 My name is Robert Lamb, I'm the Director of the Program on Crisis Conflict and Cooperation here at CSIS. Welcome. It's a pleasure to see you all today. It's a really great pleasure for me to be able to present to you Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar to speak with you this morning. You all know, probably know that Minister Atmar has been one of the most important figures in Afghanistan over the past 10 years. He's been Minister of the Interior, Minister of Education, Minister of World Development. He has spent a great deal of time, even before that period, on humanitarian issues working with NGOs. He has been an author and an editor of a good number of books on development and politics and Afghanistan. And he's a genuinely nice man and a pleasure to listen to. There are, as you well know, there's a great deal of interest in understanding where the Afghan transition is going to be going over the next two years. We talk about 2014, but as we know the transition has already begun. It won't end in 2014, it might not end in 2015, we don't know. But what's crucially important is that this is an Afghan transition. It's not an international transition. There are a lot of internationals in Afghanistan right now and they will be handing off more and more of what they, I should say we, internationals, are doing two more and more Afghans, but the fact is Afghans are already doing a lot for their own country and have been throughout their history. One thing that's crucially lacking in a lot of the conversations about strategy in Afghanistan and a lot of the conversations about transition in Afghanistan are what Afghans think about all of this. And so something that we're trying to do here at CSIS is to bring some Afghan voices to the public conversation. Since April we had the pleasure of hosting a colleague of minister Atmar, former minister of foreign affairs Abdullah, known to the international media as Abdullah. And we hope that this becomes a series in which we bring prominent Afghans to CSIS, to Washington, so that we can listen to Afghans and I'm tempted to add for a change. So without further ado, I would like to hand over the microphone to minister Atmar and thank you so much for coming today. Thank you. If you don't mind, I'll put it in there, okay? Good morning. Salam alaikum. Sob bachar. Wish you all a very good morning. Let me first of all say how proud and privileged I feel to be able to talk to this distinguished audience. Thank you for coming. Thank you for taking interest in Afghanistan. And thank you for taking interest in my perspectives. I would very much like to thank the leadership and all colleagues of CSIS to invite me here. I feel privileged. Thank you for this. I can assure you that from now on I will read every publication you have. That's a pleasure. This idea of me being here while I was enjoying the peace at home after nine years of hard work with the government came up when a very good friend of Afghanistan, a very notable and respectable personality that I have very high respect for, Mr. Huda Farooqi came up with the idea of why not going to the U.S. to talk to people. He is here. I am so grateful, Mr. Farooqi, and to all Anaheim colleagues who have been so hospitable and caring my God. If I had known them during my government time, you would have seen most of them poached. So that was a pleasure. And I know, Mr. Farooqi, from my education days, when for the first time a private sector leader came to my office and said, Mr. Minister, we are interested in financing education in Afghanistan. I said, you must be kidding. Most people come here to talk to me about contracts getting from either the ministry or the USAID and others. That school, which was a technical vocational school, created, established with this wonderful idea of Mr. Farooqi and his colleagues, is now becoming a center of excellence. Of course, later on USAID supported that initiative, which is great in terms of public-private partnership, not to mention the Afghan American University. The point I'm trying to make, that Anaheim colleagues and the rest of our colleagues from the private sector should know that we acknowledge, and we are grateful for what you've done. This also brings me to another acknowledgement that I must make, and I do it from the bottom of my heart, that some of you I know already have served in Afghanistan, either as military personnel, diplomats, civilians, humanitarian workers, or as private sector investors and entrepreneurs. And you've done that with great honor and excellence. We are grateful for that. At times, I get a little bit upset to read that some of Afghan leaders do not sound as grateful as they need to be. That does not represent the Afghan view. The Afghan view is, we are grateful to your brave men and women in uniform who have made their ultimate sacrifices for Afghanistan to your taxpayers. I know how hard they work. And I've seen how that hard-earned money has been invested in Afghanistan, just to give you one little example. In about 5,000 years in Afghanistan of our recorded history, less than 2,000 schools had been built. In two and a half years as a minister of education, with your tax money, we built over 3,500 schools. It's unheard of in terms of achievements we've made. It was your tax money, it was your dedication as partners of Afghanistan, and it was the sacrifices of your soldiers and ours, too. So that actually brings up a critical issue of our responsibility to make sure that these sacrifices do not go in vain and that we honour them by pursuing the exactly same objectives that these people have sacrificed so much for. Today I will be talking about basically three things. One giving you an Afghan perspective on how the situation is at the moment, a review of the current situation in the country. I will look at the security situation, the transition, peace and reconciliation, and the political crises that we have to get to grips with. Then I would unfortunately have to go to the two scenarios that await our country and perhaps all of us. And third, I would take the liberty to make some policy recommendations, I mean as a private citizen I can certainly make those recommendations, whether they like it or not, but at least I'm no longer constrained by the government, say this, do not say that. One of the things I'm grateful for, this opportunity that Anham, CSIS and other colleagues organised this forum for policy debates, and this is a manifestation of their commitment as their social responsibility as corporate organisation, which is great. Now if I may move onto quickly the security situation and how I see it, or we see it there, and the impact of COIN, I would first highlight that there is no significant reduction in violence. If you look at, I had wonderful power points, but Tony Kodesman killed all of my power points and then of course logistics was also a problem. So if you look at the trends that we are recording, you don't see any significant drop in violence over the past 12 months. Every month on average there are about 500 kinetic operations by the insurgents. Every month on average there is about 300 counterinsurgency activities by our forces and your forces. Every day over the past 12 months, 36 Afghans, civilian, military and your brave soldiers have lost either their lives or got wounded. So our casualty rate is 36 people a day, killed in action and wounded in action. Similarly, 30 kinetic operations on daily basis is what is happening. Now this is general obviously, but it doesn't explain the variations in different regions of the country. Now I try to look at the six major objectives of the current counterinsurgency campaign that we often hear about although they are used interchangeably by our colleagues and try to do some kind of assessment as to whether we are making progress. The first objective that they are often putting for the counterinsurgency is protection of the civilians. Now this worked beautifully in Kandahar and Helmand in south. The effort produced result, but also in the north, particularly in Kunduz, Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh, Tahar, to some extent in Josjad and Saripol, to a less extent in Faria. But you do not see the same progress in the east, south-east and even in the west. Girat is probably as volatile these days as Kandahar. Konar is more volatile than Helmand. So the statement made by leaders here that the progress is an even, fragile and reversible is true. I subscribe to that assessment. The second objective they put often is to reverse the Taliban insurgents' momentum and degrade their capability. True in the south and north, not true in the east, south-east and in the west. So it's not so black and white. You have gray areas as well. Third is, force the insurgents to a negotiating table, the current objective. I don't have any evidence that this has happened first. Of roughly around 30,000 plus insurgents, full-time and part-time insurgents, only 8% have reconciled so far. And 99% of them not from the south, from other regions of the country. So you don't see that correlation. And I say heaven to Al Qaeda, great, yes, of course, leader was killed. But I see early signs of their return to Konar and Nuristan in the east. It's not going to be easy for our military leaders to accept the fact that they are returning. Over the past nine, 10 months, two important operational commanders of Al Qaeda were killed by US forces in Konar. Expand the government's area of influence. Yes, it has been achieved in the south and north, but not necessarily in the east and south-east. Finally, build the Afghan national security forces, grow them rapidly, which is one of the objectives of the campaign, the counterinsurgency. Yes, they've made significant progress on that one. So in a nutshell, the current campaign is producing tactical results, which may not add up to a strategic intended result. Why? There are three problems, at least. Problem one, unless the sanctuary's problem is addressed, the terrorism industry, rather than calling the sanctuaries alone, but it is an industry now producing at an industrial scale terrorists who are ready to blow themselves up. Unless that problem and that in Pakistan is addressed, there is absolutely no way we can win this war. There will be a war of attrition, an attrition warfare forever. They're not going to win either. So that's problem one that needs to be addressed. Problem two is our governance problem, for which we Afghans are responsible. Our leaders are responsible. And that doesn't give me any protection either, I've been part of that government. We are responsible. We failed our nation. The corrupt practices of the government, the irresponsibility shown by our leaders, have made actually our situation worse. It may not be the main driver of insurgency and terrorism, but it is definitely a facilitating factor. It is creating a fertile ground for the terrorism element to grow. And there's also a third problem, and that is that we are losing the regional consensus in that region. In early years, everybody was opposed to Taliban and al-Qaeda in that region, with the exception of one country, which was half opposed to al-Qaeda, but not necessarily to Taliban. Today, it's not the same situation. There are other countries that are now actively financing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. So we lost that regional consensus. Today, as I said, there's only the people of Afghanistan and probably India who would support the long-term presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan. Nobody else in that region. Well, what matters for us is the fact that we Afghans support their presence. And final factor in that might be the issue of that our commanders, your commanders, are working against a deadline that is not fair. Before even surge was approved in total, they started to talk about the drawdown. So it did not give enough time to our leaders on the ground to do the right thing. I hope they will be given sufficient time that the drawdown is not as rapid as their rhetoric these days against the long-term engagement. That point I was trying to make was about the transition of security responsibility to the Afghans. Is this an issue that Afghans support wholeheartedly? Because it is an issue of our national sovereignty. Second, can we sustain it? The answer is yes and no. It depends on a number of factors. One would be the continued presence of a residual force, counterterrorism force in the country. Second, the growth and sustainment of the Afghan national security forces, which essentially is a fiscal commitment. And third would be the diplomatic surge and its impact on Pakistan in particular and the region to promote a peace and reconciliation and be remove, eliminate the sanctuaries. Without these factors, it's absolutely simple. What we cannot achieve, let's look at our assets at the moment in the theater as a to borrow from our military colleagues. You have 305,000 Afghan brave men and women in uniform. You then have 150,000 brave men and women as international soldiers. Probably the best humanity has ever produced in terms of capability and training. With 450,000, we have a problem at the moment. We are making progress in Helmand and Kandahar, but we are not making progress in East and South East, and there is also the drawdown plan. Why do we believe that after four years, Afghans alone will be able to manage that problem? The assumption is that there will be a significant degradation of Taliban insurgents capability. Therefore the Afghans will be able to handle it. And there will be a change in Pakistani policy to support sanctuaries. Fine, if these two come true, it will work. Otherwise, it would be just misleading ourselves. But of course the transition will have an awful lot of other impacts on the Afghan, particularly Afghan economy. If our economy falls, our state will fall. The third issue was peace and reconciliation. Frankly speaking, it doesn't work. I mean, the 8% that have reconciled, most of them are not genuine insurgents, and particularly not from the regions that matter. It doesn't work because three important enablers are not in place. Enabler number one is the Pakistani policy. Sorry, colleagues, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Pakistan. I love Pakistanis as much as any other Afghan does. No, I'm serious. I'm just talking about policies of Pakistani state and Afghan state, which I do not love. So that's number one. You can't make peace with Taliban if they are not able to make their own decision. I must have seen a significant number of Taliban leaders during my time in Ministry of Interior. The number one issue they brought up with me was, what about our families? And I said, what about your family? No Taliban leader or commander can be trusted with weapons and finances unless he has his family in Pakistan. And I have evidence of that. When I went to negotiate for the release of a handover of Mullah Baradar to Afghanistan, I found out that his young boy as young as 13 was also in that jail. So if somebody does something wrong, his family is going to be punished as well. So it is like a collateral for good behavior. Negotiating with some people whose children are taken hostage is absolutely not the right negotiation. Now, I don't have to generalize here. There are people such as Saraj Haqani who is a committed killer. Whether his family is there or not, he will continue to kill Afghans and international soldiers. We have to have a different approach to that. The second enabler in this is the Afghan national unity. If we don't have it, we will not make it. We will not bring peace to Afghanistan. It can't be peace for one ethnic group. It will have to be peace for every Afghan in Afghanistan. It can't be just peace for men. It will have to be peace for our children and women as well. So national unity is not just an ethnic issue anymore. It is how we respect the rights of our citizens. Regardless of their gender and their ethnicity. The third enabler is regional consensus. The United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are the most important players in this. Oh, of course I am not playing down the roll that India, Turkey, Russia, China, the Saudis are playing in this. What knows, sometimes they are more interested in our country than we are. So that will have to be taken into account if this peace is to work. Fourth issue in terms of our current situation is the constitutional and political crisis that we have at the country at the moment. First there is a power struggle between the three branches of the government. And second, the legitimacy of these three institutions has been seriously questioned. There is a divide and rule policy that our leaders are pursuing at the moment which I don't like, which will not produce national unity. And there is this corruption scandals one after another which takes away legitimacy of the state and the confidence of our public into our state. Now I have only ten more minutes so I will be very, very quick. Now considering this, Afghanistan will have to get to grips with the prospects of two scenarios. Scenario one, that Afghanistan falls. Scenario two, that we all succeed in Afghanistan. If it falls, why would it fall? If there is a premature drawdown of troops. If there is a significant reduction of economic assistance. If there is no change in the policies of our leaders to address the governance deficit. And if the vacuum created is to be felt by regional actors. If these things happen we will fall. And that means the state will disintegrate. Afghan National Army and the police will be factionalized. And loyalty would shift from the state and people to factional leaders. And there will be a perfect scenario for regional war game. And it will be a proxy led civil war in Afghanistan. Which would lead to the disintegration of Afghans. A significant part of Afghanistan would be controlled by the insurgents. And that part is going to provide safe haven to the Taliban. To the Al-Qaeda, LAT, to Tehriki Taliban in Pakistan. To Jaisi Muhammad and to all the other groups that do not have problems with Afghans alone. They have a problem with every one of us. The second scenario is that we succeed. And in that case I am not talking about the same level of military security. And fiscal commitment on the part of the United States. But I am talking about smart policies and programs. Which will enable us to succeed in this. Which means draw down as planned, but not in a hurried way. Second, keeping a residual force of 20,000 to 30,000 in Afghanistan. To work with our national security forces. And train them and sustain them. Third is to keep a reasonable level of economic assistance. To sustain the state and the national security forces. And to work as a cushion against the significant economic slowdown that will happen as a result of a transition. In this case, whether Pakistan cooperates or not, we Afghans will be able to protect our country. It will be an attrition warfare. But we would still be able to reconstruct, develop the nation. With assistance from the West. That is possible. In this case, Afghans will invest more in blood, you less. You don't have to invest in blood. We will do that investment. You are expected to invest in treasure. Not at the same level. A much reduced level. Now, of the 10 minutes I have 8 left, 9 left. I have my 7 recommendations. I know I do not have the time to go through all of them. My recommendation one would be do not let the Afghan state fall. And the major guarantee for that not to happen is the strategic partnership agreement. Between the United States and Afghanistan. I am sorry for what our leaders at times emotionally say. Whether they mean it or not, it doesn't really matter. The Afghans would like to have that strategic partnership. Today's report from our lawyer Jirga was. The overwhelming majority even forgot about conditionalities and said, we want the strategic framework as strategic partnership. Why? Most of them, by the way, from the South and East. Which is apparently to be affected by these night raids and all the rest. I'm not saying that our president is not right on the night raids. He is right. He is right on civilian casualty. He is right on detention centers. But where I disagree with him is that don't bring it up as conditionalities as if the United States does not care. And second, you cannot achieve them over the coming weeks. You will have to achieve them over the coming months and sometimes even years. What does that mean? So we don't sign the strategic agreement, which is ridiculous. We know that the survival of our nation depends on partnership with you. That is the fact. Second, of course, a long term fiscal commitment. I know this is so unpopular these days in the United States, but I have to say it, that we have to, unfortunately, in order to protect our children. You here and me there, we have to make these sacrifices. Second, a diplomatic search is my recommendation, not in words, but to produce a result. What result? That Pakistan decides to abandon its policy of supporting or basically use of militancy for political national security objectives. It's wrong. Now, I must say that Pakistan has some legitimate concerns and interests that Afghanistan and the United States must attend. That does not mean that Afghanistan will lose part of its national sovereignty. We would not. We might be ready for another 30, 60 years of warfare if the issue is loss of national sovereignty. That is not it. This is not what we can compromise on. But the legitimate interests of Pakistan will have to be respected, will have to be protected. There are two ways to, my third recommendation will be to eliminate the sanctuaries. Option one, favorable option, is to convince Pakistan to stop doing it. I had my conversation with my counterpart about two years ago. He said, well, we can launch a military operation anywhere in Pakistan to get rid of the sanctuaries. And I said, Mr. Minister, I don't want your army. I want you policemen to go and arrest these Khweta Shoram members in Pashtunabad. This is the address. I can send my policemen with you. You don't need to use an army. So was the case in the arrest of Mullah Beradan in, I mean, how many times you must have heard here in this country that Osama bin Laden was not in Pakistan. You don't hear that anymore. So we need to talk about that at some other point. He is not. That is very true. Peace and reconciliation cannot happen without, A, our national unity, B, Pakistan cooperation and support, C, regional consensus. And that is my recommendation. Building up national Afghan security forces, there's absolutely no substitute to that. But I would add one more thing there, that along the border, the time has come that we change our military strategy. There's a new way to secure the border. And that by Afghans themselves, not by international troops. Political reform in Afghanistan, our leaders must be held accountable. And here's one point. It may be quite controversial that I am suggesting. Perhaps the time has come that an accountability process is personally organized for Afghan leaders and Pakistani leaders. Afghan leaders in terms of whether they fight corruption or not, whether they steal from their own public or not. And for Pakistani leaders, whether they support terrorism. If state sponsors of terrorism can get into our legal discourse, there must be a way to put in individual sponsors of terrorism. They cannot turn Afghanistan and Pakistan into a hell for our people. And yet, having their children in the US and Europe to live in peace and study in beautiful institutions at what cost, they must live in the same hell if they are trying to turn for the rest of us. This personal accountability process will put every individual on the spotlight, whether Afghan or Pakistani. Being part of the government, I understand that people respond positively to such accountability processes. We have to find a new way. Final recommendation is we have to continue to support a pro-poor economic growth in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has never had so many billionaires and millionaires in its history. Afghanistan has never been such a better place for its poor that it is now. But the gap between our poor and our millionaires, well, not all of them made those millions illegitimately, but some of them did. Now, a pro-poor economic growth would call for a public-private partnership, which I would wholeheartedly support. I know I still have 10 more minutes, but I have to stop to respect my colleagues here. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir, for that. One of the issues that arises repeatedly in conversations here in Washington, but also in Afghanistan, is that 2014 is not only the year of the transition that we Americans care most about. It's also the year of a rather important presidential election in Afghanistan. And just at the time when a lot of international troops will be leaving Afghanistan, there is, in theory, also going to be a change of leadership within Afghanistan. I'm wondering if you would care to talk about the politics of the upcoming election or any other issues that this particular question raises that you'd like to address. Thank you. We have to look at a number of things in order to make sure that Afghanistan moves towards democracy and strengthening of democratic institutions. Number one is the most strategic partnership between the US and Afghanistan. I'll be very, very frank with you. If Afghans understand that there is no partnership with the US and their future is with Pakistan and Iran and the region, they wouldn't bother about democracy. Because we are not going to have democracy. We will have to have to get to grips with Taliban, Hakanis, and the warlords. So number one, we have to give confidence to Afghan people and say, there is a partnership. We are not going to let you down. We will be with you. But you have to do your part as well. Number two, all Afghan leaders will have to have a new framework of partnership with the United States. Again, I'm quite frank on that. At the moment, people are concerned about the future. And as a survival strategy, in the absence of the US, our leaders are thinking to align their interests with the neighbors. Now, is this in the best interest of democracy? No. But if there is a new partnership between the US and Afghan leaders, that partnership is about fighting terrorism, two, building democracy, three, good governance in Afghanistan, four, accountability mutual. I think that would work. Finally, electoral reform is extremely important. Number one, we need to decide on this SNTV and the other type of voting. Number two, we have to ensure the credibility of the Independent Election Commission, which is anything but independent. And number three, we have to get our men, women, and children registered as Afghan citizens, as voters, as those who have rights as a key issue for future elections. Now, I belong to a party now, and I can safely speak on their behalf. They will be interested. They will fight for democracy. They will be interested in that. But they would not just out of blue choose somebody. There will be democratic procedures and processes to see who can win and who has the popularity publicly. Or there might be a support that they would throw behind somebody who is better than the potential candidate of the party. Now, here we learn from your experience. Well, not all of your experience is bad. Well, of course, I've always appreciated. Thank you. We have about 20 minutes for questions. And what I'd like to do is take two questions at a time. So I'd make a couple of requests of that. But first, you identify yourself. Second, that your question be a question and not a statement, and especially not a lengthy statement. And three, if you would wait for the microphone to get to you, then that would be more helpful. So let's start with this gentleman here and this gentleman here, please. Thank you very much, Mr. Atmar. My name is Taitzafar Hashmi from Voice of America's Afghanistan Service. My question goes back to the issue of Pakistan that you raised. You say that you know that there is problem with Pakistan, and its cooperation with the international forces in Afghanistan as well as the Afghan government. What falls, what cannot do the international community and Afghan government cannot do to make Pakistan work the way that you think is legitimate and the way that it should be? Where is the shortcoming in the international community's approach in Afghanistan? And the second question, please. Sayid Jawaad with size, John Hopkins, the Birbatan Residence at size. Mr. Atmar, thank you very much for the very comprehensive presentation on the issue of political transition in the prospect and the scenarios for the future of Afghanistan. I would like you if you could spend a couple of minutes on the economic transition in Afghanistan. You have, at the beginning of your speech, you have alluded to the important role that some of the companies like Anham have played who came in as government contractors initially, but then invested in building the human capital in Afghanistan and entered into partnership with the private sector and even looking into public-private partnership. Now, in some of the upcoming projects, these companies or similar companies are interested to come in Afghanistan, but they are facing stiff competition by China and India. And one reason that they are less competitive is security in Afghanistan. Considering the fact that there has been less progress in developing the Afghan public protection forces for political reason, what security business model do you recommend for American or European companies to implement in Afghanistan to be more competitive? Great, thank you very much. What are the barriers to the international community's ability to deal with Pakistan and what are the barriers to private companies' ability to operate within Afghanistan? Pakistan at least has six legitimate expectations when it comes to Afghanistan. And probably about four when it comes to the international community. Now, these are not the expectations that they have spelt out formally, but in many, many meetings that we've had with them. Well, when it comes to Afghanistan, I'm afraid I have to take a bit more time to explain what these expectations are. Number one, they suggest that we must have the ability to trust you, that we will have strategic partnership with you, but they're saying that to Afghanistan. This is legitimate. Our leaders must behave in a manner that we are not seen erratic, that we are seen as credible partners to negotiate. Second, they will tolerate no threat from Afghanistan. At times they talk about Indian influence in Afghanistan and sometimes the threat of their own separatists. Afghanistan must assure them that, I'm not saying that this is the case now, but there is somebody paranoid here. We have to assure them that this is not the case. Third, they are concerned about riparian rights, that Afghanistan reconstruction might affect their access to water. We must, I mean, we cannot deny water to people. We must take appropriate measures. Number four, it is the transit trade and access to central Asia. And number five is probably benefits from the Afghan reconstruction for their falling economy. And finally, it is some kind of relationship that the government in Afghanistan is seen as reliably and predictably friendly to Pakistan. Now, there are issues when it comes to Afghanistan interference with the Pashtuns of Pakistan, which is absolutely nonsense. We do have a soft spot for them, but we have never been involved in any kind of internal interference. Number, the other would be, which is not legitimate, the deuberant line, well, basically, it's bringing that up is not gonna serve any purpose. When it comes to U.S., the expectations are number one. What about Kashmir? They won't help on Kashmir. Two, what about civil nuclear cooperation? Three, what about economic military assistance? For what about predictability in friendship and strategic? I think as far as these concerns and interests are legitimate, Afghanistan and the United States, as well as the rest of the international community should decisively move to a short. If that doesn't work, then we have to prepare ourselves for a very, very long war with terrorism. Personally, I'm in favor of the FOMA approach. On the issue of Ambassador Jawad, I mean, let me also make that acknowledgement that Afghanistan was proud to have you as our very, very capable and dedicated ambassador. And you've worked quite a lot on these issues. So just the number one that you quite rightly put forward is that the time has come, we've taken from Afghanistan, if you want to see it that way, then let's give it back something in terms of investment. Now projects such as this ATVI school are the Logistics City Park or the projects that we have another partner sitting here, Guard of World, and I must acknowledge they're extremely well thought through programs benefiting Afghanistan and we have Louis Berger and all of you. Please, colleagues, don't take it personal if somebody is not mentioned here. I love you all and I have that respect. They need to now make two strategic moves. One, invest in Afghanistan. Even if something is not economically viable, invest in the Afghan human resources. One key reason why we are so vulnerable to terrorism and insurgency is lack of economic opportunities. I don't say that this is enough to produce terrorism, but this is an enabling factor that needs to be removed. Initiatives such as preferential access for Afghanistan's labor and products in the West and to be facilitated by private public partnership. There are plenty of areas for investment. We would encourage these actors to learn from the experience of those who are there, but at the same time, I must warn them that working with Afghan government is not easy, but at the same time, there are those who would help you with that process. In terms of security model, let's be compliant. The government of Afghanistan has asked all of us to seriously now move to use of APPF, Afghan Public Protection Force. This is going to be the model. And now in this, I disagree with Afghan leaders when they politicize the issue. They don't have their heart in it. They just use it in order to protect themselves against the pressure on corruption. But I agree with them that the time has come to formalize and move away from private-led security to public structures of security. In that, again, there is room for private public partnership. Some of these companies have significant experience in training Afghan police force and Afghan army. Perhaps now they can be drawn on for training the APPF. APPF cannot be produced in large numbers such as 20,000, 40,000 unless the private sector is involved to train them. That will be a kind of model, A, to protect the investment and B, to contribute to the process of institution building and Afghan national security forces capability development. I'm Marvin Weinbaum, the Middle East Institute. Sorry, you've laid great stress on the necessity to have this strategic partnership with the United States. At the same time, you also acknowledge that there is a region here that is going to have to be cooperative if Afghanistan is going to have a good future. And the fact that a long-term American military presence is something which is clearly something not to their liking. How can we reconcile this? How can we expect to have the kind of cooperation and the avoidance of spoilers that we're likely to have if the U.S. is there in a military capacity over a long period of time? Thank you. Arthur McMillan, Agence France Press, on a very similar point. You seem at least fearful of the security implications post-2014-2014, if there is not, as you described, a residual force of maybe 20,000, 30,000 U.S. troops. Do you have any confidence, given the current political appetite and the financial situation facing the Pentagon, that that wish would be granted? And secondly, given that you poset the possibility of, as you termed it, the regional war, the conditions being ripe for a regional war, if there was not the correct conditions in around 2014, how would you see that regional war playing out? What's the scenario that you rather blackly envisage? One reason why we want that strategic partnership and the U.S. military presence in that region is to prevent a regional conflict. One more attack of Bombay-Mombay sort would bring Pakistan and India to a nuclear war. That we should all understand. I've looked at the work all of you've done in terms of how much restraint the Indians showed at that point. Second time it is not guaranteed that they would do that, but it absolutely not guaranteed that LAT would not do that again. That region is far more complex than just that example. The presence of the United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan is not just for the security of Afghanistan. It will have a significantly positive impact on regional security. Now we have evidences to why this is so important. Think of a situation that there is a 100% drawdown pullout of Afghanistan. Iran, India, Russia would not accept the return of Taliban as the government of Afghanistan. And they will use all means, all assets at their disposal. Pakistan would not stop short of anything by having Taliban in power. And they would have support in this from Saudis. There is a little bit of rivalry between. I mean God knows why they cannot live in peace. Everybody is rival with everybody else in that region. So Russia would already think about creating a Bafa state in the north of Afghanistan. This is absolutely predictable that they would go to war with each other. And it's absolutely clear that that war will be taking place in Afghanistan using Afghan proxies. And it may well go out of hand. As I said in terms of the example of one more Bombay type of attack would bring these two nuclear powers into nuclear confrontation. It's absolutely necessary for NATO and the United States and Afghanistan to look at this long-term presence. The region, politically how would that play out? I mean this very same region did not have a problem with the US soldiers intervening, I mean coming in 2001. The Russians were quite happy that that was happening. Iran was quite happy, Indians were happy. How come that they are not happy any longer now? At that point the enemy of the enemy was their friend. But what has changed that it is not the case now? Why is Iran now crying so loud that they wouldn't accept the US presence in Afghanistan? How come you accepted it over the past 10 years? You cooperated with them on Afghanistan because you had something common in interest. They must accept the fact that we are a sovereign nation. We need a strategic partnership with the United States. Whether they like it or not, they must put up with that idea. Finally, at the end of the day, it is your interest, national security and its ours. And they must take precedence over other considerations. Our survival depends because they are ready to tear our country apart. They've done it in the past. There was no US soldier in Afghanistan during the 90s and they fought in our country. So it is in our interest to protect ourselves against them. It is also in your interest because a regional conflict in that region would not give you any comfort level that A, it will be a nuclear conflict and B, that al-Qaeda would not find safe heavens there from which to plan and execute attacks against the United States and its allies. And the fact that the stakes are so high, we must be strategic about it. Well, unfortunately, it's my role to end the party when the time comes. I want to thank Anham and its CEO, Mr. Furugi, for generously underwriting the visit by Minister Atmar today at CSIS. David Bertot is the head of the International Security Program here at CSIS, and he and I both want very much to thank you, Minister Atmar, for coming today and generously giving so much of your time. We know that you have a promising future here and not here so much as in Afghanistan. And we hope that we can hear from you again in the future. And we look forward to welcoming you back in the future. CSIS, the International Security Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation. We would like to thank all of you for coming today. This will be up on the website at some point this week, perhaps early next week, so if anybody would like to watch it, it'll be there for you. Thanks for coming today.