Hamid Karzai on the Taliban, Pakistan and His Daughters’ Future

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1:47How do we build a good country? by divisions and conflict or by cooperation and understanding each other's point of view, just like you do in your own country. Why should we be the only country in the world fighting it out? Hamid Karzai, who came to power in Afghanistan after 9-11 only to see the Taliban return. Are you having to consider sending your own children overseas to try and complete their education? As a father, it is my responsibility to provide them the best education. But as a citizen of Afghanistan, it is also my responsibility to have my own country ready for educating girls. If I take my daughter out abroad, it will mean that we have given up on this right.

2:37From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Michelle Hussain Show. I'm Michelle Hussain.

2:47At exactly this moment, 25 years ago, the summer of 2001, the 9-11 attacks were still a few weeks away. The world had not yet changed, as it would that day. And the person at the centre of this episode probably had little hope of change in his country, Afghanistan, where the Taliban group, with their hardline interpretation of Islam, had been in control for some years. But as it turned out, everything changed in Hamid Karzai's life in the weeks after 9-11. From being a little-known tribal leader, he was named as his country's interim leader and was then elected president. His nearly 13 years in office were difficult on a number of fronts.

3:34Security, corruption allegations, a deteriorating relationship with Washington and ultimately the resurgence of the Taliban, who retook Afghanistan five years ago. By then, Hamid Karzai was no longer president, but unlike most of his peers, he did not leave the country at that point. He remained in Kabul, where he still lives today, in circumstances you'll hear him describe, and which I would call a form of house arrest. He does few interviews, and in fact he wasn't at all sure about the podcast world when we reached out. But with the 9-11 anniversary approaching it felt like an important moment to understand what he sees as he looks back and to talk about the everyday, life in Kabul now, his family, the fact that his daughters like all Afghan girls are banned from going to school after the age of 12.

4:31And just finally before we dive in, Bloomberg subscribers can access my written notes on this episode. They are at bloomberg.com forward slash Michelle. And that's where you get a deeper picture of what we discuss, the extra details, other people's views, the context around my questions and Hamid Karzai's answers. So with that, here's what happened when he joined us from his book-lined study in Kabul. Hi. Mr Karzai, how are you? You know, we have never done a podcast. This is the first time. It's the future of media. It is. The other one that we haven't done yet is documentaries that I refuse to do.

5:16But the podcast would use the first one and welcome. And let's hope it becomes the best available to us. Well, I welcome you. And it's also really nice to see you wearing your cloak. I would call it a chogha. I don't know what you call it in Pashto. Chapan. Chapan. Chapan. Chapan. Both in Pashto and in Farsi. Okay. It's beautiful and it will be very familiar to people watching this. So I was thinking that I'd like to begin with an image that has stayed with me for the last five years and which has really come back to me this summer. And it's the image of you in August 2021, those days of uncertainty as the Taliban were approaching Kabul.

6:04And you released a video where you're standing with your three little daughters and you're asking everyone to stay calm and hoping for the best. And I watched it again just now. And I want to know what you were thinking that day that you were not able to say? Well, things for me that day were very unexpected. Even about an hour and a half before I did that video, over lunch, I was arguing with my colleagues and friends that things were all right, though I had been receiving calls from all around that things were collapsing, but I did not believe it and felt that there will be some form of a conclusion to the peace process and that the state will stay, but an arrangement with the Taliban will be made for a government that includes all Afghans towards stability and peace in the country.

7:06That didn't happen. At about quarter to three, as I was preparing for a meeting with the ambassador of Russia who was supposed to visit me at four o 'clock, I learned that the country was empty of the responsible personnel and the state structure. The president had left, your successor had left the country. I had left and the presidential security service came to my house, who were providing also security to me, telling me that this has happened. Now they asked me what to do with the palace. Are you coming there? What should we do? I told them, no, I'm an individual now, a citizen of the country.

7:53I have no authority to do a thing like that. But you go and hold on to the palace and protect it until someone responsible emerges at the gates and then your job is done. But then my colleagues told me that, well, that's not enough. There's this whole country that's now in uncertainty and we must do something. And then I thought, well, the only thing and the best thing that I can do is to stand up and call on the Afghan people and vote on the Taliban who are arriving and on the Republican personnel, security personnel who are still in the country, who are still around, to protect the people and to provide security and ask the people to be strong and be vigilant.

8:42The way you're describing that day, you remember every moment. Every moment. And I can understand why, because it must be one of the most intense days in your life, and I know you've had many of those. What were the girls saying to you? Because in the video you can hear the sound of the helicopters overhead. Yes. You have that sense of something happening in the city. The younger ones were not very aware. They knew something was going on. But the older one, of course, was aware and she was worried and, you know, a little scared of what would happen. Did you consider going to the airport and getting on one of those planes because you could have done?

9:26No, I did not consider that. I was approached by some friendly governments a day before that and weeks before that. that they would provide us a plane in case a thing like that happened, that me and my family would be taken out to those capitals. I refused. I said, no, I will not leave. And have you had cause to regret that? Because five years on, as you said, the power sharing did not happen. No, no, no. Women are not working. Girls, as you know for yourself and your own family, have to learn at home because they're not able to go to school after the age of 12? No, I rather am very happy I didn't do that.

10:12This is our home, this country. And you don't leave your home when things go difficult. You stay on and get it corrected. I know we don't have our girls studying, women are not working, and there's a lot more that troubles the country. But this is our country, and we must build it back. And we must build it back by cooperation. All of us, all the Afghan people. The Taliban are also Afghans. They belong to this country. We are also Afghans. We belong to this country. All other Afghans. Those who are in opposition to the Taliban are Afghans. We all, the opposition to the Taliban, the Taliban, and people like us who live in this country, we must all join hands and give in to this perpetual conflict or the danger of conflict and work it out together.

11:09So hearing you speak in that way, obviously I'm curious about whether you are saying something is happening, a new movement. Who are the opposition that you speak of? Is this the remnants of the former Afghan National Army, people like you? What is happening that makes you think there is an era of cooperation that is coming? I'm thinking of all Afghans. I can't speak for all Afghans. I mean, look, during my time in office, I called on the Taliban as brothers. because they belong to this country, because I wanted to convey to them that we can sit together and build this country together. Today I call all others who are, for one reason or another, not happy with the situation in Afghanistan.

12:03They're also Afghans and they're our brothers. So Afghans, the countrymen, our compatriots, that this country belongs to all of us and we must work it together. But those various moments along the way in the last five years, there have been the times where it looked like something might change, that girls might be able to stay in school beyond primary education. None of those hopes have materialized. Is there actually a dialogue? Do you think you have some kind of influence with the Taliban? No, I have no influence with the Taliban. But I do talk to them whenever the opportunity comes, to some of their leadership.

12:48I've been doing this from the very beginning. I've been repeatedly speaking to them and telling them of the importance of education for Afghanistan, of the importance of Afghan women, half the society, getting back to work, and that this country belongs to all the Afghan people, a lot of them, many, many of them, understand and appreciate and do agree with me. And this shall go on until we reach our objectives. And have you reached any of your objectives so far? What is the general response when you speak? They agree and then nothing happens? Or do you see signs of small change that you want us to know about?

13:33The very fact that the dialogue is on, the very fact that we still sit down and talk, The very fact that recognition for the correct path is there means that there is hope. Even if there isn't, we must go on and keep asking and deliver eventually. But I do wonder what the toll is on you personally, seeing your eldest daughter no longer able to go out to school. When I realized that had happened, I read back some of your speeches and repeatedly you said as president how much it meant to you to see boys and girls being able to go out to school, that that sight in the morning gave you so much. And now in your own family, that has had to stop for your eldest.

14:26Many of the difficulties our country suffered in the past 40 years was because of the extremely difficult environment that our country found itself in, right from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan till today. The only time that children got the opportunity to educate themselves and did it wonderfully all over the countries, boys and girls, was the 20 years of the Republic. This produced a huge, huge number of educated men and women in Afghanistan. And like any other country map, the only way for Afghanistan to stand tall, provide for itself, and do well is through an educated population. We cannot imagine progress any other way but through education.

15:30And for that reason, during my time in office and today, I call for education for the Afghan people, especially for goods. And when you say this in your dialogue with the Taliban, what is the response? Those who come and meet me, those who talk to me, they are of the same opinion as I am. But they don't hold sufficient power. That I don't know, and I wouldn't reflect on that. But I can tell you that they agree with me, and a great, great number of the clergy, the olima in the country, have called for the girls' right to education and women's right to work. This is a debate that is overwhelmingly in favor of education in the Afghan society in our country.

16:29And I'm sure, ma 'am, someday, sooner or later, we will get back. But we hope that this will happen soon and it will happen through an agreement and through a cooperative environment rather than other means. Are you having to consider sending your own children overseas to try and complete their education? Because if it comes back later rather than sooner, they are the generation who will have lost out. As a father, it is my responsibility to provide them the best education, the best one can have, especially to girls. but as a citizen of Afghanistan it is also my responsibility to have my own country ready for educating girls in our own environment in our own culture in our own historical perspective in our own languages plus training a first class world citizen if I take my daughter out abroad it will mean that we have given up on this right and I will never give up on this right.

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20:22There is another milestone I've been thinking about, and that is that it's 25 years nearly since the September 11th attacks. And it was in the aftermath of that, the US invasion, that you returned to the country and you became the interim leader and then the president. And yet by the time you were leaving office in 2014, you were talking about the United States as never really having wanted peace in Afghanistan, that they had their own agenda and goals. So as you look back on this 25-year period, what can you say about what you saw of the United States? Before September 11, when we were busy inside Afghanistan and as refugees in Pakistan, and beyond that in Rome with our late king, his majesty, Zaid Shah, we were working towards the convening of Uloijark through an intra-Afghan dialogue process where Afghans would get together from all walks of life, from all over the country, and decide the country's future through dialogue.

21:46and through the expression of the well of the Afghan people. It was during this time that we began to engage very closely with the United States. I did it personally as well. And also with Europeans, with Russia, with Iran, with Pakistan, with Turkey. we had a great international engagement in order to reach the objectives that we had in mind. But September 11 brought the immediate action forward, and then the decision of the Security Council allowing the United States to come to Afghanistan together with its allies, was the culmination of that effort, through which I was at that time inside Afghanistan, in the assumption of Afghanistan.

22:41I was declared as the head of the interim government. The United States did support, did approve of our call for dialogue, just like the Europeans and others. And when they came, initially, things flourished very, very well. the Afghan people's lives changed, the economy changed, the support came and the reconstruction came and education and health services, a lot happened. Where I run into difficulties with the United States was over the conduct of military operations in South Africa, targeting homes and villages and populations and creating prisons in our country for us, for the Afghan people.

23:27But the reason they were doing that was having supported the creation of a new Afghanistan. They were seeing it threatened by the resurgence of the Taliban. And by the time you get to 2010, when your relationship with the Americans had deteriorated considerably, they were trying to emphasize in statements that it was the Taliban who were responsible for more civilian casualties than coalition forces were. No. You don't think that statement's true? No. The country became peaceful. People returned, millions of refugees from Pakistan and Iran, and from the West, the country flourished. We could have done a lot better by focusing on peace deals and not intimidating villages and local populations, villages where most of the Taliban lived.

24:28When the Republic was established, many of the Taliban leaders settled down in their homes. They went back to their villages. Native troops and some of our own went and raided those homes for no reason. And then there was also Pakistan, which was fomenting trouble in Afghanistan, which was doing all sorts of things to weaken and undermine the republic. And the Americans knew that. And we would discuss all these issues. So to put it in a few short words, there are two sides to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. One is that of assistance and support and reconstruction and betterment, without a doubt.

25:15And we are grateful for that. To the American people for the money that they sent to Afghanistan, for the millions of Afghan educated youth that we have today, not only the Americans, the Europeans and other countries and neighbors. All of that is magnificent. There is also this other side, unfortunately, a very sad side of bombardment of our villages, of bombardment of our homes, of borging into our homes and of raids and of creating prisons. which I strongly disagreed with. And I was absolutely right to disagree. But as you look back, that conference in Bonn in 2001, you were not there. You had actually nearly been killed by an American bomb dropped in Afghanistan by mistake at that very moment.

26:07But the Taliban were excluded from that Bonn conference. Now, it was soon after 9-11, They had given Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda a home, essentially, in Afghanistan. But as you look back now, do you think it was a mistake to exclude them? Because as you say, they were Afghans, they are Afghans. And perhaps that was one of the first moments that laid the ground for what would happen later. It became clear in the very early stages that that was a mistake. that some of the organizers of the World Conference also very soon came to tell me that that was a mistake, that they should have been invited.

26:47And some other Afghans too. And would you have agreed that at the time, if they'd asked you at the time? Absolutely. Absolutely. Even though you'd been campaigning against them, and I think you hold them responsible for the assassination of your father only a couple of years before. I was campaigning for a united, peaceful Afghanistan. How do we build a good country? By divisions and conflict or by cooperation and understanding each other's point of view and building a middle ground, creating a middle ground on which we all stand and move forward, just like you do in your own country. Why should we be the only country in the world fighting it out?

27:37So what does your experience lead you to conclude as you look at the last few months and the war between the US and Iran? And what appears to have been a desire for regime change in Iran, which obviously hasn't happened. What do you see when you look at that situation? During the Republic, especially during my time in office, Iran and the United States both remained very cooperative with Afghanistan. Iran did not make an issue of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. They actually said, well, their presence is good for you. And the United States did not object to our close cooperation with our neighbor, Iran.

28:28They understood. But for the two countries, the United States and Iran, they're both great people, great countries. Iran is a great old civilization, a country of tremendous art and literature and culture. And it's our neighbor, religious, cultural, linguistic. We are almost the closest one can find in the world. The United States, too, is a great power. There are hundreds of thousands of Afghans who are prospering in the United States, who live there, including members of my own family. We want the two countries to live peacefully and friendly together. It's good for both of them. That has been my advice during my time in office.

29:21That is my advice today. And I wish both of them well. I want them to be wiser and to work it out rather than to fight it out. Do you think the U.S. was wrong to start this war in Iran? It was a terrible mistake, and I made a statement then when this war started, asking all the United States that this was not right. And how do you think it is going to be resolved? How can it be resolved? Well, at this stage, I would ask both Iran and the United States both to choose diplomacy and talks over fighting and attacks on each other. Well, the country that's playing a role in all of that is Pakistan, with which you have a long and difficult relationship, and with which the Taliban is at war, essentially, with these strikes that have been taking place across the border.

30:22Do you welcome Pakistan's role between the US and Iran? Pakistan has done well. Pakistan acted very promptly and smartly. And we appreciate it. And I hope they continue to do the same. And they shouldn't give up. It's not meddling, in your view. It is something constructive in that arena. No, no, it is constructive. Of course, we saw that it was constructive. Pakistan has done well in this. There is an irony in the fact that you and others for so long have accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban before they returned to power, and now those two are fighting each other. Well, this proves that Pakistan can't live with any Afghan government.

31:06They couldn't live with the republic. They can't find common ground with the Taliban. So that means there is something wrong in Pakistan's own policy towards Afghanistan. And I hope it will be corrected. I have repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly called on Pakistan to seek a civilized relationship with Afghanistan. Civilized meaning away from the use of extremism and radicalism to find a more sophisticated means of seeking its objectives in Afghanistan. rather than through trying to undermine Afghanistan or weaken Afghanistan. That won't help them. That will hurt them as it is hurting them now.

31:54But you know what it's like to face militancy in your own country. And last year was the worst year for militancy in Pakistan for a decade. And they accuse the Afghan Taliban of supporting the insurgency in Balochistan and supporting militants like the Pakistani Taliban. That is the picture from their perspective. And I wonder how you think this can be resolved. Is it Chinese mediation? Is it some other country trying to step in? Militancy is wrong. And militancy is what Pakistan used against Afghanistan. On an effort for peace between Afghanistan and Pakistan, I think Britain is one of the countries with deep relationship historically with Pakistan and Afghanistan.