Robert Crews: Afghanistan, Taliban, Bin Laden, and War in the Middle East | Lex Fridman Podcast #244

1. 0:00 – 0:19

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Robert Kruse, a historian at Stanford specializing in the history of Afghanistan, Russia, and Islam. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, here's my conversation with Robert Kruse.

2. 0:19 – 15:08

   U.S. invasion of Afghanistan

   1. LFLex Fridman0:20

      Was it a mistake for the United States to invade Afghanistan in 2001, 20 years ago?

   2. RCRobert Crews0:26

      Yes.

   3. LFLex Fridman0:27

      As simple as yes? Why was it a mistake?

   4. RCRobert Crews0:30

      I'm a historian, so I say this with (laughs) , you know, some humility about what we can know. I think, you know, I'd still like to know much more about what was going on in the White House, you know, in the hours, days, weeks, you know, after 9/11. But I think the George W. Bush administration acted in a state of panic, and I think they wanted to show a kind of toughness. They wanted to show some kind of resolve. You know, this was a horrific act that played out, you know, on ev- everyone's television screens, and I think it was really a, fundamentally a crisis of legitimacy within the White House, in the Oval Office. And I think they felt like they had to do something, and something dramatic. I think they didn't really think through, you know, who they were fighting, you know, who the enemy was, what this geography had to do with 9/11. I think looking back at it, I mean, some of us, not to say I was, you know, clairvoyant or could see into the future, but I think many of us were, you know, from that morning, skeptical about the connections that people were drawing between Afghanistan as a state, as a place, and, you know, the actions of Al-Qaeda in Washington and New York and, and Pennsylvania.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:33

      So, as you watch the events of 9/11, the things that our leaders were saying in the m- in the minutes, hours-

   6. RCRobert Crews1:42

      Mm-hmm.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:42

      ... days, weeks that followed, maybe you can give a little bit of a timeline in, of what was being said. When was the actual invasion of, of Afghanistan? And also, what were your feelings in the minutes, weeks after 9/11?

   8. RCRobert Crews1:59

      I was in DC. I was, you know, on the way to American University, uh, hearing on NPR what had happened, um, and I thought of the American University logo, which is red, white, and blue. (laughs) It's an eagle. And I thought, you know, "Washington is under attack, and symbols of American power are under attack." And so, um, you know, I was quite concerned, and at the time, lived, you know, just a few miles from the Capitol. And so, um, you know, I, I, I felt it, you know, it was, it was real. So I appreciate the, you know, the, the sense of anxiety and fear and panic. And for two, three years later in DC, we were constantly getting reports, you know, mostly rumors, un- unconfirmed, about all kinds of attacks that befall the city, so I definitely, um, appreciate the sense of, of being under assault. But in watching television, including Russian television that day, because I just h- I had just installed a, a satellite thing, so I was trying to watch world news and get different points of view, and that was quite useful to have an alternative, you know-

   9. LFLex Fridman2:56

      In-

   10. RCRobert Crews2:56

       ... set of eyes.

   11. LFLex Fridman2:57

       In Russian?

   12. RCRobert Crews2:58

       Yeah, in Russian, yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman2:59

       Okay, so your Russian is, uh, is good enough to understand, uh, Russian television.

   14. RCRobert Crews3:03

       The news, yeah, the news-

   15. LFLex Fridman3:04

       The news?

   16. RCRobert Crews3:04

       ... and the visuals that were coming that were not shown on American television.

   17. LFLex Fridman3:07

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RCRobert Crews3:08

       I don't know how they had it, but they had- they were not filtering anything in the way that the major networks a- and cable televisions were doing here. So, it was a very unvarnished view of, of the violence of, of the moment, you know, in New York City, of, of people diving from the towers or being just, you know, it was really ... They didn't hold back on that, which was quite, you know, fascinating. I think much of the world saw much more than actually the American public saw. But to your question, you know, amid that feeling of imminent doom, I watched commentators start to talk about Al-Qaeda and then talk about Afghanistan, and one of the experts was, um, was Barnett Rubin, um, who was at NYU, who was a, you know, kind of long, very learned, um, Afghanistan hand, and he was brought on with Peter Jennings on ABC News to, to kind of lay this out for everyone. Um, and I thought, you know, he did a fine job, but I think it, it was formative in submitting the view that somehow Al-Qaeda was synonymous with the space Afghanistan. Um, and I think, a- again, I was no Al-Qaeda expert then, and I'm not now, but I think my immediate thought went to war and ... because my background had been with, at that point, mostly Afghans who had been displaced from decades of war, whom I encountered in Uzbekistan, who were refugees and so on. I thought immediately, you know, my mind went to the suffering of Afghan people, that this war was going to sweep, sweep up, of course, the, the, you know, the defenseless people who have nothing to do with these politics.

   19. LFLex Fridman4:31

       So we should give maybe a little bit of context-

   20. RCRobert Crews4:33

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman4:33

       ... so you can speak, too.

   22. RCRobert Crews4:34

       Yeah.

   23. LFLex Fridman4:35

       So assume nobody's an expert on anything.

   24. RCRobert Crews4:38

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman4:38

       So, let's just say-

   26. RCRobert Crews4:39

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman4:40

       ... um, you're, uh, you and I are not experts on anything.

   28. RCRobert Crews4:42

       Right.

   29. LFLex Fridman4:43

       What, as a historian, were you studying at the time and thinking about

   30. Yeah.
3. 15:08 – 32:43

   September 11

   1. LFLex Fridman15:08

      world. But back-

   2. RCRobert Crews15:09

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman15:10

      ... to our discussion of Uzbekistan-

   4. RCRobert Crews15:12

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman15:13

      ... Tajikistan, the whole region, that gives us context for the events of 9/11.

   6. RCRobert Crews15:18

      Right, right. So yeah, if we go back to that day and the weeks, you know, that followed, um, you know, my mind went to the community I knew in Tashkent, um, which was interesting. It was... I mean, they were... so Islam was the focal point of our conversation in the US about 9/11, right? Everyone wanted to know what was the relationship between this horrific violence and that religious tradition with its, you know, one billion plus followers across the globe, right? That became the issue, of course, for American security institutions, for, you know, local, state and police institutions, right? I mean, it became the, I think it was the question that most Americans had on their mind. So again, I didn't imagine myself as someone who had all the answers, of course, but given my background and, and coming at this from Russian history, coming at this from studying empire and trying to think about the region broadly, you know, I was very alarmed at the way the, the conversation went. It was-

   7. LFLex Fridman16:12

      Can I ask you a question?

   8. RCRobert Crews16:13

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman16:13

      What was your feeling on that morning, um, of 9/11? Who did this? Isn't that, isn't that a natural feeling? There's a... it's coupled with fear-

   10. RCRobert Crews16:23

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman16:24

       ... of what's next, especially when you're in DC.

   12. RCRobert Crews16:26

       Right, yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman16:27

       But also who is this? Is this an accident?

   14. RCRobert Crews16:30

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman16:30

       Is this a deliberate terrorist attack? Is this, uh, domestic? Like-

   16. RCRobert Crews16:34

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman16:35

       What were your thoughts of the options and the internal ranking given your, um, expertise?

   18. RCRobert Crews16:41

       Yeah. I mean, I suppose I, I was taken by the narrative that this was international. I mean, I, I'd also lived in New York during one of the first bombings in '94 of the World Trade Center. So it was clear to me that a radical community had really fixed New York as part of their imagination of... and I, I immediately, you know, thought it was a, it was a, a kind of blow to American power. And, you know, I was drawn in by the symbolism of, of it. You know, if you think of it as an act, it was a kind of, um, an act of speech, if you will, a kind of, a, a way of speaking to... from a position of relative weakness, speaking to a, you know, a, a, an imperial power. And that I saw, I saw it as a kind of symbolic, you know, speech act of, of that, with horrific, you know, real world, um, consequences for all those innocent victims, for the firemen, for the police, and just the, you know, the horror o- of the moment. Um, so I, I, I did see it as, as transcending the United States, but I did not see it as really having anything necessarily to do fundamentally about Afghanistan and, and the history of the region that I'd been studying and the community of people that I knew, who were not particularly religious, right? The, the, the guys I hung out with actually wore me out because they wanted to go out every night. They wanted to party every night. We had-

   19. LFLex Fridman17:57

       Drinking?

   20. RCRobert Crews17:58

       Yep. We had discussions about alcohol. I mean, Uzbekistan is famous for its, you know-

   21. LFLex Fridman18:02

       Drinking.

   22. RCRobert Crews18:03

       Its drinking, you know, its... and-

   23. LFLex Fridman18:04

       That's something to look forward to. So I, I do wanna-

   24. RCRobert Crews18:07

       And it's... yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman18:07

       ... travel to that part of the...

   26. RCRobert Crews18:08

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman18:08

       When, when was the last time you were in that part of the world?

   28. RCRobert Crews18:11

       Early 2000s. Well, in the mid-2000s.

   29. LFLex Fridman18:13

       Yeah.

   30. RCRobert Crews18:14

       2010s. Yeah, yeah.
4. 32:43 – 1:08:12

   Bin Laden

   1. RCRobert Crews32:43

   2. LFLex Fridman32:43

      With the relation to Afghanistan, who was bin Laden?

   3. RCRobert Crews32:47

      Bin Laden was a, a visitor. Um, if we look at his whole life course, part of it is an enigma still. You know, he is from a Saudi elite family, but a family that kind of has a, a Yemeni Arabian Sea kind of genealogy. Um, so the family has no relationship to Afghanistan, past or present, except at some point in 1980s when he went, like thousands of other young Saudis, first to Pakistan, to places like Peshawar, on the border, where they wanted to aid the jihad in some capacity. And for the most part, the Arabs who went opened up hospitals, some opened up schools. The bin Laden family had long been based in engineering, construction, so it's thought that he used some of those skills and resources and connections to build things. Um, you know, we have images of him firing a gun, uh, for show, right? It's not clear that he ever actually fired a gun in what we would call combat.

   4. LFLex Fridman33:52

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RCRobert Crews33:52

      Um, again, I could be corrected by this, and I think, you know, there could... There are competing accounts of who he was, so he's kind of a... I mean, many of these figures that... Who, who sit at the pinnacle of this world are, you know, fictive heroes-

   6. LFLex Fridman34:05

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RCRobert Crews34:05

      ... that people, you know, map their aspirations onto, right? And so people like Mullah Omar, who was then head of the Taliban, was rarely seen in public. The current head of the Taliban is almost never seen in public. I mean, there's a kind of studied air of, um, mystery that they've cultivated-

   8. LFLex Fridman34:23

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RCRobert Crews34:24

      ... to make themselves available for all kinds of fantasies, right?

   10. LFLex Fridman34:27

       Do you think he believed... So his religious beliefs, do you think he believed some of the more extreme things that enable him to commit terrorist acts? Maybe put another way, what makes a man want to become a terrorist?

   11. RCRobert Crews34:47

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman34:47

       And what aspect of bin Laden made him want to be a terrorist?

   13. RCRobert Crews34:51

       Right, right. Um, I mean, let me offer some observations. Uh, I think, you know, there are others who know more about bin Laden and, and have far more expertise in, in al-Qaeda. So I'm coming at this in an adjacent way, kind of from Afghanistan and from my historical training. So this is my two cents, so you know, bear with me. Um, I, I don't have the authoritative account for this, but-

   14. LFLex Fridman35:12

       Which, which in itself is fascinating, because you're a historian of Afghanistan. And the fact that bin Laden isn't a huge part of your focus of study just means-

   15. RCRobert Crews35:24

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LFLex Fridman35:24

       ... that bin Laden is not a key part of the history of Afghanistan, except that America made him a key part of the history of Afghanistan.

   17. RCRobert Crews35:32

       I, I would endorse that. Definitely, that's... I mean, you've, you've put it in a very pithy, pithy way. Um, yeah, so listen, he was... He was a... So he was an engineer. He was said to be a playboy, um, who spent a lot of cash from his family. You know, like many young Saudis and from some other countries, he was inspired by this idea that there was jihad in Afghanistan. It was gonna take down one of the two superpowers, the Soviet Union, who, you know, the Red Army did murder hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as two million, um, Afghan civilians during that conflict. It, it's very, you know, plausible and very, you know, uh, completely understandable that many young people would see that cause as, you know, the righteous, pious fighters for jihad, who called themselves mujahideen, arrayed against this evil empire, right? Of a godless Soviet empire that... I mean, there was even confusion about what the Soviets wanted, right? Now, now we know much more about like what the Kremlin wanted, what, what Brezhnev wanted.... and how the Soviet elite thought about it, because we have many more of their records. But from the outside, you know, for Jimmy Carter and then for Reagan, it looked like the Soviets were making a move on, on South Asia, because they wanted to get to the warm water ports, you know, which Russians always want, supposedly, right? And it was kind of a, a move to take over our oil and, you know, to assert world domination, right? So, there are lots of ways in which this looked like good versus evil. In Congress, it looked like, um, you know, kind of Vietnam again. But this time, it- this was our chance to get them, and there are lots of great quotes, uh, I mean disturbing, but really revealing quotes that, uh, American policymakers made about wanting to give the Soviets their Vietnam. So, the CIA funneled, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars into this project to, to back the Mujahedin, you know, who Reagan called freedom fighters. And so bin Laden was part of that universe. He's part of that, you know, he's swimming in the ocean of these Afghan Mujahedin, who out of size, you know, did 95% of the fighting. They're the ones who died. They're the ones who defeated the Red Army, right? The Arabs who were there did a little fighting, but a lot of it was for, you know, their purposes. It was to get experience. It was to kind of create their reputations, like bin Laden began to forge for himself, uh, being spokesman for a global project. Because by the late '80s, when bin Laden, you know, I think was, was more active and began conspiring with people from other Arab countries, the idea that... You know, when Gorbachev came to power in '85, he's like, "Let's get out of here. This is, this is draining the Soviet budget. It's an embarrassment. Uh, we didn't think about this properly. Let's focus on restoring, um, the party and strengthening the Soviet Union. Let's get out of this costly war, you know, it's, it's, it's a waste. Um, it's not worth it. We're not gonna lose anything by getting out of Afghanistan." Um, and so their, their retreat was quite, uh, effective and successful from the Soviet point of view, right? It's not what we're seeing now. Um-

   18. LFLex Fridman38:35

       What, uh, what year was their retreat?

   19. RCRobert Crews38:37

       Um, I mean, it began ... So Mihail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, you know, he was a generation younger than the other guys. He was a critic of the system. He didn't want to abolish it, he wanted to reform it. He was a, a true believer in, in Soviet socialism and in the, and in the party as a, a, you know, a monopolist, right?

   20. LFLex Fridman38:55

       Mm-hmm.

   21. RCRobert Crews38:56

       Um, but he was critical of the old guard and recognized that the party had to change and the whole system had to change to continue to compete. And so Afghanistan was one element of this. And so he pushed the Afghan elites that Moscow was backing to basically say, "Listen, we're gonna share power." Um, and so a figure named Najibullah, who was a Soviet-trained intelligence specialist sitting in Kabul, um, agreed. And he said, "You know, we need to have a more kind of pluralistic, accommodationalist approach to our enemies, who are backed by the US mainly, sitting in Pakistan, sitting in Iran, backed by these Arabs to a degree, getting money from Saudi." And he said, "Let's draw some of them into the government and basically have a, a kind of unity government-"

   22. LFLex Fridman39:47

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RCRobert Crews39:48

       "... that would make some space for the opposition." And for the most part, with US backing, with Pakistani backing, with Iranian backing, and with Saudi backing, the opposition said, "No, we're not going to reconcile. We're gonna push you off the cliff." And so that story goes on from at least 1987. The last Soviet Red Army troops leave early 1989. Um, but the Najibullah government holds on for three more years. It, it is the, um... I mean, they're still getting some help from the Soviet Union. Its enemies are still getting help from the US mainly. And, um, it's not 'til 1992 that, that, um, that they lose. And then Mujin- Mujahedin come to power. They immediately, you know, they're deeply fractured and-

   24. LFLex Fridman40:33

       And that's where bin Laden is watching all of this unroll.

   25. RCRobert Crews40:35

       That's right, and he's, he's part of the mix, but he's also mobile. So he go- he at one point, you know, goes, um, you know, is in Sudan, you know?

   26. LFLex Fridman40:42

       Right.

   27. RCRobert Crews40:42

       He's, he's moving from place to place. His people are all over the world, in fact. They, I mean, if you think of the ... Once the Mujahedin take power, you know, they, they have difficulties with the Arab fighters too, and they don't want them coming in and, you know, messing with the Mujin- Mujahedin regard this as like, you know, "This is an Afghan national state that we're going to build. It's going to be Islamic. It's going to be an Islamic state, but you can't interfere with us." And so there were always tensions. And so the Arabs were always kind of ... I would say they were... The Arab fighters were always interlopers. Um, yes, the Africans were happy to take their money, send patients to their hospitals, um, take their weapons, but they were never gonna let this be like a Saudi or Egyptian or, or whatever project.

   28. LFLex Fridman41:22

       Mm-hmm.

   29. RCRobert Crews41:22

       Um, but then many of those fighters went home. They went back to Syria, they went back to Egypt. Some wanted to go back to Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis were very careful. I mean, the Saudis always used Afghanistan as a kind of safety valve. In fact, they had, you know, fundraisers on television. They chartered jets. They filled them with people to fly to Pakistan, um, get out into Peshawar and say, you know, "Go fight." And it was one way that the, the monarchy, the Saudi monarchy, um, very cleverly I think, created a, a kind of escape valve for would-be dissidents in Saudi Arabia, right? Just send them abroad. You want to fight jihad? Go do that somewhere else. Don't, don't bother the kingdom. But all this became dicier, um, in the early '90s when some of these guys came back home and some of the scholars around them said, you know, "Let's... We've defeated the Soviet Union," which is a huge, huge boost.

   30. LFLex Fridman42:11

       Mm-hmm.
5. 1:08:12 – 2:00:24

   Withdrawal of U.S. troops

   1. LFLex Fridman1:08:13

      Withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Uh, what are your thoughts on how that was executed? How could it have been done better?

   2. RCRobert Crews1:08:24

      Yeah, an important question. I mean, I would preface all this by saying, you know, as I noted, I think the war was a mistake. Um, I had hoped the war would end sooner. I think there were different exit routes all along the way. Again, I think there were lots of policy choices in September and October when the war began. Um, there were choices in December 2001. So, we could look at almost every six month stopping point and say, "We could have done differently." As it turns out, though, I mean, the way it played out, um, you know, it's been catastrophic. And I think, um, the Biden administration has remained unaccountable for the scale of the strategic and humanitarian and ethical failure that they're responsible for.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:09:16

      Well, okay, let's lay out the full... There's George W. Bush-

   4. RCRobert Crews1:09:21

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:09:21

      There's Barack Obama. There's Donald Trump.

   6. RCRobert Crews1:09:25

      That's right.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:09:25

      There's, uh, Biden.

   8. RCRobert Crews1:09:27

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:09:28

      Uh, so they're all driving this van and there's these exits and they keep not taking-

   10. RCRobert Crews1:09:33

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:09:33

       ... the exits, and they're running out of gas.

   12. RCRobert Crews1:09:36

       Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:09:36

       I do this all the time thinking, "Where am I gonna pull off?"

   14. RCRobert Crews1:09:39

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:09:39

       "I'll go to the very, till it's empty." How could it have been done better and what exactly, um, how much suffering have all of the decisions along the way caused? What are the long-term consequences? What are the biggest things that concern you about the decisions we've made in both invading Afghanistan and staying in Afghanistan as long as we have?

   16. RCRobert Crews1:10:03

       I mean, if we start at the end, as you proposed, um, you know, the horrific scenes at the airport, you know, that was just one, one dimension. Um, I think in the weeks to come, I mean, we're gonna see Afghanistan implode. Um, there are lots of signs that malnutrition, hunger, starvation are going to claim tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives this winter, and I think there is really nothing, there's no framework in place to forestall that.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:10:39

       What is the government, what is currently the system there? What's the role of the Taliban? So, there could be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands that starve, uh, e- either just-

   18. RCRobert Crews1:10:51

       Yeah.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:10:51

       ... almost a famine, or starve to death.

   20. RCRobert Crews1:10:54

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:10:54

       So, this is economic implosion.

   22. RCRobert Crews1:10:56

       Yeah.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:10:56

       This is political implosion.

   24. RCRobert Crews1:10:58

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:10:58

       What, um, what's the system there like, and what could be the one, you know, some inkling of hope?

   26. RCRobert Crews1:11:05

       Right, right. The Taliban sit, sit in control. That's unique. When they were in power in the 1990s, from 1996, 2001, they controlled some 85 to 90% of the country. Now they own it all, uh, but they have no budget. The Afghan banking system is frozen, so-

   27. LFLex Fridman1:11:28

       So, the financial system's a mess?

   28. RCRobert Crews1:11:31

       And it's frozen by the US, because the US is trying to use that lever to exert pressure on the Taliban. And so the ethical quandaries are of course legion, right? Do you r- release that money to allow the Taliban to shore up their rule, right? The Biden administration has said no, but the banks aren't working. Uh, if you're in California, you wanna send $100 to your cousin so she can buy bread, you can't do that now. It's almost impossible. There are some informal networks that are moving some stuff, but there are bread lines. The Taliban government is incapable, fundamentally just o- of ruling. I mean, they- they can discipline people on the street, they can force people into a mosque, they can shoot people, they can beat protestors, they can put out a newspaper, they can have... They're great at diplomacy, it turns out. Uh, they can't rule this country. So, essentially, the hospitals and the kind of healthcare infrastructure is being managed by NGOs that are international. Um, but means people had to leave, and- and the Taliban have impeded some of that work. They've told, uh, adult women essentially to stay home, right? So, a big pa- big part of the workforce isn't there. So, the, I mean, the- the- the supply chain is-... you know, is kind of crawling to a halt. Trade with Pakistan and its neighbors, I mean, it's kind of a transit trade economy. Um, it exports fruits. Pakistan has been closing the border because they're anxious about refugees. They want to exert pressure on the international community to recognize the Taliban, because the Pakistan want the Taliban to succeed in power, because they see that in Pakistan's national interest, especially through the lens of its rivalry with, with India. So the Pakistan, the Pakistani security institutions are playing a double game, and essentially the Afghan people are, are being held hostage. And so the Taliban are also saying, you know, "If you don't recognize us, you're gonna let tens of millions of Afghans starve."

   29. LFLex Fridman1:13:39

       So to which degree is Taliban... Like, who are the Taliban? What do they stand for? What do they want? Obviously, year by year this changes. So what is the nature of this organization? Can they be a legitimate, peaceful, kind, respectful, uh, government sort of holder of power, or s- or are they fundamentally not capable of doing so?

   30. RCRobert Crews1:14:06

       Yeah. I mean, the briefest answer would be that they are a clerical/military organization. Um, they have ... this is kind of a imperfect metaphor, but years ago a German scholar used the term caravan to describe them.

Episode duration: 2:42:47