Lawfare Archive: Introducing Allies: A Podcast Series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo

Summary

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Lawfare Podcast Archive: Introducing Allies – A Podcast Series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo

Release Date: December 14, 2025
Episode Focus: Re-airing the first episode of “Allies,” a deep-dive podcast series examining how U.S. reliance on Afghan interpreters, translators, and local partners shaped two decades of war and the fraught legacy of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program.
Guest Voices: Journalists Matthew Akins & Wesley Morgan, U.S. Army veteran Matt Zeller, former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, security policy expert Corey Shockey, with narration by Bryce Clem.

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Episode Overview

This episode revisits the first installment of Allies, Lawfare and Goat Rodeo’s acclaimed series chronicling the story of Afghan partners essential to the U.S. war effort. Against the backdrop of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos at Kabul's airport, the podcast examines:

• The critical, often life-risking, roles Afghan interpreters and local staff played for American military and intelligence operations.
• The creation, functioning, and failures of the Special Immigrant Visa program.
• The intersection of policy, bureaucracy, and human lives during two decades of war and the eventual evacuation crisis.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: U.S. Withdrawal and Immediate Crisis

[02:00 – 14:00]

• Episode contextualized by a tragic shooting and Trump administration policy in 2025, but the core story unfolds during the August 2021 evacuation of Kabul after nearly two decades of U.S. involvement.
• Matthew Akins details the shock and fear among Afghans as U.S. forces prepared to exit and the Taliban advanced.
  • “People were very anxious, very desperate to leave. But still very few people had any sense that the end was that near.” — Matthew Akins [04:27]
• The U.S. announced “Operation Allies Refuge” to evacuate Afghans at risk, especially interpreters and others closely linked to U.S. missions.

2. The Chaos at Kabul Airport

[07:00 – 14:00]

• Scenes of desperation: massive crowds surging at Hamid Karzai International Airport, people clinging to planes, and tragic deaths.
• The physical security setup (blast walls, choke points) turned “mobs” into “death traps.”
• “American soldiers were posted at the gate to sort through the crowds, but it was nearly impossible to check for travel documents.” — Bryce Clem [10:02]
• Reports of horror, including the deadly Abbey Gate bombing by ISIS, amplifying the sense of chaos and abandonment.

3. The SIV Program: Red Tape and Failure

[14:00 – 16:25]

• The podcast tracks the emergence of deep bureaucratic hurdles, as interpreters and partners waited years for visas and saw the process grind to a halt at the worst possible moment.
• Matt Zeller: “The problem was not the idea. The problem wasn't the legislation. The problem was the execution.” [15:10]
• “Much less reasonable if you're trying to stay alive long enough to get the damn visas.” — Wesley Morgan [15:20]

4. Origins: Why and How Afghan Allies Were Recruited

[22:38 – 40:00]

• Post-9/11, the U.S. faced an intelligence and cultural deficit in Afghanistan.
• Former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin describes the CIA’s scramble to understand Afghanistan’s terrain, languages, and power structures:
  • “There weren't many people in Washington who had paid attention to Afghanistan or knew much about it. I was sending teams of analysts out ... carrying maps and doing a briefing on... what exactly is Afghanistan.” [29:37]
• The linguistic diversity complicated matters, creating a massive dependency on local interpreters:
  • “Most Afghans are multilingual and speak Dari or Pashtu ... In all, they speak nearly 60 languages.” — Bryce Clem [31:18]

5. The Essential Role of Interpreters and Cultural Brokers

[33:34 – 36:03]

• Matt Zeller, a U.S. Army officer, recounts how interpreters were not just translators but cultural guides and lifelines:
  • “There's just so much ... if you go and sit into a meeting ... where do you put the two most important people? ... In Afghan culture, they sit next to each other ... these little nuances ... If you don't know, ... it's a big insult.” [33:44]
  • On the significance of hospitality: “If we were in, like, a village and someone invited us ... the interpreters would pull us aside ... they've literally cooked all the food in the house. If you don't come back tomorrow with ... food for this family, they're gonna starve.” [34:18]
• U.S. troops were “utterly dependent” on this expertise, as acknowledged by Corey Shockey of the NSC:
  • “I bet there were less than 20 people in the American national security establishment who had the language abilities to navigate Afghanistan. We were utterly dependent on our interpreters and translators.” [35:44]

6. Broader Strategic Picture and Policy Drift

[39:01 – 41:56]

• As the Bush administration pivoted focus to Iraq, resources and attention were drained from Afghanistan.
• The war in Afghanistan shifted from rapid military operations to an open-ended and poorly resourced nation-building project, compounding the burdens on Afghan partners.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We were the eyes and ears of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan.”
  — Wesley Morgan [14:13]
• “The Taliban knew all this. That's why they used to shoot at them first.”
  — Matt Zeller [14:15]
• “People are going to listen to this, and there will be blood spilt back in Afghanistan if we're not careful.”
  — Bryce Clem [14:44]
• “The CIA had come prepared with a thick binder ... With a plan we’d developed and updated that week ... for attacking Al Qaeda in dozens of countries around the world.”
  — John McLaughlin [24:38]
• “Creating safety throughout the country was going to require a magnitude of forces that the United States did not want to provide.”
  — Corey Shockey [38:35]

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Timeline of Key Segments

• [02:00 – 03:02]: Introduction — Background on the suspension of Afghan visas and setup for the episode.
• [03:02 – 11:54]: The 2021 Kabul airport crisis, firsthand accounts from Matthew Akins, and the logistical/human turmoil of evacuation.
• [14:13 – 15:24]: Discussion of interpreters as eyes and ears; the dangers they faced; the failures of policy and the SIV backlog.
• [22:38 – 30:59]: How post-9/11 knowledge gaps drove U.S. reliance on local partners; CIA early operations.
• [31:18 – 36:03]: Nuanced stories about language, culture, and survival; interpreters’ indispensable roles.
• [39:01 – 41:56]: Shift to Iraq, resource diversion, and the evolving U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

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Tone and Takeaway

This episode is both a journalistic investigation and a humanistic narrative, blending rigor with empathy. It is imbued with lament, frustration, and moral urgency. The tone is serious and occasionally somber, reflecting on bureaucratic failures and honoring the courage and sacrifice of Afghan partners who became “the eyes and ears” of America’s longest war.

For listeners:
This episode offers vital historical context to the current debates about Afghanistan, immigration, and U.S. global responsibility, while foregrounding the lives caught in the machinery of war and policy.

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For further exploration, listen to the entire Allies series—especially to hear directly from Afghan partners themselves.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Nearly every News alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at 202-643-846 or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to askusanythinglawfairmail.com by December 16th. Take control of the numbers and supercharge your small business with Xero. That's X E R O. With our easy to use accounting software with automation and reporting features, you'll spend less time on manual tasks and more time understanding how your business is doing. 87% of surveyed US customers agree Xero helps improve financial visibility. Search Xero with an x or visit xero.comacast to start your 30 day free trial. Conditions apply. Hannah Berner Are those the cozy Tommy John pajamas you're buying?

[Paige DeSorbo]

Paige desorbo they are Tommy John.

[Isabella Royo]

And yes, I'm stocking up because they.

[Podcast Host]

Make the best holiday gifts so generous.

[Paige DeSorbo]

Well, I'm a generous girly, especially when.

[Bryce Clem]

It comes to me, so I'm grabbing the softest sleepwear, comfiest underwear and best fitting loungewear.

[Podcast Host]

So nothing for your bestie?

[Bryce Clem]

Of course I'm getting my dad Tommy John.

[Isabella Royo]

Oh, and you of course it's giving holiday gifting made.

[Podcast Host]

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[Paige DeSorbo]

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[Podcast Host]

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[Paige DeSorbo]

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[Isabella Royo]

I'm Isabella Royo, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for December 14, 2025. Following the November 26 shooting of two National Guard members in D.C. in which the suspect is an Afghan national who was granted asylum, the Trump administration announced a suspension of visa issuance for all nationals applying with an Afghan passport. This includes those applying for Special Immigrant Visas, which are issued to applicants who assisted the US military. For today's archive, I chose an episode from May 16, 2022. It is the first episode of the Lawfare series Allies, and it describes how, in the wake of 9 11, the US government filled gaps in its regional and linguistic expertise on Afghanistan by hiring local partners through military contractors. The episode explains the roles Afghan interpreters, translators and other partners played in helping US Forces the rise of the Special Immigrant Visa Program, how the Special Immigrant Visa Program's failures contributed to the chaos at the Kabul airport in 2021 during the US withdrawal and more.

[Bryce Clem]

A warning for listeners. This podcast features stories about war, terrorism, and violence. It's important to hear, but it can also be disturbing. After two decades, the US Was getting out. President Trump had negotiated a deal with the Taliban promising a departure of U.S. troops in spring 2021. President Joe Biden let the whole world know that he wasn't reversing course. American troops would be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9 11.

[President George W. Bush]

I'm now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth. After consulting closely with our allies and partners, I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time for American troops to come home.

[Bryce Clem]

Journalist Matthew Akins was covering the withdrawal from the New York Times. He had been reporting from Afghanistan since 2008. He says with the Americans leaving, nearly every Afghan he talked to had no clue what was in store for them. Some who work for the US Government didn't even know if they'd be able to get out. Others wondered what life would look like if the Afghan government collapsed.

[Matthew Akins]

So the clock was ticking. People were very anxious, very desperate to leave. But still very few people had any sense that the end was that near.

[Bryce Clem]

Rumors of the Taliban's advance had been trickling into Kabul for months. Now they were closing in on the capital city.

[Matthew Akins]

Well, I think that the Afghan government was in denial that the Americans were going to leave so quickly. The military was largely concerned with force protection, with covering its own butt as it was leaving. And that meant getting out as fast as possible. And that took the Afghans by surprise, Definitely.

[Bryce Clem]

As part of the evacuation effort, the Biden administration announced Operation Allies Refuge, a plan to get at risk Afghans on flights out of the country. There was one group that was in particular danger. To wage this war, the US had hired thousands of Afghan translators, interpreters, and other local partners. They were often on the front lines with US Soldiers. To any Afghan who dealt with the United States, they were the face of the war. Their service made them targets for kidnapping, extortion, and murder by the Taliban. In recognition of their service and the danger they faced, Congress had created a program over a decade earlier. This program would get them resettled in the U.S. these Afghans could apply for something called a Special Immigrant Visa, also known as an siv. If there was ever a time for this program to kick into gear, it was now. In Kabul, Matt akins spoke to two Afghan interpreters on August 15th. They both served with US Special Forces and had applied for SIVs.

[Matthew Akins]

They were waiting for years for this visa, jumping through all these bureaucratic loopholes while feeling the Taliban were getting closer and closer. So there was like they were just staying one step ahead of the insurgents. And, you know, they kind of realized at the end that they were going to be left to their own devices. And we were actually sitting there together at lunch talking about this. On the afternoon the city fell.

[John McLaughlin]

Our.

[Matthew Akins]

Driver actually came in and he's like, people are saying the Taliban are inside the city.

[Bryce Clem]

Aiken stepped out and saw armed men walking the streets. He saw members of the Taliban drive into Kabul and captured government Humvees. They were hanging out of the windows, carrying US Made assault rifles, waving their white flags in the wind. Some crowds even cheered them on.

[Matthew Akins]

That same day, as the city was falling, I was getting a lot of messages from former interpreters and other people who are working for the US Government or foreigners who were asking me for help, like, how do I get out? How do I get to the airport?

[Bryce Clem]

As the Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan, desperate Afghans flocked to one place in Kabul. Hamid Karzai International Airport. There were just a few weeks until the deadline for flights out August 31st. As each day passed, bigger crowds started to gather at the airport. Eventually, people started flooding the tarmac. Men, women, and children crowded around departing planes. People dangled off jet bridges trying to force themselves into cabins.

[Matthew Akins]

We got there and we're like, oh.

[John McLaughlin]

My God, what's happening?

[Matthew Akins]

There's thousands of people streaming from all directions. At that moment, actually, a US C17 was taking off on the Runway and crushing people to death beneath its wheels. You know those video images that were broadcast to the world.

[Bryce Clem]

This morning? The flight from Kabul, in one stark image, complete and utter mayhem and chaos.

[Podcast Host]

Today at the Kabul airport. We are now playing out the visuals on your screen. They're images that have shocked the world. Desperate Afghans clinging to a US Military plane. Others are seen falling to their death from the undercarriage of a plane as it becomes airborne.

[Bryce Clem]

The US Military locked down the tarmac. After that, they started funneling people through an entrance called Abbey Gate. But this airport wasn't built for a country at peace. It wasn't a facility designed for flowing crowds. The Kabul airport was built to withstand blasts from car bombs and suicide bombers. So it had high concrete walls and.

[Matthew Akins]

Narrow passages, moats, hescos, barbed wire towers, you know, with machine guns in them, sandbags like, it's a. It's a fortress. That kind of defense. When you push mobs of people up against it created death traps. I mean, people would get trampled, would get crushed. They get kind of forced into these choke points.

[Bryce Clem]

American soldiers were posted at the gate to sort through the crowds, but it was nearly impossible to check for travel documents. In the mad rush of bodies, Afghan men and women did anything to get their attention. Yelling at the marines, waving their papers, or even their children in the air.

[Matthew Akins]

The sight of these bedraggled people, men, women and children, dusty, you know, weak from dehydration, sitting at the base of these vast concrete structures with soldiers, you know, either Taliban or the CIA backed paramilitary unit aiming their assault rifles at them. It was just the most grotesque contrast. It was like something out of science fiction.

[Bryce Clem]

For weeks, Akin heard rumors that the terror group ISIS was planning something in Kabul. Then on August 26, he was sitting at his house when he heard an explosion. Akin saw smoke coming from the airport a few miles away.

[Matt Zeller]

That is the Pentagon confirming there has.

[Bryce Clem]

Been an explosion outside Kabul airport where.

[Wesley Morgan]

Thousands of people have gathered to try.

[Matt Zeller]

To to evacuate the country.

[Matthew Akins]

As the staggering death toll soared to.

[Bryce Clem]

At least 170 Afghan civilians today, it was revealed the attack was carried out.

[Matthew Akins]

By a single bomber believed to be.

[Corey Shockey]

Wearing a 25 pound vest of explosives.

[Bryce Clem]

We can confirm that a number of US service members were killed at the Kabul airport. The attack laid bare the chaos of the US withdrawal and accelerated the evacuation all month. Aikens remembers hearing jet engines hanging over Coppell each night. The noise only got louder as each day passed and more planes weaved in and out. The last flight was on August 30th.

[Matthew Akins]

Well, I remember that night listening to the sound of aircraft and it seemed more intense than normal. It was everything. You know, you heard the fighter jets, you'd hear drones, you'd hear for a while, helicopters and C17s. The C130s was this orchestra of intense noises in the sky that was kind of maddening because it reminded everyone that the foreigners were leaving. And then all of a sudden it went quiet. And my housemate and I stepped outside.

[John McLaughlin]

And we're listening like, huh.

[Matthew Akins]

There'S no more planes. And that quiet didn't last that long because then we start hearing gunfire.

[Wesley Morgan]

And.

[Matthew Akins]

The gunfire gets more and more intense until it's all around us and we can see like tracers going up in the sky and it's the Taliban just shooting in the air. To celebrate the departure of the last American.

[Bryce Clem]

From lawfare and goat rodeo, this is Allies, a podcast about how the US Government Failed its eyes and ears in the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan. I'm your host, Bryce Clem. The US Military got thousands of people out of Kabul in August. But despite the decade long efforts of veterans, lawmakers, and the highest ranking officials in the military, even more were left behind. Many have gone into hiding, fearful of the Taliban seeking retribution. So how did we end up here? How was the fate of thousands of Afghans decided? By which side of a wall they were on and whether or not they had the right pieces of paper. What happened at the Kabul airport in August was the culmination of 20 years of war. A war where language and those who had access to it shaped the very way it was fought.

[Wesley Morgan]

We were the eyes and ears of.

[Bryce Clem]

US Troops in Afghanistan.

[Matt Zeller]

The Taliban knew all this. That's why they used to shoot at them first.

[Bryce Clem]

You're literally fighting blind if you do.

[Wesley Morgan]

Not have those interpreters with you.

[Bryce Clem]

A war where the US asked translators and interpreters to serve in the line of fire. You will hear from them on this podcast, but we can't use their full names.

[Matthew Akins]

The Taliban will find them and will kill them.

[Bryce Clem]

I move my family from location to location three times. There's no option for us.

[Wesley Morgan]

Some days they're going to find you.

[Bryce Clem]

People are going to listen to this and there will be blood spilt back in Afghanistan if we're not careful. We will take you from the front lines to the halls of Congress where lawmakers created a program to protect Afghan allies. We'll tell you how it was supposed to work and how it collapsed in the slow churn of bureaucracy. He was just banging his head against.

[Matt Zeller]

The wall trying to figure out, how.

[Podcast Host]

Do I unstick this?

[Bryce Clem]

The problem was not the idea. The problem wasn't the legislation. The problem was the execution. These things might seem reasonable in Washington.

[Matt Zeller]

Much less reasonable if you're trying to.

[Wesley Morgan]

Stay alive long enough to get the damn visas.

[Bryce Clem]

We will seek to answer questions that still linger from two decades of war. How did this program fail so many? Over seven episodes, we'll take you through the 20 year war. We'll explain why the SIV program was created at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'll hear from veterans, advocates, journalists, and most importantly, Afghans who tried to navigate a never ending bureaucratic maze. You'll hear how far four presidential administrations supported and ignored America's eyes and ears. And in the end, we'll tell you how these failures culminated in the chaos in Kabul. In this episode, we're going back to the beginning. Just before 9, 11 this is episode one. Faithful and valuable service.

[Wesley Morgan]

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[Bryce Clem]

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[Bryce Clem]

In the late 1990s, the terrorist group Al Qaeda repeatedly attacked US assets, bombing embassies in Africa and a naval ship in Yemen.

[President George W. Bush]

The United States launched an attack this.

[Bryce Clem]

Morning on one of the most active.

[President George W. Bush]

Terrorist bases in the world. It is located in Afghanistan and operated by groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden, a network not sponsored by any state, but as dangerous as any we face.

[Bryce Clem]

A few years later. In the summer of 2001, John McLaughlin was the deputy director of the CIA. He says the agency was flooded with tips from Afghanistan. So the CIA knew Al Qaeda was planning another attack.

[John McLaughlin]

But we had enormous amount of reporting. It was kind of off the chart in terms of indicators of preparations for some kind of attack by extremists.

[Podcast Host]

We believe that a plane has crashed into the World Trade center in New York.

[Wesley Morgan]

A second plane drove in too. And you can see that plane coming around the building.

[John McLaughlin]

And so when the second tower was hit, instantly, of course, I knew this was what we had been expecting.

[Bryce Clem]

McLaughlin says the rest of that day was a blur. But he does remember connecting with President George Bush via telecom.

[John McLaughlin]

We made clear that in our judgment this was an Al Qaeda operation and the one that we had been talking about during the summer in particular. And I remember and wrote down what he said. He said, form a worldwide coalition, we will find them and destroy them.

[Bryce Clem]

Four days later, on September 15, the President gathered his national security team at Camp David. They talked about the attack, how it was coordinated, who was behind it. But the question they were there to answer was what should we do about it?

[John McLaughlin]

The CIA had come prepared with a thick binder, a spiral bound booklet I remembered quite well. With a plan we had developed and updated that week was a plan we'd had in preparation for a long time. But it was a plan for attacking Al Qaeda in dozens of countries around the world. And we explained it. Everyone absorbed it.

[Bryce Clem]

The CIA's plan homed in on Al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan. President Bush reconvened the group two days later in the White House. McLaughlin remembers him rattling off several decisions. The administration's war strategy. President Bush told the military to call up the reserves, the Justice Department to ready warrants and indictments, and treasury to follow the money.

[John McLaughlin]

And for the CIA, he said, basically, I'm adopting your plan. I want you first into Afghanistan as fast as you can be.

[Bryce Clem]

President Bush spoke to Congress and the American public on September 20. He told the country about Al Qaeda, the terrorists who many people were hearing about for the first time.

[President George W. Bush]

They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan where they are trained in the tactics of terror. The leadership of Al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country.

[Bryce Clem]

The President also spoke about the Taliban, who called themselves the Islamic Emirat of Afghanistan. At the time, they were the country's government, a militant Islamic political body. The Taliban sprouted out of Afghanistan's rural Pashtun tribes. That's the country's largest ethnic group. Taliban is actually a Pashtu word meaning students. After the Soviet occupation, there was a power vacuum in Afghanistan. So Pashtun leaders started joining forces with former Mujahideen fighters. A civil war ensued. The details are complicated, but Taliban rule offered some security. So their influence spread across the country and took hold in huge parts of Afghanistan's region, rural provinces. By 1996, the Taliban had grown into a vast political movement. It governed through an austere and harsh vision of Islamic law, a fact President Bush and his administration repeated in the lead up to the war.

[President George W. Bush]

Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leader dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough. The United States respects the people of Afghanistan. After all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid. But we condemn the Taliban regime.

[Bryce Clem]

Osama Bin Laden had a long standing alliance with the Taliban. With the FBI and CIA on his trail, Bin Laden was allowed a haven in Afghanistan. So after 9 11, President Bush spoke directly to the Taliban. He demanded they hand over the leaders of Al Qaeda to US authorities and close every terrorist training camp.

[President George W. Bush]

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion.

[Bryce Clem]

Former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin again.

[John McLaughlin]

Within 15 days, we had those two teams on the ground in northern Afghanistan. As I recall, each one had about eight people on it. A fair number of them had the local languages and weapons specialists. Our objective was to get in there as fast as we could on a chopper that was an old Soviet, I want to say, M17 helicopter that we flew in from Uzbekistan through the mountains of northern Afghanistan.

[Bryce Clem]

Within just a few weeks, about 300 CIA agents and special Forces had landed in Afghanistan. They met with sources sprinkled across the country, Afghan village leaders and warlords who pointed them in the direction of bin Laden. McLaughlin described the scene.

[John McLaughlin]

Uniforms went away. Everyone was dressed in civilian clothes. People were riding horses. It was a remarkable thing.

[Bryce Clem]

One reason President Bush wanted the CIA first in was because they were the only government agency that knew much about Afghanistan.

[John McLaughlin]

Everyone has to realize that when this occurred, there weren't many people in Washington who had paid attention to Afghanistan or knew much about it. And I recall in the first, say, the first month after 9, 11, I was sending teams of analysts out into Washington to other agencies, carrying maps and doing a briefing on, I would say, the subject of what exactly is Afghanistan.

[Bryce Clem]

McLaughlin remembers one officer spreading out a map on the blue rug of the Oval Office. He squatted between President Bush and Vice President Cheney and pointed out Afghanistan's 34 provinces. He told them about the topography, Afghanistan's deserts, river valleys and snow capped mountains. They talked about the bordering countries, Pakistan to the southeast, Iran to the west, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the north. What immediately became clear was that Afghanistan is a very complicated place. In the fall of 2001, about two months after the first US boots were on the ground, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo to his staff. He asked them to break down all of the languages spoken in Afghanistan. Persian, Pashto.

[John McLaughlin]

We have a great deal of language.

[Bryce Clem]

Like we call Pasha, Kyrgyzi, Ubaishi, Farsi or dirty.

[Wesley Morgan]

They're all the same.

[Corey Shockey]

There are two main languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pashto and Dari, which is complicated enough. And Pashto has its own regional sub dialects.

[Bryce Clem]

That last voice you heard is Wesley Morgan. He's a freelance journalist who embedded with U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan. He saw firsthand how U.S. forces interacted with the local population. Most Afghans are multilingual and speak Dari or Pashtu. But the country has almost 40 million people across cultural, ethnic, and tribal groups. In all, they speak nearly 60 languages. Wesley Morgan was in a place called the Pesh Valley.

[Corey Shockey]

In the Pesh Valley floor, everybody speaks Pashto. A lot of the security forces speak Dari. But then the farther you go up into these side valleys north and south of the Pesh, you wind up encountering all these other languages. Kalasha La, Gambiri or Trigami, Korengali. Languages that have no written form and have only a few thousand speakers, which makes them inherently really, really difficult to kind of get a grip on. But when you go up into the northeast of the country in Kunar and Nuristan, there are a bunch of other languages as well, more really than the US military kind of appreciated at the time.

[Bryce Clem]

So the military needed interpreters, translators and local partners, Afghans who understood the languages and culture. Over the course of the next 20 years, these interpreters would prove to be essential. The number of local partners the US Hired would grow enormously. First tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of Afghans. And they'd be right next to US Soldiers looking for Al Qaeda, asking locals about them, intercepting terrorist communications, breaking down messages over walkie talkies. Later, they'd help broker huge government contracts to build roads and schools. Even the words interpreter and translator are too narrow to describe their role. Matt Zeller was a US army officer who advised Afghan forces. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 and fought side by side with several Afghan interpreters and translators. We asked him what sort of things did they teach him about Afghanistan. Zeller gave us some examples.

[Matt Zeller]

I'm gonna. Your audience can't see this, but I'm certainly sitting right now with my legs crossed, right? With my left leg crossed over my right, and the bottom of my left sole is pointing at you.

[Paige DeSorbo]

It's.

[Matt Zeller]

One of the worst things I can possibly do is to show you the bottom of the sole of my foot. I'm telling you to fuck off right now. In Afghan culture, we Americans cross our legs all the time. I have no idea. I'm giving you the finger. There is just so much. I mean, if you go and sit into a meeting with somebody in the United States of America and let's say it's a really important meeting and you're gonna sit around a table, where do you put the two most important people? On opposite sides. Do they sit next to each other or across? Across, yeah. In Afghan culture, they sit next to each other. So, like, it's these little nuances that if you don't know, like, if you were to sit them across from you, it's a big insult.

[Wesley Morgan]

Why?

[Matt Zeller]

Because you're. You want to build a bond with someone or make a deal, you sit them next to each other so that they can talk and that they're equals. Sit them across from each other. It's adversarial, the food, you know, the culture of, like, showing up to a meeting here in the United States. You show up to a business meeting, you might have quick coffee and whatever. You get down to it in Afghanistan, you'll talk for 30 minutes about their families before you even come to the matter at hand. To rush it along is seen as very disrespectful because it's not like you're appreciating their hospitality or just trying to get to the business. What else? Anytime an Afghan family would feed us, if we were in, like, a village and someone invited us over to their homes, you Know, we'd walk up like, wow, we're famished. That was an amazing meal. And the interpreters would pull us aside and be like, do you realize that they fed you everything that they have? They've literally cooked all the food in the house. Food that was supposed to last them maybe for the next couple of months. If you don't come back tomorrow with, like, food for this family, they're gonna starve.

[Bryce Clem]

As a number of veterans, journalists, and diplomats would say, these Translators were the US's eyes and ears. But at the start of the war, the US had none.

[Paige DeSorbo]

Because we had not expected to fight a war in Afghanistan. You had an incredible dearth of expertise on the country, an incredible dearth of language skills.

[Bryce Clem]

That's Corey Shockey. She was on the National Security Council during President Bush's first term.

[Paige DeSorbo]

I bet there were less than 20 people in the American national security establishment who had the language abilities to help navigate the societies in Afghanistan. We were utterly dependent on our interpreters and translators.

[Bryce Clem]

And that need for local partners was about to grow. The CIA and Special Forces operators would soon be joined by thousands of American soldiers. Less than A month after 9 11, President Bush announced Operation Enduring Freedom. Now U.S. marines were joining the fight.

[President George W. Bush]

On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations. At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies.

[Bryce Clem]

Donald Rumsfeld would later call this a new kind of war, a war that wouldn't be fought by conventional armies. Instead, an international coalition would wage it quietly fighting in the shadows against terrorist cells.

[Paige DeSorbo]

Secretary Rumsfeld, you know, viewed himself as a revolutionary in this regard. I remember once hearing him tell the President, these generals, they're dinosaurs. They think it takes a quarter million troops to do anything. You gotta help me push us forward into the modern ways of war.

[Bryce Clem]

This modern war meant night raids and clandestine missions ending with airstrikes.

[Paige DeSorbo]

But of course, that style of warfare is great for punitive raids. It's great for many things. It is poorly suited to stabilizing a country and holding territory in that country. And it's poorly suited to. To being a supportive and protective force for a population.

[Bryce Clem]

Within just a few months, the international coalition swept through Afghanistan. By November, it captured the capital city of Kabul. U.S. forces spent the winter chasing Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, and the Taliban toward the Pakistani border. But with the perpetrators of 911 still out there. Shockey says the war changed. The Bush administration thought the war in Afghanistan wouldn't require lots of American troops. But she says turned out to be a bigger commitment than they expected.

[Paige DeSorbo]

Creating safety throughout the country was going to require a magnitude of forces that the United States did not want to provide. And so we wanted to build an Afghan military that could increasingly take over the military responsibilities that the United States was performing in Afghanistan.

[Bryce Clem]

So after the smoke settled from initial combat operations, the US Military was now in a country with no government. And many inside the Bush administration worried that Afghanistan was would again become a terrorist haven. So the president gave a speech in April 2002 that outlined a change in mission.

[President George W. Bush]

We know that true peace will only be achieved when we give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations. Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government government. Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan train and develop its own national army. And peace will be achieved through an education system for boys and girls, which works.

[Bryce Clem]

So the US Mission was growing into a nation, building one and every single part of it was going to require interacting with the Afghan people, whether that meant fighting the Taliban or opening new schools, or even building an entire army from scratch. The US Forces would need more translators, interpreters, and advisors. The war in Afghanistan was going to need more resources. But then the Bush administration found a distraction. Here's Corey Shockey again.

[Paige DeSorbo]

I would say the Bush administration had persuaded itself that Afghanistan didn't require any more attention or resources than we were giving it, which is not the same thing as having one.

[Bryce Clem]

So the Bush administration started planning another invasion. High ranking officials had been ringing the alarm on Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq. They said Saddam was as big a threat to the US As Osama bin Laden. And some even sought to connect Saddam to Al Qaeda.

[President George W. Bush]

We could not accept the grave danger.

[John McLaughlin]

Of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us.

[Bryce Clem]

And gradually, we are learning the details.

[John McLaughlin]

Of its hidden weapons program.

[Wesley Morgan]

A regime that harbors ambitions for regional.

[Bryce Clem]

Domination, hides weapons of mass destruction, and provides haven and active support for terrorists. So in March 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq with more than 150,000American soldiers.

[President George W. Bush]

@ this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave.

[Bryce Clem]

Danger. And this new campaign would require more translators and interpreters. Next time on Allies, we'll head to Iraq, and you'll hear from one interpreter who saw the invasion up close. Allies was created written and produced by the show's lead producers, Max Johnston and me, Bryce Clem. Ben Whittis is our executive producer. Mixing and additional editing from Rebecca, Sarah Seidel. Production and editorial assistance from Ian enright, Isabel Kirby McGowan, Kara Schillen and Megan Nadolski. Theme music and scoring from Max Johnston. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Senior producers at Goat Rodeo are Megan Nadalski and Ian Enright at Lawfare. Editorial support from Natalie Orpet, Catherine Pompilio, Claudia Swain and Scott Anderson. A special thanks to Matthew Akins, Wesley Morgan and his book the hardest place. John McLaughlin, Matt Zeller and Corey Shockey. Allies is a production from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review the show. It helps spread the.

[President George W. Bush]

Word, Take.

[Podcast Host]

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