United States, keeps ignoring the democratic forces of Afghanistan, especially the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, that has been doing a good job and has been proving this.
And we're unable to prepare ourselves for that power vacuum on time, and you have other terrorist groups, ISKP, al-Qaeda, and the others, exploit that situation, that power vacuum, and fill that power vacuum, that can become a larger challenge and threat to the international community.
But if there is a better policy adopted, especially with this new administration here in the United States, I believe we can prevent that catastrophe from happening.
That's neither in the interest of Afghanistan's people nor is it in the interest of the United States and the international community.
And what can be done is, of course, we still have time to allow Democratic Forces of Afghanistan, especially the NRF, to prepare itself for us to basically facilitate an area inside Afghanistan that can serve as a safe zone and a humanitarian corridor for the people of Afghanistan.
If we have options of internal migration inside Afghanistan, there is no need for millions of people to externally migrate.
And for this to become a problem either for the U.S. administration or for European countries or others.
If we're able to have, if the international community has reliable partners controlling geography that can assist with anyone when it comes to counterterrorism,
no one has to basically approach the Taliban with these expectations that the Taliban can serve as a counterterrorism partner and then afterwards become disappointed because the Taliban are actually strengthening them instead of cooperating with countries to limit terrorism or to eliminate them from Afghanistan.
And the same when it comes to drugs and other matters as I spoke.
For example, let me just give you a bit of information since President Trump has been mentioning Bagram Airbase a few times in the past few months.
From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban and al-Qaeda didn't control Bagram Airbase.
Bagram has always been a strategic base inside Afghanistan, even before 2001.
Historically speaking, Bagram, the region of Bagram was Afghanistan's historic capital.
That's how important the region of Bagram and of course the current airbase is.
Throughout history, you go 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, Bagram has always had significance.
Alexander the Great had a base in Bagram.
Yes, Alexander the Great was present there and there's historical artifacts that have been discovered by archaeologists.
And from 1996 to 2001, Bagram Airbase was actually controlled by the legitimate government of Afghanistan, by those groups who were also known as the Northern Alliance.
So today the situation is much worse than on 9-11 because on 9-11, a strategic area inside Afghanistan like Bagram Air Base wasn't in the possession and control of terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda.
But today they control it.
The most strategic and significant region because Bagram is just on the border of South Asia and Central Asia.
Basically that region is on the border of two regions.
And the situation was much better back then than it is today.
So it shouldn't be ignored.
And it should be a significant topic to be discussed in policy circles here in DC.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
Well, as we're closing out here, I want to have a couple follow-ups, one for Lisa and one for Luke.
Lisa, could you talk a little bit about the, we talked about a little bit just the strategic location of Afghanistan in central Eurasia and talk about why we should care about that here in the United States for those watching at home.
unidentified
Yeah, well, I think, you know, as Luke was saying, Afghanistan has long been an issue of importance for the United States.
You know, in the recent history, it's, you know, trying to push the Russians out and supporting the Mujahideen throughout the 80s.
And I think, you know, the major mistake was made to, even after the Russians left in 1989, in the late 1980s, the U.S. then completely shifted its attention.
Of course, you had the fall of the wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
But it was really short-sighted to not remain engaged with Afghanistan to make sure that there was some kind of political process, some kind of political stability put in place, education continued.
The U.S. just completely turned its back.
And I think then we saw the lead up to 9-11.
And so I think for the same reason, now it would be a mistake to say, oh, well, we no longer have troops there.
We've got to focus on other issues and to completely turn our attention again.
It would be a grave mistake, as General Keene also pointed out.
So I think we should learn from the mistakes of the past.
And even if we don't have U.S. troops there, there are still ways to use our political leverage, use our leverage with the United Nations, use our resources, use our diplomacy to continue to engage with other leaders of Afghanistan.
And so we need to not have this black and white, either we're all in in Afghanistan or we're all out.
We need to have a policy and an approach that tries to ensure that the terror safe havens are not allowed to grow unchecked and threaten the United States once again in the future.
And so that's my hope that the Trump administration will pursue smart policies that don't harbor any illusions about who the Taliban is.
Look, sometimes we hear because the Taliban are enemies of ISIS-K and we're also enemies of ISIS-K, somehow the Taliban can be a counter-terrorism partner of the United States.
I think Ali's absolutely correct that that would be a real mistake.
Fine, if we share information with the Taliban and they go after ISIS-K and that helps us, that's fine.
But we shouldn't put ourselves in a position where we think we owe the Taliban something for going after their own enemies, which is ISIS-K.
I don't think we should sacrifice our human rights interests, our interest in seeing women and girls have access to education and employment there.
And we certainly shouldn't be cutting off our relationships and partnerships and engagement with groups like NRF and others that are fighting the Taliban and that have an idea for a different future than the Taliban has on offer for the country.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
And Luke, just kind of as we wrap this up, could you just, you know, obviously we can't go back in time.
There are a lot of bad decisions that were made, particularly in the Biden administration, as well as Afghanistan.
When we look at it going forward, what are the immediate steps that you think we should be taking in the region?
unidentified
Right.
Thanks for that question.
So in my fact sheet that was mentioned by, very kindly mentioned by Jeremy, that copies are available outside for you.
You can check it out online on the Hudson website.
I offer a series of recommendations that we can be doing now.
I just want to, I'm mindful of the time, so I'm going to quickly run through about seven of these.
One is just start engaging with the NRF directly.
There's no official engagement between the U.S. government or any European government and the NRF.
So if we can engage with the Taliban as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan, then why can't we engage with the NRF and other like-minded opposition groups?
That's what we should be doing.
Secondly, we should elevate our presence, our engagement with something that's called the Vienna process.
Now, Ali didn't bring it up today, but the Vienna process is something that he's been working very closely on with Mr. Massoud, and that is bringing different Afghan opposition groups from different communities, different ethnic groups to Vienna a couple times a year to share a common platform on how they can better coordinate the response to the Taliban.
This is more of the diplomatic track of the NRF.
And I was lucky enough to have attended one of these last February, it was in Vienna.
And the highest level of U.S. representation that showed up was a local hire from the U.S. Embassy in Vienna.
Great guy, professional, knowledgeable, but we got to do better than this.
Why aren't we sending a bipartisan congressional delegation?
Why aren't we sending the special representative for Afghanistan to this meeting?
If for anything else, so we get better informed what other Afghans are thinking when it comes to the future of the country.
The third thing we need to do is maintain our non-recognition policy of the Taliban.
And we should be encouraging our international partners likewise to not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Fourthly, and this has been discussed a lot today, we should be thinking about the future of Bagram.
Maybe right now it's not realistic for the U.S. to go back in and take the base.
Maybe it's more realistic to provide support for groups on the ground like the NRF to take the base.
But at a minimum, we should be drawing up contingency plans for in case there's an event where we have to do this.
And people think this, you might think this sounds crazy.
Saying it out loud, I think it sounds a little crazy, to be honest with you.
But this would have also sounded crazy in August of 2001.
And then look what happened.
We just don't know what's going to happen, but we do know that this is a very important base that we spent two decades operating out of that we should have never handed back to the Taliban.
We should consider what sort of aid and assistance we can provide to the NRF.
Even if, let's say, we don't want to talk about lethal aid, weapons, and that sort of thing.
There are other things like winter weather equipment, secure communications, medical and first aid kits, you know, things that are less than lethal that we could help provide to the NRF.
We should, and this is the one that gets everyone crazy online, and I'll get a lot of attention, no doubt, on X for saying this, but we should explore possible uses of Afghan frozen assets from the central bank.
Even if it's just the interest secured, we should explore possibilities to fund these big, big events like the Vienna process, so we can have a serious dialogue about the future of Afghanistan without including the Taliban.
There's billions of dollars in frozen assets from the Afghan Central Bank.
We definitely don't want to give this to the Taliban.
And in securing interests, maybe we should think about how we can use this to advance U.S. national interests.
And the same way we're having the same discussion with Europe on how we can do this to help Ukraine with Russian frozen assets.
And then finally, I would love for the U.S. government to issue a formal invitation to Ahmed Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front.
He is an inspiring individual who comes from an inspiring family of resistance and freedom fighters going back to the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
And I just think just generally, it would be great for Americans to hear his opinions, his views.
And I would love for an invitation to be extended to him to visit Washington, to visit other cities in America, so we can hear a different point of view about the future of Afghanistan.
Thank you.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
Well, if we could all just say thank you to all of our wonderful panelists for being here and sharing their insights with us.
unidentified
Thank you.
jeremy hunt ▲ ● ▼
Well, please follow us.
You can follow us on social media as well as go tohudson.org to stay stay tuned for new events that we have coming up.
unidentified
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, good to see you.
Good to see you.
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