1 ' s IGAR l omce or the S lallns Xdor General j for Afgllanlstan RecoiiStluctlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW l as Project Title and Code LL-0 1 - Strategy and Planning Interview Title Interview Ambassador Richard Boucher former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Interview Code LL-01-b9 Date Time 10 15 2015 15 10-16 45 Location Providence RI Purpose To elicit his officials from his time serving as Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs lnterviewees fEither list interviewees below attach si -in sheet to this docurnent or hyperlink to a file SIGAR Attendees Matthew Sternenberger Candace Rondeaux Sourcing Conditions On the Record On Background etc Recorded Yes No I I IX I Recording File Record Number if recorded Prepared By - Name title and date Matthew Sternenberger On the record Reviewed By Name title and date Key Topics • • • • General Observations The State and DOD Struggle Building Security Forces Governance Expectations and Karzai • • • • Capable Actors Regional Economics and Cooperation General Comments on Syria Iraq lessons learned General Obseryatjons Let me approach this from two directions The first question of did we know what we were doing The second is what was wrong with how we did it The first question of did we know what we were doing - I think the answer is no First we went in to get al-Qaeda and to get al-Qaeda out of Mghanistan and even without killing Bin Laden we did that The Taliban was shooting back at us so we started shooting at them and they became the enemy Ultimately we kept expanding the mission George W Bush when he was running for president said that the military should not be involved in nation building In the end I think he was right If there was ever a notion of mission creep it is Afghanistan We went from saying we will get rid of al-Qaeda so they can't threaten us Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 1 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 0 SIGAR I Olflce ol lhcSpec lallnspecror Gcneml lor Alghanlsllln RccoMirucllon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW anymore to saying we are going to end the Tali ban Then we sa id that we w ill get a ll of the groups the Tali ban works with Then furthe r to having our exit strategy be a stable government in Afghanistan Once you s tart saying that and yo u start getting into stable government democratic elections ma ki ng sure the Su preme Court functions properly anti-corruption authority and a women's ministry that looks at women's rights new educational curriculum transitional justice which means yo u will go after all the peopl e the president relies upon for political support You are trying to build systematic government a Ia Washington DC which is not the best example but that is the one we have in our hands in a country that doesn't operate that way If we think our exit stra tegy is to either beat the Tali ban which can't be done given the local regional and cross-border circumstances or to establish a n Afghan government that is capable of delivering good government to its citize ns using America n tools and metho ds then we have no exit strategy because both of those a re impossib le If we defined our exit strategy as leaving a more or less functional Afghanistan that wouldn't be a harbor for eda we could have at that Train u an let Karzai have mon to distribut may to re e more ry t we were besides just Ghost Wars to operate in Afghanistan Th e only time this country Afghanistan has worked properly was when it was a floating pool of tribes and warlords presided over by someone who had a certain emine nce who was able to centralize them to the extent that they didn't fight each other too much I think this idea that we went in with that this was going to become a state government like a U S state or so mething like that was just wrong a nd is what condemned us to 15 years of war instead of2 or 3 The other big problem is me you and Jessie Helms jessie Helms because when t he Soviet Union fell apart we had to cut a deal w ith Jessie Helms to continue our aid programs The deal with jessie Helms was that we would spend the money in the Un ited States We would buy American products America n grain American consultants American Security experts a nd they wou ld implement our aid programs Those billions of dollars yo u guys were trying to track down I mean you must be able to find this number The Afgha-ns used to tell me that somew here between 10-20% actually shows up in Afghanistan and less than 10% ever gets to a village So you tell us the Afghans t hat you just spent a billion dollars as we see $50 million worth of roads You th e U S hire a big contractor and inside the beltway consultant who then hires 15 s ubcontractors The first guy takes 20% then next level ta kes 20% who would go hire a bunch of expensive American experts to do what Afghan diaspora refugees or Indian experts could do for ten times the price These Americans we hire travel to Afghanistan firs t class or at least business class with five security guys each Then yo u come and maybe yo u do training for the same group of people that have been trained 12 times by different countries or you go out to the village to build a school and that is very nice The money you s pend doesn't get to the village doesn't really help the Afghan government We were sort of aware of this We took the Afghans seriously on this Bi ll Wood and I pushed to push more money through the Afghan government gradually This is 7 or 8 years after we first arrived in Afghanista n We started putting some money through certain ministries that ha d been able to qualify for the accountability of U S assistance I am afraid that is the second problem- the fact that there is a n institution that is trying to acco unt for eve ry dollar we s pend in Afghanistan You can't do tha t You can't spend money and track money at the same time in Afghanistan Larry Summers used to talk about dropping money from a helicopter in order to stimulate the economy sometimes you have to do that Sometimes yo u just have to spend money and hope that it is useful or assu me that some of it will disappear- that a large chunk will disappear in Afghanistan You can do somethings to account for it better like get receipts and ask the governors and ministers you give it to to submit an acco unting of how they spend it If you think yo u can go and audit every gun box of nails a nd bag of cement yo u are jus t fooling yourself Congress unfortunately thinks that we can Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 2 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 0 SI GAR I Office of th-0 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Ro ollSttuctlOn LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW That is where part of the problem is me People like me that didn't go up to Congress and say 40% of this money will disappear - I guarantee it I will do my best to make sure we know where it goes I will make sure it is spent as usefully as possible given the circumstance But 40% is going to disappear and I just want you to know that upfront I want it to disappear in Afghanistan rather than in the beltway So give me less money and let me spend it in Afghanistan through the government and then ask the government what they do with it Not only that but probably in the end it is going to make sure that more of the money gets to some villager maybe through five layers of corrupt officials but still gets to some villager It also will build a capability an allegiance and a dependency on the government Because we don't trust the Afghan government we go out and spend the money through American contractors American NGOs and the American military The CERP program the military has is a great program They go out there sit down with villagers and talk about what they need - schools Roads Trainings How can we help you get competitive bidding local contractors You would talk to the majors and they have all these great programs that will now leave when the major leaves or when the U S militar leaves That doesn't build an Af han overnment ca abili That actuall undercuts the local official along for the ride but everybody knew who had the checkbook We shouldn't fool ourselves about where the money goes it is more important about how we spend the money The political affect with having the Afghan government deliver something to the people even if it is the chance to pull 20% more off their cut in Afghanistan It means we are establishing the government as the course of benefits We ought to work hard to make sure the government distributes the benefits fairly but we ought to not try to distribute that stuff ourselves which is essentially what we did because of me you and Jessie Helms So we ran a parallel system of aid and development in Afghanistan and then we left Now that we are going to have fewer troops even at the levels the president is announcing today Army contractors aren't going to be out there Maybe we will have to deliver assistance through the Afghan government There are a few Afghan programs that were good the solidarity program was good We tried to make sure they kept getting money from us but never as much as others Health ministry was doing pretty well As far as I know we didn't build roads through the Ministry of Public Works We didn't just turn over money to the Ministry of Education to run the schools I think in the end we did them a disservice by not doing that Now there is another problem and it goes back the structure of government We want a government to be setup according to an org chart with all kinds of democratic elections Jelani Popa had an office of local governance in Karzai's office We tried with him to set up a fund Trying to get him $50 million that he could use to put money into districts that he trusted that they trusted that the palace thought was responsive to them His relations with Karzai did not work out I think that because in the end Karzai's overnin instinc­ were to rely on his friends That is how Afghanistan works - relying o tentates powers that be not just powers that the American's created So getting him to use that governing structure that we put in place that we told him he had to have was really hard So getting money into the provinces and districts and having the central government and Karzai use that chain was hard He relied on his friends in provinces for information for what was really going on He relied on them for his political support and favors They relied on him for the same We didn't accept that that was the way things work in Afghanistan We said you have to work through this democratic bureaucratic system just like what have in America We were consistently a quarter turn off from Karzai that eventually produced some blow ups and dust ups that we had with him The State and DOD Struggle Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 3 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 ® SIGAR OfftceoftheSpeclallnspectotGenetal I for Afghanistan Roconstructlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW There are two reasons that Congress is obsessed with the war fighting aspect of the intervention First boys with toys The Pentagon has all this cool stuff I used to argue with my counterpart at Defense Pete Williams when he was spokesman there and I was spokesman at State I would say to him that you Pete Williams go up in your briefing and somebody asks about the Battleship Iowa lobbing shells into Lebanon You tell where it was made the names of the workers the locations of the workers and the congressional districts of everybody that made the shell the gun the metal You also tell them where the commander was from how many rounds and how many that all the boys with toys stuff Then someone raises their hand asks why they are throwing shells into the side of Lebanon and he would refer them to the State Department and that is my question Congress is a bit like that too They are fascinated by all this stuff that is built in their districts and they love the mechanical stuff The other problem which is a problem Americans have but especially the American military is the can-do attitude It gets us into trouble We think we are Mr Fixit The president goes around the table and says we have problem here The first guy to raise his hand is the Special Forces guy who says they can take care of it The president might also ask why our aid is not getting down to the district level - the military steps up and says sir we have $100 million in CERP programs and we can increase that to $200 million We have majors people all over the country that can take care of that for you That is the wrong way to do it It is better to do it badly through an Afghan civilian government structure perhaps with some civilian advisors than to do it ourselves well through the military Something everybody in Afghanistan knows except the U S military is that eventually the U S military leaves and all of these capabilities all these toys all these programs leave with them I am not surprised but it takes a bit of a mindset change One thing I complain about all the time now is the sort of militarization of foreign policy That is where the money is the military has the money and the can-do attitude Ask the State Department guy to do it and he says that is really complicated It doesn't sound like the right answer when you are trying to get something done but it is unfortunately frequently the truth it is really complicated You can just go play whack-a-mole with the Tali ban or drop drones on people and think you are solving the problem You can't also just throw more military advisors into an army that is not capable of doing anything like in Iraq I can take care of that for you Mr President is probably the worst answer but it is often the one that gets the applause and it usually gets applause on the hill too Building Security Forces The thinking wasn't in Afghanistan it was in State Department it was Rumsfeld on our decision to go light footprint It was that we should get rid of the government then throw some money in there There were the Friends of Don Rumsfeld He had one guy who knew electricity one guy that knew water one guy that knew health They had a formal name and stationed in the embassy- the Afghan Reach Back Group They were just on their way out when I was getting in around 2006 What did they know about Afghanistan You know What were they doing in an Embassy with more money and responsibility at least in the sector than the Ambassador This was his way of saying we got rid of ai-Qaeda you now reconstruct Afghanistan - I am going to Iraq So the money and the troops went to Iraq By the time I got there in 2006 to 2007 we hadn't hardly trained any Afghan police There was no structure or capability to send police into localities and districts So we ramped up that program Got in a bureaucratic fight over who was going to run it and frankly I didn't care that much So we started training policemen and setting up the kind of electronic payment system for their paychecks that we set up for the military four years before General Cohen at one point was doing that training He said I know that we trained 70 000 policeman I know we are paying 70 000 policeman I just don't know if we are paying the 70 000 policemen we trained But that was Afghanistan and you had to accept that type of situation if you were going to work there Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 4 of12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 ® S IGAR l Ortlce of the Special Inspector Geneml for Afgflanlstan Roconstrudlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW There was another part of that we State Department did wrong We started out in Afghanistan with this attitude that we will do the military the Germans will do the police and the Italians will do the justice system Everybody was going to take a sector Then of course nobody had the resources Nobody had the capabilities Nobody had the determination in the other sectors or at least not to our liking The Germans were training police hierarchy officers but not placemen thinking that somehow good officers would filter down They didn't understand that the central officers had very little control over the behavior of local policemen That was true place after place If you look at it after 15 years we could have taken a thousand school children in first grade well not quite first but fifth grade and taken them to get educated and trained in Indian schools and colleges Then we could have brought them back on an airplane by now and said ok you guys run Afghanistan I am not sure that would have worked any better Better than having a bunch of Americans going in and saying we can build it for you with you meaning you can come to my meetings and listen to me go on and on I think part of it was Defense wanting to skedaddle and this idea that you can have different sectors run by different countries Part of it was that we trained people to be Americans the Germans trained people to be Germans and the Italians trained people to be Italians Some of the Afghans remained Afghans Governance Expectations and Karzai One of the things I am going to give a speech on soon is expectations of governance One of our global problems is that now people care about the quality of governance and the fairness of governance The fact that you have explosions in Ukraine Syria Iraq and elsewhere is because they are not getting fair and decent government You had the Arab Spring because the middle class was demanding fairness from their government When you look around the world and where have we done a good job helping people develop better governments government institutions and fair systematic governance for their people There is a lot of stuff now in the development scheme and that is why countries develop and that's why they prosper It is not money or investment but it is a stable government institution So where have we done that well We have done it pretty well helping out in Taiwan Korea and Singapore but they were all dictatorships or autocracies for a long time and that is not exactly a model we want to propose you use elsewhere We did it pretty well in Eastern Europe when they got out of the Soviet Bloc but they just woke up in the morning and said I want to do that and pointed at Europe They said how do Europeans brush their teeth That is how I am going to brush my teeth They said how do they control their currencies That is how I am going to control my currency They all this body of EU law that they could go and apply The ones that did it more thoroughly are doing better now but that was fairly straightforward for them The only other places we have done a good job bringing good governance is where they decided that they were going to finally try to reform and do it right Chile unfortunately a dictatorship model and we most contributed by training their people in Chicago Columbia Plan Columbia worked because it was a Columbian plan that we helped with once the Columbians decided they were going to take their problems on a fix them Georgia is starting to look that way now Philippines will look that way But who knows how much money we have thrown into the Philippines over the years Yes the rice thing in the 1960s was great but in terms of stable prosperity governance they are getting their act together now and we want to help So we don't really have that many good models and we certainly don't have many good models for countries as destitute as Afghanistan was When we first went there with Secretary Powell Ryan Crocker and the Embassy were already there They were living in something called the bunker It had been built in the Najib period or early Soviet period It had two wingsthe boys wing and the girls wing That is where they slept They had a little place to cook They worked in the embassy but it was missing certain amenities like plumbing so they couldn't really live there Actually the day the Powell visited they got the toilets to work In terms of the lives of the people on the compound that was probably a bigger deal than the Secretary of State coming to visit We went to a cabinet meeting with Karzai and he had 30 people around the table He had his Minister for Women's Affairs just like we told him he had to He had all the ministers for justice and it was just like the American cabinet They were sitting around but they had nothing The central bank governor was telling us how he went and opened the vaults and there was nothing inside There was Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 5 of12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 0 siGAR omce olthe Spo lallnsP«tor Geru ul lor Alpanl l ln Rocontructlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW no money no currency no fo reign r eserves no gold and none of wha t you would expect Mos t of the ministries did n't have a telephone I forget how many fax machines Somehow the Afghans ma naged to put on thts amazing lunch This huge banquet with piles of rice a nd dead goats They were capable people but they didn't wa nt a nything to run a gove rnment with so it really wa s from scratch both organizationally and m ateria lly I th ink we n ever let the m tak e the lead a nd maybe that is just a result of the fact that we found I arzai a nd flown him in and told eve rybody t hat he was their leader We never even waited for the Afghans to organize themselves If it had been a table of Karzai and Ismail Khan he might have been there since he was energy minister fo r a w hile and Dostum Even Hekmatyar and othe1· nasty warlord guys fom1 different tribes a nd half of Karzai's Pashtun friends from the south we would have fou nd it distasteful but it might have wo rked out better When I firs t got the job in 2006 on one of my first trips out to Kabul the DEA Administrator was there He was · to labad so I went with him to alalabad and She rzai was an r PPlnnr he needs in tenns of construction here He said I need 5 schools 5 colleges 5 dams how come He said well I need to the highways so the fanners can deliver their food the schools so kids gets educated here and don't go to Pakistan madrassas dams for inigation and electricity I said well okay but why 5 He said I got this t ribe this tribe this tribe this tribe a nd one for everybody else I thought that was the funniest thing I ever heard a nd now I think it is now one of the s martes t thing I ever heard but we were n't prepared to work thro ugh th at sys tem We weren't prepared to build up governors and peo ple w ho weren't behold to the central government and people who would probably take 20% for personal use or for t he ir extended fa milies a nd fri ends It was more a nd mor e frus I who knew him n't inte ntionaiJy go and say here is bulle t ple ase s ot an Amen can ut that some o our s tuff go to the Tali ban through fairly direct means was probably tru e I probably shou ld have taken him more seriously b 1 -1 4 0 ' co rru pti on a nd have w01·ked anti -corruption all over the wo rld but there a re differe nt IGnds of corruption There is co rrup tio n t hat spreads the wealth a nd takes care of eve rybody gets to the orpha ns and widows Then the re is co1-ruptio n that goes to my house on the Riviera I think Afghanis tan has a lot more of the orphans and widows w ith a few warlords in between a nd a lot less of the house on the Ri viera type of corr uption Capa ble Actors Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 101520 15 Page 6 of 1 2 SIGAR RO I 10 30 15 0 S IGAR Ol lcc of the Special Inspector Genoral lor Alghanlatan Roconslrlldlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW The other thing is that there were a ll type of capable Afghans in the diaspora and rather than bringing in people from Washington or Rumsfeld cronies why didn't we do a better job recruiting from the Afghan diaspora Probably because they didn't want to go back The ministers I worked with were from the diaspora Spanta was a German university professor and Rassoul was a doctor Also why weren't we hiring Pakistanis and Indians Each one of them has a political problem associated w ithin but s till as U S government contractors they could have done stuff in certain sectors I think that if we could have figured a way to t the Indian Election Commission in there to run elections instead of Americans that would have been Re ional Economics and Cooperation It a focus on the regional aspects was in Bonn It should have been in Bonn That was the moment that you could go to all the regional players and ask what type of Afghanistan do we wa n nt do we want in Afghanistan How do we s upport it I didn't do that I had people like telling me that there needs to be a regional conference to decide the future of Afghanistan I would say no There is a government in Afghanistan and they will have to decide the future of Afghanistan and we can help you have a good relationship with them We can help do other regional thi ngs like electricity lines exchanges and all that stuff We can't have people from the outside deciding the fate of Afghanistan - they have to do that themselves I was pretty strong on that I know Holbrooke when he came in he started organizing regional meetings and having everyone appointed as special envoy for Afghanistan and having big meetings I hope he enjoyed it but you're not going to fix Afghanistan from the outside in you' re going to fix it from the ground up inside Afghanistan I used to talk about ground-up security If yo u could start to establish decent government and include locals you can build the nation from there That is why police were so important to me That is w hy roads were so im portant to me I am not s ure it worked but it at least occas ionally s howed some promise I had a different model for e lections- maybe starting with local and district level elections Sort of an Indian ro tational system just the way the U S started - having the districts elect the districts elect the provincial leaders a nd have the provincial leaders getting together to elect the central leader do an adaption of Karzai's tribal coalition approach That is the way the U S Senate is not directly elected and the president is still not directly elected Something like that which builds the nation from the ground up and provide a place for everybody Yes in some places the village leader w ill say everyone has to vote for my son that's fine His son and everybody else's son will get together and select provincial leaders and so on That kind of system is more adapted to a place with that local thing I resisted the idea of fixing Afghanistan from th e outside I tried to get neighbors to cooperate and s u route to the sea Even with Turkmenista We had a big energy conference that is w hen Kha n was in Istanbul We actually had some Columbians come a nd brief how they mai ntain gas pipelines during an insurgency It turns out it is not that hard to do You just have be able to fix things quickly They can blow it up at any point but you have to be able to get out there a nd fix it pretty quick as people are relying on the gas s upply Also you get locals to buy in to the work and repairs and sometimes the gas Ther we talked a lot abo ut powerlines coming down from Kaza hkstan Kyrgysta n and Tajikistan Bob Deutch who is now livi ng in Florida was my guy w ho would do regio nal stuff in that regard So the idea was to knit the region together with gas electricity and trade Record of Meeti ng with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 7 of 12 SIGAR ROt 10 30 15 0 S IGAR I Offtco or lhe Spcclallnspccror Goocml for Afl l nnlsran Rcconsuuctlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW There were these periodic economic meetings- first one of which I went to was in Kabul Then we had one in India in about 2008 or 2007 The Indians being very protocol conscious didn't care I was the American I was only an Assistant Secretary So after all the others spoke who were allotted ten minutes each I got three minutes My speech was about fruit I basically said there are Indian and Pakistani oranges in the markets in Osh we need to make sure melons from Osh can make it to the breakfast tables in New Delhi The fact is that they couldn't They couldn't because of corruption They couldn't because of borders the Indian-Pakistan dispute and trucking You had to offload and then on load at the India-Pakistan border and a ll types of other rules But the best melons in the world are from the Fergana Valley and yet they had no way of getting to the breakfast tables of New Delhi We tried to work on it but I am afraid a lot of things that made it impossible like the India-Pakistan dispute which I guess was off my vague radar a lthough I tried In the end the Pakistanis didn't want us to solve their problems for the sake of melons from Fergana Valley They wou ld pay lip service to us then go back to their usual spats Or because the border problems were not hard but soft- bribes corruptions licenses delays We build a bridge across the river Panj I went with Secretary Gutierrez and Karzai We flew up to Tajikistan and then flew down to the bridge by helicopter with President Rahman to open the bridge The band played and the dancers danced I doubt if even more than two trucks a week go across that bridge but it is a wonderful bridge So we tried and kept trying Eventually it made sense political problems and corruption were ve ry hard to overcome I guess if we knew how to get over the political problems and the corruption problems it wouldn't take a bridge to get the melons across the melons would role from the Fergana Valley to the breakfast tables in New Delhi In terms of regional security issues we didn't too much with guys in the north We did do counter drug operations Russ ians turned out to be very good partners in that I was just so rt of the one pouring holy wate r on it and then the DEA guys were doing stuff with their Russian counterparts Controlled de livers for example a nd some of the Central Asians were good on that too - to follow a package all the way across and figure out who was in the supply chain a nd how it was getting to Europe We did that better and more than the Europeans The French has a big counternarcotic conference at the Inte rcontinenta l he believes in Paris Secretary Powell a nd made a s peech The French a nd others made speeches about how this is an awful problem and that we have to do something about it We said excuse us we have been doing something about it for seven years These drugs are not coming to U S they are coming to Amsterdam They are coming to Europe We are actually surprised that you guys just discovered th ere is a problem Then the French ha d th eir conference and said that they have to do something Then they went back to their us ual habits The Russians and some of the Central Asians turned out to be pretty good Afghan DEA guys turned out to be pretty good Our DEA guys a lways wanted more money and more capability because they were just THAT close to catching the big fish I have been fishing too and had my bait in the water a long time and never caught the big fis h ted you had the Was hington Post stories a U S troops wa ing poppy eon an not doing anything about it I sympathize with the troops if I was in my flak jacket and there was poppy - I would just say they were pretty flowers They were not there to s tart chopping flowers a nd then have s omeo ne start shooting at you The security part to t he north - the Uzbeks often recognized the fact that we were wo and radicals in nistan We were sort of ta care of one of their roblems Uzbek militants We used to have regular consultations w ith the Chinese because there were some Ui Taliban and a i-Qaeda Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 8 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 9 SIGAR Olflcc ol rho Spocial lrupecror Genom for Al flonlsr• n Roco ltuctlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW People say you Boucher should write your memoirs I would say I don't know what my book is about and if could write the Pakistan chapter- the rest would be easy I am still not as clear on Pakistan as I should be but I will t there som The best book I ever r ead on Pakistan was n to me by b 1 - 1 4 0 He gave me the book called Report on Waziristan a its Tn It is a co ection o Bri ispatches m the late 191h century and how they tried to subdue Pashtuns It goes through a series of steps they took One was that they tried to beat the military which they could do Two they tried to turn the tribes against themselves- that didn't work Three they tried to invite the leaders and chiefs for education basically hold them hostage The tribal leaders were smart enough to know what was going on so they sent the sons of their slaves or their underlings so that didn't work very well It goes through a whole series of measures What they finally did was put the tribal chiefs on their payroll and when the tribe was acting up or someone in the tribe committed a murder was to be turned over they cut off the paycheck I presume the guy's wife would start complaining and his underlings would start complaining that they weren't getting their money that month and they would come to the Brits and cut a deal Then they would start the payroll again That was w hat the Pakistanis took over - that system of tribal allegiance and payoffs Pakista n treated the tribal areas separate and sti ll had that system nominally in place into 2006 a nd 2007 They fina lly passed some laws to change it but not enough That was the nominal system but what happened was that during the 1980s we destroyed that system by funneling money and guns through the mullahs and the military and the militant groups We created in the tribal areas a mullah-military-militant complex to fight the Soviets They were very good at it They got a lot of money They got a lot of weapons We destroyed the social fabric and governing structure Both the Pakistani governing structure of tribal agents and the tribal governing structures It was no longer the chief the elders the people w ho had been around or the paterfamilias The paterfamilias' of the families were no longer really the guys in charge The people with money and capability were the preacher that had a madrassa the military commander and the head of the militant group Those were the people like Haqqani w ho had the righ t name but essentially he was able to govern because he had that authori ty from the war against the Soviets So we basically setup an ungoverned space A very militant ungoverned space That is what we had to deal with when we got back to Afghanistan Countless times we had consultations across the border we occasionally had coordination across the border where we would say to the Pakistan military that we need to move in this direction Nuristan was one place and as we moved into Nuristan they did some stuff on the other side of the border that was pretty effective That type of coordination worked for a while until some of our guys would s hoot at the Pakistan border post or the Special Forces got so envious of drone strikes that they had to say we can also do that on the ground too and come back with cell phones and information So we let them go across the border once and that was a fiasco I don't think it was unclassified but it was reported in the media so I am basing this off press releases Again we thought the Pakistani military would take care of its problem for us We went to countless meetings where the Pakistanis would stand up since they were all educated at U S war colleges and tell us about the reform of the Pakistani Army and that they were putting more people into counterinsurgency training and devoting les s forces to the Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richa rd Boucher 10152015 Page 9 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 @ siGAR Omoo of lhc Spa lal nspa lor General tor Af l'anlstan R eorslr lc1fon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW I think the answer is yes that we can partner w ith a nation like Pakistan Many of us have thought the a nswer was yes a nd many of us were willing to s pend mo ney there even though a bunch of it would be wasted I think the b 1 - 1 4 8 1 4 0 Record ofMeet1ng with Ambassador Ri cha rd Boucher 10152015 Page 10 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 @ siGAR Ol lco of thf Spo 11 sP clor Groual fo• AfgJoanlstan Rcco li IC11on LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW Iran is very interesting Rahmon in Tajikistan when we built them a bridge then said to me soon after· okay you have to build me a train to go across the bridge I asked why He said that if I get a train across the bridge then you need to build a train across the north to Iraq a nd on into Iran That way I can export through Iranian ports I said I am son y the U S government is not in the business of creating new trade with Iran We have sanctions and embargoes and not in the position to do that But if you are sitting in Central Asia we have blinders on We say Look Great gas lines through war-torn Iraq through messed dup Pakistan and may eve n through India where th will coo erate Th would roba make offload the on the Indian side ·ust like do the trucks So I think in the end it made sense in a s trategic way but in a political and practical way no This is what I am trying to teach my kids in class - that is may make sense in policy terms but you still have to deal with personalities in politics General Co mments on Syria Ira q There is a whole other set of lessons from Iraq that would apply more to Syr·ia than Afgha nistan does That is deBa'athification You can chop the head off the Mr Potato Head but then the arms and legs continued to run the country Afghanistan didn't have that core they had some but not like Iraq or Syria wher·e they had people who could make the electricity go and water run 5 months ago I w rote a blog post abo ut the Sandinista solution for Syria In the end Reagan could not defeat the Sandinistas with an insurgency so under pressure from Congress and the Central Americans he negotiated and got them to agree to an election Against most people's bets they the Sandinistas lost the elections Get the other side to ag ree to a U N s upervised election in two years and say that we will coope•·ate with you jus t have to trust the people of Sy•·ia to make the right choice b 1 - 1 4 0 Record of Meerlng with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 11 of 12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15 SIGAR I forOtftceoftheSPQCiallnspectorGenOO'II Afi'Janlstan Roconstludlon LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW sectorial problems This is a problem we have had all over the world and haven't solved very well Like in Bosnia You take the lid of the secular dictator off You get rid of Tito and you get sectarian violence You get rid of Sad dam and you get sectarian violence in Iraq You get rid of Kaddafi you get sectarian violence in Libya You get rid of Assad and you bet you will have the same thing In some ways sectarian dictatorships are pretty good The Turkish model is hard to implement in some of these places because they don't like the Turks and don't want to be seen as Turks They didn't like the Ottoman Empire We don't really have a strategy for dealing with this and again the problem is the military's can-do attitude Everything in Washington is either a testosterone test or a job for Special Forces It is about time someone said hold it It should be about 1 3 military 1 3 regional players and 1 3 governance on the ground There is 2 3rds we are not doing right now Foreign policy is fun until you have to go somewhere with bullets flying in the air and you have to fix it Lessons Learned 1 Lower your expectations 2 3 4 5 6 Define your goals Don't forget why you went there Mission creep is inherent in our system We have to say good enough is good enough That is why we are there 15 years later We are trying to achieve the unachievable instead of achieving the achievable If governance is your exit strategy as it almost always is when we go into these places we have to get a lot better at building governance Not great not systematic not accountable just decent governance Record of Meeting with Ambassador Richard Boucher 10152015 Page 12 of12 SIGAR ROI 10 30 15