Ali Latifi details the Taliban's rapid takeover, attributing it to severe ANSF corruption, inadequate jungle gear, and a flawed February 29, 2020, Trump-era peace deal that promised May withdrawal. He explains how this agreement secured international backing from China and Russia after the Taliban assured them of regional stability, while local forces surrendered upon seeing Taliban officials with foreign leaders like Xi Jinping. Ultimately, the collapse reveals a pre-ordained failure where U.S. planning errors and diplomatic miscalculations left thousands stranded despite evident military dominance long before the final fall. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Afghanistan Occupation and Peace00:07:28
What up, people?
Sheltie here, and you guys are about to listen to a clip from our weekly Patreon episode.
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Here is the exclusive clip.
Apparently, there's something going down in Afghanistan.
I don't know.
People have been talking about it a lot.
So, we figured why not talk to a journalist who's actually on the ground.
Okay, we've got boots on the ground or sandals, maybe in your case.
We have with us journalist, scholar, and verified Twitter account.
The only reason I replied, Ali Latifi, okay, who is in Kabul right now.
He is in Kabul right now.
He is looking at our set.
The only thing he commented on was the gold AK-47.
So, you know shit is going down in Afghanistan.
Somehow he's smiling and he is cheerful and he looks like an Afghan George Lopez.
Welcome to the show.
Welcome to the show.
So, obviously, we have so many questions.
Please tell us just right now.
You are, you were born and raised in Kabul, correct?
I was born in Kabul.
I was raised in California.
Okay, so you're born in Kabul, raised in California.
We have so many questions, but I just want to start breaking this down.
Please give us an understanding of what life was like under U.S. occupation and then what has changed in the last couple of days.
So, again, everybody listening right now, he is in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The Taliban has just taken control of pretty much the entire country.
They have taken control of Kabul.
They are operating and controlling the media, any military forces, and everything that's going on.
So, one, what was life like during U.S. occupation?
It's okay, it's a country of like, and I know it's kind of a cliche, but it's a country of like really, really, really large contrasts, right?
Yeah.
So, you know, you will see a fancy high-rise building.
You know, there's one across from me that has a dome on it that looks like the U.S. Capitol.
You know, there's a new steakhouse and like sports lounge that opened up only less than a year ago that they both cost like $2 million to build.
But then at the same time, on the way there, you see homeless heroin addicts, you know, just on the street.
Or when like in the winter, when it rains, you know, I live in like the downtown commercial area above these two big banks.
But when it rains, unless a car like literally backs up into the entrance of the building, I can't get out because the water will be up to my knees.
So, so it's, it, it, it's, it's very, there has been a lot of change and a lot of advancement, obviously, since the Taliban, but also that doesn't mean anything.
Right.
Because the Taliban came to power in 1996 after a civil war.
And before that was the Soviet occupation.
So everything was destroyed.
So when in 2001, when the U.S. started their occupation, there was nothing.
It was literally zero, right?
So if you go from zero to one or zero to 10 or even zero to like 30 or 40, it's still a huge improvement, you know?
Right.
Right.
And so that's really what it was like because, you know, you would go places where the nearest hospital was like 40 kilometers down an unpaved road.
Right.
You know, uphill.
So if you were poor, what would you do?
You know, or where the New York school was like that.
So there are rich people there.
They were living good lives.
They were eating at steakhouses, etc., but they're incredibly poor people as well.
So that discrepancy in wealth is very difficult.
I think most Americans right now are watching what's happening and they're going, how the fuck can a terrorist organization, because that's how we see the Taliban, right?
Yes.
We hear Taliban and we're like, oh, it's no different than ISIS, no different than Al-Qaeda.
Like we think they're all synonymous, right?
And so forgive our ignorance if we don't understand if there's more of a political motive there, what's going on.
But how can a terrorist organization, right, of a bunch of dudes, right, just it seems like running around on the back of Toyota Tacomas take over an entire country in a few days?
Can you explain how that happened?
And if that is what happened, it happens because of poor planning from the U.S. side and the Avalon side.
It happens from corruption on the U.S. side and the Avalon side.
It happens because of a really smart, astute Taliban that took advantage of a situation.
It happens because of a peace deal that Trump signed with them that emboldened them and made them feel, I mean, they were victorious, but it solidified their idea of victory.
What was the peace deal that Trump signed?
So in 2020, on February 29th, 2020, Donald Trump signed a Black History Month leap year.
Donald Trump signed a peace agreement with the Taliban that basically said they were supposed to leave in May of this year.
They mean the U.S.
The U.S., right?
Sorry.
The U.S. was supposed to leave in May of this year.
And part of the agreement was that in exchange for that agreement, the Taliban would not attack U.S. or foreign soldiers or targets of any kind.
And that the U.S. would agree to draw down their forces to 100% and allow push for the Taliban to have 5,000 of their prisoners released.
So that was it, you know, like the Taliban, let's be honest, were already winning militarily even before that.
But this just, this was like the icing on the cake.
You know, this set it for them.
And they were like, look, we got an agreement from the U.S., you know?
I mean, it seems.
It seems to me that agreement is just, here's the keys, it's your country now.
That's exactly.
Because then, then, then, you know, they were meeting with other countries in the past because in 2011, Obama approved for them to go to Doha to have like a political office where they were supposed to discuss peace.
And ever since they first got there, they were having like secret meetings with Westerners and with regional countries and Europeans and all of this.
But it wasn't like, it was never like, you know, fully formal and recognized and, you know, made public.
You know, it was still very hush-hush.
Diplomatic Missions and Agreements00:02:39
Right.
After the peace deal, the Taliban went on a world tour.
Yeah, they were emboldened.
Yeah, and they were everywhere and they were going on this diplomatic mission and assuring different countries that when we come to power, like they told China, you don't have to worry about the Uyghurs.
We won't, even though they consider themselves to be an Islamic movement, they turn their back on the Uyghurs.
You know, they told Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, like, you know, we won't let these armed groups from your country into our country.
They told Russia, you don't have to worry about those Central Asian armed groups.
You don't have to worry about Daesh or ISIS.
So they made all these deals with all these other countries.
And so all these other countries are supporting them becoming the reign of power, the ruling party, because it's beneficial for these other countries.
Ah, so the way the media is portraying this back home is that the Taliban just completely rinsed the Afghan national forces at ANF, it's called ANSF.
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Corruption and Taliban Rule00:06:48
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The Afghan National Forces at ANF it's called ANSF.
ANSF, right?
And in reality, there was no pushback.
In reality, this was the agreement.
It was once America's out of here, we're taking over.
And everybody knew that.
So we're pretending as if there was some war going on the last few days when it's all bullshit.
Everybody knew exactly what was going to happen.
Part of it.
I mean, there was a war and there was a pushback, but the pushback came from security forces that had already been suffering for so long and didn't have the support that they needed.
You know, I've been saying this everywhere.
I've been reporting on this since 2011.
I've been going to the provinces.
I've been meeting with people.
I remember meeting police and soldiers who had to buy their own boots.
You know, I remember talking to police and soldiers who said they didn't have food to eat, who hadn't been paid in months in some of the most dangerous provinces in the country.
You know, and then also they're serving areas where there really isn't necessarily much development or advancement.
And, you know, like there were cases where soldiers would die and their family would have to go and get the dead bodies somehow and either bring them on the back of a taxi or get one of the private airlines to allow them to charter it for free.
So Loyalty to the ANS, ANSF, because the ANS.
The government was super corrupt, right?
And so they weren't getting, you know, like they were asking for weapons.
They weren't getting it.
They were asking for support and backup when they came under attack.
They weren't getting it.
There were instances before in the past when districts, provinces were about to fall, but the people around the president were lying to him and saying, oh, no, it's not that bad.
And only when it was teetering on the edge, did he find out the truth and then do something.
Let me ask you a question real quick.
You talked about how there was a lot of corruption.
And the U.S. Biden, in a speech yesterday, said they were funding the Afghan military.
What was happening to the money?
Do you have any idea?
Obviously, they didn't get it.
There was corruption.
Where was it going?
Do we know?
Contractors, contractors, and subcontractors, right?
Because everything was contracted out to all kinds of, you know, like people within the Ministry of Defense and within the Ministry of Interior were corrupt.
You know, they from the top were skimming.
They were making deals with their friends and getting cuts themselves, you know, and finding like the cheapest sort of alternatives or the easiest alternatives.
Like there was investigation.
So there's a U.S. body called SIGAR, the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
And they basically have, for the last almost decade, have just been going and just evaluating all of the spending in the U.S.
And they found that they spent something like tens of millions of dollars on camouflage uniforms that do not suit the Afghanistan environment at all.
Do you get what I'm saying?
They're made for like a jungle scenario or something.
Yeah, like for Vietnam left over in the 70s.
Yeah, yeah, like Vietnam or the Amazon or something.
This is interesting.
So there's all this corruption that exists within the regime in power that the U.S. is backing.
And because of that corruption, the people of Afghanistan don't feel any loyalty, right?
Yeah, very little.
Or they feel very little loyalty.
So they're like, I'm not going to risk my life fighting for these people that aren't even taking care of us, especially if they're out of here and I'm no longer going to be getting paid.
Like, it's one thing if you're getting stipends, you're getting food, they're keeping you alive.
But if the U.S. and the people that are essentially backing the NSF are saying, we're out of here, then they're like, what the fuck am I fighting for?
And at the same time, you had Taliban showing up to these districts with pictures of them standing next to like foreign officials, including the U.S. officials, and saying, well, you know, we're going to get the country in a few weeks anyways.
And they already promised us this district.
So you might as well just lay down your work.
Oh my God.
So they're going to these places.
These are like remote villages.
They're not having access to the internet.
They're not watching fucking CI.
And they see a picture of the Taliban guy next to Xi Ji Ping or the Taliban guy next to like the British crime or something like that.
And they're like, oh, I guess the Taliban is ruling.
We don't even need a fight.
We're just going to walk up.
This is fascinating.
None of this is being reported over here, by the way.
Yeah, when you said that we were losing over there, essentially, the Taliban was winning militarily.
In my mind, I was like, really?
I always thought we were kicking the shit out of these people over there.
And they were just kind of like scattered.
If you were kicking the shit out of them, if you were kicking the shit out of them, there would be no reason for the U.S. to have this visa fiasco where they set up these visas to get interpreters who worked with the U.S. military out and then later journalists and prominent women and human rights workers and all of that, which I kind of have to say is like that whole program was a lot of bullshit.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, like it was just super convoluted.
It didn't make any sense.
You know, people couldn't get into direct contact.
Like I imagined it would be like a portal or something, right?
Like remember when you used to apply to university, like there was a website where you submitted all your documents and you went through all this BS, you know, just, I thought it would be something, it's nothing like, it's just like a website that says, do this, do this, do this, but it doesn't tell you how to do it.
And it doesn't specifically tell you who to get in contact with or how to ask questions.
There was nothing like that.
Right.
And then you had people who, you know, let's say they worked with the U.S. 10 years ago or five years ago, and they have to find a U.S. citizen, like the highest ranking U.S. citizen they were in contact with to vouch for them.
And so when they would find these people, they would be like, yo, I haven't worked for these people in years.
I don't even know if I have the authority.
Plus, I don't know who I'm supposed to send this letter to or how I'm supposed to do it.
So there's nothing clear about this.
And at the same time, like I said, like if they were taking the shit out of the Taliban, then why did you need to make these, my parents are going to be so mad and cussing?
Like, why did you need to make these stupid visas that, you know, like, essentially left thousands of people stranded And then gave them false