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It’s Our Country, We Want it Back

April 21, 2023
Notes
Transcript

While Eliot is on travel Eric welcomes LTG Sami Sadat whose poignant op-ed in the New York Times in August 2021 about the fall of Afghanistan described his personal feelings of betrayal by the US. He is a major figure in the National Geographic documentary Retrograde now airing on Disney+. They discuss the Biden Administration’s recent “Interim Report on Lessons Learned from the Afghanistan Withdrawal” and the contrast between it and the report of the Special Inspector General on Afghanistan, the relative responsibility of the Trump and Biden Administrations, the flaws in the Doha Agreement and the role that contractors played in sustaining Afghan National Security Forces. They also discuss the current humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan and the country’s future prospects.

Lt. Gen Sami Sadat’s 2021 Op-Ed:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html

Biden Administration Interim Report the Afghanistan Withdrawal:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/US-Withdrawal-from-Afghanistan.pdf

SIGAR Report on the Afghan Security Forces Collapse:

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/evaluations/SIGAR-23-16-IP.pdf

Retrograde Official Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CufeaxpsTTQ

1208 Foundation Website:

https://www.1208foundation.org/

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:07

    Welcome to Shield of the Republic. A podcast sponsored by The Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to proposition articulated by Walter Liptman during World War two that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman. I’m a contributor at the Bulwark, counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. My normal partner in this enterprise, Elliot Cohen, the Arleigh Burke Chair and Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Robert E.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:44

    Ozgood professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies is on travel. So I am so lowing today with our very distinguished guest, Lieutenant General Sami Soodat of the Afghan National Security Forces General SEDOT may be known to some of our listeners for having written extremely powerful and impassioned op ed in the New York Times several weeks after the fall of Kabul in twenty twenty one. And he also is a major figure in the Will Heinemann documentary retrograde, which our listeners can see streaming on Disney plus which accounts for the fall of of Afghanistan focusing on General Sidoti’s unit and his special forces partners in the US. It’s a searing documentary, which I hope our listeners will take the time to watch in its entirety, very, very important, I think, to watch it. Lieutenant General Sudhakar was a, if I’m not mistaken, graduate of the United Kingdom Defense Academy as as well as the Kings College program in war studies.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:58

    And we’re delighted to have you join us
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:00

    today. Thank you for having me here, mister Edelman. And I look forward to our conversation today.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:07

    I want to start by talking a little bit about some current events. I do want to, as we move on in a conversation, talk about what you’re doing in the United States, where you’re currently on tour and talk a little bit about the future. But I think first, we should probably focus a little on the past you know, not not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration released an interim report on its findings about what happened in Afghanistan in twenty twenty one and the collapse of the Afghan national security forces. This comes in the wake of a long report by the special inspector general on Afghanistan for the US that examined the collapse of the Afghan national security forces. I would say that Biden administration report to congress, the twelve pages interim report, is a kind of far ago of self justification.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:08

    It is a a lot of finger pointing at the Trump administration. But some of that finger pointing is in fact, valid as you yourself acknowledge general in your New York Times op ed. So let’s start there. Let’s start with Trump administration’s DOJ agreement with the Taliban. From your point of view as a commander in the field, What did you think of the agreement when you heard about it?
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:36

    What was the impact of the agreement? And what
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:38

    is your assessment of that agreement and the manner in which it was carried out. Thank you very much. I think the agreement was flawed. I think the agreement lacked longevity. I think the agreement didn’t have a guarantor that this agreement was going to be implemented with a group such as Taliban.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:00

    I think it was very naive to assume that the Taliban has changed all of a sudden into this responsible party that will do things by our standard or the way we look at it. I think The fact that the agreement was made without African government being party to it made it extremely difficult for us to understand were to actually make use of the agreement in any shape or form. So ultimately, the agreement was used by the Taliban against the United States and against the and government. And I think the agreement is the principal cause of why Afghanistan fell into the Taliban. However, I also believe that President Trump had made arrangements through the interrogators where the Taliban to maintain two U.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:53

    S. Bases and also continue to support the Afghan national Army even in the aftermath of the agreements implementation and the fact that the Taliban will be part of the Afghan government was possible and was probable it could have only happened if the United States maintained its military presence and then watch over the agreement’s implementation. I think things went completely wrong when president Biden took over and unilaterally decided to pull out troops while cutting all political, military and economic support for the Afghan army on the ground to to continue to fight. So unfortunately, we —
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:39

    our
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:39

    chance of fighting was taken away from us in an assumption that we have to give peace a chance whereby the Taliban will honor peace and so we have to honor it as well. We honored And the peace, although we were not party to it, but because our strategic partner, the United States, was, so because of that we honored the peace deal. But the peace deal was a wrapped up bomb and a nice cover handed over to the Africans only to explode in our face and also to bring – to tarnish the United States reputation globally and make that chaotic withdrawal and the collapse of Afghanistan that history will remember as a very failed political program that was mismanaged, mishandled all over the beginning and the end of how the United States troops have left. This was avoidable. This was completely avoidable if the United States government led by president Biden had spoken to us instead of speaking to the Taliban and say, hey, You know what?
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:46

    Because of our national security, whatever reasons we’re leaving Afghanistan, we would be like, okay. Thank you very much. You have done a lot for us. And we would have made measures and made planning that not only that would safeguard our country but also the withdrawal of the U. S.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:03

    Would have been completely smooth, easy, and possible. Unfortunately, it was the US’s representative, Khalil Zad continuing to plan with the Taliban, how the Americans should get out, when they should get out and and all that, and it kinda didn’t work. It cost us, me, my own entire country, and it costed the United States a hell of a reputation globally.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:29

    I wanna come back to some of these decisions the Biden administration made. Certainly, what you just said, reflects the special inspector general report on the collapse of the Afghan national security forces, which makes the point consistently that there was insufficient coordination between either the Trump or the Biden administration with the Afghan government and certainly with the Afghan national security forces. I I’d like to stay just for a minute on some of the flaws of the agreement as originally negotiated. You pointed to the fact that there was no guarantor. So the Taliban did undertake as part of this DOJ agreement several steps and they were sort of one-sided already to begin with.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:12

    Right? So The government of Afghanistan, although not party to the talks, was committed by the agreement to make a release of, I think, some five thousand Taliban prisoners. They were supposedly meant to go home to their villages and not return to fighting, but we know that in fact almost all of them immediately went back to fighting. The Taliban also undertook not to attack US forces, but of course that left implicit that they were free to attack. The Afghan national security forces.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:49

    I want to ask you whether that in and of itself was a demoralizing factor for your your troops troops under your command when they learned that this was how the US partner had agreed to proceed. That’s point point one, point point two is they were also committed to actually sit down and negotiate with the with the Afghan government, which to my knowledge, they never, never did. And then there were these side agreements that you talk about with regard to potential bases continuing in the aftermath, U. S. Bases, continuing in the aftermath of negotiations although as I understand it, none of that was ever committed to paper.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:31

    These were all or oral understandings. Is that Am I correct about that?
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:36

    Correct. I think all of the three points. The first one, if you read the DoHA agreement, again, there is no mention of Afghan government to begin with. So practically in the legal document for the first time the Afghan government was removed what they mention is the establishment of an Islamic government that is not as we call ourselves, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was like the Islamic government, as the Taliban, call it, the Islamic government, The second part was, I believe there are secret annexation to the DoHA agreement. I would believe that those entail some information about the US’s presence and access into conducting counter terrorism operations where the Taliban would deny any kind of international terrorist group access into Afghanistan.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:31

    And lastly, the impact was powerful and not only it impacted the Afghan forces, the Afghan political class and then began to understand that this government was no longer supported by the United States, it had its regional impact as well, regional countries like were were neighbors by Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, like Russia, we are neighbors with China. So it kind of opened the door for them to support the opposing force of the Afghan government being the Taliban. So all of them had played a significant role. The country of Qatar, who’s a US ally, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Taliban fighters to establish large scale fighting units thousands and thousands of men were trained equipped with military grade tactical equipment with weapons with clothes, with night vision goggles, with everything in Pakistan. And the Pakistan army was establishing these units one after another.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:39

    And they’re pushed into Afghanistan to take over the country. While not only we didn’t have the United States military support, but actually our own ammunition, like heavy artillery ammunition for our Air Force, which was using quite sophisticated rocket system and other equipments that was needed for the war was withheld intentionally by the United States in order to balance, as they call it, the battlefield. So the Taliban become a little bit powerful. We become a little bit weaker, so the both sides will make agreement. All of this was based on the assumption that in a perfect world, everything will work and ambassador Khalilza Will Saletan managing all of that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:24

    And as we saw it, it was only us, our party, that honored the agreement, and we stood by for hoping that peace will come out of this agreement. But the Taliban and the Taliban supporters, all the countries that rival the United States have had other plans, and ambassador Khalilza continued to lie to the U. S. Government cover what the Taliban were really planning and continue to lie to us, to the Afghan government, saying that the Taliban will honor the agreement and they will become part of the government. Unfortunately, we were blindsided by this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:04

    And unfortunately, our optimism has brought us into this disastrous failing of our state and the taking over of the Taliban.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:17

    You said that when the Biden administration took over and decided to proceed with the agreement without much if any real consultations. I know that Secret Podcast Lincoln spoke to president Ghani, but my impression is that it was not a consultation. It really was more or less a dick to add about what the United States was was planning to do. But you said had the US shared its plans with you, it would it would have been possible for a smoother exit by the US and and perhaps not the catastrophic collapse. That would not have been possible, however, unless the US had agreed to keep the contract support the United States provided to the Afghan national security forces for the maintenance of both rotary and fixed wing aircraft, for instance, vehicles trucks, other combat vehicles, and other equipment.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:14

    And yet that contract support was pulled out immediately Did you know right from the beginning when the Biden administration said they were leaving that the contractors would be going to? Was that ever spelled out to you or your colleagues in the ANSF, or was that just something you learned about after the fact as they started to leave BOGRAM and other other bases? To
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:37

    clarify, Eric, from two thousand and fourteen, the United States did not have combat operations inside Afghanistan. So it was the African army that was protecting the cities, the highways, the government, the population centers, the trade centers, and everything altogether. So the United States did not have a combat operation since two thousand and thirteen. We held the country from two thousand and fourteen and we kind of got better better at it. By twenty nineteen, it was a full blown Afghan army, you know, on offensive.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:11

    We took back a lot of districts. We expanded our parison of security. We depleted the Taliban units, several of them across the country as the new generation of the Afghan General officers, people like me, people like Rashal Saadad, General Mustafa Wardak, and everyone else came and took over the command of the courts. We really, really started going after the Taliban and expanding, and it was working. And we had some US Air Force Support.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:41

    We had zero US soldiers on the ground going with us and conducting operations. So it worked and it was working perfectly alright. And we hope that in the next few years as we were taking more and more responsibility from our older generation of generals, we felt like we would finish off the Taliban, but seems the fate had something else planned for us. Unfortunately, the Doha agreement arrested all of those progress and support. To come back to your point, no, we were not aware of that not only the US troops are leaving, but actually they are forcing the contractors to leave Afghanistan as well, which was quite dramatic, and you would think that this is some kind of a conspiracy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:26

    If you pull out the contractors, everyone thinks, like, if someone believes that the United States military will be able to fight a war without the contractors. He or she is wrong. In today’s world, the the warfare is so complex It has so many moving parts that you need contractors to support you. Yes. Secretary Blanco continued to call president Ronnie but it was to warn him to leave office.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:52

    And this is what they wanted. Like secretary Blanken, the last call he made was three days before the fall of cobble, he told president Ronnie to resign and leave the office. And this is exactly what president Ronnie did, and there was no plan to back it up. And then everything started scrambling.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:10

    Just to go back to the point you made, that from twenty fourteen on, US combat casualties in Afghanistan were absolutely minimal. It was literally a handful of people. On the other side of the ledger, what were Afghan national security force casualties like from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen roughly?
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:34

    I think the brunt of our casualties came from twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen where the Afghan national army was preparing to adopt itself with growing Taliban capabilities like we didn’t have the Air Force, we didn’t have a proper heavy artillery and all that. And gradually, you know, as we learned how to add on these classes into our war fighting capabilities, the casualties kind of drawdown. I’d say that it was in twenty fourteen, we had one thousand casualty every month all over from January till December. And then twenty fifteen, it kind of continued a little bit back and forth. And by twenty sixteen, the second half of twenty sixteen, the casualty rate then dropped as the African Army you know, adopted itself more into poised more into, you know, war fighting and stuff like that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:33

    By two thousand nineteen, our casualty was also minimum because we were on the offensive and we had little casualties on the defense The casualty was still pretty high and to the standard, but comparing it with previous years, every year the casualty rate was dropping as the and army was getting better and better at its job. But
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:55

    then in twenty nineteen, when you had the Doha agreement, one of the first things that stopped was as I understand it, US combat air support to Afghan forces. So it it was wasn’t only that the United States as part of Doha said you, the Taliban, won’t attack us, the US, but you can attack the Afghan national security forces, but we also removed one of the critical enablers that had enabled some of the battlefield success you’re describing, which was our combat air support. Is that is that accurate?
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:30

    Correct. So after the DoHA agreement, ninety eight percent of the United States air support conducted in support of the Afghan national Army and the lease was cut off. So from a hundred strikes before we got two strikes there was minimum just to break the fight kinda thing. It was not effective anymore, and it kinda grew the thinking amongst the African national army that the United States is intentionally not striking the Taliban anymore. The plane would come.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:07

    It would be circling around the checkpoint as the Taliban large number you know, bandwagon to attack this small Afghan national police checkpoint, and the police would be like, why is the aircraft not conducting strikes? It was heartbreaking. It was difficult. Not only for me, but also for my American brothers who were in the uniform, The problem was now the rule of engagement has dramatically changed, and every airstrike that was conducted against the Taliban, it has to be approved by ambassador Harizer. Ambassador Harizer was completely in bed with the Taliban.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:41

    So instead of saying, like, okay, let’s go ahead and do it. He would call the Taliban. It’s like, hey, no, we are conducting an airstrike here because your guys are attacking. So basically telling them to, you know, run away because there would be an an airstrike. It was it was tragic.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:59

    It was difficult. It was very frustrating. Unfortunately, it played a huge role in in what happened to our country.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:08

    It’s really quite striking that in the administration’s twelve page interim report, there’s almost no mention at all. In fact, I think there is no mention literally of the withdrawal of contract support. For the Afghan national security forces. It’s, of course, mentioned in extraordinary detail in the cigar report, the special inspector general report for Afghanistan, but not in the Biden administration’s own defense of itself and of its withdrawal, which appropriately blames president Trump and the doughnut cord for a lot of this, but then seems to suggest that all of its decisions were therefore for ordained by what the Trump administration has have done. When in fact, of course, As you and I have just been discussing, the United States would have been perfectly within its rights to not have continued with the Doha agreement since it wasn’t being implemented by the Taliban.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:06

    No one forced the Biden administration to keep ambassador Carlos add on as this special envoy. In fact, I know for a fact that very senior former officials counseled the Biden transition team not to keep him on because of the deficiencies of the Doha agreement. So, unfortunately, the Biden folks I think have really obfuscated a lot of what actually happened here. You mentioned that your US partners, special forces partners, were troubled by what they saw. That’s a major, I would say, element that comes through if you watch the retrograde documentary.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:51

    Can you talk a little bit about that? How did it go? These were people who had been fighting side by side with you for some period of time and they’re watching this excruciating process go on. Tell her a little bit about that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:05

    Retrograde is a documentary film developed by National Geographic directed by Matthew Heinemann. So a group of National Geographic, videography first came to Helman where I was commanding with green berets, and they wanted to form the last mission of the United States and then kind of flipped the the focus of the documentary changed to the Afghan side and they followed me around. They spent months and months with me in Helman following me to from one battleground to another. Now I think the documentary chronicles, a couple of things which are very important. One is the tender relationship between the African Army and the American side is very explicit.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:50

    It’s very strong. And it’s very visible. And for years and years, we have worked both sides to become closer partners, like brothers, integrate with one another and to in order to increase the mission effectiveness. The second thing is it shows this struggle of the Afghan army and the sacrifices that we were paying coffins and coffins of Afghan soldiers unloaded into the c one hundred and thirty every day not taken to their families as we continue to fight on the ground. The third thing it shows is really the lack of support for the Afghan national army, and we were fighting commanders were fighting for scarce resources, the kind of like ammunition some minimal things that you need for for the fight as the battlefield became more and more intensified in the Taliban kinda became in large thousand numbers to attack these cities, especially the city of Lagergar.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:48

    But ironically, the city of Lagergar survived not only it survived the Taliban’s offensive after offensive, I actually defeated every single offensive off the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan in the city of flashkarga. Now flashkarga in the Taliban planning was the first city to be taken over after the Doha agreement. But it became the last city to fall after everything has fallen apart in the rest of the country because we fought. We were a good team of Afghan commanders, governors and everyone. We worked together we had a little bit of the war fighting machine, but we utilized it to its maximum and it kind of survived.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:34

    It also shows that the Taliban were absolutely possible to defeat the Taliban. And deny them the the comeback to to power, but it was politics that fall apart all over, not only on the American side, but actually on the African side, as well, our politicians are much to be blamed for as well. But the normal soldier, we continue to fight, and our American brothers continue to send us the message of support and routing and giving us the moral support that we continue to fight in in the battlefield.
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:12

    The documentary and the comments you just made are really an incredible testimony to why president Biden’s comments at the time that Afghanistan was falling that Africans were not willing Afghan army was not willing to fight for its own defense were so wrong and, you know, unfair characterization of what had been going on since twenty fourteen and what was actually going on even at that moment. You wrote in the in the New York Times op ed that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Coppola that there were there was responsibility on the Afghan side as well. Do you want to talk about that just for a minute? But, you know, how do you see that part of the story?
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:01

    Yes, African political class was divided. Unfortunately, after the Doha agreement, which give us enough reason for all of the politicians to get United behind the army and kind of support the war effort with every single means of all our national powers, politics, society, everything Unfortunately, that leadership was missing. Unfortunately, there was corruption in our political system while contracting some of the other support elements into the Afghan army to continue to support. Again, there — Khalilzad comes into the play. He divided the and political class.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:44

    When president Ronnie refused to accept the Doha deal, then he went on to the former president Ahmed car side and he went on to Abdullah Abdullah saying that, you know, you will be the president because Ghazan is out of the office. Then he went on to all of the warlords basically, like, you know what? The Taliban told me they wanna make peace. It’s president Ronnie who doesn’t wanna make peace. So it kinda political class got divided.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:10

    Some of them, you know, supporting Khalilza. Some are supporting now the Taliban to come and join the Afghan government. The others went into other countries like talking to some of our bad neighbors to buy their own influence in the game. So unfortunately, this division never was fixed enough to give us enough support in order to continue fighting, although the odds were against us I was always optimistic that we can win this war if our politicians came together and give us enough support that we needed in the battleground. So the Afghan political class is equally to be blamed.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:59

    As I wrote in my iPad, in New York Times, a week or two weeks after the fall of Kabul, it was president Ronnie and president Biden to be responsible for this president Biden more so because he had the power, the means, and the capability to avoid this man made catastrophe. I think what president Biden did is exactly what the terrorists wanted. I mean, this was their dream. I mean, if you go again around the world, you know, follow the international terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda, Bouqou Haram, Al Shabaab, Pakistany terror groups, Central Asian terror groups, all of them celebrated. So the only people who agreed with this decision of president Biden pulling absolutely out no matter what happens is the terrorist groups.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:52

    Nobody, no good person, no good woman, and man around the world has agreed with this decision. But anyway, you know, he he did what he wanted to do, and I I I don’t wanna say much more because I’m on a tour in the US. The last thing I want is the administration coming after me Ron DeSantis allowing me to do what I
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:14

    know. We’ll we’ll come back to your your tour in the administration. I mean, you also spoke about in the op ed about the cronyism and the corruption that was endemic in the government and and the way that that also played a role. So I asked the question basically to make the point that your assessment, I think, is a fairly balanced one. You you are not seeking to blame purely the United States or or the Biden administration per se.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:44

    So at the end of the dramatic period of time in August when things start to unravel, you were asked to leave Helmont or you were commanding a division and come back to take charge of the defense of Kabul. Although by the time you returned, the Taliban were already essentially breaching the gates. But tell us a little bit about about that and and how did you yourself depart Afghanistan.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:14

    The second week of August, things started to get bad, and then I was called to Kabul, to take charge of the Afghan special operation corps. And I refused. I said, no. Let me finish my job here. I just finished defeating the last units of the Taliban were expanding into the city.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:33

    No, I want to make sure that we you know, we hold this terrain because this is the bedrock of the Taliban’s, how Western Afghanistan is the place where the Taliban came into being and this is the place where for the second time they came back into, you know, being a terrorist group. I said, The only place to defeat the Taliban is southwestern Afghanistan. And then from here, we can expand. And they said, well, Kabul is going to fall apart if you don’t show up. I couldn’t believe it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:04

    For the four months period to that, I was always in the fighting. I didn’t follow any news. Day and night, I was just busy with my own war with the Taliban. So little did I know that the politics and the doha and these agreements have completely shattered the confidence of not only politicians, but actually some security officials who are in charge of Kabul as well. I had No idea.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:29

    Relactantly, I agreed to come to Kabul. I arrived at Kabul at the evening of the thirteenth of August, on the fourteen, I was informed that you are now also to be oversizing the cybersecurity. And I I was stunned by the abrupt decisions that were made so quickly and without consulting me in something. On the fifteenth, as I started to conduct my first initial assessment of the city, I heard word that president Honey had fled. And from that point onwards, I tried very hard to maintain control and discipline in the city.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:11

    Unfortunately, the news of the president’s flooding, you know, was distributed very, very fast and it became impossible for me to hold everyone together and protect the city of Kabul. So then my job became to save some of our intelligence and special operators dour trapped in Kabul and bring them to Kabul Airport and fly them elsewhere. I remained behind for a couple of days and made sure that I could save enough, not enough but as much as I could of my people, and I did that. And then I had to fly to the United Kingdom for a treatment. And in the meantime, I was injured.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:02

    I was nursing my own wounds, but it became unbearable. As things became more and more pressing mentally and physically for me in Cabo Airport. So I flew into the United Kingdom where I received medical treatment and I kind of did my recovery in the UK. Were
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:21

    you aware of the fact that the CENTCOM Commander was meeting in Doha as all of this was happening in the last in those days, the thirteenth fourteenth period of in Afghanistan, I believe it was in those days. He met with Melaborator, and they discussed whether or not the Taliban or the US would provide security in Afghanistan for the final evacuation. Now, of course, it would have required the US presumably to put more troops in to Kabul to secure the entire city. And the the CENTCOM commander at the time made a judgment that nobody in Washington would agree to that. So he did not take up the offer to provide, you know, security for the whole city Had the US done that, do you think it could have that you and your colleagues together with a larger group of Americans could have provided a security perimeter that would have enabled a much more calm and orderly withdrawal
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:28

    as opposed to what we saw it take place in those final days. Mean, you just pointed that the major flaw. I wish the CENTCOM commander came and spoke to me or to other African generals in Kabul, why is he flying into Doha and talking to my enemy? I mean, what kind of a mental status would I have watching them talking about the security of my city where I’m responsible and the issues of our life and death I mean, what kind of confidence would it leave in the hearts of the Afghan politicians and the Afghan military leaders? No, there was zero zero such a kind of engagement with me on the other side and or with some other Afghan leaders.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:13

    I wanted to maintain security for Kabul. Even though when I heard president Ronnie left, I went to the US command General Peter Vasili, and I said, brother, we need to maintain security for the entire city. He said, no, my orders are to take everyone to Kabul Airport. I said, that’s one airport. There’s a lot of people in Kabul, but then it was very obvious for me that they didn’t care anymore about me or my guys or my city.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:44

    It was just, you know, get the American diplomats and and
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:47

    civilians out so you guys are on your own. So tell us what you’re doing in the United States and what do you think the prognosis is for Afghanistan. It’s gone through a very difficult year in almost two years now, coming up on two years of teleban rule. It seems from everything one can see from outside that the status of women and girls is getting worse. Food insecurity throughout the country is is very great.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:20

    The Taliban seems to be totally unwilling to make any combination to the requirements of the international community to get additional assistance into FDA. So, what’s your prognosis?
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:30

    So the legacy of the terrible Doha deal and also the abrupt withdrawal is two things. Right? The first thing is a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan. Today as we speak, six million people are sleeping without dinner. At night.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:48

    Children are threatened for this extreme malnutrition. The hospitals are running out of medicine. Taliban are imposing this draconian law in the name of the Islamic Shuria beating man and woman banishing women from the society completely, and then asking everyone to absolutely pledge allegiance to their amir, to this devil guy who’s sitting in Kandahar and not meeting anyone. And the second thing is really the terrorism part of this after we left Afghanistan, Al Qaeda to cover our positions. Today, as we speak, there is forty thousand foreign fighters in Afghanistan, and these are members of Al Qaeda, these are members of Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, these are members of Pakistani terrorist groups.
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:38

    These are members of some horrible, bad terrorists. Groups that are all joining hands with with the Taliban. Taliban are providing them training, safe haven and also support logistically as well as the ground for them to plan and come up with the future operations against the rest of the world, including the United States of of America. So the Taliban are not friend of America. They’re the enemy of America.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:09

    I’d say the Taliban are the biggest international terrorist organization active today. And if anyone else tells you the story. Otherwise, let’s go back and follow-up what have been the Taliban have been saying and then what have been doing. So their policy and practice is completely against the United States of America. The other thing that came up in the middle of all of this is really China going back to Afghanistan and contracting, the much needed minerals like they got a contract for Afghan lithium for thirty years.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:45

    They got a contract for African copper. They got a new contract for African oil and gas. We have a lot of oil and gas. We might have it you know, oil and gas the size of Saudi Arabia, our oil and gas is untapped. And what is China doing with all that there powering its military and economy to compete with the United States.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:07

    And Afghanistan is geographically located in some of the most important place in the world. We have four atomic powers in our neighborhood. It’s China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran, most likely. We have seventy percent of global population around our country like these population giants, India, China, Bangladesh and then the other countries. And Afghanistan is right in the middle of it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:35

    It’s such an important vantage point, not only for strategic competition, but Afghanistan has resources Afghanistan is a place where you could suppress literally any terror groups that want to rise into a global challenger of peace and and stability. For me and for my brothers and sisters, there is no other way. We’re going back and and fighting to liberate our country. And it’s our country, and we won it back. We the people of Afghanistan refused to accept the Taliban.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:09

    The people of Afghanistan refused to allow the Taliban to represent Afghanistan. We’re not terrorists. The Taliban are terrorists. If the Taliban had anything Afghan inside them, they will call themselves Afghan. There is zero times the Taliban would call themselves and they call themselves the Taliban.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:28

    And there is a reason for for all of that. And our main bulk of supporters is the young generation of Afghan people. Seventy three percent of population is under the age of thirty years old. This is the population that is grown up in the last twenty years. Of peace and stability and democracy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:50

    They’ve been educated. They travel the world. They have interacted with Americans and other people. We had open civil society, we had open media, we had jobs, we had, you know, so many things going on. So this generation is now an asset that can bring Tianjin to Afghanistan.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:10

    But if we do not use them, they will turn into a vulnerability. And the Taliban have restarted this mass reeducation program to reeducate some of these young men and turn them into extremists and terrorists and then use them against our neighbors and the rest of the people around our area. So For this reason, I came to the United States. When nine eleven happened, Austrians were the first to stand with Americans and go after Al Qaeda. We went not only after our own enemy, but we actually went after Al Qaeda and we lost a lot of man doing that and we continued to do that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:50

    And so it’s a bad time for us now and we’re here to ask you for a favor to stand with us so we can depose this oppressive regime of Taliban and bring Afghanistan back to the right path, making the Taliban come back as a brief interruption in our journey to prosperity, peace, and a good country.
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:12

    What is the mechanism, General Sudhak, for making that happen? How can that happen? How can the Taliban now be dislodged from from power in Afghanistan?
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:22

    In any event, there will be no hat without violence, unfortunately, and we are thinking to minimize violence as much as possible. There will be a political process based on which we’re trying to restore the Afghan constitution and that was adopted in two thousand and four. This is the constitution that has the absolute majority support of the African people. It’s a modern constitution. This constitution assembly was chaired by our former king Zohir Shah, religious leaders, woman leaders, activists, everyone had a at the role in this comes institution.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:59

    So the best thing is to bring it back so the people have a choice to make their own decisions. I think there will be political element to it. I think there will be a military element into it and there will be a huge civil society element into deposing the Taliban. I would say this that today as the Afghan people, our neighbors and the west of the rest of the world have seen the Taliban They know how bad they are. So, legitimately, it’s easier for us to take on the Taliban.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:31

    We have more legitimacy than they have. The second thing is Taliban were difficult to deal with as an insurgency. It’s much easier to deal with them now as as they are the regime. They don’t have enough numbers to control all the cities and districts They don’t have economic support. They don’t have weapons deals with any country that can continue to support them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:55

    And the people of Afghanistan are rebelling every single day. So there will be a national interaction, and we have to be there to manage not only the direction, but actually after the direction, create an Afghanistan and that’s at peace with herself and it’s at peace with the rest of the world.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:13

    General Sadat, I wish you well in your efforts, you know, Afghans like you who fought and bled with Americans for twenty years, I think, deserve, you know, nothing less. So I first thank you for your service. During the long war we’ve had together. Is there anything else I wanna give you, the last word, if there’s anything else you wanna let our listeners know, I wanna give you a chance to to do that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:41

    So me and my team were going around the United States with some Afghan generals and politicians the younger generation of Afghan generals and politicians and American volunteers who kindly support us like the twelve o eight foundation and some other foundations. We’re traveling around the United States, going to universities, going to communities, and to talk about Afghanistan, and we I just want to make sure I take this moment to say thank you to all the veterans, the citizens who stood up to help Afghanistan in the darkest possible day. I think we saw the the unfortunate and the greatness of America in this same day, the unfortunate was the government of America abandoning us and leaving abruptly, but we saw so the greatness of American people who stood up. Thousands and thousands of Americans stood up on held their Afghan brothers and sisters. We saw that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:40

    We will remember that and we are extremely grateful for their support and their help. It made really, really, it made a big difference in our lives, and we will remain grateful for the people of America supporting Afghan.
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:58

    This will bring this episode to a a close of Shield of the Republic. Our guest has been Lieutenant General Sami Soodat of the Afghan National security forces, you can get a a kind of visceral sense of his fight in Hillmont province. If you watch retrograde the documentary, which he plays a key role in, and we just want to wish you well.