Taking over the city of fallujah and my other question is how did you end up winning the trust of the city in order to change it and make it more prosperous even though isis is taking over the city . I think for a lot of a lot of americans they sea ice is taking over iraq and hear about the growth of al qaeda affiliates and theres a sense of what can we do about it . Is this something we just have to live with is a permanent condition of our lives . One reason i wanted to write the book is to show that success is possible. Its not by accident. Its a process that takes place. Theres learning that has to take place as well. This is not an intractable problem. You can do it but it requires local partnerships. The problem is so much of how we remember war or misremember wars purely about combat. Its not how wars are fundamentally finished in this type of work very. I thats the big take away i would say. I would like to add on that thats one of the reasons we wrote this. To get people to understand when the United States military left iraq for the most part in 2009 and 2010 we left on good terms. Things were very quiet. Four iraqi was pretty quiet and the job we were given to do had been achieved. You hear nowadays we lost the whole thing and a lot of that has to do with the way people felt about it to begin with which wasnt good but the job was done. One of the things, i couldve walked up to Prime Minister melekian said that you do this and this you are going to have a problem and he did every single one of them. Which was absolutely amazing that is what i think with whats going to happen here. One thing youll notice and ken pollack from brookings has talked about this a lot. They havent taken over any shia areas. They cant. They are not Strong Enough to do that. Like mosul, twothirds of mosul is shia. The only areas that have taken over were the areas they were sympathetic to because they hated the Central Government because they accuse them of being shia and iranian. They preyed on television and got some equipment. That doesnt mean they know how to use it. They waved the flags around and cut peoples heads off and the tide is turning i think. I suspect this is going to go back with a National Unity government i think its going to go back to being what it was before this started a year or year and a half ago. How are you guys able to win the trust of the city of fallujah during that time . Part of it was the discussion we had with him. Over time they had seen how the u. S. Military dealt with them in the city in a professional and balanced way. I have more impact than i thought it would. In discussions that was one of the things they talk about. It did mean it like this. 30 years under Saddam Hussein they were told we were the bogeyman. They didnt have to like us us. They had to respect his work with us and thats what they did. I dont know if you could say they really trusted us. They knew we were leaving because we told him that and him that and we show them out. They knew the other folks couldnt be around when they left because theyd have what they have now and they clearly did not want that. Also bill was there for two tours and some have done multiple tours. One soldier did two tours. You become local on the scene and everyone knows you. When you are living the problems everyday as bill did for two tours you know the city better than some of the residents. It starts to become part of your own life and your own hometown in a weird way. As part of dealing fairly with people and honestly it will take you far. Sometimes thats an unusual characteristic. There are other small things to build trust. When he you do something small word gets around quickly. One of the city councilmembers came up to me and said his neighbors son had been arrested by the previous unit and really was not a troublemaker and could i get him back . He had gotten lost in the iraqi prison system. It took me a while but i got them back. I brought them to his house very emotional scene. You cant begin to calculate the effect it has. It didnt take that much effort on my part. There was a combination of all those things going on and a lot of the stuff that dan was doing to help reinforce push the mir out in front, the city Council Getting them motivated and working when they were under threat. We went to his City Council Meeting where dan and i were the only two people that showed up. So it takes persistence and they saw that in us. Another question . She is over there. Pacification is a very complicated process. Empowering people is just chapter 1. The question is how you internalize changes in the population that will last after the u. S. Soldier evacuates. It seems to me that marines and military force in this process is almost unfair. It really requires specialists that know the language, that know the culture which is very different because in the middle east its important that the concept of honor and shame is much more powerful than money. And also to be the school. These people have to be school schooled. Its a variant of psychological warfare. So since the involvement of the United States in the middle east is not going to be shortterm likely, does anybody think about training a special force that will be attached, and you know part of the forces that have come to these countries and do a job that is a specialty job together to enhance and synergize by this shia military of the marines . The u. S. Army special forces is organized around different regions of the soldiers can focus on that part of the world, get that language and training cultural training and thats good in terms of working with local Security Forces forces. On the civil side state department usaid has people staying in the country for multiple years so they have, they eventually get to some wisdom about the place. The state department often has a challenge with manning austere locations with the kind of people who have the skill sets. They also send many of their people to foreign institutes. One of the things we have in afghanistan called the afghan hands program. It was an attempt to get out of this relentless careerism aboveboard promotions of getting people to eventually get out of the country or the region and really focus on afghanistan for multiple tours of language training. The problem is that to the war in afghanistan of a certain size to slightly bent personnel rules to have the program created. Right now the institutions are reverting back to their normal resting place which is to say good for you have for having been an afghan ham an afghan ham but your an afghan ham but your career is done thank you very much are you very much or you would post it to someplace where you will never get the next promotion. Places like iraq and somalia and the sedges of empire we think they need these types of deep subject Matter Expert piece but also the relationships. Most of these countries are based on relationships not in formal situations we have in the west. I think in yemen we need a yemeni hands program. We will be there for a long ti time. Back to one of your first comments about whether its fair not. In many ways especially when theres complete lack of security who else is going to do it . Thats part of the issue is you have to establish Security First but one of the things we emphasize with the marines and soldiers as we have have to deal that handed off to someone. Our presence there is an antibody and we understand that clearly. This is what i meant. I didnt mean to take away any. No, no but you hear that echoed in some of the marines and soldiers, this isnt fair. What is the enemy get to do things that we dont. Well we are not them. So why do we have to do this . Why cant we have more state department folks state department folks and folks from other agencies in your . They are allergic to getting shot at. Those are the kinds of things when you dont have the security you have to have something in their that calms things down and inclination has to be we need to build a hand this off to someone. Somebody else has to come in here and do this for the longterm to get things calm down because we know we dont belong. I hope that answers your question. [applause] thank you both dan and bill. If you want to stick aroun hassan abbas is a professor at the National Defense university and author of the the taliban revival about the reemergence of the taliban in afghanistan after u. S. And nato invasion of 2001. He talked about his book at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for about an hour and a half. Welcome to the session on the resurgence of the taliban at the Carnegie Endowment. We are happy to welcome you here this morning and i must tell you from the very beginning this is cosponsored with your organization in this. What this session is about is the launching of this book, the taliban revival violence and extremism on the pakistaniafghanistan frontier. This is indeed a timely book, or maybe not so much a timely book. Ideally i dont know because we arrived at the end of the cycle. This cycle is the cycle of western intervention in afghanistan. This is definitely not the end of the arab complex. Unless we believe our own propaganda this is not likely to be so in the months to come. Since the end of 2001, a lot of people have died in afghanistan. All of that was the taliban. I know that the focus these days in the country is mostly about the election and what is going wrong in this election. It will escape none of you that what we see actually is a resurgence of the taliban in both the south and east. None of this can be really surprised since there was mass information both places. The point is not whether this is the case. We know whats going on a retry to know whats going on. We certainly dont know everything. The question is whether does this mean that almost 13 years of war in afghanistan, additional war in afghanistan has served no purpose . Has the taliban been eradicated . Definitely not. Does that mean that the war was a success . Thats definitely a different story. This is what this book in many ways is about. How did we get into the situation we are in now . How did we get into a situation that everybody in 2002s thought had been more or less eradicated or what was left of it was essentially residual. How is it that this movement has come up again and this is what this book by hassan abbas is about. Im happy to say that this is an attempt to bring an objective perspective looking at a different angle. This is a threedimensional aspect of the book which in my opinion is of interest. The role of kabul is something that is discussed. The role of western policy and again this is something which is slightly less discuss. Today we tend to say Mission Accomplished or so we would like to believe. For that matter we are delighted today to welcome the authors hassan abbas and let me say for most of you, for many of you at least he doesnt need an introduction. Hes a professor of the department of regional and analytical studies at the National University college of International Security affairs in washington d. C. He is also Senior Adviser at the asia society. He previously served as the distinguished professor at Columbia University and the sitting adviser at the Belfour Center for science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of government. To me what is more important is he is a very prolific writer and many of you remember his first book, pakistans extremism. With those words i will not stand between you and the speaker. We will ask a song to please come up and present your book. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and its a great privilege and honor to be here and to see many friends and for so many of us to be able to find time. In the beginning i mentioned frederick is an old friend and his work has affected many of us. Its bold and courageous and scholars of south asian studies. Thithis is a newer organizationa think tank and Advocacy Group and bloodgood and indifferent thing about this organization is its primarily pakistani americans but benefiting from expertise in the guidance of many scholars of south asian descent and many of the other scholars. They believe in making pakistan a progressive state and also building u. S. Pakistan relations so thank you very much. I wish the u. The best of your luck in your endeavors. To give you first the main arguments of my book and also briefly talk about my recent visit which was kind of a book to her. I landed in pakistan for 15 da days. It was an opportunity to go to iraq. I had the opportunity to speak to parliamentarians and Law Enforcement agencies. Some of the things that i heard and its not that im just mentioning iraq, the linkages between the Pakistani Taliban and this new militant group which have built a new state, its very interesting. Some of the slogans that it started coming up on the streets in iraq are in language. We will talk briefly about some of those linkages as well. First and foremost i must add this is also about my background other than me academic background and his face. I had a great honor to serve as a Police Officer in pakistans tribal areas between 1995 and 1997. Some of my ideas and talks are based upon that. One of the understandings with my publisher was who has greatly helped me in to have some of the stories and ideas. I have many anecdotes in the book on that. What i want to begin with i had friends who lived around many cities around the world but my experience with pashtuns for both afghan and pakistan make up 80 of all taliban. My experience living among the pashtuns and im not pashtuns as i have not seen as many as hospitable and friendly as the pashtuns. At the same time i have found the pashtuns but they are principles are very religious. In their daytoday affairs they are not only pragmatic but quite similar. I served as an assistant superintendent to the schools in 1997 and said 98. It was taken over by the militants who were beheading and killing people on the streets before we have become aware of this phenomena phenomenon elsewhere. I remember a few years before this that in pakistan in those days and im not talking about the 1970s. This is late 1990s but if you want to hear good music and see the sights have a drink perhaps or whatever you smoke if you want to do that, subbot is the best place. It really changed and radicalized. This brings me to the pashtuns. Having seen them as hospitable and very secular and i can mention only one name abdul for a con. I dont think that any pashtun leader or pakistani leader was so close to gandhi the great indian leader. They used to call him frontier gandhi because of his secular ideas. Despite being a religious man. What was the biggest for me was having seen it up close what was the extent that they produced and are producing unfortunately 70 to 80 of all taliban. What had gone wrong . So in search of that question i started working on my book. We have in the United States and the rest of the world are familiar with the phrase afghan in pakistan or afghanistan however if you start picking up the history books you will find most books of history are in the political arena. Focus on the overall south Asian Affairs a competitive political study mostly on pakistan and bangladesh india of course and some of the other countries. You can find a book which is comparing pakistan and afghanistan. This is the 9 11 construct. For security reasons and political elite reasons the focus was on these but theres not enough academic study or historical treatment of the subject. That was another purpose. I realized if i wanted to talk more about pashtuns and that is how im constantly pronouncing it different because in pakistan the call at pashtuns and their side of the pashtuns is called mike pashtuns. The first challenge was pakistanis is a 60 country and was built in 1700s, very different ideals and different ethnic factors and tribalism played a major role in the creation of what we know today is afghanistan. Whereas in pakistan it was of course a product of a very Secular Progressive Movement led by all those leaders. The 15 most important pakistani leaders and political founders of pakistan. You would be amazed. They were from all different ethnic backgrounds, different sectarian backgrounds all very secular. It would seem if you looked at those from the 1940s it would be difficult for you to comprehend how a state whose own founders and the people who came up with the idea for pakistan how was it drifted into a very different direction . That too is a phenomena that i try to answer the question how that drift had taken place. That was just to begin with the larger context of what we are looking out. There are five major factors that i would like to mention in my findings as well. First and foremost is the particular need for us to understand the different ways in which the taliban and Pakistani Taliban developed, how they were groomed in some ways, what was the genesis of these organizations . My net finding is that today Afghan Taliban, the old guard of the Afghan Taliban seems to be quite open to negotiations. I would not say they have gone toward the left but they have migrated quite a bit and they are looking for opportunities and openings to negotiate. But these Afghan Taliban and maybe some of the other associates then my understanding the old guard Afghan Taliban have lost control of the insurgency taking place in afghanistan today. This is the second which has links with criminal groups and various sectarian groups as well as well as those who really believe that the foreign presence in afghanistan was something they have to fight. They were not necessarily taliban or militants but that was the considered view. That is what is in their. That is what their tribal