Jocko Podcast - 313: What's Going On? Hollie McKay's Recent 5-month Trip in Afghanistan

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:06:19 - Hollie McKay back from Afghanistan2:27:59 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:51:50 - Closing gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 313 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening. He looks like any other ordinary young Afghan, a dusting of a dark beard, sun-leathered face, a small child clinging to his side. Only Nasefullah, 24, is a proud member of Afghan's ISIS affiliate known as ISIS K, or informally, as, dash. He has long been wanted by everyone from U.S. troops and the now defunct Afghan security forces and the Taliban, formerly known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Nassfullah says he joined the terrorist group around five years ago out of frustration that the Taliban was dishonest

about the status of its shadowy leader. We kept asking the Taliban, to show us video of Mullah Omar, but we couldn't get any, he claims. That is why the dash here was created. They seemed truthful and said they were going to implement Sharia law. So that is why I joined them. Taliban founder Omar died in 2013, yet it was kept secret for more than two years. Most ISIS-K recruits are believed to have defected from Taliban branches in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, seeking an even more extreme interpretation of Islam

with more international rather than domestic-centered goals of caliphate control. Since then, the terrorist outfit has attracted a wealth of foreign recruits bent on attacking NATO, Afghan forces, and the insurgency turned Taliban government. Since the Emirate came to power on August 15th, ISIS-K has waged a deadly spouther. of suicide attacks and targeted bombings across multiple provinces and claimed dozens of lives While some assaults have targeted the Taliban the vast majority have been inflicted upon innocent civilians Particularly the minority Shiite population Nasefullah says he is unclear how many ISIS K members are hidden inside Afghanistan

He spent the last year locked away in the country's notorious Baghrum prison having been arrested by the previous Afghan government for his ISIS membership. However, when the Taliban swept to power in August, he says he was released, even though the new regime was aware of his checkered past. Nazafula went straight back to the black-clad terror clan, but says he has since broken his leg, seemingly from an accidental discharge from his own rifle. yet he remains ready to take up arms again with a very specific goal in mind our first target is to destroy Pakistan because the main reason for everything in Afghanistan is Pakistan he vows when the

Taliban were here they were saying that we control 80% of the country but they were not implementing islamic rulings that's why we stood up in when we started ISIS K over in this area. Nasfullah continues. Then in the parcel under their dominance, the outfit immediately began, quote, implementing Islamic rulings like cutting hands and everything. So that's when the Taliban got funding from Pakistan

and started fighting us back, he claims, with a big smile. And at that time, Baghdaddy announced the caliphate in our area and we were on top. That's why we are against the Taliban. Although Nazafula asserts that his outlawed group is, quote, weak now and attempts to downplay their lethality, their hardline goals remain firmly in place. We want to implement Sharia law.

We want to implement the way our prophet was living, the way he was clothed, the dressing hijab was there. Currently, we don't have much to fight. But if you give me anything, I am going to fight Pakistan now. Yet hauntingly, Nasafula also makes it clear that ISIS-K has far more global-reaching ambitions. Whoever goes against Islam and against the Koran, he adds darkly, we are against them. And that is an article from knews.com.

The article is written by Holly McKay. Holly is a journalist. She's an author. She's a war reporter. And she is an extremely courageous human being. She's been on this podcast before, number 271, where she talked about her experiences in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which she chronicled in her incredible book, which is called Only Cry for the Living.

And she's back with us again tonight to share with us her experiences from Afghanistan Because she was there she was there during the American departure The collapse of the government and the rise to power and control of the Taliban So Holly welcome back and I do mean that sincerely I was watching through social media when you were in Afghanistan and I was terribly worried worried about you and we'll discuss why I'm sure we'll get to some of that it was definitely sketchy to say the least but for now I am truly glad that you are here and you went there for reason to learn to capture what was happening and you've done that so let's talk about let's talk about what you've been through first of all welcome back thank you thank you for

having me it's strange adjusting so it's been a few days and I'm still getting used to you know, a highway without bombed and potholes. I'm like, oh, this is a nice road. Hang on a minute. Just to set the stage a little bit to bring you into Afghanistan when you went back, when you went to Afghanistan this time, just to get where, what you stepped into, July 2nd, Germany and Italy withdraw from Afghanistan. That is the same time that America quietly.

and strangely left Bogram Air Base. July 8th, Biden announces that the war is going to be over and we're going to be out by August 31st. July 12th, General Miller, who is the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. He steps down. And by the way, this is right as Taliban is seizing district after district. By mid-July, they had seized, you know, 140 or 150 districts. inside of Afghanistan.

July 21st, General Millie reports that half the districts in Afghanistan are under Taliban control. So July 22nd, the U.S. House of Representatives, they pass a bill for visas for our interpreters and other allies that were there. And the reason I bring that up is because that turned into a big deal as everything shut down. And so that's what we're going into. It's very obvious. I forget the quote from General Millie, but it was something along the lines of,

everyone was surprised at how fast it was collapsing, but it was collapsing quick. So August 7th is when you arrive in Kabul. What was your purpose in going there? Did you know how fast it was falling down? Did you like, hey, this isn't going to make it. I'm going to go in there anyways. What was that?

What was the thought process there? So I made the decision. I think it was around May, June, that I was going to go back in August. With my photographer, Jake, who is Australian, who's also spent a lot of time. He lived in Afghanistan and spent a lot of time in other places. So we thought we would go back and document what I thought was going to be the last month of the Americans being there. And then the Afghan government trying to stand on its own two feet. So between making that decision and what happened, it just,

You couldn't, you could, I just, I did not realize it was going to happen that quickly. And so when I arrived, even that first week, I was going to meetings at NDS, which is the Afghan Intelligence. I was going to meet with all these different people and everybody was just so convinced that it wasn't going to fall immediately, at least not within, say, that month. And so the speed of it, and I've had to do so much reflection on this and looking back and going where did you miscalculate? How did this sort of happen so quickly?

And it really just goes to show, I think nobody really had any idea at the end of the day. I think there were sort of intelligence failures on many different levels from many different, from parts of it. I've talked about some of this. If I'm a company commander and I'm in charge of training Afghan forces,

I want to do a good job. And when I report to my battalion commander, and I, you know, the first, I'm working with these guys for a month, and, you know, he says, how are those guys? And I say, well, they got some work to do. They're not that great. They're deficient here. They're deficient there.

They're not good at this. And my battalion goes, commander says, okay, well, you know, get them squared away. The next month, what do I say? You know, I'm going to tend to say, you know, we're making some improvement. We're doing a little bit better. We've got them issued better gear. We got the supply issues taken care of that we were worried about. We did a live fire training operation.

And so you end up just by virtue of having a positive attitude, which Americans certainly have. We end up painting a better picture than what is actually happening. I saw this. I try to think if I did this, I believe I did. I believe that I did in training Iraqi forces would sometimes say, you know, I would put some lipstick on on the situation a little bit. Again, trying to have a positive attitude, trying to look at the brightest side of what was happening.

And there was times in Iraq where the Iraqis would take over a position and the insurgents would immediately attack it and crush them. And so we got put in check a few times. I would almost say luckily because what that caused us to do was to be very honest about the capabilities of the people we were working with. So there is actual times where the Iraqis would take over, let's say, a checkpoint. We'd say, yep, they're good to go. And when I say we, I mean coalition forces in general, you know, the Americans that are there said, yes, we've been working with these Iraqis. They can handle this checkpoint.

We'd step away from the checkpoint. And this happened almost immediately upon my arrival. This checkpoint got taken over by the Iraqis and the insurgents attacked it a day later or two days later. They killed the American advisor that was there. Actually, two American advisors that were there overran. It was total disaster. And that happened when I first showed up. So it really put us in check in terms of, okay, we need to be very cautious about what we report up the chain of command and when they're actually ready.

But at the same time, you know, my guess. guess is and even when we left Iraq, I was very worried. I was very worried when America left Iraq. When coalition forces left Iraq, I thought to myself, they're not ready yet. And there's a similar, obvious similar theme here. So almost every, I never fought in Afghanistan, but everyone that I know that worked on the ground with the Afghan forces were all not surprised. Hey, they weren't ready yet. They just weren't ready yet. And it's a huge, it's, it's, um, it's almost like when you have these, these elements, the U.S. support is really like the long pole in the tent. And all the other tent poles and the canvas that goes over the tent is, and the stakes that go

on the ground, all those things are really, really important. And you can build those up and you can make them really good and you can, they can provide you shelter from the rain and shelter from the wind. But if you pull out that one long pole in the middle, it has a huge negative impact. And that's sort of, again, in hindsight, as I look at it, that's one of the things I think happened. Yeah, I think there were just multiple things. I think even right down to the number of ghost soldiers. So on paper, there might be 300,000 Afghan soldiers when in reality there's a quarter of that, because people would take commanders, were taking money of people that never existed or they were dead or there was no accountability.

You know, I can go into corruption for days in how that really destroyed Afghanistan. So to drill into that corruption that you just thought, let me see if I got this little piece of it right. I'm a commander. I'm an Afghan commander. If I say I have 500 soldiers, I get X amount of money. Yep.

So guess how many I have? 700. And two of you guys die? You're not going to report that because you still want to keep getting their money to the point where they would take the bank cards of the dead soldiers and go to the bank and get their paychecks every week or every month. It's the level and we can get into this,

but I've never seen a more corrupt place on every possible level. And yet, you know, we, and when I say we, I say the United States, we turned a blind eye to that for really 20 years instead of going to the route and fixing it. We let it fester and create this entire industry of corruption, which is what the Taliban was not only able to capitalize on, but they came in saying, well, we're not going to be corrupt. And people that don't even like the Taliban's were so fed up with that corruption that they were going to support that even if they didn't support the ideology.

So you get there on the 7th, the 8th and 9th, you're meeting with Intel people. It's still not clear that this thing is going to fall apart. Or is it starting to look that way? was this idea of, well, Kabul was never going to fall. And certain pockets like Kabul, Pangya, you know, even Mazar, which is where I ended up, these were very, very staunch resistance places. And there was sort of this idea that how can they possibly fall? And so I met with, and I had actually stayed with him in 2018 in Ankara was General Dostom. So General Dostom was the warlord, I guess, who the U.S. troops first went in with from the north during, um, after the 9-11.

And that's where Mike Spann was killed and sort of the first people there. So I'd met him several years ago in Turkey and did a profile with him. And so he invited me to go back to Mazar because he was leading some resistance forces there that were working with the Afghan commandos. And, yeah, it was just sort of this idea. And I guess looking back, it was, you know, selling a story that didn't exist. But we decided, okay, well, let's go and cover what's happening in Mazar, even though. the northern provinces surrounding it were all sort of falling, there was this sense that Mazar was going to hold.

So we went to Mazar. It was very early on a Thursday morning. How'd you get up there? We flew. Okay. Yeah. Kermare. And so it's about a 50-minute flight from Kabul to Mazar. And so we get there. Did you say a 50-minute flight? Yeah, 50-minute flight. And was this, who's flying the helicopters? Is this just charter? This is a commercial airline. Just a commercial airline? Yeah. Yeah. I flew a commercial airline two weeks ago so they still exist I was glad to land that one because there was no landing lights but but they've still had commercial airlines so we flew to Mazar because at this point you couldn't travel on roads anywhere which is in something else that's changed significantly now but but then you couldn't you could the Taliban had really cut off every strategic road and you couldn't go much beyond sort of Kabul maybe Kabul to Panjia but that was

sort of the most road travel you could do. So we flew to Mazar. That was really early in the Thursday morning. And you get there and it was just this incredibly vibrant place. And I just remember it was the how, how are all these provinces around this place falling to the Taliban when the markets were just chock a block and everybody is just going about their daily business. I was flabbergasted. And I thought, isn't like what is happening and you'd go and sort of talk to people and they'd be oh I'm a little bit worried but it's okay I think it'll be okay we'll just flee to Kabul um so that was the Thursday and everything yeah very normal yeah so your feeling was okay well obviously this is going to be okay

yeah and and I you know had a couple of friends who were very worried about me being in Mazar and I was sort of like it seems fine to me but but what did really struck me as weird was that There was no police. There was no military presence on the street at all. I didn't see a single, like, Afghan forces come through, and I thought that was strange. I thought, where is this? Like, this is in the middle of a firestorm here,

and there is zero security forces right now. So that struck me as strange, but everybody was going about life. And then the next day, Friday, which is the weekend day in Afghanistan, but still things were out and I was going out interviewing people, just asking them how they fell to people in the markets and people were starting to feel really worried. They said, well, you know, we think it's going to fall, but we just don't know when, it's going to happen. And as the day progressed,

you felt it get a little bit, people were becoming more tense. And we go to this, there's a beautiful big blue mosque, a big shrine there that's quite famous. And there were just a lot of people that had fled from other villages and other provinces. And they were all sort of of hanging out outside this mosque. And by the evening, things were still happening, but I, you know, I said to Jake, my photographer, okay, we need to book this return flight back to Kabul. And so I get online and then like, the earliest flight we can get is Monday night. And I was like, I think it's, you know, I called a few people. I said, like, is it going to hold? And they were like, yeah, you know, you should be fine. But get out in the next flight you can get back to, to Kabul. And so I booked the

flight. So you're online booking a flight, which means you're online watching news and seeing updates from other things. Yeah. Yeah. And it's still, you got the impression because I'm sure, I don't remember exactly. I knew that you were in Mazar through social media. Yeah. Because you're, you're like posting about this stuff. Yeah. But I also remember seeing, you know, sort of the battle map of what's happening and seeing the various providence, provinces collapse around. And I just remember thinking, get, please get out of there. So yeah, and I remember thinking that too, and I thought that this isn't, this doesn't feel right. But that night we went out with the commandos, the Afghan commandos too, and they were taking a lot of hits and a lot of, you know, a lot of fighting.

But they were such extraordinary. And again, you know, this perhaps warped my thinking a little bit too, but you have these men who were just like, we will never give this up. They will never get Mazar. We will, you know, and defend it and hold it and just really great young men. and we stayed out with them until we were about 2 o'clock that morning and there was this sort of strange sense with one of them his name was safie and and he kept you could tell how much he missed the west he wanted us to stay and drink beer with him and listen to music and he just he didn't want us to leave he just he wanted

he wanted this sense of this connection to to the west that I think that you know being trained by the Americans and just have this sort of deep love so 2 o'clock came we got the guys to take us back to our hotel and we're supposed to go out with them again at around seven or eight that morning. So we wake up on the Saturday and I'm waiting for a call from him. He's not there. He's not answering his phone. And I thought, you know, God, I hope he's okay. This is strange. I don't know what to do, but I will just wait for him to contact me again. And then we thought, well, let's go out and do some stories and we tried to contact some fixes or interpreters that we had known lived there. Everyone had fled to Kabul. We could not find

anybody. Eventually, by mid-morning, we found somebody who knew somebody who said that he could come and be an interpreter if we did some interviews. And so we went out and it was just suddenly this ghost town from this, it had gone from an extremely vibrant place to this complete ghost town. You just saw people lining up outside banks, just trying to get their money out. And we're walking and people are just fleeing from the outside villages into Mazar on those little rickshaws and, you know, with all their stuff. And we met with this interpreter and we get into a cab and we're driving out toward there was three front lines. And the interpreter, who I didn't really know too well, is on the phone as we're driving. And it's about midday. And he suddenly he looks at me and he turns

around, he's got this big smile on his face. And he says, oh, they just broke through the first of the three lines and it's surrounded and we looked at each other and and the cab driver was like I'm really scared because we're sort of driving toward it and I said okay that's fine we'll turn around and go back it's no big deal um so we went back and I went you had this detail that you just gave which was he was smiling yeah he was and I still can't figure out why he was smiling if he just didn't care or if he was a Taliban or if he just was trying to appease me so I wasn't He thought, hey, I'm getting to get you some stories. They just broke through.

Here we go. He's sitting there on the phone. He's like, turns around and it's just this. They just broke through the first. And I'm okay. So I get back to the hotel and I'm trying to make some phone calls because there's no, there's no fly out that I can get earlier than that Monday. And there's no way it can, you know, it's a 10-hour drive, but there's no way I

could even attempt to do that drive because it's all Taliban-controlled. And so I'm making some calls. to, you know, again, to my intel contacts in Kabul. And even then, they're saying, no, no, no, it should hold. It'll hold. Don't worry. Um, and I was starting to get pretty worried. And I was distracting myself, you know, doing some work and things. And then, and then we normally go to this, there was a kebab cafe that we'd always go to each night. And it was a really lively place. It was underground. They would play these terrible soap operas. But there was always, like a lot of people there playing music. And so Jake and I said, okay, well, let's go to this

kebab cafe and we step out and it's just pitch black and not a single person around and I'm still figuring out we walk to this kebab cafe and it's open we're like oh it's open and we go downstairs and the TV is off and there's just these the two guys that work there that are just sitting there and we order food and we're sitting there and then we just look at each other and we're like something is really really wrong we need to go and so we get up and we start hurrying back toward the hotel and this was early evening around seven and then you just see those motorcycles coming in and that's the Taliban and so we sort of hurry back just in time to get to our hotel and go to the roof and I'm just looking out and the Taliban is just circling there's just hundreds of them and they're shooting in

the air and they're playing their nashid which is their religious music and and celebrating that they just took a city without firing a shot basically but what also struck me during the day and that was the other bizarre thing, I thought, here is a city that's falling and there was no air power. There was not a sound in the air. And I remember that something, and I did a little video about it. I was like, where is the air power? Didn't we train? Didn't we put just tens, hundreds of millions of dollars into this Afghan Air Force? Where the hell is it? Because I don't hear it. And air power is a great example of the long pole in the tent, right? If you have air power when the Taliban's coming in on their motorcycles and in their trucks,

they can't. They literally can't do it. And that's the long pole in the tent that falls apart when that happens. You know, as you were talking about like the talking to one of the Afghan soldiers that you knew and how he, you know, hey, we're going to stay here. We're going to fight. They'll never take us. do you remember all that stuff that happened up in Portland when the Antifa took over the part of the part of the neighborhood or whatever they were calling it I think it was originally called chop

and then they changed it to chas but it was the occupied zone or something like this but somebody was asking me about it and I kind of said hey there's no one up there in the chop that's like ready to die for the cause that's ready to say you know what we're going to stay here wearing they're just not there's not up there there's no i mean america and i kind of made the comment that hey even the people that are antifa members guess what they have cell phones and they have you know like nice they have clothing and they have running water and it's just not that bad of a thing and they're not right that committed to it and it's it's interesting when you think about what it really takes for someone to stand

up and be willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause, whatever that cause is. And when you look at the Taliban and you're this Afghan person that's been fighting for however many years, and you've been fighting for the Americans, you've been fighting for the Afghan government for 10 years or 7 years. And then you're like, well, it looks like we're completely surrounded. If I fight, I'm going to die. Or I can just kind of put down my weapon, take off my uniform, and carry on with my life. And I, yeah, and that was, you know, I, and I think it was sort of the next day, or Joe Biden came out and said, you know, these guys ran away from their posts and things.

And to a degree, I understand where that came from. But it actually, it upset me because they were really sold out by their leadership. And I'll give you examples. So Safi, the guy that I'd met that Friday when I was finally able to get back in contact with him after Mazar had fallen. And I asked him, are you okay, where are you? And he said, you know, he'd gone out that day. and they just, they were so outnumbered and his three bodyguards had been killed

and, you know, it was really the commanders that were trying to hold it. And he said, by four o'clock that afternoon, somebody came to him and said, oh, Dostom left. And so did the commander left. Like, all your commanders left and it's up to you if you want to stay and die or you can leave.

And he just, they were sold out by everybody. I did hear stories from guys that I knew that said that, that the Taliban would like approach a village and just send a messenger in there and be like hey you know here's your chance we know you were you know you know you were Afghan security you can put down your guns and be cool

or we're going to kill everyone and guys were like okay we're surrounded we're going to die I guess we'll just go back to the way it used to be by the way that's the other thing it was they have sort of a lot of them had memory of what it used to be like and it's like okay well I guess we're going back the way it used to be

but it's better to do that be alive than be dead. And the amount of sacrifices that a lot of those Afghan soldiers made I mean they won't even release the number of killed but it's well past 100,000. Yeah, I mean there was at least 50,000

killed going into this whole thing taking place. So it's not like, and again there's plenty of Americans that fought alongside the Afghans and had met awesome Afghan troops Just like in Iraq, you know, there was, and by the time you were in Iraq and the Iraqis were fighting ISIS, they were taking massive casualties, massive casualties going to take Missouil back. That was led by the Iraqi forces. And they took massive casualties and they kept going. Compared to in the Battle of Amadi, the Iraqi forces were, some of them were very scared and didn't want to take lead and definitely didn't want to take casualties. And we had a whole battalions abandon and leave. So that idea of this kind of this kind of clear cut American version of the way things are is doesn't apply here. There's no clear cut way of, hey, oh, if you get, if you're an American, you get captured, we know what's going to happen.

You're going to get tortured. You're going to get killed. It's like, hey, you're an Afghan security force and you surrender. You're not sure what's going to happen, but you know what's going to happen if you don't. run or you're going to die. So, and then you see your leadership. All running away. All running away, all of them.

Every single one of them ran away, including the president. Including the president. Yeah. Including the president. Who, yeah. With that guy, that is an insane situation. I mean, you have that guy, Ashraf Ghani, who, who is like a professor of Berkeley, a professor of Johns Hopkins.

went to some leadership school at Harvard, wrote the book called Fixing Failed States, which is like an academic exploration of this stuff, theoretical. It's an embarrassment. And he bailed with a bunch of money, by the way. And, yeah, a bunch of money is now under investigation. But what I remember going back in being Afghanistan in 2017

and sort of hearing when I'd go to the NATO compound of the U.S. embassy and everyone who would say all these great things, about Ghani and I remember saying to a few people, have you gone out to the street just to talk to the Afghan people? Because they have a different idea, you know, so I think part of that problem was the US because nobody was leaving that base in the diplomacy world. They were getting a vacuum of information that was pre-approved people to enter that were all part of this sort of puppetry stream and they weren't actually out there talking to the Afghans who were terribly frustrated with the corruption going on, terribly frustrated with the sort of, I guess,

the Pashtun and the sectarianism and things. And it just, the picture that was so warped compared to the reality that I saw even back then. And that was, so 2017, you're out talking to normal people. And they're totally frustrated with Ghani. And yet the Americans are getting this whitewashed version of how he's doing an excellent job. Yeah. When, so it was like August 14th.

So Mazar Falls, Kabul Falls too. So that was the Saturday night. So, you know, suddenly I'm like in this room, in this hotel. And the locals that all fled. And there were no foreigners in there except I think there was a guy from Chedikistan who was there for a couple of days and someone else. But so, Jake and I look at each other. We said, well, what are we going to do? You know, we're making some calls.

And I'm speaking to some DOD people in Kabul. and they said, well, you know, go and get us measurements, go and get us coordinates, go and get us this and that, and we'll see if we can get you out in the morning, the early morning. And it was an interesting night. So you had, you had, you know, us trying to get all this information. And then the morning and the Taliban's were out having a crazy, you know, Taliban party all night. And so by the morning light, I thought, well, they'd gone to sleep then because they'd celebrated all night.

and they'd gone to sleep, but then nobody's calling. They were just sort of looking at each other going, well, now is kind of the chance to get out in this period where they're not in the street, because they're going to be in the street in a couple of hours. But it became very evident that just it wasn't going to happen. And then that Sunday, we started seeing news reports that the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul,

and then the next thing you know, they're taking the palace. And we just sort of, I looked at Jake when that happened, And I said, well, yeah, we're pretty much, we've got to figure this out. Were you feeling, were you feeling threatened with when the Taliban showed up? So the images that they were portraying of the Taliban was, was like a kinder, gentler Taliban was coming in, right? It was, like you said, it was like celebratory. Yeah. It didn't look like a angry mob.

it looked like a happy mob that was celebrating and that was sort of the images that we got initially. Then it quickly turned into images of people being, people being killed, people being murdered. But what was your initial impression? My initial impression was, it was just bizarre because I was like, who are these barbarians in the street? Like, how was this? And then they're doing announcements over the loudspeaker. And it was so strange because you saw this instant transformation of a city. and they did look a little, you know, intimidating.

And there were just so many of them. And that was a thing. I thought, where did these people come from? Because Mazar was a very strong Taliban resistance place. And suddenly it's just, there's hundreds of them. And I don't know where they come from. And I sent Jake out to buy me a burker at the market. And he just came back.

He's like, oh, my God. They're just, they're crazy, you know. And so we were trying to, I guess, figure out. What did he mean by crazy? Like, he's just like, they're just everywhere. And they just, you know, they literally have sort of the dominance of every corner possible in the city. And that was their strategy, I think, in the very beginning when they took places. They just flooded it with fighters to make sure that they could hold it.

Now, a normal person would, like, concentrate on hiding and getting out of there. But you kind of focused on let's go interview people. So not quite. So, I mean, at first I went a little quiet. I was like, I don't know. and I was trying to pretend to my parents I wasn't in the city because straight away my dad's like

we just heard on the news Mazzazz full and are you there? I said no I'm outside the city so I was trying to yeah to try to appease them a little bit but so I was a little unclear and what sort of had concerned me at that point was

I know that first night that they came in and there was a bank underneath the hotel so they were so the televans were desperately trying to get into the hotel where we were and we knew that we were the only foreign that's in there at that point and these incredible hotel staff had stayed there for us and they were terrified because they'd all been former NDS or previously worked in different capacities with the Afghans and I knew that they were desperately wanting to go home to you know safety or flee or their families but they really stayed

there for us and that was just something that I thought was just extraordinary and it goes back to that Afghan hospitality and care so we were there And several days are going by, and the focus was to get out, but it just, it became so, and my phone was just blowing up with so many different people telling me, do this, do this, do this. And I was just like, you all need to leave me alone at this point, please, because it's not helping. And I said to, you know, the US people that I was speaking to right from the beginning, I think the only way is you go and talk, like I need to go and talk to them to get their permission to leave.

because there really wasn't another way. There wasn't really a way that I felt that I could sneak out or, you know, go under the radar. And, yeah, that was what I was pushing for from the beginning. So that was sort of my focus in doing that. So it falls on like the 14th, 15th, and you spend the next few days trying to figure out what the best course of action is.

And so what did you finally figure out? So, yeah, I talked to so many different people and I thought, you know, any sort of rescue, any whatever is not going to happen. So I talked to a couple of diplomats and then I talked to sort of, I guess, a middle person who was an Afghan business guy. And so it was very, very quick. And then he sort of said, well, I'll come to the hotel and, you know, be ready at this time. And they teed some things up with the Uzbek consul, which was closed, but they were able to kind of get it open.

So next thing, you know, I'm dragging my stuff down. and the two people that come to meet me is my drive is. The two Taliban elders, you know, the cousin of the shadow governor turned new governor. So you see these sort of old Taliban guys and I'm getting into the car with them. And they were like, welcome. It was so bizarre, Joko. It was like, what? Hi.

Because at that point we really didn't know. And it's just you and Jake getting into this car? Yeah, just Jake and I getting into the car with the talibans. and we didn't know at that point how they were going to treat a foreigner, how they were going to treat a woman, how they were going to treat a journalist. And so, yeah, they drove us through the city

and I said, do you mind if I have a talk to you and ask you some questions? And they said, sure. And, you know, telling me about, I'm asking them about how they viewed Islamic law and Sharia law and what they wanted. And they just sort of said, well, you know, we want people's hands to be topped off

and they steal. And if you murder, then you should be, eye for an eye kind of thing and telling me all about their their rulings. But at the same time, they're like, yeah, you're welcome in Afghanistan, you're welcome to stay as long as you like, and we hope you enjoy our country. And it was very bizarre. And then we were dropped off at the Uzbek consul. And then suddenly these other talibans came, and there's a group of them, really young ones, like in their early 20s. And they were going to be our escort. And the only way to sort of because we couldn't go back to Kabul,

was to go north to the Uzbek border. And so you had these bunch of these young Taliban who wanted to take selfies and, you know, continue to send, they continued to send long after that. My photographer, you know, selfies of themselves with, you know, Urdu music in the background and love-heart emojis. It's literally the most bizarre thing you could imagine.

I know. I was looking at pictures on some of your articles. You have pictures of these Taliban guys. like with their iPhones or whatever out they're doing selfies. Yeah. It's freaking for social media. Yeah, and they harass,

and I know there was a couple of other photographers that I know, and they harassed, poor Jake and other photographers get harassed for their photos. So if you take a picture of a telemands, oh, I need your WhatsApp, I need your WhatsApp, and then they just harassed and they want pictures of themselves.

Like it's just, it's so new to them. These are people who were in hiding in the mountains for 20 years, and then suddenly they're like out and free and kind of a spectacle. It's very bizarre. How does selfies and Instagram match up with Sharia law? I'm not sure about that one. I guess it's too new for Sharia, maybe.

How does that work? They haven't brought a ruling on it yet. Man, that's crazy. So you, were you at any point, at what point did you go, I think I'm going to be okay? Did the old Taliban make you feel that way? Did the young Taliban make you feel that way? I think, well, I did feel like I was going to be okay

even when I was stuck in the hotel. I think the first night I was a little bit, well, you had a normal sense of fear, I guess. I certainly didn't panic, but I was a little bit thrown. This wasn't in the plan at all. But actually, there's small things that make you feel. But I remember this young man from the hotel came up to me and he said, and he put the manager of the hotel on the phone to me,

the owner and the owner said to me don't worry I've already talked to the talibans and they promised not to enter the hotel and I thought that was just like Christmas I was like thank you and I just even though I didn't know whether that was true whether they were going to honor that which they certainly weren't because they were trying to get in but it was like just what I needed to hear at that point to give me that sense of calm that I needed to to focus on on what it is I needed to do in Mazar I saw images and it was pretty prominent in the news back here sort of as Kabul fell, like let's say there was like a women's clothing boutique

and then they'd show up the next day and it'd be gone or it'd be now whatever selling shovels or something like that. Did Mazar go through that really rapid transition from like more Western influence just to boom overnight all of a sudden? Yeah, it was very overnight. And mind you, that was self-censorship.

That wasn't the Taliban going around telling them they had to. Yeah, that was me going, oh, you know, I'm not going to be selling these women's freaking bikinis anymore. Where's jotting it down? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Mazar really was just this drastic. What I found fascinating was the clothing transformation. So you see people, you know, walking around in Western jeans or whatever it is and then suddenly everybody's in Afghan dress and very, very traditional. And that was sort of the bizarre thing. And it took a couple of days before I saw a woman again on the street. And when I did, she was always in a burqa. So that was very, it really felt like you

went from one civilization and then you just plunged back a couple of hundred years overnight. And even just there were these messages coming out of the speakers, which I'd never heard before in Mazar either. So the same speakers that they used for the call to prayer were suddenly delivering messages, you know, sort of town hall messages to people, you know, telling them that, you know, if anybody steals from them or anybody does anything, they're to call this number or come to this place to report it. And so you have this immediate sense of the time. Taliban's trying to govern suddenly. But, yeah, it was so drastic that transformation.

So how do you get up to the Uzbek border, just driving up there? The Taliban's. So the Taliban took us. I know. So the Taliban take us to the Uzbek border, which the Uzbek border is closed. But again, that the, you know, a couple of really amazing diplomats in Tashkent, which is capital of Uzbekistan, had made arrangements with the Uzbek consulate. to open the border, which I actually found out I didn't even need because both of us had Australian passports and we didn't need a visa for Uzbekistan, but Americans do. So I could have gone anyway, I guess,

but they had to open especially for us because it was closed because the night before, when Mazar had fallen, or the nights before, when Mazar had fallen, the soldiers flooded that border because they had nowhere else to go. So they really flooded that border. And you drive along the way and you just see all the, you know, the American vehicles and the Humvees and everything just abandoned and left behind and the weapons still lying on the road and the you know the fatigues and these were just Afghan soldiers these were just Afghan soldiers that were just fleeing and they were going for Uzbekistan yeah because that was the closest route that they could go to get out and so I think they let a certain amount in and then they just shut the border how hard was it if I was a corporal

or a private in the Afghan army and the Taliban's coming how hard is it for me to be able to like take off my uniform grab some traditional clothing and leave and get away with with it. You wouldn't be able to get out of the country. I mean, they weren't taking anyone. And how about my identity as far as, hey, I'm just going to go back to my home wherever in this village and just kind of take up life as a normal farmer or whatever? I mean, you could go and do that. I think eventually they'd track you down and not, and I think this was also a bit of a misnomer that happened in the beginning was people were talking a lot, especially in the news. They were, oh, Taliban's got a list. They're coming to houses. They're getting, you know,

XYZ. They're targeting so and so. And when I, I looked into it, they weren't really. necessarily and of course there some people there are exceptions but the their overall goal wasn't necessarily to target any of these soldiers their goal was to take back government weapons so any government vehicles any government issued guns they needed to take them back so the process is when somebody surrenders they get they hand over their weapon and they get given a letter from the taliban so the talibans give them a letter that basically says they've surrendered this is their number they're free to go um so you know when talibati They approach some of these soldiers, you know, they either have to show the letter, and if they don't have the letter, then the Taliban will want to know where their weapon is and what they're doing kind of thing. So, yeah, it was muddying.

Okay, so now you're in Uzbekistan. You get there by what, August 20th, you're in Uzbekistan? Yes, around, yeah, August 20th. So at this time, it's getting crazier in Afghanistan. You got Biden, and Biden is now on August 20th, makes his promise. that all American citizens are going to be brought home. August 23rd, the CIA director, William Burns, meets with the leader of the Taliban, or one of the leaders of the Taliban,

well, co-founder of the Taliban, actually, to start talking about how we're going to withdraw. That starts to happen. The withdrawal starts happening. August 26th, that's when this attack happens, kills 13 U.S. military personnel, 11 Marines, one Navy corpsman, one American soldier, about 70-odd Afghan civilians. 180, 180 that went up to. 180.

Yeah. That happens on August 26th. August 29th, there's a drone strike that, is allegedly targeting some ISIS K or some Taliban or and it ends up killing a U.S. aid worker. A guy named Zamari Ahmadi kills him two other adults and seven kids. August 30th, there's some rocket attacks, but August 30th is when the last U.S. planes leave Afghanistan. the Taliban rolls into the airport, just rolls into the airport and declares victory.

And so there it is. Now the Taliban's in control. At which point, is this when you go back in? Yeah. So I was working between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and I would have gone back or tried to go back a little earlier, but when I met with these diplomats, you know, one of them sort of said to me,

and he had said, you know, because he was sort of involved in putting me in touch with the middleman to leave Afghanistan. And he sort of said, you know, I've been doing this for 30, 40 years and been in many war zones sort of working. And he said, I've never felt more terrified when then I basically handed you over to the Taliban to get in their car to leave.

And he said, I was so relieved when you were okay. And out of respect to him, I didn't want to go back in straight away. So, but there was never a doubt in my mind that I was going to go back in. Of course, I didn't tell that to my parents or to anybody else, but I thought I planned to come and do a job. I felt confident enough to go back because despite the hype that we were sort of seeing in the media and everybody trying to get out, I did know other British journalists and things that had stayed that was still in Kabul.

And I felt confident enough that I could go back and be okay about. it and so we yeah we made that decision to go back and I thought you know I'll let this airport chaos die down and so we'll go back in on the first and we'll drive back from the north back from Uzbekistan border and we'll take that it's about a 12-hour drive across Afghanistan back to Kabul because there really wasn't any other way and yeah that's that's what we did we we came in we crossed that bridge again and I you know I still and they were honoring the the valid visa So my visa was valid, media visa, and so I went back, and we kind of went to this little passport hut,

and there was just a Taliban sitting in there, and he didn't ask a single question, just had a notebook, wrote it down, stamped with the Taliban stamp, and we were good to go. So it was sort of that easy to go back, and I thought, gosh. And then you're just driving south? Then we're just driving. So we'd hired a driver, friends of our friends, who'd come to pick us up. And so there was, you know, all of us jammed into this little Toyota Corolla, driving, you know, from that bridge down just through Selang Pass, down into, yeah, it was about 12 hours.

And you're getting to checkpoints? Yeah, so there was about 16 checkpoints along that way. You know, and still now, they barely stop you when they see a woman. They see a woman, go, go, go, go, go. They've been basically instructed, at least definitely at that point they're instructed. Don't question a woman, don't, you know, if there's a woman in the car, just like, them go. Why is that? They're terrified of women. They're they, they, they just, they think, they see it as a sign of respect. Don't question a woman. Don't ask her who she, don't look at her.

Don't question. Really only once we got stopped, I think at a checkpoint, they asked a sort of a few questions, looked at the passports and one of them pokes his head through the window with them. It was, again, it's like being a clown show. And Jake said to this guy, how do you get your hair so shiny because they've got this black air that's letting around and the guy looks he goes head and shoulders and the whole thing was like i was like i don't know what movie i'm in right now but this is crazy um but yeah so they i barely got stopped at a checkpoint and and suddenly we're back in carbal and really at that point the only fighting that was really still happening was in panjia and that was sort of the last holdout that the talibans hadn't taken yet so

and you ended up going up there, right? Yes. And the reason you go, well, because there was, there was anti-Taliban forces that fled there. Yes. And they were flying the flag of the Northern Alliance up there. And it seemed like that could be sort of the, like the Montana or the, you know what I'm saying?

Like the Wyoming of, hey, hey, they might have taken the rest of America. This is like a Red Dawn scenario. Right these are the Wolverines up there thinking all right. We're gonna go up there do you know what I'm talking about? Yes Okay because I know Echo does because you know he's very up to speed on on those kind of movies But that's what it was that's what it seemed like up in Pangio was hey we've got this is the last hold out We're like the wolverines up there we're flying the old flag of the Northern Alliance and We've got experienced fighters You're hearing that story did you looking at it think that they could hold out? I

So I was hearing a lot of information. People were going to do this, this, this and this. And I've spent a lot of time in Pangea previously. And I knew that there was a lot of great fighters, great people that fought during the Soviet occupation. And that was the only place the Taliban never controlled during their reign in the 90s. They never got Pangea. That was the one place. So they certainly had this mentality to hold.

But at the same time, all the young men that I knew that had lived there had all fled to France. All of them. And I'm thinking, why have you fled to Flint? why have you fled to France? Like you should be here fighting for your province. Like what is going on? So it was a little skeptical, to be honest, because I was hearing, especially from contacts of mine in the US,

who were like, we're going to send them weapons and get this. And I remember just sort of thinking, I don't know if I'm buying this right now. So we decided, yeah, I was like, I need to get in. And there was still this debate going on. Has it fallen? Has it not fallen? Because the Taliban's were claiming in that sort of,

first week of September to have taken it. But then the NRF, as they're known, the National Resistance Front were saying, no, no, no, we're still, we're still in control. And so nobody could figure it out because nobody could get in. The Taliban's were not letting anybody go into the province. And there's really terrible cell service there. It's just, it's always been terrible cell service there. So especially if you're in the mountains, you're not going to be able to report back. So there was this really crazy debates going on. And again, where the misinformation was coming out of was this idea of, then people started saying, well, the Pakistan has got drones there and, you know, they're supporting the Taliban's. And I looked at the video and then I was like,

that's a video game. Like they're using footage, like news outlets are using footage of a video game. And also footage of like, hell, US military in Arizona. And it's being passed off as the Pakistan is in Pangea. And I just remember thinking, what, it was this complete disinformation circle. And when I really started to dig into it, I found that it was a lot of the disinformation was coming from India. So basically, Pandya had become this proxy for the conflict between Pakistan and India. And they were sending different information, a lot of which was completely inaccurate. So I said to my fixer, and we need to do whatever it takes to get into Pangea, because I need to know, has it fallen, hasn't it fallen, what is going on there? And so he was

able to make that arrangement and we were sort of the first journalist that were able to get in and go through all eight districts and that was about that was on so i want to say it was about september nine i think i did we went to panjia um and did you drive up there yeah we drove so it's it's not far from Kabul it's about an hour and a half and then we we get there and it was very heavily fortified by the taliban and and we get in and immediately it was very clear to me the taliban had complete control of it. Even, even, even, yeah, there was just so much misinformation. Did you talk to any NRF fighters? Yeah, I did. And most, I was watching them surrender from the mountains and, and they were coming down and handing their guns over to the Taliban's, and the Taliban's were giving them

the letter, and off they were going, and they were leaving. And honestly, and I got so much heat for this, but, you know, you can only report what you see in here. There really wasn't a fight. It wasn't a big fight. A lot of that was exaggerated. There was not a single amount of damage that I saw anywhere in that main street. Not to say there wasn't fighting in the mountains, but I didn't, I heard one rocket launched that entire day that I was there. The leadership had fled. They'd already left. And I just think that was just sort of, and I still hear it now about, you know, people going around trying to get weapons, trying to, you know, it's not there. It doesn't exist the way it existed 30 years ago.

And again, goes back to so many of them that I knew, they're not in the country anymore. But, you know, and it was crazy. I got so much heat for simply reporting. It really wasn't a fight here. And the diaspora just came after me and people, you know, I just, I'd never experienced that kind of backlash just from reporting a story. So I was kind of relieved when, you know, some friends of mine from Wall Street Journal and New York Times and things, they went in a couple weeks later and reported the same thing.

So I was like, well, okay, I'm not crazy. Yeah, that's, when you talk about the folks that you knew that went to France, like, give us a little bit of background on that. Well, it was just in that initial evacuation period, just a lot of the young fighters that I knew that France was, France was very close with the Pangyaries and Amachar Massoud, his wife lives there, and he spent a lot of time there during his time. And so they have a very close relationship. and the French are very aligned with the pangiers.

So they were mostly able. A lot of the men were able to get, I guess, SIVs to go to France in that evacuation period. And a lot of them took it and off they went. So, yeah, I don't doubt there was certainly a fight there, but I just think it was really blown out of proportion in terms of any ability to take it. And it was very clear that Taliban had full control

of every single of those districts. So you spend how long we get there for a day? Yeah, we're up there. So you spend a day up there. And now, at this point now, the Taliban is forming their government. Yes. And, yeah, they now run the country. They formed their government.

September 11th, they kind of formally announced that they're in control, and this is the new, this is the new regime. Yeah. They reopened the ministry, you know, for the prevention of vice and propagation of virtue, which is something that existed in their first reign, where they would go around with these. morality police and school people and people would get flogged if your beard wasn't long enough or for women's you know wasn't wearing the correct burqa so they were very stringent about that they

haven't restarted the morality police but at the beginning it was a little bit terrifying and i went to the opening of the ministry and we sort of just it was very bizarre that very first month you could just walk up and knock on a door anywhere and get in they tightened down since then but it was suddenly you just had all this access to things. And because the Taliban's were not used to all this media and people, and it was very bizarre for them. So they were just sort of, sure, come in. What's your opening line when you walk up to the Ministry of Prevention of Vice

and Propagation of Virtue? What do you say when you knock on their door? We just come, I go with my fixer, my photographer. And, of course, they don't look at me. They, you know, that was the other bizarre thing, too. The psychological effect of being ignored and, invisible for a month straight is actually just made me get a little bit crazy. So, but I would make a deliberate at first, for the first few weeks, I was trying to be

polite and I would stand back and just let them go up and, you know, handle it and do their, you know, past June greetings with the Taliban and ask the questions and I would just be in the background. They would interview with me. They didn't like it. They would complain and say, why did you bring a woman? You know, I should be interviewing with a man. But they would usually, and my fixer would say, well, she'll go and write about it.

She'll go and write about the fact that you aren't going to interview her. So then they were very worried about perception at that point. But so we'd go up and they were doing this, you know, big opening for their, you know, all the guys went in and I couldn't go in. So my photographer and fixer went in. I was allowed to go into the compound. And some of the Taliban's bought me a chair and I'm sitting under the tree. And they're all, you know, doing the Hakarnis and everybody.

in the building next to me doing their sermons. And then finally they said, oh, we need to put her in a room. She can't sit here. So I get moved to a room and they're bringing me tea and fruit and it was all just very bizarre. And then finally,

when the celebrations had finished and they were all doing picnics outside, the director came to interview me in the little room and he would just sort of sit there and very softly spoken and would answer my questions but looking at the ground.

So I was, yeah, I was very invisible, which at first I took, I said, you know, I'll be, you know, I went with the approach that they're not used, they've never seen a woman before, especially not a woman working out with men. They, if lucky, they've seen their mother's daughter, if they have one, and their sister. They really have not seen a woman before. So I tried to be like, well, this is very new to them too. Are you wearing a burqah or no? No, no, I refused. I wore everything that I normally wore in Afghanistan previously, just a hijab.

And sometimes I wore a mask depending, but I refuse to wear a burqa, I refuse to wear in a quib, I refuse to wear anything other than a hijab. Because that's all it says in Islam is cover the head and that's it. So that's what I went with. So I thought, you know, this is a very big learning experience for them too. And even when I would go to villages, it was so bizarre. You could hear the villages in the background. Is she a man or a woman?

Like they'd just never seen, it was just so new to them. And so at the beginning I was respectful. And then I snapped. I don't know. When you're ignored completely for that long, I just thought, I'm not okay with this anymore. And so I made a very big point of any time we went to meet with the Taliban that I was with my photographer and fixer, I would walk up and I would just stare at them. I'd say hi, and I would stare at them.

And they looked the other way. And even an interview when they would speak and they would just look at my fixer and not to me, I would continue to stare at them. and 95% of the time they broke. 95% of the time eventually they started to look at me. And throughout the course of my months there, I found that by the end, most of them were actually looking at me.

And I thought, I don't want to go and perpetuate this idea of it's okay just to ignore a woman, even though to a lot of them that is respect. They think it's respectful to not look at me or ignore me. And I thought, if you are going to run this country, you need to learn. what that is going to entail, and that is going to be that women are working in the street.

That's how it is. Foreign women will come in and work. So it was just an interesting social experiment, but, yeah, staring at them. So there was like a line because, you know, early you said, you know, that when the Taliban, they wouldn't look at you, and you were like, oh, when the cars, they would just wave us through checkpoints because it's a sign of respect. But then when you're actually trying to communicate with them and they're just not even looking at you, were they afraid? Yeah, it's just what they're taught. They're taught to never look at a woman. It's just, it's indoctrination that it's disrespectful to look at a woman that's not your own wife or your mother.

That's the way that they're taught. So I understand that, but they're also going to have to learn. That's not always going to be the way. Yeah, and you said, hey, it's not going to, this is the way it's going to have to be in the future. But do you think it'll be that way? Or do you think it'll just not allow it? I saw a big shift over that few months. Again, I tried to take the approach of as much as this is new for me.

This is new for them too. They've never been in a media spotlight the way they are now. They've never had all this social media and attention. And so they're navigating something new as well. And so I think that I hope that they've learned. I did see a change in it over that period just in their interaction. I know you actually, I talked about that drone strike earlier. Yeah.

And I know that at one point you actually... Twice I went and met with the family at the house where it was hit. Yeah. Talk us through that. Yeah, that was devastating. So, yeah, on the edge of Kabul, very small, you know, sort of impoverished area. We went to see that family on that first day that basically that the Pentagon had acknowledged that, okay, it was a mistake. mistake and it was heartbreaking it was absolutely heartbreaking and one of the you know it was three

brothers that were all sort of living there with all their family and waiting to get that call to go to the airport to evacuate and one of them the men had lost all his kids all his three kids were killed and another one two of them just it was heartbreaking the car was all still there and I just I can't I imagine the guy had gone to work that day. He was working for an NGO, and they sort of had a ritual where the little kids would run up to the car when it came in, and he would, you know, then they'd jump in the car and they'd drive into the house. And so he came back in five o'clock that afternoon, and that's when the drone hit. And the kids had all sort of ran out to get the car and jumped in, and that's when they were hit with the drone. And it was just, it was devastating, you know, the mothers who just, who could not speak.

week and I went back to follow up with them a couple of, I guess it would have been in November, so late November, so recently. And, you know, I said, has anybody, because there were reports that you've been compensated, the US was going to give them compensation and also speed up their visas to come because some of them did qualify for SIVs and had applied for them before the evacuation. So before any of this had happened. And they said, you know, we haven't heard a thing. We have nobody's apologized, nobody's contacted us.

And in the U.S. kind of saying, oh, we're going to give these people compensation, it endangered them further. Because then people around thought, well, these people have money now. And, you know, and crime in Afghanistan, as terrible as it is. And so suddenly these people were under an extra layer of threat on top of it. So I don't know what sort of happened, if anything's transpired over the last couple of weeks. I tried to put them in touch with a rescue organization that was going to help them get out and speed up. And they said, oh, you know, we're supposedly in contact with some lawyers in D.C. But I don't know that anything ever came out of that either or, you know, if they were able to get out.

But it was really just heartbreaking in many levels. And what's fascinating is that they weren't bitter people. They were not, they were not angry at the U.S. They were not, you know, they didn't want to try to get revenge. they want to come to the U.S. You know, they still wanted to come and live here and get out of Afghanistan. But, yeah, I just hope that that case isn't lost. Is there any news or information about the sort of intel thread that led to that drone strike?

I mean, only from what I've read out of reports was just, it seemed like a, I guess, a perfect storm of fire, really. It just seemed that, and again, I'm still trying to understand it was like you were talking. targeting a Toyota Corolla, well, 70% of the cars in Kabul are Toyota Corolla's. So I just think it seemed like a perfect storm from many different levels. And I think the U.S. was in panic mode at that point, having had the airport attack a couple of days earlier and was so terrified that this guy who was pulling water out of his car was pulling explosives out of the car. And yeah, it all just sit him to come together without, I guess, the correct due diligence.

I've done targets before, hit targets that were just, they were just wrong. And that was a huge lesson learned for me. I hit a target one time. My first deployment to Iraq and pulled the thread on the, because I got back thinking that was not right. Like that person, the guy that we got is not a bad guy. He clearly was not a bad guy. And it came back and started pulling the thread.

Hey, who did this? Who gave us this information? And eventually pulled the thread. and it was like his wife had fired the maid or something like that it was something like that the maid was pissed and so she went and started telling Americans that oh yeah this guy he's a bad guy he's financing you know that kind of thing and so that was a huge lesson for me because from then on my question would be who put this X on this building because that's what we would literally get would be a map and there'd be an X on the building a red X just like a

movie a red X on a building and I would say who'd put that red X there I want to know who put that red X and I would pull the thread and find out exactly hey this is the information that we've got this is what's corroborated it's really really hard and if you're not in that mode and there's pressure that's where these people make these quick calls to try and do something. And, you know, again, I want to pull the threat on that more and hopefully I can try and as it becomes declassified, because I'm sure some of it's classified

where they're getting information from, all that stuff can be classified. But it'll be interesting to pull the threat on that and see why they pulled the trigger on that mission. And the report came back saying nobody was responsible, nobody was held accountable. It was just a mistake that they couldn't sort of pin to one person was the Pentagon report.

on it. I thought, how is that, how is that possible? And how is nobody held accountable to this at all? Well, you know, even for me, when we hit that target and capped caught this guy, thank God, we didn't shoot him. Thank God he didn't resist. He didn't resist because he wasn't a bad guy. So we went, we grabbed this guy. But the reason I wanted was so engaged with that was because I knew it was me. Hey, I'm the one that's kicking in the door and we're, you know, well, my team, is doing that. So I need to take ownership of what we're doing and make sure that this is the right thing to do in the right situation. Because, yeah, I mean, so if you're allowed to sort of push responsibility onto 14 different people that all had a hand in the intel gathering,

which a bunch of people do gather that intel. But who's pulling the trigger? Who's saying, yes, go. And you need to own that. If you make that mistake and explain why, and then you can put some procedures in place that won't let it happen again. And also you have to question a little bit, you have the Inspector General of the Air Force investigating the Air Force. Like, you know, would it be better to have an independent person looking at this as opposed to having somebody investigate themselves? I don't know.

I don't, it's just sort of a question that I've asked myself. And there's another thing that can happen as well. And this was a term that I first heard when I was in Iraq, my second department. deployment, good shot, bad result. Meaning when you lay out what happened, what a individual saw, like if the person that pulled the trigger, what he saw, what he understood, what he was thinking, you lay all those things out and you say, you know what, that was a good shot. I understand why you took that shot.

I'm sorry that this is what happened, but we at least, we at least investigate and say, okay, how did this happen? How did this occur? And how do we make sure that first of all the person wasn't being negligent? The person's not trying to hide anything because look when you're in war you're going to shoot people and occasionally you're going to shoot someone that didn't deserve to get shot. That happens. And when that happens, you have to actually look at it and say, okay, how did it happen? How did you make that decision? Why did you make that decision? What did you see, you pull all that stuff apart. And with my guys, the couple times that something like this happened, it was, hey, I understand why you took that shot.

And it was actually the right call. And it's horrible that has a bad result. But I understand why you did it. And it made sense. You know, that's a lot different than, oh, wait a second. You didn't see anything that looked suspicious or you, you know, why did you shoot? this well I don't know no never got that answer and never was in those situations so for to your point for to pull the thread on the whole thing if someone said hey this is what we saw this is the vehicle that

we were targeting this is the intel hit that we got this is what our informant said this is what our electronic surveillance that they could actually paint a picture where you say you know in that pressure situation I understand what you did I understand why you took that shot and you took the risk at taking that shot so you could save Americans and save an attack. I understand that. Okay, now we at least learn something. But to just say,

nothing, it doesn't make sense. It's not the right move, man. Freaking horrible. You also, I mean, you were like on the freaking Taliban tourist trip.

I mean, you went to visit Molah Omar's, like, remote mosque out there? What was that like? So we took this, you know, again, taking advantage of the fact suddenly, we went to, I went to almost all the provinces

because this was something that I couldn't ever do before by eroding. Suddenly we could travel and this was fascinating to me. So we took this epic kind of journey from Kabul to Kandahar and, you know, through Logar and then Wardak and then through Ghazni.

Actually, it was very bizarre in Ghazni. We stayed the filthiest hotels. I think I've ever stayed out of my life. Like, there was, the sheets weren't, like, it was, it was gross. And mind you, this was still September where it was very hot. You got to give them a bad to Yelp review for sure. It was, like, I just, like, I didn't have to sleep. The toilet didn't work.

Like, there was just one shared squat toilet that didn't work, and the shower didn't work, and it was over flooding. And I just, I just couldn't wait to leave that place. But anyhow, what's so bizarre to me. I like the fact that you're jumping into random cars with Taliban elders, but you don't get mad until you got a freaking stuffed up shower. But, you know, it was so bizarre. So we're sitting there and this little, like, place having dinner downstairs.

And again, it's very unusual for a woman to be out at night. I was like, oh, you know, effort, I'm going out. So I'm having dinner with you. It was my driver, my fixer, and my photographer. And then a bunch of Kandahari Taliban's come into the restaurant and sort of sitting there and staring and doing their, you know, asking a few questions and went about their business. But anyway, I found out the next day, which was very strange. the hotel, and because I have to stay separately to the men.

So the guys all shared one room, and then as a woman, I have to have my own room. So I was on the other side. And then these Kandahari Taliban, so bizarre. They stayed, they were traveling through, but they stayed that night because they heard they were foreigners there, and literally, like, stayed outside my room that night to make sure nobody came in, which was just bizarre. In a way, it kind of goes back to their past June Wally hospitality, wanting to make sure nothing happened to the foreigners, which, yeah, we can talk about that because that leads to so many

different things. But that sort of shows you this very bizarre dichotomy of what is happening in this country, because on one hand, you're sort of seeing acts like that, and then on the other hand, you see the brutality and you see this insurgency that's trying to be a government. So, yeah, very bizarre. But anyway, we continue to go through to Kandahar, which is the birthplace of the Taliban's. on all the roads they bombed up you know i'd ask them who bombed this road oh we did well now you've got to fix it right like now it's time because the roads are terrible so you know we eventually got there and then it's about two hours um from kandahar city to go to this little tiny it's in sanghizar which is where mullahoma started the Taliban in 1994 so we drive there and and get to this

it's extremely primitive place it's just mud huts it's It's dirt roads. And somewhere I really think that the U.S. just never was because it was just, it was Taliban territory forever. So we get there and just this one tiny square room in the middle of nowhere and go in and the and the imam and these village elders welcome us in. And it was actually strange again because that was the first time that, and it was at Malo Omar's mosque that the, the mullahs were actually looking at me and talking to me. I thought, this is just strange because I'd come from all these other places

and here should be the most conservative of all, and yet you're actually engaging and asking me about my personal life, you know, so I just thought this is bizarre. But, you know, their sort of philosophy on it was that, that Mullah Omar gained traction and gained supporters because this came after the, there was a civil war going on, So after the Russians were kicked out of Afghanistan, you know, quickly things became another war again, which was the civil war in Afghanistan. And Mueller-Omar presented this idea of there was going to be no corruption and the crime was going to stop.

And he would give food and money and things to the poor. And people gravitated to that. And you could see just from sort of the simplicity of this tiny little mosque that, you know, looked like the carpets weren't replaced in 30, 40 years, that that was really something I think that he did live by, was this sort of sense of humility. And I think a lot of Afghans at that point when they were starting to see corruption among all these warlords, they gravitated to that.

And that's how he was able to build a very strong following very quickly. You mentioned to me about seeing people addicted to drugs there. What's that culture like? Because it's the mecca for opium, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's something more than 90% of the world's heroin and opium come from Afghanistan. So, and the Taliban's really, that's been one of the number one ways they were able to make money through the insurgency. It was through the selling of those drugs.

And they, a lot in Helmand, we went up to Helmand to Sengen and places like that where they grow the poppies. And it's funny because I went, the Taliban were putting on this big, you know, display of we're getting rid of the drugs. It's Iran. We're going to kill the crops. blah, blah, blah, and I was at the counter narcotics, and the guys, you know, they're putting on this display, but then it became very evident to me, especially when I went there, and the Taliban themselves are harvesting it. And I said, well, so you tell me it's Haram, and then one of them says to me, it's only Haram if we sell it to Afghans. If we sell it over the border, it's

not Haram. So basically, they said, we can sell it to other, we can kill other people in other places, but we don't want to kill, we don't want to kill Afghans. So that was sort of their philosophy. I don't see them ending that anytime soon. They're going to try to, I think, probably find avenues to legalize it in the sense of countries that perhaps are friendly to them that need opium for medicine. I think that's the approach that they seem like they're going to want to take is to try to legalize it in some way. Now they were using the jails to, they were rounding up a lot of the addicts from the streets and and there's a lot of addicts in the streets and rounding them up and putting them in jail because they didn't have proper rehab. So that was sort of the approach

that the Taliban's have been taking. And kids too. There were a lot of, sadly, there's a lot of young kids. Is there like a drug culture of some kind or is it just something that sort of seeps into, hey, this is what we grow, you start trying it, you start eating it or whatever. I think, you know, there was like one little boy that I talked to who was 13 and he was a day. and he was in this jail and I said well how did you start taking this and he said several years ago he'd have to go and buy it for his dad so he'd go and buy Get the get the you know puppies and heroin for his dad and then eventually he just you know tried it once and and and he became addicted So I think it tends to to filter through families and really impoverished families usually So yeah just now

You eventually do get like detained and kind of accused of being a spot Right, right. What happened with that? Oh, my gosh. So that was also in Kandahar. So what happens is as a journalist, so just to go back a little bit. So when you get to the country, as a journalist, you have to go to the Ministry of Information and Culture, which is sort of like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And they check your credentials and give you a Mujahid, Zabiyola Mujahid, who's the spokesperson, basically gives you a signed letter that says you were accredited journalist to be able to work and you flash that letter. So when I'm going through a checkpoint or when I'm going to try to do an interview, I flash my Zabbiola ladder and they say, okay, she's pressed. She can come in or whatever the situation is.

So, and when you go to a province, you have to, the protocol is you're supposed to go and inform the Minister of Information and Culture that you were there so that they know that you can get through checkpoints and you're not going to get arrested. So in Kandahar, that's exactly what we did. We went to the Ministry of Information and Culture and did an interview with him about blah, blah, blah. and he said, okay, you can go anywhere you want, goodbye sort of thing. So we're like, okay, well, we're going to Spind Baldeck, which is the border of Pakistan in Kandahar that sort of leads into that tribal area.

So into Quetta. So we go down to Spanbaldak and there's just people everywhere trying, because the border is mostly closed and there's people everywhere. And instantly, I just get mobbed. Like absolutely, I'm talking just, just, just, flubbed. flooded by hundreds of people that just surround me. And I'm, you know, with my fixer, I'm like, don't, don't leave me because these people are going to mob me.

So I'm trying to do an interview and you just get mobbed. It was, it was crazy. And the television is this because you're a female? Yeah, I guess they saw a camera and then they saw a female and they thought, okay, journalists, everybody, sort of, they're curious. They want to tell their story. But what was bizarre, Joko is the telebands were fogging them, like, whipping these guys to get them away from me.

And I was like, please stop that. Like, I don't want to be responsible. You just, to follow. I was like, you're just getting whipped. And I was upset about it because I didn't want people getting hurt. Why are you not leaving when this is happening? It was bizarre. And so what ended up happening was it just, it got to the point where it was so much.

There were just people everywhere and just closing in on me. This town was like what? What kind of town was this? It was like a super remote town? Border town. So it was just a border town. crossing. So it was a small bit, but just so many people. But they were just freaking hype to see you. Just, just, it was the craziest thing. And I mean, you have that a little bit, but this was a whole

other level where I just thought, oh my goodness, like what is happening? And I couldn't go anywhere. And I would try to grab people to interview them into a store and I'd look at the window and suddenly the store was just surrounded. It was so crazy. And I said, I just, I didn't, and so the Taliban's were coming along asking questions what is happening and we tried to call the driver and we had this funny driver called Shafik and he um he always likes to eat and every time he goes he tries to find eat and suddenly Shafik's not in the place that he we'd left him Shafiq had gone off to get food at the Kalama and yeah and the car wasn't there and and and and the weed my fixer is calling Shafik and being there where are you where I he's not answering his phone and so at the

Taliban's come along in their police vehicle and we're just trying to call Shafiq and I'm telling them like we're leaving, we're leaving. We're just getting our driver. We couldn't contact the driver. And so next thing, you know, Taliban's like, all right, get in. And I said, I don't want to get in your car. I don't want to go to the police station. And they said, nope, get in. And so we get into the police vehicle. We go to the police station and they put us in their detention room. And we're sitting there for a while and I'm thinking this is going to get resolved really quickly, hours and hours. And then finally just more of them are piling in and the top intel guy is piling in and all these talibans are piling in and i'm showing them my credentials i'm showing them the letter i'm showing them the passport i'm showing them my press card and they said oh this is fake i's no it's not they said yes it is and they you know accusing her for basically spying and i just i don't i don't know what else to tell you i'm a journalist i've showed you my credentials i've showed you my passport you have all my information so I don't know what to tell you. So we're sort of sitting there.

More people are coming in, hammering us. I can see my fixer is starting to get worried. And he's a very sort of cool, calm, doesn't really, things don't rattle him too much, but I can see he's starting to get worried and doesn't know what to do. And they're telling, you know, some about these Pakistani spies that they arrested a couple of nights earlier. And long story short, eventually, many hours later, they were able to get in contact with the Zabiyola's office who was able to to verify our information. And then they were extremely apologetic,

and they said, well, we'll take you to the border and you can photograph the Pakistanis. And at that point, they were fighting with the Pakistanis. So, yeah, I guess that was, so we ended up going to the border and getting some good interviews and footage. And they were very apologetic about the situation. But it was just one of those situations

where that usually is the case for journalists is that especially working in the Middle East or in Asia like Afghanistan, they will accuse you of being spies and you have a little recourse to argue and say, well, I've showed you my credentials, I'm not, but I don't know what I need to do to convince you anymore. You've got like survivor's bias,

but you just make it through everything. That's crazy. Like there's so many people that this, your story always seems to end up working out. Yeah, it does. Touch wood. Touch wood on that one. What about the high?

Hacconi, you visited coast, kind of... So, host, yeah, so that was... That's sort of where the Hikarnies, a lot of them come from that in Pacteer. And, yeah, so that was interesting. So I have a good friend of mine who's from Host, and so we went down there. And, you know, so it was an interesting place because it, you know, again, as sort of the home of the Hakanis, but it was very untouched a lot of the time by actual conflict. It was one of the few places where you had roads that were decent and that it was a very

self-sufficient kind of place. But yeah, what struck me going in is this big billboard of Bob Bergdell that's just there as you enter the city. And it's Bob Bergdahl and another mullah. Like a salute to Bo Bergdahl. Well, no, it's not. It's him looking down and like he's sort of got blood on his face and he's looking like he's detained and miserable. And then there's this mullah standing in the picture next to him. And it's a poem in Pashto that doesn't really make a lot of sense.

but it's basically a tribute to this mullah and I'm still very unclear. I thought you were saying it was a tribute to Bo Bergdahl. It's almost sort of like I, it's a tribute to the muller, but for some reason they felt the need to put the Bo Bergdell there. It's this new, new billboard. And then I found out that the host, the governor of host, is actually one of the Gipmo five. So I guess he put it up there to celebrate himself in some way.

And he actually invited us to go and do an interview, which I didn't end up going because he didn't want, I went and met with the mayor, but I didn't go and meet with him because he didn't want my friend, the hosty friend who had taken me to host, he didn't want her to go. So I felt sort of obliged to, I mean, just explain that Taliban five point in case anyone doesn't know what that means.

So I guess when Bob Bergdahl was traded, he was captured in 2009, he ran off base, I think. Something like that. He deserted his base in the neighboring paper. which is next to host. And he was captured by the Taliban and ultimately the Hakanis took him. And he was, I guess, yeah, under captivity for a long time. And then eventually under the Obama administration, I think it was in 2015,

they orchestrated a deal to release five Gitmo detainees in exchange for the one U.S. soldier. So. And now that one of those guys is, what, the mayor? What is he? He's the governor. The governor. He's the governor. The governor of Host now.

Yeah, they're all in top leadership positions. They're all running the show. And the Haqani's themselves. I mean, Saraj is wanted by the U.S. for $5 million. He's now the Minister of Interior. And his Uncle Khalil is the Minister of Refugees, which, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know what that entails. It's crazy. So how about the, let's talk a little bit about this. So, you know, you mentioned the Haqqani. You got Taliban. And the Taliban are very aligned, right? In fact, they kind of say there's no difference between the two, even though there's... Well, the Haqqanis are actually a designated terrorist organization, but the Taliban isn't.

But I'm saying in Afghanistan... They're very close. Well, now it's basically entwined. I think before it was... There was slight sort of ideological differences, and in many ways, the Haqanis were, they were the leading... They were like the hardcore. Yeah, they were the hardcore. Most of the suicide bombings were orchestrated.

by them. They were the ones kidnapping who still have Americans in captivity. But, and I mean, you know, and very close with Al-Qaeda. You know, the founder of the Haqani's, Haqani himself. Yeah. This was a guy that was, you know, funded by the CIA to fight the Soviet Union. Reagan called him personally a freedom fighter. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's bizarre. So when we talk about things to be in bizarre right now, they've been bizarre for a long time.

They've been very bizarre for a long. We paid him millions of them. the founder of the Haqqani. And I think, I mean, it's a fascinating guy, you know? I mean, he's got two wives, got seven sons. I think three or four of his sons were killed in combat. Yeah. And he's really the one who brought a lot of the Arabs into the fold. So until that point, it was very, you know, Afghan, Pakistan,

he started getting a lot of the Arab funding, which brought in the bin Ladens and a lot of that kind of funding. But what I found to be really, interesting in really researching the Akhanis is they're very educated and they get a lot of education a lot of their wives go to the Middle East, go to Saudi Arabia and get educations, which is ironic given that so many of the women under the Taliban are deprived of education. So it's sort of this dichotomy, but everyone I know who's worked closely or knows the Akhanis well will always say they're 20 steps ahead of everyone else.

Like they are the brainchild really of the Taliban. So they know what is going on down to a T. And Saraj does not get photo. There is not a photograph of Saraj that you can possibly find. A grainy photograph the FBI has, but it's very old and very unclear. He does not get photographed at all. And he did an event once when I was there, which was celebrating suicide bombers. At the Intercontinental Hotel, which of course the Haqani's, you know, sent suicide bombers to several years earlier.

whole thing is crazy. So when did you go to this thing? Was this on this? I didn't go in, but this was in late October they had. They were giving land and compensation money to families of suicide bombers, which we can get into because they are very much continuing their suicide bombing despite being a government. But they, so he's doing this big event there, but in every photograph that was taken, it's him from the back or him from the side or his face is blurred. And I said to one of my sources there who was, he works for him, who's a Kabul Intel Taliban guy, and I said, well, you know, what is up with that? And he says, Siraj will walk around the street every few days

and nobody knows who he is. So he will walk around the street to check, you know, what's happening at the checkpoints, check what the Taliban are doing, and nobody knows who he is. And he's going to keep it that way. Undercover boss. Yeah.

But there, yeah, the whole thing is just crazy. And then you have, so he's minister in Interior, and then you have Mila Omar San, Malayakub, who's only about 2930. He is the Minister of Defense, and those two are but heads. They don't like each other. They're coming from different schools of thought. So it's just, it's a crazy world.

And then outside of those two groups, you have ISIS-K. Yes, yes. So they, you know, they've had a presence in Afghanistan since about 2015, but essentially were pretty much defeated around 20. I think the Afghan government in early 2019 basically said that they were defeated. And that was the whole idea of the U.S.'s mission up until, I guess Trump authorized them to go after the Taliban's, but up until then it was Al-Qaeda and then ISIS. And they've really made it terrifying resurgence. There's almost daily attacks happening across Afghanistan as I was there.

And they are like even more hardcore than the Hakani. Is that an accurate statement? Yeah, they've got a different ideology. So what makes the Taliban and the Khani's different to ISIS and to al-Qaeda is they're very, telemins are very much focused on Afghanistan. They don't have any grandiose desires. They say we want to make sure that no foreigners come into our country. We want good relations with everybody, but we don't want another foreigner to come into our country.

They're like isolationists. Yes. They're very focused on Afghanistan, whereas groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda have a much more global. ideology where they want to see, as the fighter said, they want to see their interpretation spread throughout the world and they're the ones that will plant attacks in other countries, so therefore are viewed as a national security threat, whereas the Taliban isn't. And that's really hard for the Afghans to, it's always been hard for the Afghans to really wrap the head around because the Taliban's were doing so many suicide bombings and attacks.

And to them, they're absolutely terrorists and they couldn't, it was hard for me to explain to them why the U.S. was sort of leaving the Taliban's alone and going after these much smaller groups that were at that point not even doing that many attacks. And that is going back to, well, the Taliban is not a threat to the United States necessarily in and of itself. You went to the area where the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddha statues, right? Yeah, to Bamion. Bamu, beautiful province. beautiful province.

Like 1,500 years old those statues were. Yeah. You know, and that was crazy. So what, and I talked to the telemen's about this, about you know, was that a mistake? And so they say, no, no, no. That wasn't a mistake. That was the decision then, but now we're going to protect everything.

And so I went to a few other places with ruins and the telebands are all protecting it. And I said, well, you're going to continue to protect these Buddhas or, you know, and Mezinnak and other places. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's our orders for now. But what we have to remember is this might be their orders for now, but they didn't blow up those Buddhas until early 2001. So at that point, the Taliban had already been in control of, what,

since 1996. So it was left alone. And then Mueller-Omar did it as an extortion because he wanted the international community to give the Taliban's money and the international community wouldn't. So then he threatened, well, I'm going to blow up the Buddhas and still didn't get the money. So he made good on his promise. So that's the thing with the Taliban's. Right now, they might be okay where everything's okay but you don't know what they're going to do next month you don't know how the orders will change and so and you get there and it was bizarre because the Taliban are taking selfies in front of these blown up buddhas and I said well you do know that they it's you guys who blew these up right it just you know

incredibly strange but Bermion is a beautiful province it just it shows you I think when we think of Afghanistan we just think of the war and the bloodshed but it just is is one of the most remarkably aesthetically beautiful places in the world. And Bamion is just a prime example of that. It was the first national park in Afghanistan. Now, there was the drone strike that killed the facilitator and planner, and you did a little investigation on that as well, right?

Yeah, so I went there a few times. So that was just outside Dilalabad in Nanganha. So Nanganha has always been the hub for ISIS-K. It's on the Pakistan border, on the east, and it's just that is where, you know, Torobor is, where Bin Laden went and hid immediately. I also went out to the Moab side, if you remember when the US dropped that massive mother-of-all-bombs

in beginning of 2017. That's also in Nanganha. So there's an area, a couple of different areas, but that particular area was a district called Sirkerod, and that was just outside of Jalalabad. And it's one of those very eerie places, and you go there and you feel like, their skin on your neck is standing up because it just doesn't feel right. And so the house that

was hit was in the far corner. It was actually a really nice house compared to, you know, a lot of the mud huts and things. This was a nice sort of brick home. And we went into the home. And you could, yeah, see where it was hit. And it was so precise. It was just like, you know, this one section of the backyard in this chair that had been blown up and nothing else was touched. So I went and talked to, to the neighbors there. And one of the guys who was there as the drone strike hit, which was close to midnight, and he was on, I guess, guard duty on a roof across.

And, yeah, he sort of said that there was a strange guy that sort of hadn't been living there that long, but would come and go. And, yeah, they hit that night. And then sort of immediately, I guess, a car came and took the women out of the house and the children. And then the next day a bunch of Taliban came in. and were taking things out, taking flags,

taking, he said, he didn't know what they were taking, but big boxes that were just weighing the car down. And then Taliban's went in there after that and took out more things, I guess, from the house. And then he said that those Taliban were found without their heads hanging on a tree the next, a couple of days later, with an ISIS-stamped letter next to it, basically saying anybody who removes these bodies

is going to kind of be next. And he said eventually that if someone from another, the district came to collect them, but they were just hanging there on that tree for many days because people were afraid of ISIS. And he said that every night sort of you, ISIS comes in. They come in and take control. But during the day, it's very much the Taliban doing patrol. The Taliban gets scared and disappear. And then the, yeah, the ISIS fighters come in at night. And he even showed me his own warning letter he got from the Taliban for doing a local news interview after that drone strike. And then he said that the Taliban saw the interview.

and were then accusing him of being the one that gave the location to the foreigners. So it's complex. And then the actual ISIS-controlled center, where a lot of these people come from, is the next district over, which is Chapagar. So we went into that one day, which I don't know. It was the smartest decision, but I'm here today. You should play lottery. I should.

Because you would win a lot. So I know you. You left what, the first, first of December? Yes. So like a few days ago, a week ago. Yes. As you look back, there's anything else, any other high points from there? I mean, there's a bunch of stuff.

I'm sure you know, on your website, you've got a link to a bunch of the articles that you've written over there. And I have a substack that I also subscribe to that. And I usually put all the articles into that and also a little bit of extra kind of background. So how do they get to the substack? So it's just, you can get it straight from my website or it's just, yeah. And your website is what, Holly McKay? H-O-L-L-I-E-M-C-A-Y dot com. There you go.

And then you can get to the substack. Yeah. Go into some more detail there. But as you look at what's going on, what's going on now? This is a disaster. I mean, I know one thing that you had mentioned to me is like, and it's sort of the, I guess the ground or the most granular sort of point zero for the disaster is like what happened to the military working dogs that got left behind.

And, you know, that was such a big story if everybody remembers. There was about 130 dogs and you see these pictures of them at the airport. And so I wanted to follow up on that and find out what happened to those dogs because the DOD was very quickly to come out and say they weren't U.S. military dogs, but they were contractor dogs. So the long story short is that, you know, different contracting companies had given those dogs to a Kabul small animal rescue, which is run by a woman named Charlotte. And she was tasked with getting them out. But when she got to the airport, was basically told, you know, you can't get all these dogs on the plane and you can only take out what you can carry. So there was a lot of controversy.

Oh my gosh, these dogs are being abandoned. But, you know, she's someone who really does amazing work in rescuing these animals and caring for them. So I wanted to follow up and find out what happened to them. And I talked to her and she said they recovered about 70. Most of them, or not half probably had been killed by the Taliban's. And then you had, so a lot of the Spaniels, which are very friendly dogs, had run up to the Taliban's and the Taliban's just, they don't have dogs as pets. When they had the rule in the 90s, dogs were outlawed.

They're considered unclean by the Taliban. You can have cats, but not dogs. So a lot of them were shot And then they sort of saw that these dogs Had gotten so much attention and thought Well, this is a bit of a bargaining chip So they kept a lot of the German shepherds Because they thought that a lot of the German shepherds

Must be guard dogs Even though a lot of them were not trained as guard dogs But you see, especially at the airport And other places the Taliban's walking around these dogs That they have no idea what they're doing with These dogs like they don't look like You know, so some of them survived Some of them were left to run around the airport compound

and some of them got out. So, yeah, it was a sad situation. And we can debate for days. You know, obviously humans have to get priority over dogs. But I think we all can agree. We love our animals. Yeah, well, what about that? What about the, like, the human,

from a humanitarian perspective of what's going on there now? It's an absolute disaster. And that is, that is the heartbreaking thing. Is the, to give you some context, when I got there, it was 70 Afghans to one U.S. dollar. It was a hundred, it hit 100 by the time I left. So that just shows you. how quickly that devalued, their Afghani devalued, the currency. People can't afford bread,

people can't afford just basic things. There is no middle class in Afghanistan anymore. It's people are selling their belongings on the street. You know, crime has gone through the roof again. It dropped initially because I think people were in fear that they were going to get their hand chopped off and when it became prevalent that wasn't going to happen, at least not right now, the crime went back up and it's, you go to these public hospitals and, you go to these public hospitals and, And I mean, there were just the amount of malnourished babies that are just dying on mass. And the mothers are on the floor breastfeeding. And it was something I'd really just never seen to that degree.

And it broke my heart because of the amount of money that we as Americans and the amount of treasure and the amount of people and the amount of effort that had been put into this. And this was a result. And it's only going to get worse during the winter and the U.S. and other countries. going to have to make this very uncomfortable decision of do we unfreeze this money, this $9.5 billion that was frozen when the Taliban took over and the World Bank and International Monetary Front also froze. Do we unfreeze that and enable this government to support a country of $38 million? Because there is no money coming in. There's absolutely no

money. You cannot get money out of the banks. Yeah, it was very challenging to work in because of that environment. But we're going to have to make this decision of do we work with this government so that these innocent Afghan people who have already gone through so much can survive and have some kind of dignity in their lives? Or are we going to just, I guess, turn away and say, no, no, no, these people are human rights violators. We're not going to talk to them and to isolate them. And I always look back on history and I hope that we don't make the same mistake because there was no more isolated government than the Taliban

during their first reign in the 90s through to 2001. They were blackballed by everybody. They had no money. The one person who came in and gave them money, and not very much, 1.5 million, I think it was, was Osama bin Laden. He's the one who came in and gave them money. And so naturally, they were going to protect him.

Naturally, when the US said hand him over, Mullah-Amos said no. He's the only one who came in and gave us money. So it's a very complex decision and there's going to be a lot of people that feel very strongly in many ways, but it's an uncomfortable decision that needs to be made on a diplomatic level of how we're going to deal with this. Because I think the Afghan people are being through enough and they don't deserve any, they don't deserve to suffer the ramifications of this any more than they already have. And that's sort of the uncomfortable choice.

There isn't many options. Do you as when you got back to America, I guess it's been a couple days ago, but even as you were, you know, overseas and you were online and you were looking at the way that the stories were being presented and the way that the events were being presented with now, you know, the way the media and social media and emotional media all works now. What was your, you know, what was the delta between what you were seeing and what the world was being fed? There was quite a dichotomy. So if I was just to look at Twitter. and to look at what was happening, I would think there was mass slaughter on the street. I would think that the Taliban's were going out

and pulling people from their homes. And certainly there are isolated cases of that happening, but that was very much the exception, not the norm. And that was not accurately reflected. I think, you know, as strange as it is, the Taliban's were trying to show this image of, they want to be recognized. Is it safe to say that the Taliban is trying to rebrand?

Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, there's a lot of this, I hear a lot of, well, they haven't changed since the 2000 and, you know, or their first reigns in the 90s. And I don't think that's accurate. They have changed. They've changed a lot in many different respects. But, yeah, a lot of the information I was seeing about these just, you know, mass slaughters. And, you know, I think there was one thing where, and a lot of people had asked me about it, there was a rumor going around about a girl that had been beheaded by the Taliban. And when I looked into it and I asked my fixer to look into it, it turned out that she, you know,

had been killed in July, so before the Taliban came in, but it was an internal family conflict. It had nothing to do with, you know, and yet this was being presented as this just happened last week, and she's being beheaded, and I saw like Kim Kardashian or someone was then retweeting it and putting it on a story, and then a million more people are asking me, and I thought, this is how this cycle perpetuates, but if I was to sum up the situation, it was certainly terrible things were happening, but it wasn't what was being painted. You know, as I said, I could work freely and unharmed. And, you know, I was only wearing a hijab.

So a lot of the information just was wrong. And there was something I even saw, you know, there was a picture that was going around where it was a woman in a burker and she had a chain around her ankle and was being led by a husband. And people were saying, you know, this is Afghanistan now under the Taliban. I looked at, you know, a quick reverse image search. And you see, oh, no, that was 2000. and three Iraq and somebody photoshopped a chain to this woman's ankle. So there was so much of that.

And I think there really were few journalists that were in there. I didn't meet too many other Americans. I met a couple of Americans that came in and then left again. But generally, there was just a few European journalists that came in. And so a lot of the work was being done from outside the country. And I think it just shows you the importance of being on the grounds. And a lot of news organizations don't want to invest in that anymore. But Afghanistan really showed me the importance of having their ground perspective because it's so different to what you see just sort of an aggregating or even talking to people. And I think, you know, a lot of interviewees were talking to the diaspora or people that had fled, but their perspective was no longer in Afghanistan. So, yeah,

there's a lot of disinformation. Yeah, and it'll be, no one knows, right? We don't know what the Taliban's going to do um you know they were pretty brutal in their last you know time in power from 1995 1996 um up until 2001 up until up until up until the northern alliance in america went in there and i mean they had some some some bad things happen right um starvation and and and just bad some bad stuff happened i mean horrible it's uh you know definitely human rights violations and all that stuff absolutely has happened and and you know there was obviously there were some reports of terrible things happening again and it's hard to know but to your point unless you have people on the ground you it's very it makes it even more difficult to actually

know what's happening and make decisions on what you're going to do when you're basing it on photoshopped images yeah absolutely You mentioned Osama bin Laden. What was... Talk to us a little bit about Osama bin Laden's presence in the psyche of the Afghan people now. What did you observe from that perspective? Yeah, so I really think, you know, his legacy is still very strong in Afghanistan and even places that I went to, you know, in, again, the Jalalabad, the information on culture minister there has told me straight. Don't do any stories on us.

something I've been Luton. So I was like, oh, you wait. You wait now. I'm going. So, but you see that legacy is sort of carry through and they're all in power because of him. And again, it goes back to he's the one who sort of came in and gave them money when no one else would. And so in return for that, they gave him safe harbor. And it's under that code of Pashtun Wally, which is really the highest moral code that the pastures have in protecting guests. And it's the same code that they use to protect somebody like me who's a guest in their country. So it's a very complex sort of thing. But when you talk to regular Afghans or students or people that, you know, in their young, 20-something, they don't know who he is. And it's just interesting because

you sort of look at this war and you, that was continuing to go on. And yet you sort of have the people that are caught in the crossfire who just sort of have no idea of what, what, happened and what the background is and why this is all kind of still going on. So it's interesting. And Al-Qaeda still, you know, certainly exists in Afghanistan too. My understanding from the Taliban is that they've been told that they are not allowed to do any, take any military actions that they have to, you know, they're allowed to be in the country, but they have to stop, you know, not plan anything or do anything. Otherwise, they'll be in trouble. But I think a lot of the times, too, a lot of those Al-Qaeda members have just been.

basically folded into the Taliban and a part of the intelligence units or a part of that whole operation. Yeah, it was definitely some of your articles mentioned the fact that, you know, some 20-year-old Afghan didn't really know who Osama bin Laden was. Yeah. So sometimes when I get into discussions with people about the divisiveness in America, I'll reference the fact that I work with a bunch of different companies, my consulting company. And, you know, I'm a... Most people that you talk to, they're not thinking about what's happening on Twitter right now. They're not thinking about this. They're thinking about what they're doing.

They're thinking about their job. They're thinking about their company. They're thinking about how they're going to grow, how they're going to go to new markets. That's what they're thinking about. That's what they're doing. That's what their life is. Is it similar? I mean, I guess this is a rhetorical question.

But did you find the same thing? In Afghanistan, most people are like, okay, well, the Taliban's in charge or the Northern alliance in charge. I want to, you know, continue to get my job done and raise my family and move kind of forward, like kind of leave me alone type thing. You have two camps. You have the people whose entire day is fixated on trying to get out. Trying to get out of Afghanistan.

You're trying to get out. So there's really two camps. And, you know, even now, just every day, all day, my messages, my LinkedIn, everything is just flooded. How do I get out? How do I get out? So you have that camp. that I can't go anywhere and this is the new reality. So how do I survive and how do I feed my family? And that's really what it comes down to. It comes down to survival, especially now with the

crisis being what it is there and the challenges of just day-to-day life. What are people, when so many messages you, you get 10 messages about, I want to get out, I want to get out, I want to get out. Why do they want to get out? What are they? And it's a mixed thing. You have, you have people that certainly have legitimate reasons to get out. A lot of the commandos that I met with that are terrified because the commanders were really leading the charge in a lot of the fights and they're very concerned about retaliation. But then you have a lot of people who, and again, what I found, a lot of people who were maybe drivers or worked for different companies who were desperate and terrified to get out. But when I talk to them, I say, well, where's the threat?

Nobody's been threatened. Or they're passing around a WhatsApp letter that everybody's been given that's fake. So in a way that the first thing. fear is contagious. And again, that's where I'm saying the fear doesn't always match the reality. And what I found was that people thought, well, so-and-so scared and my neighbor's scared and everybody's scared, so I'm going to have to be scared too, and I'm going to have to leave. So that, yeah, it was contagious. And that's what I found that a lot of the, the worries were self-inflicted as opposed to an actual real threat that was there. There's got to be like a massive level, though, of like suppression, right?

I mean, if you're a person that was sort of open-minded and moving in this direction and now, like, it's over. Yeah. It's over. Yeah. And you don't get that. And especially for women, too, you know, that's deeply challenging. Girls are still not able to go to public schools. I think private schools are still open.

But secondary schools have been close for girls now for months. And the Taliban keep saying, it's because we've got to make sure that they have transport that's separate to the men. And I said, well, great, we'll get you some buses. Oh, and then there's another excuse. So I'm not sure what's happening with that. But, you know, women that were definitely used to going to work and to other places, and they're out there at home. And, you know, that's heartbreaking women.

You know, I met with many women who, you know, were doing, you know, in the national sort of taekwondo teams or in the national tennis teams. Yeah, it was a big article about their soccer team too. Yeah, you know, and now that then they're not allowed to do their, you know, to not even practice, let alone go into any tournaments. Even I met with the top MMA guy there as well. He's, you know, great fighter. He's, I think, two fights away from UFC.

And he's like, we can't fight anymore. And he said they tried to do a fight. The Taliban told them that they have to wear like full clothing, which he said, you know, we obviously can't do that. And the Taliban came to their first fight and broke it up and turned into a big mess. But, you know, he's concerned because, you know, he can't get out. And he's trying. But, you know, he's someone who used to go to each match with,

You know, the police, you know, Afghan police flag and, you know, was very pro the former security forces. And so, you know, it's tough for the guys, too, even though they can do, you know, a little bit more than the women. But music is completely kind of outlawed and arts and all of those sorts of things. Yeah, you're not allowed to paint any people, not allowed to paint any living things or film any living things or photograph any living things. Yeah. Well, they haven't been too strict about that. I think instruments have been outlawed except for like some drum.

Yeah, well they have this their music as this Nishid music. It used to drive me crazy. So they would get into the car and they'd put in, you know, insist and if we're driving somewhere remote and damn Taliban's would get in the car and they'd put in their Nashids

and it was just this, it's Islamic music without instruments. It's all vocals. And then there's bomb blasts and bullets. And they turn it up. And I was like, it's like their motivation. It's their battlefield music. And it's like, this is crazy. And that's what they play on night.

And the Taliban's actually moved next door to the house that I was living in. So I would deliberately go and get my two pack and my biggie. I just blast it. We'll fight their music with our music. Yeah. And I was like, you know what, it's time to go, Holly. They better not come from my guitar. So here's what I find.

This is what's so hard to really contemplate as a human being, right? what percentage of people are are are don't want it to be this way right what percentage of people don't want it to be this way and would give anything to go back to whatever to 2019 and be moving in a certain direction have the females ready to go to school and be able to play your guitar and be able to do mMA what percentage of the population feels that way versus what percentage of the population wants to go back to the old Taliban ways and strict Sharia law. I'm not asking you, you can make an estimation, but it's very difficult. And then, okay, if you're that, if you're 90% is on board for Sharia law and that's what

we're doing and, hey, the 10% that aren't on board with it, you best get out of here because this is what we're doing. Or is it 90% of the population wants to just go back to, to again, 2019, moving that direction, move towards a more open society. And if that's the case, and it's just a strict small percentage of people that maintain power and control via force and brutality,

well, then what are we supposed to do? So I think there's really, again, when we see with the media, what we're seeing is always generally coverage that's coming out of Kabul or coming out of a city. And I tried to really make an effort to go to, to, many rural areas and provinces because the perspective there is completely different.

So I'd say if you're going to estimate in somewhere like Kabul, you know, 80% of people want that previous life because they were able to, you know, there was bars, there was music that, you know, could go to clubs, you could go to, you know, get alcohol, you could do all these things because you had that foreign footprint there. But you go to the villages and, you know, that are already very conservative where the women and don't necessarily, you know, go to school past the age of 13 and that are very much relegated to the home and they don't leave. And that's just customary because that's the way that their life is.

Their lives are actually going to get better. And I say that because they don't have to face the daily bombings anymore. They don't have to deal with the ramifications of war. But their actual lives aren't going to change because they were never really privy to all those sort of new Western-inspired, if you will, freedoms. So you can make the argument that, you know, for them, they now have a more peaceful life. But in the cities, that's where you really see women and people losing a lot of those freedoms and suffering. But what I think is also interesting that came out of this was the number of Taliban's that were embedded into the military, into the government, into every possible avenue in every city. And suddenly when the Taliban were able to take power, these people came out.

People I knew for years and years and years who were working with journalists that's fixers said to me, oh yeah, I've been Taliban for 20 years. And now they're out, you know, and so, and friends of mine, you know, I had, you know, even with my fixer, a good friend of his, he was saying that someone he's known since he was very young. When the Taliban took power, suddenly he finds out his Taliban. Like it's just these people kept secrets for so long. And I think that's also why the Taliban were able to come to power so quickly. they infiltrated every possible, you know, government entity that they could.

What do they do? What's the Taliban doing with the military equipment that they took over? So I, you know, it was interesting. So I did a tour of the airport just before I left. And you still see a lot of the damaged aircraft. The U.S. blew up a lot of the aircraft before it left. But you see a lot, they still have all those Russian helicopters that are still there. and they have a lot of engineers.

They brought back a lot of the technicians from the previous government trained by the US that are now they're able to help repair whatever they can. And they still do have very limited air power, but I know that's something they're trying to build because the Air Force is something that they want that they didn't have before. And it was funny because I was sitting outside, you know, one afternoon

and you see there was a big blast, a big bomb, and the smoke's in the air, and it was down at the military hospital very close. And next thing, you know, you're hearing choppers in the air. And I said, I haven't heard this for ages. You know, what's going on? And they were flying a black hawk and two of the Russian MH-1-7s. And they had apparently dropped a suicide bomber onto the hospital because ISIS was attacking it.

Again, they're still using suicide bombers for situations like that. But, yeah, craziness. So it was an ongoing, it was an ongoing, you know, thing. But so they certainly have the, capacity if they need it, but they're saying, oh, we're just going to use it for important and urgent circumstances. So, yeah, the whole thing is backwards. But yeah, I actually went to a suicide bombing school that I found, which was in a kindergarten on the edge of Kabul where they train the suicide bombers, you know, and you have these men just begging, begging to be chosen.

Just pick me, pick me. It's like the highest honor that they could possibly take. And, you know, that despite being in government now, there's no plans to. to get rid of the suicide bombing schools. How about what are you seeing for lessons as you look at it now? You're looking back on it. You've been gone for a week now. What are you looking at? What kind of big picture strategic lessons are you saying?

My biggest thing to drive home is we can talk all day about military strategies and the Taliban military strategies. But at the end of the day, and I feel like I'm a broken record saying this, but corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption. The last government, backed by the U.S., there was so much corruption at every possible level, to the point where if you wanted to go and get an interview at the U.S. Embassy, just an interview.

If you were a university graduate who wanted to get a job at the embassy because that was a cool thing to do, you had to pay a middle person about $5,000, just to get an interview, let alone if you were to get a job, then you'd pay them a whole bunch more. And that was in every government institution, money, you know, and this is what I would get angry about, because I would tell a lot of these Afghans, I said, that's my money. As a U.S. taxpayer, you stole our money, or not you personally, but your previous government, you stole our money.

And you took that and you lined your pockets. Kabul could be Dubai by now, $2 trillion, and this is what has come from it. And that is because the corruption on every level was just so rampant and so discourage. And even when, you know, a lot of these warlords and people were fleeing the country when the Talibs were taking over, there was just, there was chunks of gold that they were keeping, you know, hidden underground, just wads of cash that just unfathomable numbers. And there was not a thing that you could do to get through daily life without paying a bribe, you know, to get through a tech point you're paying a bribe, to get whatever you need it. Like life for Afghans was difficult because of this

institutionalized corruption that I think the U.S. looked at and said, well, this is too systemic for us to do anything about. We just have to leave it. But really, to me, that was the root of the problem. So people looked at that. Afghans looked at that and were like, why am I starving here when this local governor is rolling around and with all this money and Rolls-Royce and all these fancy things? And I can't, you know, I have to pay every time just to get to my job. And that's what the Taliban really capitalized on that. They capitalized on, well, we are not going to be corrupt. You know, that's against Islam. We are going to, you know, support everybody, treat everybody the same. And so people that didn't even ideologically want to be, you know,

with the Taliban's, they were driven to that. And I've seen that in many countries. You want to fight against the government that you feel is stealing from you. And it just got to the point where it was so bad. You had judges in provinces or lawyers just falsely accusing people of something and taking them to court so they could get bribe money. So it just, and it was just, it was on every possible level. Even at the hospitals, you had medical staff stealing the supplies so they could go and sell them at a local pharmacy

or because they owned their own pharmacy. And that was going to pay them better money than the government salary. So, you know, if you're going to go into, a country or give country any sort of form of foreign aid, I hope that the U.S. and other countries can learn that lesson of if you don't stop that right in the beginning, if you don't hold people accountable. And there was never accountability to any of the corruption or stolen money. This is the result you're going to get. And I saw that in Iraq too with people joining ISIS because they wanted to fight back against the government who they felt was stealing from them,

were corrupt and were suppressing them. And it wasn't about we want to be part of ISIS because we agree with ISIS. It was, no, we want to fight this government because they're not here for us. That's the, when you pull the string on Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government was just completely corrupt. And a lot of the issues that they had were due to the exact same type of corruption.

The whole system operated through corruption and scratching each other's backs and getting money here and putting your own pocket. And you know, that was just the way it worked and that was a huge part of the issues that they had and why it's the exact same thing. It's literally the exact same thing. I know that, you know, you've been you've been gone. So you were over there for August, September, October, November, December. That's like a deployment. A deployment into a into a war zone where everything's falling apart. What is that? that's I mean are you coming back this time what how's it how's it how's the transition back to reality back to normal normal American life yeah it was incredibly difficult I think for me to leave this time um I felt tremendously guilty about leaving because I knew that that I can as an

Australian and an American I can get you know I'm able to get a flight out to Abu Dhabi and able to leave freely when it's something obviously a lot of Afghans what and I felt tremendously guilty because again you know I never think my life is any more valuable than theirs I just happen to be lucky enough to be born in different geographical coordinates that have given me a different different passports and and a very different life and you know the Afghans are some of the most truly beautiful people they're just so hospitable very kind I have a great love for the Afghans. I always say that I've been to many places in the world,

but I've never quite sort of fallen in love with a place the way I've fallen in love with Afghanistan over the years. And it's just, it's very special people. And I felt tremendously guilty, just I guess, you know, walking away from them. And I knew that it was time to leave. And I knew that some of the decisions that I felt that I was making as a journalist were,

I was taking risks that I knew were I shouldn't be taking. And I think when you get to that point, when you sort of maybe don't care so much about the outcome, it's time to take a break. And that's sort of a point that I think that I'd gotten to, especially with going into some of the ISIS areas and even my photographer was hesitating. And I was okay.

I'm fine. And I didn't have the same, I think, normal reactions you should have to those situations, just the natural sense of fear or worry. And so anyway, so I knew it was definitely time to take a break with that. But I think, yeah, I felt very guilty, especially those first few days. I was just wanting to turn around and immediately go back. But my first thing, so I couldn't go for a run.

And I'm a big runner, and I couldn't go for a run for five months. And so the first thing I did when I got to New York was go for a run. And I'm running and I look and I see a sign for a run. a beauty salon on the sidewalk. And I said, oh, they've reopened the beauty salons. That was my first instinct. And I thought, hang on a minute to you. You know, you're in New York City now.

So you're not in Kabul. So, yeah, it's actually, yeah, it's a strange transition. And as I said, when I'm driving down, I'm looking at the roads thinking, how great they are. You know, how great is this road? Why did nobody bomb this road? And then just remembering, remembering where I am. So it's, yeah, it's a little. bit of a transition but and so how long are you going to stay home for i don't i don't have a home right now

doco i don't how long are you going to sleep in places where there's beds i do need to get a home actually that is the objective for for early 20 early 20 22 scary um i am going to get a home and so i have a good base so i think i need in america yes so i can probably probably virginia i think maybe i kind of like that area. And then what's on the horizon for, you know, what are you going to do for work-wise? Are you going to, you know, you wrote Only Cry for the Living, which is an incredible book that really gives such clear picture of everything that went on with the ISIS battlefield in the Levant. What are your plans on this stuff? So I have, so Jake and my photographer and I have a photo book we're working on and he's got some really just beautiful pictures of Afghanistan throughout this transition.

and then I'm going to knuckle down and get the writing for that done. Just sort of, it's a way to present, I guess, Afghanistan to people in a very visual way, you know, just sort of showing people what it's like to be there through the fall and then in that period after and who the Afghans are, who the Taliban's are, who are all these different players. So that's the writing project I'm working on and then just, yeah, continuing to do journalism and little bits and pieces of different things here there.

How much writing is it going to take to get that book done? Not a huge amount. It's not going to be super word intensive because of the pictures. So probably, and I have so much material already. It's really just a matter of sitting down and sorting through what I think is going to be the most compelling to go with the pictures that we've already selected. Kind of like a humans of New York, but more like humans of Afghanistan? Yeah, a little bit.

And then sort of go into some of the decisions and some of the major things that were done and said and explain things in a way that I hope people can resonate with, really. Yeah, that'll be, that'll be awesome. I mean, I didn't think of that connection until just now, like, the Humans of New York, which is a fascinating book. And obviously, your Jake, Jake, just unleashing picture after picture over there. I'm sure he's got incredible photographs. And then the context that you can put around those and the history that you can put around

them and the knowledge that you have, that's, um, That'll be awesome. Yeah. So just, yeah, continuing with the writing. And then I will return to Afghanistan probably in the spring is my plan. The Taliban will have me back if they're not too mad. A lot of the stuff I've written. Some of them have been pretty mad.

Do they contact you? Sometimes they contact my fixer and threaten. And I had an issue with one Taliban's for a long time that just drove me nuts. I was a little bit worried about him, actually. What did you say about? He was just very angry about everything. and angry and just an angry person. But eventually I just said, I don't care.

I don't care. I don't care. Come and get me. I don't care. Well, they can't get you here, but maybe over there. No, no, no. In the Kabul. I thought, should I leave?

And they thought, no. I said, come and get me. Tell him to come and get me. Come to the house if he's worried. Come to the house. Because he was like, where do you live? Come to the house. But anyway, he backed off and went away.

But most of them, I think, you know, I think they have immediate team. that tries to read through three, three, read through reports, but they're desperate for recognition, so they want attention, but they're increasingly becoming very cracking down a lot, which in the beginning they were very open and very free, and it was quite easy to get the interviews,

but toward the end it became very difficult to get any approval. Well, I don't know, you kind of remind me of Alex Honnold. You know who that is? Alex Honnold is the rock climber that climbed L-CAP without knee ropes, And he's, they do like tests on him and there's no, he has let, he registers less fear than a normal human. And I think you're kind of like that. I think you register less fear than normal human. So L cap is 3,000 feet in Yosemite, straight up granite.

And he climbed it with no ropes. There's a, uh, incredible movie about it, um, called free solo. But I, when he did that, I remember just thinking, man, I hope that guy never climbs without ropes again. And of course, he does it all the time. because that's the way he is. So when you got back, I was kind of like, okay, cool. I hope you never go over there again. But I guess that's like asking Alex Holmold not to do what he loves.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, and I'm very grateful for the fact that I, I just, I feel very compelled and I really do love what I do. And I don't, at this point in my life, I can't imagine not doing it. I don't know what I would do. Is it just like curiosity? It's curiosity. it's just, it's being this rough draft of history that I just think is just a fascinating experience to have. And it's something I really thought about a lot, you know, you're sitting with all these Taliban

and they're bragging about killing Americans and they're bragging about shooting down, you know, American helicopters and they're, you know, and I really had to reflect on it a little bit because I thought, I'm in this situation, you know, what is my job here? and I think what journalists can do is it's not to hear this stuff about being a voice and giving people platforms. No, that's not how I see my job. I see my job as being able to communicate the other to the people. And I say that because we have to understand the way that they think. And we want to, it's very easy to paint things as black and white as this is the good guy, this is the bad guy.

But you have to understand why they do what they do, where this comes from, what their impetus is. And that's the way that I sort of see a lot of journalism is not to go in and interrogate or to stick it to them or to, you just have to go in and have a conversation. And sometimes that's, I find it to be really difficult because, you know, he's somebody that's, you know, bragging about killing Americans or, or, and yet you still have to go in there and have tea and talk to them. and it's a balance of sort of this compartmentalization with writing from a place of humanity, but I see that communication as being something that really journalists can do the best because we aren't government employees,

so we don't have to, we can speak to anyone we want, and I think it's an important job to be able to understand where they're coming from and what that objective is. And, you know, one of them said something interesting and I'd love to get what your own. response would be because I didn't have a, I just didn't have a response. But he, he looked at me and he said, you know, how would you feel if I went to Australia and I started recruiting Australians to kill other Australians, wouldn't you want to fight me back? I thought about it for a really long time.

And I didn't, I didn't have, I didn't have a great response because as I said earlier, Afghans were not the ones who drove those planes into New York. They were Saudi. Osama was found in Pakistan. So we can sort of debate about what role Afghans really even had in those attacks. And so in putting myself in his shoes, you know, I didn't have a great response for, how do you respond to that? Yeah, well, that's the important thing about what you said earlier. And this is something that we don't do a great job of.

by we, I mean America and West, the West in general, is trying to understand what other people are thinking, right? And if you don't understand what other people are thinking, as a, I mean, this is what Sun Su said 2,500 years ago in the art of war. You have to understand what your opponent, what your enemy is thinking. If you don't understand what they're thinking, your chances of winning go down dramatically. So any time you try and impose your thoughts on the enemy,

or you assume that you understand what they're thinking, You're making a huge mistake. You're making a huge strategic mistake when you let that happen. So when you talk about what you do as a journalist of saying, okay, let me set my emotions aside and let me listen and let me ask earnest questions about what they're thinking and why they're feeling that way. And then you actually listen to what they have to say. That is something that people should do every single day. First of all, as a leader in any organization, as a parent and in a family, as a child in a family. in a spouse and a relationship,

in a governmental situation, that's what we should do. That's what you need to learn how to do, is try and understand what other people's perspectives are. And you can only understand what other people's perspectives are if you ask her in us questions

and you actually listen to what they have to say. And you'll probably figure out that what you thought, they thought is not accurate. So there's a, you know, there's a whole road to go down with that, but that's something that we don't do very well. And, you know, I think journalism nowadays is a whole, it's just a while. It's not

what it used to be, certainly. I think you're about as close to an old school journalist. I mean, you're, I mean, I know there's others that are like you, but you are in the model of the old school journalist that's out there to gather information and kind of report what's going on. And like you said, you know, you're reporting about what the, the, um, the new Northern Alliance was how well they fought. And you're like, there wasn't much of a fight. And people are mad at you. Super mad at you.

Because you told what you saw. And now maybe if you would have said there was no fight and I didn't see any, you know, there was no fight at all. And I don't remember your quotes from that article. But, you know, it's like, hey, I didn't see any fighting. I saw, you know, the Taliban moving very dominantly through the area. So you're literally saying what you saw. You're leaving room for, you even said today.

You said, hey, there might have been more fighting in the mountains that I didn't see, but you're saying from what I saw on these heavily populated areas, there wasn't any resistance. Or there was very limited resistance. I saw one rocket. That's not a lot of resistance. So I think that people listening, asking earnest questions is something that the world has forgot how to do. Part of it is, I would say the driving factor, and that is our own egos to think, well, I know. It's like the worst thing to say. The worst thing to say and even in a worse thing to think is I know.

I know what you're thinking. I know what they're thinking. I know what the enemy is doing. You don't. You don't know. And the minute you think you know is when you start making mistakes. It's when you start assuming that you understand things and you don't. So I think what you're doing is extremely important.

I'll still go with the Alex Honnold. I actually don't want you to go back to Afghanistan. But I know you're going to. Be safe. And we'll keep tracking on you. you anything echo you got any questions yeah what exactly is the fixer so sorry a fixer is something the journalists or NGOs even but primarily journalists when we go into foreign countries we hire sort of a local person sometimes they're a former journalist sometimes they're just a connected

person and they you know help often will be a translator and they will help uh sort of help us facilitate interviews and make calls and just kind of work with us. It's almost sort of like, you know, I ended up calling my fix in a weed, a producer. So essentially he's kind of like producing for us, you know, he's doing a lot of the background. And it was really funny when we went back this time because for the last 20 years, all the Afghans and the fixes have been speaking Dari, which is sort of an Afghan dialect of Persian. But now it's all Pashto. Everything's written in Pashto because that's what the Taliban's used.

So a lot of the people that were, you know, fixing for 20 years are suddenly like, well, I can't speak the language that's needed. So it was a big, big transit. A lot of the fixes have all left the country. So it was this very much a, we had to find new people to work with. So it was a, all the big learning curve. So it's kind of like the Las Vegas VIP host kind of situation. Yeah, that's what I was about to throw it at you. You can hook you up with this stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Echo has like the you know he's got that different background When he was in the nightclub industry for a while So for him it's like oh that's the VIP host Yeah I get you in that back room Hold on let me talk to Fred over here We're taking care of yeah so my poor fixer is you know having to talk to the the dash and all these people on my best

But uh Holly we can find you at holly mackay.com You're on Instagram Holly S and it's h o L L I E S mackay S mackay and it's h o L L L I E S mackay and McKay is just MCK-A-Y. You're on Twitter, you're on Facebook. It was crazy to watch you on Instagram when you were over there and see you putting like Instagram live up and you're reading like, oh, you're reading people's stories.

Like I look at Echo's story. Oh, it's like he's in his kitchen. He's making a freaking sandwich. Oh, I'm posting that I just got done working out. And you're like, I'm in a hotel in Mount Maurit, Missouri, of Sharif. And we're surrounded by Taliban. I'm like, wait a second. This is interesting.

So people should. And hollymiquet.com, I think, is the URL for substack. Yeah, okay. So the substack, that's where you're putting your information up. Awesome. Holly. Anything else? Thank you for having me and for, yeah, letting me talk some more about Afghanistan.

I think it's very easy for these things to fall off the news once, you know, the evacuation happened and it fell off sort of the radar very quickly. But I think it's something that's very important to Americans. and important to you know to my generation who really grew up you know with after 9-11 and so many people that I knew that went to fight there and I think it's important that that we keep Afghanistan you know somewhere in our minds well you're certainly helping us to do that and thank you for coming back to talk to us and thank you for making it back to talk to us and thanks for letting us know for all you do to go out there and let us know what's actually happening and reporting it

so that the world knows what's really happening. It's definitely an eerie window into the heart of darkness. And it's a big risk for you to go in there physically, mentally, spiritually, but you're doing meaningful work. And it does have a big impact on the world. So thanks for doing it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, Holly. And with that, Holly McKay has left the building.

Awesome that she could stop by and kind of share some of that stuff with us. Lots of craziness in the world. And sometimes it seems like all that craziness that's going on in the world, what are you going to do about it? How can you help it? Look, I don't know what you're going to do for some, young girl that's getting no education in Afghanistan right now. I'm not sure what you can do about that.

I'm not sure. But I do know this. You've got a little control over your world. What's going on in your world? Try and make your world a little bit better. That's my recommendation. Man, that's crazy how she mentioned the corruption, you know, like how much of a fellow. I mean, of course, no one's going to be like, yeah, I'm totally down for corruption.

No one's going to think that for the most part. But you don't really understand how important that is. to be like legit and squared away in that way. And I really had no idea what she was going to say when I asked her that question because even, you know, reading through her articles and stuff, you know, I thought maybe she'd have some strategic thing about the way we treated the trial,

you know, just whatever kind of the more common complaints that you'll hear about how Afghanistan was handled. And yeah, that was definitely very interesting and insightful aspect. to bring up how devastating corruption can be because then then it's kind of like nothing works the way it's supposed to work exactly right yeah nothing works the way it's supposed to work when people are corrupt think about everything the way things are supposed to be they're not that way yeah she said something super quick too she said super quick but i was like oh that kind of put

add add the corruption into this this point where she said some of the ISIS fighters joined ISIS not because they support the ideology. It's just because their government is so corrupt. And it's like, bro, like the government has so much power over an individual anyway. So if it's like they're corrupt and they're just tired of that corruptness and they're like, you know what, I'm going to join this group who, sure, their stuff is kind of crazy. But at least I can fight back and have some power against this government that I'm powerless against that's corrupt, you know? We, it's two things going on.

We take it for granted in America. that things aren't corrupt and we take it for granted in America that things aren't corrupt. Do you get my double meaning on this? What I'm saying is we walk around like, oh, you know, well, this is American things aren't corrupt here. But we take that for granted. There's things that go on inside the government that are absolutely corrupt, absolutely freaking corrupt. And the more that stuff grows and also the more exposure it gets because of social media and because the way people can share information and the way you can,

Google information. It's just a different world. And I think that the amount of information that's available is going to start to become a light on a lot of the corruption that's in the U.S. government. Yeah. In now and it's going to get even more so in the future. Yeah. Yeah. When you get exposed for being like a whatever, some corrupt person, like in a position of power, it seems like there's an element of shame that goes.

along with it when you get caught, then again, I'm no expert in Afghanistan, so I don't know. But it seems like it's just so more accepted in certain places, you know. Yeah, well, like look at what just happened with the Cuomo guy from CNN. Yeah. Why did they get that? Well, because he had texts going back and forth. That wouldn't have happened 20 years ago, maybe. Were we texting 20 years ago?

Yeah. Not too much. The first time I ever texted. was we were in Vegas with Task Unit Bruges and Leif and Seth were texting. And they started texting me. And I'm like, what are you doing? Just call me or whatever because you're dumb, right? You don't know what's happening.

I'm like, just freaking call me. They're like, well, we'll send you a text when we get to wherever. And I'm like, let's call me. Why are you going to text me? And then sure enough, I'm sitting in some bar somewhere and it's super loud and get the text. And then just responding. Yeah. It's like, yeah, they remember the teen, what do you call it, T9 word, you know, the one.

It's not now like a phone. It's like actual key. Well, I got to, I got to say I had a Blackberry. Hell yeah. When I was the Admiral's aide, I got issued to Blackberry. Yeah, that was that. And so then I had the Blackberry. And once you have a Blackberry, it was hard to do anything else because they were freaking a super squared away little rig.

Yeah. Even my, I got the first iPhone. The very first iPhone that came out, Stoner went and got in line. And got us both iPhones and three days later you had like a three day return policy I took it back got I got my got my blackberry back huh the blackberry was a squared away little rig and then now it gets crushed yeah now it gets crushed by a well it gets crushed by the iPhone for sure kind of everything because they thought they knew they thought they had a lock yeah they were arrogant yeah you got to be blackberry was arrogant isn't it funny how like even

when you say, I texted, like texting is so new that we, the language didn't even catch out. We just assume that, okay, text is now a verb. So now we got to accommodate, you know, so because before then, text is a noun. Now it's a noun and a verb. So now you need past tense, present tense, future, you know, all these additional things. Right. You're over here. Hey, I'm just saying English major.

You relate to this kind of stuff. So you're like, oh yeah, he texted me. It's like, is texted a word? Well, I guess it is now. What's the past tense for text? Text. Just text? He texted me?

Texted in the past. Texted, right? That's what I just said. T-X-T and then E-D, yeah, texted. Yeah. Texted. But see how that's like a question? Texting.

Kind of texting. Yeah, we're not sure. It sounds weird. Texted doesn't sound quite right. Yeah. That's a weird word to say. Yeah. So we got to be careful that.

Yeah, we do. Very careful. So there's corruption out there. Yep. Lots of craziness in the world Like I said, try and make your world As squared away as you can Yeah

How do we do that? Well We have to stay capable, I'll tell you that Stay capable, stay healthy How about that? You should just go with The first thing in the top of your head That you've utilized

Say like, hey, I was tired the other day And I went and tried the new Freaking pre-workout And it was savage And I ended up jacking big steel Yeah. Okay. I will. But it's not that story because when I tried it, when I took some pre-workout, I tried it a long time ago. When I took some pre-workout, hey, I wasn't tired. I just did it for the mind-body. Our pre-workout? Okay. For the mind-body connection experience while working out. Didn't let me down full on. And it's kind of, and it's different. You can feel the difference like when you don't take it because I don't take it all the time. Yeah. So that was my experience recently. That was day before yesterday.

Is there a moment where you say, oh, feeling this certain mode right now, going to jump into, I'm going to get that little extra hitter right now. Yes. And what is it? What is it feeling? What do you mean the feeling that compels that behavior? Yes. Yes.

It's pretty random. It's not when I'm tired, though. Tired because it doesn't have enough caffeine for me to be like, oh, I'm tired. I need to take this for the tiredness. Two scoops? That's whatever, almost 200 milligrams of caffeine. Come on, bro. What are you a crackhead?

I'm not ready for the two scoenix. Coups yet. Dude, JP at 5 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. He dry scooped the new pre-workout. Yeah. Chased it with sour apple sniper.

Dry scooped another one and chased it again. Yeah. That's a little bit beyond my consumption capabilities. Either way. Yes, pre-workout. I did that. I would say the more significant. experience is with the energy drinks.

That's the one. That's the one that gets you. Yeah. And very, very often. Like, I drink them a lot. How often you drink them? I would say pretty much every day. Oh, okay.

Just one a day, you know? Mango, by far. 100%? By far, yeah. Do you have anything else on standby? Yeah, kind of the rest of them. Okay. The citrus I don't really drink as much.

Okay. But either way, this is what you do midday. Okay. So I wake up. I don't really eat breakfast anymore. Me neither. Yeah. So before lunch, I have one of those.

That's good. That's the good one. By one of those, you mean one of these energy drinks? Discipline go. Yes, energy drink. Healthy energy drink. I heard Henry Gracey reached out to you on me utilizing the term, energy drink.

Yeah. Did he send a cease and desist? No, no, no. He liked it. Okay. Props to Henner. Yes, he says that by the way. So yeah, energy drinks that are healthy.

No sugar. Sweet with monk fruit. Good for you. healthier. You're better off after you drink them. Legitimately good for you. Yep. You pay no back-end health price with these energy drinks. So yes, one a day is good. Here's another front-end investment you can make into your life, into your world,

is get joint warfare, get super krill. So that way you can proactively fight the mayhem that you're causing to your own joints. It's true. You know how like you take things for granted? joints are that and as far as back to my experience I have been taking my joints for granted luckily I haven't like had any kind of terrible learning experience to remind me of that I just every once in a while I get hit with it like for how old I am I feel like I don't have any joint problems yeah and you got to you know what you got to do too you got to continue

to do you got to continue to do the work yeah man you got to you don't surrender any positions yeah don't surrender any positions yeah don't surrender any Like your workout positions like for me overhead squat. Yeah over it's got like I hurt my arm real bad remember when Dean Lisch and I could not lock out my arm. I could not do an overhead squat Couldn't do it zero and then finally it started healing and it took months and months and months by the time it was healed My body had kind of forgot how to do an overhead squat. Yeah, and so the first time I tried to do an overhead squat again my body forgot how to do it and And it felt terrible and I couldn't use any weight like barely any weight. I was using the bar.

And part of that little ego in the back of my mind, the little complacency in the back of my mind was like, you know what? Overhead squat's not that big of a deal. You should, you know, you don't really need to do overhead squat. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, and then I said to myself, no. If you surrender that movement. If you don't do that movement, it's going to go away forever. Yeah.

So I'm very cognizant of that. That's why another thing, like going deep on squats, the minute you're like, well, you know, I don't need to go that deep. I'm going to go heavy, so I'm going to go less deep. No, actually don't do that. Yeah, correct. You want to do that occasionally? Okay, I get it.

We're doing muscle confusion, right? But don't, do you got to keep those movements alive, man? Keep it alive. And now that you meant that's what reminded me of that deep squats. So like, okay, so deep squats, if you, let's say, because some people don't have what? the ankle, like mobility or for that. But if you have the ankle mobility and then you don't do them for a while and then try do them, you'll feel like, oh, wait, I got to get my ankle like mobility kind of back, you know?

And here's the thing. When you say you lose it forever, it's, and it's not like you stop doing it and then it's gone, gone. You stop doing it. Then when you start doing it, it's like you get it back, but not all of it. You paid like a little tax as time goes on. And the longer you wait, the longer it might take to get back. The bigger the tax, too.

Same with muscle ups when I could hurt my arm. Couldn't do muscle ups. Couldn't do them, you know? By the time I started doing muscle ups again, I could do one. Yeah. Like it was, and it was not fun. Yeah. And so then I was like, okay, well, today I'm going to do three.

In my whole workout, I'm going to do three muscle ups. You know what I mean? You doing it on the rings? Yeah, ring muscle ups. So it's one of those things. You know what this is? This is a little tool to you put in your brain to think when you have the moment where you're saying, you know what, I'm not going to do this.

take your exercise today. Just remember you're surrendering that movement. And I'm telling you please don't do it. So there you go. Don't surrender any movements. Don't take it for granted either. Take the joint worse fear. Take the krill oil.

That'll help physically keep your joints in the game. That's on top of you keeping it in the routine. Moke, you're going to need, let's face it, you're going to need to rebuild. If you're doing overhead squats, you're going to need to rebuild. Yes, sir. So you're going to need some milk, some extra additional protein that just so happens to taste like dessert banana cream pie if we're into it that's the new one banana cream bomber yeah who thought of that name you maybe it's good too the design is good i was on origin USA the website and they got

whoever designed that that website Pete i'm just assuming yeah but but well Pete definitely designed the the banana bomber thing yeah you know he's super into the you know that's good he's good man He likes his own designs. Oh, yeah. Respect. I'm like, just making a black bottle. Right banana on it. Yeah.

He sends me options. No, no, no, no. He sends me options. Yeah. What do you think of this? What do you think of this? I'm like, bro, right banana. So there you go.

Yeah, you like, you bring it back down. Like when, you know, because. Oh, yeah. Let's face it. Dude, if Pete was running, like, had full, full say, yeah. The freaking banana, the milk would come in like a giant banana shaped bottle. Oh, yeah.

Like, he'd get too. creative but then yeah then you're like the dichotomy and whatever bringing it back down to where it needs to be perfect things down a little bit it's perfect it's all perfect in my opinion so origin USA or yeah mercury made stuff oh wait but what about for the drinks you can get the drinks at wah-wah by the way you can also get everything at the vitamin shop so check those out and then you were saying origin USA you were saying origin USA you're talking about jeans jeans jeans all that stuff everything at origin is made in America Straight up even the materials are made in America.

It's an American economic thing. What do you call it? Cut of sex is recording right now, doesn't it? No, no. No, no. We painted yourself in a corner. No, we don't have to. It could be because it is a full on American thing.

Yes, you're true. It is. It's not American thing? I'll stand out. So, okay. So bringing back certain elements of the story. of the industry to the point where it's almost, it's kind of bringing back an industry.

Bring back all elements of the industry. Yeah, that's what we're doing. Freaking all in one straight up. Yeah, you can get geese, which you should definitely get some geese, which by the way, the geese are not, this isn't your, this isn't your father's geese. This isn't your mother's geese, this is a new deal. Those geese are so freaking nice.

Get yourself one of those geese. Also, just kind of FYI, what? We're making some stuff for hunting. Yeah. We're making a hunting. It's not just some stuff. We're making a hunting line. Yeah, like a bunch of things.

Yeah. So when you roll out in hunting season, you can do it wearing American made gear. We'll keep you posted on that. Yep. What else? You said the boots, jeans. There's some wallace. Cool accessories on there.

And I went. Accessories. You make it sound like that, but like look at the belt. You won't be like accessories. that I'm getting that belt. I'm getting that wallet. The wallet's kind of a minimalist wallet though. So if you're not into minimalist wallets,

then, you know, maybe there's a, I think there's a maximumist wallet too, not maximums, but there's a maximum list. More robust. There you go.

With the low cab coming in hot. I'm just trying to help. I'm just trying to. Nonetheless, a lot of good stuff on there, all made in America. And in good quality stuff. So it's like from top to bottom.

That's kind of the go-to when you think about it. So yeah, origin, origin, com also. Did I say jacofuel? I didn't joccofuel.com if you want that if you want that the supplement side of the house jockofield.com all good um yeah but yeah jacquil has store as well that's where you can get

discipline equals freedom stuff shirts apparel shirts hats hats hoodies hoodies are back in it's winter yeah it's kind of colder here and then there's the short locker which brief description short locker what do you got it is a creative um Let's just okay But on the basic level, it's a new shirt every month But the designs are a little bit different A little bit more There are more layers to the designs

You know, they're funner, I guess Remember when Jocko podcast there was a whole thing About layers? Yes There is still a whole thing about layers It's almost like it's just an underground It's part of it Yep

Just layers. So there's layers in the t-shirts Yep There's more to it than just a straight-furt design. If you listen, you know. If you listen, you know. If you listen, you know. If you're in the game, you know what's up.

Exactly. If you're not, you'll be like, oh, yeah. But if you could do. Yeah, so that's the whole thing about the layers as far as layers go. Look, if you're not in the game, you look at the design, you'd be like, oh, man, that's cool. And I get a cool one every month. Cool. But if you listen and you know, you know the other layers in it.

So now you get the cool design on the front end, but then you get the, you know, the meaning, the ad dish. The ad dish. The ad dish. The back in the back in. So, all good. Check that out. It's on jocco store.com. Hey, subscribe to the podcast.

Also subscribe to Jocko unraveling, rolling out some Christmas cheer with my boy, D.C. Talking about all kinds of lovely subjects. Grounded podcast. We've got the Warrior Kid podcast. Also, you can do in the underground. Speaking of underground. Jocker underground.com. We got a little something that we had to set up just in case tyrannical forces take over.

We got to have a place to go. We got a place to go. It's called jocco underground. jocco underground.com. If you want to help us in there, if you want to help us be ready for any contingencies that might unfold, you can subscribe. It's $8.18 a month. We got an additional little podcast on there. We answer your questions and whatnot.

If you can't afford it, it's cool. We still watch you in the game. Go to assistance at underground jaco underground.com. Assistance at jocco underground.com. There you go. It's true. Also, we have a YouTube channel, the video version of this podcast. Some excerpts on there and also some additional.

Content As it were You're gonna have to check it out To see what it is But yeah every once in a while We'll put some additional stuff on there That turns out to be interesting You're gonna see what Jocko

Can't Live Without Get that kind of video sometimes There you go Psychological Warfare MP3 Tracks to keep you on the path We got Flipside Canvas.com Dakota Meyer

Selling stuff to hang on your wall We got books Only Cry for the Livided I mentioned it today. It's Holly McKay's first book. We covered on podcast number 271. You can get that from joccoopublishing.com. Jockopublishing.com.

This is actually a book that I published. Why? Because it's a freaking epic story from somebody that spent time on the battlefield when ISIS was being fought and pushed back. And she interviewed people from ISIS, which is crazy. So if you want to check that out, you can go to joccopublishing.com.

Also, final spin. It's a story. It's a novel. It's a poem. It's a manuscript. It's a freaking wild emotional ride. Don't read it when you're in front of people because you might be crying. Don't read it when you've got to be quiet because you might be laughing.

Final spin. I wrote it. Leadership strategy and tactics. Field manual. The code, the evaluation of protocols. Desperninger field manual. Warrior Kid. One, two, three, and four.

That's the Christmas gift. That's the Christmas gift. You're wondering, oh, I want to get this little kid. That's the gift. Get them all books. All books. Way of the Warrior Kid. One, two, three, and four.

There is no better gift you can get for a kid than those books. If you got a little kid, get a Mikey and the Dragons. Little Mikey and the Dragons. let him learn to overcome fear about face by Colonel David Hackworth. I wrote the forward on the new version and then extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership.

Who I wrote with my brother Laif Babin. Speaking of Laif, we have a leadership consultancy if you need help inside your organization from a leadership perspective, which, if you have any issues inside your organization, whatever problems you have, they're leadership problems. Leadership is the solution.

Go to ashlamfront.com for that. If you want to come to one of our live events, You can check it out there. We also have the online training academy, extreme ownership.com. It's an online leadership training academy. You can bring your team in there. You can get everyone aligned. You can get your whole company engaged in that.

Or you can just do it yourself. But you don't become a good leader overnight. And you're not just born a good leader. Just like you're not born a good guitar player. You're not. I don't care who you are. You've got to pick up and practice and learn. That's what the academy is for.

Pick up, practice, learn for leadership. Go to Extreme Ownership.com. You want to ask me a question? I'm there. You can literally just sit there and talk to me. Three times a week. Two or three times a week, I'm there answering questions. Live.

So check that out. Extreme Ownership.com. If you want to help service members active and retired, their families, gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mom. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate to that or you want to get involved,

she is helping so many veterans go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want any more of my looming lectures, or you need more of Echo's random retorts, you can find us on the inner webs, on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook. Echoes at Echo Charles. I'm at Jack Woonick. Holly is on Instagram, on Twitter.

She's Holly S. McKay. Also holly mackay.com. That's where you can find her substack as well, where people, it's a new method of putting information out there. The substack, yeah. A lot of journalists are using it. It's kind of like a Patreon,

but it's not being controlled. And they're allowing free speech, which apparently Patreon, was not. Substack. Substack. It's cool. Finally, thanks to Holly.

You can hear what she does, the risk she takes to inform and educate the world. So thank you, Holly, for doing that. People who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. And someone has to uncover history. I liked what she said about history, history rough draft, the rough draft of history. So someone's got to go out and grab that information.

people like Holly, they go and do that. Thank you, Holly, for your hard work and bravery to make that happen. And if people in uniform out there, thank you for doing your best to confront and stop evil in the world and keep us all safe. And that includes our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe right here at home. And everyone else out there. There is evil in the world and there is good and we have to be on guard and we have to be vigilant.

Vigilant against evil. Vigilant against corruption. These thoughts and ideas can creep from person to person and from mind to mind like a disease. So stay vigilant. Stay prepared. Tell the truth. Look out for each other.

and and try and keep your part of the world try and make your part of the world as good as you can and help other people do the same and until next time zecho and jaco out