July 14, 2025 • 44 mins
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What’s the U.S. endgame in Afghanistan now—and what role does the Taliban really play?
In this episode of At the Boundary, host Jim Cardoso speaks with Dr. Jonathan Schroden, a non-resident fellow at the Global and National Security Institute (GNSI), to explore how U.S. foreign policy toward Afghanistan has evolved under the the most recent presidential administrations.
Schroden examines the administration’s transactional relationship with the Taliban, which prioritizes counterterrorism cooperation and human rights advocacy, while contrasting it with the Trump administration’s more rhetorical approach. The conversation also breaks down the threat landscape in Afghanistan, identifying ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan) as the primary concern, alongside Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP).
Key topics include:
· U.S. policy shifts from Trump to Biden
· The rise of ISIS-K and regional terrorism threats
· Challenges of working with the Taliban and neighboring powers
· The moral and strategic dilemmas of engagement
This episode offers a timely, candid look at one of America’s most complex foreign policy challenges.
Links to the Show:
• 2025 Notes from Cambridge Student Blog
• Jonathan Schroden’s Article in the Journal of Strategic Security
• “Policy Options for Securing U.S. Interests in Afghanistan” Decision Briefs
At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.
A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.
The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim Cardoso (00:00):
Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's
(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, apodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorfor genusi, and your host for at
the boundary. Today on the show,we're going to talk to genocide.
Non resident fellow, Dr Jonathanschroeden. He recently wrote
(00:36):
both a decision brief and alonger article in our journal of
strategic security, examiningforeign policy decisions about
Afghanistan to maintain andpromote US interest in that
consistently volatile country.
Jonathan will join us shortly.
Couple quick notes. First, we'reexcited about a new student blog
(00:56):
that debuted on our website thisweek. GNSI sent two USF students
may Burch and Kyle Rudd acrossthe pond to the international
security and intelligenceprogram at Cambridge University,
part of the world renownedCambridge security initiative.
It's a great opportunity forstudents to learn from the
world's leading academics andpractitioners in the security
(01:17):
and intelligence communities.
May and Kyle agreed to write ablog for us, letting us
experience the ISI program,along with them. Notes from
Cambridge is on our websiteright now, and there's a link in
the show notes. By the way, weplan to send up to four students
to isI every summer. That'ssomething you'd like to support.
Check our website for ways tosupport GNSI. And if you're a
(01:37):
student and it's something you'dlike to do, start building your
resume. Also want to mention amajor event happening in Tampa
Bay on October 13 through the15th. Cyber Bay 2025. Is a
collaboration between USF, newBellini College of artificial
intelligence, cybersecurity andcomputing, along with cyber
(01:57):
Florida, Bellini, capital, andthe USF Institute for ai plus x
cyberbay is where talent,technology and national security
converge to build the future ofdigital defense. GNSI will be
partnering on this event andproviding speakers and panelists
focused on the impacts ofcyberspace activities on
national security. We put aregistration link in the show
(02:21):
notes, and I highly recommendyou check it out. All right,
let's bring Dr Jonathan trodenGNSI, non resident fellow and
one of the world's leadingexperts on Afghanistan. He was
recently named Chief ResearchOfficer at the Center for naval
analysis, otherwise known as theCNA Corporation. All in all, he
spent over 20 years with CNA. Hetook a small break in 2023 to
(02:45):
assume the high profile role ofresearch director for the
Bipartisan CongressionalAfghanistan war commission. He
was also instrumental in helpingus build our policy dialogs
conference in Afghanistan lastNovember, which in turn led to
our first special issue of ourjournal of strategic security.
The special issue is dedicatedto Afghanistan, and Dr Sheridan
wrote the lead off articleentitled terrorism and
(03:07):
counterterrorism in theTaliban's Afghanistan. He's also
a Tampa Bay resident, so it'sour pleasure to have him live
and in person on at the boundarytoday. John, welcome to the
podcast. Thanks so much forhaving me. So before we get into
Afghanistan, let's you wereoriginally named the Chief
Research Officer at CNACorporation. Tell us a bit about
the CNA and what you're doingthere in your new
Jonathan Schroden (03:31):
role. Yeah, it's a great question. So CNA is
a not for profit, non partisanresearch and analysis
organization primarily based upin the DC area, and there are
two components to it. There is alargely Defense Department
component, which is called theCenter for naval analyzes, and
that is the federally fundedresearch and development center
(03:53):
for the Department of the Navy.
So it primarily supports theNavy and the Marine Corps, a lot
of different types of analysis,but really focused on helping
those two organizations be aseffective as they can be in
whatever missions they get askedby the President and the
Secretary of Defense toundertake. We also have a non
DoD part of CNA, which is calledthe Institute for Public
(04:13):
research, and they do a lot ofwork on homeland security
incident response, disasterresponse, support to the Federal
Aviation Administration and alot of other work for the sort
of non defense executive branchagencies. As the Chief Research
Officer, I've got a bunch ofdifferent duties, as you might
(04:36):
imagine, but first and foremostis to ensure that the work that
CNA is doing is of the utmostquality, and that the research
and analysis that we do supportsour sponsors in their mission to
the best of our ability to doso. And so I do a lot of
assessing the quality of ourwork, giving feedback to people.
(04:58):
But also looking systemically atour ability to do the work. So
for example, are we using themost cutting edge research tools
and methods? Do we have accessto the right types of data sets
and those types of things? Soit's a really interesting job. I
get to be involved in a lot ofdifferent things that CNA is
doing. It's fascinating everyday.
Jim Cardoso (05:18):
Yeah, and you get to stay, you live in Tampa. You
get to stay in the Tampa Bayarea for the most part,
traveling to DC every once in awhile. Of course, that's right,
yes, excellent, greatarrangement. Yeah, and CNA, now,
they've been around a while,right? We
Jonathan Schroden (05:29):
are, in fact, the nation's oldest operations
research organization, foundedin the midst of World War Two.
So yes, we've been around forover eight decades.
Jim Cardoso (05:38):
Wow. Okay, so a lot, a lot of capability there,
no doubt. So yeah, I would, Iwould check that out. We can put
a link to the show notes, maybeto your to your website as well,
so people can check that out. Solet's go ahead now that's let's
turn to Afghanistan a littlebit. You wrote two pieces for us
recently. First, you wrote adecision brief, which kind of
was more broadly, discussing thepolicy options available as the
(06:00):
Trump administration comes in.
What major differences have youseen between the Biden
administration and the Trumpadministration with respect to
Afghanistan?
Jonathan Schroden (06:09):
Yeah, it's an excellent question, and here
I'll start by giving an answer,sort of post collapse of Kabul
and sort of post ascendance ofthe Taliban government, because
obviously that happened early inthe Biden administration. So
when I when I speakcomparatively, I'll talk sort of
post Taliban takeover. What wesaw with the Biden
administration after thatoccurred was what I would call
(06:34):
sort of transactional, or, youknow, conditional engagement
with the Taliban, albeit notdirectly in Afghanistan. So the
US did not recognize the Talibanas the government of
Afghanistan. The Bidenadministration did not allow any
officials to actually travel toAfghanistan or engage with
members of the Taliban in Kabul,for example, for example. But
(06:56):
they did do a fair amount ofengagement with the Taliban's
political office and members ofthe Taliban who would travel
there in Doha in Qatar, and alot of what the Biden
administration tried to do wasto, you know, secure various
counterterrorism cooperate, youknow, maybe not deliberate
cooperation, or any type of, youknow, formal agreements, but at
(07:19):
least sort of informal means ofsharing information or trying to
get the Taliban to take certainactions on counterterrorism
interests, as well as trying toget the Taliban to be less
draconian in their stance onhuman rights, and especially
rights of women and girls. Andthere were sort of intermittent
(07:41):
engagements that would takeplace. The Biden administration
had a designated special envoyfor Afghanistan. They had one
that focused largely onsecurity, that was Thomas West.
And then they had another thatfocused largely on women and
girls rights and human rights,and that was Rina Amiri. And the
two of them did lots ofengagements all around the
(08:02):
world, with other countries,special envoys in Doha, with the
Taliban, with lots of I went tonumerous Think Tank events at
which one or both of them wereengaging, sort of the expert
community as well. And so thatwas sort of largely the Biden
approach. Now the Trumpadministration when it came in
on the campaign trail, Trumptalked about being a lot tougher
(08:26):
with the Taliban. He talkedabout trying to get them to give
back the weapons that they hadcaptured in their takeover of
Afghanistan. He talked about thepossibility of re establishing
US presence at Bagram Air Base,which we obviously turned over
to the Afghan security forcesand then was eventually captured
by the Taliban. He talked abouta lot more economic and
(08:48):
potentially sanction typepressure on the Taliban as well.
So he talked a much, you know,much more pressurized sort of
tougher approach. What we'veseen in practice is a little
less than that, shall we say.
The really, the administrationhas not done a whole lot on
Afghanistan. So far. They've notsort of made, you know,
(09:11):
published, any kind of actualpolicy. I have not heard
anything sort of behind thescenes that there is some kind
of, like National SecurityCouncil policy in the works, as
best I can tell. No one isactively working on that type of
thing, and they have, then theyhave not named any special
envoys for Afghanistan, either.
(09:32):
So it's been a lot, you know,less attention overall placed on
them. What we have seen in termsof actual actions, though, has
been interesting, for example,very early in the Trump
administration, and without muchin the way, or if any prior
notice, suddenly the WhiteHouse's lead for hostage
(09:56):
negotiations and sort of, youknow, trying to get. Uh,
wrongfully detained Americansfreed. Uh, Adam bowler,
suddenly, he's in Kabul meetingwith the Taliban's uh, acting
foreign minister, and ZalmayKhalilzad, who you know played a
large role in negotiating uswithdrawal from Afghanistan, was
(10:17):
there with them, and theysuccessfully negotiated the
release of an American citizenwho had been, in our view,
wrongfully detained for over twoyears by the Taliban. And as
part of the the quid pro quo tosecure his release, the Trump
administration agreed to de listthe sort of infamous Acting
(10:37):
Minister of Interior, Sira JudenHaqqani, from the State
Department's Rewards for Justicelist, which was a pretty
significant move. I mean, thisis a guy who undoubtedly has the
blood of, you know, numerous, ifnot many, US citizens on his
hand, and certainly vastly moreAfghans. And so they agreed to
delist him in order to securethe release of this US citizens.
(11:00):
So we've seen some, you know,some definite changes in
approach, both in terms ofperhaps less focus, but the
focus that has been applied hasbeen in stark contrast to sort
of red lines that the Bidenadministration had, for example,
sending officials to Kabul.
Jim Cardoso (11:17):
So, I mean, you talk about, I mean, I mean, the
Trump administration has donesome things, but you did also
say that really, really, notmuch. It's almost been a, I
won't say disengagement, butjust has been a lot of attention
from the Trump administration. Alot of other things have been
going on as we watch the Trumpadministration, you know, pursue
from when they, when they, whenthey took over. But, I mean, can
(11:38):
the US really afford todisengage from Afghanistan
without strategic consequences.
I
Jonathan Schroden (11:45):
think the there's sort of security and
perhaps a moral component tothat question. So you could, you
could arguably disengage on someof the humanitarian things that
the Biden administration wasdoing. So, you know, overall,
the Biden administration spentsomething like $2 billion on
(12:06):
humanitarian aid to Afghanistan,which it largely routed, or
almost entirely routed throughthird party, international
organizations, nonprofits andthe like, to try and avoid
having any of that money, youknow, benefit the Taliban, or
end up in the Taliban's coffersin any way. So far, what we've
seen from the Trumpadministration is vastly less
(12:28):
interest in the provision ofhumanitarian aid, not just to
Afghanistan, but but all aroundthe world. I mean, the the
obvious, obviously the completedisestablishment of us a ID as
well as, you know, specificthings like the Food for Peace
program, and you know, some ofthese major programs that the US
had had for a long time focusedon humanitarian assistance, this
(12:50):
administration has quite clearlysaid we're not interested in
doing those types of things. Andso you can disengage in that
way, and and probably, you know,sort of get away with it, if you
will, to be a little bit flipwhen it comes to US national
security interests, althoughthere is, of course, a moral
(13:10):
argument that one could makethat, you know, if you, if you
withhold that type ofhumanitarian assistance, then
there's going to be a lot moresuffering in places like
Afghanistan, and we can have along debate about to what extent
the US should be responsible forthat. Should feel responsible
for it, et cetera. But that'ssort of a fact of the matter on
(13:31):
the security side, though, Ithink it's a little bit less
obvious that the US can orshould disengage from
Afghanistan and expect noeventual blowback from that type
of decision. And I know we'regoing to talk a little bit more
in depth about sort of terrorismand terrorist groups there, so I
won't go too far into the weedshere now, but suffice to say,
(13:53):
there are a number of activeterrorist groups still present
in Afghanistan and the sort ofPakistan border region. Every
time those groups have hadpressure removed from them, they
have shown the ability toreconstitute capability and to
cause problems beyond theborders of Afghanistan. And so
(14:14):
the idea that the US could orshould completely withdraw its
attention from those particularproblem sets, I think is
problematic. From a US nationalsecurity focus,
Jim Cardoso (14:27):
you know, you rewrote the decision brief for
for GNSI, and in it yououtlined, you know, policy
options for the Trumpadministration, and you had four
different policy possibilities.
Which one do you think is, whathave you seen so far, and what
do you expect going forward?
(14:51):
Yeah,
Jonathan Schroden (14:53):
I've seen, perhaps bits and pieces of of
each of them, and which is,which is fair. I mean, I Yes.
Said in the article that thesewere not mutually exclusive
options, and some degree of menupicking from among them may be
an appropriate way to sort ofthink about things overall. I
would say I've seen the mostalignment with the fourth option
(15:14):
I listed, which is effectivelyde prioritizing Afghanistan and
ignoring it as much as youpossibly can. Yeah, and to your
point, there are obviously a lotof higher priority things going
on. Certainly the Department ofDefense is, you know, bore
sighted on China, in its in itsplanning and acquisitions, and a
lot of other things. Althoughoperationally, of course, it's
(15:36):
fighting multiple, shall we callthem, campaigns against Iran,
against the Houthis, supportingUkraine, on and off, against the
Russians. So there's a lot goingon that is not Afghanistan. And
certainly Afghanistan doesn'tneed to be a top tier priority.
Shouldn't be even under theBiden administration, Thomas
(15:58):
West, the special envoy at somepoint, stated that his express
orders from the White House wereto keep Afghanistan off their
radar. And so I think that's insome ways, you know, a continued
goal is to have this be as low apriority as possible. So that's
primarily what we've seen, butwe have also seen elements of
(16:19):
the third option, which isconditional engagement. So
again, the sort of release ofthe US citizen is an example of
that. We haven't actually seenincrease in economic or
political pressure on theTaliban, which is a little
interesting to me, given thesort of rhetoric we heard on the
campaign trail. So we haven'tseen much of that. And in fact,
(16:40):
the delisting of Siraj Khani wasan interesting move that I
certainly didn't anticipatecoming. And then on the first
part, sort of increased militaryor counterterrorism pressure we
haven't seen that specific toAfghanistan, although it has
been publicly stated bySebastian Gorka, who's the the
(17:03):
lead for counterterrorism in theWhite House, that one of the
things Trump uh did early on wasto devolve authorities for
counterterrorism targeting thatwere closely held by the Biden
White House at the sort of NSClevel in The Trump
administration, they have pushedthose authorities down more to
(17:23):
the combatant commander level,or in some cases, even below
that. And so that has enabled,you know, more aggressive and
more rapid strikes againsttargets in Somalia and against
the Houthis. We haven't yet seenthose authorities applied to
Afghanistan. And you know,there, you could speculate as to
why that is, either they haven'tfound targets that would warrant
(17:44):
it, or the intelligence isn'tthere to sort of support that.
That's sort of my myspeculation. Yeah, it's hard to
Jim Cardoso (17:52):
say how much capability we have to find, you
know, the old find, fix andfinish motif,
Jonathan Schroden (17:57):
and those capabilities may be, you know,
saturated in in prosecutingstrikes against ISIS Somalia and
Houthis, which, which we've seena number of those types of
actions in recent months.
Jim Cardoso (18:10):
So you also wrote the the article for the journal
strategic security, a littlelittle more in depth. And you
really, you know, kind of youdig more into the terrorist
aspects that are going on inAfghanistan. So could you
briefly describe, you know,there's three. You kind of
settled on three main terroristgroups of most interest in
(18:32):
Afghanistan, and whatdistinguishes them? That's kind
of part one and then part two.
You can kind of delve into whichone should we care the most
about, and why?
Jonathan Schroden (18:42):
Sure, so, yeah, so the US military, when
it was in Afghanistan, was veryfond of saying there's 20
designated terroristorganizations operating in this
region. And while that'stechnically true, if you look at
the State Department's ForeignTerrorist Organization list,
there's really three that arethe ones that the US cares the
most about, and those are alQaeda, the Islamic State
(19:04):
Khorasan province, and thePakistani Taliban, which is
usually abbreviated TTP. So AlQaeda, obvious historical,
longtime enemy of the US,responsible for 911 they are
still present in Afghanistan.
The degree to which they'represent is a bit of an item of
sort of hot debate, or at leastit was during the Biden
(19:30):
administration, between theBiden intel community and folks
like Special Envoy West and theUN the United Nations terrorism
monitoring team. So the Bidenadministration, their argument
was that al Qaeda was at a touse an exact phrase from them at
a historical Nadir, and TomWest, at one point, said that he
(19:55):
his conclusion was that al Qaedais capability to. In Afghanistan
was the lowest it had been sinceOsama bin Laden moved there from
Sudan pre 911 and that was thesort of assessment of the US
intelligence community. The UNmonitoring group, had a
different view, which is theirtheir conclusion was there are
(20:17):
still several 100, possibly asmany as 400 members of Afghan al
Qaeda in Afghanistan. And whilethey haven't, you know, they
haven't performed any externaloperations from Afghanistan.
There's no indication that, youknow there are sort of Osama bin
Laden 911 style training campsor planning activities, or those
(20:41):
types of things happening thatthere is nonetheless this cadre
of very dangerous people who areactive and who are actively
connected to other affiliates ofal Qaeda, other members of the
International jihadistcommunities, and are still doing
nefarious things that we shouldbe concerned about. So there was
this sort of, you know, debate,and honestly, I don't think any
(21:03):
of us know for sure the truthmay be somewhere in the middle,
as it often is when you haveintelligence entities that
disagree, but that's sort of thecase for al Qaeda. The bottom
line there, though, is Al Qaedais a much diminished
organization, at least inAfghanistan from what it was
historically the US killed binLaden's successor as the head of
(21:28):
al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri,about a year after the
withdrawal from Kabul, roughlythree years to today's date, and
Al Qaeda has not publicly nameda successor. It's sort of widely
believed that Saif al Adil iswho was the al Qaeda number
three guy for a long time, isprobably the current leader of
(21:50):
al Qaeda, but they've notannounced that publicly, and
nobody sort of really knowswhere he is. He was long known
to be in Iran for a long time.
Some people believe he's stillthere. Other people argue that
he has, in fact, emigrated toAfghanistan at this point in
time. But nobody really knowsfor sure, at least not publicly
(22:12):
so. So Al Qaeda still exists. Itis still dangerous. We should
not forget about them or takeour eye off of that ball. But
they are much diminished inAfghanistan, from where they
were, the Islamic State Khorasanprovince, or ISK for short, is
the group that pretty mucheveryone agrees is the major
(22:32):
concern in Afghanistan. They area virulent arm of the Islamic
State, sort of enterprise, ifyou will. Their capabilities
have ebbed and flowed over time,but they have always shown an
ability to rebound from lossesthat they sustained, either at
(22:53):
the hands of the United Statesor at the hands of the Taliban
or both. And so the US, evenduring the Biden administration,
was very clear that is k wastheir primary concern. The same
is true of pretty much everyregional country and other
countries that pay attention towhat's happening in Afghanistan.
Everybody believes that thisgroup is the major problem. And
(23:13):
what's interesting is theTaliban also believe that, and
there's sort of two reasons. Oneis the if you think about, you
know, challenges to theTaliban's complete control and a
security sense of Afghanistan.
Yes, there are some Afghanresistance groups that you know
have the ability to challengethem in certain areas. But those
groups capabilities arerelatively low and and relative
(23:36):
and they're, they're relativelywell contained. ISK is the
predominant group that couldchallenge the Taliban's complete
control of Afghanistan from asecurity perspective, it's also
the most virulent ideologicalcompetitor to the Taliban. The
Taliban are a religious movementwho claim to be the defenders of
(23:59):
the faith in both this region,but also in some instances, much
more broadly than that. And isks one of their primary vectors
of attack against the Taliban,is to say that, in fact, that's
not true, that the Taliban lostthe way that they have failed to
continue to act in sort of apure jihadist sense, for
(24:20):
example, by engaging with theUnited States at all. And so ISK
argues that in fact, they arethe vanguard of pure Islam in
this region. And the Taliban areapostates at this point in time.
So for both of those reasons,the Taliban hate this group as
well, and have taken significantactions to try and limit them,
(24:45):
to reduce their capability, etcetera. And those activities
have had mixed results. So ISKstill maintains a lot of
capability. They have not beenable to attack the. US,
homeland, but they have carriedout, over the last year, year
and a half, some verysignificant attacks in Russia,
(25:05):
in a couple of Europeancountries. They were
unsuccessful, but were on theverge of something fairly
significant. You know, there wasa Taylor Swift concert that had
to be canceled, for example,because of a no kidding ISIS
threat,
Jim Cardoso (25:21):
catastrophe, right there economic, economic impact.
Jonathan Schroden (25:28):
So, you know, so there were some real examples
of ISK being able to reach outand touch people beyond the
borders of Afghanistan, in invery violent and and in some
ways, horrific ways. So thatgroup is still a major concern.
And then you have the TTP, thePakistani Taliban, and they are
primarily of concern toPakistan. They don't have the
(25:50):
capability, nor do they have anysort of expressed wherewithal,
to attack much beyond theborders of Pakistan or the
Afghan Pakistan border region,and the US is not nearly as
concerned about TTP, nor aremost other countries really.
It's mostly Pakistan that seesthem as a sort of existential
(26:12):
threat to the Pakistani state,and Pakistan has done all kinds
of things to try and deal withthat. They've they've tried
targeting them, they've triednegotiating with them, they've
tried pressuring the Taliban todo something about them, because
they argue that the TTP havesanctuary on the Afghan side of
the border, and that the Talibanare either actively or tacitly
(26:32):
supporting them as well. And soyou have this sort of like tit
for tat between Pakistan and theTaliban, the Afghan Taliban,
about the Pakistani Taliban,which is all very ironic,
because, as you know, and asmany people listening would
appreciate, the Pakistanissupported the Afghan Taliban on
their side of the border andprovided them sanctuary against
(26:53):
US forces and the Afghangovernment for decades. And so
this is you know, as they say,when you keep snakes up your
sleeve, you are likely to getbitten. And Pakistan is being
bitten right now, and they don'tlike it. They do not
Jim Cardoso (27:07):
but they're not really TTP, UNC them as a
significant concern to the US,no. And in fact, the after the
even across the region beyondlike Pakistan after the
Jonathan Schroden (27:18):
US withdrew from Afghanistan, I would say it
cared vastly less about GDP thanit did when it was present. Do
Jim Cardoso (27:26):
you think that the US? I mean, you know, you
mentioned al Qaeda, they'rewell, I mean, a lot of Americans
recognize that name go I thinkI've heard of them. They had
something to do with 911 whichwas, yeah, they were the genesis
of 911 they had been degradedsignificantly. As you said,
Where do you think the US? So,what do you think the US stands
on that? I mean, you talkedabout that, but maybe you know a
(27:46):
little bit deeper on that, interms of, you know us, how they
viewed al Qaeda as this kind ofhistoric enemy. And Al Qaeda is
known, you know, hatred of theUS, with ISK more emerging, but
now seen as the most concernfrom the US and their
international community. Do youthink that the activities of the
(28:09):
US, whatever they may be,although, as we talked about, a
lot of it has been kind ofalmost ignoring the problem. Do
you think that's going to makethat shift? Or where do you
think the US is going to
Jonathan Schroden (28:17):
sit on that?
I think the US is stillconcerned about al Qaeda, I
don't get the sense that we havecompletely taken our eye off of
that ball in terms of writingthem off entirely. As you know,
we don't need to be concernedabout these guys anymore.
They're a washed uporganization. They don't have
any capability that I do notsense that in any form or
fashion. The and there are stilla few, you know, high value
(28:40):
targets, if you want to use thatterm associated with al Qaeda, I
mean say fall Auto is, you know,an original member of the band,
if you will, one of the fewsurviving and someone who had,
you know, some degree ofresponsibility for 911 and I'm
Sure the US would love to exactsome type of, you know, Justice
(29:02):
on him, in some form or fashion.
So there is, I have no doubt, acontinuing effort to try and
locate him, and, you know, someof the other surviving senior
members of al Qaeda and eithercapture or kill them as a result
of their involvement in 911 sothere is sort of that that, you
(29:24):
know, desire to not sort offorget what these guys did, and
to use whatever capabilities westill have to try and bring them
to some form of justice.
Jim Cardoso (29:34):
How much should, or how much are the US cooperating
with the partners in the regionagainst these different groups.
And you kind of mentioned howeach group has a different, you
know, main, you know, enemy thatis is more concerned about their
growth and their activities.
How, how do you see the US is,is, again, not just inside
(29:55):
Afghanistan, but even acrossoutside of. Afghanistan as sort
of regional problems as thesethings spill over. Where do you
where do you see the US goingnow, or taking that as far as
their their their partnershipwith other players in the region
against these groups, or evenplayers outside the region who
see these group, the growth ofthese groups, maybe could be,
you know, Saudi partners, orthings like that, who see the
(30:15):
growth of these groups as a as athreat.
Jonathan Schroden (30:19):
So that's a really good question. And as you
know, the US doesn't have muchin the way of friends, reliable,
trusted friends in this region.
You can start with Afghanistanitself. The Taliban are there,
obviously, and we talked abouthow we have this sort of shared
enemy in the Islamic Stateduring the Biden administration,
(30:39):
they sort of made clear thatthey had had been sharing some
form or fashion of informationwith the Taliban. They said it
wasn't actionable intelligence,but they did give the Taliban
information that might help themdo some things against ISK, and
there were numerous engagementsthat were reported publicly,
albeit with very little detailbetween senior officials of the
(31:01):
CIA and the Taliban'sequivalent, which is called GDI.
And so you sort of assume thatin those engagements that US was
again giving information, orperhaps establishing some type
of information sharingarrangements with the Taliban.
Beyond that, though, you knowthat there's no indication that
(31:22):
the Trump administration hasdone much of that, or if they
have, they haven't said anythingabout it publicly. And you know,
if you look beyond the Taliban,certainly the US is never going
to get to a situation where, youknow, sort of embodies full
throated partnership with theTaliban. From a counterterrorism
(31:43):
perspective, we just don't trustthem in that way. Beyond
Afghanistan, if you look atIran, clearly they're not going
to be helpful to us, even beforewe bombed their nuclear sites,
and certainly not after. You canlook at the Central Asian
states. I think there was hopein the wake of the US
withdrawal, that the US might beable to negotiate a presence in
(32:06):
one of those countries for somespecial operations or other
counterterrorism assets. Theycertainly tried. There's public
statements that they tried tonegotiate like that, but those
countries are still largelyunder the political sway of
Russia. And with the war inUkraine and the US support to
Ukraine, Russia is in noheadspace to allow the US to
(32:28):
maintain any type of military,you know, presence, either
overtly or otherwise, in theCentral Asian states. And so
that leaves you with Pakistan,and certainly the US, you know,
relationship with Pakistan hasebbed and flowed over the course
of the war in Afghanistan, butit ended on a real sour note,
right the Taliban Ascendance inKabul, which the US sort of
(32:52):
looks at Pakistan as having hada very strong hand in via their
longstanding allowance of theTaliban to have sanctuary in
Pakistan, for its seniorleaders, to live there, et
cetera. So the US leftAfghanistan with a very bad
taste in its mouth for Pakistanand a very, very poor
relationship with Pakistan. Andthat has largely continued. I
(33:16):
mean, there's been some highpoints. The Trump administration
did negotiate the sort ofsurrender of an ISIS K member
that it believed was responsiblefor the attack at Abbey gate
that killed 13 US servicemembers, and President Trump
talked about that in his Stateof the Union address. But beyond
(33:37):
that, there's not much lovebetween the US and Pakistan at
this point in time, so you don'treally have a lot in the way of
great options in the region,which is why the US approach to
counterterrorism in Afghanistanright now is primarily still the
over the horizon approach thatthe Biden administration
crafted, which entails flyingdrones from various bases in the
(34:00):
on the Arabian Peninsula,presumably through Pakistani
airspace, and lingering themover Afghanistan for as long as
they can in order to collectwhatever intelligence they can.
But if you think about how farthat distance is, even for
unmanned drones which have theability to fly for quite some
(34:20):
time. It's still a long ways togo there and back, which leaves
you with very little time. Youknow, as sort of a percentage of
each sortie, you have a verysmall percentage that you're
actually able to collectintelligence over Afghanistan.
And so that's primarily wherethe US is. There have been some
experiments, apparently, toidentify drones that would have
(34:41):
longer loitering times overAfghanistan. The extent to which
those have been put intooperational practice has not
been publicly made known, andhonestly, I don't, I don't know
either, but there are, you know,in the paper that you reference.
To the Journal of strategicsecurity paper, I do give a
(35:01):
number of other specific ideasthat the US might think about
using in order to do better interms of collecting Intel,
because ultimately, that's whatwe need, right? We need to know
where, where the bad guys are.
What are they up to? And we justdon't have the same level of
visibility that we had when wewere there. I mean, general
(35:23):
McKenzie, the GNSI director,now, when he was still the
CENTCOM commander, testifiedright that we had maybe one to
2% of the capability postwithdrawal to see what was
happening in Afghanistan that wedid when we were on the ground.
So obviously, it's a verylimited picture that we're able
to keep track of now. Yeah,
Jim Cardoso (35:43):
there's some great over the horizon capabilities,
but compared to what we had whenwe were in country and with the
human capabilities as well, inaddition to the technical
capabilities, yeah, it's just,it just can't be the same. So
that's something we have to workaround. One last question, I'm
going to pull back a little bit,and this one just, I'm kind of
curious on this, and this ismore of a, I guess, more of a
(36:07):
political than a policyquestion. And I know we don't
get too much into the policyaspects of it, but I'm curious,
you know, you talk about, youknow, partnering in any way with
the Taliban, or working with theTaliban, how does the Trump
administration right? For thatmatter, any administration
(36:27):
navigate the moral aspects ofthat, the Human Rights aspects
of of who the Taliban are andhow they've proven themselves to
be, versus the unsavory realityof they are the government of
Afghanistan. It's something thatI think multiple administrations
have struggled with, and willcontinue to struggle with. How
(36:50):
is that navigated going forward?
Jonathan Schroden (36:52):
It's, I mean, it's a it's sort of the million
dollar question, not only forthe Trump administration. It was
for the Biden administration aswell, and really, for every
country around the world, right?
You have this regime that prettymuch every country looks at and
says, what you're doing ishorrific, especially to women
and girls. There is no othercountry. I mean, even the most
(37:13):
authoritarian countries you canimagine do not treat their women
and girl populations the way theTaliban are treating them, and
certainly within the Islamicworld, there are no other
Islamic countries. I mean, asstrict as some of those
countries are with respect tothe way women dress and how
they're allowed to behavepublicly, their strictures are
(37:34):
still vastly less restrictivethan what the Taliban have put
in place. So they are theTaliban are an outlier in every
sense of the word when it comesto sort of international stage
and human rights on the on theinternational stage. So every
country that engages with themhas the same challenge. To what
extent is your engagementlegitimizing them as a
(37:58):
government and thereforecontributing to their ability to
enact these policies, andconversely, to what extent would
disengagement further thesuffering of the Afghan people
by not allowing the delivery ofhumanitarian aid and these types
of things? So it is a verythorny path to walk, and we've
seen various iterations andattempts at this. Some countries
(38:22):
have decided to be a bit morerealpolitik towards the Taliban
and to sort of take them more asthey are with the under, with
the sort of hope, if you will,that if you engage them in a
limited way and try and buildsome degree of trust with them
(38:42):
that maybe then you can expandthe conversation to things that
are in this vein, right? So morespecifically, for example, if
you engage the Taliban on thingslike climate change, which is
impacting Afghanistan in waysthat are detrimental to the
Afghan people, and that theTaliban may actually want to do
(39:03):
something about, things likewater scarcity, food scarcity.
Maybe you could build somebridges there. The Taliban have
also taken, somewhatsurprisingly, I think, a very
strong stance against thecultivation of narcotics,
precursors, you know, Poppy,most notably, but also various
plants, you know, marijuana,things that lead to the plants
(39:25):
that they used to build variousspeed drugs as well, the Taliban
have clamped down on a lot ofthat which a lot of European
countries for years had beentrying to Do and wanting, you
know, the Afghan government, todo, and so, you know, maybe you
could work with the Taliban onCounter Narcotics as a bridge of
(39:46):
mutual interest. So there havebeen these attempts to try and,
okay, let's, let's set asidethe, you know, the al Qaeda
part, which we would like you todo something about. But the
Taliban don't want to, becausethey have this historic.
Relationship there. Let's setaside for the moment, human
rights. Let's focus on thisother group of topics that we
have mutual interest in, andmaybe over time, we could then
(40:08):
start to broach, you know, intothese other other areas that
it's, it's a it is as reasonablea strategy as one might be able
to craft, I think. But thecountries that have tried to do
that so far, and the UN hastried to walk this path as well,
have found it very, verydifficult to get beyond those
(40:30):
initial set of topics. TheTaliban are just steadfastly
refusing to move intodiscussions on some of these
other topics, and they haveproven themselves willing and
able to absorb a vast amount ofinternational pressure. So the
sort of Converse argument is,you've been doing all these
(40:52):
engagements. You haven't gottenanything for it. You should stop
doing that, and instead, put thescrews to them. There is little,
if any, indication that puttingthe screws to the Taliban will
change their behavior in anymeaningful way at all. So it is
the million dollar question, andthere is no great answer to
that. Unfortunately,
Jim Cardoso (41:13):
it's, you know, it's not, not the end the
podcast on sort of a downbeatbut, I mean, it is just the
challenge. That's why we havethese discussions to get these
insights out there and helppolicy makers, whatever the
policy for Afghanistan is goingto be going forward. And I think
we would both probably agreethat it should be something
(41:33):
beyond kind of almost nothinglike it seems to be right now,
but some significant challengesfor either the Trump
administration, oradministrations beyond him, and
how they deal with Afghanistan.
Any final thoughts as we closeout the podcast,
Jonathan Schroden (41:48):
I would just say, you know it Afghanistan has
been a challenging topic for theUnited States for a long time.
We put a lot of attention on itin the last 20 years, and there
were probably some detrimentaleffects that accrued from that
much attention. But if you goback more than, you know, pre,
pre, 2001 we put very littleattention on it, and there were
(42:09):
negative effects that accruedfrom that too. So, you know
this, this pendulum swing fromalmost no attention to probably
way too much back to almost noattention certainly doesn't look
like the right approach from alonger, you know, term,
historical lens. So I wouldreally like to see something in
the middle, right? It doesn'thave to be a lot, but it
(42:30):
shouldn't be none, or shouldn'tbe almost none. And so that's
really what I would hope theTrump administration would would
sort of find its way to at somepoint in the near future. Is, is
a sort of limited but, butactually proactively stated and
executed policy on Afghanistan,whatever that may look like.
John,
Jim Cardoso (42:50):
thank you.
Appreciate you being here instudio to have this discussion.
Thanks for your
Jonathan Schroden (42:55):
time today.
Yeah, again. Thanks for havingme. I really enjoyed it. We hope
you enjoyed our conversation
Jim Cardoso (42:59):
with Dr Jonathan schroeden, the Chief Research
Officer at CNA Corporation, andone of the world's leading
experts on Afghanistan. If you'dlike to read the decision brief
and the Journal of strategicsecurity article that we
discussed a bit today, you canfind them both on our website
under publications. Next week,on at the boundary, we'll be
talking with USF researcherWilliam Parker, he recently
(43:23):
authored a decision briefanalyzing the gold holdings of
BRICS, that consortium led byChina and Russia is trying to
leverage its growing position inthe world gold reserves to
counter the dominance of the USDollar as a global currency, and
to provide an alternative toWestern institutions. It's an
overlooked topic on the worldeconomic and national security
(43:43):
stage, but it shouldn't be.
We're looking forward to ourdiscussion with William Parker,
thanks for listening today. Ifyou like the podcast, please
subscribe and let your friendsand colleagues know. You can
follow GNSI on our LinkedIn nextaccounts at USF, underscore GNSI
And check out our website aswell, at usf.edu/gnsi, when
you're there, don't forget tosubscribe to our monthly
(44:05):
newsletterthat's going to wrap up this
episode of at the boundary. Eachnew episode will feature global
and national security issues wefound to be insightful,
intriguing, maybe controversial,but overall, just worth talking
about. I'm Jim Cardoso, andwe'll see you at the boundary.
(44:29):
You.
Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's
(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, apodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorfor genusi, and your host for at
the boundary. Today on the show,we're going to talk to genocide.
Non resident fellow, Dr Jonathanschroeden. He recently wrote
(00:36):
both a decision brief and alonger article in our journal of
strategic security, examiningforeign policy decisions about
Afghanistan to maintain andpromote US interest in that
consistently volatile country.
Jonathan will join us shortly.
Couple quick notes. First, we'reexcited about a new student blog
(00:56):
that debuted on our website thisweek. GNSI sent two USF students
may Burch and Kyle Rudd acrossthe pond to the international
security and intelligenceprogram at Cambridge University,
part of the world renownedCambridge security initiative.
It's a great opportunity forstudents to learn from the
world's leading academics andpractitioners in the security
(01:17):
and intelligence communities.
May and Kyle agreed to write ablog for us, letting us
experience the ISI program,along with them. Notes from
Cambridge is on our websiteright now, and there's a link in
the show notes. By the way, weplan to send up to four students
to isI every summer. That'ssomething you'd like to support.
Check our website for ways tosupport GNSI. And if you're a
(01:37):
student and it's something you'dlike to do, start building your
resume. Also want to mention amajor event happening in Tampa
Bay on October 13 through the15th. Cyber Bay 2025. Is a
collaboration between USF, newBellini College of artificial
intelligence, cybersecurity andcomputing, along with cyber
(01:57):
Florida, Bellini, capital, andthe USF Institute for ai plus x
cyberbay is where talent,technology and national security
converge to build the future ofdigital defense. GNSI will be
partnering on this event andproviding speakers and panelists
focused on the impacts ofcyberspace activities on
national security. We put aregistration link in the show
(02:21):
notes, and I highly recommendyou check it out. All right,
let's bring Dr Jonathan trodenGNSI, non resident fellow and
one of the world's leadingexperts on Afghanistan. He was
recently named Chief ResearchOfficer at the Center for naval
analysis, otherwise known as theCNA Corporation. All in all, he
spent over 20 years with CNA. Hetook a small break in 2023 to
(02:45):
assume the high profile role ofresearch director for the
Bipartisan CongressionalAfghanistan war commission. He
was also instrumental in helpingus build our policy dialogs
conference in Afghanistan lastNovember, which in turn led to
our first special issue of ourjournal of strategic security.
The special issue is dedicatedto Afghanistan, and Dr Sheridan
wrote the lead off articleentitled terrorism and
(03:07):
counterterrorism in theTaliban's Afghanistan. He's also
a Tampa Bay resident, so it'sour pleasure to have him live
and in person on at the boundarytoday. John, welcome to the
podcast. Thanks so much forhaving me. So before we get into
Afghanistan, let's you wereoriginally named the Chief
Research Officer at CNACorporation. Tell us a bit about
the CNA and what you're doingthere in your new
Jonathan Schroden (03:31):
role. Yeah, it's a great question. So CNA is
a not for profit, non partisanresearch and analysis
organization primarily based upin the DC area, and there are
two components to it. There is alargely Defense Department
component, which is called theCenter for naval analyzes, and
that is the federally fundedresearch and development center
(03:53):
for the Department of the Navy.
So it primarily supports theNavy and the Marine Corps, a lot
of different types of analysis,but really focused on helping
those two organizations be aseffective as they can be in
whatever missions they get askedby the President and the
Secretary of Defense toundertake. We also have a non
DoD part of CNA, which is calledthe Institute for Public
(04:13):
research, and they do a lot ofwork on homeland security
incident response, disasterresponse, support to the Federal
Aviation Administration and alot of other work for the sort
of non defense executive branchagencies. As the Chief Research
Officer, I've got a bunch ofdifferent duties, as you might
(04:36):
imagine, but first and foremostis to ensure that the work that
CNA is doing is of the utmostquality, and that the research
and analysis that we do supportsour sponsors in their mission to
the best of our ability to doso. And so I do a lot of
assessing the quality of ourwork, giving feedback to people.
(04:58):
But also looking systemically atour ability to do the work. So
for example, are we using themost cutting edge research tools
and methods? Do we have accessto the right types of data sets
and those types of things? Soit's a really interesting job. I
get to be involved in a lot ofdifferent things that CNA is
doing. It's fascinating everyday.
Jim Cardoso (05:18):
Yeah, and you get to stay, you live in Tampa. You
get to stay in the Tampa Bayarea for the most part,
traveling to DC every once in awhile. Of course, that's right,
yes, excellent, greatarrangement. Yeah, and CNA, now,
they've been around a while,right? We
Jonathan Schroden (05:29):
are, in fact, the nation's oldest operations
research organization, foundedin the midst of World War Two.
So yes, we've been around forover eight decades.
Jim Cardoso (05:38):
Wow. Okay, so a lot, a lot of capability there,
no doubt. So yeah, I would, Iwould check that out. We can put
a link to the show notes, maybeto your to your website as well,
so people can check that out. Solet's go ahead now that's let's
turn to Afghanistan a littlebit. You wrote two pieces for us
recently. First, you wrote adecision brief, which kind of
was more broadly, discussing thepolicy options available as the
(06:00):
Trump administration comes in.
What major differences have youseen between the Biden
administration and the Trumpadministration with respect to
Afghanistan?
Jonathan Schroden (06:09):
Yeah, it's an excellent question, and here
I'll start by giving an answer,sort of post collapse of Kabul
and sort of post ascendance ofthe Taliban government, because
obviously that happened early inthe Biden administration. So
when I when I speakcomparatively, I'll talk sort of
post Taliban takeover. What wesaw with the Biden
administration after thatoccurred was what I would call
(06:34):
sort of transactional, or, youknow, conditional engagement
with the Taliban, albeit notdirectly in Afghanistan. So the
US did not recognize the Talibanas the government of
Afghanistan. The Bidenadministration did not allow any
officials to actually travel toAfghanistan or engage with
members of the Taliban in Kabul,for example, for example. But
(06:56):
they did do a fair amount ofengagement with the Taliban's
political office and members ofthe Taliban who would travel
there in Doha in Qatar, and alot of what the Biden
administration tried to do wasto, you know, secure various
counterterrorism cooperate, youknow, maybe not deliberate
cooperation, or any type of, youknow, formal agreements, but at
(07:19):
least sort of informal means ofsharing information or trying to
get the Taliban to take certainactions on counterterrorism
interests, as well as trying toget the Taliban to be less
draconian in their stance onhuman rights, and especially
rights of women and girls. Andthere were sort of intermittent
(07:41):
engagements that would takeplace. The Biden administration
had a designated special envoyfor Afghanistan. They had one
that focused largely onsecurity, that was Thomas West.
And then they had another thatfocused largely on women and
girls rights and human rights,and that was Rina Amiri. And the
two of them did lots ofengagements all around the
(08:02):
world, with other countries,special envoys in Doha, with the
Taliban, with lots of I went tonumerous Think Tank events at
which one or both of them wereengaging, sort of the expert
community as well. And so thatwas sort of largely the Biden
approach. Now the Trumpadministration when it came in
on the campaign trail, Trumptalked about being a lot tougher
(08:26):
with the Taliban. He talkedabout trying to get them to give
back the weapons that they hadcaptured in their takeover of
Afghanistan. He talked about thepossibility of re establishing
US presence at Bagram Air Base,which we obviously turned over
to the Afghan security forcesand then was eventually captured
by the Taliban. He talked abouta lot more economic and
(08:48):
potentially sanction typepressure on the Taliban as well.
So he talked a much, you know,much more pressurized sort of
tougher approach. What we'veseen in practice is a little
less than that, shall we say.
The really, the administrationhas not done a whole lot on
Afghanistan. So far. They've notsort of made, you know,
(09:11):
published, any kind of actualpolicy. I have not heard
anything sort of behind thescenes that there is some kind
of, like National SecurityCouncil policy in the works, as
best I can tell. No one isactively working on that type of
thing, and they have, then theyhave not named any special
envoys for Afghanistan, either.
(09:32):
So it's been a lot, you know,less attention overall placed on
them. What we have seen in termsof actual actions, though, has
been interesting, for example,very early in the Trump
administration, and without muchin the way, or if any prior
notice, suddenly the WhiteHouse's lead for hostage
(09:56):
negotiations and sort of, youknow, trying to get. Uh,
wrongfully detained Americansfreed. Uh, Adam bowler,
suddenly, he's in Kabul meetingwith the Taliban's uh, acting
foreign minister, and ZalmayKhalilzad, who you know played a
large role in negotiating uswithdrawal from Afghanistan, was
(10:17):
there with them, and theysuccessfully negotiated the
release of an American citizenwho had been, in our view,
wrongfully detained for over twoyears by the Taliban. And as
part of the the quid pro quo tosecure his release, the Trump
administration agreed to de listthe sort of infamous Acting
(10:37):
Minister of Interior, Sira JudenHaqqani, from the State
Department's Rewards for Justicelist, which was a pretty
significant move. I mean, thisis a guy who undoubtedly has the
blood of, you know, numerous, ifnot many, US citizens on his
hand, and certainly vastly moreAfghans. And so they agreed to
delist him in order to securethe release of this US citizens.
(11:00):
So we've seen some, you know,some definite changes in
approach, both in terms ofperhaps less focus, but the
focus that has been applied hasbeen in stark contrast to sort
of red lines that the Bidenadministration had, for example,
sending officials to Kabul.
Jim Cardoso (11:17):
So, I mean, you talk about, I mean, I mean, the
Trump administration has donesome things, but you did also
say that really, really, notmuch. It's almost been a, I
won't say disengagement, butjust has been a lot of attention
from the Trump administration. Alot of other things have been
going on as we watch the Trumpadministration, you know, pursue
from when they, when they, whenthey took over. But, I mean, can
(11:38):
the US really afford todisengage from Afghanistan
without strategic consequences.
I
Jonathan Schroden (11:45):
think the there's sort of security and
perhaps a moral component tothat question. So you could, you
could arguably disengage on someof the humanitarian things that
the Biden administration wasdoing. So, you know, overall,
the Biden administration spentsomething like $2 billion on
(12:06):
humanitarian aid to Afghanistan,which it largely routed, or
almost entirely routed throughthird party, international
organizations, nonprofits andthe like, to try and avoid
having any of that money, youknow, benefit the Taliban, or
end up in the Taliban's coffersin any way. So far, what we've
seen from the Trumpadministration is vastly less
(12:28):
interest in the provision ofhumanitarian aid, not just to
Afghanistan, but but all aroundthe world. I mean, the the
obvious, obviously the completedisestablishment of us a ID as
well as, you know, specificthings like the Food for Peace
program, and you know, some ofthese major programs that the US
had had for a long time focusedon humanitarian assistance, this
(12:50):
administration has quite clearlysaid we're not interested in
doing those types of things. Andso you can disengage in that
way, and and probably, you know,sort of get away with it, if you
will, to be a little bit flipwhen it comes to US national
security interests, althoughthere is, of course, a moral
(13:10):
argument that one could makethat, you know, if you, if you
withhold that type ofhumanitarian assistance, then
there's going to be a lot moresuffering in places like
Afghanistan, and we can have along debate about to what extent
the US should be responsible forthat. Should feel responsible
for it, et cetera. But that'ssort of a fact of the matter on
(13:31):
the security side, though, Ithink it's a little bit less
obvious that the US can orshould disengage from
Afghanistan and expect noeventual blowback from that type
of decision. And I know we'regoing to talk a little bit more
in depth about sort of terrorismand terrorist groups there, so I
won't go too far into the weedshere now, but suffice to say,
(13:53):
there are a number of activeterrorist groups still present
in Afghanistan and the sort ofPakistan border region. Every
time those groups have hadpressure removed from them, they
have shown the ability toreconstitute capability and to
cause problems beyond theborders of Afghanistan. And so
(14:14):
the idea that the US could orshould completely withdraw its
attention from those particularproblem sets, I think is
problematic. From a US nationalsecurity focus,
Jim Cardoso (14:27):
you know, you rewrote the decision brief for
for GNSI, and in it yououtlined, you know, policy
options for the Trumpadministration, and you had four
different policy possibilities.
Which one do you think is, whathave you seen so far, and what
do you expect going forward?
(14:51):
Yeah,
Jonathan Schroden (14:53):
I've seen, perhaps bits and pieces of of
each of them, and which is,which is fair. I mean, I Yes.
Said in the article that thesewere not mutually exclusive
options, and some degree of menupicking from among them may be
an appropriate way to sort ofthink about things overall. I
would say I've seen the mostalignment with the fourth option
(15:14):
I listed, which is effectivelyde prioritizing Afghanistan and
ignoring it as much as youpossibly can. Yeah, and to your
point, there are obviously a lotof higher priority things going
on. Certainly the Department ofDefense is, you know, bore
sighted on China, in its in itsplanning and acquisitions, and a
lot of other things. Althoughoperationally, of course, it's
(15:36):
fighting multiple, shall we callthem, campaigns against Iran,
against the Houthis, supportingUkraine, on and off, against the
Russians. So there's a lot goingon that is not Afghanistan. And
certainly Afghanistan doesn'tneed to be a top tier priority.
Shouldn't be even under theBiden administration, Thomas
(15:58):
West, the special envoy at somepoint, stated that his express
orders from the White House wereto keep Afghanistan off their
radar. And so I think that's insome ways, you know, a continued
goal is to have this be as low apriority as possible. So that's
primarily what we've seen, butwe have also seen elements of
(16:19):
the third option, which isconditional engagement. So
again, the sort of release ofthe US citizen is an example of
that. We haven't actually seenincrease in economic or
political pressure on theTaliban, which is a little
interesting to me, given thesort of rhetoric we heard on the
campaign trail. So we haven'tseen much of that. And in fact,
(16:40):
the delisting of Siraj Khani wasan interesting move that I
certainly didn't anticipatecoming. And then on the first
part, sort of increased militaryor counterterrorism pressure we
haven't seen that specific toAfghanistan, although it has
been publicly stated bySebastian Gorka, who's the the
(17:03):
lead for counterterrorism in theWhite House, that one of the
things Trump uh did early on wasto devolve authorities for
counterterrorism targeting thatwere closely held by the Biden
White House at the sort of NSClevel in The Trump
administration, they have pushedthose authorities down more to
(17:23):
the combatant commander level,or in some cases, even below
that. And so that has enabled,you know, more aggressive and
more rapid strikes againsttargets in Somalia and against
the Houthis. We haven't yet seenthose authorities applied to
Afghanistan. And you know,there, you could speculate as to
why that is, either they haven'tfound targets that would warrant
(17:44):
it, or the intelligence isn'tthere to sort of support that.
That's sort of my myspeculation. Yeah, it's hard to
Jim Cardoso (17:52):
say how much capability we have to find, you
know, the old find, fix andfinish motif,
Jonathan Schroden (17:57):
and those capabilities may be, you know,
saturated in in prosecutingstrikes against ISIS Somalia and
Houthis, which, which we've seena number of those types of
actions in recent months.
Jim Cardoso (18:10):
So you also wrote the the article for the journal
strategic security, a littlelittle more in depth. And you
really, you know, kind of youdig more into the terrorist
aspects that are going on inAfghanistan. So could you
briefly describe, you know,there's three. You kind of
settled on three main terroristgroups of most interest in
(18:32):
Afghanistan, and whatdistinguishes them? That's kind
of part one and then part two.
You can kind of delve into whichone should we care the most
about, and why?
Jonathan Schroden (18:42):
Sure, so, yeah, so the US military, when
it was in Afghanistan, was veryfond of saying there's 20
designated terroristorganizations operating in this
region. And while that'stechnically true, if you look at
the State Department's ForeignTerrorist Organization list,
there's really three that arethe ones that the US cares the
most about, and those are alQaeda, the Islamic State
(19:04):
Khorasan province, and thePakistani Taliban, which is
usually abbreviated TTP. So AlQaeda, obvious historical,
longtime enemy of the US,responsible for 911 they are
still present in Afghanistan.
The degree to which they'represent is a bit of an item of
sort of hot debate, or at leastit was during the Biden
(19:30):
administration, between theBiden intel community and folks
like Special Envoy West and theUN the United Nations terrorism
monitoring team. So the Bidenadministration, their argument
was that al Qaeda was at a touse an exact phrase from them at
a historical Nadir, and TomWest, at one point, said that he
(19:55):
his conclusion was that al Qaedais capability to. In Afghanistan
was the lowest it had been sinceOsama bin Laden moved there from
Sudan pre 911 and that was thesort of assessment of the US
intelligence community. The UNmonitoring group, had a
different view, which is theirtheir conclusion was there are
(20:17):
still several 100, possibly asmany as 400 members of Afghan al
Qaeda in Afghanistan. And whilethey haven't, you know, they
haven't performed any externaloperations from Afghanistan.
There's no indication that, youknow there are sort of Osama bin
Laden 911 style training campsor planning activities, or those
(20:41):
types of things happening thatthere is nonetheless this cadre
of very dangerous people who areactive and who are actively
connected to other affiliates ofal Qaeda, other members of the
International jihadistcommunities, and are still doing
nefarious things that we shouldbe concerned about. So there was
this sort of, you know, debate,and honestly, I don't think any
(21:03):
of us know for sure the truthmay be somewhere in the middle,
as it often is when you haveintelligence entities that
disagree, but that's sort of thecase for al Qaeda. The bottom
line there, though, is Al Qaedais a much diminished
organization, at least inAfghanistan from what it was
historically the US killed binLaden's successor as the head of
(21:28):
al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri,about a year after the
withdrawal from Kabul, roughlythree years to today's date, and
Al Qaeda has not publicly nameda successor. It's sort of widely
believed that Saif al Adil iswho was the al Qaeda number
three guy for a long time, isprobably the current leader of
(21:50):
al Qaeda, but they've notannounced that publicly, and
nobody sort of really knowswhere he is. He was long known
to be in Iran for a long time.
Some people believe he's stillthere. Other people argue that
he has, in fact, emigrated toAfghanistan at this point in
time. But nobody really knowsfor sure, at least not publicly
(22:12):
so. So Al Qaeda still exists. Itis still dangerous. We should
not forget about them or takeour eye off of that ball. But
they are much diminished inAfghanistan, from where they
were, the Islamic State Khorasanprovince, or ISK for short, is
the group that pretty mucheveryone agrees is the major
(22:32):
concern in Afghanistan. They area virulent arm of the Islamic
State, sort of enterprise, ifyou will. Their capabilities
have ebbed and flowed over time,but they have always shown an
ability to rebound from lossesthat they sustained, either at
(22:53):
the hands of the United Statesor at the hands of the Taliban
or both. And so the US, evenduring the Biden administration,
was very clear that is k wastheir primary concern. The same
is true of pretty much everyregional country and other
countries that pay attention towhat's happening in Afghanistan.
Everybody believes that thisgroup is the major problem. And
(23:13):
what's interesting is theTaliban also believe that, and
there's sort of two reasons. Oneis the if you think about, you
know, challenges to theTaliban's complete control and a
security sense of Afghanistan.
Yes, there are some Afghanresistance groups that you know
have the ability to challengethem in certain areas. But those
groups capabilities arerelatively low and and relative
(23:36):
and they're, they're relativelywell contained. ISK is the
predominant group that couldchallenge the Taliban's complete
control of Afghanistan from asecurity perspective, it's also
the most virulent ideologicalcompetitor to the Taliban. The
Taliban are a religious movementwho claim to be the defenders of
(23:59):
the faith in both this region,but also in some instances, much
more broadly than that. And isks one of their primary vectors
of attack against the Taliban,is to say that, in fact, that's
not true, that the Taliban lostthe way that they have failed to
continue to act in sort of apure jihadist sense, for
(24:20):
example, by engaging with theUnited States at all. And so ISK
argues that in fact, they arethe vanguard of pure Islam in
this region. And the Taliban areapostates at this point in time.
So for both of those reasons,the Taliban hate this group as
well, and have taken significantactions to try and limit them,
(24:45):
to reduce their capability, etcetera. And those activities
have had mixed results. So ISKstill maintains a lot of
capability. They have not beenable to attack the. US,
homeland, but they have carriedout, over the last year, year
and a half, some verysignificant attacks in Russia,
(25:05):
in a couple of Europeancountries. They were
unsuccessful, but were on theverge of something fairly
significant. You know, there wasa Taylor Swift concert that had
to be canceled, for example,because of a no kidding ISIS
threat,
Jim Cardoso (25:21):
catastrophe, right there economic, economic impact.
Jonathan Schroden (25:28):
So, you know, so there were some real examples
of ISK being able to reach outand touch people beyond the
borders of Afghanistan, in invery violent and and in some
ways, horrific ways. So thatgroup is still a major concern.
And then you have the TTP, thePakistani Taliban, and they are
primarily of concern toPakistan. They don't have the
(25:50):
capability, nor do they have anysort of expressed wherewithal,
to attack much beyond theborders of Pakistan or the
Afghan Pakistan border region,and the US is not nearly as
concerned about TTP, nor aremost other countries really.
It's mostly Pakistan that seesthem as a sort of existential
(26:12):
threat to the Pakistani state,and Pakistan has done all kinds
of things to try and deal withthat. They've they've tried
targeting them, they've triednegotiating with them, they've
tried pressuring the Taliban todo something about them, because
they argue that the TTP havesanctuary on the Afghan side of
the border, and that the Talibanare either actively or tacitly
(26:32):
supporting them as well. And soyou have this sort of like tit
for tat between Pakistan and theTaliban, the Afghan Taliban,
about the Pakistani Taliban,which is all very ironic,
because, as you know, and asmany people listening would
appreciate, the Pakistanissupported the Afghan Taliban on
their side of the border andprovided them sanctuary against
(26:53):
US forces and the Afghangovernment for decades. And so
this is you know, as they say,when you keep snakes up your
sleeve, you are likely to getbitten. And Pakistan is being
bitten right now, and they don'tlike it. They do not
Jim Cardoso (27:07):
but they're not really TTP, UNC them as a
significant concern to the US,no. And in fact, the after the
even across the region beyondlike Pakistan after the
Jonathan Schroden (27:18):
US withdrew from Afghanistan, I would say it
cared vastly less about GDP thanit did when it was present. Do
Jim Cardoso (27:26):
you think that the US? I mean, you know, you
mentioned al Qaeda, they'rewell, I mean, a lot of Americans
recognize that name go I thinkI've heard of them. They had
something to do with 911 whichwas, yeah, they were the genesis
of 911 they had been degradedsignificantly. As you said,
Where do you think the US? So,what do you think the US stands
on that? I mean, you talkedabout that, but maybe you know a
(27:46):
little bit deeper on that, interms of, you know us, how they
viewed al Qaeda as this kind ofhistoric enemy. And Al Qaeda is
known, you know, hatred of theUS, with ISK more emerging, but
now seen as the most concernfrom the US and their
international community. Do youthink that the activities of the
(28:09):
US, whatever they may be,although, as we talked about, a
lot of it has been kind ofalmost ignoring the problem. Do
you think that's going to makethat shift? Or where do you
think the US is going to
Jonathan Schroden (28:17):
sit on that?
I think the US is stillconcerned about al Qaeda, I
don't get the sense that we havecompletely taken our eye off of
that ball in terms of writingthem off entirely. As you know,
we don't need to be concernedabout these guys anymore.
They're a washed uporganization. They don't have
any capability that I do notsense that in any form or
fashion. The and there are stilla few, you know, high value
(28:40):
targets, if you want to use thatterm associated with al Qaeda, I
mean say fall Auto is, you know,an original member of the band,
if you will, one of the fewsurviving and someone who had,
you know, some degree ofresponsibility for 911 and I'm
Sure the US would love to exactsome type of, you know, Justice
(29:02):
on him, in some form or fashion.
So there is, I have no doubt, acontinuing effort to try and
locate him, and, you know, someof the other surviving senior
members of al Qaeda and eithercapture or kill them as a result
of their involvement in 911 sothere is sort of that that, you
(29:24):
know, desire to not sort offorget what these guys did, and
to use whatever capabilities westill have to try and bring them
to some form of justice.
Jim Cardoso (29:34):
How much should, or how much are the US cooperating
with the partners in the regionagainst these different groups.
And you kind of mentioned howeach group has a different, you
know, main, you know, enemy thatis is more concerned about their
growth and their activities.
How, how do you see the US is,is, again, not just inside
(29:55):
Afghanistan, but even acrossoutside of. Afghanistan as sort
of regional problems as thesethings spill over. Where do you
where do you see the US goingnow, or taking that as far as
their their their partnershipwith other players in the region
against these groups, or evenplayers outside the region who
see these group, the growth ofthese groups, maybe could be,
you know, Saudi partners, orthings like that, who see the
(30:15):
growth of these groups as a as athreat.
Jonathan Schroden (30:19):
So that's a really good question. And as you
know, the US doesn't have muchin the way of friends, reliable,
trusted friends in this region.
You can start with Afghanistanitself. The Taliban are there,
obviously, and we talked abouthow we have this sort of shared
enemy in the Islamic Stateduring the Biden administration,
(30:39):
they sort of made clear thatthey had had been sharing some
form or fashion of informationwith the Taliban. They said it
wasn't actionable intelligence,but they did give the Taliban
information that might help themdo some things against ISK, and
there were numerous engagementsthat were reported publicly,
albeit with very little detailbetween senior officials of the
(31:01):
CIA and the Taliban'sequivalent, which is called GDI.
And so you sort of assume thatin those engagements that US was
again giving information, orperhaps establishing some type
of information sharingarrangements with the Taliban.
Beyond that, though, you knowthat there's no indication that
(31:22):
the Trump administration hasdone much of that, or if they
have, they haven't said anythingabout it publicly. And you know,
if you look beyond the Taliban,certainly the US is never going
to get to a situation where, youknow, sort of embodies full
throated partnership with theTaliban. From a counterterrorism
(31:43):
perspective, we just don't trustthem in that way. Beyond
Afghanistan, if you look atIran, clearly they're not going
to be helpful to us, even beforewe bombed their nuclear sites,
and certainly not after. You canlook at the Central Asian
states. I think there was hopein the wake of the US
withdrawal, that the US might beable to negotiate a presence in
(32:06):
one of those countries for somespecial operations or other
counterterrorism assets. Theycertainly tried. There's public
statements that they tried tonegotiate like that, but those
countries are still largelyunder the political sway of
Russia. And with the war inUkraine and the US support to
Ukraine, Russia is in noheadspace to allow the US to
(32:28):
maintain any type of military,you know, presence, either
overtly or otherwise, in theCentral Asian states. And so
that leaves you with Pakistan,and certainly the US, you know,
relationship with Pakistan hasebbed and flowed over the course
of the war in Afghanistan, butit ended on a real sour note,
right the Taliban Ascendance inKabul, which the US sort of
(32:52):
looks at Pakistan as having hada very strong hand in via their
longstanding allowance of theTaliban to have sanctuary in
Pakistan, for its seniorleaders, to live there, et
cetera. So the US leftAfghanistan with a very bad
taste in its mouth for Pakistanand a very, very poor
relationship with Pakistan. Andthat has largely continued. I
(33:16):
mean, there's been some highpoints. The Trump administration
did negotiate the sort ofsurrender of an ISIS K member
that it believed was responsiblefor the attack at Abbey gate
that killed 13 US servicemembers, and President Trump
talked about that in his Stateof the Union address. But beyond
(33:37):
that, there's not much lovebetween the US and Pakistan at
this point in time, so you don'treally have a lot in the way of
great options in the region,which is why the US approach to
counterterrorism in Afghanistanright now is primarily still the
over the horizon approach thatthe Biden administration
crafted, which entails flyingdrones from various bases in the
(34:00):
on the Arabian Peninsula,presumably through Pakistani
airspace, and lingering themover Afghanistan for as long as
they can in order to collectwhatever intelligence they can.
But if you think about how farthat distance is, even for
unmanned drones which have theability to fly for quite some
(34:20):
time. It's still a long ways togo there and back, which leaves
you with very little time. Youknow, as sort of a percentage of
each sortie, you have a verysmall percentage that you're
actually able to collectintelligence over Afghanistan.
And so that's primarily wherethe US is. There have been some
experiments, apparently, toidentify drones that would have
(34:41):
longer loitering times overAfghanistan. The extent to which
those have been put intooperational practice has not
been publicly made known, andhonestly, I don't, I don't know
either, but there are, you know,in the paper that you reference.
To the Journal of strategicsecurity paper, I do give a
(35:01):
number of other specific ideasthat the US might think about
using in order to do better interms of collecting Intel,
because ultimately, that's whatwe need, right? We need to know
where, where the bad guys are.
What are they up to? And we justdon't have the same level of
visibility that we had when wewere there. I mean, general
(35:23):
McKenzie, the GNSI director,now, when he was still the
CENTCOM commander, testifiedright that we had maybe one to
2% of the capability postwithdrawal to see what was
happening in Afghanistan that wedid when we were on the ground.
So obviously, it's a verylimited picture that we're able
to keep track of now. Yeah,
Jim Cardoso (35:43):
there's some great over the horizon capabilities,
but compared to what we had whenwe were in country and with the
human capabilities as well, inaddition to the technical
capabilities, yeah, it's just,it just can't be the same. So
that's something we have to workaround. One last question, I'm
going to pull back a little bit,and this one just, I'm kind of
curious on this, and this ismore of a, I guess, more of a
(36:07):
political than a policyquestion. And I know we don't
get too much into the policyaspects of it, but I'm curious,
you know, you talk about, youknow, partnering in any way with
the Taliban, or working with theTaliban, how does the Trump
administration right? For thatmatter, any administration
(36:27):
navigate the moral aspects ofthat, the Human Rights aspects
of of who the Taliban are andhow they've proven themselves to
be, versus the unsavory realityof they are the government of
Afghanistan. It's something thatI think multiple administrations
have struggled with, and willcontinue to struggle with. How
(36:50):
is that navigated going forward?
Jonathan Schroden (36:52):
It's, I mean, it's a it's sort of the million
dollar question, not only forthe Trump administration. It was
for the Biden administration aswell, and really, for every
country around the world, right?
You have this regime that prettymuch every country looks at and
says, what you're doing ishorrific, especially to women
and girls. There is no othercountry. I mean, even the most
(37:13):
authoritarian countries you canimagine do not treat their women
and girl populations the way theTaliban are treating them, and
certainly within the Islamicworld, there are no other
Islamic countries. I mean, asstrict as some of those
countries are with respect tothe way women dress and how
they're allowed to behavepublicly, their strictures are
(37:34):
still vastly less restrictivethan what the Taliban have put
in place. So they are theTaliban are an outlier in every
sense of the word when it comesto sort of international stage
and human rights on the on theinternational stage. So every
country that engages with themhas the same challenge. To what
extent is your engagementlegitimizing them as a
(37:58):
government and thereforecontributing to their ability to
enact these policies, andconversely, to what extent would
disengagement further thesuffering of the Afghan people
by not allowing the delivery ofhumanitarian aid and these types
of things? So it is a verythorny path to walk, and we've
seen various iterations andattempts at this. Some countries
(38:22):
have decided to be a bit morerealpolitik towards the Taliban
and to sort of take them more asthey are with the under, with
the sort of hope, if you will,that if you engage them in a
limited way and try and buildsome degree of trust with them
(38:42):
that maybe then you can expandthe conversation to things that
are in this vein, right? So morespecifically, for example, if
you engage the Taliban on thingslike climate change, which is
impacting Afghanistan in waysthat are detrimental to the
Afghan people, and that theTaliban may actually want to do
(39:03):
something about, things likewater scarcity, food scarcity.
Maybe you could build somebridges there. The Taliban have
also taken, somewhatsurprisingly, I think, a very
strong stance against thecultivation of narcotics,
precursors, you know, Poppy,most notably, but also various
plants, you know, marijuana,things that lead to the plants
(39:25):
that they used to build variousspeed drugs as well, the Taliban
have clamped down on a lot ofthat which a lot of European
countries for years had beentrying to Do and wanting, you
know, the Afghan government, todo, and so, you know, maybe you
could work with the Taliban onCounter Narcotics as a bridge of
(39:46):
mutual interest. So there havebeen these attempts to try and,
okay, let's, let's set asidethe, you know, the al Qaeda
part, which we would like you todo something about. But the
Taliban don't want to, becausethey have this historic.
Relationship there. Let's setaside for the moment, human
rights. Let's focus on thisother group of topics that we
have mutual interest in, andmaybe over time, we could then
(40:08):
start to broach, you know, intothese other other areas that
it's, it's a it is as reasonablea strategy as one might be able
to craft, I think. But thecountries that have tried to do
that so far, and the UN hastried to walk this path as well,
have found it very, verydifficult to get beyond those
(40:30):
initial set of topics. TheTaliban are just steadfastly
refusing to move intodiscussions on some of these
other topics, and they haveproven themselves willing and
able to absorb a vast amount ofinternational pressure. So the
sort of Converse argument is,you've been doing all these
(40:52):
engagements. You haven't gottenanything for it. You should stop
doing that, and instead, put thescrews to them. There is little,
if any, indication that puttingthe screws to the Taliban will
change their behavior in anymeaningful way at all. So it is
the million dollar question, andthere is no great answer to
that. Unfortunately,
Jim Cardoso (41:13):
it's, you know, it's not, not the end the
podcast on sort of a downbeatbut, I mean, it is just the
challenge. That's why we havethese discussions to get these
insights out there and helppolicy makers, whatever the
policy for Afghanistan is goingto be going forward. And I think
we would both probably agreethat it should be something
(41:33):
beyond kind of almost nothinglike it seems to be right now,
but some significant challengesfor either the Trump
administration, oradministrations beyond him, and
how they deal with Afghanistan.
Any final thoughts as we closeout the podcast,
Jonathan Schroden (41:48):
I would just say, you know it Afghanistan has
been a challenging topic for theUnited States for a long time.
We put a lot of attention on itin the last 20 years, and there
were probably some detrimentaleffects that accrued from that
much attention. But if you goback more than, you know, pre,
pre, 2001 we put very littleattention on it, and there were
(42:09):
negative effects that accruedfrom that too. So, you know
this, this pendulum swing fromalmost no attention to probably
way too much back to almost noattention certainly doesn't look
like the right approach from alonger, you know, term,
historical lens. So I wouldreally like to see something in
the middle, right? It doesn'thave to be a lot, but it
(42:30):
shouldn't be none, or shouldn'tbe almost none. And so that's
really what I would hope theTrump administration would would
sort of find its way to at somepoint in the near future. Is, is
a sort of limited but, butactually proactively stated and
executed policy on Afghanistan,whatever that may look like.
John,
Jim Cardoso (42:50):
thank you.
Appreciate you being here instudio to have this discussion.
Thanks for your
Jonathan Schroden (42:55):
time today.
Yeah, again. Thanks for havingme. I really enjoyed it. We hope
you enjoyed our conversation
Jim Cardoso (42:59):
with Dr Jonathan schroeden, the Chief Research
Officer at CNA Corporation, andone of the world's leading
experts on Afghanistan. If you'dlike to read the decision brief
and the Journal of strategicsecurity article that we
discussed a bit today, you canfind them both on our website
under publications. Next week,on at the boundary, we'll be
talking with USF researcherWilliam Parker, he recently
(43:23):
authored a decision briefanalyzing the gold holdings of
BRICS, that consortium led byChina and Russia is trying to
leverage its growing position inthe world gold reserves to
counter the dominance of the USDollar as a global currency, and
to provide an alternative toWestern institutions. It's an
overlooked topic on the worldeconomic and national security
(43:43):
stage, but it shouldn't be.
We're looking forward to ourdiscussion with William Parker,
thanks for listening today. Ifyou like the podcast, please
subscribe and let your friendsand colleagues know. You can
follow GNSI on our LinkedIn nextaccounts at USF, underscore GNSI
And check out our website aswell, at usf.edu/gnsi, when
you're there, don't forget tosubscribe to our monthly
(44:05):
newsletterthat's going to wrap up this
episode of at the boundary. Eachnew episode will feature global
and national security issues wefound to be insightful,
intriguing, maybe controversial,but overall, just worth talking
about. I'm Jim Cardoso, andwe'll see you at the boundary.
(44:29):
You.
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