Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. So, i think to answer that question, its important that you understand the nature of the corruption thats in afghanistan. So corruption is like a disease and there are different kinds of disease, all right . One of the problems with using the term corruption is its this big banner that can mean anything from sort of low level shakedowns at check points all the way to a cleptocratic form of government. Low level is illegal and not tolerated by the system is actually very easy to deal with. Corruption by sort of individuals that when the larger context of the system is corruption is not tolerable, you can eventually put enough pressure on those individuals and deal with the problem. When its in a sector like the ministry, thats an even more aggressive form of the disease. It could be treatable if you isolate it. If youre a crelecleptocracy. The difference between patronage is that money flows from the top down and loyalty goes up. And in a cleptopracy, goes up to power brokers in kabul and often to offshore banks. At one point, 5 billi 5 billion and license what you need to do to make current profit is what flows down, so some of the reports ive gotten from afghan officials is Police Chiefs for very lucrative tier one provinces can go for several Million Dollars. Up to 3 billion was one recent one. A Border Police commander, generally, 50,000 or so. One person who works in the ministry of interior told me that theres actually a cue to become chief of police and helmet and after 500,000, youll be the chief of police for a certain period of time with the expectation youll turn a Million Dollar profit. Not everybody plays this game, but too many of them do. This also happens with generals for about 100,000 or so. When everybody is playing this game, your number one incentive or enough people are playing this game, your number one incentive is not Good Governance and not winning the war. Its feeding the system to turn the profit because youre expected to move money up and thats also a way you take care of your family. So how would you apply additionalty to this situation . Let me give you two specifics. One is the business of promoting people who fight and whose units are efficient. That is something where we have enough insight to know whether its happening or not happening. Its going to be much harder to do than to say but where we have the mechanisms and advisory to put continuing levels of pressure. Second thing is we have to pick the egregious targets and frankly, there has to be a measure of discussion. But then, we can put very specific pressure on individuals or on two. But thats more art than science. That isnt going to be described in a policy. Thats going to work out the ground. I think hes exactly right. Theres been discussions in kabul with the Afghan Government and Resolute Support that the military command about essentially having review boards to assess performance of provincial governors or court commanders and for those that are not, you know, performing, then that review board would make some sort of determination that would be binding. So theres been discussion about that. Things like that, i think, would be very, very helpful. Because rod is exactly right. You cant just dismantle it overnight. There are way too many people too powerfully invested. The first Vice President is resisting turning over some for questioning for, you know, for an alleged abusive act against another afghan. Until theres a system in place to review performance, any International Community actually willing to suspend or cut off funding when lines get crossed. For instance, a Corruption Perception index every year. Afghanistan has been in the top three from 2008, i believe, until not good. Until 2016. I think yemen and libya have actually gotten worse, but thats an index we can use but i think both when corruption is not getting better, when a performance on the index is not getting better, then theres penalties. When performance exceeds expectation, i think theres a bonus. So i think weve got to do some, i think weve got to do some things to make conditionality very, to depersonalize it and objective as possible and i think rons also exactly right that we have to have a sense of who are the spoilers and blockers and we have got to Work Together with the Afghan Government in ways that help reduce the spoiling and blocking activity. So im going to ask one more question. The Peace Process. You described a process that is somewhat different than the normal thing. We think of a Peace Process, people coming to a negotiating table, sitting down, coming up with confidence Building Measures and gradually moves towards a final negotiation but over a number of years. Love to hear your sense of 10 to 15 years. Thats a discouraging number in this conflict. Is that based on case studies and experience . Where did that come from and secondly, how does this process get started . Is it completely sequential or first have to change the battlefield conditions or things we can start doing now to lay the conditions . How do you see this . So, yes. Im making a distinction between a peace deal which is get a bunch of elites around a table and try to make a Peace Agreement and a Peace Process thats very gradual, very deliberate that starts with very basic, very broad confidencebuildi confidenceBuilding Measures and over time, those confidence Building Measures can become more concrete, can become more comprehensive to the point of which youre then able to begin making agreements about battlefield activities. When you look at the Peace Process in northern ireland, for instance, rather than being a gradual and deliberate process, that once it began, gaining some traction, took about a decade or more. Columbia in the Peace Process, also had been very gradual, very deliberate and the reason why i think this is really important is, look, in 1992 in the accords after the afghan communist government fell, the seven parties tried to essentially create a peace deal that carved up the Afghan Government. Amongst them. And that dwan a civil war abega. And another and made things worse. So when the United States is working on in 2013 opening this Taliban Office and none of the preparatory work was made in afghanistan and Building Support for the idea of a Taliban Office and a Peace Process. The upbeat outrage in afghanistan was significant in june of 2013 and i think, i hope the United States learns a lesson from that and stops rushing to take a very deliberate action. And there is a lot of polarization in afghanistan, naturally, between, you know, the Afghan Government and the taliban and various groups in between. Frankly, i dont see a peace deal that is, first of all, sustainable. And second of all, if we tried, it would probably make the conflict worse. To underscore two points. One, peace deal has to be afghan led, not american. Every time we look like were urgent for peace, what we set up is a process where taliban try to see if they can get more from us that be tn the afghans. Thats a losers game. So it has to be afghan led and ghani wants to do it anyway but our support has to be support for her so just bite your fingers, set up. And then second to recognize that fighting and negotiating our parallel tracks. Americans get really hung up with this idea that these are alternatives. They are not alternatives. You do them side by side and the clearest formulation of that i heard was from the late israeli prime minister. Was asked once, how can you negotiate with these terrorists . And his answer was, i have to negotiate as though there were no terrorism and i have to fight terrorism as though there were no negotiations. And in other words, you dont let yourself be put into a position where you weaken your fighting because youre having negotiations, even though they havent gone anywhere, nor do you get yourself into a position where you cant negotiate because you havent won the war yet. You have to pursue both in parallel and your paper makes a really important point we didnt discuss which is the need for a third party voice to work between people because its hard enough to do this thing at all but hardest enough with the parties at the table because any idea you put forth, it appears to be a potential concession. And you have a third party who works back and forth between parties, then they can try out ideas and you can, whatever party you are, americans, afghans, taliban, you can give an answer but its not negotiated or one youre responsible for committing to at a table. And that is a hugely necessary process, probably required. A lot of times, just to talk about what youre going to talk about before you actually get to talking about goenegotiations. Were going to open it up for questions. When i call on you, tell us who you are and actually ask us a question. Do we have mikes . Okay, this gentleman right here. Doug brooks at the Afghan Chamber of commerce. If youre going to bolster the Afghan Military and police, were talking more engagement, possibly mentors. Again, with them, do we have any buyin from, say, nato allies . Would they be willing to do that sort of thing . A longterm process to take casualties at a fairly significant rate, again, is this sustainable . Its a great question. And i dont know to what extent those conversations have developed with nato partners. Certainly different nato partners come with different caveats and different restrictions on what their military forces can do and so this could affect their ability to provide the sort of up close and personal advising that were talking about. So i think this is a process that needs to. But it doesnt necessarily mean a lot of casualties because if i understand the report correctly and what general nicholson is talking about, broadening the advisory presence is first of all, covering each core. Right now, we dont cover every core and its periodically or occasionally depending on need at the brigade level. This is not the vietnam advisor at the Company Level or b battalion level in the field and what your understanding is of working and not working, it does not seem to me that that level of rising would lead particularly to much in the way of casualties. Yes. Right here. Marvin from the lee institute. Chris, given the description, right on here about what is the lay of the land. Im surprised you didnt come up with a fourth option. Which uses some of the same ingredients that certainly your third one did. I find difficult about the third, first of all, it goes on for a long time. And we have to seriously ask the question, given the trajectory of things now, whether afghanistan has 10 or 15 years. The fourth option that i have in mind is not predicated on there being eventually sitting down around the table and coming to some kind of resolution here. But taking what you said here about building confidence, both in the military, presumably, the Economic System has to be able to lay out there the incentives of people to want to identify, but also, the political reconciliation among the political types. Why cant we see our position there then as essential for all the reasons youve said but essentially, its our buying time but our time, certainly not as long a stretch as you put out here, but 3, 5, 7 years. Let me just come to my point, if i can. That would be great. And that is, the process is not one of a grand bargain, even if its down the road. But of reintegration rather than reconciliation with the taliban. Its one in which what we do by making gains here is to begin this process of peeling off commanders and that in the end, it marginalizes the hardcore and for that reason, we get the best of all outcomes. Sure. And theres actually a little bit of that in the paper, but the bottom line is that theres been an aspiration to encourage taliban leaders to defect for a very, very long period of time. And today, there is one. Defected from the taliban after being shot a number of times in i think 2010 or so. So its not realistic and although theyre factious in the taliban and theres emerging research on this from bill farrell, actually, where although the taliban leaders, sort of mid level leaders are not satisfied with their leadership, their senior leadership, theyre not willing to defect. The taliban brand name to them is really important so the defect model hasnt worked. I think what the process where you essentially look at this in three major layers, the local level, absolutely important which gets us some of the dealing with the local grievances and may be getting people off the battlefield that way but youve also got to have a process that deals at the national and International Level and if we announce a timeline, if were going to do this another 5 to 7 years and then were out, once you announce a timeline, you lose your leverage. A contest of wills, any war is, that matters. Thats why we took this approach. Brian at usa. It was mentioned before the tension between the long open ended commitment and the conditionality and, you know, when you have conditionality, you need to have a real threat on the table. Willing to take something away and be willing to follow through on that, and so what very specific things should we be willing to take away that doesnt undermine that first overall commitment to longterm support . The idea that we will lay out some grand vision of what we will take away is now a conspicuous failure. Its what we have tried repeatedly in brussels and tokyo in various agreements. And we ended up framing it generally and then we wont carry through. Its very practical. I understand it. But it doesnt work. Its why i think you need a process which is, because it doesnt work, its not credible. So we end up with a need for a bigger threat because we didnt perform on the last one and thats less manage. So what i would like to see is far less sketching out what youre going to take away. Far more leaving it up to people in kabul to find ways of exacting pain on an individual basis and a targeted basis. Thats much more art than science but i really think, you have to hurt individuals, not systems. Most of what we want to take away hurts subpoenystems and le untouched the individuals motivated for corruption. As attractive as the theory is, and its got to be actually less specific but less framed and more specific in its application. We can do that, including one thing id like to see with a certain number of people is getting the irs to go after those who have significant american holdings. We would just love to see occasion afghan politicians finding their vacation in the u. S. Has been interrupted by a soldier in court. We could do that. We have some of these tactics were not using but thats targeting individual and you have to select things on a political basis, not trying to frame everything in broad systemic terms. Very difficult for us. Its not the way we like to operate. I think its the only way that will work. Theres a good article on international security. A couple, maybe one issue ago on how the United States used conditionality effectively in el salvador and gets to some of the issues that ron was discussing. Tom . Hi, tom bowman with npr. Thanks for doing this. The taliban gained 15 more ground over the past year according to general nicholson. They still enjoy safe havens in pakistan, something people have been complaining about for years going back to mike mullen and theres a crop of poppi in helmand that fuels the taliban and corruption. In practical terms, how do you deal with all three . Nicholson wants a few thousand more trainers down at brigade level. I mean, can you push back the taliban with just guys at level and the the hikani network in pakistan because that is not, people have been talking about it, if i had a dollar for every time someone said that, i could retire right now. And the poppy crop, i was there in the spring. What do you do about the poppy, do you eradicate it like the old days or basically buy it up and then sell it as medical morphine in a healthy which economy . Thats a great question. Id love the answer but its your report, go ahead. Ill jump on the pakistan. You go with pakistan and ill go with a couple of others. So, in an ideal world, the United States would be able to put enough pressure on pakistan that they would turn against the Afghan Taliban and the insurgency would be over and thats been a demand from afghans that we do that. And theyre mystified as to why the United States allows this to happen. Why we designate pakistan as a major nonnato ally and give them 7. 24 billion a year in aid and assistance which then enables them to use other money to support the taliban thats conducting attacks that are killing american soldiers and Afghan Soldiers and civilians. Its very frustrating. But i think as ron mentioned, weve got to figure out, got to make a distinction between whats most desirable andrealis. Even when pakistan was under very aggressive, very comprehensive sanctions in the 90s because of the nuclear program, they were supporting an insurgency in kashmir. We could do that again and money will still make their way to the taliban. So the idea, the expectation that if the United States could put enough pressure on pakistan to go to war with the Afghan Taliban is just not realistic and thats why in this report, i said, look. Your most likely favorable and durable outcome is going to come through a Peace Process and what we have to do is recognize, were not go