Military

DATE=10/17/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01412

TITLE=AFGHANISTAN REPORT CARD

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT= Transcript for OTL released Friday UTC

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: Afghanistan struggles to rebuild. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: Afghanistan is making progress toward becoming a democratic nation. In December, a loya jirga, or national council will meet to consider a draft constitution for Afghanistan. The draft, written by an Afghan commission has been presented to President Hamid Karzai for review. Kabul, the capital is now a city bustling with energy and commerce, with security provided by NATO forces. A new Afghan national army is also helping to bring security to parts of the country. But much of Afghanistan is still dangerous. The ousted Taleban regime and its Al-Qaida terrorist allies continue their efforts to destabilize the south. Operating out of Pakistan's lawless border provinces, they cross the border into Afghanistan to murder local officials and international aid workers. And in the North, there is an uneasy truce between warlords whose forces have been engaged in a provincial civil war. Is Afghanistan on the mend? I'll ask my guests: Peter Tomsen, former U-S Special Envoy to Afghanistan and former ambassador to Armenia, David Isby, author of "War in a Distant Country: Afghanistan, Invasion and Resistance" and joining us by phone from Dubai, Hamid Karzai's brother, Mahmood Karzai, chairman of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce. Also joining us by phone from Lahore, Pakistan, is Ahmed Rashid, a terrorism expert and author of the books: "Taliban" and "Jihad." Welcome and thanks for joining us. Peter Tomsen, what are the biggest challenges facing Afghanistan right now?

Tomsen: The biggest single challenge is security. Security has slipped in the southern and eastern provinces bordering Pakistan. There are efforts under way to improve security in those areas. A larger police force, better-funded NATO is thinking of deploying ISAF --

Host: ISAF is?

Tomsen: -- the International Stabilization of Afghanistan Force, which is the peacekeeping force that has been limited to Kabul to date. But it will be deployed outside of Kabul and that process will begin in the next several weeks. And there's a new push on reconstruction that's planned, inside Afghanistan, particularly in the provinces adjoining Pakistan. But, the threat that is emerging from Pakistani territory, that is, Taleban and Al-Qaida strikes into southern and eastern Afghanistan, is a very worrisome trend. And so, as was mentioned at the beginning of the program, the fighting among warlords around the country.

Host: David Isby, is security in and of itself the single biggest challenge in Afghanistan still?

Isby: Security is a big challenge because anything else is going to have to follow from that. The challenge is not only achieving security however, but using it to make the lives of the average Afghan better. Because, once you have done that, there will be certainly less people to follow warlords into factional battle or to follow Taleban in armed resistance to [the] Kabul regime. So, first you have to achieve security, but then you have to build on it and that's possibly the more difficult task.

Host: Mahmood Karzai, are you there by phone?

Karzai: Yes.

Host: David Isby brings up this issue of the relationship between security and the economic life of the country, how the average Afghan finds his day-to-day situation. How is that going in Afghanistan, that relationship?

Karzai: I think he's right. It is essential, the economic root is essential to security. I think overall, the economic progress is tremendous compared to the era of the Taleban. But to the full potential, I particularly disagree with one of the policies that currently Afghanistan has to adapt to the economic growth, which is basically a center-directed economy. And it would be more helpful if the government will actually cut the red tape and let them deregulate it so the country's economy will be more conclusive to producers. And also, to allow more competition by using the licensing so a consumer can benefit from low prices. These are the essential three elements which are lacking at this current time.

Host: Is the security situation currently stable enough that businesses are able to get started and trade around the country?

Karzai: Yes, absolutely, Kabul is very safe and also the main cities, Kandahar City, Herat Jalalabad, disturbances occur near the border areas, not coming into the city. And the cities are the center of commerce. I think if they ease restrictions and take an attitude that the average citizen involved, our merchant, knows his territory better than somebody who sits in the office in Kabul, if they take this attitude [it would] help. I believe that unless citizens are able to participate in the economy we'll not have a free market economy. So, this is -- they have to take a different approach.

Host: I'd like to bring Ahmed Rashid into the conversation. Are you there by phone Mr. Rashid?

Rashid: Yes.

Host: Peter Tomsen mentioned the Taleban operating out of the border provinces. You've written a lot about that and how strong is the new action being taken by the Taleban and how much destabilization are they achieving in Afghanistan?

Rashid: Well, I've just come back from Southern Afghanistan, I was there last week and certainly what I saw and heard, both in Southern Afghanistan and in the Pakistani province of Balochistan which borders Kandahar and Zabol provinces, was very disturbing to me. I mean to me, it was very much a kind of rerun of what I had been seeing back in 1994, 1995, when the Taleban first emerged and that was, certainly in Baluchistan the Taleban are operating very, very openly. In Quetta and other cities they're buying vehicles and motor bikes. They're crossing over the border. They're launching attacks against Afghan government forces and softer targets now: aid workers and ordinary civilians. All this is escalating. They're now up to two or three attacks a day in the South, where there used to be one every two or four days.

Host: Mr. Rashid, is the Taleban gaining an influence in the region or just stepping up its violence in the region?

Rashid: I certainly do not get any sense in Khandahar and Helmand that there's any popular support for the Taleban. I think the Pashtuns who are still in Afghanistan are caught in a very deadly vise. That is, they are linked by many people to be pro-Taleban but at the same time they're not getting the benefits of reconstruction because of the insecurity situation. And there is an alienation down there, but certainly there is not popular support for the Taleban. I think what you're seeing is a guerilla operation that I s run out, mainly run out of the Pakistan border region. I don't see the Taleban as yet being able to establish any kind of bases or capture any actual territory inside Afghanistan.

Host: Well, Peter Tomsen, what can be done to thwart the Taleban's effort to bring renewed violence to southern Afghanistan?

Tomsen: I think that Ahmed and David and Mahmood are absolutely right by stressing the economic side, reconstruction. There is a lot of assistance that is in the pipeline and is coming to Afghanistan. It's like a long pipeline. Things go slowly in Afghanistan, but there's going to be hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of road-building, education, health and other assistance flowing into these areas. It's been delayed. The international community has not delivered as promised. But there still is a commitment to fulfill the promises that have been made and as the provincial reconstruction team sees U-S aid, and security organizations are expanded, I think they'll be established in Kandahar and Jalalabad probably in Khost. And as the ISAF international force in Kabul deploys to help security on the roads and in the cities, the reconstruction will go forward. As Ahmed said, the people want to see reconstruction. They want to see peace and stability. They don't want to see conflict and extremism spreading blood and destruction. So if the international community can deliver better than it has in the last two years, and I think that's coming now, there is, I think, real hope for improvement in the security as well as the economic situation in these areas.

Host: David Isby.

Isby: I would say to that, yes that's all true, but what we need to do is to prevent the Taleban, Al-Qaida from becoming more than a marginal threat along the borders or the road to Sialkot and Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid said the situation in some ways is reminiscent of that in 1994, which is not a good thing. However in that time frame, the Taleban had very strong foreign support which led to them moving in and becoming a military force. So the main thing the U-S has to do is to keep up its contacts with the neighbors, with the people in the region, the different governments and to say, "Listen, you will do better with a prosperous Afghanistan than with trying to hedge your bets by keeping the Taleban and Al-Qaida alive. And certainly, Pakistan has the potential to benefit, selling concrete and trade with a rebuilt Afghanistan.

Host: Mahmood Karzai, to what extent have the economic issues been fueling the conflict among warlords in various parts of Afghanistan and what kind of threat is that to trade that warlords are trying to take taxes and bribes for getting contracts in their areas?

Karzai: That is the source of the problem, but the situation has improved. I just went to Kandahar about three days ago, and the economic progress of Kandahar is tremendous. All the roads are paved in the city and there's construction going on everywhere, even people neighboring counterparts are working on a large scale to rebuild Kandahar. And people are happy. These disturbances which occur around Kandahar really are in an area where you have an officer or two sitting in the room and they take them over. In other words, they're not attacking areas where there's military forces. So those are easy targets. The warlords are still a problem and they are in there for their own gains, of course, the source is economics and they're getting in some areas the taxes cut [cut of taxes] and contracts, but I think eventually -- they're not as strong as they used to be and when I was in Kabul, really there's some great news, especially two political announcements that President Karzai made. People were really happy about that. On the political front, I really see some good improvements. And after the election, I think we'll see a new political structure in Afghanistan and a new political reality which will make the situation very good. But, economically, unfortunately I have to say that Afghanistan does not have up-to-date, really a team of professional economists, in other words, people who really belong to the field and who could come up with some solid economic policies that would help the president and also the government.

Host: Ahmed Rashid, Mahmood Karzai mentions that many of the attacks that the Taleban is undertaking in southern provinces are against very small little police stations. To what extent is there confrontation between the Taleban in the south and U-S forces allied with the forces of the new Afghan national army?

Rashid: Well, in the early summer, the Taleban were almost exclusively targeting American forces and were not very successful. It seems by about May, they seem to have switched their tactics and started attacking Afghan government sources, police stations, isolated outposts, along the border and then started attacking aid workers and civilians. Now that has just created a very serious insecurity situation on the roads. I agree, I mean, you know, Kandahar is certainly looking much better than a year ago, but at the same time, people are scared to go outside the city. Aid workers can not get outside and do their important work that is needed in the rural areas of the provinces in the south, which are very heavily populated, which are very underdeveloped, which badly need help. And at the same time, large-scale infrastructure projects are not being able to take off. I mean, in Kandahar, there are about a dozen, industrial projects. People want to set up small industry in Kandahar, and the fact that there is no electricity and the fact that electricity comes from outside the city, the infrastructure is lacking for that. So, I think, you know, there has been a knock-on effect unfortunately of these attacks, which has been very detrimental to progress in the south.

Host: Peter Tomsen, is that then the strategy behind these Taleban attacks, is to try to discourage the kind of international aid that will help get those infrastructure projects moving?

Tomsen: Yes, I think that is a strategy. But I don't think it's going to work in the long-run. I think what's needed, though, is not only defense from the Afghan side, the new national army's coming on line. More and more units are being deployed to the south. The police force is going to be expanded and with ISAF expansion too, that will help. There has to be more done, as David had mentioned, by the Pakistani President [Pervez] Musharaff. At a September 7th press conference last year, he took full responsibility for everything the Inter-Services Intelligence agency does, that's the I-S-I, which always supported the Taleban.

Host: And this is the Pakistani military intelligence.

Tomsen: Yes. And many believe that the I-S-I created the Taleban, and the I-S-I certainly coordinated and collaborated with the Taleban and Al-Qaida in the extremist network that ran Afghanistan up until nine-eleven and the attacks from the United States and its coalition destroyed it. So, they have to do more on their side to extend the flow of Taleban and Al-Qaida and extremist fighters into Afghanistan.

Host: Let me bring Ahmed Rashid in on this point, one of the best experts on this. Do you think Pakistan is doing everything it can to stop the Taleban, or do you believe that the I-S-I is still supporting it?

Rashid: Pakistan's policy seems to differentiate right now between Al-Qaida and Taleban. I think there's a lot of cooperation with the Americans in catching Al-Qaida and when I say Al-Qaida, I mean the non-Afghan, non-Pakistani elements, that is Arab, Central Asian. But when it comes to the Taleban, there seems to be very little action being taken. I mean, there are parts of Quetta, which is the capital of Balochistan which literally have been taken over by the Taleban. They're buying properties and restaurants and they're moving in, in a very big way and they're able to send fighters across the border. President Karzai gave a list more than four months ago to President Musharaff of top Taleban leaders he wanted arrested. Well, the home of one very senior Taleban leader was shown to me. He was in Afghanistan at the time, but his other family members were there. There are very senior Members of the Taleban living in and around Quetta. Everybody knows where they area and who they are and where their houses are, but there doesn't seem to be any effort to catch these guys.

Host: David Isby, is the Taleban going to remain a long-term threat as long as they can operate openly in Pakistan do you think?

Isby: The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is porous. And as long as they exist in Pashto-speaking Pakistan, the Taleban culture, the religious parties, the infrastructure from which they can draw support, yes this is going to be a problem. In the longer term that problem may have to address the reformation of civil society in Pakistan, a much broader issue. But in Afghanistan, itself, some of the issues, the warlords, as we call them, are going to be there as long as Kabul does not provide full security, as long as there is not a functioning national economy but rather they look to the neighbors or regional economy. So, only when you have development and reconstruction are the warlords going to become irrelevant. And that's not, probably going to be after this election or even the next one.

Host: Mahmood Karzai, I'm afraid we're getting close to the end of the show, but I wanted to ask you about reports that are much in the Western press of tension within the government of Afghanistan, tension between defense minister Mohammed Fahim and President Karzai. Are those reports true or overblown?

Karzai: Well I try to stay away from politics as much as I can, but during those meetings of all the commanders, I was in Kabul. And there were some meetings and there were some rumors, but eventually Minister Fahim came on television and he said that the rumors were incorrect, that he was completely on the side of the President. And in elections, you know, people have the right to vote for who they think is the best person. Of course at election time there are some disagreements, but I didn't see anything really major. And Mr. Karzai there made some very clear and good statements. One was that military officers and warlords could not form a political party. Now in Afghanistan, you know that a political party -- the law states that people can form their parties. The other one was that he will not, after the election has succeeded, he will not form a coalition government. And those two statements are very essential for a true democracy.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word. That's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests for joining us, Peter Tomsen, former U-S Special Envoy to Afghanistan; author and defense analyst David Isby and joining us by phone, I'd like to thank Mahmood Karzai of the Afghan-American chamber of commerce and author and terrorism expert Ahmed Rashid. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov. For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.