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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Things are moving fast in Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just over a week ago, it seemed impossible to evacuate the airport in Kabul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But as of Thursday morning, something like 100,000 people had already been airlifted out of the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The impetus to move faster and faster and faster wasn't just about this August 31st deadline, but also the threat of terrorism, namely from a group called ISIS-K.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And later on Thursday, ISIS-K struck.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are significant casualties, including some Americans, from a suicide attack outside the country's main airport in Kabul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This happened about one hour ago in an area where thousands of people are waiting, hoping to try to get on a flight out of the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Estimates say the attacks left something like 180 dead, mostly Afghans trying to get out of the country, as well as at least 13 U.S. service members.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Biden has pledged revenge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will not forgive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will not forget.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will hunt you down and make you pay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the show today, we're going to dig into this group and how the United States and Taliban might actually work together to fight them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dan Byman is here to help.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's a professor at Georgetown University's security studies program.
--:-- Dan Byman: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, who is ISIS-K?
--:-- Dan Byman: So as the name implies, this is a branch of the Islamic State.
--:-- Dan Byman: The Islamic State is a group that really comes out after the U.S. invasion of and occupation of Iraq.
--:-- Dan Byman: Another major piece of what America fought for in Iraq was lost today.
--:-- Dan Byman: Islamic militants seized control of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city with one and a half million people.
--:-- Dan Byman: It then emerges in public consciousness after the Syrian civil war.
--:-- Dan Byman: And in 2014, very dramatically with a series of beheadings, becomes really known globally.
--:-- Dan Byman: They are the faces of merciless killers.
--:-- Dan Byman: ISIS militants, here in their own video, intentionally unmasked and exposed to the world.
--:-- Dan Byman: In the video, they behead those they forced to the ground.
--:-- Dan Byman: And in 2014, 2015, this is when it's at its peak.
--:-- Dan Byman: It's declaring a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
--:-- Dan Byman: But it also says there are provinces around the Muslim world.
--:-- Dan Byman: And so there's a province in Libya.
--:-- Dan Byman: There's a province in Egypt.
--:-- Dan Byman: When you look at that map, Brian, and you see them popping up all over the place, fairly close to Italy even at this point.
--:-- Brian Ross: That's right.
--:-- Dan Byman: And these unfettered areas where they can go unchecked leads U.S. authorities to believe they could be planning attacks to the West, including the U.S.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, Brian Ross with us here this morning.
--:-- Brian Ross: Very importantly, they establish a province in Afghanistan.
--:-- Dan Byman: And this, as I think everyone knows, is a longstanding theater for jihadists to fight, fighting the Soviet Union and then fighting the United States.
--:-- Dan Byman: So the Islamic State Corps was trying to kind of join that.
--:-- Dan Byman: And they set this up really starting when the group's at its peak in 2014.
--:-- Dan Byman: And they're using a bunch of people who are already in the game.
--:-- Dan Byman: Often these are disaffected people who are part of groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the far right is Abdullah Gull.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in the middle, behind the mask, a man known only by his alias, Abu Rashid.
--:-- Dan Byman: He speaks fluent Arabic and is the link man between his group and their controllers in Iraq.
--:-- Dan Byman: He defected from the Taliban to answer the call of the caliphate.
--:-- Dan Byman: And they're forming them into a new group with a new brand, challenging not only the United States and the government the U.S. backed, but also the Taliban.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is a group that has lots of enemies, but it is tied to a broader struggle around the Muslim world.
--:-- Dan Byman: And are they limited to Afghanistan?
--:-- Dan Byman: So they use the word Khorasan.
--:-- Dan Byman: ISIL's long-term aim in the region is to reconstitute an historical province known as Khorasan.
--:-- Dan Byman: This would mean conquering territory in at least five modern states.
--:-- Dan Byman: Which is implying more broadly Central Asia, India, Pakistan.
--:-- Dan Byman: They're trying to say there's a region where they are supreme and they don't really, of course, control this region at all.
--:-- Dan Byman: But it's meant to be more than Afghanistan.
--:-- Dan Byman: It's meant to include kind of Afghanistan and many of its neighbors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The United States is sure they carried out this attack yesterday outside the Kabul International Airport.
--:-- Dan Byman: Every indicator seems to be it's this group.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Taliban want the United States out and have been in a way keeping the peace because the U.S. is doing what they want, which is leaving the country.
--:-- Dan Byman: Before the attack, there was very specific intelligence saying, hey, this group might do an attack and including at the Kabul airport.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it does seem like this specific group was predicted to do an attack, and all the indicators now show that it is this group.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think you could say a high degree of competence
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The former president bragged several times about completely wiping out ISIS
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think he may have even used the figure 100 percent
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Three weeks ago, I was in Iraq and I was talking to some of our great generals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I gave them the absolute go ahead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said, go at it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How long will it take?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once you get started, you said, sir, one week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said, where did that come from one week?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he meant it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's about a week since they really got going.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they'll be informing us very soon, officially, that it's 100%.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This attack yesterday implies he didn't 100% wipe ISIS out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, and really even going to the ISIS core in Iraq and Syria, they're doing lots of attacks, especially in Iraq, and are pretty active there at a local level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I would say to the credit of President Trump that he continued the efforts begun under President Obama that really got rid of the caliphate as an above-ground functioning government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they lost their territory in Iraq and Syria.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They lost all their control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it really did hurt their brand and really weakened the movement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they are still active around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're active underground as an insurgency in Iraq and Syria.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this attack is simply one of many that groups affiliated with the Islamic State are doing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So no, they're not gone completely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But to be fair, they are weakened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you mentioned that they are a foe of the Taliban.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is their relationship with the Taliban?
--:-- Dan Byman: So the Islamic State of Khorasan considers the Taliban not sufficiently zealous.
--:-- Dan Byman: And so they have doctrinal disputes that they would play up and say that they're not properly implementing Islamic law.
--:-- Dan Byman: They are very critical of the Taliban for negotiating, whether it's with the United States or others.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this is also very much a power struggle, that these are individuals who are trying to kind of establish themselves in lieu of the Taliban leadership.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're seizing opportunities to criticize the Taliban.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now that they're going to be in opposition with the Taliban government, they'll try to exploit any governing mistakes the Taliban make and say, look, these guys aren't serious enough about Islamic law.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're not serious enough about providing services.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Whatever they can, they'll find fault.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we can play up the doctrinal distinctions, but I think we also really have to stress the interpersonal rivalries and simple power struggles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is their vision for the world?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why are the Taliban not extreme enough for them?
--:-- Dan Byman: So if you look at what the Islamic State did in Iraq and Syria, they were even more brutal towards religious minorities.
--:-- Dan Byman: The Islamic State captured men, women, and children from the Yazidi minority group during its deadly rampage through northwest Iraq in August.
--:-- Dan Byman: Islamic State fighters killed scores, if not hundreds, of Yazidi men before carrying off their relatives.
--:-- Dan Byman: They were even harsher in terms of enforcing Islamic law and daily life.
--:-- Dan Byman: And they were also very aggressive regionally.
--:-- Dan Byman: They were always trying to expand and they were doing attacks in neighboring states.
--:-- Dan Byman: They were pushing everywhere they could.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fact is that ISIS has a lot of momentum right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what we're dealing with is a central government that has in essence practically lost control over large sections of the country and large sections of its armed forces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's a real question, which is, do the Taliban stop in Afghanistan or do they start to spread what they're doing to Central Asia and to Pakistan?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in the past when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, they were focused on Afghanistan and trying to change Afghanistan rather than be a revolutionary force in the whole region.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So ISIS-K and the Islamic State in general is pushing against this and is calling for being much more aggressive, not just in Afghanistan itself, but around the area.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did they accomplish yesterday with the attack outside the airport?
--:-- Dan Byman: ISIS-K was able to put itself back in the conversation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For the last few months, the Taliban have been dominating everything and scored a huge victory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, the scenes of Americans fleeing in panic, in chaos, and leaving behind tons of equipment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All this is tremendous grist for the Taliban mill, but it also helps the Taliban's allies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they've worked closely with the al-Qaeda corps.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've worked closely with a range of other groups.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this is a huge prestige bump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these groups are all competing for money and they're competing for recruits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when you have a big success, you're going to get more followers, you're going to get more resources.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And because the Islamic State in Coruscant was already under siege, it risks becoming irrelevant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now you have a very dramatic attack on the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's showing that, unlike the Taliban, it's willing to strike America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's going to appeal to some people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's been reported that the Pentagon believes more attacks like this are on the way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We believe it is their desire to continue those attacks, and we expect those attacks to continue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we're doing everything we can to be prepared for those attacks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That includes reaching out to the Taliban, who are actually providing the outer security core and around the airfield, to make sure they know what we expect them to do to protect us.
--:-- Dan Byman: Unfortunately, it does seem quite probable that there'll be more attacks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a tremendous opportunity for the Islamic State in that U.S. forces are all in one place, and it's very hard for them to defend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have to be in contact with the broader population in order to screen them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as a result, we're going to see at least attempts by the Islamic State to follow up on this, to grab more attention.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The only silver lining in all this is the Taliban will be paying even more attention to this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this is a short-term problem because of the departure of U.S. forces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More with Dan in a minute.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dan, it seems a lot like you're saying here that the United States and the Taliban have a shared enemy in ISIS-K.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does that make the United States and the Taliban somehow allies here?
--:-- Dan Byman: The United States and Taliban have some common interests.
--:-- Dan Byman: And the biggest is going to be opposing ISIS-K.
--:-- Dan Byman: ISIS-K is violently opposed to Taliban and violently opposed to the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's already been some de facto cooperation in the past few years as the Taliban has gone after this group and the United States has.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I can imagine in the future the United States indirectly sharing intelligence, perhaps via Pakistan, to say to the Taliban, hey, these guys are in this province or in this location, go kill them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And conversely, I can imagine the Taliban kind of passing on information saying, hey, if a 500-pound bomb happened to drop on this particular building, that would be a good thing and we're not going to be terribly upset by it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you could imagine de facto cooperation, even as there's active hostility on other areas ranging from human rights to the al-Qaeda presence that the Taliban is continuing in Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And is this how President Biden, as he seemed to promise yesterday, will retaliate for this attack on Thursday, even while the United States is pulling out of Afghanistan?
--:-- Dan Byman: So the United States has a pretty long track record of killing ISIS-K leaders.
--:-- Dan Byman: So we killed their founder.
--:-- Dan Byman: We killed several of his successors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we have been able to successfully gather intelligence and act on it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, it's going to be harder because we don't have a ground presence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're not in the same contact.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't have the ability to know what's going on at the provincial level in the same level of detail.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that said, there still are intelligence opportunities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that President Biden is going to look for an opportunity to do a relatively high profile hit on a senior ISIS-K figure and say, look, this is vengeance for the deaths of these Americans and a way of saying to Americans that we're still remaining vigilant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will not be deterred by terrorists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will not let them stop our mission.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will continue the evacuation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership, and facilities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose, in the moment of our choosing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, tell me more about how the United States fights a war on terror while essentially pulling out of its war on terror.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a challenge the United States has faced in other parts of the Muslim world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We see it in Libya, we see it in Somalia, we see it in Yemen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We see it in various places where the United States has to use a range of indirect means to go after terrorist groups in these areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this can be things like backing local forces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there might be a local tribe or militia that's willing to kind of act as kind of a spear point for U.S. efforts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The black ISIS flag was replaced by the banner of U.S.-backed forces in the city of Raqqa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It can be working with governments, in this case, telling the Taliban to crush a particular group.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At times, it might be a special operations force raid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It can be remote airstrikes or drone strikes that are going against leadership targets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was, according to the U.S. government, a senior operational leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now Washington's acknowledged that it deliberately killed U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then a lot of it is making sure that the group in question is relatively isolated, that it's hard for money or people to get in and out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: U.S. airstrikes have targeted poppy fields in Afghanistan's booming heroin trade.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Opium production has played a crucial role in the country's rural economy and the Taliban's insurgency for decades.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's lots of different means, none of which are perfect or even close to perfect, but together can keep a group really off balance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you wrote about this strategy for foreign affairs and you called it the good enough doctrine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How come?
--:-- Dan Byman: So one thing that I hope Americans have realized 20 years after 9-11 is that we're not going to end terrorism, that there's still going to be some threat, and that efforts to do dramatic things like regime change in the Muslim world not only don't work too well, but actually fail when it comes to counterterrorism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So things like the Iraq War actually backfired and made the terrorism problem worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there are a series of efforts, and a lot of it's intelligence and law enforcement cooperation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's working in a supportive way with the American Muslim population.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then there are things like drone strikes and special forces rates that each by itself can reduce the danger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And together, it's quite effective.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So some of the people who are listening may know the Swiss cheese model we talk about with COVID where you have a combination of vaccines and masks and distancing that each help the problem but don solve it completely
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It the same thing with counterterrorism where each of these measures can reduce the danger and together are quite effective
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But to stress, it doesn't eliminate the danger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We have to live with some risk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does pulling out of Afghanistan in particular potentially create more risk?
--:-- Dan Byman: Pulling out of Afghanistan is unquestionably a win for the broader jihadist cause.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, they said, hey, we beat the Soviet Union, and now, after 20 years of fighting, we beat the American Empire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a big question about whether the Taliban will allow al-Qaeda to do international terrorist attacks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, they're clearly going to allow al-Qaeda to persist in Afghanistan itself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in the past, in the 1990s, of course, they opposed al-Qaeda's international terrorist attacks, but they still didn't do anything about it when it happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think many listeners would say, well, it's not really significant opposition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After it happens, you don't really do anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they paid a huge price for these attacks when the United States went in and overthrew them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's a question of whether the Taliban learned that lesson.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Pakistan, which is the key backer of the Taliban, also have no interest in international terrorist attacks on the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It just attracts negative U.S. attention to Pakistan and to the region.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's a factor as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the United States, in contrast to the pre-911 era, has all these means of, you know, striking training camps and going after leaders and following people in an intelligent sense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are all these possibilities that reduce the danger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the danger of an attack has increased because the United States left Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I personally think it's something that good counterterrorism can manage, but it's not the sort of thing we can wish away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where does this leave Afghanistan?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, so the Taliban is in control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: ISIS-K is going to be attacking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, you have these Afghan resistance forces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, how many groups are currently competing for power in Afghanistan?
--:-- Dan Byman: So this is a tricky question in Afghanistan itself because you'll have groups like the Taliban.
--:-- Dan Byman: But the Taliban are composed of networks.
--:-- Dan Byman: So you'll have factions within the Taliban.
--:-- Dan Byman: You have individual commanders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as we saw when the Taliban gained power in the 90s, lost power after the U.S. invasion in 2001, and then gained power again, is lots of commanders will switch sides.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So right now the Taliban are quite strong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've captured a bunch of U.S. equipment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a huge prestige boost.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have all this support from Pakistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're going to be a very strong force in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan will probably know more stability than is known for many years, because the core of the civil war, that's going to diminish.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the Taliban aren't going to have complete control of the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Parts of it are simply very remote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So geography is kind of an enemy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there'll be areas that the locals oppose the Taliban enough to fight effectively.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There may be foreign governments, and we don't know this yet, but there may be some like the United States that actually support opposition to the Taliban.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are going to be a lot of challenges the Taliban face.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that said, they were pretty effective in the 90s.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In consolidating control, and I expect them to consolidate control for much of the country within the next year reasonably efficiently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there is some chance for some sort of stability in Afghanistan, though it sounds like it does look like that stability will come from whatever the Taliban plans to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that's exactly right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it'll be stability with a, effectively a tyrannical government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the good news for Afghans is that the death and misery of civil war will diminish.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And again, I think it will continue in parts of the country, but will be at a much lower level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it comes at an extremely steep price.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a lot of the progress we've seen in Afghanistan in the last 20 years is going to go away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're almost exactly two weeks out from the 20-year anniversary of 9-11
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know you served on the 9-11 commission
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you feel like the United States is safer after two wars hundreds of thousands dead and trillions spent on this war on terror
--:-- Dan Byman: I want to answer your question Mary carefully
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I feel the U.S. homeland is definitely safer now than it was right before 9-11.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We have better homeland defense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's better global intelligence cooperation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are efforts to go after big havens wherever they might appear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And all that has kept the American homeland safer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: However, there are parts of the world, and the Middle East is a big example, where you saw these massive civil wars develop.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they developed for lots of reasons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the region itself is destabilized, and that's going to create kind of persistent problems that allow these armed groups, some of which are linked to al-Qaeda, some of which are linked to ISIS, and it allows them to persist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I would say where you stand on this very much depends on where you live.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you're an American living in the U.S. homeland, I think the risk is diminished.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Again, not gone, but diminished.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you're someone living in the Middle East, you're facing a lot of danger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dan Byman is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: To speak to that ongoing danger Dan described, as of today, Afghans are still rushing towards the airport in Kabul in hopes to make it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're crowding around the very area where something like 180 people were killed yesterday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our episode today was produced by Will Reed and Halima Shah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
