Military

DATE=05/19/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE SHORT #1

NUMBER=1-01329

TITLE=AFGHANISTAN'S CHALLENGES

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT= INSERTS IN DALET AND AUDIO SERVICES

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: This is On the Line, and I'm ------------. U-S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stopped in Kabul to announce that American troops had ended major combat operations in Afghanistan. Mr. Rumsfeld said that U-S soldiers will now focus on maintaining security and on helping to rebuild the war-torn country. Also, visiting Kabul was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. He said, "Although we may be occupied at present in Iraq, the United States is not going to forget our responsibilities here in Afghanistan."

Peter Tomsen is former U-S Special Envoy to Afghanistan. He says that international assistance has fallen well short of what Afghanistan needs to restore itself:

Tomsen: Afghan institutions need to be rebuilt. And this was country that before the Soviets invaded, unlike East Timor and Bosnia and even the Central Asian states, it had a government, a functioning government, a functioning military. It had a functioning civil service. It wasn't, you would say, superb in all these areas, but these institutions were functioning, they were working.

Host: Defense analyst David Isby says that the biggest challenge in rebuilding Afghan society is restoring the confidence of the people:

Isby: Among the things that were destroyed by thirty years of war was legitimacy of centralized Afghan institutions, not just the institutions themselves, but that of government and also the people. The people who were there before the war are now largely old or in exile and the number of skilled Afghans with public administration skills is now highly limited. So we not only have to rebuild the institutions, we have to re-legitimate them. There are many people in Afghanistan, who have seen nothing good coming out of Kabul since 1978. Now at last, under Karzai, we've started to turn this around.

Host: Elie Krakowski is senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. He says Iran and Pakistan are going back to their old habits of interfering in Afghan politics:

Krakowski: When you look at a situation in Afghanistan, you have to distinguish whether it is purely internal -- and there you have a very weak central government that needs to grow and develop. Then you have the international situation where the surrounding actors that had been one of the main causes for conflict, I think, have resumed some of their nefarious activities and are supporting different groups and egging them on against others.

Host: The stronger Afghanistan's institutions become, the more it will be able to resist interference from its neighbors. For On the Line, I'm -------------.