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Afghanistan War – War Correspondents & War-time Friendships – Jeffrey E. Stern
122 Plays1 year ago
Ep 012 - Nonfiction. Jeff’s latest book, “The Mercenary: A Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War,” is a nonfiction novel about his time in Afghanistan as a war correspondent & the friendship he forms with his Afghani driver. This book is a page-turner, and Jeff does a terrific job exploring what it means to be a reporter, but also a human being, in a war zone.
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Transcript
Introduction to War Books Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello everyone, I'm AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, super excited to have Jeffrey Stern on the show talking about his new book, The Mercenary, a Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War.
Meet Jeffrey Stern, Journalist & Author
00:00:23
Speaker
Jeff is an award-winning journalist and author. He's written three books, one of which was turned into a major motion picture by Clint Eastwood. That's really cool. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Atlantic, and others. Jeff, how are you doing today? Good. Thanks. It's great to be here. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed your book.
The Art of Storytelling in Nonfiction
00:00:49
Speaker
I know you say it's not a novel in the very beginning, but I really found myself reading it as if it was a novel. Stylistically, I loved it. I thought you did a really nice job with this story. It's like one of those books where I felt like the pages turned themselves. So really nice work. Thank you. That means a lot. That's like everything I want to hear. So good. All right. Perfect.
00:01:15
Speaker
Well, let me, what's that? Yeah. So thanks everyone. That's the interview.
Journey to Afghanistan
00:01:22
Speaker
So let me just like first start on something that, so you were a war correspondent and you write briefly about why you don't really dwell on it, but I kind of want to dwell on it here a little bit. So why, what made you want to go to Afghanistan to be a war reporter?
00:01:43
Speaker
What did your family think when you said, Hey, I'm going to Afghanistan. Tell us, tell us a little bit about how you got into that. So, I mean, one of the things that I, that I thought might be one of the things I was interested in was writing. And I think that sort of in, in, when I was in college, that was sort of a passion that, that grew a little bit. I didn't, I was kind of late to it in some ways. I didn't write for my college paper. I hadn't had the chance to write a few longer form articles for
00:02:13
Speaker
a local kind of hippie independent paper, a free paper, my alumni magazine, an article or two. So I had just enough experience to be like, you know, I kind of like this. And I probably thought of myself as, you know, the next great American novelist or something. But but knew didn't didn't want to be kind of like the starving artists. I wanted to be a little bit more practical. So that I think was the bridge from writing to journalism. And then because I just didn't have
00:02:43
Speaker
I didn't have that many connections. I didn't have really a portfolio. It was hard for me to get a job in journalism. And it was hard to prove to editors that they should consider me as a freelancer. And so somewhere along the line, the idea that kind of started as a joke that turned into maybe an idea that turned into maybe I should actually seriously consider this, this idea of going someplace where
00:03:09
Speaker
Even if no one knew who I was, the place would kind of pitch itself in some way.
The Reality of War Reporting
00:03:16
Speaker
Were you afraid of of the danger that you're going to be putting yourself in? I think it was I think it was such a. I don't think it was real until it was real, you know, I don't I think for so much of the planning, it was there's no way this is actually going to happen. You know, I forgot to get this kind of visa, of course, like so now I'm not going to go. You know, it wasn't until I kind of landed
00:03:37
Speaker
that it occurred to me that this might actually happen. And there were a million times along the way that it was like, yeah, see, I screwed this up. So I'm not actually going to go over, you know, it was always like this, this kind of thing happens in the movies doesn't happen in real life. So eventually, I'm going to have the reality check and it's not going to happen. So I think that prevented me from being, from being scared, not because I was, you know, brave and willing to face the
00:03:58
Speaker
consequences, but because I didn't think I actually would. It's just like, you know, it's like, well, I guess like everything's kind of worked out in this. So I guess I'll jump in and do this. That or a little bit also the opposite that this is not all going to continue to work out. So I'm not actually going to end up in Afghanistan, you know, I'm going to.
Early Writing and Ambitions
00:04:17
Speaker
What is your family? What does your family say when you told them? Well, I think I think partially because it started as this kind of a joke. So I'd had this internship
00:04:25
Speaker
And one of my bosses had a friend who was the Islamabad bureau chief or the Kabul bureau chief for I think the Washington Post and had written and said, Hey, you know, Hey, buddy. Hey, Brian, I'm coming home, you know, I'm giving up this post. And so my boss, Brian, you know, it was like, Oh, interesting. My, uh, my friend is coming home from, from running the bureau, the Washington Post bureau and it was, you know, Kabul or Islamabad or wherever it was.
00:04:51
Speaker
And I said, oh, I'll take over. And it was sort of a joke because everyone knew I was kind of like the least qualified intern they'd even ever had. So it was like, ha ha ha, Jeff will take over. And then I think that sort of lodged in my head, like what a funny joke. Well, now wait a minute, you know, and so, and I, and I think I talked about it that way. So I talked about it as kind of a joke.
00:05:13
Speaker
than this sort of fantasy. So I sort of unintentionally kind of like weaned people into the idea. So I think for them too, it was a little bit of a, this is not actually gonna happen until I was taking off. Well, your book, so it's not really a, it's not a memoir, but it's, you know, your life is, you know, front and center in it.
Blending Nonfiction with Novel Elements
00:05:35
Speaker
And you say, like I mentioned, it's not a novel. How would you classify your book actually?
00:05:41
Speaker
you know, I'd love to classify it as a novel, actually. I mean, that's why I was so affirming that you said that because I, you know, I, I work really hard to try to make things, you know, make it read like a novel. And I don't know that necessarily all the time I take being this word instead of this word, this develop this person, like a character,
00:06:02
Speaker
I don't know that necessarily always shows up on the page. So first of all, when you, when you reflect that, it's like maybe some of that time was worth it. And also I found just in, in publishing, there's sort of a, a tendency to say, okay, this is nonfiction and therefore this is how, here's the audience we should sort of push it to.
00:06:21
Speaker
And I am not an expert in Afghanistan. I would never claim to be nor would I want to be, but that's kind of the conventional path to presenting a book like this. Jeff's an expert in Afghanistan, talk about that. And really what's more important to me is to sort of tell the story in some of the other more kind of human, perhaps a little bit less practical
00:06:43
Speaker
messages. So I would love to consider I've thought of what to call a genre. I mean, nonfiction novel, is that? Yeah. You know, no, I've read actually, there's a nonfiction novel by Ken Follett, called I think On the Wings of Eagles. It's about Iran.
00:07:03
Speaker
I read this book a long time ago, so I really forget anything that was in it. But I've read books like that before, so maybe that's not your style. But the events in this book are with an asterisk, kind of, which you point out in the introduction. They're true, though, right? These aren't things that you made up.
00:07:27
Speaker
I didn't make anything up, at least not on purpose. I, you know, hired a fact checker. I couldn't really afford to put out, point out all the things that I didn't really have sourced well enough. I mean, you know, they're, it's, it's impossible to avoid, you know, a hundred percent avoid mistakes, but I tried as hard as I could to avoid them. And I suppose the exception is just that I did want to lean into misperceptions. That was a huge part of it, largely mine. So that's why you see things happen.
Stern and Imal's Intertwined Stories
00:07:55
Speaker
in part one of the book that are true to how I was experiencing things, but you realize later when you see things from other people's perspectives that in the moment I was confused or I was a little naive or I misread the situation that I was in.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah. And I want to come back to that because I thought that was a very interesting, the events that you describe versus the events that your friend Imal describes. I thought that was very interesting. Just for the audience, maybe we can just kind of step back and give some context and give an overview of your book. So it's
00:08:33
Speaker
it says on the cover, a story of brotherhood and terror in the Afghanistan war. And it's really, it's the story of you and your friend, Imaw, and your life story, his life story, and how those stories interweave and the events that take place. Is that an accurate way to? Perfect. I love that. Oh, great. Well, you know, talk a little bit then about, let's start with
00:09:02
Speaker
You know, so you've got the story of, of I'm all in your book. Talk a little bit first about your friend, I'm all his background, his personality. He seems like a really interesting guy. Yeah. Talk a little bit about him.
00:09:16
Speaker
So when I first met him, he was a taxi driver and he was really funny and really charming and I just sort of felt like we bonded. And I didn't speak any Farsi. He was very confident in his English but was very bad at it. So there was lots of laughs. There was a lot of just sort of connecting on just sort of a human level.
00:09:40
Speaker
I think looking back, part of that is because we were similar in a lot of, of course, very different in a lot of ways, but similar in some ways. One of which was that we were both really ambitious and we were both really trying to make a name for ourselves. And we were doing it kind of in a similar atmosphere. I was in an entirely new country.
00:10:02
Speaker
And this was his country, but it also kind of wasn't. I mean, this was his country that looked a lot different from how it had when he was a little bit younger, because all of a sudden there was so much money and so much international presence. So, you know, he was sort of his streets, but also a little bit different. And also there was this part of his city that grew up that he didn't really have access to, which is where all the kind of foreigners would spend time and, you know, the bars and the bases and all this stuff.
00:10:31
Speaker
We became, we became friendly. He started to really look out for me. We are sort of lives continued to intersect. We were about the same age. Um, and then at some point he kind of shifted from this, you know, scrappy, funny, hard luck, always kind of in need kid to pretty wealthy and then really wealthy. Uh, and of course the time I was very confused and couldn't quite figure out what was going on.
00:10:58
Speaker
And it was only years later that he sort of clued me in to what had been going on under my nose. Yeah. And so his backstory is he grew up very, I would say very, very poor in Afghanistan. He was not one of the wealthier, from a wealthier family in Afghanistan.
00:11:21
Speaker
And his background was he becomes a businessman. He starts selling CDs, I think, or something to do with music. And he just slowly works his way up. And by the time you meet him,
00:11:36
Speaker
He drives for a taxi company or he owns his own company? Drives for a taxi company. It hadn't started and that to him at the time felt as high as he could ever get because he got to spend all this time with foreigners who he had kind of come to idolize because
00:11:54
Speaker
earlier during the Taliban years and the Civil War years when he was literally starving, one of the only ways that he had sort of relief was his brother had kind of stolen a satellite dish and he would watch international but largely American television. So he sort of came to idolize foreigners with white people the way he described it. He wanted to be around white people and he wanted to be a white person. So when he got a job driving for this taxi company, even though he was sort of getting paid not that much,
00:12:23
Speaker
For a while it was, I have arrived, you know, I get to spend time with foreign people, his own company. Yeah. And all the while, like, you know, growing up, you've, you, you talk a little bit about how he's like, you know, the Afghanistan war starts. And before that, before 2001, he's watching on like his satellite dish, he's watching other countries and it's kind of his escape and like the events going on in America or in Europe.
00:12:51
Speaker
And then September 11th obviously happens and all of a sudden his country is on TV and he's watching his own people. I thought that was really striking. Let's talk a little bit about kind of the Afghanistan war and how that, obviously that's the backdrop to this story. So you get to Afghanistan in the late 2000s, I think it's 2007? That's right.
00:13:18
Speaker
What was going on in the war at that time?
Experiencing Afghanistan's Escalation
00:13:21
Speaker
What was going on in Afghanistan? I think if we look back now, that looks like the beginning of really the insurgency kicking off into another kind of a higher gear.
00:13:31
Speaker
there was this period in the early 2000s where the Taliban had basically said, okay, we lose, we're out. And then they sort of came back. At the time, it didn't necessarily feel that way. It felt, I mean, to me, landing there. And I, you know, I was probably blinkered a little bit just by the fact that I was having this crazy adventure that again, I never thought would actually happen. And I was in this strange, but also like very beautiful place. So it didn't necessarily feel like I was parachuting into this very kinetic war zone at all. I mean, it felt like I was
00:14:02
Speaker
parachuting into a kind of beautiful, a little bit dusty, developing country with a lot of energy. But it was not, and this probably should have been a lesson, like it wasn't that hard to find. I mean, there was some kind of violence beginning to happen, you know, even in this major cities.
00:14:22
Speaker
you know, several times a week. So it was sort of these two worlds happening at once. It was like, you know, studying abroad in the interesting new safe country with friendly people, but then also this sort of undercurrent of really intense urban insurgency happening.
00:14:39
Speaker
And so you're a young reporter. What are some of the things that you're feeling? What are the thoughts you're having? How is this all registering to you as a young reporter? Fresh out of college, too. I don't think we mentioned that. This is your first reporting, I think your first reporting job out of college. And basically, you were freelance. You were working at a university and just going around trying to get stories. What were your feelings at the time?
00:15:06
Speaker
I think for me, I was so, I mean, again, I think I was able to keep this sort of facade of like, this isn't quite real. And this is something that I kind of came home later that I dealt with much later, but
00:15:20
Speaker
I wasn't conscious of this at the time, but I think I had a sort of clinical mindset. I am here to observe and maybe even a little more, almost shamefully, like I'm here to build a career for myself. So things would happen and I'd be conscious of sort of the tragedy and the human cost, but I would also be able to sort of see things in a, I'm a journalist, how is this gonna make for a good story?
00:15:49
Speaker
How am I going to get a really powerful detail that an editor back home might be interested in? It becomes a little less human at that point. I remember Anderson Cooper talked once about how he was reporting from a war zone.
00:16:07
Speaker
And he was a little bit younger and he just found himself just like snapping photos of dead bodies or something and not even realizing this is a human being, this is a life. So, you know, maybe like a similar feeling. Yeah, it is. It's like, yes, it's a human being, but it doesn't kind of register emotionally as much.
00:16:29
Speaker
I have a few explanations for that. I don't know which of them are true, if any, but one is, I know doctors who can go into an emergency room and take care of people who are bleeding out, but who, if they see someone roll their ankle on the sidewalk are puking. So I think there's something of being in situ. This is my job. This is that you're able to kind of be a little bit more clinical. I also think, and this is uncomfortable to admit, but I think that there might be an aspect of
00:17:00
Speaker
These are human beings but they don't look exactly like me and therefore maybe this is like I don't connect to it as much that you know that would be blown up for me way later when when you know cobble collapsed and it was like all these people that I felt where my family were in trouble but but I think for a while I was able to sort of.
00:17:19
Speaker
I was able to sort of keep that distance. And I think another part of it may just be because as close as I came to feel to people and to this place, I always knew I had another home. And even when at times Afghanistan felt like a home, I still had another home so I could leave.
00:17:35
Speaker
It didn't quite register to me that people around me couldn't really. As your fledgling reporting career, as it gets off the ground, what are some of the things that happen on that first stretch when you're in Afghanistan as a reporter?
00:17:58
Speaker
So first of all, you alluded to this, but I was not able to make enough money, you know, doing a couple of articles, do an article a week or something for, you know, squire.com slash backslash part of the website, no one ever goes to, to actually survive there.
Balancing Journalism with University Work
00:18:13
Speaker
So I ended up getting this job at the American University of Afghanistan. It was a low level job, basically kind of a glorified secretary, but it gave me housing, a little bit of money and, and kind of a base of operations.
00:18:28
Speaker
But so I, what would happen is I'd, you know, I'd have a nine to five or sometimes longer than that. And then if something happened, I'd sort of ask my boss, like, I am hearing there's a, you know, a bomb went off in this part of the city. Can I go? And usually it would be because Amal had called me to tell me that. And usually I'd be trying to find a way to get Amal to come get me.
00:18:48
Speaker
rather than, you know, one of the other drivers for that taxi company. I guess I've been saying, I'm all, I was reading it. I'm all about Amol like email. You say, yeah. I mean, I lived in the Middle East for a very short period of time. So some of, some of the pronunciations I can get, uh, okay. Anyway, um, as much as it helps because you know, what's correct in one part, one country and it's slightly different for another country. Sure. Sure. Sure.
00:19:16
Speaker
So we covered some bombings, some shootings, their mind clearing operations. And I was sort of getting drawn into the kind of development efforts because I had this job at American University of Afghanistan, which was partially a grantee of USAID. So of course I wasn't by any stretch.
00:19:40
Speaker
a development expert or anything like that, but I had kind of a window into what was happening in terms of the development efforts and the education efforts for better or worse. So those two things were kind of happening at the same time. And it's true, I've gone back and forth to the country over the years, but that first stint was six or seven months straight, which at that age and at that time, that felt like being there, especially because other journalists
00:20:10
Speaker
with some exceptions, but other journalists would usually come in for a few days or a few weeks and leave. I was like, man, I get it. I live here after being there for six months. You eventually return to America. How are you feeling then when you return? I think I felt
00:20:33
Speaker
a mix of things. I felt like I'd had this kind of really meaningful experience. I had a, you know, I had the beginnings of a portfolio. Um, I still couldn't really get a job, you know? So what ended up happening is I spent two or three months being like, I'm a sort of accomplished work correspondent. Cause I'd had four articles published in blog posts, basically.
00:20:59
Speaker
still kind of couldn't get a job. And the only place that would have me really was back in Afghanistan. I got another kind of low level job at the American university and went back and did it all again for another six months or seven months. And how did things, so on your second time around, how were things different? Things were different in that the day job I had was a little bit more directed. I went back to start working on this,
00:21:29
Speaker
a women's education program. So there had been this project run out of Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona, where they were bringing about 10 or 15 aspiring, Afghan aspiring business women over to Arizona to kind of combine them with mentors and run them through a modified version of this business school curriculum and then send them back. There was some connection between that school and the American University of Afghanistan, and they decided
00:21:55
Speaker
It'd be great if we could do a version of this in Afghanistan. It would sort of save money. We could reach more people. Everyone at the university was really busy with really important jobs, except for me. So not by any virtue of my qualifications, but sort of by the opposite. This was sort of put in my lap as like figure out how to do this. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to build this, you know, Afghan women business training program in Kabul, which I again was like totally unqualified to do.
00:22:23
Speaker
but ended up being kind of an interesting rhyme with my sort of night job as a journalist, because I would go on these tours of local businesses and meet women doing interesting things. And then I would see sort of the other side of the country when I was at the site of some bombing or something. And so all the while, when you were the first and second, the first time and this time, your friendship with Aymal is
00:22:51
Speaker
is growing, right? Talk about that friendship and how that's evolving because he's not just your driver anymore. You guys are your friends. Yeah. You know, he starts as my driver. I think pretty quickly I was like, I want this person to be my friend and I'm going to make him be my friend even if he doesn't want to be. He was also just my entire bureau. I mean, again, I had no access to official people. I had no resources behind me. So he became
00:23:17
Speaker
my translator, my driver, my security. Really, he was my sort of network of sources because he would kind of hear when things would happen in a way that I, at the time, didn't quite understand how he was able to do that. And then when we were actually kind of doing stories, he would sort of facilitate. He kind of got a sense of what information I was looking for and was almost in some ways kind of a co-writer. So he was this entire bureau in one person
00:23:46
Speaker
And he was becoming, I thought, a really genuine close friend, despite the fact that we'd come from different worlds.
Growing Friendship with Imal
00:23:55
Speaker
Jen, he invited you to dinner with his family. Yeah. It's really not just a business relationship. You guys seem to be really actual good friends. Yeah. Well, I'm not asking for spoilers, because I do like how things are laid out.
00:24:16
Speaker
But maybe if you could just talk about some of the events that you would like to share with you and Imal and what those events were and why they are important to the story. So the two of the scenes that as well do, I'll describe two of the scenes that we see twice.
00:24:39
Speaker
And one of them is when he is kind of courting a young woman and wants to take her on a picnic to this place called the Salang Pass, which is a couple of hours from Kabul. And it's just this beautiful kind of waterfall-y, white water mountainous region that's really close to the city, but feels totally different. Because in Kabul, especially in the summer, it gets really hot, it's dusty, it can be,
00:25:05
Speaker
It's kind of can get dirty. It's like any other kind of downtown city. And then a few hours away, you've got this beautiful lush, you know, you feel like you're in the Lord of the Rings or something.
00:25:15
Speaker
So he wanted to sort of take her out from the dusty city of Kabul and show her this good time. He invited me and my understanding was that I was sort of the character witness because this woman was Afghan. She was born in Afghanistan, but she'd grown up. She left very young and grown up in Europe. So he felt he was punching above his weight and he needed another foreigner to kind of be there to vouch for him.
00:25:38
Speaker
So we went, we went on this, you know, on this picnic and it, and it kind of ended in disaster because we, we basically got arrested for indecency and you know, hijinks ensued. And as I narrate it, I was able to use my, you know, my station as an American to kind of get us out of trouble. We see that same, that same scene again from his perspective. And we realized what actually happened, which was.
00:26:06
Speaker
addition to everything that led up to getting arrested, which I had also misunderstood, once we did, everything I said was sort of making it worse. And Amol was actually kind of stage managing the situation to try to get me to be quiet. And then he was translating, intentionally mistranslating what I was saying. So while I had remembered this event as
00:26:30
Speaker
Wow, everyone's gonna thank me. I stood up for myself in this foreign land. I presided over this moment and got us out of trouble. It really was the opposite. I'd made things worse and I'd made it harder for him all. And he sort of had ingeniously manipulated this situation to get us out safely.
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, and this scene too, to give a little context to it, so this is obviously Afghanistan, a conservative country, and the indecency was, it was just two men and a woman, and the woman wasn't related to the two men, correct?
00:27:05
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So what? First, let me let me ask you because we touched on this earlier, but I'll ask you now about these scenes that are narrated from your perspective and then narrated from I'm all's perspective. What are some of the differences in how you both perceive yourself? Well, I think a lot of the differences are I think a lot of the differences, if not almost all of them are
Perceptions vs. Reality
00:27:35
Speaker
are my own misperceptions because in addition, you know, of course, perception is subjective, but I didn't speak the language. You know, he did. There was a lot going on in his life that I, of course, didn't know that he did. So. There are there are moments where I'm just sort of bringing a level of like hubris and kind of projecting onto what's around me as if I know.
00:28:04
Speaker
And it's only once we see things from the perspective of someone who is from this country and lives here and his entire kind of career is based on looking really closely at society that we see what I would now confidently say is the truth between the two versions. Part of it is my perspective and his perspective, but part of it is the perspective of a young, ambitious person who lacks humility
00:28:32
Speaker
and the perspective and truth, and almost truth, right? Now, what I was actually really struck by was when we get, I'm all narrated from your perspective, he's this very personable, very confident, this guy that everybody likes. When we get narrated from his perspective, you really get a lot of insecurity, or at least I felt like insecurity, for example,
00:29:01
Speaker
He's always ruminating on how his father died when he was very young, and he doesn't come from wealth, and Americans are kind of these exalted people, and he's just this Afghan who doesn't really matter. Talk a little bit about how, because obviously you're not in his mind, but for the purposes of the book, you are in his mind. Talk about how that kind of, I don't want to say character of I'm all developed,
00:29:29
Speaker
But what was that, how did you come on that process? So I think it started because before there was ever a book, I was visiting him in Canada a few years ago and he brought up another story that we'd done together and he said something, you know, we were joking about it, but he said something that kind of made me realize this actually really haunted him. This was really, this stuck with him.
00:29:57
Speaker
And I think that may have been the seed of, you know, it's important to try to tell this story from his perspective, not just from his perspective, but sort of like the interiority, because it is really easy. And this is basically what I did to view this person as kind of, oh, this nice guy who's kind of here to serve me, you know, and that, and that I think a lot of our relationship, too much of our relationship,
00:30:21
Speaker
was that. And I think from part one, that's sort of what you see, this confident, happy, lucky little guy, nothing can hurt him. And that's partially, I think, comes from thinking really highly of him. But I think it also partially comes from not thinking of him, not thinking of him as a three-dimensional human being who is able to have doubts and insecurities. And I'm glad you brought that up, because in a way, I think it's kind of universal. I mean, how many
00:30:51
Speaker
How many people that you, that project is really confident, do you later find out are struggling with deep, deep insecurities? I mean, it's everyone. Why should it be different for him? But from my perspective, here I was in this, you know, strange exotic new land and everything that was there was kind of there for me to consume.
00:31:10
Speaker
And so I hope that that contrast between, you know, the somewhat two dimensional version of a mall that I described from my perspective and this like very thoughtful, insecure, but also kind of brilliant person from his perspective. I hope that kind of, I'm glad that that pop for you, that that's validating.
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just, I mean, there are several scenes. There's a scene that takes place in a morgue that I thought was also especially striking. So I did really enjoy those. Now talking about I'm all in this scene that you were talking about where you guys are basically arrested. Now he's, if I remember correctly, the woman that you're with
00:31:56
Speaker
Is this the woman that he wants to marry? At the time, yeah. It's not the one who ultimately does, but yeah. Right, right. And now this I found, so this really, so he ultimately is dissuaded from marrying her because he doesn't have enough money and he meets her dad and he's like, what kind of life are you going to provide my daughter?
00:32:21
Speaker
Talk a little bit about not just that event, but because, as you mentioned, he comes into a lot of money later on. Talk about how this cloud of not having much money, talk about how that hangs over, I'm all, and then how that influences some of his actions.
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, so like you pointed out from a from a really early age, he was really conscious of how much he didn't have. And in some ways, I mean, that may seem kind of obvious that, you know, not everyone knows the entire history of Afghanistan, but with with even sort of the most basic knowledge, you know, that, you know, it's not a wealthy country. It hasn't been a wealthy country for a while. But still, even by the standards of, you know, early 90s Afghanistan, where there was civil war and then there was Taliban years and the Taliban were
00:33:11
Speaker
among other things, are just not very good at governing. So there was famine, there was food shortage, and not for everyone, but for a lot of people. And because he had lost his father really young, his mother was widowed with a bunch of kids to look after. And he was just very conscious, partially because of that, partially because of what he was seeing on the satellite dish of how much he didn't have and how small he was, basically. He felt inadequate.
00:33:40
Speaker
There were a few early opportunities he had to provide for his family. As a really young man, there was a small NGO that did kind of vocational training and also gave kids groceries for their families. So he had that experience of providing, very modestly, but
00:34:03
Speaker
But that kind of stuck with him. And then every time there was some kind of even suggestion that rhymed with that kind of inadequacy, it would kind of inflame. I mean, he would kind of fly off the handle. And a really good example of that is the one you brought up where he goes to meet with the
00:34:25
Speaker
with the father of Fatima, this woman that he's sort of courting. And, and the father is basically saying, and you know, my hope is you can kind of see things from both perspectives, because the father is saying, my daughter is educated, she travels, she has friends, I don't want her to marry, you know, a conservative Talib type guy.
00:34:44
Speaker
But to aim all what's happening is he's saying, you're poor, you're not good enough for her. Where's your father? Where's your, you know, and he and it's almost like violent, the feeling of Yeah, of course, again, I'm being made to feel, you know, small and inadequate. And because I don't have a family, I don't have money, I don't have any and it inflames that sense of, you know, so screw you guys, I'm going to do it, I'm going to find a way and I'm going to be big enough that you're all going to be, you know, begging me for forgiveness.
00:35:12
Speaker
Yeah, and so then talk about like that. Well, actually before I ask you, we're gonna come back to this in a second, but I was thinking about just as you were just talking, did you know about his upbringing when you were there and you were with him? No. So this is something you found out afterwards. Yeah. Okay.
00:35:35
Speaker
So at the time, what did you think about his life and his upbringing and his background? How did you feel as an American? Did you already feel like I obviously come from a much wealthier place than I'm all? I think I was conscious of being exalted, to use your word, exalted as a foreigner, as an American.
00:35:58
Speaker
And probably not as uncomfortable with that as I should have been. I sort of enjoyed this feeling of being really special through no achievement of my own, just because I had white skin and was from America. That was sort of enough for me to be special initially in his eyes. And it felt like in a lot of people's eyes. And I just kind of took it. Yes, you're welcome. I'm great because I was born in the right place.
00:36:24
Speaker
How did you feel when you found out that, oh gosh, his background, he comes from a very poor place? I wasn't shocked. I think I knew enough to know. Of course, I didn't assume he came from great wealth. I was always impressed with his house, but I think that's just because his mom and his brothers worked really hard to keep this house that was in the center of Kabul.
00:36:55
Speaker
Uh, but, and, and I, and in, when, when he would have me over for these meals, they were always, you know, they, there was so much food and I was, I sort of assumed that was not normal, but, but it didn't, it didn't bother me and it didn't, and I wasn't, I wasn't. So I wasn't sort of shocked when I found out the details of his, of his early childhood, it kind of tracked.
00:37:21
Speaker
But also I found myself really wanting to reach out and hug that kid. You're good. You'll be okay. This is not your fault. So talk about then this journey that Imaw begins after he loves this woman and wants to marry her, but he's broke. Talk about his journey then from like, okay, I'm tired of being broke to wealth.
00:37:50
Speaker
Yeah. So some of his other friends at this taxi company decide to start their own taxi company and they invite him to be a part of it. And what he finds is they mistreat him too. They kind of look down on him too, but they also like take his ideas. And so at some point, and he says this is because I suggested it, which I don't remember, but at some point he's, I suggest, why don't you just start your own company?
00:38:20
Speaker
And for some reason that hadn't occurred to him. I think he didn't, you know, again, to your point, like I saw this sort of confident, you know, mouthy kid who like could do anything. He saw like, how could I, I'm just Amol, I'm just some poor Afghan, how could I ever start my own business? But the way he describes it, when I was like, well, screw it, why don't you start your own? That kind of stayed with him.
00:38:45
Speaker
And eventually he kind of had a bit of a falling out with the second taxi company, decided to start his own company. At that time I was in America, he called me and asked for an initial investment. I found a way to wire him $700.
00:39:02
Speaker
I thought that was a point I thought was interesting that you gave him $700 to start his company. I know that that felt like a huge amount to me, but I also knew that just in the grand scheme of starting a business that couldn't possibly be a lot. It turns out that does become a very minuscule amount.
00:39:22
Speaker
It turns out, but in the, in the interim, as I, as he began becoming successful in a way that I, you know, in my part, I can't quite figure out how. And he's like, you did this. You started this company. This is your company. Again, I was like, all right. You know, I don't really see what someone else could do, but I'll take it. I'll take the credit. So I guess, yeah. I mean, without giving too much away, he started a taxi company. It became more than a taxi company and he found a way to exploit the misunderstanding
00:39:52
Speaker
you know, the gap between the international community and Afghans, particularly when it came to weapons. And it's, it's tied to the American just influx of cash, or I guess it's the NATO. I'm not sure what the right terminology. International Security Systems Force, which I think is NATO, also few.
00:40:16
Speaker
Maybe it's minus a few, but anyway, I say negative. There's just this massive influx of cash that I'm all is. Ultimately, that's how he makes his wealth for himself. Much like a lot of other people, he finds ways to get a part of that. Talk about why is there so much money pouring in? What are the types of things that
00:40:43
Speaker
people are doing with this money. Talk about this cash infusion.
Corruption in Afghanistan
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things I was hoping the book might do is, of course, we hear about corruption in wartime contracting in Iraq, Afghanistan, elsewhere. We hear stories all the time about how horrible it is, how much money is lost, and how much graft there is and inefficiency.
00:41:06
Speaker
you know, in a way he embodies that that's where he's making his hay. And so, and so part of my hope is like, yes, but like, let's, let's get to know someone. So we're rooting for that person and then find ourselves almost rooting for him to make more of this American taxpayer money. But yeah, a huge amount of money poured into the country to, you know, and, and this is not an expert analysis, but it always seemed to me like the
00:41:31
Speaker
Motivation behind it would alternate between at least from from the American perspective It would be we can't let Afghanistan become a safe haven for terrorists again And then it would then that would feel kind of politically a little bit too self-serving so then it would shift kind of towards we're developing this country and democratic peace and then that would feel a little bit too polyannic and then would shift back to a
00:41:57
Speaker
But it was, you know, there was this massive influx, billions and billions and billions of dollars to secure and build, uh, Afghanistan and a lot of good things were accomplished, I think. And a lot was lost and wasted. And so like what, like, so when we're talking about like graft, you know, obviously, you know, I'm all with, with the weapons, uh, stuff, but like, what are the types of, you know, is there.
00:42:23
Speaker
I don't know, are people, are politicians pocketing the money? How is this affecting the country as a whole? Yeah. It's like a version of, we talk about inequality, income inequality in almost everywhere, but in America, for example, and it's like that there with slightly different driver and kind of a different scale.
00:42:47
Speaker
If you're a Western country or if you're a neighboring country, if you're Iran or Pakistan or you're a country nearby, it's important. Afghanistan is sort of a chessboard. It's landlocked, but it's in a strategic place.
00:43:03
Speaker
A lot of countries find various ways of buying influence. You want to make sure that the person who's in power, the people who are in power have good relationship and sense of obligation to your country. So that can be a country sending literal bags of cash, which the CIA has done. We've done that.
00:43:25
Speaker
I'm sure other countries have done that too, or sending goods, sending weapons, sending vehicles, sometimes sending weapons so that your side, the side you've chosen to back can fight. And I think sometimes just sending them is sort of like here, like us.
00:43:42
Speaker
And it was largely that, that a mall was able to exploit. And so, there's an example with up armored vehicles, which are kind of expensive to ship, especially to a landlocked country. But some of the neighboring countries were giving them as part of their patronage relationships with certain warlords and leaders, often way more than those warlords and leaders actually needed.
00:44:04
Speaker
So I'm all found this way to take those vehicles and then lease them for a massive, massive markup to Western security contractors. So you have this kind of crazy odd situation where, you know, in some cases weapons provided by Iran were being provided to Americans and British, you know, right at the time when President Bush was saying, you know, Iran is the axis of evil and yet you have
00:44:28
Speaker
you know american military contract with with you know protected by armored vehicles provided by iran i thought that was very interesting when you wrote about that i also thought it was very interesting
00:44:40
Speaker
that I'm all when he's negotiating with these Westerners. He's like, maybe I shouldn't ask for too high of a price, but I'm going to ask for it. And he just drops some ludicrous number and the Westerners are like, okay, we'll pay that. They don't even try and negotiate with him. There's just so much cash. Nobody's really
00:45:01
Speaker
paying that much attention. And I was- It really gets orienting to him. He'd be like, you know, because he's used to bartering and that's part of his skill and he didn't get to because- Yeah. That was actually the first time I went to the Middle East. I was like, that was a cultural thing that I had to learn also too is like, you know, that's kind of the expectation is to barter things down.
00:45:22
Speaker
Remember that you just felt uncomfortable doing that. Someone would be like, this carpet, how much is it worth? How much do you want to pay? And I'd be like, I mean, I don't make anything. I don't want to insult you. Like, no, no, don't tell me what is it? And I'd say like $5. I'm like, Oh, how could you say that? Yeah, yeah. I yeah, those, those, those parts of the book, if not resonated, at least I was like, Oh, yeah, that's that.
00:45:50
Speaker
Where were you? Well, I was a few places actually. The first time that I left the country, I was 18 years old and I went to the West Bank actually. Yeah, I spent a summer living in Bethlehem and I was studying Arabic in college at the time. I was at Indiana University.
00:46:11
Speaker
And I never left the country before. But I think a little bit like what you were talking about when you were growing up, you kind of wanted to get out and see the
Cultural Negotiations
00:46:20
Speaker
world. And there's much more out there, which really drove you to writing. I too, I was just dying to go see the world and go see things. And I got a travel grant from this company to spend a summer in the West Bank.
00:46:41
Speaker
I was, you know, I got to practice my Arabic. I lived with a Palestinian family, which was very, very cool because I got like, you know, every day was like a new, a new course on Middle Eastern culture. So that was really cool.
00:46:58
Speaker
And then I went, when I was in college for another summer, I went to Oman and then when I graduated, I lived in Jordan and Qatar for a short period of time. So yeah, so I've been to a few places, definitely no war zones, but I've got like a little knowledge of Middle Eastern culture. But the bartering stuff,
00:47:19
Speaker
is like totally like, and I'm still like not, I'm not good at doing that. I never learned like, there's no way I would ever make it in the Middle East trying to like wheel and deal. No, not at all. You need someone like him. Exactly. Yeah. No, like I, and you know, I've met those people when I've been in the Middle East, when I was in Jordan, there was this guy who, real nice guy,
00:47:46
Speaker
a professor when I was in college, he introduced me to him for him to help me find an apartment and to do those things that nobody, you know, don't trust like this Westerner from Indiana. Like I grew up in like this rural, solid, rural town.
00:48:05
Speaker
And so like this guy was like, he used to, he was a rackie. And he was like, he fought in Saddam's army. Like he was a big guy. And it's so funny because when I was reading your book, I assumed that on the cover here is Imal on the left and you on the right, is that? Well, for some reason that didn't register until like maybe 50 pages in and I flipped back and I was like, oh, that must be the guy.
00:48:31
Speaker
Initially, when I was reading your story, I was picturing this guy, this Iraqi guy who was helping me around Jordan as this fixer because that's who he was. He could negotiate. To find my apartment, he flagged some guy walking down the road. He's like, hey, do you live around here? They got to talk and he's like, you know any apartments? He's like, I'll show you one now.
00:48:55
Speaker
They negotiated the prize and he was like talking and he's like, oh my gosh, like how could you, you know, that's an outrageous price, like it must be much lower. And so anyway, like, yeah, like that kind of, that kind of culture, it's not something that comes natural to me, but I also like have met people with that kind of personality and have been so grateful for them. You just put your faith and you just put yourself in their hands. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:49:25
Speaker
Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about your, so this, we've been talking about this stretch of time now where you and I mall are, I think it's like 2011, 2012. You're in different parts of the world. He's in Afghanistan. You've returned to the US. Talk a little bit about what you've going on and how your career is changing and progressing.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah. So I ended up going to grad graduate school, um, for international security, international relations, and then, and then finishing again, not really being able to get a job and decided to really, to really kind of bear down and try to do a book. Uh, and long story short, I ended up, I ended up writing this book about a, um, co-educational school in Afghanistan that was at that time already 2012 preparing for, for what looked like an imminent, uh, us withdrawal.
00:50:19
Speaker
So, and after that I began working on some more long form magazine stories and started, you know, sort of traveling the world again. Well, let's fast forward a little bit here then to, I guess 2021, which is like a 10 year jump, but you know, we've only got so
Career Progression & Urgency
00:50:38
Speaker
much time here. Talk about your career a little bit, how it's progressed, and then talk about the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and how that impacted you.
00:50:50
Speaker
So in many ways, thanks to this kind of base that Amol had helped me build, you know, I was able to do this book when that first book was, you know, after I'd submitted a first draft and before it was published, I wrote to every magazine editor I could find and said, hey, I've got some time because I'm waiting for my book to come out because I wrote a book because my book's going to be published because I, you know, I just like repeated the fact that I, as shamelessly as I could,
00:51:20
Speaker
and ended up getting some assignments in various parts of the world and had a few years of covering outbreaks and different civil conflicts and wars and insurgencies. All the while, Afghanistan had been kind of my first love, I guess, but also I just become so close to so many people there.
00:51:45
Speaker
And as, so as the, the Biden administration announced they weren't going to change, they were going to pull, you know, they were going to pull troops entirely out by that August, 2021. Um, a lot of us who were, you know, who are friends, who are friends and family of, of the country kind of like, or of, or of communities there.
00:52:09
Speaker
I started to get worried. I think I still had some kind of denial that was not actually going to happen, but better start building some pathways out just in case. The person I was most worried about was this guy who had founded this co-educational school and was a member of an ethnic and religious minority. For a variety of reasons, he was really at risk.
00:52:32
Speaker
And also I was just very close to him and his family. So there were a few months of just kind of writing and calling different American universities and think tanks and, and, um, and trying to find positions for him. And actually a lot of really positive response. I'm just really kind of amazed. People who were not trying to, I mean, this was before there was that moment where everyone was paying attention to Afghanistan. There was no like glory or glamor or posturing in it. They're just people who.
00:53:01
Speaker
learned a little bit about this person and kind of wanted to help. Ultimately, none of that worked because not everyone in his family had passports, not everyone had visas, the embassies were overrun already, plus they were sort of already operating with skeleton crews. And it just got more and more and more urgent until we came to August 2021 and city after city was falling to the Taliban.
00:53:30
Speaker
Kabul fell and it came down to a few nights of just being up all night and sort of coordinating the family's route across Kabul using this incredible network of people who come together just kind of impromptu and some some pretty influential former and active duty military who were who were trying to make sense of the chaos and get people get people across there's just this like very
00:53:55
Speaker
traumatic, but kind of heavy effort to get this one family to safety. And once that happened, we had about five minutes of, wow, I can't believe he's finally safe. They're finally okay. And then it was like, geez, we've just deprived this whole community of its leader. Now what? And we just rolled right into trying to get more people, especially girls from that school out of the country. And that's an effort that just continues today.
00:54:24
Speaker
At this point, you're a pretty seasoned, if you want to say seasoned, but you've reported from other war zones.
Reporting in Conflict Zones
00:54:35
Speaker
I think there's a chapter where you're reporting from Yemen. What are some of the career milestones that you've passed up to this point? Yemen was a big one. That was a really difficult story to pull off, but again, had a lot of help.
00:54:53
Speaker
And that was one of the things I was trying to do with that. I guess with a lot of the stories I try to take kind of exotic and foreign and difficult to understand and then sometimes kind of too big to understand crises and try to render them in a kind of intimate, personal, easy to grasp way. And I certainly don't always succeed, but that's often part of the motivation of trying to find an angle. And I'd done a story in Northern Iraq about ISIS siege on Kirkuk.
00:55:22
Speaker
and couldn't quite figure out how to portray that in a way that Western readers might feel connected. And the solution ended up being this one story about a guy who had an old bulletproof BMW that he drove around and saved a bunch of people. So it was like, literally, there's a BMW. People know what a BMW looks like. Maybe that's the almost literal vehicle I can use to transport people to this other conflict.
00:55:50
Speaker
So there's a number of things trying to do that. I'd, I'd co-written a couple of books that would, would kind of help pay for my habit of trying to do these, you know, this, this war reporting that still was freelance. And even when I was getting compensated for it was usually after having to put in a lot of time and effort sort of, and money, trying to figure out the logistics. And then I think one of the meaningful differences between all of those and Afghanistan was that
00:56:17
Speaker
again, and I didn't realize this at the time, was that I could always come home. And when Afghanistan collapsed and there was just this sort of incredible need from
00:56:27
Speaker
a lot of people that I either knew or were members of a community that I knew, that was just all happening on my phone. I didn't really realize this was the first time I couldn't leave. I wasn't there. I was already gone, but it was just constant everywhere. There was no escape. I think that was the first time I actually, as much as I felt like I could empathize with people who are in the midst of some kind of violent civil conflict,
00:56:52
Speaker
I think that was the first time I actually, it really came home and it's because I was home and there was no other place I could go to sort of escape from it. Yeah.
Humility in War Reporting
00:57:02
Speaker
And you've touched on this actually a little bit in the afterward of your book about war correspondence, just kind of in general. What do you think your book says about war correspondence in war reporters? What do you think the takeaway is there?
00:57:21
Speaker
I mean, one of the things, and of course I'm trying partially because I want this to be more like a novel, even though I tried very hard to make sure it's all true and corroborated. I'm trying not to be preachy, but if there is one message to
00:57:39
Speaker
foreign policy makers and also to people who cover foreign policy and foreign correspondence and war correspondence. It's just the benefit of humility and what happens when you lack it. And I'm sort of trying to use my part one myself as an example of the damage you can cause if you aren't humble, if you don't acknowledge a little bit of what you don't know. And also,
00:58:07
Speaker
if you license yourself to just do anything under the kind of rubric of, I'm a journalist and therefore no matter what I do, I'm fighting the good fight. I of course think that journalism is indispensable, that foreign reporting is really important, but I also think that we tend to have, we being, I think journalists, especially freelance journalists, no, all journalists tend to have
00:58:33
Speaker
You know, a bit of a persecution complex, a bit of a, it's so hard for us and we're doing God's work. And therefore, whatever pain I might inflict on this person I'm interviewing is worth it because I'm informing, you know, the public. And it's not that I necessarily always strongly disagree with that, but I think that it's worth, it's worth pausing and asking the question. And I think that we don't often do that. I think we often say, here I am, stick the microphone in someone's face. You know, what was it like when your family was killed?
00:59:04
Speaker
And we don't really often think, is this necessary? Is this actually helpful? Am I, should I be caught re-traumatizing this person? So I think it's that sort of pause and question and a little bit of introspection that I would advise to my earlier self. And if I'm gonna be so bold as to advise other journalists, it may be that.
00:59:31
Speaker
Wonderful.
Upcoming Book on Smart Bombs
00:59:33
Speaker
Well, Jeff, this has been a terrific interview. I could just, I could just keep going, but I know we got to wrap up finally here. You know, what are you working on next? I'm working on. So one of the big things I'm working on is a, a book that was already late when I started this one, but it's, it's sort of a biography of one of the first smart bombs and trying to follow this one invention from the
01:00:01
Speaker
from World War II to now and telling a number of stories that intersect with the development of this bomb. That's been a couple of years late on that now, but eventually. Well, I hope whenever you finish it, I hope you come back on and I'd love to talk to you about it. Yeah, I like that. Well, if people want to follow you, where can people find you? Are you on social media?
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not that good at it, but I'm trying to sort of learn. Join the club. Maybe this thing is just a website, Jeffrey Eastern.com.
01:00:41
Speaker
You know, and I'll do a tweet once every six months. So, okay. Perfect. Well, Jeff, thanks again. Uh, everybody, Jeffrey Eastern, the mercenary, go get a copy, go check it out from your library, read the story. Very compelling read, read like a novel. I'll repeat that again, because, uh, that was Jeff's intention and that's what I thought it did. Yeah. So Jeff, uh, thanks so much. Thank you so much. This was so great. Thank you. Thanks.