I'm John Batchel with Bill Rajov, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a senior

fellow. He keeps a long war journal. And these last years, Bill and I have often returned to the

disaster of the withdrawal, the exit, the abandonment of Afghanistan.

That event in August of 21 is said to be connected to a lot of bad acting since then.

One is the connection between that and Vladimir Putin's decision to risk Ukraine because the U.S. was withdrawing from Eurasia.

However, since then, Bill and I have often talked about al-Qaeda raising lots of camps and

R&R centers and training centers throughout Afghanistan.

The Taliban not interfering in any fashion.

There is said to be, however, fervent opposition by the Taliban to ISIS.

ISIS is always somewhere at the edges of where al-Qaeda is.

Do they work together, Bill?

Do they fight each other?

How do, if you're an ISIS-inspired, does that mean you have any connection at all to al-Qaeda or not?

Yeah, this is a really complicated issue. I think one that's widely misunderstood.

We have to understand the origins of the Islamic State. It arose from a dispute between two

Al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who eventually formed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,

and Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who eventually formed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and Abu

Muhammad al-Julani who just won the Syrian civil war and lees for now.

Jalani wanted to control the jihad in Syria under al-Qaeda and he wanted he didn't want to

report to Baghdaddy. Baghdadi disagreed.

Jalani took the dispute to al-Qaeda's then-Amyraim al-Zawahiri.

Jalani won.

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