The 2022 documentary Retrograde explores the final months of America’s war in Afghanistan, capturing footage from January 2021 until the final withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021.
The charismatic figure at the center of the film is Afghan Lieutenant General Sami Sadat.
“The Americans trained me,” Sadat says early in the film. “I just don’t believe that the Americans are going to retrograde.” But U.S. troops began to retrograde on May 1, 2021. On the same day, the Taliban began its final offensive that culminated in the fall of Kabul on August 15. For months, Sadat rallied Afghan soldiers to fight back against the Taliban, first in Helmand Province and later in Kabul.
In his new book The Last Commander, Sadat gives a personal account of combat against the Afghan Taliban. He argues that Afghanistan could have prevailed with continued support from its allies, but believes that his opposition group has the leadership and resolve to win back Afghanistan. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
You have an unusual name. Is your family from Afghanistan?
My family is Sadat, a smaller tribe in Afghanistan. We are Arabs, so my ancestors came with the Islamic invasion into Afghanistan in the seventh century. They moved from what today is Saudi Arabia into Oman, crossed the Indian Ocean into Baluchistan and then expanded into Afghanistan via Kandahar. Because we are the direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, the Sadat people spread throughout the north, northeast and all across Afghanistan into small villages.
Tell me about your childhood.
I grew up in Helmand and Kabul. Helmand is a very tough place to grow. There is a lot of competition among the kids, tough competition. It’s not just a normal part of childhood; there is fighting on the street and bullying and beating each other. It’s a wartime culture and not just a Pashtun culture because there are Tajik, Hazara, and many other ethnic groups in Helmand. There is agriculture in Helmand, and you can grow wheat, you can grow a garden, Helmandi watermelons are very famous but poppies are most profitable. The same people who designed the Hoover Dam designed the Kajaki Dam. The Americans designed Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand.
The mujaheddin came when I was in third grade, so we moved to Kabul in 1994. The city was just coming out of civil war and the Taliban claimed Kabul in 1996. There was hardship and broken families. My father was always fighting in the first resistance. He moved to the north and fought with the Northern Alliance or the first “Afghanistan United Front.” It was extremely difficult to focus in school and learn. I will never forget the beatings inflicted on students by our teachers, who were supervised by Taliban. After school, we were sent to mosque where Taliban mullahs would teach us religious studies and send us outside in the winter to stand for hours in the snow. When I graduated from the twelfth grade, I could hardly read and write.
What was it like after the Americans came to Afghanistan in 2001?
We got a break! We got the opportunity to leave the country. I went to a NATO school in Germany. I went to a military school in Warsaw. I went to the United States and trained with the U.S. Marines and then went to the UK and did more studying and earned a Masters degree. When the United States military came to Afghanistan, that was my break.
You returned to Afghanistan in 2011, after President Obama announced the surge of U.S. troops. Why?
Yes, I returned to Afghanistan, and since then I have never been to another school for study. I needed to return to action. I became the director of covert action. We partnered with the CIA and I saw close-up the rot of terrorism.
What do you mean the “rot of terrorism?” Give an example of what you saw.
For example, we would arrest boys who wanted to conduct suicide attacks in Kabul. During interrogation they would tell us they were sexually assaulted in madrassas by their teachers. Once they graduated from madrassa, they were told that in order to cleanse their sins, they must conduct suicide attacks against Western soldiers.
Explain the madrassas—what is their purpose?
The madrassas were eye-opening. The students were cut-off from society. No connections via technology or books or modern information. When I was a boy, I went to madrassa basically half-time, for half-a-day, but these kids were taken from their families at 7, 10, 12 and isolated from their families and embedded in the madrassas for many years until they became adults. They were physically and psychologically manipulated by their teachers, who supplemented the religious education with instruction on building bombs and weapons and how to hate their enemies. You can never break the connection with your fellow students and instructors, even if you return to your families.
The more sophisticated teachers were Arab teachers and the regular teachers were from Pakistan or Afghan Taliban, maybe Punjabis from Pakistan or Pashtuns from Afghanistan. There are 60,000 registered madrassas in Pakistan. There are probably 10,000 in Afghanistan. The Pakistani madrassas are focused on producing religious students. It’s difficult to compare but I would say the Afghan madrassas are more zealous than those in Pakistan but it is hard to differentiate.
The Taliban began an offensive against Afghan National Security Forces in May 2021. Officially, Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021. Did you expect your government to fall so quickly?
No. I thought there would be a battle. I thought we would fight everywhere for a year or two. I thought there would be civil war and we would defeat Taliban and drive them from the country, but I was wrong. I was far away from Kabul because I had been fighting in Helmand—
How was the battle in Helmand, before you left for Kabul?
I had to evacuate the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah because one-third of the city had been burned down by Taliban fire. Thousands and thousands of Taliban were pouring into the Lashkar Gah for four months, driving from the Pakistani border carrying new weapons and wearing new gear. Al Qaeda fighters, Punjabi fighters, Pakistani Taliban, people I had never seen before. I thought that if we could defeat the Taliban in Lashkar Gah, then we could defeat them anywhere else in the country. We estimated 5,000 or more Taliban were killed in that battle. It was the most intense warfighting in Afghanistan in 20 years of war.
What happened when you got to Kabul?
Everything was falling apart. President Ashraf Ghani asked me back to Kabul to take charge of the special forces and lead them in defense of Kabul. So, I was expecting to take command of these troops but President Ghani fled the country before I could move. I arrived in Kabul on August 13. By August 15 President Ghani had fled the country.
Why did your country and military fall so quickly to the Taliban?
The first blow was the Doha deal struck between the United States and the Taliban. It gave the Taliban legitimacy. It emboldened Qatar, Iran, China, Russia – everyone got a go-ahead to form legitimate relations with the Taliban, and their support gave Taliban the resources to grow their military. The withdrawal of the contractors had a significant effect; the Doha deal forced those contractors and air resources and combat support to leave the country. The Biden Administration pressured our president to resign in favor of a peace government, which was wishful thinking. There was no written paperwork on this. There was a letter sent by Tony Blinken to Ashraf Ghani in May or June of 2021 asking Ghani officially to resign. He threatened Ghani in the letter. In private meetings, US officials demanded that he resign, which was initiated by the Taliban.
Do you blame the United States?
The political support was complicated by the United States. The Taliban initiatives were affected and supported by the State Department of the United States. It’s frustrating, it’s suffocating. It gets me in my throat even after three years of talking and writing about it. President Biden’s state department wanted the Afghan government to collaborate with the Taliban to establish a joint republic government, but this was a want but not a plan. It was pushed on us without considering the consequences. The CIA officers and generals criticizing this plan were not considered.
Are you prepared to fight the Taliban again?
Yes, we will fight the Taliban again. We will go on the ground. We are lobbying in the United States to gain recognition as freedom fighters. We are globally recognized as the official opposition to the Taliban. The U.S. government has not been supportive but has not prevented us. My friends in the Pentagon and CIA say they are not even allowed to speak about Afghanistan. I have been censored; even though I have friends in Congress, if my friends are in the Democrat party, they are told not to meet or speak about us.
What do you want?
We want political and technical support only. Our warplanes are sitting in Uzbekistan under protection of the United States. We do not want U.S. troops or U.S. government involvement in the war because our goals require a much longer-term policy. I do not believe Washington has the stamina to get engaged and stay engaged for many, many years, and I think the American government is very impatient. There will be so many caveats and requirements … “we cannot do this” and “we cannot do that.” We want the United States as a political ally in supporting our efforts on the ground.
