--:-- [Sound of a podcast intro fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Jen Williams: And I'm Jen Williams, host of the Worldly Podcast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This weekend in Afghanistan was one of the deadliest this year. Jen, can you tell us what happened?
--:-- Jen Williams: So, in Kabul, we saw one of the deadliest terror attacks in the capital this year. A suicide bomber killed at least 63 people at a wedding reception in Kabul. More than 180 people were injured. Young kids, men, women, children. It was a horrific attack.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The explosion happened near the stage where the musicians were. Everyone who was nearby was killed. Kabul's huge wedding halls are centres of community life, but the grand design and decor of this one belie the carnage of the attack.
--:-- Jen Williams: So these people were literally celebrating one of the happiest moments of their lives. Around 1,200 guests were invited to the wedding. I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast. I couldn't find anyone. Everyone was laying on the floor all around the hall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Throughout the night, ambulances ferried the injured for treatment. Outside of a nearby hospital, relatives checked for names of the dead and injured. And the explosion happened right ahead of Afghanistan's 100-year Independence Day celebration.
--:-- Jen Williams: So it was pretty momentous. And it really shook Kabul. Like I said, it was one of the deadliest attacks that we've seen this year. Earlier this month, 14 people were killed and over 100 wounded when a car bomb was detonated outside a police station in West Kabul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That blast and the wedding attack occurred in the same area. And there are also a series of attacks in Jalalabad, and at least 66 were killed in 10 separate attacks also over the weekend.
--:-- Jen Williams: So all in all, a really, really horrific weekend for Afghanistan. Do we have any idea who was behind these attacks this weekend?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So ISIS has claimed responsibility for the wedding attack. It took place in the Hazara community, which is predominantly Shia. ISIS, if you'll remember, is a Sunni Islamist group, very hardcore Sunni, and have attacked Shia in the past.
--:-- Jen Williams: So it makes sense that it would be ISIS. The Afghan government, however, has tried to put some of the blame, at least on the Taliban, for saying they probably had something to do with it. But as far as it looks right now, it was probably ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does ISIS fit into this picture? Obviously, the U.S. went to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, and now the U.S. is talking to the Taliban about peace. Meanwhile, ISIS executed this bombing over the weekend.
--:-- Jen Williams: Right. So if you remember, the U.S. essentially invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban had harbored al-Qaeda while they were essentially planning 9-11. So, you know, September 11th, terrorist attacks happen. We find out that, you know, bin Laden and his cohort are hanging out in Afghanistan. That the Taliban had given them safe haven.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we invade basically to punish the Taliban and to kick everybody out, all the terrorists out, right? So that happens sort of. The U.S. continues to fight this kind of long-running war against the Taliban and also targeting al-Qaeda.
--:-- Jen Williams: Meanwhile, more recently, several years ago, ISIS arises, right? And I mean ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. So how the hell do they get to Afghanistan? Well, basically, they start as this kind of regional group, but they end up spreading out and essentially doing franchises the way that Al-Qaeda kind of did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there in Afghanistan, there are some kind of ISIS people who maybe have connections to the original ISIS group in Iraq and Syria. But a lot of the fighters that actually make up this ISIS-K group in Afghanistan, a lot of them come from the Taliban.
--:-- Jen Williams: So you have more extreme people in the Taliban, often sometimes younger fighters, who are mad the Taliban is like considering doing peace with the Americans. Like, are you kidding me? You know, I thought we were fighting to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan, right? This grand caliphate thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So is this potentially to disrupt the peace process between the United States and the Taliban? Well, it's certainly possible. For a long time, a lot of jihadist kind of thinkers, strategic thinkers, have basically advocated the idea that chaos in general, like sowing chaos and essentially having anarchy is really helpful for groups to thrive in right If there no order if there no structure if there no government then you can grow and build
--:-- Jen Williams: There's another way ISIS could be using this which is to demonstrate its capabilities and its commitment to the terrorism fight, to the cause. This is a huge attack relative to some of the other attacks they've been carrying out, showing, look, we're still here. We are strong. We are powerful. Come join us. We're not selling out. We're not making peace with the Americans. We're still in this fight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I'm sure there are going to be plenty of people in the Taliban, especially like foot soldiers, who are not thrilled about giving up the fight and making peace with the Americans. So it's a smart recruiting strategy. But there's also just the fact that ISIS's strategy this whole entire time has been basically brutality against civilians.
--:-- Jen Williams: And this is a brutal attack against civilians, which that's how they grew their brand in Iraq and Syria. So it makes sense that they would do the same thing now in Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So is ISIS actually making Afghanistan more unstable at this point? Absolutely.
--:-- Jen Williams: Last November, at least 55 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked hundreds of Muslim scholars and clerics gathered in another Kabul wedding hall to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There have been bombings in Afghanistan fairly regularly over the past several years. But this was really a spike in violence that we haven't seen.
--:-- Jen Williams: In August, on August 7th, there was a car bomb that targeted Afghan security forces, killing 14, wounding 145.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But earlier this summer, a U.N. report actually came out saying that of the civilian deaths so far this year, more of them had actually been committed by U.S. and Afghan and allied forces than those that were committed by the Taliban and ISIS.
--:-- Jen Williams: So, you know, we are seeing attacks, especially now as these peace talks are kind of underway. We're seeing a lot more kind of uptick in violence. But in general, overall civilian casualties have dropped, according to that report, by around 27 percent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So not great, right? Still really violent. And if you're living in Afghanistan, it's not a secure time. It's not a secure place to be living.
--:-- Jen Williams: But compared to like the heights of the Afghan war, the level of security is relatively better. But it's relative. The Taliban in general, you know, when they were ruling the country, you know, before the U.S. invasion was perhaps even more brutal, at least for the people under Taliban rule.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So getting rid of the Taliban rule, which the U.S. did for a while, was a net positive for a while. But the Taliban is now back. They control entire swaths of the country.
--:-- Jen Williams: The group has changed somewhat. But, I mean, there's still a lot of violence. Like, this is still a country at war. This is a country that has been at war for coming up on two decades just from the U.S. And then, you know, decades previous were also at war during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how to end America's longest war or whether that's even a possibility at this point. That's after the break on Today Explained.
--:-- [Sound of a commercial break]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome back to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Jen Williams: And I'm Jen Williams, host of the Worldly Podcast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I went to SmileDirectClub.com today because I wanted to know what I was telling you to get into and there's a very handsome, not recently shaved man sitting in what looks to be a bed with a duvet over his waist down and a nice plain grey t-shirt on, waist up He is holding in his right hand what looks to be clear aligners for his top teeth, but he also has a perfect smile, which I think is Smile Direct Club's way of telling you that you too can have a perfect smile when you visit SmileDirectClub.com slash podcast and use the offer code EXPLAINED.
--:-- Jen Williams: You will start by taking a free 30-second smile assessment on that very website, and as a result, you may get a free at-home impression kit with a rebate and $100 off your aligners.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Go to smiledirectclub.com slash podcast. And the offer code is explained.
--:-- Jen Williams: So, Jen Williams, host of the Worldly Podcast, the war in Afghanistan is now the U.S.'s longest war ever. Can we just go through quickly what it's looked like under three different presidents, starting with President Bush?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For sure. So remember, the U.S. goes in to Afghanistan right after 9-11. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
--:-- Jen Williams: These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime. We basically start doing what we started calling state building So we try to set up all of the institutions for a functional democracy So we set up the government We set up things like schools We built roads and infrastructure and wells and kind of everything you need that we thought could create like a stable, prosperous Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The problem is that we weren't very great at that because you had U.S. troops, trying to do things like building schools, which is not particularly what U.S. military forces are trained to do.
--:-- Jen Williams: So while they were fighting this insurgency that started up, you know, while they're there, the Taliban starts coming back. You have these power struggles going on because they're trying to set up this democracy. You have this like huge, massive effort that starts to kind of unravel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does Obama pivot? Right. So Obama comes in and, you know, remember, he ran on getting out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
--:-- Jen Williams: Except that he gets in office and he ends up doing the exact opposite. I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.
--:-- Jen Williams: Basically, the idea was I'm going to try to get this finished, right? I'm going to send in all these troops. We're going to get this done. We're going to solve the problem. We're going to train the Afghan troops, train the Afghan security forces, because that was a big part of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Again, doesn't quite work. You still end up having a lot of attacks. You have attacks on U.S. forces by some of the security forces. They're even training. It all happened here at this British-run military academy in Kabul.
--:-- Jen Williams: Coalition forces say the Afghan soldier was using a light machine gun when he opened fire on international troops. So you have more casualties, more chaos, more failure of the U.S. mission.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eventually, he brings those troops back home, and it kind of pivots towards the end of his administration to a more narrowly counterterrorism focused mission.
--:-- Jen Williams: And Trump comes in saying he wants to end it all, the entire engagement, but obviously doesn't. What does he do instead? Right. We're now several years into the Trump administration and U.S. forces are still there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's still around, I think the current number is around 13 or 14,000 U.S. troops. So not 68,000, not this huge number we had under Obama or even more under Bush, but we still have a lot of U.S. troops there.
--:-- Jen Williams: And so he kind of turns it into this, again, more like even more narrowly focused counterterrorism mission. He basically tells the U.S. military, you can kind of take the gloves off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He essentially gave commanders at the lower level permission to carry out like airstrikes and targeting operations in Afghanistan that usually before only higher level commanders could do that.
--:-- Jen Williams: So basically saying, look, you can do, you know, more stuff. You can bomb more people. You can do more things. I'm giving you this kind of permission. Let's get this done. You know, let's kick out the Taliban. Let's fight. You know, ISIS has now come in. Let's fight ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Part of that of getting it done is also his administration starts these peace talks with the Taliban. Right. That seemed like the biggest development in the Trump oversight of Afghanistan so far.
--:-- Jen Williams: You and I spoke about it back in January. Is that any closer to happening, this peace deal with the Taliban? It certainly looks like it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just these past few weeks, we've seen a lot of reporting coming out that they are getting closer to actually making some kind of deal. Just this past Friday on the 16th, Trump himself had a briefing with Zalmay Khalilzad, who's the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, who's basically in charge of running the peace talks on the U.S. side.
--:-- Jen Williams: A little while after Trump tweets, just completed a very good meeting on Afghanistan. Many on the opposite side of this 19-year war and us are looking to make a deal, if possible, exclamation point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so he's very clearly signaling that they are close to a deal, that he really wants a deal. He's not being subtle. He has been very clear that he wants to get the hell out of Afghanistan.
--:-- Jen Williams: We've been there for 19 years. We're really serving as policemen. We could win Afghanistan in two days or three days or four days if we wanted, but I'm not looking to kill 10 million people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It looks like the Taliban is potentially willing to actually come to a deal. It's getting close. It's hopefully expected by the September deadline.
--:-- Jen Williams: The U.S. is kind of self-imposed. But, you know, there's still a lot of stuff to be worked out. What are they trying to work out? On the U.S. side, what they want the Taliban to agree to is permanent ceasefire, So stop fighting to basically pinky swear promise not to harbor terrorists ever again.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the big one, although those two are also pretty big asks, but the biggest one is for the Taliban to agree to engage in in negotiations with the Afghan government.
--:-- Jen Williams: Now that is something that the Taliban has flat refused to do forever They consider them to be a real government Therefore they are not going to talk to them So that like one of the biggest things that if the U manages to get that then the U.S. or at least the Trump administration will be largely satisfied.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the Taliban side, what they want is basically just for all the U.S. troops to get out. That's more or less all they're asking for.
--:-- Jen Williams: What does it look like if the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan completely? Well, it kind of depends, right? So if the U.S. does this and the U.S. does pull out all its troops, The agreement would be that the Taliban would have a ceasefire, right? They would stop fighting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So ideally, in a perfect world, okay, great. Taliban's not fighting anymore. We're good. U.S. is gone. We're good. The Taliban then goes and sits down with the Afghan government. They make a power-sharing arrangement, and everything is great.
--:-- Jen Williams: And then the Afghan security forces continue to fight ISIS, and everyone's happy. That kind of pie-in-the-sky ideal outcome is not necessarily super likely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The problem is that the Taliban has been fighting, again, for 20 years. It's unlikely that they are going to just completely agree to a ceasefire totally and completely and stop fighting.
--:-- Jen Williams: It's also the fact that the Taliban doesn't necessarily have super good control over every single member who says they're the Taliban. So if you have groups carry out an attack and the Taliban leadership didn't authorize that, well, what happens? Did you just violate the peace agreement or do you say, hey, get your guys in line?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then, you know, the Taliban could just agree not to deal with the Afghan government, to not have these negotiations. So does the U.S. go back in? Do we just start all over and like, oh, just kidding, we're back.
--:-- Jen Williams: Meanwhile, you still have this ISIS problem there. So does the U.S. just do like airstrikes from far away, like drone strikes? Well, even then, you need to have people on the ground, like at least intelligence people, to collect the intel to talk to people and figure out what house ISIS is hiding in so that you know where to target with a drone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we don't actually know what it would look like if the U.S. left because we still don't know really what that means.
--:-- Jen Williams: It sounds like everything you're saying is why it's so hard to end this war. Because you've got the U.S. trying to be a stabilizing force, fighting the Taliban. You've got the Taliban not having any regard for the Afghan government. And then on top of all that, you've got ISIS, which doesn't really answer to anyone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely. And, you know, at a fundamental level, the main reason why it is so hard to end this war beyond all the like moving pieces is like this is what happens when you try to invade and occupy an entire country as a way to fight a stateless terrorist group.
--:-- Jen Williams: We essentially went in to fight al-qaeda and to punish the taliban but if the taliban were just the taliban and had never harbored these groups right had never harbored al-qaeda and if there weren't like an isis presence we wouldn't care really what the taliban were doing in afghanistan we didn't care before when they were completely ruling you know afghanistan brutally and horrifically
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We only cared when they harbored a terrorist group that attacked us. So our response to fight these terrorist groups, the war on terror, was to invade and occupy a very specific geographical boundary, a country, the country of Afghanistan.
--:-- Jen Williams: But al-Qaeda and ISIS, these groups who are actually fighting, they don't have a specific territory. Right. They are wherever they want to be. They can move around. They, especially nowadays, use the internet to recruit and they can just radicalize someone in their bedroom in Montana.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're still occupying this one country, but the actual threat that we were there to fight is still all over the place. That's why you don't invade and occupy a country to fight these kinds of terrorist groups.
--:-- Jen Williams: And we could have saw that understanding evolve down the line, but it's too late. We're still in this country, and we've created this whole mess by invading, and we're essentially stuck there, even though the threat doesn't really match up with why we're there anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen Williams is a senior foreign editor at Vox.com.
--:-- Jen Williams: I'm Sean Rameswaram from Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just a reminder that if you're trying to get that summer smile in order before the end of the season, Smile Direct Club wants to help you at SmileDirectClub.com slash podcast. Use the offer code EXPLAINED to get this 30-second smile assessment set up. You get a free at-home impression kit with a rebate plus $100 off your aligners. Again, that is at smiledirectclub.com slash podcast. And the offer code is explained.
