 Welcome, everyone, and good afternoon to this New America Foundation talk on regional connectivity in South Asia. I think we'll let people trickle in as we go on, but we'll begin given the time, and I'm sure Ms. Sumar would have to leave at the 1.45 hour. Let me very quickly introduce the topic, and then our speakers. I'm Mohit Yusuf, I'm the South Asia Director at the US Institute of Peace, and I'm grateful to New America Foundation for asking me to moderate this panel. What we'll do here is allow our speakers Ms. Sumar and Ms. Symbol to talk through regional connectivity issues on South Asia. As you know, this is a topic that's been discussed a lot over the past four or five years, as we grapple to see what is it? What's going to, what is it going to take to change the South Asian region from a heavily security dominated, and one, quite frankly, where political fissures between states over bare virtually everything else. And one of the things I think there seems to be a consensus on is regional connectivity, be it through trade, be it through communications, be it through people, be it through energy. And there's been a lot of effort behind the scenes and some in public on areas like energy, where we've talked about TAPI gas pipeline, we've talked about transmission lines called the Casa 1000, we've talked about Pakistan-India trade. We grapple virtually every day with the visa regimes that Pakistan-India, the two beasts in the region have. We have trade agreements, sub-regional trade agreements. And one of the interesting facts I'll mention is that if you go back the last 10 or 15 years, virtually all successful trade agreements are ones where India has excluded Pakistan or Pakistan has excluded India. So it doesn't really give you a very, very hopeful scenario. That said, we have today two speakers who've looked at this issue very closely and Fatma Sumar, who's now the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia. Her portfolio is, if I'm not wrong, looking at regional connectivity and a lot of these issues which she'll bring to our notice today. Fatma is a longtime friend. She's also, before she joined the State Department, was a professional staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, working with then-Senator John Kerry and Senator Menendez. Before that, a fellow working at the State Department and a lot more. I could spend an hour just going over her credentials, but I'll stop here. Symbol Khan, again, a very good and old friend from Pakistan who's done a lot of work on South and Central Asia and connectivity issues, recently did her PhD, which is also dealing with Uzbekistan and Central Asia and South Asia. She was a director of the South Asia and Central Asia program at one of Islamabad's leading think tanks in Pakistan, still is affiliated with Islamabad, the Policy Research Institute, and has also set up a new venture, a consulting venture, which is going to look precisely at regional connectivity issues, and I'm sure you'll talk more about that. What, as I said, will give both our speakers 15 minutes. I'll then try and have a few questions for them, hopefully to generate a debate, and then we'll open it up for questions and answers, and we'll end firmly at 1.45. Fatima, would you like to? Thank you so much, Moide and Symbol, thank you so much for the opportunity to come and speak about an issue that is very near and dear to my heart, it's what we're spending every day working on at the State Department, and we wanted to use this opportunity to really give all of you a sense of the work we are doing at the State Department and within the U.S. government on looking at issues in the South Central Asia space. There's been a lot of conversation that's been dominated for all the obvious reasons, especially when you look at Afghanistan in terms of the political situation and the security situation, and alongside those conversations, we are also deep in terms of looking at economic planning and looking at how we can make a transition that includes economic stability for Afghanistan and the region. Now, as many of you are very familiar with, in 2011, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked off this initiative that we have dubbed the New Silk Road Vision, and there's been a lot of conversations, a lot of speeches about this vision, and I wanted to spend a couple minutes today to actually talk about what that's all about, what we've actually done in the last couple years, and where we're going with it, and then how we are also looking in the South Asia space as well and looking between South Asia and Southeast Asia in terms of regional economic connectivity throughout this region. So first on the northern side, when we look at the New Silk Road Vision, what's really telling is there's been a lot of changes in the last few years. Initially, this was something that the United States very much kicked off, and to me, what's very striking and coming from the Hill and into the State Department is the sense of how much the region has come to own this vision themselves, and they are now driving the agenda in many ways with the international community alongside as a partner to help shape, structure, and fund some of those efforts. So whether it's the CARIC platform, which is the ADB platform, the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation, which had the privilege of leading the U.S. delegation to the last ministerial in Astana in October, whether it's the Istanbul process, whether it's the RECA Regional Economic Cooperation Platform, which conference will be coming up next March in Kabul, there's a lot of platforms that are being driven by actors in the region, the Afghanistan, India, the Central Asians, to look at how best to support this vision. And what's really striking is, as we talk about a security and political transition in the coming year in Afghanistan, there's this sense of, with all the challenges that are ahead, and I'm sure we'll talk about some of those challenges in the discussion ahead, there's still a sense of what are the economic possibilities, because the best way to keep Afghanistan engaged in the region is for it to become part of the regional fabric, to be part of the neighborhood, and no longer isolated the way it was in the 1990s. And I think it's very striking for all of you in the room here today who follow this region, who've been there multiple times, you can see it with your own eyes, you can see the changes that have taken place, that this is no longer the Afghanistan of the 1990s, there have been some really fundamental shifts that have taken place. And so there's four key areas I wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking about today that I think really help illustrate how far we've come in the last few years. The four areas are energy, trade and transit, customs and borders, and people to people. And in each of these areas there's been some, I think, transformative changes. So first on energy, this idea of creating a regional energy grid that for the first time can link surplus electricity and energy resources from Central Asia to an energy starved South Asia, I think is very transformative. And the United States in partnership with the countries of the region, with the Asian Development Bank, with the World Bank and others are really looking for ways to take this vision and translate it into a proof of concept projects that help lay a foundation for this. In the last few years, we've made some significant investments. So if you look in the energy sector alone, in Afghanistan, for instance, we've invested over $1.7 billion in hydro projects in electricity lines and helping create and support the Northern, the Northern electricity power system, NEPs and SEPs, the Southern electricity power system. We've been working on looking at projects such as CASA 1000 and the TAPI project, which I'll turn to in a moment. We've looked at how to help modernize an old grid in Central Asia and looking at modernization projects in the different Central Asia republics. We've worked in Pakistan through the modernization of multiple dams such as Tarbala, Saqpara Dam, Gomalzam Dam and others. We've added in the last years about 1000 megawatts to the Pakistani grid with another 200 megawatts coming planned in 2014. We've also worked in Pakistan to help them from lossage and help prevent theft of the energy grid and we've saved about 200 megawatts that way. And so there's some really significant energy investments we have made in the last few years that I think have really helped lay some of this foundation. Now when you look at what's coming in the future and what we're planning in this area, there's some projects that I think are both exciting in terms of their potential and then will of course require a lot of political involvement to make sure they stay on course. So the first is the KASA 1000 project Moid, which you referred to. This is the project some of you are very familiar. This is something we've been talking about for many years, but we're in finally an estate where KASA is moving forward in a pretty concrete way. KASA 1000 is a project that will bring surplus hydro from the summertime months from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan benefits both as a consumer country, it will consume about it will consume about 300 megawatts off that grid, but also as a transit country generating an approximately 30 million or so in revenue from that grid as it transits 1000 megawatts into Pakistan. Pakistan of course benefits from a clean, reliable and cheaper energy source if and when KASA 1000 is completed. Pakistan in the September finally signed the International Council MOU on KASA 1000. So for the first time we have all four KASA countries formally committed. And there's been some pretty positive momentum in the last few months for all four KASA countries to do both the technical and project financing work they need so that the World Bank can take this project for a positive approval at their bank meeting hopefully this spring. The United States very much has been part of this process. We've been supporting the KASA Secretariat for years. And last week, the State Department and Secretary Kerry announced a $15 million contribution into KASA so that we have an equity stake in the project as well going forward in addition to that. The TAPI pipeline is also in a critical phase. There was a lot of momentum this in 2013 when Turkmenistan and Afghanistan signed an agreement for a gas purchase sales agreement for that to go forward. And now the United States is working with Turkmenistan to finalize the last stages so that an international oil company can now finally engage on the TAPI pipeline. And we're hoping to see some positive momentum in breaking that project forward in 2014. So there's a lot going on on the energy side that together we are looking at ways that we can start putting a grid together that really helps connect Central Asia to South Asia via Afghanistan. The next area is trade and transport. This is both the hardware side, so the building of physical infrastructures such as rail, roads, bridges, and the soft infrastructure side so that you can weave together the soft pieces that need to come together for this to work. So this is trade facilitation agreements, customs agreements, the kind of technical pieces that have to come together. And there's been a lot of progress in recent years, both on the heart and the software side. So on the hard side, if you look at roads alone in the last few years in Afghanistan, for instance, we have had over 200 road projects. And through that we've either improved or built over 2000 kilometers or 3000 kilometers of roads in Afghanistan. Through the Kerrick platform, we have helped support the building or renovation of about 4500 kilometers of roads in the Greater Central Asia region. If you look at our efforts in Pakistan on building roads, we've put in about $25 million or so on the Peshawar ringword to help modernize roads in that area and also critical bridges and infrastructure that connects Afghanistan and Pakistan. So there's a whole connection of physical grid that's being laid on road and rail in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia where we are for the first time actually starting to connect the dots through efforts of the United States and our international partners in very much driven though from an agenda from the region. It's the same when it comes to rail, we've self support and modernize the rail authority in Kazakhstan and help modernize the rail system in Kazakhstan. Afghanistan, we've played a critical role on the rail authority as well. When you look at different pieces of the softer side, we've also played a critical role in trade and transport agreements. Afghanistan and Pakistan, as we all know, signed the APTA, the Afghanistan-Pakistan Trade Transit Agreement in 2010, which was a significant step forward. But now the key to really unlock that potential is the work that both countries really need to do to operationalize that. And I'm happy to report there has been positive momentum and real leadership from both Pakistan and Afghanistan's sides in recent months to bring their teams together and try to figure out a way forward on trade transport, on the trade transport side. Cross-border trade agreements is another area we've very much been putting political support behind. For instance between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan to really unlock that potential of harmonizing trade and customs regimes. Probably one of our biggest efforts that is really bearing fruit is WTO accession and helping a region that historically has not been part of the global trade fabric to join global trading norms through accession processes such as WTO and the World Trade Organization. So we helped Tajikistan accede in their accession process in recent years and now are helping them realize the full potential of their membership. And the same with Kyrgyzstan. We are working with Kazakhstan and Afghanistan for their WTO membership accession and hopefully we'll have positive news to report by the end of 2014 in both of those areas. And we're also talking to our partners in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to see what areas they may be interested in when it comes to WTO and being part of the rules of the road. The third area I'm going to quickly turn to is customs and borders because as we all know you can build the road, you can build the rail, you can build all these different pieces but if the borders don't work and trucks are lined up on either sides of the borders it doesn't really have that much impact. And the goal here really very much is how do you reduce the costs of doing business and reduce border crossing times and reduce the overall transit times on each of the sides. I'm happy to report that through our efforts for instance in the past year and through investments we've made on critical border checkpoints on the Afghan Central Asian borders we've reduced transit times for about 33 percent in some areas which is quite significant. And we're working on model border crossing points and working with very much closely with our partners in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia to look at where we can really unlock border and customs harmonization on each of these key areas on the borders. Obviously security will be a huge concern, the counter-narcotics trade is a huge concern as we do that. So the challenges are significant and I don't want to undermine any of this by saying that we don't recognize how significant the challenges are both the political side, the security side and ultimately the political will has to come from the region itself for any of this to work and we're very, very cognizant of that. So when we think about our agenda every single day and the kind of work we're doing we're very much driven by where are we seeing political leadership from the countries themselves and where is there an opening and opportunity to move something forward and where there is we seize upon it and help facilitate those conversations to take place. And the last area that I want to quickly turn to is the people to people because I think it's actually one of the most exciting areas and I know Symbol is going to talk a little bit more about this. And this is an area where we've just had tremendous amount of success in actually creating networks of entrepreneurs, women's entrepreneurs, youth and businesses in the region through our multiple trade forums, through our symposiums, through trade fairs and through so many different types of engagements on higher education vocational training and building a communications infrastructure in the region so that for the first time people that historically have actually been quite isolated from each other and are for the first time starting to connect and we're working very much to help create these networks and keep them alive. So I wanted to point some of this out because there's been a lot of criticism understandably so on the US side of what is it we've actually been doing when we talk about the New Silk Road and regional economic connectivity and what I'm very much struck by is how much behind the scenes actually has gone on to support a vision driven from the region in so many ways without understating the challenges that lie ahead especially given the uncertainty of the political and security challenges next year. Going forward I just wanted to pivot just very quickly for a minute or so to think about the rest of the South Asia region because ultimately the goal very much is to lay a generational I mean generationally the goal is to look at a vision whereby you can unlock the full potential of the South Asian continent and to do that that means India-Pakistan and that really means looking for leadership from the Indians and the Pakistanis to look for low-hanging fruit and to take the steps they need on trade liberalization and take the other steps they need to really unlock the potential of that border and then it means looking at the Indian market and looking how India connects to Southeast Asia and how you connect South Asia to Southeast Asia. This is a concept that Indo-Pacific economic quarter that Secretary Clinton first announced Secretary Kerry also discussed during his trip to Delhi earlier this summer and it's this idea that with the political openings in Burma with the political thought and relationships between India and Bangladesh in recent years for the first time in history you haven't you have a political opportunity if you can find the economic pieces and put them together to really start economically linking this region of the world and ultimately we all know and all the studies and data show that long-term shared prosperity and security and peace is really rests upon economic connections and the economic potential that left that rest in this region and so I think there's so much of the discussion in Washington is so dominated by the political and security agenda that I think it's refreshing for all of us to have this opportunity to look at it from another angle about how you actually link our businesses our people our country's economies together in a region that needs to be linked together for them all for them all to flourish and to thrive so let me just stop there because I know there'll be more in the question and answer and thank you again for this opportunity. Not at all excellent and thanks for for sticking to to the to the time I can almost see a whole wall in your office with a diagram and scheme of everything that you do and actually perhaps to put those in PowerPoint slides and pass them out to people who actually can can push those. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think you've made my job absolutely absolutely easy and I don't even need to touch my presentation anymore because you've covered I think I'm absolutely done because you have actually covered almost most of the stuff that I wanted to talk about but it gives me an opportunity to kind of frame certain questions which I thought were coming out of your presentation and I think I'm going to focus more on that first thing I'll start from one of the last few statements that you made about how there is such little optics on actually what all has been achieved so far in the region and even in the US and I've spent my last whole year here in the US and I'm back here you know at the New America Foundation. One thing I definitely absolutely noticed that there is such a lot of close microscopic look on how difficult the situation is in Afghanistan and what's going to happen with the BSA and where is it all going and the and the and the problems that the bottlenecks political and security bottlenecks there is that we just don't have enough optics on actually what has happened on the ground in Afghanistan or in the in the wider region and also why we are doing what we have been doing and why should the US and why should the international stakeholders and other region regional stakeholders be interested in making these interventions forward so I think I'll talk a little bit about try to give it a slightly more geopolitical perspective to what to frame of what's happening and I think that this takeoff point for me would be the idea about south central Asia region just the fact that we use this term this hyphenated term is for me a novelty it's an it's a new thing because these two regions south Asia and central Asia in the past even till the 90s were part of these two separate sub-regional complexes why are we talking about south central Asia for me very briefly two factors which are signifying this shift over to south central Asia and it's causing this hyphenation first is the is the growth is the is the huge regional and global growth of China and India as these powerhouses not only as the generating growth within their own countries but also developing as as powerhouses with capacity to access resources out of their own regions growing output from their own regions these both these giant powerhouses are now extending off to Africa in search of energy resources to feed these furnaces of growth that is happening and they are both located right at this juncture the other aspect for me important why this hyphenation has happened is what has happened in Afghanistan last 15 14 or 15 years of hyper international multilateral engagement with Afghanistan which is has been military but has also been political it has also been economic engagement in Afghanistan has created also generated huge opportunities for benefit and growth for the regional countries so what you've seen is that all of Afghanistan's neighbors have gotten tangled and invested and busy in reaping benefits out of that growth that's happened so to be the question the main question is that have we moved off from the older binds the older political and in security binds which everybody keeps referring to the moment we talk about start talking about post 2014 Afghanistan I feel at I there is almost a reflexive return to the 1990s oh it's all going to fall back to the 1990s even here most of the conversations I hear is you know about the power play and how the regional countries themselves are going to be pulling Afghanistan apart and all the connectivity that we worked on is all going to die down I think it's completely erroneous to imagine that because I think the way the regional countries themselves have engaged with Afghanistan last 10 or 12 years has created I think created a regional vision and I think they are now daring to imagine a future for Afghanistan where the model is what we call cooperative competitive model rather than the zero sum or the great game or the not so great game models that everybody's talked about and I think this is extremely in an extremely important factor and not repeating what all Fatima talked about but but what if you also look at empirically what's happening on the region we are obviously talking about these large scale projects at Fatima talked about Kasa 1000 and the tapi pipelines and the other large scale infrastructure project leaving that aside just looking at empirically how the region has connected under the radar there's been huge changes there has been huge people to people links have increased just the transport a network has improved tremendously over the region tele communication has flowed looking at few examples look at the the central Asian neighbors that border Afghanistan in the north Uzbekistan has been able to establish a real network first time real network with connecting Haraitan and Masar Sharif it's hoping to extend the real network to Kabul it is also supplying gas and electricity to Kabul as well as northern Afghanistan Tajikistan is part of the Kasa it's already supplying energy as well as electricity Iran Iran has gained tremendously from the last 10 or 12 years of basically the growth inside Afghanistan it is one of the biggest trade outlet for for Afghanistan now it has actually benefited and it's has been able to divert some of the trade that was going through a more traditional route out of Pakistan through the its port in Pandarbass Pakistan's bilateral trade with Afghanistan has increased a tremendous city 2.5 million it's also trying to extend a real network to Afghanistan through Quetta and then linking it to Kandhar so all that is happening China has become one of the major investors inside of Afghanistan in the in the energy field in resource development and so is India so on the ground all this has happened yet the along with that the moment we talk about post 2014 you have this whole anxious kind of a narrative that comes up and somehow this narrative about views all the developments that have network trade energy other connectivity network developments as insulated from the development on the political and security side for me there is no insulation to mean these developments themselves have changed the political dynamics on the ground they've already intersected and segwayed into the political and security dynamics in the ground and just to give a very small example very very small example and we can discuss this more in the question-answer session small example is how the regional actors the main regional neighbors of Afghanistan which have been considered some of the biggest troublemakers in the region neighbors of Afghanistan themselves have not only have a changing their engagement with Afghanistan the early patterns of engagement 1990 it was most of the Afghanistan's regional neighbors were using what we call the proxy model they were all had very close relations due to the fragmentation of the Afghan state everyone had their favorites which were regional actors which were co-ethnics or which were local strongmen close to their own border spaces now for me this whole political engagement has shifted to a two-tier level of engagement most of these actors are still maintaining their links with the local local actors on the on the regional affair but have also invested have also developed strong links with the center within the center in Kabul they all have their power brokers in the center in the Kabul in this represented in the state so for me that alone is a total departure from how things have happened before for example Uzbekistan still has very Uzbekistan and Iran also still maintains very strong links with Dostam with Muhammad Atal Noor in Balgh with other actors yet at the same time they also have right around Karzai in Karzai's inner circles they have certain power brokers which they very closely invested with same is true of Iran and same is true of Pakistan Pakistan while maintaining its links with the power brokers in the south and the east close to its border including the Taliban have grown out to reach out specially have close investment in Karzai's inner circle as well as now has reached out to the non-Pashtun elements so all that dynamic we can we can discuss it deeply is changing and that is showing that there is a long-term investment in a state in Afghanistan and that has to do a lot with how the region has connected how these countries have done business with Afghanistan last 10 or 14 years so this is a big departure and and a little bit about the multilateral or the international actors what is framing their interest why why do they want to continue doing what they've been doing Fatma has talked about it a little bit I want to just extend it a little bit more what are the reasons why you Japan the international financial IFI's World Bank and of course the US remains engaged two or three very important factors of course the most obvious is to sustain Afghanistan to make it a sustainable enterprise that the state building that has gone on for the last 15 years to make it sustainable to make Afghanistan capable of supplying and supporting its own economic well-being but also the factor the fact is that geopolitically looking at the at the lay of the land and looking at the physical geography of the region there is a desire to open up the the markets open up the especially the energy market especially the energy and transport and trade market southwards also and I think there's a very good reason for that because looking at both the powerhouses in South Asia and South and East Asia China and India together China physically geophysically geopolitically speaking is far more well-placed than both the South Asian countries Pakistan and India to access the Eurasian energy markets and we've seen evidence of that China has already established networks of about three pipelines and various other transport and other networks which is crisscrossing Central Asia and Eurasia right now but India and Pakistan also itself has gotten bogged down in due to various you know historical as well as political binds and bottlenecks in the region any kind of an effort to open up first of all it makes a huge amount of sense to me this is the region along with China that in going in the next to two decades or so is going to be home to about one third of the world's population is a huge region South Asia in China India as well as Pakistan is a hugely fast urbanization is happening there this is the region where future growth is expected to go much higher this is where you we can create markets for for basically for for Western businesses this will be a market for all kinds of consumer markets also but it I think there is a need to support this kind of a southward trend and opening up and that's creating a lot of a lot of momentum for me and the other thing that frames at least the US's engagement of course Fatma talked about Hillary Clinton's vision about the Silk Road vision and how this plays out but also as we are transitioning out of the whole war on terror this creates a very fundamental framework for US to engage going in the future with South Central Asia region what is it mean for the US and I think this is a very clear a very positive kind of an engagement that that can be brought out and I'm I'm I'm a little disappointed that it isn't the optics is not so much placed on that as yet it is not framed in the terms as it should be framed because I think it's a it's a hugely important aspect and now coming back to a little bit about about what's what are the problems that we face so much I'm not going to go deeply into a lot of things that Fatma has mentioned about what has gone on and how the international community the international financial institutions multilateral platforms and the US and other stakeholders are trying to support this move forward into greater regional connectivity I'll try and focus on some of the problems that we've seen most of that activity that Fatma has also mentioned and which is basically the way to go forward is state-to-state and it's totally understandable why it is state led the states are the main actors to undertake these kind of large scale projects which are the projects of scale which the region actually needs to make all this connectivity really meaningful because we can have small traders and small enterprises and medium enterprises which are already unfolding and happening which is going to continue to happen whether the international community intervenes or not we can assist that but for the international intervention that we've been seeing happening our state led are focused on the state sector and there we come face-to-face with problems of first of all state capacity in the region which is hugely limited the other thing is bureaucratic inertia which is characterizes state action not just on the regional connectivity scale but also within domestically we've seen development policies dying down and we've seen how difficult it is to get anything anything to get moving in the state sector and what that does is that we have this two-step forward one step backward kind of a scenario with for me things haven't become to a standstill but things have moved far too slowly then they should have before and the sector the state-to-state sector also is hostage to the political the binds in the region the political old stagnant political relationships Pakistan Afghanistan relationships one day you have a little bit of a shelling on the border and all the various platforms that we've set up where the Pakistani state in the Afghans are supposed to sit down and have the secretary level or the line ministry meetings the whole schedule goes out of the window nobody totally says anything on paper and doesn't really it's not really expressed openly but the meetings become slower the calendar dates are moved forward and India Pakistan similarly you know you start making so much significant process and it starts I'm not what I'm saying that we need the state sector the kind of the economies of scale the business of scale that we can move it has to move through the state sector but what we need also on the side has to be a level where we can plan interventions where we can intervene which is the level which is below the state sector where we can we can highlight where we can frame the medium to small enterprises which are already happening which are already working which are there and also although they have been in operation they have achieved so much over the years most of the connectivity that we are talking about is happening through that sector yet because there's no such platform available for them the optics are completely missing so what you have is the dirge like narratives that we have floating within the region and also internationally because the up because the state-to-state higher level large scale is so slow moving that that all that is totally invisible what's happening on the ground and when we talk about all kinds of potential platform or interventions there actually no funding streams available for that I've explored it deeply because I'm part of trying to start an initiative I've actually have started my own initiative I'm going to take two minutes talking about later but the fact is that there's actually no funding stream available there's actually no thinking clearly available how to instrumentalize this level and also to create advocacy platforms to push the to have that bottom up push pushing the states forward to push forward for example I'll give you a small example about the big businesses in Pakistan and Afghanistan which have been doing business last 10 years a lot which have generated a lot which which you can see reflected in the bilateral trade figures between Afghanistan and Pakistan it's a silver lining out of all that has happened yet though all those businesses have no platform we've set up a small chamber of Pakistan Afghanistan joint business chamber has been set up out of Peshawar those people are totally have no capacity how to actually stand as a functional lobby which can push the state for state forwards towards solving small regulatory issues which can make trade and interaction and connectivity far much better there is there's no focus on that there is no available of that's only one example so there is a need when we think in intervention there is a need to try to kind of brainstorm how to get that moving identifying this vacuum in the in in the scene I have myself been part of this initiative which I have set up along with certain of my partners which have set up in the region this is basically I call then the initiative is called in this global initiative and the model that I'm trying to develop and we have developed is basically having a set of partnered partnered nodes of activity partner nodes of platforms within most of the regional countries which become the central nodes to create a platform for all various levels of actors which are already involved in in in connecting with the region with trade transport energy and other actors which we can add identify the the the main purpose is to also generate interventions bottom up right now a lot of interventions that are being planned are top-down some of them are planned by the multilateral institutions they get translated through dialogue between with the with the with the states or the state actors but the bottom up kind of a planning is just not there there is no potential for that these this kind of a platform that I've set up basically would provide opportunities for that and also to create a little boom optics and momentum going forward where to frame clearly within the civil society within the non-government governmental sector that this is what we've achieved and these are the planning these are the avenues that we can follow and provide support to businesses which are interested medium to small businesses which are interested in investing in other regional countries and other regional areas I'll end here and thank you thanks a lot symbol as always very detailed comprehensive and clearly both of you are invested in this topic and I've noticed that none of you used any notes to speak which is quite impressive which means you're on top of this I'm going to try and and act as a bit of a devil's advocate here because I think both of you are on the same page and I think all of us agree that this is the way forward for this region but one of the things you know I used to play golf in college in the US and the first day my coach sat me down and and the other teammates and said one word you're never going to use ever for the next four years is potential that's a curse word because what you're telling me is you haven't achieved anything in life but you have potential to do it is this a case of a lot of potential which all of us know about nobody can disagree with but something that is just not going to be realized because of all the challenges that you've alluded to and many more in terms of security and sort of the political will issue which is you know which oscillates sometimes you find it sometimes you don't or do you think that there is actually reason to believe that we are going to have a paradigm shift moving forward for whatever reason in the region and the last both of you I would just say it's not an all or nothing right so things are already happening there's no magic moment when it'll start to happen and there's no magic date in 2014 or 2015 when it either all ends or begins the region is already changing it's already transforming it's already reacting to ways organically on the ground to the different people are already making their own calculations whether it's on the business side the political side the security side throughout the greater region and you know yes there's a lot of potential which is as we all know to be the case what I I think things are starting to move and you're actually seeing pieces start now fall into place in real momentum behind both both the big you know multi billion dollar projects but also on the ground at the small medium enterprise level I was struck I was in Almaty in October and I was struck by a couple of Kazakh businesses that I went to visit that for the first time we had connected them to companies and suppliers in Afghanistan and I was struck because they were telling these stories they had attended some of our trade forms and either Islamabad or Delhi or in Kabul and they had done their homework and they had struck they had made deals on the spot at these trade forms and one company for instance in Almaty was supplying food products now it struck a deal with 16 different suppliers in Afghanistan the contracts were all signed on the spot and they came back and they were the first shipments had gone out and they were they were nervous because they were on the rail they had left Almaty they were in Uzbekistan and they got as far as the tiramisu border on the rail and then they were offloaded on even though the rail goes all the way into Afghanistan which you know is a big feat to you know to build that 75 kilometer piece and it's been done now that connects Uzbekistan and Afghanistan by rail for the first time despite that the products were unloaded onto barge before the river and then they're uploaded to Afghan trucks in this one particular case and there was no tracking system at that point so they didn't know they wouldn't hear now until they reached the suppliers which you can imagine if you are a business for the first time trying to enter this market is very nerve wracking it's very nerve wracking and even if there's a profit margin to be made maybe it doesn't maybe the risk isn't worth it right and so there's different parts of the calculation and to me that story is very illustrative because you have to do all the different pieces of this for it to work and I think what I was trying to outline in my comments is that yes it's complicated yes it's hard yes it's challenging we all know the challenges we've been talking about them for years in many different forums but businesses are still making those deals you know they still are making and this was a month ago they're still making these deals now whether or not this carry forwards a lot a lot is to be seen and how what the what the environment looks like going forward but it all you know businesses have to be willing to invest obviously the customs pieces on the borders have to work the corruption issues have to be dealt with to me there's not going to be a magical solution whereby everyone automatically does what's right nicely in their best interest and it all comes together but I think what you can do is I think there are potential areas of opportunity in each of these countries along different transport corridors for instance whereby you change the incentive structure enough that the cost of business go down dramatically enough that truckers start to talk about this is the way to cross this border don't go to that border crossing it's too difficult go to this one it's easier it's cheaper it works right this is an area where traders know how to trade we don't have to teach them how to trade historically in this area they know how to trade we have to give them the space so that they can do it make some money off of doing it and I think that is not just potential that's reality in many ways and the other thing I wanted to say that I was remiss in not saying in my earlier comments is what we're talking about here is very much the north-south connectivity piece from Kazakhstan down south through Afghanistan Pakistan and you know eventually hopefully one day into the Indian subcontinent but it's not to say that we're not very cognizant and recognizing the really important role that east-west connectivity already does and already plays such an important role in this region connecting a symbol of saying the Eurasian landmass and connecting China through Central Asia through Europe in these connections which are very much in the interest of Central Asians and others in this region and so if you're building if you're taking the east-west pieces and you're building the north-south the complement and at the same time you're working on the customs and the trade facilitation side which have to work for any of those ways to work east-west doesn't work without customs facilitation working right the Chinese know that yeah by the way and they talk about that and when we talk about when we talk about the space with the Chinese for instance people say well aren't you are you in competition with the Chinese and I actually reject that as a present because there's so many areas of shared cooperation for for this space to work for everybody and to give countries options and for them to exercise their sovereignty and I think to me that was very striking at the Karak ministerial in Astana was that was the conversation that the Chinese were saying through their public remarks that the Kazakhs were saying that other Central Asians were saying that we want all of these routes to work for any of them to work the following has to happen and what are how do we change incentive structures for that to take place yes of course agreeing with Fatma and most of us said just to add another element I totally agree with the that the traders know how to work the system and when you're talking about the actors within the region they have just been doing it remarkably well just one instance that I kind of mentioned in my presentation also we've had a we've signed a new ATTA the Afghan Pakistan transit and transport agreement that we've had in 2010 but they have been problems of that agreement in its operationalization there's some issues that are stuck between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the negotiations are still going on we're going to probably have an ATTA too or something but because of those elements being stuck which is on Pakistan Afghanistan especially the Torkham and the Chaman routes are the two primary routes of transit trade with Afghanistan the most often used routes most of the traders running those routes are sitting in Karachi once this this this ATTA signing got the regulations that were not done completely got stuck on Torkham and Chaman a lot of the same traders who sit in Karachi diverted their trade through Iran these are actors most of them are Pakistani sitting in Karachi these are Pakistani businesses who are sitting there in Karachi but because that route right now was open it was easy to get their stuff out of Afghanistan or into Afghanistan they started using Bandar Abbas for a while and we've had I've had a lot of you know discussions with my Pakistani customs and the FBR and all and it's heard the squibbing that you know because of that ATTA and we because it's all gotten stuck we've lost so much business to the Iranians on that but what I'm trying to illustrate that within the region there it's very clear to the region that this is the way forward and they are actually already impact empirically doing it it somehow doesn't really hit the world outside that much because right now the economies of scale are too smaller compared to maybe the East Asian region or what's happening in Latin America the you know the scale is so huge which is into billions and even trillions of dollars these are still smaller level economies it's not really clearly hitting the world outside but within the region that clarity is very much there that this is the way forward and they're doing it I think again I will try and re-emphasize that what needs to happen is there has to be a clarity here there has to be a clarity within the within the regions international partners which includes the US as to why are you there why why is it important to intervene why is it important to plan these interventions why is it important to be part of this part of this growth that's happening there I think that the clarity is still missing because economies of scale are not there I think what you need to do is to I try to touch a little bit of those aspects in my presentation need to spell out the larger frameworks need to spell out the larger conceptual frameworks which are gridding the strategy forward I think there's no better example in terms of traders being not needing to be taught than the Pakistan India informal trade I mean for 65 years they've continued to trade it supports of two and a half billion Fatima any comments on the messaging part that symbol is talking about I mean I think I mean look it's very much there's this conversation that we have in multiple forum about what the US role is going to look like post 2014 and you know I think it's you know whether president Obama or Secretary Kerry or any of our senior official leaders it's been very clear that the United States is looking for a long-term commitment to the broader region in so many ways and of course the what that transition look like is changing of course and we'll see what what the final decisions look like in the in the coming year on that but irrespective of that in order for the region to function whether it's Afghanistan and the billions of investments we've made over the past decade in Afghanistan whether frankly it's our investments in Pakistan when you know very much recognizing even independently of Afghanistan the critical role Pakistan plays in broader US national security interests and looking for stability in Pakistan whether it's the Indian subcontinent and looking at how you can frankly revitalize an entire region and by connecting India to Southeast Asia in addition to India to Central Asia and the Central Asian states in terms of our own security and economic interests in the region in terms of looking for ways to empower their own sovereignty and for them to exercise greater economic independence in that region there are a host of different reasons why the United States is interested in this broader region and I think some are directly related to Afghanistan but actually there are those that are independent of Afghanistan that very much suggest a long-term commitment US commitment to this region in so many different ways including the economic sphere which frankly is the one area where you don't get a lot of resistance from a lot of countries because it's very much it's what they're looking for and they're looking for the United States and others for that kind of leadership and often you know people will say to us well how much money are you putting into a project and I'll say it's not about the money because our biggest tool is not our it's not the money or the assistance it's our convening power we can bring parties to the table we can have difficult conversations and bring parties that otherwise won't do a bilateral and turn it into a trilateral meeting or have our own individual conversations and lay that and lay that kind of ground work and so I think there's been incredible leadership from the White House and from the State Department in many ways in a region that historically is can be difficult to work in and that is the least economically connected region in the world and so I would hope that if you're in Pakistan or India or Central Asia Afghanistan you come away feeling a bit more reassured that we have a strategic plan that takes us beyond the politics and the security whatever those decisions are and we'll see what we come out on all of those but that keeps us invested in this region for a long time to come. Let me just come to Symbol once and then we'll make it conversation as well. Symbol isn't the real issue here not what the US or the international partners are saying or how they're messaging although that's important I agree. What about the region itself because one of the things that I find is that South Asians and I would say less about Central Asia just because my knowledge is less but I think it applies to that too. I think the South Asian mindset is still very much invested in a narrative of security and politics and not of regional connectivity so even though under the surface you may be seeing these things happen on the business to business level or others what are we doing to actually change the narrative within South Asia so that there is more traction and perhaps more space for the bottom-up pressure that you've talked about. Yes I absolutely agree with you Mohid on this that you know the narrative still remains focused on the security by and the old security stagnant political relations the political bottlenecks that have existed within the region India Pakistan buying the now Afghanistan Pakistan buying also then of course in Central Asia as you mentioned there's a huge disconnect between the two very important actors which are border Afghanistan is Tajikistan and Uzbekistan I mean just to get those two players to play together it's literally has become worse than it used to be 10 years ago they were still cooperating a little more than they are now so all these lines do exist but for me what I tried as I tried to highlight in my presentation I feel what we've seen these two major developments within the region China and India the major economic growth generation that's that's happened there and their outreach and also what's happened over Afghanistan itself has changed the way the these security binds also has changed the political binds also because for me economics trade links connectivity does not operate in isolation all these aspects segue into each other I tried to hint on the on the on the changing political ideas but I agree with you for all this knowledge to kind of segue into the popular narratives that's not really happened because again coming back to what I said why because a lot of this connectivity lot of the positives that we are focusing on are at the state-to-state level and at the at the non-state level where these links are actually operational those people just don't have a voice there's just absolutely an absence of a platform for them all the actors I know hundreds and hundreds of businessmen on both sides and enterprises and other actors who are engaged across the border where is the platform for them they have no support coming to them to kind of make or to have that draw that optics on that and I think that is fundamentally important to put optics on that to be able to present it for me everything starts with a vision you have to create the vision for it to snowball into into larger things we can do hundreds of actions and of course things are going to change for the for the better and they are changing for the better but to snowball it to kind of create that momentum that vision has to be spelled out and I don't think we're doing a good job in trying to project that vision because again we're relying too much on the state sectors and the states where where have they ever taken leadership especially in South Asia or even Central Asia have had that dynamism to take the leadership on to have present that larger vision to their to their populations they're still stuck working on their constituencies every time they want to get attention from the from the public they're going to start beating either the India drama the anti-india drama the Indians will start beating the Pakistani drama or Karzai will start resurrecting the dangers from Pakistan and then the Pakistanis will have this just beating over the Afghans that is the most easiest way forward with the states are usually left over then they left to devices so I think that definitely is where we need to work on recently put out a book on on the future of South Asia looking at the long-term future of the region and one of the conclusions from the book was very interesting that South Asians invest much more hope in the people of South Asia than in the states of South Asia but none of the authors could really pinpoint what it would take for the South Asian state to receive and provide those platforms and spaces to the non-state sector so I think this is a tension we grapple with and so much of what Fatma talks about ultimately states have to do that and then provide space but the pressure has to go in in the state sector we have a question here why don't we take that sorry let's wait for the mic to I'm very worried about the increasing continuing water shortage throughout central south southeast and east Asia as the Himalayan glaciers are melting under global warming and I worked a dozen years ago I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan and I'm very aware of the the Amudaria and Sirdaria flowing into the RLC which is drying up and the rivers are being depleted and of course the the glaciers are the source of the Indus of Ramaputra the Mekong and also I worked in China and the Yellow River is losing its flow and the Yangtze of course and I'm very particularly worried about the fact that China now has control of that central Tibetan area and is trying to divert water eastward and that deprives water even more strongly to south and and central Asia and might cause great warfare between China and India even more than has already occurred and it can undo all of these great economic projects that you're starting if there isn't enough water flowing in the rivers so I wish you would I'm sorry I didn't hear you mention anything about the fact that a water shortage could just undo all of your good work thank you Fatma where does water fit into the water very very high on our on our sense of prioritization and in fact I'm you know secretary Kerry one of his top sorry I was just saying water is one of the top priorities that we're looking at in the region for all the reasons that you mentioned and as you know secretary Kerry one of his top commitments as secretary of state is on climate change and water very much looking at that issue and you know in many ways the South Central Asia space is ground zero on a lot of these issues given the geographic location of many of these rivers and the sources this comes up through multiple contexts that we deal with both on the energy side so whether you're looking at some of these hydro power projects that we mentioned and discussed and looking at existing water sharing agreements and concerns that countries in the neighborhood may have about what these mean for their own for their own access on especially if you're downstream country this comes up in the context of our broader climate change efforts and of course this comes up in the client in the context of our broader economic programs on agriculture for instance that we deal with much more on a bilateral not in a certain regional context but in a bilateral level and so I don't have any I don't have any quick solutions off the top of my head except to say that this is we very much recognize that you cannot have a serious conversation frankly about any of these areas that we're talking about without appreciating how that space works and and what drives many of these countries and because they're very cognizant of this and they're very cognizant of what their whether it's energy shortages or whether it's looking at climate melt a glacial melt and what effect that has on existing agriculture poll agriculture output or any of the kind of economic inputs they need for their economies to work this is something that comes up I think in almost every one of our high-level discussions with all the countries in the region and right so I think part of that you know in in terms of how to be creative about this beyond the traditional work that we're all doing we're very much looking even in the economics fear when we talk about some of these energy projects about how to use existing hydropower about how to connect the dots on hydro and part of why I spent so long talking about the energy sector in particular and looking at this vision of how we could potentially connect central and now I can't use the word potential any more things to help with a different word for my lexicon here but looking at the vision of how we could eventually eventually connect central Asia to South Asia is very much driven in some ways by the energy shortages and the water piece in particular whether you're China whether you're India whether you're Pakistan this dominates every one of your discussions when you think about your own national security when you think about your own economic future and so thank you for raising this because it's absolutely you know dead center of all the conversations that we're having so my contribution today is to reduce your vocabulary by one yeah the hug I with USAID one question I had is recently at USIP in fact no ashreev talked about possibly getting the Chinese interested in a quarter down to guadar in Pakistan is that something that the US would be interested in partnering with China to create if there was infrastructure or something else involved with that my other question has to do with kind of you know in the US we have OPIC for example that does political risk insurance and can kind of mitigate some of the risks that that traders that we're doing this cross-border trade do is there any interest in kind of having a US insurance something that will lower the risk for traders to do exactly kind of the trade that you're looking to facilitate and then I had one other question oh my question for a symbol is why haven't chamber chambers of commerce has been an effective platform for SMEs in the various countries to advocate for cross-border trade should we sell with you simple yeah for the simple reason is that the chambers of commerce in Pakistan they work like an appendage of the state sector they're not really considered independent a kind of thing the the secretariat where they're set up it's basically linked with the provincial government set up in their fund that offices the capacity of the traders themselves first of all they're good with what they do they good with the money and they're good with finding those pathways but they they have limited organizational capacities they have limited capacities to kind of see how security politics how larger development issues intersect with trade because for me it's all kind of links together and how how to leverage and and their capacity of the understanding as to especially the traders in frontier province and the KPK province understanding of how they can leverage their platform or leverage what they do to push policy forward at the state or at this lamb at level is absolutely limited what we would probably would need to do is you know to I give them works workshop them to create a more kind of a functional working relationship between them bring them together with the traders in of in safe sitting in Karachi who are little more you know far more slicker as far as networking is concerned bring them together to the some trading houses sitting in Islamabad put them all together have a kind of a set up where their voices are heard or they're able to push policy forward and I know poor this trading lobby or the other the common commerce people chamber of common people sitting in Peshawar their usual strategy is once there is some dialogue going on between state to state level between Afghanistan and Pakistan over the transit trade or some regulation they usually send in a little communicate in the newspaper there's this little communicate on the second or the third page of the newspaper and that's it this is the maximum best that they can do so I know I mean there is so many things that you can do to leverage it and this is a way forward that has to happen not just in Pakistan also in Afghanistan where is the platform for those traders there who's kind of looking who's kind of you know fashioning it up making strategies for them how to move forward with with with pushing policy forward in Tajikistan for example I know that their traders who are attached to the state sector because the state sector also actually moves through these actors whenever there is any kind of infrastructure regulatory deal done between Pakistan or Afghanistan some of these private construction companies transport companies trading companies are involved in that in translating that thing on the ground but how to leverage what they do into that policy is absolutely the same China Gavadar and then OPEC just an OPEC I mean I think OPEC is a we have some pretty incredible OPEC programs throughout this region that really do help us bring in other actors that otherwise wouldn't necessarily be able to do that and then of course you know within certain within certain states like Pakistan you know you're well aware of our efforts on leveraging private equity and bringing in other private sector actors and figuring out creative public private partnerships in order to do some of those things I think a lot of the initiatives I was talking about earlier today very much have to do with creating the space for businesses to then be able to operate and find those leverages and then very much intersect with the work symbols talking about on that and then using that space and how to fill it in a way that's actually effective and and can champion those voices that right now are not being heard risk calculation I think is it differs where you are you know the Indian markets very different than the Uzbek market for instance and there's a lot of you know differentiations a lot of that also to frankly not so much with risk but the broader investment climates and you know that has to do with ongoing discussions we do have it a state to state level about what steps countries need to take to improve the investment climate so that companies actually want to invest and do business you can't even talk to many companies right now about the risk factor because they're not even interested in investing in some in some cases and so there's a lot of work that really has to be done to make to make this an attractive proposition for some in other areas we actually have quite a bit of foreign investment and the goal there is to keep it and to keep them wanting to stay and invest and to grow their operations so I think it depends on the countries that we're talking about I don't have a lot to add right now actually on the Chinese in Guadar I think we've had this conversation for a long time about looking at what's happening with the port and the kind of infrastructure that would be needed in order to really utilize the deep-sea port and the access there and there's been a lot of conversations in different areas I don't really have you know we can have deeper conversation offline gentlemen here up front I'm Bob Hershey I'm a consultant what can be done in creating the space that you're talking about by using the internet or mobile phones so people can get together and get an economic consensus on what they want across the countries well the internet I mean and the mobile phone that has become something that's become widespread and of course the figures on Afghanistan are so encouraging on Pakistan also it's one of the growth industries and it has widely kind of proliferated and it is connecting markets to businesses and to you know especially from the rural areas to cities and how the how goods move through the the truckers how the truckers move the good the internet and of course the telephone mobile telephones have become telephone rates become a really important aspect of it I'm not sure that you can leverage just that for what we've just been talking about as to create those platforms within I think that kind of creation of platform creation where businesses would come and structure which are actually larger medium to small enterprises which are already working there I'm not clearly sure I mean I'd like your views on it if you you know a little bit more about it I'm not sure how that can be leveraged there but of course the mobile telephone internet services that tremendously changing the region and how people are connecting with each other across the borders would you want to comment that's fantastic I'd love to hear more about it well you know Marvin Weinbaum Middle East Institute so much of the discussion about the Silk Road and and integration has been Afghan focused and for us it's been how somehow can we leave and have the regional neighbors cooperating with Afghanistan so that it can survive it's it seems to me that it's been very much focused that way what I wonder here is obviously the regional countries don't want to necessarily play our game they don't want to pull our ions out of the fire and that they're hedging so much is hedging now on particularly what will happen as we alluded to before what will happen over the next year or two or so so even though we'd like to think that economics is going to be the driver here and the political the political will will follow which is good economic determinism isn't it the fact here that everything really is is on hold until we see whether they were going to have a survivable Islamic or rather Afghan regime because if it has a different complexion then we're in a very different dynamic if there is a strong radical Islamic presence in Afghanistan that everyone then is very much going to recalculate and and just just to have an Islamic regime of a Taliban sort buying into this kind of economic picture it's traditionally not part of their vision at least they have another agenda just just some comments so for essentially 2014 and you know this change and I think partly the conventional wisdom that if things go south all of this maybe you know potential that is never realized so I mean I would just say a couple a couple quick thoughts on that first we just don't know what's going to happen and you know yes you can paint there's many different scenarios you can paint worst case best case and then what I think is probably more likely which is a murky in between which is a little bit harder to define but we just don't know yet what's going to happen and regardless of what decisions come out you know we're optimistic on certain fronts that that the political pieces will fall into place is already good planning on the elections for instance you know whatever happens with that I think what's what's important is that we keep on planning on the economic side irregardless busy because you can't just wait you can't wait for the politics and the security so that we have a final answer and then start I mean a lot of this is multi-year planning it's getting technical conversations going it's confidence building amongst parties and so much is already happening in the region and what I think is striking is the region is not waiting even with even with hedging behaviors that may be happening in the region even with with the uncertainty and the anxiety that may be there for many actors you're still seeing these conversations take place that are driven from them all these conferences that are going on all these different steps the ministerials the the the meetings that the World Bank the ADB and others are hosting the deals that are being struck the money that's still being poured in on the investment side is to me a sign that countries in the region don't want the worst-case scenario and are actively in many cases looking for ways to avoid it and it may not all be in harmony with each other by the way right and of course that's the reality and that's that's something that we're we're facing at that space plays out but at the same time whether you're Pakistan or Uzbekistan ultimately you actually want similar things out of this you may you may have different strategies to get there but your calculations aren't a whole lot that different or India for that matter these of the Afghanistan and so you know yes there's uncertainty and anxiety I think a lot has changed in Afghanistan and my view is that whatever happens it will not be a repeat of the 1990s just too much has changed as a fundamental shift in society that you can see from every socioeconomic indicator whether that's whether that's the mobile telephone penetration which is actually a huge significant shift in how that's connected people for the first time to the world whether that's the education statistics or the health statistics or the economic indicators Afghanistan has come an enormous way in the last 10 years and I don't see any signs of of people giving that up without a significant fight or the international community for that matter before I come to you Simul can I the physical part of setting up a lot of what you've talked about if security in Afghanistan happens to be bad post 2014 let's take the pessimistic scenario what about the physical ability of putting up some of the infrastructure that you're talking about I mean I think you know part of this is our own sense of we have to prioritize and look at where things make sense and of course we will continuously revise as the security situation plays itself out but for instance on the energy side which we spent a lot of time talking about energy lines you know they've persisted we've we've put up energy lines in some of the hardest parts of Afghanistan in the last decade whether that's in the south or in the east where the security situation has been the worst and they've survived and electricity is flowing in Kabul electricity is flowing in Kandahar electricity is flowing in Nangahar and in the east and these areas electricity is flowing in Pakistan with all the repairs that we've made in some of the actually hardest parts of Pakistan in FATA for instance with with our repairs on the dams over there in these areas so you know to me it's still not a zero sum argument with the security situation and I do think there's strategic investments that can be made and that we should be strategic about planning for of course with an eye of revising as as the situation plays out yeah I agree with Fatima here again I don't think that as Marvin is talking about that people are waiting that things are on hold or waiting I don't get that sense anymore of course people are worried there are anxieties about where it's going to go there is a sense of uncertainty for the six for the sense that there was you know there was a security presence of the huge security presence which had undergrid the post born one and born two state building enterprise in Afghanistan and that is the security presence was important but as Fatima said that whole period that we've just gone through has also brought around huge changes in Afghanistan to me they're absolutely irreversible no matter what anybody says to me as I can see the changes from the within the region the irreversible changes and things are moving slow but things are moving slow for various reasons I don't think anybody is holding their breath and waiting to see or you know they had that sense that I don't know what's going to happen end of 2014 and then we will move forward I don't think anything is on hold as such the people who are investing in Afghanistan the investments are going on groundwork for all these energy grids and all that is continuing Kasa is continuing Kasa 1000 is continuing the talks between Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan and India over the TAPI pipeline are continuing nothing is actually on hold saying that of course that people are debating or trying to get their mind across as to what those changes are going to look like in post 2014 of Afghanistan but one thing we must also remember when we say that there has been huge changes within the region that Afghanistan is no longer the same Afghanistan it used to be in the 90s we must also remember that the Taliban are no longer the same Taliban that they were in the 1990s I will just try to frame on a lighter note I saw this article on the emirates of Afghanistan which is the main Taliban website day before yesterday on the BSA on Karzai and BSA and my comment it was written by some pseudonym obviously by some young Talib Jafar or some pseudonym that he's using and it was so funny the language the style of writing was of somebody writing for Wall Street Journal or New York Times I was shocked because I've been following these websites for over the years for since the 90s I've been following with the thing is that it's there is this slickness that's happening it is changing and if you look at the article deeply this very nuanced understanding of politics that is unfolding and the other thing I'll go with to what Fatima was saying we think all that change and the development that's happened in Afghanistan in the south in the east Taliban are separate from that you've mistaken they're completely plugged into that development it has enriched them they are as invested those regions outside the main cities have always been controlled by them they're huge players in the east they're huge players in the south and while their presence while they control they've allowed this to happen I don't believe that they want to pull a plug on all that also because the losers they will also lose out on that so things are very nuanced and change that if there are no other questions let me ask a final one to both of you and then wrap up and which is you mentioned all this sort of schema of different initiatives and different energy projects and sort of trade and others is there do you get a sense that the region and the US and others are on board with the prioritization of these you know when we say all of these should happen that's that's well taken point is well taken but is there a danger of putting all of this out without seeing how well they fit in with each other and then creating either duplication or competition among these in a way that it becomes counterproductive you know it's a thousand flashes of light versus a well thought out plan and sometimes I get a feeling from the region that everybody is excited about everything but they don't really get a sense of how all of this comes together I think it's an excellent point and just you know from from the work that my team has been working on it's very much a sense of prioritization so we have looked very intensely at what the different projects and the proposals that are out there there's many many many of them and we've narrowed it down frankly to areas where we feel it has a direct national security interest for us a direct interest for the US to be involved and you know it's going to be a handful of things we're not going to be all over the map we're very focused on these four key priority areas and within that we have a very concentrated sense of what it is we're going to be following and looking for areas of possibility on and so we're not and that doesn't mean that other actors won't pick up the space and other projects but I think from the US perspective we're very much in a mode of being strategic and really trying to focus and prioritize on what's possible and doable given the environment the challenging environment that we're in and so we're not I don't want to suggest that we're being naive or polyanus about any of the the very real challenges that we've identified both Afghanistan beyond Afghanistan I mean this is even if Afghanistan were to be solved tomorrow this is a tricky neighborhood for all the reasons you all know better better than better than I do and so we're trying to be strategic and we're also trying to be very much in tune with what motivates countries in the region and what motivates actors in the region and how how we can best align our security and strategic and economic interests in the region with what works for the region and and where we think we're going to have traction So will you get a sense from the region that the prioritization is is working out it's the same as as outsiders would want it No, I don't think so I'm that that problem with the region as I said before and attached upon before the states are busy there's inertia there's bureaucratic inertia the governments are changed that especially with Pakistani government it's it's hugely inward looking right now I mean we've had problems so that I don't think it's spaced out that that clearly within the region there are hits and there are misses but I agree that there should be far more clearer process of prioritization but that has to do with of course the whole process of the planning commission which works within these countries in Afghanistan and Pakistan and even India how to kind of focus that but saying that I think there are so many missing bits and pieces that need to work together we can of obviously focus and pick out two or three projects which are large and which there's a lot of interest in and a little bit of it is happening for example Pakistan I think and Navashree's government is very clearly focused on the Kasa 1000 I think I've seen that priority come forward and they are trying to push that one thing forward while having so many other projects because there is one about the rail link between Quetta and then Khanhar which for me it's it's a very good project there's also this one project on building a better kind of transit and transport a border structure on Kulamp Khan border which is like will be a third border and how to link that with roads and how that that is also there but I think they're clearly putting a lot of their eggs into the Kasa 1000 and that clarification is there it's saying that there are so many smaller issues with the regulations which are tied which need to be identified and which probably will take little effort and make a lot of progress on also Alexander thank you thank you to both of you for giving us a lot of information very comprehensively on on this subject I think in in some ways I will say after having played devil's advocate I was I happened to be in Pakistan when this Kasa 1000 the Pakistani side there was there was a whole sort of conference and they signed it and I saw real excitement which is not too common when it comes to these regional regional connectivity issues so I do agree and I think on the Pakistan India front also which of course they are the too big sort of bottlenecks here I think the conversations are genuine whether they can make that progress as quickly as we want we'll see but but certainly there there are movements the key I think will be how we create the incentives for actors not to see these as competitive projects and even the Taliban Marvin if you talk about them if they haven't touched this development what are the incentives going forward that that they are not going to go and moving in the region the optics and the narrative is crucial because if we can start moving that part and then I think you know Fatima your role is critical but the region also has to take that up there's only so much you can do from here but with that once again thank you very much please and thank you all of you for coming please join me in thanking the speakers and also for what they do because quite honestly this is not an easy task and I can see myself being frustrated every day 12 hours of working on this so thank you both of you thanks for coming