[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
THE AFGHAN ELECTIONS: WHO LOST WHAT?
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 1, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-61
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts RON PAUL, Texas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DIANE E. WATSON, California MIKE PENCE, Indiana
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York CONNIE MACK, Florida
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
GENE GREEN, Texas MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, California TED POE, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
BARBARA LEE, California GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York, Chairman
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri DAN BURTON, Indiana
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York JOE WILSON, South Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
JIM COSTA, California GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota DANA ROHRABACHER, California
RON KLEIN, Florida EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
GENE GREEN, Texas
Howard Diamond, Subcommittee Staff Director
Mark Walker, Republican Professional Staff Member
Dalis Adler, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Glenn Cowan, Co-Founder & Principal, Democracy International,
Inc............................................................ 6
J. Alexander Thier, J.D., Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan,
United States Institute of Peace............................... 13
Peter M. Manikas, J.D., Senior Associate & Regional Director,
Asia Programs, The National Democratic Institute............... 22
C. Christine Fair, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Security Studies
Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown
University..................................................... 28
The Honorable Lorne W. Craner, President, International
Republican Institute (Former Assistant Secretary of State for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor)............................. 49
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Gary L. Ackerman, a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on the Middle
East and South Asia: Prepared statement........................ 3
Mr. Glenn Cowan: Prepared statement.............................. 9
J. Alexander Thier, J.D.: Prepared statement..................... 15
Peter M. Manikas, J.D.: Prepared statement....................... 24
C. Christine Fair, Ph.D.: Prepared statement..................... 31
The Honorable Lorne W. Craner: Prepared statement................ 51
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 80
Hearing minutes.................................................. 81
The Honorable Gene Green, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Texas: Prepared statement............................. 82
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Virginia: Prepared statement................. 83
The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California: Prepared statement.................... 85
THE AFGHAN ELECTIONS: WHO LOST WHAT?
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the Middle East
and South Asia,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:10 a.m. in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Gary L. Ackerman
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Ackerman. The subcommittee will come to order. Today
because of the size of the panel, I suggest that myself and the
ranking or acting ranking minority member make opening
statements if we could, and then proceed directly to the panel.
Or if anyone would really care to make an opening
statement, we will accommodate that as well.
Mr. Green. I would like to make an opening statement.
Mr. Ackerman. No problem. I would like to start with a
somewhat rickety old joke. A politician, a minister, and an
economist are stranded on a deserted island and they fall into
a 40-foot steep, steep pit, with nothing to drink or eat. ``How
do we get out of this?'' they ask. ``Let us make a lot of noise
and someone will hear us,'' the politician says. That is not
going to work. The minister simply says, ``Let us pray.'' The
other two question whether or not that is going to work. They
turn to the economist, and they say, ``Well, what is your
plan?'' and he says, ``It's easy. First, let us assume a 50-
foot ladder.'' Well, some days later the minister and the
politician starve to death, and the economist, I fear, was the
only soul eventually rescued from that island. And sometime in
2002, he was put in charge of American strategy for
Afghanistan.
I have this suspicion because our strategy there to date
could be summarized as, Let us assume an effective Afghan
Government.
There is, of course, no such thing. Yes, Afghanistan has a
President. Yes, there are ministers and ministries. Yes, there
are security forces. But to confuse those accessories of
governance with an actual, capable effective government is to
confuse Pinocchio with a real, live little boy. They might look
alike, but the similarities stop there.
The Afghan Government, after 8 years of international
sponsorship, is a disaster. Its writ extends only as far as
foreign troops can carry it. Its policemen are mostly thieves.
Its troops still cannot provide security to its people.
Its ministries are mostly empty, and the ones that are
staffed often focus chiefly on graft. Not fighting it, but
pursuing it. Much of its decision-making is non-deliberative,
non-transparent, and mostly ineffective, or not intended to
benefit the public at large.
What was crafted in Bonn in 2002 as a grand bargain of
governance has fallen apart. The people of Afghanistan, who
have endured 30 years of warfare, salted with heavy doses of
drought and misfortune, and are thoroughly exhausted, but are
still not supporters of the Taliban.
But neither are they fans of the system that we and our
allies have been propping up. There is no strong center. There
are few strong governors. There is almost no effective
representation. There is little law and less justice.
Afghans are not only living in something akin to anarchy,
but in a kind of conflict-saturated anarchy, and all the while,
they hear of the billions--$38 billion from the United States
alone--that is being poured into their desolate and desperate
country.
They must wonder, as I do, where has all the money gone?
Notwithstanding the near complete absence of tangible or
meaningful signs of success, or security, or development, we
are not in year one of this conflict. We are in year eight.
Much as I wish the Obama administration could have gotten a
fresh start, there is in fact nothing fresh about our struggle
in Afghanistan. Following the defeat of the Taliban in 2002,
our efforts were underfunded, undermanned, under-thought, and
underappreciated.
And well before President Obama even ran for the Democratic
Party's nomination, the situation in Afghanistan was already
moving sharply in the wrong direction. The recent elections
there have only served to bring the rot and decay into public
view. Not surprisingly many here are feeling a bit nauseated.
The August elections were, in the words of current senior
United States officials, intended to serve as a ``critical step
toward developing a government that is accountable to its
citizens.''
Instead, these elections served as a powerful demonstration
of how corrupt and awful the Afghan Government really is.
Congress has hard choices to make in the coming weeks and
months about this conflict. To many, it strikingly appears
similar to another conflict that wore on for many years before
finally being cast off by an American public sick of war, and
unable to find either a believable strategy for winning it, or
a convincing rationale for continuing it.
I would suggest, however, that there are some very
significant differences between the war in Afghanistan and the
war in Vietnam. But perhaps that is a subject for a different
hearing.
The issue before us today can be thought of in three simple
questions: With regard to the Afghan elections, (1) what
happened? (2) what is happening right now? and (3) what are the
implications of these events?
To answer these questions, we are very fortunate to have
with us a superb panel of true experts. Most of them were on
the ground in Afghanistan during the elections, and can report
not only what they saw and heard, but more importantly, what it
might all mean. But first before the panel, we are going to
hear from Mr. Rohrabacher.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ackerman follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, I
certainly see some familiar faces, and I am very anxious to
hear the testimony that we are about to receive in this
committee.
I would at this point submit for the record a list of
observations of the last election that are very disturbing.
Now, Mr. Chairman, if we could submit that for the record at
this point.
Mr. Ackerman. Without objection.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Thank you. And I am going to be
listening intently from a distance, but yet with focus from a
distance. It seems clear not only to us here, but also up close
to the people of Afghanistan, that the recent elections held
there were fraudulent and dishonest.
I would think that all of the sacrifice that we have made,
both in blood and in treasure, that we would expect more, and
something different than what we got, and what the people of
Afghanistan got in that election from a regime that we have
been bolstering so many years, and have, and supposedly have
influence over.
So here we are after all these years, and all of this
money, and all of this sacrifice, and people losing their
lives, et cetera, we are left with a display of arrogance on
the part of this regime, and it is a regime that holds power,
but we supposedly believe in the United States that a regime is
not a legitimate government unless it represents the consent of
the governed.
And the consent of the governed is not what happened in the
last election in Afghanistan. This government is dependent on
our largess and our willingness to sacrifice, yes, our young
military defenders who go there, and who are willing to give
their lives.
I think that the corruption and the dishonesty of this last
election makes a mockery of the sacrifices that have been made
to defeat radical Islam in their country, and the recent
elections, I believe, and as I say, were very demonstratably
dishonest and fraudulent.
And we will listen very intently to get details from our
panel today, but Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that there is at
least one path that we can take, and that is that we should
insist that our Government insist that the runoff election be
held in Afghanistan.
At the very least that would give the Afghan people a
chance to vote up or down on the Karzai administration, and
bring up some, at least a new list of characters, who might be
able to do better with our help.
So I am calling today on our Government to insist that that
runoff election occur so that at least the Afghan people can
choose between Karzai and Abdullah as their choice.
I have a resolution that I will be submitting today on the
floor of the House. I am putting it in the hopper today that
actually makes that United States policy that we should be
demanding a runoff election.
And finally let me just say that the corruption that we
have seen from the Karzai administration in other areas, where
hundreds of millions of dollars are being made by people within
that government off the drug trade, et cetera, is a cause for
dismay and alarm.
It does not mean that we should give up, but it is
something that we should take into consideration when we are
trying to determine whether or not we are going to send any
more military forces to Afghanistan.
If Mr. Karzai and his government cannot even conduct a fair
and free election, then we should have second thoughts about
even considering sending more troops to Afghanistan. This is
something that we should all need to think about and discuss.
I am very pleased that we have a hearing today so we can
get some advice as to which way to go.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. As previously announced, all
members will have the ability of placing statements in the
record, opening statements, if they choose.
I have looked over the CVs of each of our panelists, and it
is quite impressive, and would present quite a challenge if I
read them all today. Rather than the traditional recitation of
degrees and past employments, all of which I assure everybody
are very distinguished, I would like to point out that each of
our witnesses has a singularly important credential for our
purpose today.
Each of them was in Afghanistan either just before or
during the August elections. Glenn Cowan, who is CEO, and co-
founder, and principal, at the Democracy International,
director of the elections monitoring delegation, and was in
Afghanistan in July on a survey mission.
Alex Thier, who is the director for Afghanistan and
Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace, and was in
Afghanistan just before the elections.
Peter Manikas, senior associate and regional director of
the Asia Programs, at the National Democratic Institute, was
one of the leaders of the NDI observer mission.
Dr. Christine Fair, an assistant professor in the Security
Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University, was a long time observer and
was in Afghanistan for most of August.
Lorne Craner, who used to come into this room as the
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, led a 30-person observer mission for the International
Republican Institute, of which he is the president.
So with that introduction, let us begin with our first
witness, Mr. Cowan.
STATEMENT OF MR. GLENN COWAN, CO-FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL, DEMOCRACY
INTERNATIONAL, INC.
Mr. Cowan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
invitation from yourself and the members of the subcommittee. I
would like to start by thanking the United States Agency for
International Development, whose support of international
election observation has been crucial we think in these
elections.
Over the last 30 years the United States has played a vital
role in observing important international elections, and it has
been, and I hope that it will continue to be, an important
element of our support for global democracy.
That said, it is not the responsibility of the world's
international election observers to determine the legitimacy of
an outcome, because that is a political construct really. Our
job is to independently and objectively report what we observe,
in the context within which an election has been held.
International partners have to make judgments based on
broader diplomatic and geopolitical concerns about the impact
of these elections, and most importantly, of course, the people
of the country grant legitimacy based on an internal calculus
which is generally beyond our understanding.
That said, the August 20 elections in Afghanistan have yet
to produce a credible result. On Election Day, our
organization, Democracy International, fielded more than 60
international observers throughout the country, and despite a
partial success on Election Day, we said at the time, and
cautioned at the time when we spoke with Senators Casey and
Brown, and Congressman Space, who were members of a codel a
couple of days after the election, we cautioned that the time
was not yet there to call this a success process.
The legitimacy of the process was far from certain.
Afghanistan's independent election commission still needed to
tabulate and verify votes, and the election complaints
commission had to resolve thousands of complaints that they had
received prior to the election.
There had been, prior to the election, concerns about
ballot manipulation. There were hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of ID cards that were presumed to be duplicates.
And I have to say that in the last 40 days since the
election, significant damage has been done to the credibility
of the process, and to the Independent Election Commission
itself.
The results that they have reported have been done very
slowly and fitfully. The significant delay and the manipulation
in the release of the results have created an environment of
suspicion, and have substantially damaged the IEC and the
overall election process.
One of the hopes of the international community, and as
observers, was as this was the first election to actually be
led by Afghans that this would be a signal event in their
history.
Even with a partially successful Election Day, on balance,
we have to conclude that at this point, these elections were
not conducted well at all.
Before the election, we knew that the IEC had failed to
produce a useable voter registering. There were reports, and we
saw evidence as I have said previously, of perhaps millions of
duplicate voter ID cards on Election Day, and it has become
apparent that the IEC appointed substantial numbers of local
staff, who either assisted in or failed to report significant
Election Day fraud.
The commission itself has been opaque in its strategy to
release election returns, and despite repeated assurances,
failed to screen out potentially fraudulent results with
qualitative or quantitative evaluations as had been promised.
This lack of clarity and transparency, and the inability of
the IEC to produce an acceptable set of election returns have
led to the extraordinary process of using statistically
sampling of the suspect polling stations to determine whether
or not a second round is going to be necessary.
Even if this unusual auditing approach results in a runoff
election, it is not at all certain that a runoff conducted in
October will generate a more credible result than has come from
the first round.
The same people will be running it, and there will be no
time to train further folks. The security situation is going to
be worse. The number of observers likely will be fewer. We
think there are some things that can be done if there is a
second round election, and perhaps it can be somewhat better
than the first round.
To begin with, we would recommend that President Karzai
replace the leadership of the Independent Election Commission.
He has the power to do that. There is time to do that, and
there are people who can serve who would be acceptable to both
Presidential candidates.
We think that the commission should dismiss those employees
who worked for them and did not perform as they should. We
think that there should be investigations, and the beginning of
some prosecutions of those who so blatantly defrauded this
process.
We think, perhaps most importantly, that the Commission
should be ordered to impound results from any runoff that fail
the tests established by the Elections Complaints Commission,
and perhaps naively, we would call on the candidates to tell
their inherents to stay in line.
If the candidates have the sense that they can run and win
an election, they ought to let their folks back off. Let the
selection take place.
Even if these steps are taken, we are very concerned that
we are heading toward a second round that may be no better than
the first.
I would be pleased to answer any questions that the
chairman of the committee might have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cowan follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you, Mr. Cowan. Mr. Thier.
STATEMENT OF J. ALEXANDER THIER, J.D., DIRECTOR FOR AFGHANISTAN
AND PAKISTAN, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE
Mr. Thier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and ranking member
Burton. Once again, I am Alex Thier, the director for
Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of
Peace, and thank you for the opportunity to present my own
views on the Afghan elections.
The legitimacy and credibility of the Afghan Government and
its international backers are the linchpin of a successful
stabilization strategy in Afghanistan. Victory is not
guaranteed with improved governance and accountability, but
without them failure is assured.
Reversing the current crisis of confidence among the Afghan
and American people will require the trust, the just and
transparent resolution of the ongoing election conflict, as
well as a serious campaign to address the culture of impunity
that undermines our efforts there.
We need to put Afghanistan's unresolved election in a
broader context of the struggle for this country today. The
election represents a pivotal moment in a pivotal year. Public
confidence in the political process and the Afghan leadership
is so important, because I believe that we do know what success
looks like in Afghanistan.
Success is that the path offered by the Afghan Government
in partnership with the international community is more
attractive, more credible, and more legitimate, than the path
offered by the insurgents.
On paper, the government offers a comprehensive array of
rights. It promises to subordinate the powerful to the rule of
law. It promises education, health care, and economic
development, while combating criminality, corruption, and drug
trafficking.
These are all things that most every Afghan yearns for, and
indeed would fight for. The Taliban, on the other hand, offer
much less in material terms, and their ideology is far more
extreme than the solidly pragmatic majority of the Afghan
people.
But the Afghan Government and its international partners
have failed to deliver on many of these key issues. Many
Afghans do not feel secure. The government and the
international forces are unable to protect the people from the
Taliban.
At the same time private militias, drug mafias, and
criminal gangs act with impunity throughout the country. Many
of these bad actors are government officials or closely
associated with those in the government.
No government that is unable to provide security, and which
is seen to be corrupt and unjust, will be legitimate in the
eyes of the population, and I believe that the most dangerous
direction for Afghanistan, and indeed the United States, is if
we are seen to be propping up by military force an Afghan
Government that is no longer legitimate in the eyes of the
people.
And I think the narrative of the 2009 election reinforces
this legitimacy crisis in three important ways. The first is
that insecurity and apathy gravely depressed turnout on August
20, which may have been as low as 30 percent, a striking
contrast to the 70 percent in the first Presidential election
in 2004.
During the campaign several figures, whose avarice and
brutality during the civil war in the 1990s actually
precipitated the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, were
brought back into the national political arena to fulfill a
narrow and cynical agenda.
And finally massive organized fraud affirmed the worst
fears that the election would be stolen. The ongoing recount of
over 3,000 polling stations statistically sampled may encompass
up to 2 million votes, or 35 percent of the entire total.
It is possible, for example, that 700,000 votes could be
invalidated, and yet President Karzai would still win,
simultaneously delegitimizing the electoral process, and
ratifying the victory of the candidate in whose name over 80
percent of the fraud was committed.
The continued uncertainly and sense of corruption that have
surrounded the results have injected deeper doubt into the
minds of Afghan, American, and European populations, about our
objectives in Afghanistan, and the likelihood of achieving
them.
So let me briefly go to two recommendations. The first is a
way forward on resolving the election. The ongoing uncertainty
about the outcome of the election has created turmoil, but also
presents some opportunity.
It is very much worth noting that the existence of Afghan
civil society organizations, and the excellent work of the
electoral complaints commission, are a welcome presence and
change from previous elections there.
The current process of investigations and recounts has the
potential to undo some of the harm of the electoral process,
and may serve to demonstrate in the end that the powerful can
in fact be subordinated to the law.
But I agree as Representative Rohrabacher said that a
runoff election may ultimately be the only way to restore the
legitimacy of the democratic process at this point, and I am
happy to go into more detail about that.
On a broader level the United States must act aggressively
with its Afghan partners in the lead to break the cycle of
impunity and corruption that is dragging down all sides, and
providing a hospitable environment for the insurgency.
I believe a few clear steps need to be taken after the
election is resolved to set a clear tone for the next Afghan
Government, and I will just say briefly two points. A
demonstration of Afghan leadership must be accompanied by the
empowerment of an anti-corruption and serious crimes task
force, independent of the government agencies that it may be
investigating.
In the first few months, there must be high profile cases
against people associated with the government, the elections
fraud and other criminality, and they should be highly
publicized.
And finally the United States needs to approach this
mission in Afghanistan with the same vigor as other key
elements of our counterinsurgency strategy. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thier follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Manikas.
STATEMENT OF PETER M. MANIKAS, J.D., SENIOR ASSOCIATE &
REGIONAL DIRECTOR, ASIA PROGRAMS, THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
INSTITUTE
Mr. Manikas. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. What I
would like to do, if I can, is to submit some written testimony
for the record, and also to submit the full statement of NDI's
delegation that was in Afghanistan on Election Day, and then
just briefly summarize the written testimony.
Mr. Ackerman. We will accept it for the record. You can
begin.
Mr. Manikas. Thank you very much. Just briefly to describe
what we did. We had about 100 people in Afghanistan on Election
Day, including international and the Afghan observers.
We faced the same constraints, I think, as every other
delegation, in that we had limited access to the country
because of the security situation. Nevertheless, we were able
to get to 19 of the 34 provinces.
And also our delegation was supplemented by a team of long
term observers, including Dr. Fair to my right, that were
looking at various thematic issues involved in the election,
such as security, and that was Dr. Fair's area, but also
women's participation, and I can't remember all the others.
We also have an ongoing effort to monitor the current
count, and we have a team of people that remained in Kabul
watching the recount unfold, and as you all know, in early
September the ECC declared that there was clear and convincing
evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations, and ordered
a recount of polling stations in which there were over 600
ballots in the ballot boxes, 600 being a key figure because
that is in excess of the maximum number of estimated voters per
polling station.
And polling stations that also had more than 95 percent of
the ballots cast for one particular candidate, and the ECC
identified over 3,000 ballot boxes that fall into that
category, and well over 1 million ballots could be affected.
Clearly if all of those ballots are excluded from the
totals in the end it could affect the outcome of the election.
NDI's own observers as well identified particularly problems in
Nuristan, Paktia, Helmand, and Badgis, as being places at which
there was an unusually high turnout, and these are all areas
that are quite insecure, and therefore quite suspicious.
Last week, the ECC and the IEC agreed to use a statistical
sample instead of inspecting every single affected ballot box,
declaring that this approach would both save time, and if a
runoff was to be held, it would permit it to be held in a
timely manner.
The commissions ordered that all the ballot boxes that are
a part of the sample be brought to Kabul to help ensure the
efficiency of the audit process.
The entire election I think in the view of the delegation
was shaped by a variety of--it was shaped by the security
environment that really affected every aspect of the election.
Because so much of the area was insecure, there was a
decrease in the number of provincial council candidates taking
office. Insecurity affected the IEC's ability to recruit
polling staff in many areas, and as I mentioned, domestic and
international observers had limited access to much of the
country.
In addition to a lot of the problems that I think we are
seeing unfold now, there were also more systemic problems
related to the election that were clear I think from the very
beginning.
Many date back to the 2004 and 2005 elections in which
there was a very lax registration process that led to the
generation of really millions of excess registration cards.
There were reports of the misuse of State resources and
proxy voting was permitted in a lot of areas. There were also
questions raised about the independence of the IEC, whose
members are entirely appointed by the President.
Also, the number of women engaged in the political process
continued to face a lot of barriers to their participation,
including the repeated threats of violence.
Having said all of this, I think it is also important to
recognize though that there were some positive aspects to the
political process, and it gives a little hope, I think, that
Afghanistan could have a credible electoral process if some of
these other problems are remedied.
In the lead up to the campaign, unlike 2004 and 2005, all
the candidates were able to campaign throughout the country.
Mr. Karzai was everywhere, as was Mr. Bashardost, and as was
Mr. Abdullah.
There were very few clashes among the supporters of the
candidates, suggesting that the ethnic divide may not be quite
as acute as we are often led to believe. Afghans have
repeatedly said--am I running out of time?
Mr. Ackerman. If you could just wrap up.
Mr. Manikas. Okay. Sure. I want to go back to the major
plan, I guess, that Glenn referred to in regards to the runoff.
It is going to be very, very difficult, I think, to restore
credibility to this process, and a runoff may be the only hope
of doing so.
I mean, ultimately the security of Afghanistan really
depends on the legitimacy of the government, and it is very
difficult to imagine a situation in which there is support
among the Afghanistan people for a newly elected government
without a runoff now.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Manikas follows:]
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Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Dr. Fair.
STATEMENT OF C. CHRISTINE FAIR, PH.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR,
SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, EDMUND A. WALSH SCHOOL OF FOREIGN
SERVICE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Ms. Fair. Thank you, Honorable Chairman Ackerman, and
distinguished colleagues for the opportunity to contribute to
this important contemporary foreign policy issue.
Mr. Ackerman. If you could pull your microphone just a
little bit closer to you.
Ms. Fair. I am sorry about that. I have submitted a lengthy
statement where I detail my observations about the entire
electoral process, from the registration, to the conduct of the
election itself.
I am going to concentrate my written remarks upon the
impacts of these elections for the insurgency and the United
States' efforts to secure its supreme national interests in
Afghanistan.
What are the obvious implications of the insurgency
stemming from these elections? In truth, going into the
elections, there were few outcomes that could have advanced the
cause of stabilizing Afghanistan politically or otherwise.
The Karzai government, along with its international
partners, has done little to advance governance. Yet,
governance is not simply a bromide. Providing good governance
is likely a fundamental element of defeating the insurgency.
Rand studies of how insurgencies end find governments with
high popularity defeated most of the insurgencies they fought.
In contrast, unpopular governments lost to insurgents more than
half of the time.
Yet, the data suggests that a successful counterinsurgency
campaign in Afghanistan will require the confidence of the
citizens in the government. Yet, there is no data that Afghans
actually have that support.
In fact, polls conducted by ADC, BDC, among others since
2005, show a continued downward trajectory in support for their
government.
Karzai repeatedly demonstrates a lack of political will to
deal with the corruption, the trafficking in narcotics, and to
find some way of providing better governance at all levels of
the state.
Despite the large sums of international assistance, many
programs cannot succeed without a dedicated partner in Kabul,
and let me offer up one example of the flawed interplay between
international assistance and the resolve of the government in
Kabul.
And I am going to raise the issue of training the Afghan
National Police. It is a belated priority, but I think we all
agree that it is indeed a priority now, and it was a
fundamental issue in securing the election.
The efforts of training the Afghanistan police has
certainly been hampered by the constrained international human
and financial resources. But they have also been constrained by
the political environment in which these efforts have taken
place.
The current program is called the Focus District
Development Program, or FDD. It was devised to deal with police
corruption. The program takes all of the police out of the
district, and it submits them to 8 weeks of training. It then
returns them to the very districts from which they came.
The provincial governor stays in place, and the district
governor stays in place. All the other corrupt notables stay in
place. So this is akin to dusting off the police officers and
putting them right back into the same corrupt system from which
they emerged, and then people wonder why recidivism seems to be
taking place.
At a minimum this important international activity should
be happening in concert with cooperation with Kabul to replace
those district and provincial level leaders who are found to be
corrupt, as opposed to simply moving them around and making
them someone else's problem.
So the training of the police is a really good example of
how we cannot succeed unless Kabul does its part. So how can
the United States secure its interests in the wake of these
very problematic elections?
As evidenced by the peering the elections have crystallized
cleavages in domestic political opinion about the next step
forward in Afghanistan, with intense discussions surrounding
the request for additional troops.
While the debate over scaling up or scaling down troops has
seized the public's attention, reconfiguring the footprint or
mission of the United States and international troops alone
cannot address this problem.
CUSFA General Stanley McChrystal, in his recent assessment,
lays out the problem clearly and it is joint. The ISF mission
faces two principal threats, he says, the first of which is the
existence of organized and determined insurgent groups.
The second threat is the crisis of popular confidence that
spring from the weakness of the Government of Afghanistan.
Arguably analysts and policymakers focus upon the footprint and
mission of United States troops, because it is the one thing
that the United States has the most control over.
Washington cannot direct its NATO allies' military and
civilian commitment to Afghanistan. It cannot quickly produce
Foreign Service Officers, or USAID officers, or other civilian
capabilities while sustaining quality.
It cannot quickly reconfigure or improve the way that the
United States delivers aid, and it apparently has very little
influence over the government in Kabul to provide better
governance.
Thus, if one considers what can be done, as opposed to what
would be the ideal thing to do, victory in Afghanistan is
unlikely if winning means establishing a competent, reasonably
transparent government, capable of providing even limited
services, and increasingly able to pay for itself.
In other words, the United States needs a Plan B, and Plan
B is not simply trying to make Plan A work again. The United
States needs a contingency plan which defines victory to more
narrowly address the most critical United States security
interests.
If the international community cannot prevail in the
counterinsurgency campaign again with the Taliban and allied
fighters due to shortcomings on the international community's
configuration, or due to the shortcomings in Kabul, Washington
can secure its preeminent objectives of protecting itself
against al-Qaeda.
This involves separating out the counterinsurgency from the
counterterrorism efforts. The United States and international
efforts can and should focus its resources in helping the
Afghans take ownership of the counterinsurgency campaign, while
the United States reorients and prioritizes its assets and
resources toward defeating al-Qaeda, which is actually
localized largely in the Kunar Province.
And I don't need to tell you that there are probably more
al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. Therefore,
in conclusion, I recommend a reformulation of the question away
from whether the United States can protect its interests
without a decisive defeat of the Taliban, toward how can the
United States secure its interests without such a decisive
defeat.
This is the reality of the government in Afghanistan. It is
not predicated upon the government that we wish we had in
Afghanistan. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fair follows:]
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Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Craner.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LORNE W. CRANER, PRESIDENT,
INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE (FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY
OF STATE FOR DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR)
Mr. Craner. Chairman Ackerman, Congressman Burton, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to
testify today. Mr. Chairman, it has become fashionable of late
to say that people in certain usually poor countries are not
ready for democracy.
In Afghanistan, some in government may not be ready for
democracy, but the people are as they showed during the
campaign. The pre-election environment was dynamic and
energetic, with candidates reaching beyond their ethnic
strongholds in issue rather than personality based campaigns.
Private media's campaign coverage was very balanced. Most
striking were the unprecedented first Presidential debates, one
of which included the head of state. In terms of pre-election
administration, the Independent Election Commission is to be
commended for the training of election workers, despite a lack
of international funding.
Turnout was not as high as in past elections, but as Gary
Hart, who co-led NDI's delegation, put it, I do not know of one
country, including my own, where faced with the threat of death
for voting the turnout would be 40 percent.
And Afghans expected that their votes would count. A July
IRI survey revealed that 92 percent were confident in the IEC,
and 61 percent believed that the Electoral Complaints
Commission was doing a good job.
In other words, Afghan's believe that their investment in
this election would be rewarded with a legitimate outcome. Over
100 IRI delegates and domestic observers on Election Day
monitored more than 250 polling stations.
I noted above many positive aspects, but issues such as
fraud and abuse of State resources, many of these issues under
government control, brought the elections certainly to a lower
standard than those in 2004 or 2005.
While IRI noted that the pre-election environment, pre-
election administration, and Election Day voting, we were able
to observe, still seemed credible. We also stated that much
attention would be paid to the vote counting and post-election
adjudication.
And it is in these two areas that trouble first became
apparent and persists. As the United States Government
continues to formulate its policy, I recommend adoption of the
following principles.
Number one, legitimacy precedes capacity. Governance is
critical, but cannot be achieved unless Afghans believe that
their officials are legitimately elected. Many cite Afghanistan
as the graveyard of empires, including they intimate the United
States.
They forget a crucial difference. As an IRI partner and
Member of the Afghan Wolesi Jirga said of the 1980 Soviet
occupation, political puppets placed in office by those outside
Afghanistan cannot bring the Afghanistan people together. It
does not matter how many troops are deployed, without
legitimate leaders the effort will fail.
Or as two Afghans have told me on separate occasions, you
are the only invaders we ever loved, because unlike the British
or Russians, they say, you want what we want for Afghanistan.
Not honoring Afghan's expectations for a credible election
means that Afghans will lose trust in their titular leaders and
in the international community, including the United States. In
other words, Afghans will conclude that like the British or
Russian empires, we don't want what they want.
Number two, a rule of law matters. A legitimate government
can only come about if due process provisions to adjudicate
electoral irregularities are followed. These issues have been
at the root of the dispute involving Peter Galbraith, who was
dismissed yesterday by the U.N.
Third, if needed, an interim leader must be selected
through a transparent mechanism acceptable to the Afghan
people; and fourth, after the election, we must focus on good
governance.
Election of legitimate leaders must be followed by
addressing the needs of the Afghan people. This is an issue
that General McChrystal has highlighted as the second component
as my colleague noted.
Mr. Chairman, I close my written testimony by offering
critiques of both the Bush and Obama administrations approaches
to Afghanistan. In President Bush's case, under-resourcing the
war and staying too close for too long to an ineffective
leader, it is important that the Obama administration not
repeat those two mistakes.
Others are better qualified than me to address the issue of
resourcing currently being discussed with the Pentagon, but in
doing democracy work, I have gotten to know a few things about
ineffective leaders.
Early public misgivings by the administration about
President Karzai's confidence and abilities disappeared in the
spring when there was an apparent conclusion that he would win
the election.
Pre-election polls, however, showed that Karzai was
substantially less than 50 percent of the vote, and even with
an apparently large amount of fraud, he was able to gain only
54 percent provisionally.
Pre-election polling also showed strong voter interest in a
joint ticket of Abdullah and Ghani. This is not a question of
historical interests. According to the September 28, 2009 New
York Times, even before the results are determined, which might
lead to a second round of voting, the administration has told
the government of Karzai that it believes that he will be
reelected, and is currently attempting to fashion a policy
based on that perception.
The Clinton administration in a number of countries,
Russia, Nicaragua, Slovakia, and Serbia, decided that it was
legitimate to make its preferences know regarding elections
that would shape our future policies toward those countries.
Arguably our stake in Afghanistan is as least as important as
it was in those countries
This period of post-election adjudication is an opportunity
for us to clarify our enduring principles to bring populations
together under legitimate governments. Whether legitimacy in
Afghanistan is achieved through a coalition, a runoff election,
or an alternative outcome, this moment should be seized upon to
establish a result that we, and more importantly, Afghans, are
willing to support. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Craner follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you, and I thank our entire panel.
There seems to be a general consensus on the panel questioning
the legitimacy of the election, and a sense of direction that
we have an obligation to try to set things right, or to
encourage them to set things right, because the government
under the current cloud is not legitimate.
I guess my question may be more about us than about
Afghanistan and their election. If we have that as a moral
obligation do we have a right to pick and choose where to apply
our moral obligations?
There seems to be a more aggravated population, at least
judging from the street reaction, in Iran, and yet we have not
insisted or pronounced that that government is not legitimate,
and should have an election.
We seem to pick and choose, and we seem to pick and choose,
I think, based on the ability of pushback of the administration
in the country that we are talking about. Is it legitimate for
us to do that?
Certainly it would be in our interests if we are talking
about where our interests lie, to see a different result most
likely in Iran based on the leadership choices that were before
their public. How do we deal with that?
And the follow-up question, I guess I would have, and I am
going to more strictly observe the 5-minute limitation on our
members, and be less generous with us than we did with the
panel. So I will be mindful as should the panel.
And my follow-up question would be if we make that
determination and insistence, the leverage we have it appears
is whether or not we send more troops. If we send more troops
or don't send more troops, based on their reaction to our
suggestion that the election was not legitimate, who are we
punishing, us or them?
And why don't we start in the same order as before. Mr.
Cowan, and I would like to hear from all five of you. So if we
could keep the answers succinct it would be great.
Mr. Cowan. The question is somewhat beyond the writ of the
international election observation, but I do have some
experience in these questions having been assigned to CORDS in
Vietnam in one of our first major efforts to take an
interagency approach to a counterinsurgency war.
I don't think that we can walk away from Afghanistan based
entirely on an illegitimate election. I think the stakes for
the United States are potentially too high for us to simply
assert that their government is not legitimate, and we will not
deal with it.
Mr. Ackerman. Okay. Let me in the interests of getting
everybody in, I will pass on an answer to the first question,
which was probably more philosophical and esoteric, and ask you
each to comment for \1/2\-minute maybe if there is no runoff,
and our insistence or suggestion is not adhered, do we send
troops anyway?
Mr. Cowan. I think that depends on our views as to whether
or not those troops can reasonably participate in a fully
engaged interagency solution in Afghanistan, which means that
you would have to have complete engagement of the State
Department, USAID, et cetera.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Thier.
Mr. Thier. I do want to say to your first question that in
the case of Afghanistan, we are not neutral commentators. What
we do will be seen as a decision. If we allow the election to
go forward without a recount, we will seem to have been
supporting that decision, and so whatever we do bears weight
ultimately.
The reason that I believe, and maybe not fully, but the
likelihood that additional resources are needed in Afghanistan
is because the crisis today in Afghanistan is not predicated on
these elections.
The crisis is predicated on 3 or 4 years of decline, and
unless we are able to get our arms more effectively around this
problem of insecurity and injustice, then Afghanistan will
collapse, and I think that Afghanistan's collapse has very
grave repercussions for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United
States.
Mr. Ackerman. It appears that my time has expired. Mr.
Burton.
Mr. Burton. You know, I really appreciate, Mr. Chairman,
the testimony, and I think that Mr. Rohrabacher and I were just
talking a minute ago, and we think the testimony has been very,
very good.
But one of the missing links in this whole issue is having
a direct testimony from the people in the field. I think that
General McChrystal needs to be here, and we need to make a
request as quickly as possible to get him here.
If time is of the essence, and if we are going to need
40,000 troops, and if we are going to have to have another
election over there, we really need to get from the Ambassador
and the Commanding General as much information as possible.
No disrespect to those who are here, because I think your
testimony was very, very good, but I think it is extremely
important that the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Armed
Services Committee make a request to have them here as quickly
as possible.
Mr. Ackerman. If the gentleman will yield, I believe, Mr.
Berman has as his intention to invite the General within the
next 2 weeks.
Mr. Burton. In the next 2 weeks?
Mr. Ackerman. Yes.
Mr. Burton. Well, that's very good. That is very good. I
really appreciate that, and I think in addition to that, I
think the Ambassador who is over there in Kabul also ought to
be here. So I hope that is included in the mix.
What I would like to ask is--and I don't know that the
panel should--well, maybe this is just a general question that
I ought to throw out, and anyone can answer if they want to.
But in a situation like this--and I don't want to be
partisan, but I think it is important that when you have
something that is of such gravity as this issue, is this
decision, should not the President be very, very engaged, and
shouldn't he be contacting, or be contacted, by the officers in
the field, the Commander in the field, more than once since,
say, 70 days?
I mean, I know that we were in other conflicts, because of
the political significance, as well as the military
significance, the Commanders-in-Chief were in contact on at
least a biweekly basis with the commanders in the field so we
could make decisions rapidly if we needed more troops, or
needed more equipment over there.
So if somebody wants to answer that question, how
frequently do you think that the commander in the field should
be in direct contact with the Commander-in-Chief and the
Secretary of Defense? Anybody? If you are afraid of that one, I
will ask another one. Nobody wants to tackle that?
Mr. Ackerman. They know a mine field when they see one.
Mr. Burton. I see. Well, let me just say that whoever the
Commander-in-Chief is, whether it is President Obama, or
whoever it is, I think on an issue as important as this, Mr.
Chairman, the President needs to be engaged on a very regular
basis.
I am not saying every day, or every week, but on a regular
basis, he and the Secretary of Defense. And I know that they
had a meeting the other day, the National Security Council did,
and they had McChrystal on a teleconference, which I think was
a step in the right direction, but I hope that they do more of
that.
Let me just ask this question. In the short run, and I
would like to have your opinions on this, if we don't send the
troops can there be a free and fair election, and is the threat
of people losing their hands, their fingers, or their lives if
they go vote, is there a risk that people simply won't come to
the polls, and that you won't get a true picture of what the
people want over there?
And will the 40,000 troops be able to, if we start getting
them over there rapidly, will that be an encouragement for
people to vote, and will that stabilize the situation?
Mr. Craner. Congressman, I think if there is a more stable
and secure environment, you will see more people voting, but I
think no matter how many people vote, if the government is not
committed to having an honest election, you would have a repeat
of what just happened. And to go back to Mr. Ackerman's second
question----
Mr. Burton. Well, before you get to that, let me just ask
since I only have about 35 seconds here, you know, that is a
big country, and there is an awful lot of people that are going
to be needed to watch the election, poll watchers, to make sure
that this is an honest election.
Do you think that we can get the number of poll watchers
there to make sure that there is a free and fair election,
especially with the Taliban running around threatening people?
Mr. Craner. Yeah, I do. I think the number that was out
there this time provided the early reports of early problems
within a few days of the end of the election. Clearly you would
need more in the south because that is where the most problems
occurred, and that is where the greatest insecurity is.
But certainly with more troops and more observers, you
would have an even better picture.
Ms. Fair. Well, I have a somewhat different view. Even
domestic observers could not get into the most insecure
districts. They were perhaps in the district capitals, but they
were not in the countryside, which is where a lot of the
alleged malfeasance appears to have taken place.
It is also not just the number of troops. It is what the
troops are actually doing. We are in an unfortunate situation
where putting more troops to engage in kinetics, i.e., on an
enemy focused operation, has really put us in the unfortunate
situation of killing about as many civilians as the insurgents
do.
So that is not a terribly good track record, and the
Afghans do not blame the insurgents for the civilian
casualties. They blame us, even the civilian casualties caused
by the Taliban.
So we have to think not only about the number of troops,
but also what those troops will be doing, training versus
kinetics.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mrs. Berkley.
Ms. Berkley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me thank
each of you for being here. I appreciated the information. I
was in Afghanistan about 1 year ago, and I remember looking
down as we were flying in on a military flight, and my
immediate reaction was this is a hell hole.
I didn't see--there wasn't a road. There wasn't a stream.
There wasn't a farm. There wasn't any housing. And I just
looked down and I was astounded at how barren the landscape
was.
And after we arrived and spent time on the military base
talking to our people, and meeting with Karzai, and our
Ambassador, I felt that the hell hole extended beyond just the
geography, and that we were in a world of hurt being there.
And I was very conflicted at the time. It is 1 year later,
and I am still conflicted. I am not surprised at the results of
the election, or the way the election was conducted. It is just
the tip of the iceberg, and punctuates what I have seen as a
descent in good governance or any governance over the last few
years.
It does not appear to me that Karzai either has the will or
the interest in leading a government that can be of benefit to
his people. The corruption is widespread and well known, and I
do not believe that he has the support of his people.
Consequently, we saw a great amount of fraud and deceit in
this past election. I was very interested in Mr. Ackerman's
question, and I would like to give the rest of my time to the
panel to answer Mr. Ackerman's question.
And if I may start with whoever he left off with, I think
that would be of benefit because that was my question, and I
think it gets to the very heart of the issue, and I thank you
again for being here.
Mr. Ackerman. That would be Mr. Manikas.
Mr. Manikas. I am sorry, what exactly--could you repeat the
question?
Mr. Ackerman. The question went to the issue, do we pick
and choose which countries that have apparently disingenuous
elections, that we insist that they have reruns, runoffs,
redos, recalls, try agains?
Mr. Manikas. It seems to me that we have a special
obligation with respect to Afghanistan because of the nature of
our involvement there, and also because of the promises that we
have made to the Afghan people, which is what makes I think the
outcome of this election so important.
I mean, we told people that we wanted them to participate
in this electoral process, and they did so at great risk often
times, and I think that is why it is so important that we let
this play out and have a runoff if one is required.
Ms. Fair. To add on to that, we have not been completely
innocent in the way in which this election has played out. I
was there in May 2008. It was very apparent that the
independent director of local governance was really functioning
as the Karzai re-election campaign. Everyone knew this. USAID
funded it.
When Mr. Karzai's brother-in-law, Norzid, decided to stand
up a 10,000-person militia. ISAC blessed it. So not only is
there the obligation that people took on great risks to vote,
it is also that we have been implicit in this process that
ultimately culminated in this fraudulent election. So I think
we ultimately have some substantial responsibility to bear in
this.
Mr. Craner. The United States has asked for other elections
to be rerun that were not as bad as this, and I think back to
Ukraine just before the Orange Revolution. In the example that
you raised, Iran, certainly they deserve another election.
Is it intrinsic to what our greatest national interest
there is, atomic weapons? It is not clear that an election is
intrinsic. I would make the case in Afghanistan, and I think
you have heard from this panel, that without legitimate
governance victory in that war is almost impossible.
Ms. Berkley. Mr. Chairman, if I can reclaim my last 26
seconds. My concern is if the United States is seen supporting
and propping up a corrupt--yet another corrupt and ineffective
government, we will pay a huge price, and I do not believe the
Afghan people will reward us for doing this.
Quite the contrary, they will condemn us and we will never
be able to reclaim the upper hand in this war against
terrorism, if that is what we are doing there.
Mr. Craner. And that is why fixing this election problem is
really, really important to our mission there.
Ms. Berkley. Thank you.
Mr. Ackerman. I would ask unanimous consent that the
gentlewoman be given 1 extra minute that she would yield to me.
Ms. Berkley. I will accept the minute, and yield it to you.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. In listening carefully to the
responses that we just had from a panel that seems to have seen
this train heading for the crash before Election Day, if we do
have this obligation to after the fact be critical, and demand
a redo, are we not guilty of the crime of being accessories
before the fact by not speaking out and alerting the government
there, and the rest of the international community, that we
think a fraud is about to be perpetrated, so that perhaps their
behavior would change before they commit the crime?
And I guess it is an opinion rather than a factual question
that anybody could answer, even if you are not one of the
experts who were there. So I forego the answer in view of the
fact that my time is up again. Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Ms. Berkley noted the ruggedness of the
Afghan territory, and described it as a hellhole, and I guess--
and quite frankly you suggested that you don't know that area
well. I do.
And let me suggest that the Afghanistan that counts is not
the territory, but it is the people, and the people of
Afghanistan are more rugged than the territory, or they would
have not succeeded in surviving all of these years.
Ms. Berkley. I could not agree with you more.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And that ruggedness and that strength of
the Afghan people has given them a degree of integrity,
personal integrity and courage that I have rarely seen in other
parts of the world where life is much easier.
The Afghan people, for those of us who know them, have
earned our respect over and over again for their personal
integrity and courage, and they should have earned the
gratitude of the American people over and over again as well
for the battles that they have fought, and has had direct
relationship to our own national security, both when they
defeated the Soviet Army back in the 1980s, which brought about
the demise of the Soviet Union, which was the greatest threat
to our own national security.
And then after 9/11, after we had walked away from them
after the war with the Soviet occupation forces, they then rose
up again, and it was the people of Afghanistan, not American
troops, that dislodged and drove the Taliban out of their
country.
We only had 200 American troops in Afghanistan when the
Taliban were driven out. They were driven out by the Northern
Alliance, but also a coalition of people of Afghanistan, and
then we decided to shift our focus and go to Iraq, and again
left them to sleep in the rubble.
Ms. Berkley. If that is the case, if I could ask you then
why do we need to commit another 40,000 troops if the Afghans
are so self-sufficient?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me just note that you are assuming
that that is my position, which is wrong. I am the last one to
answer that question. I would suggest that if we do not have
and keep faith with the people of Afghanistan directly, rather
than making deals with a corrupt government, 40,000 more troops
won't make any difference in Afghanistan.
We must, and in fact, I would suggest, that the first step
of regaining the faith of the people of Afghanistan is to
insist on a runoff election that is not conducted--and this is
my question--that is not conducted by the Afghan Government
itself, but conducted by international organizations.
Is that possible that they could have international
organizations, rather than the Government of Afghanistan, which
we all know is so corrupt that they can't be counted on to
actually conduct the elections, rather than observe the
elections? Very quickly.
Mr. Cowan. Thank you, Congressman. Congressman Burton, you
may remember that we were together members of a Presidential
observation of the Namibian elections.
Mr. Burton. Yes, I remember.
Mr. Cowan. And that was an interesting model, because
although conducted by the colonial power, the South Africans,
the United Nations oversaw those elections in every polling
station in the country.
That is a model that is possible in Afghanistan, but not
possible in the near term, and if such an attempt were made,
there would have to be an interim government appointed, and
they would likely have to call a Loya Jirga in order to provide
for such a thing constitutionally, which might be a good
outcome, but it would take some time to effectuate.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And does the panel agree with that
assessment?
Mr. Thier. Let me just say that I do think that the
Independent Election Commission, were it truly independent,
together with the Electoral Complaints Commission, which is an
international Afghan hybrid, are capable of running a free and
fair election.
The problem was not that those institutions could not run
the election. It is just that there was so much fraud and a
lack of independence in that commission. So I think we could do
a better job with the institutions that are in place, which
frankly would also provide for a greater degree of Afghan
leadership, which is very important for people to see.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But we should insist, and I know that I am
running out of time, Mr. Chairman, but we should insist that
there at least be a runoff election, and that we just don't
accept this result because it would--frankly it would provide
an illegitimate government as an alternative to the radical
Islam and the persona of the Taliban.
And that is not a proper choice for the situation in
Afghanistan right now, for the people of Afghanistan. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing. Welcome to the panel. I will ask this
question of the panelists, and maybe starting with you, Glenn,
and it is good to see you again.
In your review of observing the elections, those of you who
were there, did Karzai in fact win this election, the
allegations of fraud notwithstanding?
Mr. Cowan. Thank you, Congressman. We probably will never
know. I think the process by which these votes have been
counted, and the auditing process now taking place, is not a
legitimate way to have done this, and I do not think we will
ever know what the real votes cast would have produced.
He certainly could have come close to winning, but whether
or not he did in any event is unclear, and will probably never
be a matter of fact.
Mr. Craner. We at IRI did some pre-election polling on this
question. These are all provisional results that we are getting
from the Election Commission. We had predicted from various
polls that Mr. Abdullah would get around 28 percent. We were
within 2.3 percent in our polling.
We had said that Mr. Bashardost would get 9.2, and we were
within 0.8 percent of the provisional results. We had said that
Mr. Ghani--the number that he got, I am sorry, those were all
the numbers that they got in provisional results, 2.7, and we
were 3.30.
With Mr. Karzai, we were 10 points off, with 54 percent. So
take those results, and as Glenn said, we will probably never
know, but I think the point that some of us are making is that
this is not our fate to accept these elections.
We have a say here in whether there is another round of
elections, and that say goes to these issues that Peter
Galbraith has been talking about how they should be conducted.
Mr. Connolly. Well, I am glad that you bring that up. I
worked with Peter Galbraith for 10 years in the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. He is our former Ambassador to Croatia.
We just had published reports today that he has been
terminated in his post with the United Nations because of a
dispute that he had with the chief U.N. official who was
responsible for observing these elections. What is your take on
that?
Mr. Craner. I have not seen Peter's letter that was in
today's New York Times. I would have to look at that. But I
think as a general matter that Peter was sticking up the most
rigorous possible examination of the selection, and that is
what I mean by saying that it is not our fate to accept this
first round. It is within our control to insist that it be
better done.
Mr. Connolly. And if I could clarify my question, Mr.
Craner. That is exactly what I am getting at, but it looks like
with that termination, the United Nations is prepared
unfortunately perhaps to do just that. Namely, to certify an
election that is alleged to have been achieved by widespread
fraud.
Mr. Craner. Again, our fate is not decided by the United
Nations, nor is the Afghan people's fate. I think we as a
government have a right to insist that the U.N., which is
renown for running elections in the world, and ran the 2004 and
2005 Afghan elections, that they would do a decent job here.
Again, if we don't get this issue straight of the
legitimacy of the government, it is probably not worth sending
another 40,000 troops, or even continuing there. It really
needs to be fixed.
Mr. Connolly. Isn't, Mr. Manikas, one of the problems--I
mean, I am very familiar, and certainly a fan of the work of
NDI, but perhaps one of the--and I could throw out a slight
criticism of the NDI approach.
On elections, it is often a top-down approach. It is a
national election, often sometimes irrespective of the fact is
that local governments have not in fact built up a democratic
tradition.
And it seems to me that generally democracy is built from
the bottom up, and not the top down, and did we not just
witness that in these elections in Afghanistan? We are trying
to impose or help create a structure that has in fact never
existed in Afghanistan.
And the local tribal culture may involve democratic
elements, but certainly in towns and villages across
Afghanistan, they don't have such a culture or tradition.
Mr. Manikas. I do not think that is the case. I think it is
the case that every poll that has been done over the past 7 or
8 years has shown an overwhelming support among the Afghan
people for a democratic process.
There are institutions that are created by Afghans, not by
the international community. There are things that have grown
out of the Bonn process, which the Afghans, I think, have
enthusiastically endorsed. I don't think this is a matter of
institutions or an electoral process being imposed on Afghans.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman, my time is up, but I sure wish
I had time to challenge that statement.
Mr. Ackerman. The chair is contemplating a possible
truncated second round depending on how this goes. Mr. McMahon.
Mr. McMahon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
convening this very relevant and interesting hearing, and to
all the witnesses, thank you for coming today. Mr. Craner, you
indicated that it is within our power to compel a further
election or a runoff if you will.
Can you just walk me through that process, because I think
what I sat here and learned is that I think that everybody in
this room agrees that there were high irregularities in the
election.
That following the best interests of the Afghan people and
the American people, and the world, that Mr. Karzai not remain
in that position. But coming from local politics in New York,
it is not the first time that I looked at the results of the
election, I was not happy with it.
But through the process how do we--I think we all see the
same goal here, but tell me how we get there.
Mr. Craner. Well, there was an Independent Election
Commission, and unusually there was a separate Election
Complaints Commission. You usually don't have that. The two are
usually together.
So clearly there was an understanding that there was going
to be a problem, or there might be a problem here. The Election
Complaints Commission has insisted on being quite rigorous
throughout the process.
They have--and this again gets to the dispute between the
head of the mission and Mr. Galbraith about how rigorous the
Election Complaints Commission is going to be in looking at
these results.
I do not think given our stake in Afghanistan, but also
given our presence there, that we are the main--the United
States is the main presence there, that it is out of the
question for the United States to say we think this is an
important issue, and we think it should be decided in a
particular way, that it should be looked at rigorously.
Mr. McMahon. But who has the power to impose that decision?
Does that Commission have the procedural power to say----
Mr. Craner. Yes.
Mr. McMahon [continuing]. No, Afghan, you are a free
nation, and we are telling you----
Mr. Craner. Yes.
Mr. Connolly [continuing]. To do a new election?
Mr. Craner. The final results cannot be validated until the
Election Complaints Commission has signed off on them. The
issue has been what small portion of the vote is the Election
Complaints Commission going to be allowed to look at to
determine that.
It is partly driven by a desire to get this over with. It
is partly driven by a desire to get this over with quickly so
that if there was going to be a second round, it could have
been held before the winter.
If you open up other options, if you say it will be okay if
we have a second round in the springtime because this is a
really important election, then the Election Complaints
Commission can be freed up to do the work that it should be
doing.
Mr. McMahon. But can't the Karzai government then declare
legitimacy and refuse to cooperate? You were saying that we
were fairly elected, and now you are trying to actually take
away the independent votes of the people?
I am not for that. I am just curious, because we are sort
of in the room here far, far away, saying what should happen. I
just am not seeing the process that would bring that about.
Mr. Craner. If there were a popular perception in
Afghanistan that this had been a very clean election, I think
you would be able to do that. I think the popular perception in
Afghanistan is probably very much like it is here, which is
that this was a very bad election.
So I think for him to say, well, this Election Complaints
Commission really doesn't have any standing, and the Afghan
people have made their wishes known, but the Afghan people have
not made their wishes known through this election process.
Mr. McMahon. I understand. I agree, but I just am not clear
how procedurally you make that happen. Mr. Thier.
Mr. Thier. Well, let me say that I think that you are right
to point out officially there is a gray area, and it would be
very difficult, because ultimately it is the Independent
Election Commission that will certify the results.
I think what we have not dealt with effectively over the
last number of years, and certainly it is pertinent right now,
is that the United States pays for most of the Afghan
Government budget.
We provide the security, and we paid for most of this
election, and ultimately we have to decide where--not only
where our principles lie, but where our future lies in
Afghanistan.
And if we determine, as I think virtually every witness
here has said, that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan over the
next 5 years with the incredible pall of illegitimacy that this
election has left.
Then we have to get down to brass tacks, and that means
that we can make very serious demands, and it is not just us.
We are there with 41 other nations. I don't believe that
President Karzai, with the lack of popular support for the
legitimacy of the election, and the lack of popular will
amongst the international community that pays all the bills,
can stand up against that credibly.
Mr. McMahon. Well, I understand that it is more the weight
of our authority, as opposed to some--yes, Dr. Fair?
Ms. Fair. Well, just one quick point. In some sense with
the announcement that we have already acknowledged that Karzai,
either through the force of a recount, or through the basis of
the previous tallies, is going to be the President, we have
already undercut in some measure those very important domestic
institutions like the ECC.
I would actually turn the question around. How can the ECC
come to the determination that a runoff is appropriate when
major international stakeholders have already basically said
that we are going to be acknowledging Karzai as the continued
President.
Mr. McMahon. Thank you. I will adopt that question in the
next found. Thank you, Dr. Fair.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Costa.
Mr. Costa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of us, or I guess
all of us have been to Afghanistan a number of times, and you
look at the flip side of comparison analysis with Afghanistan
and Iraq, and you have got the majority of people, 70 percent
or more, live in rural areas, versus Iraq, that live in urban
areas.
You have got literacy rates where I think still 80 percent
or more of the population of Afghanistan are illiterate. You
have got a life expectancy that is--I mean, the slog here, the
investment that you clearly, Mr. Thier, noted that we have made
thus far, and the one that we are going to have to continue to
make to be successful, I think the American people truly need
to understand the significance of the financial commitment, as
well as the manpower, and the lives that are out there.
Could you give me an assessment of how long you think it
will take--we have been there 8 years--to straighten this out
given the lack of focus that has been placed there to turn this
around, the Plan B sort of, Dr. Fair, that you noted, and what
that Plan B is, because it can't be just rearranging Plan A?
Mr. Thier. I think that it is critical to note that
although we have been there for 8 years, we have not been
trying for 8 years to accomplish many of these hopeful
objections.
Mr. Costa. Clearly.
Mr. Thier. And so I don't know that the 8 years is
necessarily a good metric, because I think that it is a scary
number. I believe that going forward that essentially a 5-year
plan of transition, where we focus very heavily on developing
Afghan capacities over the next 2 years----
Mr. Costa. Using smart power, combined with our military
force?
Mr. Thier. Exactly. I still believe--I lived there 4 years
of the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and things can
get a whole lot worse. The Afghan people are very resilient,
and what exists in a lot of the country right now, with the
exception of the east and the south, is relatively positive to
where that country has been for the last 30 years. So for
those----
Mr. Costa. When you talk about the east and the west like
that, for what percentage of the population are you saying
things are relatively positive?
Mr. Thier. I think that for about 70 percent of the
population, there are certainly threats of insecurity, but they
are not living in armed conflict. They are living in an
environment where there are opportunities to improve their lot.
And many people have. Economic growth has been considerable
over the last 8 years, and so it is a question of being able to
balance this positive growth with the downward trends that we
have seen over the last 3 to 4 years.
One of the most important things about this whole debate, I
believe, is that while the national elections are important,
ultimately politics, society, and economy in Afghanistan are
local, and we need to pay a lot more attention than we have to
dealing with things at a local level than the national level.
Mr. Costa. Well, with 70 percent of the people living in
rural areas, that is a more difficult challenge.
Mr. Thier. It is a more difficult challenge, but at the
same time those people have survived through decades of
conflict, and it is not as though they have just lived in
chaos.
They have governed themselves, and they have fed
themselves, and there is a great well of capacity among the
Afghan people to persevere.
Mr. Costa. Dr. Fair, Plan B?
Ms. Fair. Yes, I have a really different view. I mean, I
spent my career looking at the South Asia region, and so I am
always thinking about tradeoffs. What we do in Country X, is
that what we need to do in Country Y.
The problem that we have in Afghanistan is that the
counterinsurgency lurch is very clear. Locals win
counterinsurgency, not foreigners. Our Government has not
stepped up to the plate.
They have not been able to support our international
resources on something very basic as training police. So by
putting so much United States resources into counterinsurgency,
as opposed to counterterrorism, we are actually in a really
ironic situation.
I think that most people would agree that we have far more
significant terrorist threat, as well as the threat of nuclear
proliferation, residing in Pakistan. But because we want to
send more troops to Afghanistan, we need Pakistan ever more as
a logistical supply route.
So it is very ironic that we are trying to engage a
counterinsurgency battle on behalf of the Afghans, which we
can't win realistically speaking, and because of this
commitment, we are unable to put needed pressure on Pakistan to
do what it needs to do to diminish what I would argue is even a
greater terrorist threat, and of course the enduring nuclear
proliferation threat resides there as well.
Mr. Costa. In recent years--and quickly my last question,
and I don't know if you can get a head nodding agreement among
all of you, but President Karzai, who many of us have met, has
been referred to in some cases as not much more than the Mayor
of Kabul.
Would you concur all of you that his ability to reach out
to the provinces and to have a truly national government is
still that limited?
Ms. Fair. He can reach out, but not in ways that are
necessarily productive.
Mr. Costa. Well, that is part of the problem. Is
everybody's head nodding on that? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for
repeatedly providing us with timely hearings and provide great
consternation. Let me just offer my thoughts of a country that
I went into shortly after the--probably in the spring of 2002,
I recall.
And I think at that time it was Chairman Karzai and the
palace in Kabul, and it was dark, and riddled with bullets, and
so I saw it in its last state if you will. Certainly there have
been steps toward progress in Afghanistan that I think we
should give credit to.
In talking to Afghan parliamentarians, there is still a
concern about the treatment of women and girls. We have made
some strides, and then we have fallen back. I would just point
that out in terms of governance and where we are, and how they
relate to these elections.
Let me pose these questions. I am not sure, Mr. Craner, but
I was coming in as you were saying--and I hope I didn't
misinterpret, but I was coming into the room, and it seems you
said something about not sending troops.
You can like shake your head if I am incorrect, but I am
going to get a question to you. But did I hear you when I was
coming in correctly?
All right. I am going to pose the question, and pose the
question to Ms. Fair, and I appreciate the other witnesses,
too, and Mr. Thier. And I would just go down the line and
answer the question.
One, I was speaking to some international press, and I was
speaking in an off the record conversation also to a British
parliamentarian, who said that the United States has gone on
record internationally that we want our man to win.
If I missed it in the domestic press, somebody needs to let
me know, and that would be Karzai. We made our point when I
thought we were trying to stand back and let the process go
forward.
Second, I am going to weave this into this question of the
dilemma that is facing the administration on surging up or
looking at some other options. My understanding of the defeat
of the Russians was the nationalistic posture that Afghans
take, and they don't let up.
So my question is how do we think we are going to change
that? Do we not need to find--and let this not be humorous, and
let me qualify it so that it is not manipulated and abused
across the world of dialogue--but can we find the good Taliban?
Don't they exist? Are they not an underpinning--are there not
some people who are Taliban? We have gotten that name, and so
maybe it should be a different name, and you can help me out.
To work on this thing called counterterrorism, which I
think is a valid point, I need to understand it. But I think it
is a valid point. You can work on the bad guys. I mean, I think
we should work on the bad guys.
But I don't know if a surge and the whole idea of presence
with NATO dropping down is going to work; and lastly, if this
gets settled is Karzai the gentleman who could pull people
together if this election could be legitimized? Mr. Craner.
Mr. Craner. On your first question, 2 days ago apparently
in New York, there was a meeting reported on by the New York
Times that indicated that we had basically said to Karzai that
you have won, even though the election process was not quite
done.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. I will look that article up.
Mr. Craner. And the Soviets versus us question, clearly you
have to--you may not be able to always get to the leaders of a
counterinsurgency, but you have to starve them of their foot
troops, and if you have a counterinsurgency strategy with a
legitimate government, you can do this.
Is Karzai capable of pulling people together? As my
colleague noted, yes, but not the right people.
Ms. Jackson Lee. All right. Thank you. Dr. Fair.
Ms. Fair. The issue of our man actually began circa March,
when everyone agreed that the election would be postponed, and
because of the unfortunate consequence of the international
community being forced to support continuity of government as
the peak insurgency season began, and everyone read that as
being tantamount to support for the incumbent.
So there was some realities about the politics and the
needs for the insurgency. I believe very strongly that we need
to remember that there are two military missions in Afghanistan
right now.
One is the counterinsurgency mission, which targets the
Taliban.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Right.
Ms. Fair. And the second is the counterterrorism mission,
which brought us into Afghanistan, which focuses upon al-Qaeda.
There are two very separate missions that remain separate
today.
Going to the point about flipping the Taliban, I think that
even the term Taliban is not terribly helpful. Many of the
fighters that are currently associated with the Taliban
infrastructure, they are opportunists. They are entrepreneurs
of violence, and yet I think they can be brought into a system,
and that is how insurgencies end, a politicalization of those
combatants that can be politicalized.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. The chair will attempt to have a
second round. The found will be limited with everybody's
consent to 3 minutes per member. The chair will go last in case
we run out of time.
I remind you that 3 minutes means if your question is 2
minutes and 10 seconds, each panelist will have 10 seconds
left. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair. I certainly----
Mr. Ackerman. I am sorry, Mr. Rohrabacher, or would you
like to go and bat cleanup?
Mr. Connolly. I certainly would defer to my colleague if he
wishes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We are
in a war right now with radical Islam, and the radical
Islamists coalition declared war on us. They attacked us and
slaughtered 3,000 of our people.
What happens in Afghanistan has a lot to do with the
outcome of that war, and I know when I was a young man, and I
had spent some time in Vietnam doing--I was not in the
military, but doing some other work there.
And I came back and talked to my father, who had fought in
the Korean War, and had actually pulled the first DC-3 into the
Pusan perimeter, and I was telling him about how concerned I
was about Vietnam, and how I felt the dynamics would mean that
our sacrifice would mean nothing.
And he told me that it was much worse in Korea, and he said
look at it today. At least in Korea, they have a democratic
government on our side now, et cetera, and what would it be
like if we had not stayed in Korea, or we had not won in Korea,
or at least prevented them from being taken over by the
communists.
It would have been a whole different world, and in fact the
communist's surge throughout the world might have succeeded,
and it might be a totally different world today. Well, I
believe that unless we succeed in Afghanistan, it will be a
totally different world.
But it doesn't necessarily mean that it is all based on our
military forces, and sending people like my father when he was
a young man into Korea to do their fighting. It seems to me
that as in the Cold War, the outcome was the fact that we did
make stands, but also that we allied ourselves with people like
the Afghan people.
In fact, we allied ourselves with the Afghan people who
helped defeat the Soviet empire, and today unfortunately, Mr.
Chairman, it seems to me that we have tried to ally ourselves
with an elite in Afghanistan, and create some sort of
alternative elite in Afghanistan, rather than going to the
people themselves and allying ourselves with what is or what I
consider people of high integrity and courage, who are open to
a friendship with the United States.
If we permit this election result to go unchallenged, and
we don't have a runoff, I think that it will be an insult to
the people of Afghanistan. It will undermine our efforts to
actually succeed there, because our success depends on an
alliance with the people there, and not with a coalition of
crooks.
And an alliance with a coalition of crooks that run the
central government. So, with that said, I have appreciated the
testimony today, and I again would ask my colleagues if they
would like to join me in a resolution, which I will be
submitting today, calling for at least the runoff election.
And if any of us are considering supporting 35,000
additional troops for Afghanistan, we should go on record
demanding that the people of Afghanistan not be insulted with a
fraudulent election.
At least pulling that out in a little way by offering a
runoff to the people that would be run hopefully in a more fair
and honest manner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to
my truncated conversation with Mr. Manikas. You were citing
polls that overwhelmingly the Afghan people favor free
elections.
And you seemed to take issue with the fact that there was--
a minor assertion--that there was not really a tradition of
democratic elections, certainly at the national level in
Afghanistan.
I want to give you a chance to comment on both, because one
wonders about how accurate polling would be in a country like
Afghanistan, with 80 percent illiteracy at least, with a sense
of no nationhood.
Most Afghans, if you ask them where they come from, they
will cite their tribe, not Afghanistan. So the sense of
nationalism in Afghanistan is very limited. I was there in
February, and I can't remember a national election in
Afghanistan that put in a relative free stable government, or
even a free unstable government.
So I would like you to have a chance to respond to that,
but point number two, and to anyone else on the panel real
quickly, even if we succeed in getting a runoff election, one
of the concerns that I have got is that we are raising
expectations that if we only got to a free election with that
individual, who in fact really is elected, all will be well.
And I am really worried about raising that expectation,
because I just think it is just not true, and I think even with
a freely elected government--relatively freely elected
government--we have got a lot of trouble in Afghanistan, and
elections sadly may not be the crux of the problem. Mr.
Manikas.
Mr. Manikas. I agree that polls are somewhat problematic.
There has been though three different organizations--the Asia
Foundation, the IRI, CSIS, here in Washington that have been
doing polling, and have come up with pretty consistent results
over the past 7 or 8 years.
On the electoral process itself, I think the participation
of a large number of Afghans, both back in 2004 and 2005, and
this current election, demonstrates a commitment to the
electoral process.
In addition to the millions of people who voted in this
election, there were over 40,000 Afghans who participated as
candidates, as domestic election monitors, as polling
officials, and all at personal expense and risk. I think those
factors demonstrate a commitment to the institutions that they
created.
Mr. Craner. I think that everything that Peter said is
right. I think what the Afghan people are not--I mean, nobody
raised this issue of are the Afghan people ready for democracy
in 2004 and 2005 when the elections were pretty well run.
It has come about because there was a fraudulent election.
But the fraud was not committed by the Afghan people. As Alex
noted, it was 80 percent by the government. There were other
people who committed fraud, but it was 80 percent by the
government.
I think what the Afghan people really want to see is
something in between elections called democracy. That means
that the state has an interest in their welfare, and they are
not seeing that. I think that is the problem.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I am on a marathon. Mr. Craner, could you
say again, no troops? I am just going quickly. Did you say no
troops, or----
Mr. Craner. I said it is difficult to make the case for
troops unless you can sort out the selection.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Right.
Mr. Craner. In other words, this election is critical.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me put on the record that I believe
that we should have a legitimate runoff, but I will ask Mr.
Thier, and Dr. Fair, again. Mr. Thier, I didn't get to you, and
so I want to get an answer to this question.
My point about--and my dear friend and I are probably on
the same page. We have traveled to Afghanistan at different
times. My point on nationalism is the idea that they will stand
against an outside force, whether they are tribal or otherwise,
and that I think was part of the defeat of the Russians.
The question is whether there is any value for us to be
there in that military point if we are not doing democracy and
focusing on who we can negotiate with. So, Mr. Thier, if you
would answer that about any value.
Let us say the election gets a reelection, and we have some
unity in the government. We talked about democracy. Get into
this point about where we go next with this so-called
democratic government.
Dr. Fair, just help me again in distinguishing on your
counterterrorism. What tools will you use for counterterrorism?
Are you promoting counterterrorism over the insurgency fight?
Dr. Thier, and Dr. Fair, I think I have time for both of you to
answer quickly.
Mr. Thier. Yes, I believe fully in the premise of your
question about nationalism, but I think that the benefit for
the United States is that fundamentally Afghan nationalism has
been consonant with American goals since 2001.
I believe that there are great and strong national
traditions in Afghanistan, and I think that for the most part
that they have been supportive. I think the talk of xenophobia,
and a graveyard of enterprises, has largely fallen flat in
Afghanistan.
It is only--it is not that the Afghans fear the Judeo-
Christian armies of the United States taking over Afghanistan.
It is that when they see what we have developed and what we
have delivered with the Karzai government that they have grown
skeptical. And so what they want from us----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Can we win their hearts and minds without
a surge of troops?
Mr. Thier. I think that the question of troops to support
what Mr. Craner said is less important than the question of how
we deal with the fundamental premise of creating a responsible
and legitimate civilian government. You could probably----
Ms. Jackson Lee. I hear that. Thank you, Mr. Thier. Dr.
Fair.
Ms. Fair. The point of the counterterrorism issue actually
feeds right off of this. So why we went into Afghanistan was
because al-Qaeda----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Absolutely.
Ms. Fair. So the counterterrorism struggle focuses narrowly
on al-Qaeda. They are largely localized in the Kunar Province,
and of course----
Ms. Jackson Lee. And what tools do we use?
Ms. Fair. Special operators, another thing probably not----
Ms. Jackson Lee. I understand that. Okay. Different from
what we have with massive groups walking around.
Ms. Fair. No, counterinsurgency is targeting the Taliban.
The Taliban is created from goals from al-Qaeda.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Right.
Ms. Fair. Which was a national terrorist organization that
went to harm us or our allies everywhere if possible. The
Taliban largely is focused on domestic issues, largely focusing
on undermining the government in Kabul.
So to win the counterinsurgency affair, that is not for us
to win. That is for the Afghans to win. That requires the
Afghans to take a handle on this governance issue.
We can send in trainers, and we can train the police. We
can train the military, but if this does not happen in concert
with the Ministry of the Interior reform, and Ministry of
Justice reform, the Afghans will not win the counterinsurgency
struggle against the Taliban.
Going back to your other point, most insurgencies do end
with some political resolution. These are not al-Qaeda in Iraq
where everyone was foreign. It is not as if they came back.
They never left.
So there will ultimately have to be some resolution of
that, and that goes back again to the credibility of this
government in Kabul. How can an uncredible government deal with
the insurgency in political terms?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. My final issue that I would like
to bring up. It seems historically that when we become involved
with uncredible as you call them regimes, and the people remedy
that situation, regardless of how long it might take them, that
our alliance with that regime that then gets overturned does
not sit well with the people who are demanding justice.
And I could cite examples from Cuba, to the Shah of Iran,
and everybody else before and after, and in between. If we
continue to back, assuming that whatever insistence we might
have, and the final disposition of Mr. Rohrabacher's suggestion
of insisting on a runoff that they may not accept, and we
continue to send troops, do we look like participants in a sham
government that is not legitimate?
Do we look like enablers of that process of election
stealing, and are we no longer welcomed in a region of the
world that we see presently as critical to some of our
concerns?
Mr. Cowan. Mr. Chairman, I think that 5 years ago, we
acceded to a Karzai regime demand that they not have true
separation powers in their government, and we permitted a
single non-transferable votes system for the election of their
legislature, which stripped that body of the ability to be
managed and run by political parties.
So there are no political parties in the country, and they
do not act as a check against unbridled executive power. That
is one of the central problems in the country, in companion
with the fact that we did not----
Mr. Ackerman. Are we the bad guys by participating and
propping up an illegitimate government?
Mr. Craner. I think at this point that we need to call on a
change in the way that the legislature is elected so that we
can have checks in that government, yes.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Thier, how are we viewed if
our pleas, if we make them, are ignored for a runoff and
legitimate election, a new election, and we continue to be
supportive or cooperative with the regime, which is really them
being cooperative with us?
Mr. Thier. Well, I think it comes down to ultimately how
the next year plays out. I think that this election crisis will
flow into the question of how we effectively deal with the
accountability of the government.
And again it is not the election that precipitated this
crisis. It is the fact that the government has not performed
credibly or legitimately. I think that there are steps that
could be taken, regardless of who becomes President, that would
improve the performance of the Afghan Government, and would
improve people's perceptions of us and the Afghan Government.
And so it goes beyond the elections. It is these other
things about dealing with the cultural of impunity that we need
to address.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Manikas.
Mr. Manikas. I think what we say about the process will
also matter. It is not just support for an illegitimate
government, but how honest we are in describing what actually
occurred.
Mr. Ackerman. Dr. Fair.
Ms. Fair. I agree with everything that my colleagues have
said, and I would like to add the addendum that we also have to
be introspective and look at the places at which we knew that
the election was going down a pre-cooked path, and we actually
subsidized, funded, or supported those mechanisms, or at a
minimum acquiesced to them, and some of these mechanisms were
clearly evidenced as early as May 2008.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Craner.
Mr. Craner. I would say the answer to our question is yes,
but it is within our power to change that.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Mr. Ellison, do you have a
question, or two, or three?
Mr. Ellison. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Ackerman. Well, I would yield the chair to you, because
I have to be in one of those places that I can't tell you
about, and learned things that I never heard. So you can yield
yourself the time. I believe we are on a 3-minute regime right
now.
Mr. Ellison [presiding]. I will yield myself 3 minutes. Let
me begin with you, Dr. Fair. Was there any evidence that you
have seen that suggested to you that perhaps our policy, either
explicit or implicit, was that we kind of thought of Hamad
Karzai as our guy, and therefore, we are not as judicious as we
could have been as we saw these election irregularities
developing, and then culminating in what we now are talking
about today?
Ms. Fair. Yes.
Mr. Ellison. Could you elaborate on that?
Ms. Fair. Yes, absolutely. In my various trips to
Afghanistan, it really was not until March 2009 on this year
where I actually began hearing very serious rumblings amongst
the international community actors there in Kabul, that maybe
the worst thing for the insurgency would be 5 more years of
Karzai.
But at that point, they had already acquiesced to
postponing the election, and that meant that everyone had to
rally around continuity of governance, which of course Karzai
took to mean continuity of the incumbent governance.
And so that sort of put into play a very difficult
structural situation that no one could really extricate itself,
from which we could not extricate ourselves. When Ambassador
Eikenberry made a very visible effort to meet the other
contestants that was then construed as the United States trying
to find another alternative.
But I look at the Afghan policies as being very similar to
the Pakistan policies, and that is that we are always trying to
find our guy to execute our interests in a relationship that we
say is transactional, but in fact we never get the returns to
the investment from those transactions.
Mr. Ellison. In your view, would Dr. Abilis, assuming that
he prevailed in the election, and it looks as if so far he
hasn't, if he did, would that necessarily be a bad thing for
the United States, and our stated goals of protecting ourselves
from al-Qaeda, and other transnational terrorists that might
gather ground in Afghanistan?
Ms. Fair. Well, again, I really do like to make a
distinction between the counterinsurgency, which is dealing
with the Taliban, and the counterterrorism campaign, which
deals with al-Qaeda.
I believe that you can actually secure our goals against
al-Qaeda, irrespective to some measure to what happens with the
counterinsurgency. Had there been a more credible outcome in
this electoral process, irrespective of who wins, it would have
facilitated the prospects for the counterinsurgency campaign,
because it would have added a grain of credibility to the
government.
Had Karzai not won, or had there been a runoff, it would
have been an important signal to Karzai that he is not our man,
and that in fact he is answerable to his constituencies, and he
has to perform.
So it is counter-factual that in fact we don't have a
credible electoral outcome. We don't have a Presidential
candidate. And finally everyone talks about the Presidential
candidate. Remember, these are provincial council elections as
well.
And the Taliban, there is a lot of evidence that they were
floating proxies, and that they were keen about the outcomes of
the provincial council elections. So let us also remember that
there were multiple elections taking place, and I would argue
that the provincial council elections are just as important.
Mr. Ellison. I am out of time, and I will yield now 3
minutes to Congressman Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. Just some final
thoughts. First of all, a thank you to the panel, and all of
you have given us food for thought. We face some really
important decisions about what our policy is going to be in
Afghanistan.
I am reminded that years ago, like 25 years ago, I was
actually walking into Afghanistan, walking through Afghanistan,
with a Massoud combat unit to the City of Jalalabad, which was
then under seize by Massoud forces.
And I had a beard and the whole business then, and a young
man came running up from the back of our little band of
insurgents, and came to me and said that I understand that you
are an American, and I said yes.
And he spoke English very well. A 16- or 17-year-old boy,
and he said, ``I know that you are involved in politics,'' and
I said, ``Yes. Yes, I am.'' And he said, ``Are you a donkey or
an elephant?'' And I said, ``Well, I am an elephant.'' And he
said, ``I thought you were.''
Now, here is a guy, a young person in Afghanistan, and he
had an AK-47 over his shoulder, marching into a battle on the
other side of the world, and he knew about our political
system.
He knew about us, and it was an amazing thing to me, and I
often wondered--and that was 20 or 25 years ago. He must be
near 40 years old now. We have to keep faith with that young
man.
I don't know if he ever survived the war or not, but many
of them like him marched off and had incredible courage, and
changed the course of history with what they did.
And I think that our major challenge right now is to keep
the faith with people like that, that young man with such
incredible courage and integrity, and knowledge, and a longing
to make his country better, and allying with us in order to do
so.
I don't know if he survived or not, but I do know that
Abdul Hawk did not survive after 9/11. He went in to try to
reorganize, and tried to help his people fight off this radical
Islamic element.
I know that Commander Massoud, both of whom I know were
close friends of mine--Commander Massoud, of course, was
murdered in the days right before 9/11. Some of us believe that
was part of the whole 9/11 plan of the Taliban, and al-Qaeda,
to kill Commander Massoud, to make sure that the United States
did not have a method of retaliating against them.
So that would be the equivalent of George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson being killed during the American Revolution.
Now what would that have done to the United States after the
war, after our revolution, and how would it have impeded our
progress?
And so there is hardship to be overcome right now that has
been brought upon us by the circumstances of history, and the
loss of leadership. We must do our best to pay back this debt
to the people of Afghanistan, and I believe our future, the
future of the world that we will create, will be determined on
how we handle this.
And whether or not we keep faith with those people, like
that young man who understood us and wanted a free country, and
wanted a country where his people would grow better, or whether
or not we jus succumb to making coalitions with elites, even if
they are crooked elites, and run crooked elections.
I don't think that is keeping faith with those people, and
that will not serve us in the years ahead. So with that said,
thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for testifying
today.
Mr. Ellison. And if the gentleman would yield, I have just
one quick question that I would like to ask, just one fast one,
and I would like to ask it to the panel for a quick answer.
So if the outcome of this thing is that--well, let me ask
it this way. Whether we have a runoff election--or should we
have a runoff election? That is my question. Not we. What am I
talking about. They. Should they have a runoff election?
Mr. Cowan. We will know in the next couple of days whether
or not there will be a runoff. I think a runoff would be one
way of adding some legitimacy to this process, but it is not at
all likely that such a runoff in and of itself is sufficient to
give us a legitimate outcome.
Mr. Thier. I believe that a runoff election is the best of
a series of problematic options for dealing with the crisis
that has been created by this election.
Mr. Manikas. A runoff is the best option to restore
legitimacy to the process.
Ms. Fair. Agreed. My only concern is that some of the
issues that were present in the election will remain present in
the election, namely the security issues, the logistical
issues, the not completely independent nature of the IEC. So
some of the same institutional problems will not be erased in
the course of a runoff.
Mr. Craner. My answer is, yes, it would help, and I would
say that it is not going to hurt things at all if it is in the
springtime, and it will enable us to fix some of those
problems.
Mr. Ellison. With that, we will thank the panel, and this
hearing will conclude.
[Whereupon, at 11:08 a.m., the subcommittee hearing was
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative
in Congress from the State of California
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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