this is jocko podcast number 313 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening he looks like any other ordinary young afghan a dusting of a dark beard sun leathered face a small child clinging to his side only nasa fula 24 is a proud member of afghan’s isis affiliate known as isis k or informally as dash he has long been wanted by everyone from u s troops and the now defunct afghan security forces and the taliban formerly known as the islamic emirate of afghanistan nosfula says he joined the terrorist group around five years ago out of frustration that the taliban was dishonest about the status of its shadowy leader we kept asking the taliban to show us video of mullah omar but we couldn’t get any he claims that is why the dash here was created they seemed truthful and said they were going to implement sharia law so that is why i joined them taliban founder omar died in 2013 yet it was kept secret for more than two years most isis-k recruits are believed to have defected from taliban branches in afghanistan and neighboring pakistan seeking an even more extreme interpretation of islam with more international rather than domestic centered goals of caliphate control then the terrorist outfit has attracted a wealth of foreign recruits bent on attacking nato afghan forces and the insurgency turned taliban government the emirate came to power on august 15th isis k has waged a deadly spat of suicide attacks and targeted bombings across multiple provinces and claimed dozens of lives while some assaults have targeted the taliban the vast majority have been inflicted upon innocent civilians particularly the minority shiite population nazifullah says he is unclear how many isis k members are hidden inside afghanistan he spent the last year locked away in the country’s notorious bagram prison having been arrested by the previous afghan government for his isis membership however when the taliban swept to power in august he says he was released even though the new regime was aware of his checkered past nazifula went straight back to the black-clad terror clan but says he has since broken his leg seemingly from an accidental discharge from his own rifle yet he remains ready to take up arms again with a very specific goal in mind our first target is to destroy pakistan because the main reason for everything in afghanistan is pakistan he vows when the taliban were here they were saying that we control 80 of the country but they were not implementing islamic rulings that’s why we stood up in when we started isis k over in this area continues then in the parcel under their dominance the outfit immediately began quote implementing islamic rulings like cutting hands and everything so that’s when the taliban got funding from pakistan and started fighting us back he claims with a big smile and at that time baghdadi announced the caliphate in our area and we were on top that’s why we are against the taliban although nazifullah asserts that his outlawed group is quote weak now and attempts to downplay their lethality their hardline goals remain firmly in place we want to implement sharia law we want to implement the way our prophet was living the way he was clothed the dressing hijab was there currently we don’t have much to fight but if you give me anything i am going to fight pakistan now yet hauntingly nazifullah also makes it clear that isis k has far more global reaching ambitions whoever goes against islam and against the quran he adds darkly we are against them and that is an article from knews com the article is written by holly mckay holly is a journalist she’s an author she’s a war reporter and she is an extremely courageous human being she’s been on this podcast before number 271 where she talked about her experiences in the war against isis in iraq and syria which she chronicled in her incredible book which is called only cry for the living and she’s back with us again tonight to share with us her experiences from afghanistan because she was there she was there during the american departure the collapse of the government and the rise to power and control of the taliban so holly welcome back and i do mean that sincerely i was watching through social media when you were in afghanistan and i was terribly worried about you and we’ll discuss why i’m sure we’ll get to some of that it was definitely sketchy to say the least but for now i am truly glad that you are here and you went there for a reason to learn to capture what was happening and you’ve done that so let’s talk about let’s talk about what you’ve been through first of all welcome back thank you thank you for having me it’s strange adjusting so it’s been a few days and i’m still getting used to no you know highway without bombed and potholes and like oh this is a nice road hang on a minute um just to set the stage a little bit to to bring you into afghanistan when you went back when you went to afghanistan this time just to get where what you stepped into july 2nd germany and italy withdraw from afghanistan that is the same time that america quietly and strangely left bagram air base july 8th biden announces that the war is going to be over and we’re going to be out by august 31st july 12th general miller who is the commander uh commander of us and nato forces in afghanistan he steps down and by the way this is right as taliban is seizing district after district by mid july they seized you know 140 or 150 districts inside of afghanistan july 21st [Music] general milly reports that half the districts in afghanistan are under taliban control so july 22nd the u s house of representatives they they pass a bill for visas for our interpreters and and other allies that were there and the reason i bring that up is because that turned into a big deal as everything shut down and so that’s what we’re going into it’s very obvious i forget the quote from general milly but it was something along the lines of everyone was surprised at how fast it was collapsing but it was collapsing quick so august 7th is when you arrive in kabul what was your purpose and going there did you did you know how fast it was falling down did you like hey this isn’t going to make it i’m going to go in there anyways what was that what was the thought process there so i made the decision i think it was around may june that i was going to go back in august with my photographer jake who’s australian he’s also spent a lot of time he lived in afghanistan and spent a lot of time in in other places so we thought we would go back and document what i thought was going to be the the last month of the americans being there and then the afghan government trying to stand on its own two feet so between making that decision and what happened it just you couldn’t you could i just i did not realize it was going to happen that quickly and so when i arrived even that first week i was going to meetings at nds which is the afghan intelligence i was going to meet with all these different people and everybody was just so convinced that it wasn’t going to fall immediately at least not within say that month and it’s so the speed of it and i’ve had to do so much reflection on this and looking back and going where did you miscalculate how did this sort of happen so quickly and it really just goes to show i think nobody really had any idea at the end of the day i think there were there were sort of intelligence failures on many different levels from many different from parts of it i’ve talked about some of this um if i’m a company commander and i’m in charge of training afghan forces i want to do a good job and when i report to my battalion commander and i you know the first i’m working with these guys for a month and you know he says how are those guys and i say well they got some work to do they’re not that great they’re deficient here they’re deficient there they’re not good at this and my battalion goes commander says okay well you know get them squared away the next month what do i say you know i’m gonna tend to say yeah well we’re making some improvements we’re doing a little bit better we’ve got them issued better gear we we got the supply issues taken care of that we were worried about we did a live fire training operation and and so you end up just by virtue of having a positive attitude which americans certainly have we end up painting a better picture than what is actually happening i i saw this i i try to think if i did this i believe i did i believe that i did in training iraqi forces would sometimes say you know um i would put some lipstick on on on the situation a little bit again trying to have a positive attitude trying to look at the brightest side of what was happening in and there was times in in iraq where the iraqis would take over a position and the insurgents would immediately attack it and crush them and so we got put in check a few times i would almost say luckily because that what that caused us to do was to be very honest about the capabilities of the people we were working with so there is actual times where the iraqis would take over let’s say a checkpoint we’d say yup they’re good to go and this is when i say we i mean coalition forces in general you know the americans that are there said yes we’ve been working with these iraqis they can handle this checkpoint we’d step away from the checkpoint and this happened almost immediately upon my arrival this checkpoint got taken over by the iraqis and the insurgents attacked it a day later two days later they killed the american advisor that was there actually two american advisors that were there overran it was total disaster and that happened when i first showed up so it really put us in check in terms of okay what do we need to be very cautious about what we report up the chain of command and when they’re actually ready but at the same time you know i my guess is and even when we left iraq i was very worried i was very worried when america left iraq when coalition forces left iraq i thought to myself they can’t they’re not ready yet and there’s a there’s a similar obvious similar theme here so almost every i never fought in iraq in afghanistan but everyone that i know that worked on the ground with the afghan forces were all not surprised hey they weren’t ready yet they just weren’t ready yet and it’s a huge it’s it’s um it’s almost like when you have these these elements the us support is really like the long pole in the tent and all the other tent poles and the canvas that goes over the tent is and the stakes that go on the ground all those things are really really important and you can build those up and you can make them really good and you can they can provide you shelter from the rain and shelter from the wind but if you pull out that one long pole in the middle it has a huge negative impact and and that’s sort of again in hindsight as i look at it that’s what that’s one of the things i think happened yeah i think there were just multiple things i think even right down to the number of ghost soldiers so on paper there might be 300 000 afghan soldiers when there’s in reality there’s a a quarter of that because people would take commanders were taking money of people that never existed or they were dead or there was no accountability um you know i can i can go into corruption for days in in how that really destroyed afghanistan and so to drill into that corruption that you just thought let me let me see if i got this little piece of it right i’m a commander i’m a i’m an afghan commander if i say i have 500 soldiers i get x amount of money yep so guess how many i have 700 and and two of you guys die you’re not going to report that because you still want to keep getting their money to the point where they would take the bank cards of the dead soldiers and go to the bank and get them their paychecks every week or every month like it’s the level and we can get into this but in my i’ve never seen a more corrupt place on every possible level and yet you know we and when i say we i say united states we turned a blind eye to that for for really 20 years instead of going to the root and fixing it we let it fester and create this entire industry of corruption which is what the taliban was not only able to capitalize on but they came in saying we’re not going to be corrupt and people that don’t even like the talibans were so fed up with that corruption that they were going to support that even if they didn’t support the ideology so you get there on the 7th the eighth and ninth you’re meeting with intel people it’s still not clear that this thing is going to fall apart or are you or is it i think there was this idea of well kabul was never going to fall and certain pockets like kabul pangaea you know even mazar which is where i ended up these were very very staunch resistance places and there was sort of this idea that how can they possibly fall and so i i met with and i had actually stayed with him in 2018 and uncarl was general dustin so general dostum was the the warlord i guess who the u s troops first went in with from the north during um after the 911 and that’s where mike spann was killed and sort of the first people there so i’d met him several years ago um in turkey and did a profile with him and so he invited me to go back to missouri because he was leading some resistance forces there that were working with the afghan commandos and yeah it was just sort of this idea and i i guess looking back it was you know selling a story that didn’t exist but we decided okay well let’s go and cover what’s happening in mazar even though the northern provinces surrounding it were all sort of falling there was this sense that mazar was going to hold so we went to mazzar it was uh very early on a thursday morning how did you get up there we flew okay yeah come here and so it’s about a 50 minute flight from carmel to mazzar and so we can say did you say a 50-minute flight yeah 50-minute flight and was this who who’s who’s flying the helicopters is this just charging this is a commercial airliner yeah i flew a commercial airline two weeks ago so they still exist i was glad to land that one because there was no landing lights um but but they’re still at commercial airlines so we flew to mazzar because at this point you couldn’t travel on roads anywhere which isn’t something else that’s changed significantly now but but then you couldn’t you that you could the taliban had really cut off every strategic road and you couldn’t go much beyond sort of kabul maybe kabul to pangaea but that was a sort of the most road travel you could do so we flew to mazzar that was really early in the thursday morning and you get there and it was just this incredibly vibrant place and i just remember it was the how how is there how are all these provinces around this place falling to the taliban when the markets would just chalk a block and everybody is just going about their daily business i was flabbergasted and i thought isn’t like what is happening and you’d go and sort of talk to people and they’d be oh i’m a little bit worried but it’s okay i think it’ll be okay we’ll just flee to kabul um so that was the thursday and everything yeah very normal yeah so your feeling was okay well obviously this is gonna be okay yeah and and i you know had a couple of friends who were very worried about me being in mazzar and i i was sort of like seems fine to me um but but what did really struck me as as weird was that there was no police there was no military presence on the street at all i didn’t see a single like afghan forces come through and i i thought that was strange i thought where is where is this like this city this is in the middle of a a firestorm here and there is zero security forces right now so that struck me as strange but everybody was going about life and then the next day friday which is the weekend day in afghanistan but still things were out and i was going out interviewing people just asking them how they felt people in the markets and people were starting to feel really worried they said well you know we think it’s gonna fall but we just don’t know when it’s going to happen and as the day progressed you felt it get a little bit people were becoming more tense and we’d go to this there’s a beautiful big blue mosque a big shrine there that’s that’s quite famous and there were just a lot of people that had fled from other villages and other provinces and they were all sort of hanging out outside this mosque and and by the evening things were still happening but i you know i said to jake my photographer okay we need to book this return flight back to kabul and so i get online and then like the earliest flight we can get is monday night and i was like i think it’s you know i called a few people i was like is it gonna hold um and they were like yeah you know you should be fine but but get out in the next flight you can get back to to kabul and so i booked the flight so you’re online booking a flight which means you’re online watching news and seeing updates from other things yeah yeah and it’s still you got the impression because i’m i don’t remember exactly i knew that you were in mazar through social media because you’re you’re like posting about this stuff um but i also remember seeing you know sort of the battle map of what’s happening and seeing the various provident provinces collapse around and i just remember thinking get please get out of there [Music] so yeah and i remember thinking that too and i thought that this isn’t this this doesn’t feel right but that night we went out with the commandos the afghan commandos too and they were taking a lot of hits and a lot of you know a lot of fighting but they were such extraordinary and again you know this this perhaps walked my thinking a little bit too but you had these men who were just like we will never give this up they will never get mazar we will you know and and defend it and hold it and just really great young men and we stayed out with them until about two o’clock that morning and there was this sort of strange sense with with one of them his name was safi and and he kept you could tell how much he missed the west he wanted us to stay and drink beer with him and and listen to music and he just he didn’t want us to leave he just he wanted he wanted this sense of this connection to to the west that i think that you know being trained by the americans and just have this sort of deep love um so two o’clock came we got the guys to take us back to our hotel and we’re supposed to go out with them again at around seven or eight that morning so we wake up on the saturday and i’m waiting for a call from him he’s not there he’s not answering his phone and i thought you know god i hope he’s okay this is strange i don’t know what to do but i will just wait for him to contact me again um and then we thought well let’s go out and do some stories and we tried to contact some fixers or interpreters that we had known lived there everyone had fled to kabul we could not find anybody eventually by mid-morning we found somebody who knew somebody who said that he could he could come and be an interpreter if we did some interviews and so we went out and it was just suddenly this ghost town from this it had gone from extremely vibrant you know place to this complete ghost town you just saw people lining up outside banks just trying to get their money out um and we’re walking and people are just fleeing from the outside villages into mazar on those little rickshaws and you know with all their stuff and and we met with this interpreter and we get into a a cab and we’re driving out toward there was three front lines and the interpreter who i didn’t really know too well um is on the phone as we’re driving and it’s about midday and he suddenly he looks at me and he turns around he’s got this big smile on his face and he says oh they just broke through the first of the three lines and it’s surrounded and we looked at each other and and the cab driver was like i’m really scared because we’re sort of driving toward it and i said okay that’s fine we’ll we’ll turn around and go back it’s no big deal um so we went back and i went you had this detail that you just gave yeah he was smiling yeah he was and i still can’t figure out why he was smiling if he just didn’t care or if he was a taliban or if he just was trying to appease me he thought hey i’m getting to get you some stories they just broke through here yeah turns around and it’s just this they just broke through the first and and i’m like okay um so i get back to the hotel and i’m trying to make some phone calls because like there’s no there’s no flight out that i can get earlier than that monday and there’s no way it can you know it’s a ten hour drive but there’s no way i could even attempt to do that drive because it’s all taliban controlled and so i’m making some calls to you know again to my intel contacts in kabul and even then they’re saying no no it should hold it’ll hold don’t worry um and i was starting to get pretty worried and i was distracting myself you know doing some work and things and then and then we normally go to this there was a kebab cafe that we’d always go to each night and it was a really lively place it was underground they would play these terrible soap operas but there was always like a lot of people there playing music and so jake and i said okay well let’s go to this kebab cafe and we step out it’s just pitch black and not a single person around and i’m still figuring out we walk to this kebab cafe and it’s open we’re like oh it’s open and we go downstairs and the tv is off and there’s just these the two guys that work there that are just sitting there and we order food and we’re sitting there and then we just look at each other and we’re like something is really really wrong we need to go and so we get up and we start hurrying back toward the hotel this was early evening around seven and then you just see those motorcycles coming in and that’s the taliban and so we sort of hurry back just in time to get to hotel and go to the roof and i’m just looking out and the taliban is just circling there’s just hundreds of them and they’re shooting in the air and they’re playing their nasheed which is their religious music and and celebrating that they just took a city without firing a shot basically um but what also struck me during the day and that was the other bizarre thing i thought here is a city that’s falling and there was no air power there was not a sound in the air and i remember that something and i did a little video about i was like where is the air power didn’t we train didn’t we put just tens hundreds of millions of dollars into this afghan air force where the hell is it because i don’t hear it and air power is a great example of the long pole in the tent right the if you have air power when the taliban’s coming in on their motorcycles and in their trucks it it they can’t you literally can’t do it and that’s the long pole in the tent that falls apart when that happens you know it’s um as you were talking about like the talking to one of the afghan soldiers that you knew and how he you know hey we’re gonna stay here we’re gonna fight they’ll never take us do you remember all that stuff that happened up in portland when the antifa took over the part of the yeah part of the neighborhood or whatever they were calling it i think it was originally called chop and then they changed it to jazz but it was the occupied zone or something like this but somebody was asking me about it and i kind of said hey there’s no one up there in the chop that’s like ready to die for the cause that’s ready to say you know what we’re going to stay here worry they’re just not there’s not up there there’s no i mean america and i kind of made the comment that hey even the people that are antifa members guess what they have cell phones and they have you know like nice they have clothing and they have running water and it’s just not that bad of a thing and they’re not right that committed to it and it’s it’s interesting when you think about what it really takes for someone to stand up and be willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause whatever that cause is and when you look at the taliban and you you’re this afghan person that’s been fighting for however many years and you’ve been fighting for the americans you’ve been fighting for the afghan government for 10 years or seven years and then you’re like well it looks like we’re completely surrounded if i fight i’m gonna die or i can just kind of put down my weapon take off my uniform and carry on with my life and i yeah and that was you know i i think it was sort of the next day well joe biden came out and said you know these guys ran away from their posts and things and and to a degree i understand where that came from but it actually it upset me because they were really sold out by their leadership and and i’ll give you examples so saffy the guy that i met that friday when i was finally able to get back in contact with him after mazar had fallen and i asked him are you okay where are you and he said you know he’d gone out that day and and they just they were so outnumbered and his three bodyguards had been killed and um you know it was really the commanders that were trying to hold it and he said by four o’clock that afternoon somebody came to him and said oh dust and left and so did the commando left like all your commanders left and it’s up to you if you want to stay and die or you can leave and he just he they were sold out by everybody i i did hear stories um from guys that i knew that said that the taliban would like approach a village yep and just send a messenger in there and be like hey you know here’s your chance we know you were you know you we know you’re afghan security um you can put down your guns and be cool or we’re gonna kill everyone and guys were like uh okay we’re surrounded we’re gonna die um i guess we’ll just yeah go back to the way it used to be by the way that’s the other thing it was they have sort of a lot of them had memory of what it used to be like and it’s like okay well i guess we’re going back the way it used to be but it’s better to do that be alive than be dead and the amount of sacrifices that a lot of those afghan soldiers made i mean they don’t they won’t even release the number of killed but it’s it’s well past 100 000 yeah i mean there was at least 50 000 killed going into this whole thing taking place yeah so it’s not like and again there’s plenty of americans that fought alongside the afghans and had met awesome afghan troops just like in iraq in other words and by the time you were in iraq and the iraqis were fighting isis they were taking massive casualties massive casualties going to take mosul back that was led by the iraqi forces and they took massive casualties and they kept going compared to in in the battle of ramadi the iraqi forces were some of them were very scared and didn’t want to take lead and definitely didn’t want to take casualties we had whole battalions abandon and leave so that idea of this kind of this kind of clear-cut american version of the way things are is doesn’t apply here there’s no clear-cut way of hey oh if you get cat if you’re an american you get captured we know what’s going to happen you’re going to get tortured you get killed it’s like hey you’re an afghan security force and you surrender you’re not sure what’s gonna happen but you know what’s gonna happen if you don’t surrender you’re gonna die so and then you see your leadership all running away all running away all of them and every single one of them ran away including the president including the president yeah including the president who yeah with that guy that is a is an insane situation i mean you have that guy ashraf ghani who who is like a professor at berkeley a professor at johns hopkins uh went to some leadership school at harvard wrote the book called fixing failed states which is like an academic exploration of this stuff theoretical it’s an embarrassment yeah and he bailed with a bunch of money by the way and and yeah a bunch of money is now under investigation but what what i remember going back in being afghanistan in 2017 and sort of hearing when i’d go to the the nato compound of the us embassy and everyone would say all these great things about ghani and i remember saying to a few people have you gone out to the street just to talk to the afghan people because they have a different idea you know so i think part of that problem was the us because nobody was leaving that base in the diplomacy world they were getting a vacuum of information that was pre-approved people to enter they were all part of this sort of puppetry stream and they weren’t actually out there talking to the afghans who were terribly frustrated with the corruption going on terribly frustrated with the sort of i guess the the pashtun and the sectarianism and things and it just the picture that was was so warped compared to the reality that i saw even back then and that was so 2017 you’re out talking to normal people and they’re totally frustrated with gandhi and yet the americans are getting this white-washed version of how and how he’s doing an excellent job yeah um when so it was like august 14th so mazar falls kabul falls too so that was so that was the saturday night so you know suddenly i’m like in the in this room in this hotel and and the the locals had all fled and there were no foreigners in there except i think there was a guy from tajikistan who was there for a couple of days and someone else but so when jake and i look at each other we said well what are we what are we gonna do um you know we’re making some calls and i’m speaking to some some dod people in kabul and they said well you know go and get us measurements go and get us coordinates go and get us this and that and we’ll see if we can get you out in the morning the early morning and it was a interesting night so you had um you had you know i was trying to get all this information and then the morning and the talibans were out having a crazy you know taliban party all night um and so by the morning light i thought well they’d gone to sleep then because they celebrated all night and they’d gone to sleep but then nobody’s calling um they were just sort of looking at each other going well now is kind of the chance to get out in this period where they’re not in the street because they’re going to be in the street in a couple of hours um but it became very evident that just it wasn’t going to happen and then then that sunday we started seeing news reports that the that the talibans were at the gates of kabul and then the next thing you know they’re taking the palace and we just sort of i looked at i looked at jake when that happened and i said well yeah we’re pretty much we’ve got to figure this out were you feeling were you feeling threatened with when the taliban showed up so the images that they were portraying of the taliban was uh was like a a kinder gentler taliban was coming in right it was like you said it was it was like celebratory yeah it didn’t look like a angry mob it looked like a happy mob that was celebrating and that that was sort of the images that we got initially then it quickly turned into images of people being people being killed people being murdered um but what was your initial impression my initial impression was it was just bizarre because they were the it i was like who are these barbarians in the street like how is this like and then they’re doing announcements over the loudspeaker and it was so strange because you saw this instant transformation of a of a city and and they did they did look a little you know intimidating and there were just so many of them and that was the thing i thought where did these people come from because mazzar was a very strong taliban resistance place and suddenly it’s just there’s hundreds of them and i don’t know where you they come from and i i sent jake out to buy me a burger at the market and he just came back he’s like oh my god they’re just they’re crazy you know and so we were trying to i guess figure out what do you mean by crazy okay just like th they’re they’re just everywhere okay and they’re just you know they literally have sort of the dominance of every corner possible in the city and that was their strategy i think in the very beginning when they took places they just flooded it with flyers to make sure that they could hold it now a normal person would like concentrate on hiding and getting out of there but you kind of focused on let’s go interview people so not not quite so i i mean at first i went a little quiet i was like i don’t know and i was trying to pretend to my parents i wasn’t in the city because straight away my dad’s like we just heard on the newsmazar’s fallen are you there i said no i’m outside the city um so i was trying to yeah to try to appease them a little bit but uh so i was a little unclear and and what sort of had concerned me at that point was i know that first night that they came in and there was a bank underneath the hotel so they were so the talibans were desperately trying to get into the hotel where we were and we knew that we were the only foreigners in there at that point and and these incredible hotel staff had stayed there for us and they were terrified because they’d all been former nds or previously worked in different capacities with the afghans and i knew that they were desperately wanting to to go home to you know safety or flee or their families but they really stayed there for us and that was um just something that i thought was just extraordinary and it goes back to that afghan hospitality and and care um so we were there and and so several days are going by and the focus was to get out but it just it became so and my phone was just blowing up with so many different people telling me do this do this do this and i was just like you all need to leave me alone at this point please because it’s not helping um and i said to you know the us people that i was speaking to right from the beginning i think the only way is you go and talk like i need to go and talk to them to get their permission to leave because there really wasn’t another way there wasn’t really a way that i felt that i could sneak out or you know go under the radar and yeah that was that was what i was pushing for from the beginning so that was sort of my focus in in doing that so it falls on like the 14th 15th and you spend the next few days trying to figure out what the best course of action is and so what’d you finally figure out so um yeah we i talked to so many different people and i thought you know any sort of rescue any whatever is not going to happen so i talked to a couple of diplomats and then i talked to um sort of i guess a middle person who was a afghan business guy and so it was very very quick and then he sort of said well i’ll come to the hotel um and you know be ready at this time and they’d heat some things up with the uzbek console which was closed but they were able to kind of get it open so next thing you know i’m dragging my stuff down and the two people that come to meet me is my drivers are the two taliban elders you know the cousin of the his shadow governor turned new governor so you see these sort of old taliban guys and and i’m getting into the car with them and they were like welcome it was so bizarre joko it was i was like what a hi um because at that point we really didn’t know well it’s just you and jake getting into this yeah just jake and i getting into the car with the talibans and we didn’t know at that point you know how they’re going to treat a foreigner how they were going to treat a woman how they were going to treat a journalist um and so yeah they they drove us through the city and i so i said do you mind if i have a talk to you and ask you some questions and they said sure and um you know telling me about i’m asking them about their how they viewed islamic law and sharia law and what they wanted and they just sort of said well you know we want people’s hands to be topped off when they steal and if you murder then you should be your eye for an eye kind of thing and and telling me all about their their rulings and um but at the same time they’re like yeah you you’re welcome in afghanistan you’re welcome to stay as long as you like and uh we hope you enjoy our country and it was very bizarre and then we were dropped off at the uzbek console and then suddenly these other talibans came um and they were there’s a group of them really young ones like in their early 20s and they were going to be our escort and the only way sort of because we couldn’t go back to kabul was to go north to the uzbek border and so you had these bunch of these young talibans who were just who wanted to take selfies and you know continue to send they continued to send long after that my photographer you know selfies of themselves with you know urdu music in the background and love heart emojis it’s literally the most bizarre thing you could imagine i was looking at pictures um on some of your articles you have pictures of these taliban guys like with their iphones or whatever yeah out they’re doing selfies yeah it’s freaking for social media yeah and they and they harass and i know with there’s a couple of other photographers that i know and they harass poor jake and any other photographers get arrest for their photos so if you take a picture of a telemen’s oh i need your whatsapp i need your whatsapp and then they just harass and they want pictures of themselves like it’s just it’s so new to them these are people who are in hiding in the mountains for 20 years and then suddenly they’re like out and free and kind of a spectacle it’s it’s very bizarre how does selfies and instagram match up with sharia law i’m not sure about that one i guess it’s it’s it’s too new for sharia maybe how does that work they haven’t put a ruling on it yet um man that’s crazy um so you were you at any point at what point did you go i think i’m gonna be okay did the old taliban make you feel that way did the young taliban make you feel that way i think well i did i did feel like i was going to be okay even when i was stuck in the hotel i think the first night i was a little bit well you you had a normal sense of fear i guess i certainly i didn’t panic but i i was a little bit thrown this wasn’t in the plan um at all and but actually it’s the small things that make you feel good i remember this this young man from the hotel came up to me and he said and he put the manager of the hotel on the phone to me the owner and the owner said to me don’t worry i’ve already talked to the talibans and they promised not to enter the hotel and i thought that was just like christmas i was like thank you and i just even though i didn’t know whether that was true whether they were going to honour that which they certainly weren’t because they were trying to get in but it was like just what i needed to hear at that point to give me that sense of calm that i needed to to focus on on what it is i needed to do um in mazar i saw i saw images and it was pretty prominent in in the news back here sort of as cobble fell like uh let’s say there was like a women’s clothing boutique and then they choked the next day to be gone or it’d be now whatever selling shovels or something like that did mazar go through that really rapid transition from like more western influence just to boom overnight all of a sudden yeah it was very overnight and mind you that was that was self-censorship that wasn’t the taliban going around telling them yeah that was me going oh you know i’m not going to be selling these weapons freaking bikinis anymore we’re shutting it down yeah yeah so yeah mazar really it was just this drastic but what i found fascinating was the the clothing transformation so you see people you know walking around in western jeans or whatever it is and then suddenly everybody’s in afghan dress and very very traditional um and that was sort of the bizarre thing and it took a couple of days before i saw a woman again on the street and when i did she was always in a burger so that was very it was it really felt like you went from one civilization and then you just plunged back a couple of hundred years overnight and even just there were these messages coming out of the speakers which i’d never heard before in mazar either so the same speakers that they used for the call to prayer were suddenly delivering messages you know sort of town hall messages to people you know telling them that um you know if anybody steals from them or anybody does anything and they’re to call this number or come to this place to report it and so you have this immediate sense of the taliban’s trying to to govern suddenly but yeah it was so drastic that that transformation so how do you get up to the uzbek border just driving up there the talibans so the talibans took us i know so the talibans take us to the uzbek border which is back water is closed but again that they you know so a couple of really amazing diplomats in in tashkent which capital of uzbekistan had made arrangements with the uzbek consulate to open the border which i actually found out i didn’t even need because both of us had australian passports and we didn’t need a visa for uzbekistan but americans do so i could have gone anywhere i guess but they had to open especially for us because it was closed because the night before when mazar had fallen or the the nights before when mazar had fallen the soldiers flooded that border because they had nowhere else to go so they really flooded that border and you drive along the way and you just see all the you know the american vehicles and the humvees and everything just abandoned and left behind and the weapons still lying on the road and the the you know the fatigues and and these were just afghan soldiers these were just afghan soldiers and they were going for uzbekistan yeah because that was the closest route that they could go to get out and so i think they let a certain amount in and then they just shut the border how hard was it if i was a corporal or a private in the afghan army and the taliban’s come and how hard is it for me to be able to like take off my uniform grab some traditional clothing and leave and get away with it you wouldn’t be able to get out of the country i mean they weren’t taking anyone and how about my identity as far as hey i’m just gonna go back to my home wherever in this village and just kind of take up life as a normal yeah farmer or whatever i mean you could go and do that i think eventually they track you down and not and i think this was also a bit of a misnomer that happened in the beginning was people were talking a lot especially in the news they were oh taliban’s got a list they’re coming to houses they’re getting you know xyz they’re targeting so and so and when i i looked into it they weren’t really necessarily and of course there some peop there are exceptions but the their overall goal wasn’t necessarily to target any of these soldiers their goal was to take back government weapons so any government vehicles any government issued guns they needed to take them back so the process is when somebody surrenders they get they hand over their weapon and they get given a letter from the taliban so the talibans give them a letter that basically says they’ve surrendered this is their number they’re free to go um so you know when talibans approach some of these soldiers you know they either have to show the letter and if they don’t have the letter then the talibans will want to know where their weapon is and and and what they’re doing kind of thing so yeah it was muddying okay so you now you’re in uzbekistan you get there by what august 20th you’re in uzbekistan yes around yeah august 20th so at this time it’s getting cr it’s getting crazier in afghanistan you got bite and biden is now on august 20th makes his promise that all american citizens are going to be brought home august 23rd the cia director william burns meets with the leader of the taliban um or one of one of the leaders of the taliban well co-founder of the taliban actually to start talking about how we’re gonna withdraw that starts to happen the withdrawal starts happening august 26th that’s when this attack happens kills 13 u s military personnel 11 marines one one navy corpsman one american soldier about 70 odd afghan 180 180 that went up 180 yeah that happens on august 26th um august 29th there’s a drone strike that is allegedly targeting um some isis k or some taliban or and it ends up killing a usaid worker worker um a guy named zamari ahmadi kills him two other adults and seven kids um august 30th there’s some rocket attacks uh but august 32 when the last u s planes leave afghanistan the taliban rolls into the airport just rolls into the airport and declares victory and so there it is now the taliban’s in control at which point is this when you go back in yeah so i was working between uzbekistan and and tajikistan and i would have gone back or tried to go back a little earlier but but when i met with these diplomats um you know one of them sort of said to me and he had said you know because he was sort of involved in being you know putting me in touch with the middle man to leave afghanistan and he sort of said you know i’ve been doing this for 30 40 years and been in many war zones sort of working and he said i’ve never felt more terrified when then i basically handed you over to the taliban to get in their car to leave and he said i just i was so relieved when you were okay and i out of respect to him i didn’t want to go back in straight away so but there was never a doubt in my mind that i was going to go back in of course i didn’t tell that to my parents or to anybody else but i thought i i planned to come and do a job i felt confident enough to go back because despite the hype that that we were sort of seeing in the media and everybody trying to get out i did know other other sort of british journalists and things that had stayed that was still in kabul and i felt confident enough that i could go back and and and be okay about it and um so we yeah we made that decision to go back and i thought you know i’ll let this airport chaos die down and so we’ll go back in on the first and we’ll drive back from the north back from uzbekistan border and we’ll take that it’s about a 12-hour drive across afghanistan back to kabul because there really wasn’t any other way and yeah that’s that’s what we did we we came in we crossed that bridge again um and you know i still and they were honoring the the valid visas so my visa was valid um media visa and so i went back and and you we kind of went to this little passport hut and there was just a taliban sitting in there and he didn’t ask a single question just had a notebook wrote it down stamped with the taliban stamp and we were good to go so it was sort of that easy to go back and i thought gosh and then you’re just driving south then we’re just driving so we’d hired a driver um for friends of our friends who’d come to pick us up and so there was you know all of us jammed into this little toyota corolla driving you know from that bridge down just through selang pass down into yeah it was about 12 hours are you and you’re getting the checkpoints yeah so there was about 16 checkpoints and what does that feel like you know and still now they barely stop you when they see a woman they see a woman go go go go they’ve been basically instructed at least definitely at that point they’re instructed don’t question a woman don’t um you know if there’s a woman in the car just let them go why is that they’re terrified of women they’re they they yeah they just they they think they see it as a sign of respect don’t question a woman don’t ask her who she don’t look at her don’t um question really only once we got stopped um i think at a checkpoint and they asked us sort of a few questions looked at the passports and one of them pokes his head through the window it was again the it’s like being a clown show and jake said to this guy how do you get your hair so shiny because they’ve got this black hair that’s floating around and the guy looks he goes head and shoulders the whole thing was like i was like i don’t know what movie i’m in right now but this is crazy um but yeah so they i barely got stopped at a checkpoint and then suddenly we’re back in kabul and really at that point the only fighting that was really still happening was in pangaea and that was sort of the last holdout that the talibans hadn’t taken yet so and you ended up going up there right yes and the reason you go well because there was there was there was anti-taliban forces that fled there yes and they they were flying the flag of the northern alliance right up there and it seemed like that could be sort of the like the yeah like the montana or the or you know what i’m saying like the wyoming of hey hey they might have taken the rest of america this is like a red dawn scenario right these are the wolverines up there thinking all right we’re gonna go up there do you know what i’m talking about yes okay because i know echo does because you know he’s very up to speed on on those kind of movies but that’s what it was that’s what it seemed like up in pangaea was hey we’ve got this is the last holdout we’re like the wolverines up there we we’re flying the old flag of the northern alliance and we’ve got experienced fighters [Music] you’re hearing that story did you looking at it think that they could hold out so i was hearing a lot of information people were going to do this this this and this and i’ve spent a lot of time in pangaea previously and i knew that there was a lot of great fighters great guy you know people that that fought during the soviet occupation and that was the only place the talibans never controlled during their reign in the 90s they never got pangaea that was the one place so they certainly had this this mentality to hold but at the same time all the young men that i knew that had lived there had all fled to france all of them and i’m thinking why have you fred deflant why have you fled to france like you should be here fighting for your province like what is going on so a little skeptical to be honest because i was hearing especially from contacts of mine in the us who were like we’re gonna send them weapons and get this and i remember just sort of thinking i i don’t i don’t know if i’m buying this right now so we decided um yeah i was like i need to get in and there was still this debate going on has it fallen has it not fallen because the talibans were claiming in that sort of first week of september to have taken it but then the nrf as they known the national resistance front was saying no no we’re still we’re still in control and so nobody could figure it out because nobody could get in the talibans were not letting anybody go into the province and there’s really terrible cell service there it’s just it’s always been terrible self-service there so especially if you’re in the mountains you’re not going to be able to report back so there was this really crazy debates going on and and again where the misinformation was coming out of was this idea of um then people started saying well pakistan has got drones there and you know they’re supporting the talibans and i looked at the video and then i was like that’s a video game like they’re using footy like news outlets are using footage of a video game seriously and also footage of like hell us military in arizona and it’s being passed off as the pakistan is in pangaea and i just remember thinking what the it was this complete disinformation circle and when i really started to dig into it i found that it was a lot of the disinformation was coming from india so basically pangaea had become this proxy for the conflict between pakistan and india and they were sending different information a lot of which was completely inaccurate so i said to my fixer and we need to do whatever it takes to get into pangaea because i need to know has it fallen hasn’t it fallen what is going on there and so he was able to make that arrangement and we were sort of the first journalists that were able to get in and go through all eight districts and that was about that was once i want to say it was about september 9 i think i did we went to pangaea um and did you drive up there yeah we drove so it’s it’s not far from kabul it’s about an hour and a half and then we we get there and it was very heavily fortified by the taliban and and we get in and immediately it was very clear to me the taliban had complete control of it um even even yeah there was just so much misinformation did you talk to any nrf fighters yeah i did and most i was watching them surrender from the mountains and and they were coming down and handing their guns over to the talibans and the talibans were giving them the ladder and off they were going and they were leaving and honestly and i got so much heat for this but it you know you can only report what you see in here there really wasn’t a fight it wasn’t a big fight a lot of that was exaggerated there was not a single amount of damage that i saw anywhere in that main street not to say there wasn’t fighting in the mountains but i i didn’t i heard one rocket launched that entire day that i was there the leadership had fled they’d already left um and i just think that was just sort of and i still hear it now about you know people going around trying to get weapons trying to you know it’s not there it doesn’t exist the way it existed 30 years ago and again goes back to so many of them that i knew they’re not in the country anymore but you know and it was crazy i got so much heat for simply reporting there really wasn’t a fight here and the the diaspora just came after me and people you know i just i’d never experienced that kind of backlash just from reporting a story um so i was i was kind of relieved when you know some friends of mine from wall street journal in new york times and things they went in a couple weeks later and reported the same thing so i was like well okay i’m not crazy um yeah that’s the the when you talk about the the folks that you knew that went to france like give us a little bit of background on that well it was just in that initial evacuation period just a lot of the young fighters that i knew that they france was france was very close with with the pangaearis and and um amacha massoud his wife lives there and he spent a lot of time there during his time and so they have a very close relationship and the french is a very aligned with the pangaea so they were mostly able a lot of the men were able to get um i guess sivs to go to france in that evacuation period and a lot of them took it and off they went and um so yeah i i don’t doubt there was certainly a fight there but i just think it was really blown out of proportion in terms of any ability to to take it it was very clear the taliban had full control of every single of those districts so you spend what how long were you up there for a day yeah you spent a day up there and now at this point now the taliban is forming their government and um yeah they now run the country they form their government september 11th they kind of formally announce that they’re in control and this is the new this is the new regime yeah they reopened the the ministry um you know for the prevention advice and propagation of virtue which is uh something that existed in their first reign where they would go around with these morality police and and school people and people get flogged if your beard wasn’t long enough or if a woman’s you know wasn’t wearing the correct burqa so they were very very stringent about that they haven’t restarted the morality police but at the beginning it was a little bit terrifying and i went to the opening of um the ministry and we sort of just it was very bizarre that very first month you could just walk up and knock on a door anywhere and get in they tightened down since then but it was suddenly you just had all this access to things and because the talibans were not used to all this media and people and it was very bizarre for them so they would just sort of sure come in what’s your what’s your opening line when you walk up to the ministry of prevention of vice and propagation of virtue what do you say when you knock on their door we just come i go with my fixer my photographer and of course they don’t look at me um they you know that was the other bizarre thing too i the psychological effect of being ignored and um invisible for a month straight is actually to say it made me a little bit crazy so but i would make a deliberate at first for the first few weeks i was being trying to be polite i would stand back and just let them go up and you know handle it and and do their passion greetings with the talibans and make ask the questions and i would just be in the background they would interview with me they didn’t like it they would complain and say why did you bring a woman you know wish i should be interviewing with a man but they would usually and my fixer would say well she’ll go she’ll go and write about it she’ll go and write about the fact that you aren’t going to interview her so then they were very worried about perception at that point um but so we we’d go up and they were doing this you know big opening for their you know all the guys went in and i couldn’t go in so my photographer and fixer went in i was allowed to go into the compound and i’m some of the talibans bought me a chair and i’m sitting under the tree like and they’re all you know doing their the haqqanis and everybody’s in the building next to me doing their their sermons and then and then finally they said we need to put her in a room she can’t sit here so i get moved to a room and they’re bringing me tea and fruit and it was all just very bizarre and then finally when the celebrations had finished and they’re all doing picnics outside um the director came to to interview me in the in the little room and he would just sort of sit there and um very softly spoken and would answer my questions but looking at the ground so i was yeah i was very invisible um which at first i took i said you know i’ll be you know i i went with the approach that they’re not used they’ve never seen a woman before especially not a woman working out with men they if lucky they’ve seen their mother’s daughter if they have one and their sister they really have not seen a woman before so i tried to be like well this is very new to me are you wearing a burqa or no no no i refused i wore everything that i normally wore in afghanistan previously just to her job and sometimes i wore a mask depending but i refuse to wear a book i refuse to wear in a crib i refuse to wear anything other than a hijab because that’s all it says in islam is cover the head and that’s it so that’s what i went with so i thought you know this is a very big learning experience for them too and even when i would go to villages it was so bizarre you could hear the villages in the background is she a man or a woman like they’d just never seen it was just so new to them and so at the beginning i was respectful and then i i snapped i i i didn’t i just when you’re ignored completely for that long i just thought i’m not okay with this anymore um and so i made a very big point of any time we went to meet with the talibans that i was with my photographer and fixer i would walk up and i would just stare at them i’d say hi and i would stare at them and they looked the other way and even an interview when they would speak and they would just look at my fixer and not to me i would continue to stare at them and 95 of the time they broke 95 percent of the time eventually they started to look at me and throughout the course of my months there i found that by the end most of them were actually looking at me and i thought i don’t want to go and perpetuate this idea of it’s okay just to ignore a woman even though to a lot of them that is respect they think it’s respectful to not look at me or ignore me and i thought if you are going to run this country you need to learn what that is going to entail and that is going to be that women are working in the street that’s how it is foreign women will come in and work um so it’s just an interesting social experiment but yeah staring at them so there’s like a line because you know early early you said you know that when the taliban would they wouldn’t look at you and you were like oh when the cars they would just wave us through checkpoints because it’s a sign of respect but then when you’re actually trying to communicate with them and they’re just not even looking at you were there were they afraid yeah it’s just what they’re taught they’re taught to never look at a woman it’s just it’s indoctrination that it’s disrespectful to to look at it at a woman that’s not your your own wife or your mother that’s the way that they’re they’re taught so um i understand that but they’re also going to have to learn that’s that’s not always going to be the way yeah and you said hey it’s not gonna this is the way it’s gonna have to be in the future but do you think it’ll be that way or do you think i’ll just not allow it i i i i saw a big shift over that few months again i tried to take the approach of as much as this is new for me this is new for them too like they’ve never been in a media spotlight the way they are now they’ve never had all this social media and attention and and so they’re navigating something new as well and so i think that i think that i i hope that they’ve learned i did see a change in in it over that period just in in their interaction um i know you actually i talked about that drone drone strike earlier yeah and i know that at one point you actually twice i went and met with the family at the house where it was hit yeah talk us through that yeah that was devastating so yeah on the edge of kabul very small you know sort of impoverished area um we went to see that family on that first day that basically that the pentagon had acknowledged that okay it was a mistake and it was heartbreaking it was absolutely heartbreaking and one of the you know it was three brothers that were all sort of living there with all their family and waiting to get that call to go to the airport to evacuate and one of them the men had lost all his kids all his three kids were killed and another one two of them just it was heartbreaking the car was all still there and i just i can’t imagine that the guy had gone to work that day he was working for an ngo and they sort of had a ritual where the little kids would run up to the car when it came in and he would you know then they’d jump in the car and they’d drive into the into the house and so he came back in five o’clock that afternoon and that’s when the drone hit and the kids had all sort of ran out to get the car and jumped in and that’s when they were hit with the drone um and it was just it was devastating you know the mothers who just who could not speak and i went back to follow up with them um a couple of i guess it would have been in november so late november so recently and i you know i said has as anybody because there were reports that you’ve been compensated the the us was going to give them compensation and also speed up their visas to come because some of them did qualify for sivs and had applied for them before the evacuation so before any of this had happened and they said you know we haven’t heard a thing we have nobody’s apologized nobody’s contacted us and in in the u s kind of saying oh we’re going to give these people com pump compensation it endangered them further because then people around thought well these people have money now and you know and and crime in afghanistan as terrible as it is and so suddenly these people were under an extra layer of threat on top of it so i don’t know what sort of happened if anything’s transpired over the last couple of weeks i tried to put them in touch with a rescue organization that was going to help them get out and speed up and they said oh you know we’re supposedly in contact with some lawyers in dc but i don’t know that anything ever came out of that either or you know if they were able to get out but it was really just heartbreaking and in many levels and and what’s fascinating is that they weren’t bitter people they were not they were not angry at the us they were not um you know they didn’t want to try to get revenge they want to come to the us you know they still wanted to come and live here and get out of afghanistan but yeah i just hope that that that case isn’t lost is there any news or information about the sort of intel thread that led to that drone strike i mean only from what i’ve read out of reports was just it seemed like a i guess a perfect storm of fire really it just seemed that and again i’m still trying to understand it was like you were targeting a toyota corolla well 70 of the cars in kabul are toyota corollas so i just think it seemed like a perfect storm from many different levels and i think the us was in panic mode at that point having had the airport attack a couple of days earlier and was so terrified that this guy who was pulling water out of his car was pulling explosives out of the car and yeah it all just seemed to come together without i guess the correct due diligence i i’ve done targets before hit targets that were just it was wrong and and that was a huge lesson learned from me i hit a target one time my first deployment to iraq and and pulled the thread on the because i got back thinking that was not right like that that person the guy that we got is not a bad guy he clearly was not a bad guy and it came back and started pulling the thread hey who who did this who gave us this information and eventually pulled the thread and it was um like he had his wife had fired the maid or something like that it was something like that the maid was pissed and so she went and started telling americans that oh yeah this guy he’s a bad guy he’s financing you know that kind of thing um and so that was a huge lesson for me because from then on my my question would be who put this x on this building because that’s what we would literally get would be a a map and there’d be an x on the building a red x just like a movie a red x on a building and i would say who’d put that red x there i want to know who put that red x and i would pull the thread and find out exactly hey this is the information that we’ve got this is what’s corroborated it’s really really hard and if you’re not in that mode and there’s pressure that’s where these people make these um quick calls to to try and do something and you know again i don’t i’ll i want to pull the threat on that more and hopefully i can try and as it becomes declassified because i’m sure some of it’s classified where they’re getting information from all that stuff can be classified but it’ll be interesting to pull the threat on that and see why they pulled the trigger on on that mission and the report came back saying nobody was responsible nobody was held accountable it was just a mistake that that they couldn’t sort of pin to one person was the pentagon report on it i thought how is that how is that possible and how is nobody held accountable to this at all well you know even for me when we hit that target and cap caught this guy thank god we didn’t shoot him thank god he didn’t resist he didn’t resist because he wasn’t a bad guy so we went we grabbed this guy but the reason i wanted was so engaged with that was because i knew it was me hey i’m the one that’s kicking in the door and we’re you know well my team is doing that so i need to take ownership of what we’re doing and make sure that this is the right thing to do in the right situation because yeah i mean so if they’re if you’re allowed to sort of push responsibility onto 14 different people that all had a hand in the intel gathering which a bunch of people do gather that intel but who’s pulling the trigger who’s saying yes go and you need to own that if you make that mistake and explain why and then you can put some procedures in place that won’t let it happen again and also you have to question a little bit you have the inspector general of the air force investigating the air force like you know would it be better to have an independent person looking at this as opposed to having somebody investigate themselves i don’t know i i don’t it’s just sort of a question that i’ve asked myself and there’s another thing that can happen as well and this was a term that i first heard when i was in iraq my second deployment good shot bad result meaning when you lay out what happened what a individual saw like if the person that pulled the trigger what he saw what he understood what he was thinking you lay all those things out and you say you know what you that was a good shot i understand why you took that shot i’m sorry that this is what happened but we at least we at least investigate and say okay how did this happen how did this occur and how do we make sure that first of all the person wasn’t being negligent the person’s not trying to hide anything because look when you’re in war you’re gonna shoot people and occasionally you’re gonna shoot someone that didn’t deserve to get shot that happens and when that happens you have to actually look at it and say okay how did it happen how did you make that decision why did you make that decision what did you see you pull all that stuff apart and with my guys the couple times that something like this happened it was hey i understand why you took that shot and and it was actually the right call and i’m it’s horrible that has a bad result but i understand why you did it and it made sense you know that’s a lot different than oh wait a second you didn’t see anything that looked suspicious or you you know why did you shoot this well i don’t know no never got that answer and never was in those situations so for to your point for to pull the threat on the whole thing if someone said hey this is what we saw this is the vehicle that we were targeting this is the intel hit that we got this is what our informant said this is what our electronic surveillance said they could actually paint a picture where you say you know in that pressure situation i understand what you did i understand why you took that shot and you took the risk at taking that shot so you could save americans and save an attack i understand that okay now we we at least learn something but to just say nothing it doesn’t make sense it’s not it’s not the right move man freaking horrible um you also i mean you were like on the freaking taliban tourist trip i mean you you went to uh visit omar’s like remote mosque out there what was that so we took this you know again taking advantage of the fact suddenly we went to i went to almost all the provinces because this was something that i couldn’t ever do before by road suddenly we could we could travel and this was fascinating to me so we took this epic kind of journey from kabul to kandahar and you know through logar and then wardak and then through um ghazni and actually was very bizarre in ghazni after we started the filthiest hotel that i think i’ve ever stayed in my life there was the sheets weren’t like it was it was gross and mind you this was still september or it was very hot gotta give us a bad yelp review for sure it was it was i just didn’t have hang asleep the toilet didn’t work like there was just one shared squat toilet that didn’t work and the shower didn’t work and it was over flooding and i just i just could not wait to leave that place but anyhow what’s so bizarre i like the fact that you’re jumping into random cars with taliban elders but you don’t get mad until you got a freaking stuffed up shower but you know it was so bizarre so we’re sitting there in this little like place having dinner downstairs and again it’s very unusual for a woman to be out at night now it’s like oh you know effort i’m going out so i’m having dinner with yours my driver my fixer and my photographer and then a bunch of kandahari talibans come into the restaurant and sort of sitting there and and staring and doing their you know asking a few questions and went about their business but anyway i found out the next day which was very strange the hotel the and because i have to stay separately to the men so the guys all shared one room and then as a woman i have to have my own room so i was on the other side um and then these kandahari talibans so bizarre they stayed they were traveling through but they stayed that night because they heard there were foreigners there and literally like stayed outside my room that night to make sure nobody came in which was just bizarre in a way it kind of goes back to their pasture and wally hospitality wanting to make sure nothing happened to the foreigners um which yeah we can we can talk about that because that’s that leads to so many different things but that sort of shows you this very bizarre dichotomy of what is happening in this country because on one hand you’re sort of seeing acts like that and then on the other hand you see the brutality and you see this insurgency that’s trying to be a government so yeah very bizarre but anyway we continued to go through to kandahar which is the birthplace of the talibans um on all the roads they bombed up you know i’d ask them who bombed this road oh we did well now you’ve got to fix it right like now it’s time because yeah the roads are terrible so you know we eventually got there and then it’s about two hours um from kandahar city to go to this little tiny it’s in in sangiza which is where mulla oma started the taliban in 1994 so we drive there and and get to this it’s extremely primitive place it’s just mud huts it’s it’s dirt roads it’s and somewhere i really think that the us just never was because it was just it was taliban territory forever so we get there and just this one tiny square room um in the middle of middle of nowhere and go in and and the imam and these village elders welcome us in and it was actually strange again because that was the first time that and it was at omaha’s mosque that the the muellers were actually looking at me and talking to me i thought this is just strange because i’d come from all these other places and here should be the most conservative of all and yet you’re actually engaging and asking asking me about my personal life you know so i just thought this is bizarre um but you know their their sort of philosophy on it was that that mullah omar gained traction and and gained supporters because this came after the there was a civil war going on so after the russians were kicked out of afghanistan you know quickly things became another war again which was the civil war in afghanistan and mulla omar presented this idea of there was going to be no corruption and the crime was going to stop and he would give food and money and things to the poor and and people gravitated to that and you could see just from sort of the simplicity of this tiny little mosque that you know looked like the carpets weren’t replaced in 30 40 years that that was really something i think that he did live by was this um sort of sense of humility and i think a lot of afghans at that point when they were starting to see corruption among all these warlords they gravitated to that and that’s how he was able to to build a very strong following very quickly um you mentioned to me about seeing people addicted to drugs there what what’s that culture like because it’s the mecca for opium yeah yeah absolutely i think it’s something more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin and opium come from afghanistan so and the taliban is really proud that that has been one of the number one ways they were able to make money through the insurgency was through the the selling of of those drugs and they a lot in helmand we went up to helm and to uh sang in and places like that where they grow the poppies and it’s funny because i went the taliban were putting on this big you know display of we’re getting rid of the drugs it’s haram we’re going to kill the crops and blah blah blah and um and i was at the canon narcotics and and and the guys you know they’re putting on this display but then it became very evident to me especially when i went there and the talibans themselves are harvesting it and i said well so you tell me it’s haram and then one of them says to me it’s only haram if we sell it to afghans if we sell it over the border it’s not haram so basically they said we can sell it to other we can kill other people in other places but we don’t want to kill um we don’t want to kill afghans so that was sort of their philosophy i don’t see them ending that anytime soon they’re going to try to i think probably find avenues to legalize it in the sense of um countries that perhaps are friendly to them that need opium for for medicine i think that’s the approach that they seem like they’re going to want to take is is to try to legalize it in some way now they were using the jails to they were called rounding up a lot of the addicts from the streets and and there’s a lot of addicts in the streets and rounding them up and putting them in jail because they didn’t have proper rehab so that was sort of the approach that the talibans have been taking and kids too there was a lot of sadly a lot of young kids is the cult is there like a drug culture of some kind or is it just something that sort of seeps into hey this is what we grow you start trying it you start eating it or whatever you know there was like one little boy that i talked to who was 13 and he was addicted and he was in this jail and i said well how did you start taking this and he said several years ago he’d have to go and buy it for his dad so he’d go and buy get the get the you know puppies and heroine for his dad and then eventually he just you know tried it once and and and he became addicted so i think it tends to to filter through families and really impoverish families usually um so yeah just now you eventually do get like uh detained and kind of accused of being a spy right what happened so that was also in kandahar so what happens is as a journalist so just to go back a little bit so when you get to the country as a journalist you have to go to the the ministry of information and culture which is sort of like the ministry of foreign affairs and they check your credentials and give you a mujahid zabiola mujahid is the spokesperson basically gives you a signed letter that says you were accredited journalist to be able to work and and you flash that letter so when i am going through a checkpoint or when i’m going to try to do an interview i flash my zabiola letter and they say okay she’s pressed she can come in or whatever the situation is so and when you go to a province you have to the protocol is you’re supposed to go and inform the minister of information and culture that you were there so that they know that you can get through checkpoints and you’re not going to get arrested so in kandahar that’s exactly what we did we went to the ministry of information and culture and did an interview with him about blah blah blah and he said okay you can go anywhere you want goodbye sort of thing so we’re like okay well we’re going to spin boldac which is the border of pakistan in kandahar that sort of leads into uh into that tribal area so into quetta so we go down to spain boldack and there’s just people everywhere trying because the border is mostly closed and there’s people everywhere and instantly i just get mopped like absolutely i’m talking just just flooded by hundreds of of people that just surround me and i’m you know with my fixer i’m like don’t don’t leave me because these people are gonna mob me so i’m trying to intervene just you just get mobbed it was it was crazy and and the talent is just because you’re western yeah yeah i guess they saw they saw a camera and then they saw a female and they thought okay jonas everybody sort of they’re curious they want to tell their story but what was bizarre joko is the talibans were flogging them like whipping these guys to get them away from me and i was like please stop that like i don’t want to be responsible they just continued just to follow i was like you’re just getting whipped and i was upset about it because i didn’t want people getting hurt why why are you not leaving when this is happening it was bizarre and so what ended up happening was it just it got to the point where it was so much there were just just people everywhere and just what was the closing in on me this town was like what who what what kind of town was this was like like our super bowl town border town so it was just a border crossing so it was a small bit just so many people but they were just freaking hyped to see just just it was the craziest thing and i i mean you have that a little bit but this was a whole other level where i just thought oh my goodness like what is happening um i couldn’t go anywhere and i would try to grab people to interview them into a store and i’d look out the window and suddenly the store was just surrounded it was so crazy and i said i just i didn’t i and so the talibans were coming along asking questions what is happening and we tried to call the driver and we had this funny driver called shafiq and he um he always likes to eat and every time he goes he tries to find eat and suddenly shafiq’s not in the place that he we left him sophie had gone off to get food at the bar and the car wasn’t there and and and and the weed my fixer is calling shafiq where are you he’s not answering his phone and so the talibans come along in their police vehicle and we’re just trying to crush your feet and i’m telling them like we’re leaving we’re leaving um we’re just getting our driver we couldn’t contact the driver and so next thing you know television’s like all right get in and i said i don’t want to get in your car i don’t want to go to the police station and they said nope get in and so we get into the police vehicle we go to the police station and they put us in their detention room and we’re sitting there for a while and i’m thinking this is going to get resolved really quickly hours and hours and then finally just more of them are piling in and the top intel guy is piling in and all these talibans are piling in and i’m showing them my credentials i’m showing them the letter i’m showing them the passport i’m showing them my press card and they said oh this is fake no it’s not they said yes it is and they’re you know con accusing us of basically spying and i just i don’t i don’t know what else to tell you i’m a journalist i’ve showed you my credentials i’ve showed you my passport you have all my information so i i don’t know what to tell you so we’re sort of sitting there more people are coming in hammering us i can see my fixer starting to get white and he’s a very sort of cool calm doesn’t really things don’t rattle him too much but i can see he’s starting to to get worried and doesn’t know what to do um and they’re telling you know it’s about these pakistani spies that they arrested a couple of nights earlier and and long story short eventually many hours later they were able to get in contact with the the zabiola’s office who was able to verify our information and and then they were extremely apologetic and they said well we’ll take you to the border and you can you know photograph the pakistanis and at that point they were fighting with the pakistanis so um yeah i guess that was so we ended up going to the border and getting you know some good interviews and footage and they were very very apologetic about the situation but that was just one of those those situations where that that usually is the case for journalists is that especially working in the middle east or in asia like afghanistan they will accuse you of being spies and you have a little recourse to argue and say well i’ve showed you my credentials i’m not but i don’t know what i need to do to convince you anymore you’ve got like uh survivor’s bias but you just leaves make it through everything it’s crazy like there’s so many people that this your story always seems to end up working out yeah it does yeah touch on touch wood on that one um what about the haqqani you you visited coast kind of so host yeah so that was um that’s sort of where the haqqanis a lot of them come from that and pacquia and uh yes so that was interesting so i have a good friend of mine who’s from host and so we went down there and you know it was an interesting place because it you know again as the sort of the home of the haqqanis but it was very untouched a lot of the time by actual conflict it was one of the few places where you had roads that were decent and that um it was a very self-sufficient kind of place but but yeah what struck me in going in is this big billboard of beau bergdahl that’s just there as you enter as you enter the city and it’s bo bergdahl in another muller like a salute to beau bergdahl no it’s not it’s him looking down and like he’s sort of got blood on his face and he’s looking like he’s detained and miserable and then there’s this muller standing in the picture next to him and it’s a poem in pashto that doesn’t really make a lot of sense but it’s basically a tribute to this muller and i’m still very unclear i thought you were saying it was a tribute tribute to bob it’s almost sort of like a it’s a tribute to the muller but for some reason they felt the need to put the bow bergdahl there it’s this new new billboard and then i found out that the host the governor of host is actually one of the gitmo five so i guess he put it up there to you know celebrate himself in some way and and he actually invited us to go and do an interview which i didn’t end up going because he didn’t want i went and met with the mayor but i didn’t go and meet with him because my he didn’t want my friend the friend that had the hosti friend who had taken me to host he didn’t want her to go so i i felt sort of obliged to i mean just just explain that taliban five point in case anyone doesn’t know about that so i guess when when beau bergdahl was traded um he was what captured in 2009 he ran off base i think something he deserted his base in uh in in the neighboring paxia which is next to host and he was captured by the taliban and ultimately the haqqanis took him and he was i guess yeah under captivity for a long time and then eventually under the obama administration i think it was in 2015 they orchestrated a deal to release five uh gitmo detainees uh in exchange for for the one us us soldier so and now now that one of those guys is uh what the mayor what is he he’s the governor the governor he’s the governor of host now yeah they’re all in top leadership positions they’re all running the show and they’re connie’s themselves i mean saraj is wanted by the us for five million dollars is now the minister of interior and his uncle khalil is the minister of refugees which um yeah i don’t know i don’t know what that entails it’s crazy so how about the let’s talk a little bit about this so you know you mentioned the haqqani you got taliban akane and taliban are very aligned right um in fact they they kind of say there’s no difference between the two even though there’s well the haqqanis are actually a designated terrorist organization but the taliban isn’t but i’m saying in afghanistan they’re very close well now it’s basically entwined right i think before it was there were slight sort of ideological differences and in in many ways the khanis were they were the leading they were attacks yeah they were the hardcore most of the suicide bombings were orchestrated by them they were the ones kidnapping who still have americans in captivity but um and i mean very close with al qaeda you know the founder of the haqqanis haqqani himself yeah this was a guy that was you know funded by the cia to fight the soviet union reagan called him personally a freedom fighter yes yes so when we talk about things for being bizarre right now they’ve been bizarre for a long time they’ve been very bizarre for a long time we paid him millions of dollars um the the founder of the haqqani and i think he’s i mean it’s a fascinating guy you know i mean he was um he’s got two wives got seven sons i think three or four of his sons were killed in combat yeah and he he’s the really of the one who brought a lot of the arabs into the fold so until that point it was very you know afghan pakistan he started getting a lot of the arab funding which brought in the bin ladens and a lot of that kind of funding but um but what what i found to be really interesting in in really researching the akanes is they’re very educated and they’re they get a lot of education a lot of their their wives go to the middle east go to saudi arabia and get educations which is ironic given that so many of the women under the taliban are deprived of education so it’s sort of this dichotomy but but everyone i know who’s worked closely or knows that khan is well will always say they’re 20 steps ahead of everyone else like they are the brainchild really of the taliban so they know what is going on down to a t and siraj does not get photo there is not a photograph of suraj that you can possibly find a grainy photograph the fbi has but it’s very old and very unclear he does not get photographed at all and he did an event once when i was there which was um celebrating suicide bombers at the intercontinental hotel which of course the haqqanis you know sent suicide bombers to several years earlier the whole thing is great so when did you go to this thing was this on this i didn’t go in but this was in this was in late october they had they were giving land and compensation money to families of suicide bombers which we can get into because they are very much continuing this suicide bombing despite being a government but they um so he’s doing this big event there but in every photograph that was taken it’s him from the back or him from the side or his face is blurred and i said to to one of my sources there who was he works for him who’s a kabul intel taliban guy and i said well you know what is up with that and he says suraj will walk around the street every few days and nobody knows who he is so he will walk around the street to check you know what’s happening at the checkpoints check what the talibans are doing and nobody knows who he is and he’s going to keep it that way undercover boss yeah but there yeah there it the whole thing is just crazy and then you have so he’s minister of interior and then you have mula omar’s son muliyakub who’s only about 29 30 he is the minister of defense and those two are bat heads they don’t like each other they’re coming from different schools of thought so it’s just it’s a crazy world and then outside of those two groups you have isis k yes yes so they you know they’ve had a presence in afghanistan since about 2015 but essentially were pretty much defeated around 20 i think the afghan government in early 2019 basically said that they were defeated and that was the whole idea of the us’s mission up until i i guess trump authorized them to go after the talibans but up until then it was al qaeda and then isis and they’ve really made it a terrifying resurgence there’s almost daily attacks happening across afghanistan as i was there and and they are like even more hardcore than the haqqani is that accurate they’ve got a different ideology so what makes the talibans and and the khanis different to isis and to al-qaeda is they’re very talibans are very much focused on afghanistan they don’t have any grandiose desires they they say we want to make sure that no foreigners come into our country we want good relations with everybody but we don’t want another foreigner to come into our country they’re like isolationists yes they’re very focused on afghanistan whereas groups like isis and and al qaeda have a much more global ideology where they they want to see as the fighter said they want to see their interpretation spread throughout the world and they’re the ones that will plant attacks in in other countries so therefore are viewed as a as a national security threat whereas the taliban isn’t and that’s really hard for the afghans to it’s always been hard for the afghans to really wrap their head around because the talibans were doing so many suicide bombings and attacks and and to them they’re absolutely terrorists and they couldn’t it was hard for me to explain to them why the us was sort of leaving the talibans alone and going after these much smaller groups that were at that point not even doing that many attacks and that is is going back to well the talibans is not a threat to the united states necessarily in it in and of itself did you you went to the area where the taliban blew up the ancient buddha yeah beautiful province beautiful province 1500 years old those statues were you know and that was that was crazy so what and i i talked to the telemanns about this about you know was that a mistake and so they say no no no that that wasn’t a mistake that was the decision then but now we’re going to protect everything and so i went to a few other places with ruins and the talibans are all protecting it and i said were you going to continue to protect these buddhas or you know in mazanak and other places yeah yeah yeah that’s our orders for now but what we have to remember is this might be their orders for now but they didn’t blow up those buddhas until early 2001 so at that point the taliban had already been in control what since 1996 so it was left alone and then mullah omar did it as an extortion because he wanted the international community to give the taliban’s money and the international community wouldn’t so then he threatened well i’m gonna blow up the buddhas and still didn’t get the money so he made good on his promise so that’s the thing with the talibans right now they might be okay where everything’s okay but you don’t know what they’re going to do next month you don’t know how the orders will change and so and you get there and it was bizarre because the talibans were taking selfies in front of these blown up buddhas and i said well you do know that that these you guys who blew these up right it just you know incredibly strange but birmingham is a beautiful province it just it shows you i think when we think of afghanistan we just think of the war and the bloodshed but it just is is one of the most remarkably aesthetically beautiful places in the world and then bamiyan is just a prime example of that it was the first national park in afghanistan now there was a the drone strike that killed the facilitator and planner and you did a little a little investigation on that as well yeah so i went there a few times so that was just outside dalalabad in nangenha so nangan has always been the hub for for isis k it’s on the pakistan border on the east and it’s just that is where you know tora bora is where bin laden went and hid immediately i also went out to the the moab side if you remember when the us dropped that massive mother of all bombs in beginning of 2017 that’s also in nangenha so um so there’s an area a couple of different areas but but that particular area was a district called sarkorod and that was just outside of jalalabad and it’s one of those very eerie places and you go there and you feel like their skin and your your neck is standing up because it just doesn’t feel right and so the house that was hit was in the far corner it was actually a really nice house compared to you know a lot of the mud huts and things this was a nice sort of brick home and we went into the home um and you could see where it was hit and it was it was so precise it was just like you know this one section of the backyard in this chair that had been blown up and nothing else was touched so i went and talked to to the neighbors there and and one of the the guys who who was there and as the drone strike hit which was close to midnight he was on i guess guard duty on a roof across and yeah he sort of said that that there was a strange guy that sort of hadn’t been living there that long but um but would come and go and yeah they hit that night and then sort of immediately i guess a car came and took the women out of the house and the children and then um the next day a bunch of talibans came in and were were taking things out taking flags taking he said he didn’t know what they were taking but big boxes that were just weighing the car down and then talibans went in there after that and took out more things or i guess from the house and then he said that those talibans were found without their heads hanging on a a tree the next couple of days later with an isis stamped letter next to it basically saying anybody who removes these bodies is going to to kind of be next and he said eventually that um if someone from another district came to collect them but they were just hanging there on that tree for for many days because people were afraid of isis and he said that every night sort of you isis comes in they they come in and take control but during the day it’s very much the taliban doing patrol the taliban gets scared and disappear and then the yeah the isis fighters come in at night and he even showed me his own warning letter he got from the talibans for doing a local news interview after that drone strike and then he said that the taliban saw the interview and and were then accusing him of being the one that gave the location to the foreigners so it’s complex and then the actual isis-controlled center where a lot of these people come from is the next district over which is chapaga so so we went into that one day which i don’t know it was a smartest decision but i’m here today you should play lottery because you would win a lot um so i know you left what the first first yes first of december yes so like a few days ago a week ago yes um as you as you look back there’s anything else any other high points from there i mean there’s a bunch of stuff i’m sure you you know um on your website you’ve got a link to a bunch of the articles yes yeah and i have a sub stack that i also subscribe to that and i usually put all all the articles into that and also a little bit of extra kind of so how do they get to the sub stack so it’s just uh you can get it straight from my website or it’s just yeah it’s and your website is what holly okay h-o-l-l-i-e-m-c-k-a-y dot-com there you go and then you can get to the sub-stack yeah go into some more detail there but as you look at what’s going on um what’s what’s going on now this is a disaster i mean i i know one thing that you’d mentioned to me is like and it’s sort of the the i guess the the like the ground or the most granular sort of point zero for the disaster is like what happened to the military working dogs that got left behind and you know that was such a big story if everybody remembers there’s about 130 dogs and you see these pictures of them at the airport and so i wanted to to follow up on that and find out what what happened to those dogs because the dod was very quickly to come out and say they weren’t us military dogs but they were contractor dogs so the long story short is that you know different uh contracting companies had given those dogs to a carnival small animal rescue which is run by a woman named charlotte and she was tasked with getting them out but when she got to the airport was basically told you know you can’t get all these dogs on the plane and you can only take out what you can carry so there was a lot of controversy oh my gosh these dogs are being abandoned but you know she’s someone who really does amazing work in in rescuing these animals and caring for them so i wanted to follow up and find out what happened to them and i talked to her and she said they recovered about 70 um most of them or not a half probably had been killed by the talibans and then you had so a lot of the spaniels which are very friendly dogs had run up to the talibans and the talibans just not they don’t have dogs as pets when they had the rule in the 90s dogs were outlawed they considered unclean by the talibans you can have cats but not dogs so a lot of them were shot and then they sort of saw that these dogs had gotten so much attention and thought well this is a bit of a bargaining chip so they kept a lot of the german shepherds because they thought that a lot of the german shepherds must be guard dogs even though a lot of them were not trained as guard dogs but you see especially at the airport and other places the taliban’s walking around these dogs that they have no idea what they’re doing with like these dogs like they don’t look like you know so so some of them survived some of them were left to run around the airport compound and some of them got out so yeah it was a sad situation and and we can debate for days you know obviously humans have to get priority over dogs but i think we all can agree we we love our animals yeah well what about that what about like the hum from a humanitarian perspective of what’s going on there now it’s an absolute disaster and that is that is the heartbreaking thing is the to give you some context when i got there it was 70 afghans to one us dollar it was a hun it hit a hundred by the time i left so that just shows you how quickly that devalued their their afghani devalued their currency people can’t afford bread people can’t afford just basic things there there is no middle class in afghanistan anymore it’s people are selling their belongings on the street um you know crime has gone through the roof again it dropped initially because i think people were in fear that they were going to get their hand chopped off and when it became prevalent that wasn’t going to happen at least not right now the crime went back up and it’s you go to these public hospitals and i mean they were just there the amount of malnourished babies that are just dying on mass and the mothers are on the floor breastfeeding and it was something i’d really just never seen to that degree and it broke my heart because of the amount of money that that we as americans and the amount of treasure and the amount of people and the amount of you know effort that had been put into this and and this was the result and it’s only going to get worse during the winter and and and and the us and other countries are going to have to make this very uncomfortable decision of do we unfreeze this money this 9 5 billion that was frozen when the taliban took over and the world bank and and international monetary fund also froze do we unfreeze that and enable this government to to support a country of 38 million because there is no money coming in there’s absolutely no money you cannot get money out of the banks um yeah it was it was very challenging to work in because of that environment but we’re going to have to make this decision of do we work with this government so that these innocent afghan people who have already gone through so much can survive and have some kind of dignity in their lives or are we going to just i guess turn away and say no no these people are human rights violators we’re not going to to talk to them and to isolate them and and i always look back on history and i hope that we don’t make the same mistake because there was no more isolated government than the taliban during their first reign in the 90s through to 2001 they were blackballed by everybody and they had no money the one person who came in and gave the money and not very much 1 5 million i think it was was osama bin laden he’s the one who came in and gave them money and so naturally they were going to protect him naturally when the u s said hand him over mula alma said no he’s the only one who came in and gave us money so it’s a very complex decision and there’s going to be a lot of people that feel very strongly in many ways but it’s an uncomfortable decision that needs to be made on a diplomatic level of how we’re going to deal with this because i think the afghan people have been through enough and and they don’t deserve any they don’t deserve to suffer the ramifications of this any more than they already have and that that’s that’s sort of the uncomfortable choice there isn’t many options do you as when you got back to america um i guess it’s been a couple days ago but even even as you were you know overseas and you were online and you were looking at the way that the stories were being presented and the way that the events were being presented with now the you know the way the media and social media and emotional media all works now what was your you know what was the delta between what you were seeing and what the world was being fed there was quite a dichotomy so if i was just to look at twitter and to look at what was happening i would think there was mass slaughter on the street i would think that that the talibans were going out and pulling people from their homes and and and certainly there are isolated cases of that happening but that was very much the exception not the norm and that was not accurately reflected i think you know as strange as it is the talibans were trying to show this image of they want to be recognized is it safe to say that the taliban is trying to rebrand yes absolutely and and i think you know there’s a lot of this i hear a lot of well they haven’t changed since the 2000 and you know or their first reigns in the 90s and i don’t think that’s accurate they have changed they’ve changed a lot in many different respects but um but yeah a lot of the information i was seeing about these just you know mass slaughters and you know i think there was one thing where and a lot of people had asked me about it there was a rumor going around about a girl that had been beheaded by the taliban and when i looked into it and i asked my fixer look into it it turned out that she had been killed in july so before the talibans came in but it was an internal family conflict it had nothing to do with you know and yet this was being presented as this just happened last week and and she’s being beheaded and i saw like kim kardashian or someone was then retweeting it and putting it on a story and then a million more people are asking me and i thought this is how this cycle perpetuates but if i was to to sum up the situation it was certainly terrible things were happening but it wasn’t what was being painted you know as i said i i could work freely and and unharmed um and you know i was only wearing a hijab so a lot of the information just was was wrong and there was something i even saw you know there was a picture that was going around where it was a woman in a burka and she had a chain around her ankle and was being led by a husband and people were saying you know this is afghanistan now under the taliban i looked at you know a quick reverse image search and you see oh no that was 2003 iraq and somebody photoshopped a chain to this woman’s ankle so there was so much of that and um and i think there really were few journalists that were in there i didn’t i didn’t meet too many other americans i met a couple of americans that came in and then left again but generally there was just a few european journalists that came in and so a lot of the work was being done from from outside the country and i think it just shows you the importance of being on the grounds and a lot of news organizations don’t want to invest in that anymore but afghanistan really showed me the importance of of having the ground perspective because it’s it’s so different to what you see just sort of an aggregating or even talking to people and i think you know a lot of interviewers were talking to the diaspora people that had fled but their perspective was no longer in afghanistan so yeah there’s a lot of disinformation um yeah and it’ll be no one knows right we don’t know what the taliban’s gonna do um you know they were pretty brutal in their last you know time in power from 1995 1996 um up until 2001 up until up until the northern alliance and america went in there and i mean they had some some some bad things happen right um starvation and and just bad some bad stuff happened i mean horrible it’s uh you know definitely human rights violations and all that stuff absolutely has happened and and you know there was obviously there were some reports of terrible things happening again and it’s hard to know but to your point unless you have people on the ground you it’s very it makes it even more difficult to actually know what’s happening and make decisions on what you’re going to do when you’re basing it on photoshopped images yeah absolutely um you mentioned osama bin laden what was talk to us a little bit about osama bin laden oh osama bin laden’s presence in the psyche of the afghan people now what did you observe from that perspective yeah so i i really think you know his legacy is still very strong in afghanistan and even places that i went to you know in again the jalalabad the the information and culture minister there has told me straight don’t do any stories on a song so i was like oh you wait you wait now i’m going um so but you see that legacy sort of carry through and they’re all in power because of him and again it goes back to he’s the one who sort of came in and gave them money when no one else would and so in return for that they gave him gave him safe harbor and it’s under that code of pashtun wally which is really the highest moral code that the the pashtuns have in protecting guests and and it’s the same code that they use to protect somebody like me who’s a is a guest in their country so it’s it’s a very complex sort of thing but but when you talk to regular afghans or or students or or people that you know when they’re young 20 something they they don’t know who he is and it’s it’s just interesting because you sort of look at this war and you that was continuing to go on and and and yet you sort of have the people that are caught in the crossfire who just sort of have no idea of what what happened and what the background is and and why this is all kind of still going on so it’s interesting and al qaeda still you know certainly exists in afghanistan too um my understanding from the talibans is that they’ve been told that they are not allowed to do any take any military actions that they have to you know they’re allowed to be in the country but they have to to stop you know not plan anything or do anything otherwise they’ll be in trouble but i think a lot of the times too a lot of those al-qaeda members have just been basically folded in into the talibans and a part of the intelligence units or a part of that whole operation yeah it was definitely some of your articles mention the fact that you know some 20 year old afghan didn’t really know who osama bin laden was yeah so sometimes when i get into discussions with people about the divisiveness in america i’ll reference the fact that i work with a bunch of different companies at my consulting company and most people that you talk to they’re not thinking about what’s happening on twitter right now they’re not thinking about this they’re thinking about what they’re doing they’re thinking about their job they’re thinking about their company they’re thinking about moving you know how they’re going to grow how they’re going to go to new markets that’s what they’re thinking about that’s what they’re doing that’s what their life is is is it similar i mean i guess this is a rhetorical question but did you find the same thing in afghanistan most people are like okay well the taliban’s in charge of the northern alliance in charge i want to you know continue to get my job done and raise my family and move kind of forward like kind of leave me alone type thing you have two camps you have the people whose entire day is is fixated on trying to get out um trying to get out of afghanistan you’re trying to get out so there’s really two camps and you know each even now just every day all day my messages my linkedin everything is just flooded how do i get it how do i get out so you have that camp and then you have another camp of people who are just basically um i know that i can’t go anywhere and this is the new reality so how do i survive and how do i feed my family and and that’s really what it comes down to it comes down to survival especially now with the the crisis being what it is there and the challenges of of just day-to-day life what are people when somebody messages you you get 10 messages about i want to get out i want to get out i want to get out why do they want to get out what are they what’s and it’s a mixed thing you have you have people that are certainly have legitimate reasons to get out um a lot of the commandos that i met with that are being terrified because the commanders are really leading the charge in a lot of the fights and and they’re very concerned about retaliation um but then you have a lot of people who who and again what i found a lot of people who were maybe drivers or worked for different companies who are desperate and terrified to get out but when i talk to them i say well where’s the threat nobody’s been threatened or they’re passing around a whatsapp letter that everybody’s been given that’s fake or so in a way that the fear is contagious and again that’s where i’m saying the fear doesn’t always match the reality and what i found it was that people thought well someone’s so scared and my neighbor’s scared and everybody’s scared so i’m gonna have to be scared too and i’m gonna have to leave so that yeah it was it was contagious and and that’s what i found that a lot of the the worries were were self-inflicted as opposed to an actual real threat that was there there’s got to be like a massive level though of like suppression right right i mean if you’re a person that was sort of open-minded and moving in this direction yeah and now like it’s over yeah it’s over yeah and and and you don’t get and especially for women too you know that’s deeply challenging girls are still not able to go to to public schools i think private schools are still open but secondary schools have been closed for girls now for months and the talibans keep saying it’s because we’ve got to make sure that they have transport that’s separate to the men and i said well great we’ll get you some buses oh and then there’s another excuse so i’m not sure what’s happening with that but you know women that were definitely used to going to work and to other places and now they’re at home and you know that’s heartbreaking women you know i met with many women who you know were doing um you know in the national sort of taekwondo teams or in the national tennis team yeah there’s a big article about their soccer team too yeah you know and now that then they’re not allowed to to um to do their you know to not even practice let alone go into any tournaments even i met with the top mma guy there as well he’s you know great fighter he’s i think two fights away from ufc and he’s like we can’t fight anymore and he said they tried to do a fight the talibans told them that they have to wear like full clothing which he said you know we obviously can’t do that and the taliban came to their first fight and broke it up and turned into a big mess but you know he’s concerned because you know he can’t get out but and he’s trying but you know he’s someone who used to go to each match with you know the police your police you know afghan police flag and it was very pro the former security forces and so you know it’s tough for the guys too even even though they can do well you know a little bit more than the women but music is completely kind of outlawed and and arts and all those sorts of things yeah you’re not allowed to paint any people don’t know how to paint any living things or film any living things or photograph any living things yeah well they haven’t been too strict about that but yeah instruments have been outlawed yeah except for like some drum yeah well they they have this their music is this nasheed music it just drive me crazy so they would get into the car and they’d put in you know insist and um if we’re driving somewhere remote and damn talibans would get in the car and they’d put in their nasheeds and it was just this it’s islamic music without instruments it’s all vocals and then there’s bomb blasts and bullets and just like and they turn it up and i was like it’s like their motivation it’s their battlefield music and it’s like this is crazy and that’s what they play all night and the talibans actually moved next door to the house that i was living in so i would deliberately go and get my two-pack and maybe again i just blast it completely yeah and i was like you know what it’s time to go holiday so here’s here’s what i find this is what’s this is what’s so hard to really contemplate as a as a human being right what percentage of people are are are don’t want it to be this way right what percentage of people don’t want it to be this way and would give anything to go back to whatever to 2019 and be moving in a certain direction have the females ready to go to school and be able to play your guitar and be able to do mma what percentage of the population feels that way versus what percentage of the population wants to go back to the old taliban ways and strict sharia law i’m not asking you you can make an estimation but it’s very difficult and then okay if you’re that if you’re 90 is on board for sharia law and that’s what we’re doing and hey the 10 that aren’t on board with it you best get out of here because this is what we’re doing or is it 90 of the population wants to just go back to again 2019 move in that direction move towards a more open society and if that’s the case and it’s just a strict small percentage of people that maintain power and control via force and brutality well then then then then what are we supposed to do so i think there’s really again when we see with the media what we’re seeing is always generally coverage that’s coming out of kabul or coming out of a city and i tried to really make an effort to to to go to as many rural areas and provinces because the perspective there is completely different so i’d say if you’re going to estimate in somewhere like kabul you know 80 of people want that previous life because they were able to you know there was bars there was music that you know could go to clubs you could go to you know get alcohol you could do all of these things because you had that foreign footprint there um but you go to the villages and you know that are already very conservative where the women don’t necessarily you know go to school past the age of 13 and that are very much relegated to the home and they don’t leave and that’s just customary because that’s that’s the way that their life is their lives are actually going to get better and i say that because they don’t have to face the daily bombings anymore they don’t have to deal with the ramifications of war but their actual lives aren’t gonna change because they were never really privy to all those sort of new western inspired if you will freedoms so you can make the argument that you know for them they now have a more peaceful life but in the cities that’s where you really see women and people losing a lot of those freedoms and and suffering but but what i think is also interesting that came out of this was the number on of talibans that were embedded into the military into the government into every possible avenue in every city and suddenly when the talibans were able to take power these people came out people i knew for years and years and years who were working with journalists fixers said to me oh yeah i’ve been taliban for 20 years and now they’re out you know and so and friends of mine you know i had you know even with my fixer good friend of his he was saying that someone he’s known since he was very young when the taliban took power suddenly he finds out his taliban like it’s just these people kept secrets for so long and i think that’s also why the talibans were able to come to power so quickly they infiltrated every possible you know government entity that they could um what do they do what’s the taliban doing with their with the with the military equipment that they took over so um i you know it was interesting so i did a tour of the airport just before i left and and you still see a lot of the damaged aircraft the us blew up a lot of the aircraft before it left but you see a lot they still have all those russian russian helicopters that are still there and and they have a lot of engineers they brought back a lot of the technicians from the previous government trained by the us that are now they’re able to to help you know repair whatever they can um and they still do have very limited air power but i know that’s something they’re trying to build because the air force is something that that they want that they didn’t have before um and it was funny because i was i was sitting outside you know one one afternoon and and you see there was there was a big blast a big bomb and and the smokes in the air and it was just it was down at the military hospital very close and next thing you know you’re hearing choppers in the air and i said i haven’t heard this for ages you know what’s going on and they were flying a blackhawk and two of the the russian mh17s and they had apparently dropped a suicide bomber onto the hospital because isis was attacking it again they’re still using suicide bombers for situations like that but yeah craziness so it was it was an ongoing it was an ongoing you know thing but but so they certainly have the capacity if they need it but they’re saying oh we’re just going to use it for important and urgent circumstances so yeah the whole thing is is backwards but yeah i actually went to a suicide bombing school that i found which was in a kindergarten on the edge of kabul where they train the suicide bombers um you know and you have these men just begging begging to be chosen just pick me pick me it’s like the highest honor that they could possibly take and and you know if despite being a government now there’s no plans to to get rid of the suicide bombing schools um how about what are you seeing for lessons as you look at it now you’re looking back on it you’ve been gone for a week now what are you looking at what what kind of big picture strategic lessons are you seeing my biggest thing that to to drive home is you know we can talk all day about military strategies and and the taliban military strategies but at the end of the day and i i feel like i’m a broken record saying this but corruption corruption corruption corruption the last government backed by the us there was so much corruption on every possible level to the point where if you wanted to go and get an interview at the u s embassy just an interview if you were a university graduate who wanted to to get a job at the embassy because that was that was a cool thing to do you had to pay a middle person about five thousand dollars just to get an interview let alone if you were to get a job and then you’d pay them a whole bunch more and that was in every government institution money you know and and this is what i would get angry about because i would tell a lot of these afghans i said that’s my money as a u s taxpayer you stole our money or not you personally but your previous government you stole our money and you took that and you lined your pockets kabul could be dubai by now two trillion dollars and this is what has come from it and that is because the corruption on every level was just so rampant and so disgusting and even even when you know a lot of these awards and people were fleeing the country when the talibs were taking over there was just there was chunks of gold that they were keeping you know hidden underground just wads of cash that just in unfathomable numbers and there was not a thing that you could do to get through daily life without paying a bribe you know to get through a checkpoint you’re paying a bribe to get whatever you needed like life for afghans was difficult because of this institutionalized corruption that i think the us looked at and said well this is too systemic for us to do anything about we just have to leave it but really to me that was the root of the problem so people looked at that afghans looked at that and were like why am i starving here when this local governor is is rolling around and with all this money and a rolls royce and all these fancy things and i can’t you know i have to pay every day every time just to get to my job and that’s what the the taliban really capitalized on that they capitalized on well we are not going to be corrupt you know that’s against islam we are going to um you know support everybody treat everybody the same and so people that didn’t even ideologically want to be you know with the talibans they were driven to that and i i’ve seen that in many countries you want to fight against the government that you feel is is stealing from you and it just got to the point where it was it was so bad you had you had judges in provinces or lawyers like just falsely accusing people of something and and taking them to court so they could get brad money so it just and it was just it was on every possible level even even at the hospitals you had medical staff stealing the surprise supplies so they could go and sell them at a local pharmacy or because they owned their own pharmacy and that was going to pay them better money than the government salary so you know it’s if you’re going to go into a country or give country any sort of form of foreign aid i i hope that the us or and the con other countries can learn that lesson of if you don’t stop that right in the beginning if you don’t hold people accountable and there was there was never accountability to any of the corruption or stolen money this is the result you’re gonna get and i saw that in iraq too with you know people joining isis because they wanted to fight back against the government who they felt was stealing from and were corrupt and was suppressing them and it wasn’t about we want to be part of isis because we agree with isis it was no we we want to fight this government because they’re not here for us that’s the when you pull the string on vietnam the south vietnamese government was just completely corrupt and a lot of the issues that they had were due to the exact same type of corruption the whole the whole um system operated on through corruption and scratching each other’s backs and you know getting money here and putting in your own pockets and you know that was just the way it worked and that was a huge part of the issues that they had and why it’s the exact same thing it’s literally the exact same thing um seeing it again i know that um you know you’ve been you’ve been gone so you’re over there for august september october november december that’s like a uh deployment yeah a deployment into a into a war zone where everything’s falling apart what is that that’s i mean are you coming back this time how’s it how’s it how’s the transition back to reality back to norm normal american life yeah it was incredibly difficult i think for me to leave this time um i felt tremendously guilty about leaving because i knew that that i can as an australian and an american i can get you know i’m able to get a flight out to abu dhabi and and able to leave freely when it’s something obviously a lot of afghans want and i felt tremendously guilty because again you know i never think my life is any more valuable than theirs um i just happen to be lucky enough to be born in in different geographical coordinates that have given me a different different passports and and um and a very different life and you know the afghans are some of the most truly beautiful people they’re just so hospitable very kind um i i have a great love for the afghans i always say that i’ve been to many places in the world but i i’ve never quite sort of fallen in love with the place the way i’ve fallen in love with afghanistan over the years and it’s just it’s very special people and i felt tremendously guilty um just i guess you know walking away from them and i knew that it was time to leave and i knew that um you know some of the decisions that i felt that i was making um as a journalist were i i was taking risks that i knew were were i shouldn’t be taking um and i think when you get to that point when you sort of maybe don’t care so much about the outcome it’s time to take a break and that’s sort of a point that i think that i’d gotten to you know especially with going into some of the isis areas and and even my photographer was hesitating and i was okay oh i’m fine i and i didn’t have the same i think normal reactions you should have to those situations just you know the natural sense of fear or worry and and so anyway so i knew it was definitely time to take a break with that but i think yeah i felt very guilty especially those first few days i i was just you know wanting to turn around and immediately go back but um my first thing i saw i couldn’t go for a run and i’m a big runner and i couldn’t go for a run for you know five months and so the first thing i did when i got to new york was go for a run and i’m running and i look and i see a sign for a beauty salon on the sidewalk and i said oh they’ve reopened the beauty salons that was my first instinct and i thought hang on a minute you know you’re in new york city now so you’re not in kabul so um yeah it’s actually yeah it’s it’s a it’s a strange transition and as i said when i’m driving down i’m looking at the roads thinking how great they are you know how great is this road why did nobody bomb this road and then just remembering um remembering where i am so it’s um yeah it’s a little bit of a transition but and so how long are you going to stay home for oh i don’t i don’t have a home right now i don’t how long are you going to sleep in places where there’s beds i do need to get a home actually that is the objective for for early 20 early 2022 scary um i am going to get a home and so i have a good base so i i think i need in america yes so i can probably probably virginia i think maybe i kind of like that area and then what’s on the horizon for you know what are you gonna do for work wise are you gonna are you gonna you know you wrote only cry for the living which is an incredible book that really gives such a clear picture of everything that went went on um with the isis battlefield in the levant what are your plans on this stuff so i have so jake and my photographer and i have a photo book we’re working on and he’s got some really just beautiful pictures of afghanistan throughout this transition and then i i’m going to knuckle down and get the writing for that done um just sort of it’s a way to present i guess afghanistan to people in a very visual way um you know just sort of showing people what what it’s like to to be there through the fall and then in that period after and and who the afghans are who the talibans are who are all these different players so that’s the writing project i’m working on and then just yeah continuing to do journalism and little bits and pieces of different things here and there so how much writing is going to take to get that book done not a huge amount it’s not going to be super word intensive because of the pictures so probably i have so much material already it’s really just a matter of sitting down and sorting through what i think is going to be the most compelling to go with the pictures that we’ve already selected so kind of like a humans of new york but kind of more like humans of afghanistan yeah a little bit and then sort of go into some of the some of the decisions and some of the major things that were done and and said and explain things in in a in a way that i hope people can resonate with really yeah that’s that’ll be uh that’ll be awesome i mean i didn’t think of that connection until just now like the humans of new york which is a fascinating book and and obviously your your uh jake take just just unleashing picture after picture over there i’m sure he’s got incredible photographs and then the context that you can put around those and the history that you can put around them and the the knowledge that you have that’s um that’d be awesome yeah so just uh yeah continuing with the writing and then i will return to afghanistan probably in the spring is my is my plan at the talibans will have me back if they’re not too mad it’s a lot of stuff i’ve written some of them have been pretty mad do they contact you um sometimes they contact my fixer and and threaten and i had i had an issue with one taliban’s for a long time that just drove me nuts i was a little bit worried about him actually what did you say about it he was just very angry about everything and angry and just just an angry person um but eventually i just i just said i don’t care i don’t care i don’t care come and get me i don’t care well they can’t get you here but maybe no no kabul i i say i thought should i leave and they thought no i said come and get me tell him to come and get me come to the house if he’s worried come to the house because he was like where do you live come to that but anyway he backed off and went away but most of them um i think you know i think they have a media team that tries to read through three three read through reports but they’re desperate for recognition so they want they want attention but they’re increasingly becoming very um cracking down a lot which in the beginning they were very open and very free and it was quite easy to get the interviews but toward the end it became very difficult to to get any approval well i don’t know you kind of remind me of alex honold you know who that is alex honold is the rock climber that climbed el cap without any ropes and he’s they do like tests on him and there’s no he has let he registers less fear than a normal human and i think you’re kind of like that i think you register less fear than normal human so el cap is 3 000 feet in yosemite straight up granite and he climbed it with no ropes there’s a uh incredible movie about it um called free solo but i when he did that i remember just thinking man i hope that guy never climbs without ropes again and of course he does it all the time because that’s the way he is so when you got back i was kind of like okay cool i hope you never go over there again but i guess that’s like asking on alex hornell not to do what he loves yeah i guess yeah and i’m very grateful for the fact that i i just i feel very compelled and i i really do love what i do when i don’t at this point in my life i can’t imagine not doing it i don’t know what i don’t know what i would do is it just like curiosity it’s curiosity it’s it’s just it’s being this rough draft of history that i just think is just a fascinating experience to have and and it’s something i really thought about a lot you know you’re sitting with all these talibans and they’re bragging about killing americans and they’re bragging about shooting down um you know american helicopters and and they’re you know and i i really had to reflect on it a little bit because i thought i’m in this situation you know what is my job here and and and i think what journalists can do is it’s it’s not to hear this stuff about being a voice and giving people platforms no that’s not how i see my job i see my job as being able to communicate the other to the people and i say that because we have to understand the way that they think and we want to it’s very easy to paint things as black and white as as this is the good guy this is the bad guy but you have to understand why they do what they do where this comes from what their impetus is and that’s the way that i sort of see a lot of journalism is not to go in and interrogate or to stick it to them or to you just have to go in and have a conversation and sometimes that’s i find it to be really difficult because you know he’s somebody that’s that’s you know bragging about killing americans or or and yet you still have to go in there and have tea and talk to them and and it’s it’s a balance of of sort of this compartmentalization with running from a place of humanity but i i see that as that communication as being something that that really journalists can do the best because you know we aren’t government employees so we don’t have to we can speak to anyone we want and and i think it’s an important job to be able to to understand you know where they’re coming from and what that objective is and you know one of them said something interesting i’d love to get what your response would be because i didn’t have a i just didn’t have a response but he he looked at me and he said you know if how would you feel if i went to australia and i started recruiting australians to kill other australians wouldn’t you want to fight me back i thought about it for a really long time and i didn’t i didn’t have i didn’t have a great response because as i said earlier afghans were not the ones who who drove those planes into into new york that was they were saudi osama was found in pakistan so we can sort of debate about what role afghans really even had in those attacks and so in putting myself in his shoes you know i didn’t have a great response for how do you respond to that yeah well that’s the important thing about what you said earlier and this is something that we don’t do a great job of and by we i mean america and west the west in general is trying to understand what other people are thinking right and if you don’t understand what other people are thinking as a i mean this is what sun tzu said 2500 years ago in the art of war you have to understand what your opponent what your enemy is thinking if you don’t understand what they’re thinking your chances of winning go down dramatically so anytime you try and impose your thoughts [Music] on the enemy or you assume that you understand what they’re thinking you’re making them you’re making a huge mistake you’re making a huge strategic mistake when you let that happen so when you talk about what you do as a journalist of saying okay let me set my emotions aside and let me listen and let me ask earnest questions about what they’re thinking and why they’re feeling that way and then you actually listen to what they have to say that is something that people have people should do every single day first of all as a leader in any organization as a parent and in a family as a child in a family in a you know spouse in a relationship in a governmental situation that’s what we should do that’s what you need to learn how to do is try and understand what other people’s perspectives are and you can only understand what other people’s perspectives are if you ask ernest questions and you actually listen to what they have to say and you’ll probably figure out that what you thought they thought is not accurate so there’s a you know there’s a whole a whole road to go down with that but that’s something that we don’t do very well and you know i think journalism nowadays is a whole it’s just a while it’s not what it used to be certainly i think you’re about as close to an old school journalist i mean you’re i mean i know there’s others that are like you but you are in the model of the old school journalist that’s out there to gather information and kind of report what’s going on and like you said you know you’re reporting about what the the um the new northern alliance was how well they fought and you’re like oh they there wasn’t much of a fight and people are mad at you super mad at you because you told what you saw and now maybe if you would have said there was no fight and i didn’t see you know there was no fight at all and i don’t remember your quotes from that article but you know it’s like hey i didn’t see any fighting i saw you know the taliban moving very dominantly through the area so you’re literally saying what you saw you’re leaving room for you even said today you said hey there might have been more fighting in the mountains that i didn’t see but you’re saying from what i saw on these heavily populated areas there wasn’t any resistance or there was very limited resistance i saw one rocket that’s not a lot of resistance so um i i think that that people listening asking earnest questions is something that the world has forgot how to do part of it is i would say the driving factor and that is our own egos to think well i know it’s like the worst thing to say the worst thing to say and even in a worse thing to think is i know i know what you’re thinking i know what they’re thinking i know what the enemy is doing you don’t you don’t know and the minute you think you know is when you start making mistakes it’s when you start assuming that you understand things and you don’t so i think what you’re doing is extremely important i’ll still go with the alex honold i i actually don’t want you to go out back to afghanistan uh but i know you’re going to um be safe and and we’ll keep track on you anything echo you got any questions yeah what exactly is the fixer so sorry a fixer is something that journalists or ngos even but primarily journalists when we go into foreign countries we hire um sort of a local person sometimes they’re a former journalist sometimes they’re just a connected person and they you know help often will be a translator um and they will help uh sort of help us facilitate interviews and and make calls and and just kind of yeah work with us it’s almost sort of like you know i ended up calling my fixing a weed a producer so essentially he’s kind of like producing for us you know he’s doing a lot of the background and and it was really funny when we went back this time because for the last 20 years all the afghans and and the fixers have been speaking dury which is a sort of an afghan dialect of persian but now it’s all pashto everything’s written in pasture because that’s that’s what the the um talibans use so a lot of the people that were you know fixing for 20 years are suddenly like well i can’t speak the language that’s needed so it was a big big transit a lot of the fixes have all left the country so it was this very much uh we had to find new people to work with so it was a all a big learning curve so it’s kind of like the las vegas vip host yeah [Applause] you know he’s got that different background yeah he was in the nightclub industry for a while so for him it’s like oh that’s the vip host yeah i can get you in that back room hold on let me talk to fred over here we’ll be taking care of yeah so my poor fixer is you know having to talk to the the dash and all these people on my behalf um holly we can find you at hollymck com you’re on instagram holly s and it’s h-o-l-l-i-e-s mckay and mckay is just m-c-k-a-y you’re on twitter you’re on facebook it was crazy to watch you on instagram when you were over there um and see you putting like instagram live yeah up and you’re reading like oh you’re reading people’s stories like i look at echo story oh it’s like he’s in his kitchen he’s making a freaking sandwich oh i’m i’m posting that i just got done working out and you’re like i’m in a hotel in mount maurice rio sharif and that’s we’re surrounded by taliban wait a second this is uh interesting so yeah people holly mckay dot sub stack i think it’s the url okay so the sub stack that’s where you put your information up awesome holly anything else thank you for having me and for yeah letting me talk talk some more about afghanistan i think it’s very easy for these things to fall off the news once once you know the evacuation happened and it fell off the sort of the radar very quickly but i think it’s something that’s very important to americans and important to you know to my generation who really grew up you know with after 9 11 and and so many people that i knew that went to fight there and i think it’s important that that we keep afghanistan you know somewhere in our minds well you’re certainly helping us to do that and thank you for coming back to talk to us and thank you for making it back to talk to us and thanks for letting us know for all you do to go out there and let us know what’s actually happening and reporting it so that the world knows what’s really happening it’s uh definitely an eerie window into the heart of darkness and it’s a big risk for you to go in there physically mentally spiritually but you’re doing meaningful work and it does have a big impact on the world so thanks for doing it thank you appreciate it thank you thanks holly and with that holly mckay has left the building awesome that she could stop by and kind of share some of that stuff with us lots of lots of lots of craziness in the world and sometimes seems like all that craziness that’s going on in the world what are you gonna do about it how can you help it look i don’t know what you’re gonna do for some young girl that’s getting no education in afghanistan right now i’m not sure what you can do about that i’m not sure but i do know this you got a little control over your world what’s going on in your world try and make your world a little bit better that’s my recommendation man that’s crazy how she mentioned the corruption you know like how much of a felt like i mean of course no one’s gonna be like yeah i’m totally down for corruption no one’s gonna think that for the most part so but you don’t really understand how important that is to be like legit and squared away in that way and i really had no idea what she was going to say when i asked her that question because even you know reading through articles and stuff you know i thought maybe she’d have some strategic uh thing about the way we treated the trial you know just whatever kind of the more more uh common complaints that you’ll hear about how afghanistan was handled and yeah that was uh definitely very interesting and insightful aspect to bring up how devastating corruption can be because then then it’s kind of like nothing works the way it’s supposed to work exactly right yeah nothing works the way it’s supposed to work when people are corrupt think about everything the way things are supposed to be they’re not that way yeah she said something super quick too she said super quick but i was like oh that kind of put add the corruption into this this point where she said some of the isis fighters joined isis not because they support the ideology it’s just because their government is so corrupt and it’s like bro like the government has so much power over an individual anyway so if it’s like they’re corrupt and they’re just tired of that corruptness and they’re like you know what i’m going to join this group who sure their stuff is kind of crazy but at least i can fight back and have some power against this this government that i’m powerless against that’s corrupt you know we we it’s two things going on we take it for granted in america that things aren’t corrupt and we take it for granted in america that things aren’t corrupt do you get my double meaning on this what i’m saying is we walk around like oh you know well this is american things aren’t corrupt here right but we take that for granted and there’s things that go on inside the government that are absolutely corrupt absolutely freaking corrupt and the more that stuff grows and also the more exposure it gets because of social media and because the way people can share information and the way you can google information it’s just a different world and i think that the amount of information that’s available is going to start to become a light on a lot of the corruption that’s in the u s government yeah in the in now and it’s going to get even more so in the future yes it’s yeah like when you get exposed for being like a whatever some corrupt person like in a in a position of power there it seems like there’s an element of shame that goes along with it when you get caught then again i’m no expert in afghanistan so i don’t know but it seems like it’s just so except more accepted in certain places you know yeah well like look at what just happened with the cuomo guy from cnn yeah why did they get that well because he had texts going back and forth that wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago maybe 20 were we texting 20 years ago not too much the first time i ever texted was we were in vegas with task unit bruiser and leif and seth were texting and they started texting me and i’m like what are you doing just call me or whatever because you’re dumb right you don’t know what’s happening i’m like just freaking call me and they’re like we’ll send you a text when we get to wherever and i’m like just call me why are you gonna text me and then sure enough i’m sitting in some bar somewhere and it’s super loud and get the text and then just responding yeah it’s like yeah they remember the teen what do you call t9 word you know the one it’s not not like a phone it’s like actual keyboard i gotta i gotta say i had a blackberry hell yeah when i was the admiral’s aide i got issued a black bear yeah that was the best so then i had the blackberry and once you have a blackberry it was hard to do anything else because they were freaking a super squared away little rig even my i got the first iphone the very first iphone that came out stoner went and got in line and got us both iphones and three days later you had like a three-day return policy i took it back out i got my i got my blackberry back the blackberry was a squared away little rig and then now it gets crushed yeah now it gets crushed by a well it gets crushed by the iphone for sure kind of everything because they thought they knew they thought they had a lock yeah they were arrogant yeah you got to be blackberry was arrogant isn’t it funny how like even when you say i texted like texting is so new that we the language didn’t even catch up we just assumed that okay text is now a verb so now we gotta accommodate you know so because before then text is a noun now it’s a noun and a verb so now you need past tense present tense future you know all these additional free things hey i’m just saying english major you gotta relate to this kind of stuff so you’re like oh yeah he texted me it’s like is texted a word well i guess it is now what’s the past tense for text text just text he texted me texted in the past right it hasn’t just said x t and then an e d yeah texted yeah but see how that’s like a question kind of texting yeah we’re not sure it sounds weird text did doesn’t sound quite right yeah it’s a weird word to say yeah so we got to be careful that yeah we do very careful so there’s corruption out there yeah um lots of craziness in the world like i said try and make your world you know as squared away as you can yeah how do we do that well we have to stay capable i’ll tell you that stay capable stay healthy how about that you should just go with the first thing on the top of your head that you’ve utilized say like hey i was tired the other day and i went and tried the new freaking pre-workout and it was savage and i ended up jacking big steel yeah well okay i will but it’s not that story because when i tried it when i took some pre-workout i tried it a long time ago when i took some pre-workout hey i wasn’t tired i just did it for the power pre-workout okay for the mind body connection experience while working out okay didn’t let me down full on and it’s kind of and it’s different you can feel the difference like when you don’t take it because i don’t take it all the time yeah so that was my experience recently that was day before yesterday is there a moment where you say oh feeling this certain mode right now gonna jump into i’m gonna gonna get that little extra hitter right now yes and what is it what is it feeling uh what do you mean the feeling that compels that baby yes yes um it’s pretty random it’s not when i’m tired though tired because it doesn’t have enough caffeine for me to be like oh i’m tired i need to take this for the tiredness two scoops that’s yeah whatever almost 200 milligrams of caffeine come on bro what are you a crackhead i’m not ready for the two scoops yet dude jp at five o’clock in the morning yeah he dry scooped the new pre-workout chased it with sour apple sniper dry scooped another one and chased it again yeah that’s a little bit beyond beyond my uh uh capabilities either way yes pre-workout i did that i would say the the more significant experience is with the energy drinks that’s the one that’s the one that gets you yeah and very very often like i drink them a lot how often you drink them i would say pretty much every day oh okay just wanted what’s your favorite flavor mango by far 100 by far do you have anything else on standby yeah kind of the rest of them okay the citrus i don’t really drink as much okay but either way this is what you do midday okay so i wake up i don’t really eat breakfast anymore me neither yeah so before lunch i’ll have one of those that’s good that’s the good one buy one of those you mean uh one of these energy drinks discipline girl yes energy drink healthy and gracie reached out to you on me utilizing the term energy drinking yeah did he send a cease and desist no no he liked it okay yep props to him yes he says so yeah energy drinks that are healthy no sugar sweetened with monk fruit good for you healthier you’re better off after you drink them legitimately good for you yep you pay no back-end health price with these energy drinks so yes one a day is good here’s another front-end uh investment you can make into your life into your world is get joint warfare get super krill so that way you can proactively fight the mayhem that’s you’re causing to your own joints it’s true you know how like um you take things for granted joints are that and as far as back to my experience i have been taking my joints for granted luckily i haven’t like had any kind of terrible learning experience to remind me of that i just every once in a while like it’s i get hit with it like for how old i am i feel like i don’t really have many joint problems yeah and you gotta you know what you gotta do too you gotta continue to do you gotta continue to do the work yeah man you gotta you don’t surrender any positions yeah don’t surrender any positions like your workout positions like for me overhead squat yeah overhead squat like i hurt my arm real bad remember when dean lisch and i could not lock out my arm i could not do an overhead squat couldn’t do it zero and then finally it started healing and it took months and months and months by the time it was healed my body had kind of forgot how to do an overhead squat yeah and so the first time i tried to do an overhead squat again my body forgot how to do it and it felt terrible and i couldn’t use any weight like barely any weight i was using the bar and part of that little ego in the back of my mind the little complacency in the back of my mind was like you know what overhead squat’s not that big of a deal you should you know you don’t really need to do overhead squat uh yeah you know and then i said to myself no if you surrender that movement if you don’t do that movement you’re it’s gonna go away forever yeah so i’m very cognizant of that that’s why another thing like going deep on squats the minute you’re like well you know i don’t need to go that deep i’m going to go heavy so i’m going to go less deep no actually don’t do that yeah correct you want to do that occasionally okay i get it we’re we’re doing muscle confusion right all right but don’t you gotta keep those keep those movements alive man keep it alive and nothing but that’s what reminded me of that deep squats so like okay so deep squats if you let’s say because some people don’t have what the ankle like a mobility or for that but if you have ankle mobility and then you don’t do them for a while then try to do them you’ll feel like oh wait i got to get my ankle like mobility kind of back you know and here’s the thing when you say you lose it forever it’s in it’s not like you stop doing it and then it’s gone gone you it’s you stop doing it then when you start doing it it’s like you get it back but not all of it you paid like a little tax yeah as time goes on and the longer you wait the month longer it might take to get back the bigger the tax does same with uh muscle ups when i could hurt my arm couldn’t do muscle ups couldn’t do them you know by the time i started doing muscle ups again i could do one yeah like it was and it was not fun yeah and so then i was like okay well today i’m gonna do three in my whole workout i’m gonna do three muscle ups you know what i mean you’re doing the rings yeah ring muscle ups so it’s one of those things that’s what you know what this is this is a little a little tool to you put in your brain to think when you have the moment where you’re saying you know what i’m not gonna do this particular exercise today just remember you’re surrendering that movement and i’m telling you please don’t do it so there you go don’t surrender surrender any movements don’t take it for granted either yeah take the joint worst fear take the krill oil that’ll help physically keep your joints in the game that’s on top of you keeping it in there smoke you’re gonna need let’s face it you’re gonna need to rebuild if you’re doing overhead squats you’re gonna need to rebuild yes sir so you’re gonna need some milk some extra additional protein that just so happens it tastes like dessert banana cream pie if we’re if we’re into it that’s the new one banana cream bomber yeah who thought of that name you maybe repeat it’s good too the design is good i was also on origin usa the website and they got whoever designed that that website pete i’m just assuming but well pete definitely designed the the banana bomber thing yeah you know he’s super into the you know that’s good he’s good man he likes it good design yeah he’s making a black bottle right banana on it he puts it no no no he sends me options yeah what do you think of this what do you think of this i’m like bro right banana so there you go yeah you like you bring it back down like when you know because oh yeah let’s face it dude if pete was running like had full crease yeah the freaking banan the milk would come in like a giant banana shaped bottle oh yeah yeah like he’d get too creative but then yeah then you’re like the dichotomy or whatever bringing it back down to where it needs to be perfect a little bit perfect it’s all perfect in my opinion so origin usa yeah american-made stuff oh wait but what about for the drinks you can get the drinks at wawa by the way you can also get everything at the vitamin shop so check those out and then you were saying origin usa you were saying jiu jitsu you’re talking about genes genes [Music] everything at origin is made in america straight up even the materials are made in america it’s an american uh economic thing [Laughter] this is the uh uh what do you call it recording right now because it is a full-on american thing yes it is correct it’s not american thing so okay so uh bringing back certain elements of this of the industry to the point where it’s almost it’s kind of bringing back and industry bringing back all elements of the industry yeah that’s what we’re doing freaking all in one straight up um yeah you can get geez which you should definitely get some geese which by the way the geese are not this isn’t your this isn’t your father’s ghee this isn’t your mother’s key this is a new deal those keys are so freaking nice yeah get yourself one of those geese also just kind of fyi we’re making some stuff for hunting yeah we’re making a hunting it’s not just some stuff we’re making a hunting line yeah like a bunch of things yeah so when you roll out in hunting season you can do it wearing american made gear we’ll keep you posted on that yeah what else oh you said the boots jeans there’s some wallets and cool accessories on there and and i went accessories you make it sound like that but like look at the belt you won’t be like accessories you’ll be like oh that i’m getting that belt sure i’m getting that wallet while it’s kind of a minimalist wallet though so if you’re not into minimalist wallets then you know maybe there’s a i think there’s a maximus wallet too not maximus but there’s a maximum more robust robust there you go all right thank you with the vocab coming in hot just trying to help nonetheless a lot of good stuff on there all made in america um and good quality stuff so it’s like from top to bottom that’s kind of the go-to when you think about it so yeah origin usa com also did i say jacofuel com i didn’t tacklefuel com if you want that if you want that uh the supplement side of the house all good um yeah but yeah jacqueline store as well that’s where you can get discipline equals freedom stuff shirts apparel shirts hats hoodies hoodies are back in it’s winter it’s kind of colder here and then there’s the short locker which brief description short locker what do you got it is a creative um let’s just okay but on the basic level it’s one a new shirt every month okay but the designs are a little bit different a little bit more there are more layers to the designs you know they’re funner i guess remember when jaco podcast there was a whole thing about light layers yes there is still a whole thing there’s nothing there let’s think about layers it’s almost like it’s just the underground it’s part of it yep just layers so there’s layers in the t-shirts yep there’s more to it than just a straightforward design if you listen you know if you listen if you listen you know if you’re in the game you know what’s up exactly if you’re not you’ll be like oh yeah but if you could do yeah so that’s the whole thing about the layers as far as layers go look if you’re not in the game you look at the design you’ll be like oh man that’s cool yeah and i get a cool one every month cool but if you listen and you know you know the other layers in it so now you get the cool design on the front end but then you get the you know the meaning the dish [Music] back and so all good check that out it’s on jacquelinestore com hey subscribe to the podcast uh also subscribe to jocko unraveling rolling out some christmas cheer with my point dc talking about all kinds of lovely subjects um grounded podcast we got the warrior kid podcast also you can join the underground speaking of underground docker underground com we got a a little something that we had to set up just in case tyrannical forces take over we gotta have a place to go we got a place to go it’s called jocko underground jocklinground com if you want to help us in there if you want to help us be ready for any contingencies that might unfold you can subscribe it’s eight dollars and eighteen cents a month we got an additional little podcast on there we answer your questions and whatnot if you can’t afford it it’s cool we still want you in the game go to assistance at underground jocko underground dot com assistance at jackonground com there you go it’s true also we have a youtube channel the video version of this podcast some excerpts on there and some also some additional content as it were you’re gonna have to check it out to see what it is but yeah every once in a while we’ll put some additional stuff on there that turns out to be interesting you wanna see what jocko uh can’t live without get that kind of video sometimes there you go um psychological warfare mp3 tracks to keep you on the path we got flipsidecanvas com dakota meyer selling stuff to hang on your wall we got books only cry for the living mentioned it today it’s holly mckay’s first book we covered on podcast number 271 you can get that from jackopublishing com jockopublishing com this is actually a book that i published why because it’s a freaking epic story from somebody that spent time on the battlefield when isis was being fought and pushed back and she interviewed people from isis which is crazy so if you want to check that out you can go to jacopublishing com also final spin it’s a story it’s a novel it’s a poem it’s a manuscript it’s a freaking wild emotional ride don’t read it when you’re in front of people because you might be crying don’t read it when you got to be quiet because you might be laughing final spin i wrote it leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluation the protocols desperately freedom field manual warrior kid one two three and four that’s the christmas gift that’s the christmas gift you’re wondering oh where to get this little kid yeah that’s the gift get them to get them all books all books work way of the war your kid one two three and four there is no better gift you can get for a kid than those books if you got a little kid getting mikey in the dragons little mikey in the dragons let him learn to overcome fear about face by colonel david hackworth i wrote the forward on the new version and then extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership who i wrote with my brother leif babin speaking of life we have a leadership consultancy if you need help inside your organization from a leadership perspective which if you have any issues inside your organization whatever problems you have their leadership problems leadership is the solution go to ashlandfront com for that if you want to come to one of our line of live events you can check it out there we also have the online training academy extremeownership com it’s a online leadership training academy you can bring your team in there you can get everyone aligned you can get your whole company engaged in that or you can just do it yourself but you don’t become a good leader overnight and you don’t you’re not just born a good leader just like you’re not born a good guitar player you’re not i don’t care who you are you gotta pick up and practice and learn that’s what the academy is for pick up practice learn for leadership go to extreme ownership com you wanna ask me a question i’m there you can literally just sit there and talk to me three times a week two or three times a week i’m there answering questions live so check that out extremeownership com if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families check out mark lee’s mom mama lee she’s got a incredible charity organization if you want to donate to that you want to get involved she is helping so many veterans go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you want any more of my looming lectures or you need more of echo’s random retorts you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram on facebook echoes at the charles i’m at jacqueline holly is on instagram on twitter she’s holly s mckay also holly mckay com that’s where you can find her sub stack as well where people it’s a new uh method of putting information out there the subset yeah a lot of journalists are using it it’s kind of like a patreon but it’s not being controlled and they’re allowing free speech which apparently patreon was not sub stack sub stack finally thanks to holly you can hear uh what she does the risk she takes to inform and educate the world so thank you holly for doing that people people who do not know history are doomed to repeat it and someone has to uncover history i liked what she said about history history rough draft the rough draft of history so someone’s got to go out and grab that information people like holly that go and do that thank you holly for your hard work and bravery to make that happen any people in uniform out there thank you for doing your best to confront and stop evil in the world and keep us all safe and that includes our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thank you for keeping us safe right here at home and everyone else out there there is evil in the world and there is good and we have to be on guard and we have to be vigilant [Music] vigilant against evil vigilant against corruption these thoughts and ideas can creep from person to person and from mind to mind like a disease so stay vigilant stay prepared tell the truth look out for each other and and try and keep your part of the world try and make your part of the world as good as you can and help other people do the same and until next time this zekko and jocko
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