[Music]
okay I
welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and with me gri
in 1989 the last Soviet column left
Afghanistan it brought to an end a
9-year intervention costing untold
amounts of blood and treasure the
left-wing government left behind in
cabul struggled on for longer than most
thought possible before being overrun by
the us-backed and Saudi funded fanatics
of the president najah hanging him from
a lamp poost with his severed penis
stuck in his mouth it was the shape of
things to come competing mujahidin
factions proceeded to murder each other
on an industrial scale until the Taliban
crushed the allall and teamed up with
al-Qaeda in one of the most obscurant
States in history the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan as the world knows they soon
turned on their Earth while patrons from
alhar to the Twin Tower a useful
reminder that Mary Shell's novel friend
Frankenstein should be read right to the
end our first guest charted all of this
and More in his Peerless career as a
foreign correspondent for the guardian
and as the author of ghosts of
Afghanistan and I'm glad to say Jonathan
steel joins us now Jonathan thanks for
coming on board the Sputnik this
Majestic work of yours ghosts of
Afghanistan the haunted Battleground one
of the things that sticks out from the
book is that the principle difference
between the Soviet Union and us is that
the Soviet Union learned their lesson
earlier and changed course would you
agree with that definitely and it wasn't
just the political leadership in the
Kremlin mik gorbachov who came to power
of course in 1985 who realized the war
was unwinable and they ought to pull out
it was the Soviet military they weren't
like the gung-ho us generals of today
who think everything's going well and
progress is being made we know from the
secret meetings of the polit bureau The
Archives of course been published since
the collapse of the Soviet Union the
military agreed with gorbachov they had
to get out it was not not working and
yet the US Generals in particular
forever calling for a surge one more
heave still more men into the mall still
more blood to be spilt rather
surprisingly managed to persuade
President Obama of this when he had run
for office as the man to bring an end to
America's unpopular Foreign Wars well he
made a big mistake in his campaign
having come out against the Iraq War
which of course was good he described
that as a war of choice where he said
the whereas he said that the war in
Afghanistan was one of necessity and we
had to be in there because of al-Qaeda
and the Taliban and all the rest of it
so he did make a mistake but though I
think probably like gorbachov he
realized in his heart of hearts that the
thing was unwinable and now uh having
spent all that blood and treasure having
spent I think trillions of dollars
amongst all the parties having invested
scores of billions of dollars in the
regime of hammed Karai as soon as the
foreign forces leave I think we're going
to be back at square one are we not well
I think it'll be worse because as you
pointed out in the intro it took three
years before the muine came into Cabell
after the last Soviet troop had gone I
mean I flew actually on February the
15th 1989 from Moscow to kabell I was
the Moscow correspondent of the guardian
and a lot of my Russian friends thought
I was crazy to be going to Afghanistan
at that moment they thought there'd be
complete collapse of the regime there'd
be a blood path any foreigners would be
killed particularly ones like me who'd
actually worked there in during the
Soviet period and reported from there
but I had a sense that it wouldn't be
like that I thought the Afghan Army was
relatively strong I didn't think the all
the government workers in Kabul wanted
the muin they were terrified of them and
I knew of course the muin completely
disunited and were often fighting each
other more than fighting the Soviet or
the Afghan Army and so I thought that it
would probably last but there was a
massive actual psychological campaign by
Western governments to try and undermine
najiah Robert Gates who had been an
adviser to President Carter in the
binski National Security era which began
this whole miserable story revealed for
the first time or at least confirmed for
the first time that the US
administration had been funding these
Fanatics these so-called mujahadin fully
six months before the Soviet
intervention uh in the country that
squares I'm sure with your own findings
exactly right they wanted actually to
suck the Soviet Union into Afghanistan
they were very glad when the Soviet
Union invaded because they thought it
would be Revenge it would be the Soviet
Union's Vietnam and they would get a
bloody nose just like the Americans had
done four or five years earlier in in
saon and of course all the guns and all
the money and all the strength that they
gave these people they paraded them on
the conference Platforms in the
Republican Party in the US the
conservative party in Britain ITN was
forever reporting about these uh holy
Warriors these Freedom Fighters as
President Reagan called them these are
the very people or the very milu out of
which 9911 and other Al-Qaeda atrocities
came well one of the incredible things
about this election that they're going
to have in April in two months time in
Cal is that one of the candidates Abdul
rasul Sayad
is the very man who invited
Al-Qaeda to come to Afghanistan in 1986
and yet he's posing as a Democratic
candidate for this presidency and
Western diplomats go along and talk to
him and say oh yes he's changed now he's
a different man and all the rest of it
and does he have much support in
Afghanistan well I think he's popular in
some areas but only in the tribal areas
around pman which is his own personal
sort of power base but I think a lot of
people particularly women other people
are more secular terrified that men like
this could possibly come back to Power
now it's all lasted longer than the
first and second world wars put together
uh we ourselves have lost the blood of a
lot of our service Personnel the US of
course far more other NATO intervention
countries also the financial costs have
been uh gigantic it has to go down as a
pretty unmitigated disaster when you
spend the lives of your people and the
trillions of dollars and leave so little
behind exactly I mean very little has
been done I mean actually if we're
talking about the Soviet Union
remembering that they were equally bad
in the sense that if you look at the
total budget that the Soviet Union spent
in Afghanistan over their nine years 94%
went on Military things 6% went on
civilian development that's exactly the
same proportion as with the Americans
only 6% of these billions of dollars
that have gone in have actually gone in
to do health and education and
infrastructure and so on I mean it's a
terrible shame and the other thing is
that people are terrified of the
Americans I mean there was a recent poll
uh done by the Asia Foundation which is
a us-based US financed organization and
they found that 77% of Afghans say
they're terrified when they see if they
come into any encounter with the
Americans even Kai is now trenant
criticizing the British and American
occupation which put him in power well
this is what happens I think to people
who are puppets essentially or clients
you know with with no real power BS of
their own on the one hand they're
completely dependent on the occupiers or
the Invaders or the interveners whatever
you want to call them at the same time
for National dignity purposes every so
often they have to make a little
statement saying you know I'm a
nationalist I want the Americans to go
and so on and NAA did the same thing
actually I interviewed him 25 years ago
when I finally arrived in Carell on this
trip that I just mentioned and I did I
got the first interview with since the
Soviets went and it was incredible
because he was doing exactly what Kai is
doing he he even used the word dictat to
describe the Soviet occupation he said I
I referred to some quote from the
British foreign secretary at the time
who said he n will ought to resign and I
said what do you think of that statement
he said look we've just liberated
ourselves from one dictat and you're now
trying to impose another one on us how
can we do that well of course we know
what happened to him uh I presume Kai
will be better organized and will be out
on a flight to enjoy some of the fruits
uh of his presidency in Dubai uh or
somewhere but where does that leave
Afghanistan where will the people be if
we are lucky enough to be talking uh
together 5 years from now what kind of
Afghanistan are we going to have well as
you pointed out there was a civil war
going on even before the Soviets came in
in December 1979 so this is really a
long running Civil War that's been going
on for 40 years overlaid by two foreign
interventions first by the Soviets and
then by the Americans and I'm afraid
that the Civil War will ramp up when the
Americans gradually pull out and
fighting will continue and as I said
early at Kell may fall not immediately
it could be two years but I don't think
it's going to last for very long but
certainly the countryside the pashon
areas from which the Taliban come the
south and east of the country will
gradually the villages will fall under
Taliban control many of them have
already well the uh uh fighting and the
violence the destabilization has of
course and the war has of course spread
over the border into Pakistan and uh May
yet consume uh Pakistan at least the
formerly Northwest Frontier uh province
which begs a question uh that uh I don't
think you deal with in the book perhaps
you'd give me your view now is
Afghanistan one of these states that's
going to have to separate that is going
to have to have this Durand Line redrawn
with a pashon state somehow emerging out
of the pashon areas in Pakistan and the
pashun in Afghanistan well I don't think
either the people in Kabul or the
Islamabad people want that I mean the
pakistanis don't want that that would
increase the number of pashun in their
own country and that would be a
potential security threat to the you
know the other groups in Pakistan and
Sly the Afghans don't want to lose
territory I think so it would have to be
a popular movement based on an
continuing Insurgency but at the moment
you know the Taliban focus is not to
withdraw this part of the country and
join it to Pakistan it's to capture
power in caral so sure but they're not
going to I mean we'll we'll be back to
the Northern Alliance then won't we well
we are that's why this election is going
to produce only people probably in power
who are you know historic enemies of the
Taliban so the chances of getting peace
talks and an end to this historic Civil
War are going to be rather dim I think
because it'll just be Reviving all the
old bloodlust of the last 20 30 years
war war and more war if you want to
understand what's happening in
Afghanistan this is the book to get
ghosts of Afghanistan the haunted
Battleground by the Peerless Jonathan
steel thanks for joining us on the
Sputnik after the break a tale of scal
dugery involving the Metropolitan police
who would have thought it casting light
into the shadowy world of undercover
cops the organizations they tried to
wreck the women whose Hearts they broke
and the children they abandoned we'll be
right
back last month in a humiliating
judgment the court of appeal in London
quashed the convictions of dozens of
environmentalists originally convicted
of hijacking a CO train on its way to a
power station on the grounds that the
British government prosecutors had
failed to disclose to the defense or to
the judge in the original trial that the
effective ring leader of the hijack was
in fact a police officer operating
undercover as a provocator we now know
that this officer Mark Kennedy was one
of the many undercover cups who had been
told to grow their hair long tune in and
drop out into a whole set of perfectly
peaceful nonviolent and above all
entirely legal campaigning organizations
many of them household names like
Friends of the earth I knew this case
was coming and would end this way
because I had the pleasure of reading
one of the books of last year undercover
published by Guardian Faber I'm glad to
say we've got one of the authors of
undercover Rob Evans with us now Rob
Evans you're the co-author of undercover
published by Guardian Faber you brought
along a copy but I've actually bought
two copies of this book it's that good
and it deals with the the activities of
this undercover unit that was
infiltrating all kinds of perfectly
legal peaceful nonviolent Civil Society
organizations in Britain in the 21st
century remarkable no yes it is yes I
mean we started looking at this uh at
the guardian three years ago and you
know we did what journalists do which is
you just follow leads and we we we found
you know just kept on going because it
was an astonishing story and until uh
Mark Kennedy was the first undercover
officer to be uh exposed in uh late 2010
I don't think people out there really uh
understood what what was going on or
would have imagined that the state would
have gone to such lengths you know to
infiltrate these type of groups and
these groups by and large had no History
of Violence or crime they were
uh perfectly peaceful organizations some
of them household names some of them
meeting in the stram library very close
to where we live who knew uh in that
particular group the police had a
majority at one stage in the
organization the number of police
officers attending the meetings was was
a majority of those attending this is
not policing but Aon provocator surely
well there is what the what the
undercover officers were there to do was
to pick up in advanced intelligence
about demonstrations um that were going
to happen so they're there to pick up
all the information they can they can
about the protests that were being
organized and this went across right
across this uh political spectrum and
some of the groups they did inter uh
infiltrate you know did carry out
violent violent acts that you know
because they inter infiltrated um you
know Nazi groups and some animal
Liberation groups as well but there are
a large number of other groups that were
you know carrying out just perfectly
peaceful lawful peaceful tree
hugging the most shocking of all of
course the one that has gotten your book
most publicity and deservedly is so is
the uh question of the police
infiltration of the campaign around the
issue of Steven Lawrence the murdered
black teenager in South London you
couldn't get a much more respectable
campaign to be involved in than the
movement for justice for Steven Lawrence
yet a police officer whose face I
recognized out of your book was deeply
embedded in that cause please tell us
yes I mean there were actually three uh
undercover officers during the three of
them in the mid 90s who were embedded in
groups that supported you know the cause
uh of Steven Lawrence and they were
there you know to pick up and
Intelligence on what those groups were
were doing but it goes even wider than
that because the thing with Steven
Lawrence is that everyone you know can
remember and everyone knows that name
but during that time there are a whole
load of other groups uh other um
instances where black people have been
had died at the you know in police
custody the black Justice campaigns and
we tell the story of Peter Francis in
the book who has come out he's the only
one who's come out and you know actually
said this is what I did um and he says
that he was also there to um pick up
Intelligence on all of those black
Justice groups as
well well I recognized the
aforementioned uh gentleman uh from the
book but I have a unfortunately an even
closer
Association uh with in a way the most
senior of the policemen unmasked by you
and others but you in the book bring us
remarkable information about him his
name was Bob Lambert I had no idea that
he had been a police spy and a
particularly disreputable one tell us
the story of Bob Lambert Bob Lambert was
a very skillful operator and he was a
very convincing man when he was
undercover and uh he was undercover for
four or five years in the mid 80s in
environmental and animal rights groups
during that time he had relationships
with four women and one of them he went
on he he had a child with that with the
woman none of the four knew that he was
an undercover copper and uh the he
walked out on he abandoned her and their
child their boy yeah um in the late 80s
and um took no part in in you know in
helping to bring up that child and she
only found out by chance 24 years later
that he had been an undercover copper by
which time the child was grown up was in
his had thought his father had just
walked out of his life yes yes the the
mother she's she's taken it very badly
and she's now needed treatment for it
she and uh a group of around 10 women
are now taking legal action against the
police uh because you know they say
they've suffered enormous emotional
Trauma from having relationships with
men these are long substantial very
meaningful relationships with men they
didn't realize at the time um where SP
on them were spies yeah and that they
found out many years later were spies
and uh they they've said that the police
have done are responsible for the trauma
that they and Devastation that they've
uh that that they've suffered I just I'm
just so astonished at the fact how easy
it is for them to go from one to the
other disguise presumably changing names
as well yes and all the legal pap that
comes with it must go all smoothly for
them well the thing about what the when
the when the uh police set up this
undercover unit they went to very
elaborate uh lengths um to make sure
that this byy the officers who went
undercover would not be discovered so
they in effect uh you know fitted the
the the spies had to develop their own
fake persona and it had to be very
convincing and they went down you know
into the archives and found the the
records you know found a boy who had
died at a young age and in effect took
over identity took their identity as if
they were then the they then assumed
their their identity as if that boy had
grown up it's like a cold Cas CSA yes uh
yeah it's like the activities of
criminals rather than uh police officers
so there's the identity of a dead baby
has been stolen uh without the knowledge
of the parents without the knowledge of
the parents a woman is falsely drawn on
a false basis drawn into a relationship
children are then born then abandoned uh
it's a pretty sorry story what kind of
men are they that do this kind of thing
for a living well the best undercover
officers are always the best Liars you
know they're very convincing and they
have to be convincing if they're going
to survive out there otherwise they will
get rumbled because a lot of the
activists that they are infiltrating are
actually quite you know they're pretty
clued up people yeah yeah and they can
not they can they get a feeling about
people if they're not right so a lot of
these are you know Bob Lambert For
example was one of the best operators
that we know about there may have been
others we have no idea about because
they were so smooth that we we don't uh
have even a clue about but they were
very convincing must be an expensive
business also because you're creating a
false identity for someone over many
years yes so he has to have his actual
house where his real wife and children
live and he's got to have a fake house
cover paid for by the state paid for by
the state he's got to have a vehicle in
both places he got to you got to have a
life in both places yeah what Justified
this huge expenditure from the
Metropolitan police's budget well that's
the question isn't it I mean at the
heart of all of this is the
justification why you know I think
people out there can say can think well
okay then if you're infiltrating the IRA
you know we can see why you did that but
here the question that a lot of people
are asking is why is the state going to
such lengths you know and duplicity to
infiltrate groups that you know were
committing you know minor crime really
if they were committing crime but
they're not direct threat to the state I
assume well that's that's it depends how
you define a threat to the state States
I mean all these undercover officers in
that particular Unit were special Branch
officers and special Branch was there
basically to collect information about
political activists that they perceived
were a threat to the state The $64,000
Question is is this still going on the
people who are watching this who are
involved in Civil Society organizations
how worried should they be that the
woman or the man sitting next to them is
actually a copper yes well I mean I
think is still going on basically
because the police make no attempt to
say it stopped um at what level and what
extent I don't know but uh uh I think
they are still out there all the
information that has come out has not
come out you know because the state has
wanted to tell us this it's come out
because of you know the work the
detective work of either the campaigners
or whistleblowers who have come and
talked to us
and you uh who with Paul Lewis produced
this really wonderful book I I said last
year that this was one of the books of
2013 I tell you it's still repays
reading today Rob Evans thanks for
joining us on the Sputnik thank you very
much for having
me now it's your turn to tell us what
you think in the social media review
gatri what's rattling I asked whether 12
year war in Afghanistan was worth it and
what was actually gained from it the
verdict was unanimous Mark Walder says
for Western Government regarding oil and
opium yes there was a lot to gain for
the people of Afghanistan and the region
of course not and on Facebook Mitchell
HW says well we did at least give the
Warlords and Drug producers back their
Liberty to Reign Terror over the world
following on from the lovely Taliban and
all their libertarian views the UK and
us back the mujahedin back in the day
getting rid of the only legitimate
government in memory they brought
stability in Afghanistan but not a pro
Western stance so off they went and
following on came Al-Qaeda well that
this is a very important point that the
government that came before the US
intervention in Afghanistan in
1979 was briefly ws and all the only
progressive government of any kind that
Afghanistan has ever had they talk about
women's rights that's the only period
where girls went to school women went to
universities Jordan Turner says it's a
waste of life the Taliban will have full
control again within what 10 years to Wi
Daniel Mason replies are you being
serious I would say 10 hours it won't be
10 hours but it definitely won't be uh
10 years it could be 10 weeks that's all
we've got for this week which
unfortunately means that's the end of
the show keep contacting us and tweeting
us on rtor Sputnik and on Facebook you
can find us on Sputnik on Russia today
it's goodbye from me gatri and from me
George Galloway it's been marvelous