Matthew Hoh: ‘I Firmly Believe That We Are Taking Part In A Civil War’ In Afghanistan

Last week, former Marine captain and State Department employee Matthew Hoh made headlines when he went public with his resignation from the administration over his opposition to the continuation of the war in Afghanistan. In a four-page letter he sent to the State Department, he explained his resignation by writing that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan serves to “bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by [the Afghan] people.”

This past Sunday, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed Hoh about his views on the war. During one segment of the interview, Zakaria asked Hoh why he feels the U.S. should begin to draw down its troops from the country. Hoh replied that he doesn’t see the Afghan conflict as one between the U.S. and the Taliban, but rather as a 35-year long “civil war” between rural Pashtuns “who want to be left alone” and an urban government the U.S. is backing:

HOH: I firmly believe that we are taking part in a civil war. We are on the same side of the civil war that the Soviets intervened on.

ZAKARIA: So, you have a divide among the Pashtuns. There’s the urban middle class. And Karzai, presumably, who is a Pashtun, comes from this urban middle class.

HOH: Correct.

ZAKARIA: Many of them left the country after the — during the years of the civil war. And the ones who have stayed to fight, who fought the Soviet Union and who are now fighting us, are the rural, mountain tribe Pashtuns who resent the central government and its intrusions.

HOH: Who want to be left alone.

Watch it:

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